(by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations what approaches have been made to him about postponing the date of the coming into force of the Federation of Malaysia on 31st August.

We have had no such request.

Is the Secretary of State aware that it is reported that approaches have been made to the Secretary-General of the United Nations asking whether it will carry out a plebiscite in the Borneo territories? If this is agreed by all parties concerned, does not the right hon. Gentleman think it wise that we should also agree, as a means of still further destroying the allegation by the Chinese imperialists that this is neo-colonialism?

That seems to me to be a hypothetical question. It seems to be so full of "ifs" that it cannot be anything but hypothetical, in which case it is not in order.

May I ask the Minister whether it is not a fact that approaches have been made to the United Nations Secretary-General for the purpose of carrying out a plebiscite in North Borneo? If so, will we do nothing to obstruct that act?

We have made no such request. I think that certain inquiries have been made to see what could be done between now and 31st August.

On the question of the attitude of China on this point, it should be remembered that the Dutch Government were not accused of imperialism when they handed over West New Guinea to Indonesia without a plebiscite. Indeed, they were almost accused of imperialism for suggesting that perhaps it would be a good thing if the opinion of the people were obtained before this transfer was made.

I should like to take this opportunity to remind the House that the Legislatures of both these territories, Sarawak and North Borneo, have passed resolutions, either unanimously or without any opposing votes, in favour of Malaysia. Both Legislatures were then dissolved, elections were held and majorities in favour of Malaysia were returned. We are, therefore, wholly satisfied that the majority of the population of both territories is in favour of joining Malaysia.

Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that what has happened bears out the warning which I ventured to give during the debate on this matter? Will he be very careful not to disturb the new promising relations between Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines in favour of a much wider confederation?

The hon. Member says that he gave a warning. In fact, he said that he thought that it would be a good thing if we delayed the setting up of the new Federation. We very much take the view that it would be a mistake to delay a new association which is clearly desired by the peoples of all the territories concerned. Of course, any change in the date—and nobody has proposed that there should be a change—would require the approval of all the five Governments who have signed the agreement.

Is it not true that this trouble has arisen because the President of Indonesia has changed his mind?

I would not like to interpret his mind.

I have thought long before deciding to initiate this debate. It is a grave matter to suggest that someone has been wrongly hanged. It is graver still to suggest that someone else may possibly have been guilty. I have also hesitated from consideration of the woman who escaped death but was terribly injured and also the wife and family of the murdered man. No one would wish to recreate memories and sorrows. Nevertheless I feel that this is a public duty. Issues of supreme importance are involved, not only as to whether an innocent man was hanged but whether the judgment of the wisest of us is infallible.

I have been engaged in this investigation for over a year with the constant help of competent legal advisers and of a medical man of stature. The case unhappily has close associations with my constituency. Michael Gregston and Valerie Storie were on the staff of the Road Research Station at Langley. Valerie and her family live in Slough. The tragedy began near and through Slough.

I was led to start my inquiries by a responsible Slough journalist, Mr. Mason, a man of character and social conscience, and by a businessman and a barrister whose interest had been aroused by the proceedings of the trial. Mr. Mason approached me before Hanratty was executed, and the businessman and barrister came to see me. Indeed, on the night before the execution information reached me which caused me to contact the Home Secretary and which led Scotland Yard to make last minute inquiries. Arising from this preliminary information I felt that there was sufficient to justify the continuation of the inquiry.

It has been a somewhat disagreeable experience. It has necessitated associations which I would not normally choose. I have not hidden from Scotland Yard or the Home Secretary what I have been doing. With a legal adviser I had an hour's frank talk with Chief Detective Superintendent Kennedy of Scotland Yard, and a verbatim note of the interview was sent to the Home Secretary. I have also reported to the Home Office and have been admitted to see certain papers. I believe that the evidence which has emerged from this investigation, whilst not necessarily conclusive, provides a prima facie case for an inquiry.

There are two ways in which one could prove Hanratty's innocence. The first would be to show that he could not have done it. At the trial he disastrously attempted to present a phoney alibi. He is dead and there is no evidence on that matter. The second way is to suggest that someone else may have been guilty. I should have much preferred to have submitted evidence in this respect to an inquiry.

Only the uncertainty as to whether the Home Office would grant one necessitates my speech today. I make it fully understanding the gravity of what I am doing. I do not want to take refuge behind the privilege of this House. I have sent a detailed statement not only to the Home Secretary but to every Member of Parliament and it has reached the Press, though without my authority. I should have much preferred an inquiry where the evidence could have been sifted. I still hope that after what I have said today the Home Secretary will agree. Indeed, if only for the sake of the man himself, I cannot see how the right hon. Gentleman can refuse.

The trial of Hanratty aroused doubts in many minds. It was recognised that the judge was fair, but it was held widely that the evidence was not sufficient. Even greater doubts were caused by the Home Secretary's decision not to grant a reprieve. The then Home Secretary knew, although the jury did not know, that Hanratty had been certified as a mental defective. I have made some inquiries from the family. I have seen his father and his brother. They have impressed me greatly as honest and truthful. They are the best type of the working class.

The father has told me of the difficulty of James Hanratty's school years, spent in a special school, and how as a teen-ager, following an accident, he had a brain operation after which the deterioration of his character was marked. A truthful boy became a liar and an honest boy a thief, addicted as the years went by to petty crimes and car stealing. Even so, there is no evidence that he ever showed any tendency towards violence and had ever handled a gun. Whether he was guilty or not, the refusal of a reprieve to a mental defective seems to me to be inexcusable. A Home Secretary has a cruel decision to make. I admire the them Home Secretary's record, his resistance to pressures for severer punishments and his zeal for prison reform, but I should not like to have on my conscience the decision he made on Hanratty. I have sent to the Home Secretary and Members of Parliament copies of a confession made by another man. A photostat copy is in the possession of the Home Secretary and I have a photostat copy here. I will call the man "Mr. X", although I fear that his identity will become clear by more that I must necessarily say.

I want to say at once that I do not place credence on the mere fact of a confession. No murder takes place without some exhibitionist making a confession. It is all the surrounding circumstances, some of which were revealed at the trial and much of which is in the new evidence that I will reveal, which makes this confession noticeable.

The confession was first made orally to a barrister. The written document was given to an intimate friend of Mr. X, who subsequently brought it to me. It was handed over by Mr. X at the Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, on 15th May, 1962. It was written on notepaper of the Rubens Hotel, Buckingham Palace Road, where he had stayed the previous week. It is in the form of notes intended to be expanded into a fuller confession, each point numbered. Out of consideration for Valerie Storie I do not propose to read much of the detailed description of the fatal car drive which is included in the confession.

The first point reads:

"(1) Obtaining the gun. Reasons for this. Name of person George."

We have not been able to identify "George". I do not know whether Scotland Yard, to whom the confession was immediately sent, has tried to do so or succeeded.

"(2) Frame-up in Vienna. How I knew Nudds. Reasons for this frame. Altering the register (alibi with my mother). Planting cases in room 24 when R was out. Asking Nudds if Ryan had left."

"Vienna" means the Vienna Hotel. Nudds was the hotelier. "R" is Hanratty, who was known at the hotel as Ryan. The reference to altering the register was an apparent attempt by Mr. X to fix an alibi with his mother. I shall make further comments on this item later.

I will continue to read from the confession:

"(3) Slough Had gun but hoping not to commit murder at that time but well in the mood for it. The dogs. Bookmaker who might know me. Going out after Mentals Only Hope. Walking out into the country. Stopped at pub opposite Old Station Inn. On to Marsh Lane. Couple in car fitted my mood and my main plan."

"Mentals Only Hope" was a greyhound which ran in the seventh race at Slough Stadium shortly after 9 p.m. on the night of the murder. This is striking confirmation that Mr. X was in the neighbourhood that night. I continue with the confession:

"(4) From the moment I went in, imitated working class person with voice and background although I never met Ryan."

That is, Hanratty.

"But a lot of what I said which could be interpreted as Ryan's hatred of ordinary middle-class people stemmed from my heart and was my own hatred of them.

(5) I played with them as cat and mouse—but all the time I was tense and being an extrovert I showed it and exaggerated, and a lot of my nervousness was communicated to them.

"(6) When I killed him and she said, 'Oh, you swine. You bastard. You have shot him', I felt the need to give her some explanation and I said, 'He should not have tried to turn tables on me'. She said, 'He was not, you swine. You are mad'. I said, 'He moved too quickly'. I knew I must kill her but first I might as well rape her. I felt tense and overwrought and I felt that even fleeting love would help me. She said, 'Do what you like now. Nothing matters any more'."

I omit several lines here, for the sake of Valerie Storie.

"I said, 'I must kill you now. It is either your life or mine and I have a messianic mission'. She said, 'Please don't hurt me'."

There is another considerable omission here, again for the sake of Valerie Storie.

"I said, 'Goodbye, Valerie. You will stay here'. But as I walked away I turned and shot her"—

there is a query mark here—

"times. She fell and lay on the ground. I went over and fired more shots into her. She lay absolutely still. I believed she was dead."

The confession continues with a number of points:

"(7) Meeting the drivers on the road. Driving badly.>

(8) Meeting my friend at Southend. Disposal of gun."

I have some evidence which I have forwarded to the Home Secretary that Mr.X spent the night following the murder at a place not far from where the murder car was found and en route to Southend.

"(9) All my interviews with police (Finsbury Park and Acott) can be found from my papers with McDougal.

"(10) If they had been other sort of people I would not have killed them."

I omit point (11).

It is followed by a series of further renumbered points:

"(1) Car passed. Lights lit up faces twenty minutes after Gregston…

(2) I arrived in car about 9.30.

(3) Left approximately 11.30.

(4) Drove to layby by roundabout route.

(5) I said, 'Shut up. I am thinking my plan out'.

(6) Fired about ten times at her.

(7) Drove off about 3 o'clock.

(8) Raped Valerie twenty minutes after Gregston's death.

(9) Fire shots at Gregston at point-blank range.

(10) said 'Kiss me' before raping her when she was in front seat.

(11) ·38 Enfield revolver.

(12) Past attempt at cornfield."

The Home Secretary may say that the substance of this confession could have been built upon reports of the trial, but in fact there are additional points which could be tested.

This written confession was supplemented by an alleged acknowledgment of the crime to the Hanratty family. Hanratty's father says that Mr. X visited his home on 22nd August, 1962, which was the first anniversary of the murder. Mr. Hanratty says this:

"I asked him if it was right that he had written a confession and said I had a copy. He said, 'Yes. I have the original here' and produced it from his pocket. He put it on the table and said 'I am very sorry that all this happened. I never thought they would hang your son. I know he did not do the murder'."

It is the series of circumstances which I will now cite which gives these confessions substance. The case against Hanratty at the trial was based positively on three counts, which I will consider in turn, particularly in the light of new evidence.

The first was Valerie Storie's identification. Valerie said she had seen the assailant only momentarily in the head lights of a passing car. She had to rely mainly on recognising his voice. She took part in two identification parades, at the first of which she picked another man. She admitted that this man resembled Mr. X. At the second identification parade, after 20 minutes, she chose Hanratty when he said "finking" rather than "thinking" I have tape recordings that prove that Mr. X mispronounces in the same way—

"Everyfing you asked."

and:

"I want free hundred pounds…"

followed by:

"…you had better make it free hundred pounds."

These tape recordings are available to the Home Secretary. Indeed, some of them have been heard at Scotland Yard, at an inquiry.

The matter of identification is important. There were three identifications of Hanratty reported at the trial. There were five identifications of other people by leading Crown witnesses.

Secondly, the finding of cartridge cases from the murder gun in a room which Hanratty used at the Vienna Hotel. Here I must refer to item No. 2 in Mr. X's confession.

"Frame-up in Vienna. Reasons for this frame. Planting cases in room 24 when R "—

that is, Hanratty—

"was out. Asking Nudds if Ryan had left".

It will be seen that Mr. X states that he had planted the cartridges when Hanratty was absent. Mr. X had spent the night of 21st August, the night before the murder, at the Vienna Hotel. The hotelier, Nudds, in his second statement to the police, said that two and a half hours after the murder was discovered Mr. X was in his room, unkempt and in a nervous state. His bed had not been slept in and Mr. X told him that he did not want any breakfast. The hotelier made three statements to the police, withdrawing the first and second, which incriminated Mr. X, leaving the third against Hanratty. In court Mr. Nudds acknowledged that he was a liar.

Thirdly, Hanratty had spoken of the upstairs back seat of a bus as a good place to hide unwanted jewellery; and the gun was discovered in just such a place. On this I acknowledge that I have no new evidence, although I take this opportunity of correcting the statement which was made in a book and also in a Sunday newspaper to the effect that Hanratty had said that this was a good place to hide a gun. He never made such a statement. He never referred to a gun. He remarked on one occasion that it was "a good hiding place."

Mr. X was the first suspect of Scotland Yard, and he was arrested. Under an assumed name, he had shut himself in his room at the Alexander Hotel, Finsbury, for five days following the murder. Identikit pictures drawn from descriptions of the murderer fitted him, particularly that by Valerie Storie. At the trial Superintendent Acott gave 12 reasons for eliminating Mr. X from his further inquiries. In fairness to Mr. X I will repeat them, though sometimes they seem to me to be trivial.

They are, first, that the assailant told Valerie Storie and Gregston that his name was Jim; in fact, it was Peter. Apart from the unlikelihood that a murderer would reveal his real name. Mr. X admits to using several names and he knew that Hanratty was known as "Jim Ryan" at the Vienna Hotel.

Secondly, the assailant is described as being in his mid-twenties; Mr. X is 30. Valerie Storie admits that she saw little of the assailant. In fact, Mr. X looks younger than his years. I saw him when he came with others to visit me at the House of Commons and I should place him at less than 30.

Thirdly, the assailant is described as being about 5ft. 6ins.; Mr. X is 5ft. 9ins. Hanratty was 5ft. 8ins. Mr. X looks shorter than his height. He has sloping shoulders and he gave me the impression of being a shorter man.

Fourthly, the assailant is described as having blue eyes; Mr. X's are hazel. His face had been seen only in the headlights of a car which, as every motorist knows, plays tricks with colour. They would appear to have done so with Valerie Storie in her description of the colour of her assailant's hair, which she says was brown. John Kerr, the under- graduate who found her on the A.6 lay-by, said that she told him that her assailant had fairish hair. Dr. Rennie, of Guy's Hospital, also stated that Valerie told him that her attacker had fair hair.

Fifthly, the assailant had difficulty in pronouncing the dipthong "th". I have already said that the tape recordings of his voice, which are available, show that Mr. X has the same difficulty.

Sixthly, the assailant had an East London accent; Mr. X is well spoken. However, no one who has heard the tape recordings would say that Mr. X is well spoken. He frequently lapses into a Cockney accent. Indeed, his voice answers the description given by Valerie Storie. Hanratty's father says that Mr. X's voice is very like that of his son.

Seventhly, the assailant is described as uneducated; Mr. X is distinctly educated. He may be, but no one who has heard or read transcripts of the tape recordings would suspect him of any culture.

Eighthly, the assailant was hesitant while Mr. X readily answered questions. Hesitant? He kept Gregston and Valerie Storie talking in the car for one and a half hours before making them drive off. This is consistent with Mr. X's hour-long telephone conversations, parts of which are reproduced on the tape recordings.

Ninthly, the assailant used the word "kip" and Mr. X did not. According to Hanratty's family, James Hanratty did not normally use the word "kip" and Superintendent Acott admitted that in telephone conversations Hanratty had used the word "sleep".

Tenthly, Hanratty, under questioning, showed a desire to sleep and Mr. X, despite being kept awake, did not. This could be interpreted in different ways. A guilty man would remain alert while an innocent man might be more in different.

Eleventhly, the assailant drove a car and Mr. X does not drive. It is true that the assailant drove the car away from the layby, but all the evidence shows that he drove it very badly. It would appear that he had little knowledge of cars. Valerie Storie had to start the engine of the Morris Minor after Gregston was murdered and show the assailant how the gears operated. Hanratty, on the other hand, would not have been expected to drive badly. He was a good and experienced driver. He was a convicted car thief and would certainly have known how to operate the gears of a Morris Minor. His knowledge of cars is indicated in his last letter to his brother, advising him on the care of the powerful car which he bequeathed to him.

Twelfthly, the assailant is described as being immaculate; Mr. X, when arrested, was shabby and wearing a blazer and flannels. Mr. X is at home in the most exclusive hotels and is normally dressed neatly. I remember that my secretary remarked that his trousers bad been neatly pressed when he came to see me at the House of Commons. I make the general comment that these seem to be an extraordinarily unconvincing series of reasons, even if they had been accurate, for releasing a suspect.

There are contrary reasons for regarding Mr. X as a suspect, as the investigations of the last year have shown. The centrepiece of the tragic night of 22nd August, 1961, was in the neighbourhood of Slough, Taplow, where Gregston and Valerie Storie were accosted in a cornfield, is a few miles from Slough. They were directed at gun point by the assailant to drive through Slough and then along the A.4 past London Airport. The assailant would have seemed to have known the district.

There is no evidence that Hanratty had ever been to Taplow or Slough. Mr. X, on the other hand, was familiar with Slough and its environments. He frequented Slough Greyhound Stadium. He says that he was there immediately before the murder drive. He has stayed at the Ariel Hotel on the A.4, opposite London Airport.

There is this significant fact. After Hanratty's conviction Mr. X took two men, one of them the barrister to whom he first made the oral confession, to the cornfield in Marsh Lane. It was night time, but they affirm that he led them without hesitation to the spot. There had been Press reports of the general whereabouts of the cornfield, but none, as far as I know, so detailed as to enable a stranger to find the spot with precision. The correctness of the site was confirmed the next day when one of the men returned and found a beer bottle there which he had thrown down whilst with Mr. X.

One weakness in the prosecution case at the trial was the failure to produce evidence that Hanratty's clothing had bloodstains on it. Stains could not have been avoided in view of his proximity to Gregston if he were the murderer. He was said to have been wearing a blue striped suit. The waistcoat and trousers were exhibited, but were without bloodstains. Surely his trousers would have had bloodstains, because he took over the driving seat which Gregston had occupied? The jacket was not exhibited, and the prosecution implied that it had been discarded because of incriminating bloodstains.

Hanratty explained that he had thrown away the jacket after it had been torn as he climbed through the window of a house in Stanmore into which he had broken at the end of September. The police at Stanmore—reported the prosecution—had no record of a break-in on the dates given by Hanratty. Before the end of the trial, however, the police admitted that they were mistaken. The break-in had been recorded. Hanratty's account of it was confirmed, even to the detail of a green candle which he had used because the electricity supply was cut off.

There is an even more important point. If Hanratty was the murderer, does any one believe that he would have continued to go about wearing the trousers in which he was alleged to have committed the crime? A Crown witness stated that some days after the murder Hanratty visited her wearing the same blue striped trousers.

There is one fact which has deeply inclined me towards belief in Hanratty's innocence. Both the priests who saw him in the condemned cell are said by Hanratty's father to have told him that they were convinced that his son had not committed the murder. I would not be so impressed by this if Hanratty were not a Catholic. A Catholic believes that he will suffer eternal damnation if he dies without confessing sins which he has not confessed at previous confessions. I find it difficult to believe that Hanratty would have gone to the gallows declaring himself innocent if he were in fact guilty, when there is evidence that he sincerely accepted in his last hours the ministration of Catholic priests to whom he could have confessed in the presence of God.

There were other happenings and circumstances described in the report which I forward to the Home Secretary which fortified the case for an inquiry. I have spoken for long, and I cannot mention more, but I must refer to the tape recordings of telephone conversations between Mr. X and the businessman to whom I have referred.

The businessman had been an intimate friend of Mr. X, and it was to him that Mr. X handed his confession. Subsequently, when Mr.X found that his friend had passed the confession to me and was engaged in inquiries as to whether Mr.X was associated with the murder, the relationship between them changed. Mr. X began to threaten his friend's life and to demand money from him. The recorded telephone conversations were during this stage.

The significant thing about them is that they are uninhibited. Exhibitionism might be alleged against the confession, but it cannot be alleged against these man-to-man conversations. An hon. Member on the benches opposite has told me that it is the transcriptions of these tape recordings which have convinced him of the case for an inquiry. I can understand that. They are the most conclusive evidence.

In these long telephone talks it is assumed as an agreed matter that Mr. X was involved in the A.6 murder. It is difficult, and I would not say desirable, to reproduce their atmosphere here, but these are a few extracts. I shall call the businessman Mr. Y:

"Mr. Y: I should leave her"—

that is Mrs. Hanratty—

"alone—after what you have done to Jimmy."

That is James Hanratty.

"Mr. X: Only you know that and I don't think you will say that in court will you? Will you?"

This was said in a threatening manner.

"Mr. Y: No."

This is another extract, showing the demands for money:

"Mr. X: I want £250, and don't f…"—

I shall not use the obscene words—

"about with me. You stupid little c…I have told you what I want. I want £250.

Mr. Y: Is that what you think I am?

Mr. X: I want £250.

Mr. Y: If I cannot get it?

Mr. X: Then I am going to kill you."

Another, in which Mr. X complains of the inquiries in which his friend had been engaged, is as follows:

"Mr. X: You are an evil person. What you do to people is evil.

Mr. Y: What you have done to Gregston…

Mr. X: What I have done to Gregston is one thing. Two rights don't make a wrong. What you are doing is evil. I'm a human being, you know.

Mr. Y: What was Gregston?

Mr. X: Hume was a murderer but he didn't go through what I'm going through."

The following is another extract:

"Mr. X: I don't think talking makes things clear. Hitler talked a lot before the war, but no one took any notice of him till he struck; then they did not know what to do.

Mr. Y: Like in the car you mean?

Mr. X: Yes, that's right. I will just tell you one thing. No. I had better not. About the car.

Mr. Y: Yes.

Mr. X: Yes. Anyway, I can tell you Gregston did not take any notice at all. Did not take any notice at all of talk. You know what happened to him. It is not easy to terrorise anyone by talk you know. Don't think it was all terror in the car because it wasn't.

Mr. Y: I quite agree.

Mr. X: It was after the shot was fired, but not before. He was quite cocky.

Mr. Y: Who?

Mr. X: Gregston."

Another extract:

"M. X: I always mean what I say. It is not a lot of hot air. It is a case of waiting and seeing.

Mr. Y: Did you wait for him or her? You never made it clear.

Mr. X: Perhaps it was lucky I didn't.

Mr. Y: I told Mr. Hanratty the truth.

Mr. X: You shouldn't have told him; what I told you I told you in confidence…You're going to go, aren't you? We don't know what you are yet; the fact that she got away with it does not matter. That was just a fluke, she was just lucky. After having six bullets in her, she managed to live and she managed to put someone to the gallows."

I give a final extract in which the businessman appears to express remorse for betraying someone who had been a friend—or is be fearing Mr. X's threats, as I think he had some reason to do? The extract is:

"Mr. Y: Why did you tell me?

Mr. X: Why are you trying to persecute me for it? Is not the crime enough?

Mr. Y: I agree. I am ashamed of my conduct; I'm paying for it. You shouldn't have told me.

Mr. X: You asked…you asked me out of curiosity in the beginning….

Mr. Y: I only hope you will retract on your decision.

Mr. X: I am sure you will break…I don't want a truce. What do I gain out of any truce? This affair came about to glorify me; I have only been dragged in the mud…I could deny the voice or anything…I did say I would go abroad and tell the truth if convicted on the Fadzuk case—I will one day. I will get my case against Acott first…

Mr. Y: Why did you tell me you did the murder?

Mr. X: What's that got to do with it? I told you the truth; you told me a f…pack of lies, didn't you? Why shouldn't I tell you? You were my friend; people don't do what you did; there are murders going on all over the world; I didn't expect your reaction to be what it was."

I have refrained from reading certain extracts from these tape recordings out of consideration for Valerie Storie, but they are of significance and may possibly provide a motive for the incident in the cornfield which preceded the murder. I ask the Home Secretary to study these extracts in the document which I have sent to him.

That document concludes with Hanratty's last letter, written to his brother just at dawn on the day of his execution.

I read a part of it:

"Well, Mick I am going to do my best to face the morning with courage and strength and I am sure God will give me the courage to do so. Mick now you are the eldest in the family and I know that I could not count on anybody better than yourself. Mick we always got on well together and we had many good times together over the years. But I am going to ask you to do me a small favour, that is I would like you to try and clear my name of this crime. Someone somewhere is responsible for this crime and one day they will venture again and then the truth will come out. Time is drawing near, it is almost daylight, so please look after Mum and Dad for me."

Those words—

"Someone somewhere is responsible for this crime."

Are we to believe James Hanratty's assertion of his innocence? I suggest that in the light of the evidence which I have presented, it will be on our conscience if we do not respond to his appeal to find the truth.

Whatever else one may think about this distressing affair, I do not think that anyone can fail but admire the persistence with which the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) has pursued this matter over the last twelve months and the clarity with which he has deployed this morning an extremely difficult case. He has had a very difficult task to perform, as he said. It is no easy thing either to question a decision reached in a criminal case, or to cast suspicion upon somebody else in a case in which one man has already been convicted. I personally admire very much the moderate and restrained way in which he put before us this morning the evidence which he has collected.

I have a personal interest in this case. After Hanratty was convicted, but before he was executed, his solicitor got in touch with me. Why I do not know; but quite out of the blue he rang me up at the office one morning, and he sent to me certain papers which I understood he then intended to forward to the Home Secretary. These papers, which I studied and sent back to him—because they were obviously confidential—did not seem to me at that time to add anything to the evidence which had been produced in court.

I gave him such advice as I was able to give. He was anxious to obtain advice about the possibility of obtaining a reprieve, but the only advice which I felt that I could genuinely give him was that I thought it unlikely that the Home Secretary of the day would grant a reprieve except on evidence of mental instability. That evidence I believed to be there, although it was not brought out at the trial, I gather from Hanratty's own wish; and I think that this was perhaps unfortunate and that it might have been better if it had been brought out.

Of course, in the documents which were sent to me at that time, there was no mention of a lot of the material contained in the memorandum which the hon. Member for Eton and Slough has circulated to the Home Secretary and to all hon. Members. But I think that it is on the evidence contained in that document that we in the House, and the Home Secretary particularly, upon whom rests the very difficult task of deciding these matters, have to make up our minds.

But before looking at this evidence I wonder whether I may make one general point which, I hope, will appeal to the whole House, whatever their views on this case may be. Whenever a case like this arises—and I think that this is the third since the end of the war—the whole discussion gets bedevilled by the arguments for and against capital punishment, to the extent that in the case of Rowlands and Evans, which were the two preceding cases in which doubts were cast on the conviction of a man after he had been executed, it tended to happen in the House that those who, like myself, were in favour of the abolition of capital punishment lined up in favour of the reversal of the verdict and those who were of the opposite view insisted firmly that there should be no change. This was a very broad distinction, but it tended to happen and, as a result, the arguments could not be considered dispassionately and away from outside influences.

I hope that on this occasion we shall be able to consider the incident on the evidence presented—and the hon. Member for Eton and Slough has certainly done it—as if it were an ordinary criminal case. It is a difficult thing to do, but unless we do it we shall get completely clouded once again by the argument which always intervenes in these cases.

Considering this incident as if it were an ordinary criminal case, my reaction is to say that although I am not convinced by this that Hanratty was innocent or that Mr.X was necessarily guilty, I am convinced that if this information had been before the jury they would not have convicted Hanratty. I believe, therefore, that there must be an inquiry into this case.

Basically, the reasons why I am convinced of this are three. One is a reason to which the hon. Member for Eton and Slough did not refer in his speech, that is to say, the evidence brought out on page 7 of the cyclostyled document—I do not know whether the numbering in the Home Secretary's copy is the same, but I think that he will recognise the passage—the evidence of a gentleman called Mr. Fogarty-Waul, who, apparently, lived in a caravan quite near the cornfield. He made certain statements about meetings there both before and after the murder with another man, a man who, clearly, was not Hanratty.

I shall not go into the details of this because it trespasses on ground upon which the hon. Gentleman, quite rightly in my opinion, did not enter. However, I find that a very convincing statement, and I should like to have Mr. Fogarty-Waul's evidence tested by inquiry, by examination and, if necessary, by cross-examination, to ascertain whether it is true.

The second main reason why I believe that the jury would not have convicted arises from the so-called confession and, much more, the tape recordings. I believe that these are too circumstantial not to have an element of truth in them, and, again, I am certain that, on the evidence of these two documents, particularly the nightmare-like tape recordings of those astonishing telephone conversations, there must be an investigation. There must be a probing to ascertain whether they are true or not. As long as they are hanging about, there will be doubt cast on the whole matter.

The third factor which convinces me that there must be an inquiry was mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, namely, the subsequent visit paid to the cornfield by Mr.X and his acquaintances some time after the murder. In the time available since the hon. Gentleman sent me this document, I have been through as many Press reports of the murder and of the trial as I have been able to find, and I can bear out what he says, that in no newspaper which I have been able to track down was there any precise description of where the field was. It was described in general terms, but I imagine that there were a number of fields around there and it could have been one of several.

I have come to a conclusion which, I must admit, I did not want to come to at the beginning. One is always most reluctant to cast doubt not on the whole judicial system, but, at least, on the jury system in which we take such pride, and this is not something to be undertaken lightly. My first reaction when the hon. Gentleman sent me the document was to try to put it aside unread, but I felt that that would be a dereliction of duty. I am, however, convinced that there is enough evidence of doubt here—without necessarily being convinced one way or the other on that evidence—to suggest that there should be an inquiry.

One final word. I hope that, if there is an inquiry, it will be an inquiry so far as possible in public. We have had the experience of the Scott Henderson inquiry which, whether it was right or wrong, because of the way in which it was handled did not carry an enormous amount of conviction. If this particular matter is to be cleared up, it should be cleared up as publicly as possible.

My approach to this question is very similar to that of the hon. Member for Gravesend (Mr. Kirk). We all realise that, in a serious matter of this kind, it is only in the clearest cases that this House ought to take the responsibility of urging the Home Secretary to order an inquiry which, in itself, would throw doubt on the proper administration of justice. It is fundamental in our society that the public should have confidence in the way in which justice is administered and confidence in our system of trial by jury and the findings which a jury reaches after hearing all the evidence given in a criminal case.

I, too, hope that this discussion will not be bedevilled by any views which one may hold about the abolition of capital punishment. In this respect, I think that I can speak with more conviction because I have not always held the same views as those expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) and by the hon. Member for Gravesend.

We are faced this morning with a very serious situation. My hon. Friend has been at pains to collect a great deal of evidence which tends to show two things; first, that Mr. Hanratty was innocent although he was convicted of a murder for which he has been hanged; second, that another gentleman, Mr. X, although at one time arrested by the police, is now at large and has confessed to the murder.

Although, of course, it is not for this House in any sense to judge on the merits of the matter, I have come to the conclusion that anyone reading dispassionately the statement and the memorandum which my hon. Friend has circulated or anyone listening to the extracts which he read this morning, must be convinced that there is, at least, a very strong prima facie case that the matter cannot be left where it is.

Even if Mr. Hanratty had not been hanged and was merely serving a life sentence, the facts revealed this morning would appear to indicate that there is very substantial evidence that another person, Mr. X, was guilty of the murder. That itself is something which, I suggest, the Home Office has a duty to investigate.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I always approach these matters which throw doubt on the validity of a decision reached by a court with the greatest suspicion and the greatest reluctance. One knows that, after the hanging of any convicted murderer, there often appear a few madmen who pretend that they have themselves committed the murder. In this case, however, it cannot be said that these documents are just a piece of exhibitionism on the part of Mr. X. They are his own statements, corroborated by independent evidence.

I was impressed also by a reading of the evidence, which has been given by Mr. Fogarty-Waul, which my hon. Friend did not read. It seems to me very odd that this Mr. Fogarty-Waul did not come forward to give evidence at Hanratty's trial. He is obviously in a position to give most valuable information, and I should have thought that it was important at any inquiry to test his evidence.

I was impressed, also, in considering whether Hanratty was innocent or not, by two matters. I refer, first, to the most unsatisfactory proceedings at the identity parades. When one reflects on the trial, one is forced to the conclusion that the prosecution had to rely on those identity parades. Without proof of the identity of the murderer, Hanratty could not have been convicted, and that proof of identity depended entirely on identity parades which, in my view, were thoroughly unsatisfactory. Although, on three occasions, Hanratty was identified, on five other occasions someone else was, including, I think, Mr. X on one occasion.

The jury reached their conclusion and Hanratty has been hanged, but I should have thought that everyone must, to put it at the lowest, have the gravest possible doubt about whether Hanratty would ever have been convicted if the evidence now available had been before the jury.

I was impressed by the obvious sincerity of Hanratty's final message to his family and the testimony of the Roman Catholic priests who said that right until the last moment he had not confessed in the confessional and had asserted his innocence knowing that, even if he had confessed to those priests in order to obtain the benefit of spiritual absolution, that confession could never have been disclosed to anybody. The fact that he failed to do so and preferred to die a Roman Catholic protesting his innocence is, to my mind, a most striking fact.

What should our duty be? I do not think that the Home Secretary, or any Home Secretary, can possibly allow this matter to remain where it is. There is the clearest possible case for investigation. There would be such a case even if this were not a capital offence, but the fact that it is a capital offence, and the fact that it looks as if injustice has been done, makes it all the more important that there should be an investigation.

The Home Secretary may be urged that it will shake public confidence in the administration of justice if there is a further inquiry. But I urge this consideration on him: public confidence in the administration of justice has already been shaken. This is the third case of a capital nature which has occurred recently, but only the other day we had the case of Mr. Gordon, who, only a few weeks ago, was convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment after a trial, and then, as a result of further evidence being brought to light before the Court of Criminal Appeal—which, incidentally, has not yet been made public, but I am sure that in the interests of public policy it ought to be made public—a convicted criminal was set free. Therefore, it is no use saying that the public can have complete confidence that a jury's finding is final and infallible.

But when a capital sentence is involved, and when a person who may have been innocent has been hanged, there is this further consideration. Since the passing of the Homicide Act, we have been living through an experimental period to decide whether there should be at some future time a further review about the abolition of capital punishment.

On that matter, I have never taken the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough. I have always thought that the strongest argument for the abolition of capital punishment is not that there is something inherently wrong in capital punishment for a deliberate, clearly proven murder, but that there is the risk that, as long as capital punishment remains on the Statute Book, a completely innocent person may be hanged and that further evidence may subsequently come to light which shows that the most grievous possible injustice that any society can inflict has been inflicted.

It is that consideration in the whole context of the future retention or abolition of capital punishment which, to my mind, makes it imperative that the Home Secretary should order a completely impartial inquiry into the Hanratty case, either so that public confidence may be restored, which may be one solution, or, if it is found that injustice of this grave character has been done, in order that the public knows the risks which are being run by the retention of capital punishment.

For all these reasons, I would hope that the Home Secretary would feel that it is his public duty to try to allay the very considerable public anxiety which has been aroused, and which will be aroused, by these disclosures by having a completely impartial inquiry into the whole circumstances, the report of which can be made public.

I join hon. Members in complimenting the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) on his very assiduous investigation into this case and the manner in which he has presented it to the House. It undoubtedly sows the seeds of doubt in our minds about the conviction of Hanratty.

I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will consider this case carefully and will accede to the request for an inquiry because, to my mind, it is another instance which tells us that we should look at our system of criminal justice, particularly in murder cases. I happen to fit into the category—I do not know whether by inclusion or exclusion—mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend (Mr. Kirk) in that I have not been among those urging the abolition of capital punishment. None the less, I have endeavoured to consider these serious cases in a dispassionate way and to form my own opinion on whether our system of justice, in which, of course, we take so much pride, has been working in the way that we desire.

I have had grave doubts, not only in this case, but also in the Evans case. But I believe Chat one has only to be involved and intensely interested in investigating a case oneself to feel strongly about these matters. It so happens that I have had such a case, in John Armstrong, who is my constituent. He was sentenced to death in 1956,but was subsequently reprieved by the clemency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler), who then occupied the position of Home Secretary.

I do not want to go into the details of the Armstrong case. I am not sure that I should be in order in doing so. In any event, it would be embarrassing for Armstrong himself, who is still a young man and who, one hopes, will have a useful life in front of him in society when he has paid the penalty for his conviction. It is enough to remind the House that he was sentenced for a crime to which his wife, who was charged with him and acquitted, subsequently confessed though the circumstances of her confession were such as to throw certain doubts on it. However, my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden, who was still Home Secretary, refused an investigation.

I was left extremely puzzled by the operation of justice in the Armstrong case. I was left with the strong conviction that, although Armstrong was not entirely innocent in every respect, he was innocent of the crime with which he was charged and convicted, but that he had brought himself—I use that word advisedly—to the verge of the gallows by a very unwise type of behaviour when he found himself accused of this extremely serious crime. Had he acted somewhat more wisely and circumspectly he would not perhaps have had the difficulty in proving his innocence that he had.

It was in 1958 when this case came to my notice. I was left with this sense of puzzlement, to which I found some elucidation in an extremely good article in the Observer on 15th January, 1961. I think that it is worth my while reading a part of this article as being the key to the argument which I wish briefly to present. The article was founded on the Evans case. The article said:

"In his review Lord Birkett argues that 'there was no failure in the administrative machinery of the criminal law' and that 'no human skill could have prevented the conviction, and no human judicial system, whatever its checks and safeguards, can ever provide complete security against the exceedingly rare and utterly exceptional case such as that of Evans'."

The article went on to say:

"But is this so? Is it not true rather that Evans would not and could not have been found guilty in France or Germany or any country which has an 'inquisitorial' system of justice as against our 'accusatorial' system—that is to say, where the aim of the trial is to investigate the truth of a crime and not the guilt or innocence of a person? These Continental systems have their own dangers, but is it not at least possible that we can learn something from them?"

I hope that in drawing my right hon. Friend's attention to these arguments, which were put forward two years ago, not only will he investigate this case in the manner suggested by the hon. Member for Eton and Slough, but he will look at the working of our whole system and its mode of action in the courts.

We comfort ourselves with the thought, which, of course, we all learned at school, that in this country a man is innocent in our courts until he is proved guilty. But one is really led to doubt even this statement, when one examines the working of these murder trials. What happens is that an accusation is framed by the prosecution from which the accused person has to escape in one way or another. He has to knock down the props of this frame of the accusation, and that seems to me to produce unsatisfactory results in two ways.

First, it is the people of low intelligence who are unable to escape from this frame and are almost convicted before they start unless they have some obvious proof of innocence brought to their rescue, and this is the position in the Hanratty case. It was the position in the cases of Evans and, to some extent, of Armstrong who, although a person of good intelligence, in some respects had an inept pattern of behaviour.

This has to some extent been recognised by the plea of diminished responsibility. And one is bound to comment on one's surprise that in the Hanratty case, in the light of what the hon. Gentleman said, this plea was not put forward in court. None the less there are a large number of people who are not of high intelligence, but who nevertheless could not be able to plead diminished responsibility. This is the danger of this accusatorial system, on the one hand, that it is difficult for people of low intelligence to escape from the frame of accusation which is put up.

What is equally cogent is that just as the wrong people may be convicted, so also, the wrong people may escape, because we have the opposite of a case like that of Evans, or even a case like the one which we are discussing; we have the case of Donald Hume, who was such an excellent liar that he got right through the accusations merely by a clever fabrication of a system of lies concerning totally non-existent people, as he confessed later after he had been acquitted. So, we have the danger not only that we may convict the wrong people, but, also, that we may allow the wrong people to escape from the accusations against them.

I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been impressed by the arguments that have been advanced today. I should like to repeat one argument—we are familiar, of course, with the argument from authorities that if we have an inquiry it tends to discredit justice, but I think that we have reached the stage where that is no longer the case. What does discredit justice is when almost every year or two years some case of this kind arises both in this House and in the Press. I feel that my right hon. Friend will create public confidence in justice, in his administration and in his office if he accedes to the request which has been made to him today.

Before the Home Secretary replies, I would urge him not to refuse this request at least upon the ground that it is undesirable to question the verdict of a jury in a case of this kind. There have been of late a number of mounting criticisms of our jury system. For my part, I do not share those criticisms. It is difficult—indeed, impossible—to frame any legal system which will be proof against mistakes and faults. We have framed our criminal procedure in the belief that it is better that a number of guilty men should escape justice rather than that innocent men should be wrongly convicted, and generally speaking, in our criminal process, the scales weigh very heavily in favour of the accused man. I think that is right and I think it is a mark of a civilised system of jurisprudence.

Generally speaking, I believe that an accused person who is innocent is less likely to be convicted by a jury than by any other kind of tribunal. I think, however, that there is one exception to that, and that is where the defence is one of identity. Experience shows that juries, for some reason, are extraordinarily distrustful of this defence. It is, of course, a very easy defence for a guilty man to put forward when he cannot think of any other defence. He just says, "It was not I. A mistake has been made in identification. It must have been someone else."

Then, of course, he tries to support that evidence with alibi evidence to prove that he was somewhere else. Because it is so easy, and because many people who are in that position as defendants cannot produce alibi evidence, as I say juries tend to be extremely distrustful of it and I think experience shows that very many, if not most, of the cases where it has been subsequently found that juries returned a wrong verdict of guilty were cases in which the defence was one of identity. There are numerous cases of that.

In the Hanratty case, where the defence was identity, the prosecution rested, I think I am right in saying, on three identifications and all of them were ones for a very short period of time by the witnesses concerned, and there had been, as has been referred to, several failures to identify Hanratty on other occasions. I felt at the time of the Hanratty case—I was not present during the trial, but from newspaper reports I felt very strongly at the time—that Hanratty was almost sure to be convicted, and I thought that for two reasons.

The first was that visual identification was supported by an identification concerning his pronunciation—I think of the letter "th". He said "t'ink" instead of "think". This seemed to me to be a telling point in confirming the visual identification. The second was that Hanratty gave what I think fairly subsequently proved not one but two false alibis, and this, it seemed to me, was something which was bound to make a deplorable impression, from the defence point of view, on the jury and make them almost sure to reject the defence of identity.

There are two factors which make me hesitate, which have subsequently developed. One is the evidence contained in the memorandum circulated by my hon. Friend that Mr. X on one occasion at least is said to be recorded as having made the same mistake in pronunciation which went to support the identification by Miss Storie. The second is that we now know, what the jury at the time did not know, that Hanratty had a mental history, and I think it probable that this offers the explanation of the otherwise extraordinary feature in the case, namely, that he should construct false alibis.

One may ask, why should he construct a false alibi at all? But I think the answer to that is simple. He could not count on alibi evidence in the sense of having someone to call to testify where he was at the time of the trial. A person of low intelligence finding himself in that situation, knowing himself unlikely to be believed, particularly when he has a criminal record, would tend to construct a false alibi if he can get people to come in and support it, and it appears to me conceivable that, being of low intelligence, he might do it twice, each time falsely.

This question of his mental intelligence has been referred to by one or two hon. Members, and regret has been expressed that this was not brought out by the defence at the time of the trial. The reason why they did not was Hanratty's expressed request. I must say I would have thought that in the event it was a matter which would give the greatest difficulty to the defence in deciding whether to bring out that defence or not, because it might be used to question, as I have indicated, the reason for the two false alibis which could not help also impressing doubts upon the jury, and as a factor which might also point to guilt, as giving an explanation why this man, who up to then had only been a convicted thief and never indulged in violence, might have made a sexual assault of the kind which was made upon Miss Storie.

It was asked also why the defence of diminished responsibility was not raised. The answer to that is simple. It is that it is not a defence which can be raised when the plea is not guilty, because it is inconsistent with the plea of not guilty to say, "I did it" and say "The reason was because of my mental state which indicated diminished responsibility." It could not be put forward as a defence, and that is indicative of the dilemma in which the defence are put when there is some mental history and in a case where the plea is not guilty.

I feel myself reluctant to invite the Home Secretary to reopen a matter of this kind with an inquiry. I say no more upon that point other than to urge that he should not refuse an inquiry in any event upon the ground that a jury's verdict must not be questioned in this way. This appears to me to be the class of case where experience shows that one should be prepared to question the verdict of the jury, and I think many practitioners have found that it is something unfortunate in this class of case that the Court of Criminal Appeal should be so reluctant to do so themselves.

I do not want to prevent the Home Secretary from having full time to deal with the arguments which have been advanced. Therefore, I shall not speak at great length. Of course, my views on this kind of case are pretty well known. We can never rule out the possibility of human error in anything in which human beings are engaged, and sometimes a human error may be in the advice learned counsel tenders to his client when considering the line of defence which should be adopted.

I had the experience once of learned counsel coming straight from the Old Bailey to see me to say, in the case of a certain person who had been sentenced to death, that he had advised his client not to proceed on the basis of unsoundness of mind because he thought that it would be rather worse for the man to get sentenced to life imprisonment as a result of the trial rather than be hanged.

The right hon. Gentleman, I am quite sure, by this time has discovered that in nearly every case of murder a confession turns up on his table during the period he is considering whether the sentence should be carried out, and that generally all those confessions can be dismissed because, in the course of them, there is something which is not consistent with the facts as known and established.

An hon. Member advocated the inquisitorial system. I share the dislike of the inquisitorial system, because, after all, the word "inquisition" never sounds very pleasing to English ears, and I think that on the whole it is better that the prosecution should have to prove their case; and if they fail a verdict of not guilty is the one it is the jury's duty to return.

I am merely dealing with the case which has been presented to us this morning by my hon. Friend. Let us be certain of this; Mr. X has never been charged with an offence before a court. It is always easy to say that some other fellow whom the police did not catch is responsible for the crime—especially in a lower court. It is sometimes very difficult when learned counsel suggests that the real culprit is not before the court, but that somebody else is responsible. Sometimes it almost goes as far as being a case where the other person can be identified.

In asking the right hon. Gentleman to agree to the request of my hon. Friend that there should be an inquiry I am not suggesting that there is some other known person who committed the crime, because that would seriously jeopardise him if, in the future, it should happen that a charge should be made against him, but I know from my own correspondence in connection with many cases that there is grave suspicion in the public mind in respect of several sentences which have been passed in recent years.

I do not think that it is possible now to say that a traditional belief in the infallibility of the British legal system any longer exists among a large number of people. But a frank recognition that doubt exists, and a careful examination of the facts of the case as now known, would give more confidence to the public mind in respect of cases of this sort than would be given merely by saying—as one very distinguished member of the Bar who rose to the highest possible position said—that the thing is so carefully studied that a mistake is impossible. Nobody can claim that for any human institution or human transaction of affairs.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will feel able to grant my hon. Friend's request.

This debate exemplifies the grave responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of the Home Secretary. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Dr. D. Johnson) will forgive me if I do not follow him into the wider field which he opened up. In that connection, and in relation to what was said by the hon. and learned Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot), I can assure the House that my decision on the question whether or not to order a further inquiry in this case would not be influenced in any way by the question whether I thought it was a good thing or a bad thing subsequently to call in question the verdict of a jury or the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal.

I think that I shall carry the House with me when I say that we should look specifically and in some detail at this case, which has been so clearly set out by the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway). I am aware of the great amount of trouble that the hon. Member has taken in investigating the matter, and the great amount of detail that has come to his knowledge. I hope that he, in return, will recognise that the Home Office has devoted a tremendous amount of careful thought to the details of this case.

There is one more thing that I should say. In general, where a confession comes to light and a memorandum is furnished to the Home Office, such as that which the hon. Member has sent in, if it casts any doubt on the verdict of a jury there ought to be a further inquiry. But if, on the other hand, the nature of the evidence and of the confession is such as to render it impossible that the man that has made the confession could actually have committed the murder, in my view there would be no case for an inquiry.

The right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) truly said—he and I know it, but the House and the public may not know it—that it is commoner than one might think for people to make false confessions of murder. The confession which we have been debating today is not the only one which was received by my predecessor in connection with the Hanratty case. Two anonymous confessions in due course reached the Home Office. Every effort was made to trace their authors, but that was impossible. I say that simply to remove from the minds of the House and the public any idea that because a confession comes in, that fact, in itself—without regard to the contents of the confession—casts doubt on whether justice has been done.

I hope that what I have already said proves that I recognise to the full the gravity of the matter that we are debating. A graver suggestion can hardly be made than that a man is guilty of murder, but the allegation is the more serious if a man is said to have done a murder for which another has been condemned. If there is reason for thinking that there has been such a miscarriage of justice no effort must be spared to get at the truth. That is the spirit in which I approach this request for an inquiry.

I suppose that few criminal cases in recent years have been so widely publicised as the one that we are now considering. The story of this ghastly and utterly senseless murder is widely known. The events which led, on the night of 22nd August, 1961,to the murder of Michael Gregston and the shooting of his friend Valerie Storie, will be well known not only to hon. Members who have interested themselves in the case, but, I would think, to all hon. Members who are present this morning.

I do not propose to go over the details of the story and the unchallenged facts, or over the evidence given at the trial of Hanratty. I only say that on that evidence Hanratty was convicted, and his appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed. In the Court of Criminal Appeal the Lord Chief Justice said that there was abundant evidence which, if accepted by the jury, would support their verdict—and he added:

"The court is of opinion that this was a clear case."

The hon. Member for Eton and Slough will probably accept it when I say that a great deal of the information that he gave this morning had been before the court, although other information had not. He said that Hanratty had been certified as a mental defective. That is not so. He had never been certified as a mental defective. His mental history was fully explored before his execution. Everything that was known to the prosecution about his medical and mental history was made known to the defence. As the hon. and learned Member for Derby, North said, it was for his counsel to consider and decide what use, if any, to make of that information.

His appeal was dismissed, and it fell to my right hon. Friend, who is now the First Secretary of State, to consider whether there were grounds on which he could recommend a reprieve. I do not think that I need tell the House of the exceedingly heavy sense of responsibility with which any Home Secretary approaches that duty. I have been fortunate. In the year that I have been Home Secretary I have only had to consider two death sentences and reach my decision on them, but I know from that short experience what a load it means on the mind and on the heart.

The Home Secretary—and I am quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman will confirm this—examines every fact and every aspect that may affect his decision. My right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State is well known to the House as a personality as well as a politician. Nobody who knows him could doubt that it would have been only after the most anxious and thorough course of inquiry that he decided that the law should take its course. Indeed, I, reading the papers subsequently, can see from them how very carefully and slowly my right hon. Friend reached his decision.

I think that there are excellent reasons why it is not the practice of Home Secretaries to disclose the reasons for which they, or, indeed, their predecessors reach decisions to recommend or not to recommend the exercise of the prerogative of mercy. I must abide by that practice. But the House will understand and accept, I am sure, that everything that could possibly count in Hanratty's favour, every point raised in his defence, which was a very skilful one, every conceivable mitigating circumstance in his history was taken into account by my right hon. Friend. That is the background against which this allegation of a miscarriage of justice has to be examined.

The memorandum suggesting a miscarriage of justice which the hon. Member for Eton and Slough sent to me has received wide publicity, wider than he intended, as if it raised matters which were entirely new. I know that the publicity was not of his seeking and I wholly accept that assurance, but the hon. Gentleman will know far better perhaps than many who have read about what the memorandum contained that the memorandum covers very similar ground to representations which its two principal authors, those who have been described as the businessman and the barrister, have been making for a considerable time and which have already, well before the time of this memorandum, been investigated very fully indeed. So to put the memorandum into perspective I must give the House some account of these previous representations.

They began with representations made before the execution of Hanratty which took place on 4th April, 1962, representations that were considered with all the other material at that time. In March of that year Hanratty's solicitor brought to my predecessor's notice statements made by that businessman and that barrister about meetings and conversations which they had had with Mr. X,who was a man who had at one time been suspected of the crime but had been cleared of suspicion and who had, in fact, a complete alibi for the night in question.

It appears that these two gentlemen had been cultivating Mr. X, taking him to restaurants and dog races, inviting him to their homes, and they suggested reasons for thinking that he and not Hanratty was the A.6 murderer. Naturally, those suggestions were at once examined, and exhaustively examined, on my predecessor's instructions, by the police, but they were found to be groundless. Later in that month these two gentlemen submitted further statements, including an account substantially repeated in the latest memorandum of how, with the man whom we are calling Mr. X, they had driven to the field in which the murderer had surprised his victims. Who had halted the car at this particular field was not clear. The implication was that it was the suspect and that this showed that he was there on the night of the crime. This suggestion, with all the other arguments put forward, was carefully examined, but, in fact, it did not carry weight because the location of the field, if, indeed, it was the suspect who had found it, was widely known at that time.

It is important, I think, that whereas the hon. Gentleman said that they affirmed that Mr. X led them without hesitation to the spot, one of them said in a statement of 26th March, 1962, which was sent to the police, "I cannot honestly remember who suggested we should stop where we did." He also said in that statement, "After dinner at Bray we went in the car to the Downey Reach area, as Mr. So-and-so, the businessman, told me he was curious to see the cornfield."

I come now to the events which the hon. Gentleman will recall. On the eve of the execution, the businessman telephoned to him and informed him that if police were present at his flat, the businessman's flat, they would witness a dramatic development. Very properly the hon. Gentleman at once communicated with the Home Office. Police officers were sent to the flat where they saw the businessman. He told them that the man he suspected was then in the flat, but he had, in fact, nothing new to report to them, and nothing happened. That was in April, just before the execution.

May I interrupt the right hon. Gentleman for a moment? I was concerned. Not only did I ring the Home Secretary and ask that Scotland Yard should send representatives, but at two points later in the night, the night before the execution, I was also involved. Would the right hon. Gentleman answer this? When Scotland Yard did send their detectives and when it was suggested that the suspect was in this house and was then in a mood to make a confession and was just longing for the moment of execution, would it not have been right for the representatives of Scotland Yard to have made rather more inquiries than just to have been satisfied with seeing the businessman? Could they not have seen the suspect?

I do not think that the behaviour of the police officers that evening can really be questioned. They came on the invitation of the owner of the flat. He said that something dramatic was going to happen. Nothing did happen. The suspect was a man who had already been cleared. I think that it was up to the businessman to produce some evidence on that occasion if he really felt that the evidence was available.

Next I come to July of that year when the businessman called at the British Embassy in Vienna where he said that Mr.X had confessed to the murder of Michael Gregston and had threatened his life on a number of occasions and he himself—the businessman—had had to leave England. He later called and made a similar statement at a police station in Vienna. The result of that call was that he was sent to a psychiatric hospital from which he later returned to London. I think it right for me to say—the hon. Member for Eton and Slough said that his investigations had led him into queer ways and among queer people—that both Mr. X and the businessman are people of precarious mental balance and that there is evidence of the businessman being a heavy drinker.

The document referred to as a confession was brought to Scotland Yard on 24th July, 1962. At that time the businessman was in Vienna and it was brought by the barrister and a friend. The document is, in fact, a series of unsigned notes, apparently in Mr. X's handwriting, written, as he said, on the writing paper of a London hotel. What it purports to do is to give a synopsis of the crime and the writer's motives and feelings in committing it. This document was also brought to the notice of the hon. Member, who telephoned my Department on 2nd August, exactly a year ago, and it was, of course, fully inquired into.

It was established that it had probably been written at the hotel in May, 1962, when Mr. X was staying there. It was established—this is important—that it contained nothing that could not have been learned at the trial, which Mr. X attended, or from Press reports of the case. There was nothing in it which could have been known only to Mr. X. It was established that newspapers and newspaper cuttings, with references to the case marked in red ink, had been seen strewn about Mr. X's room, together with what was evidently the confession which was later produced.

Not only was there every indication from this evidence that the so-called confession was spurious, but, I am bound to say, the confession does not stand up to examination against the known facts of the case. For example, the confession suggested that on the night of the murder Mr. X attended the greyhound races at Slough until after a dog named "Mentals Only Hope" had run. He then walked out in the country and stopped at a public house at Taplow and walked from there to the cornfield where Mr. Gregston and Miss Storie were sitting in their car. In fact, the murderer surprised them there at about 9.30 p.m.

Yet, according to Mr. X's account, he did not leave the Slough stadium until about 9.5 p.m., a gap of 25 minutes. It is about six miles from Slough stadium to the public house at Taplow, and it is another mile-and-a-half from the public house to the cornfield. That is one example of gross inconsistency. There is another that I will give if it is argued that it is possible that this confession may have been genuine.

At the time of the murder Mr. X could not drive a car. He had never held anything more than a provisional driving licence, and that was a number of years before. He had held no driving licence. He had no driving licence at the time. It is quite inconceivable that Mr. X could have been the man who drove the car that night after the murder, from seven miles south of Bedford until the car was seen in Ilford some hours later. There is, of course, no question about Hanratty's ability to drive a car. I informed the hon. Member for Eton and Slough on 3rd August last year that the document to which he had drawn my attention could not, in my view, be regarded as a genuine confession.

Hon. Members may very well ask why a man should write a document of this kind, what could be the motive in it. We can none of us probe with certainty into the minds of people, particularly people of rather strange minds and unlike the normal, and the hon. Member mentioned exhibitionism as one reason, not necessarily in this case, but otherwise. I can speculate—I can do no more than speculate—on the motives which have caused this man who, as I said before, has a complete alibi for the crime, to encourage people, the businessman and the barrister, to believe in his guilt.

I said that he had a complete alibi. It is beyond challenge that Mr. X was occupying a room at the Vienna hotel in London at the time of the murder and, therefore, could not have been at Dorney Reach or Deadman's Hill.

Was not that on the evidence of Nudds,who has himself admitted that he is a liar?

The main thing about the evidence of Nudds is that he made three statements, and he gave evidence after. The jury accepted, and I have no reason whatever to doubt, that the first and the third statements were true and that the second statement, which he admitted was a fabrication, was untrue. There is also the evidence from the hotel register, and so forth, very convincing evidence.

As I say, I can speculate as to the motives of Mr. X. The businessman is a wealthy man. He may have felt that in some way or other he could obtain money from the businessman through this behaviour. Indeed, reference was made to his attempts in a telephone conversation to extract money from the businessman. But we can never tell for certain what it is that leads a person to make a statement or confession of that kind.

I have recalled these events of the last sixteen months because they provide the context in which the memorandum, which the hon. Member was good enough to send me, has to be evaluated. I must tell the House that the memorandum contains very little that has not already been brought to the notice of my predecessor or myself. But whether it covered old ground or new, it has been exhaustively examined and the arguments and the alleged evidence which it puts forward, when critically considered, have been found to be of a very flimsy kind. The only real addition made by the memorandum to the material already considered is that it includes transcripts of tape recordings of telephone conversations said to have taken place with the suspect. They add nothing to the case for believing him guilty. They only confirm that he has hinted at his guilt for reasons of his own.

Reference has been made to the mispronunciation of "th" as "f". As he knew about this characteristic of the murderer, there is no reason why he should not have feigned that in a telephone conversation when he was trying to represent himself as the murderer. The police had at an early stage interviewed Mr. X for no less than five hours, and in that interrogation there was no trace of the mispronunciation of the diphthong, "th".

A point of considerable bearing on the credence which could be attached to the document that Mr. X wrote, and the general impression that he has sought to give that he was the murderer, is that he apparently suggested in one of the recorded conversations that he had known Miss Storie before the murder, and in the memorandum which the hon. Member submitted to me, weight was attached to that point. There is not a shred of evidence of such a connection between Mr. X and Miss Storie before the murder.

No mention of it was made by Mr. X in his so-called confession. It was only in one of the recorded conversations that he claimed this previous acquaintance. The suggestion in the telephone conversation seems quite inconsistent with a suggestion in the confession that when Mr. X held up the two of them in the car he imitated a working-class person's voice and background. Why should he be imitating anybody if he and Miss Storie were already known to one another?

On the other hand, the House will remember that Miss Storie firmly identified Hanratty as her assailant. Neither she nor other witnesses who identified Hanratty picked out Mr. X when he was put on an identification parade before Hanratty's arrest. I think that that point was raised by the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) and I wanted to deal with it.

I am asked now to appoint a public inquiry. I hope that I have convinced the House that I have gone into this very thoroughly indeed with the help of my advisers at the Home Office. If I thought that there was anything in this memorandum I have received, I would not hesitate to appoint a public inquiry. Indeed, I go further than that. If I thought that on any reasonable view there could possibly be anything in it, I would welcome an independent investigation, but I suggest that we must keep a sense of balance and proportion in these matters. I must tell the House that I have found nothing to cause me to doubt in any way that, after a full trial in which every point in Hanratty's defence was carefully examined, Hanratty was rightly convicted.

There are facts, and I have given some of them to the House, which render it impossible that Mr. X could have been the murderer, and which lead inescapably to the conclusion that, for some reason best known to himself—and I can only speculate on that reason—he decided to present himself to this businessman and this barrister as the murderer.

I think that the whole House will be grateful to the hon. Member for Eton and Slough for the care with which he has studied this case and to my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend (Mr. Kirk), who has paid a great deal of attention to it. I cannot agree to reopen the case, because I believe that it is impossible that Mr. X could have committed the murder. But of the importance of these issues I am in no doubt at all, and I appreciate very much the opportunity that has been given to ventilate the whole matter fully in the House.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise today a question which has been of some concern to me for some time past, namely, the mutual diplomatic representation between the United Kingdom and the Socialist countries of Eastern Europe. I wish to call attention to certain anomalies which I believe exist within that representation and to suggest to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State ways in which perhaps those anomalies might be corrected.

I say at the outset that in this debate I am inhibited slightly by the fact that I have received much excellent hospitality and made a number of friends in the diplomatic missions of the countries to which I am about to refer. At this early stage I stress the hope that that hospitality will not be in any way mitigated by what I say today.

As an amateur in the art of diplomacy I am depending, as many of my hon. Friends do, on textbooks such as Satow's Guide to Diplomatic Practice. I think it germane to this discussion to say that this was one of the first diplomatic textbooks which was translated into Russian. Diplomacy in this textbook is defined as:

"The conduct of business between states by peaceful means."

I think we might add, with mutual agreement, that the object of such diplomacy is the improvement of relations between nations. For this purpose, by long usage, certain diplomatic immunities have been established and they are referred to in Satow's book in these words:

"Diplomatic immunities are founded on common usage and tacit consent … on the understanding that they will be reciprocally accorded."

It is further laid down that for the obvious use of the diplomat's operating art it is essential that a diplomatic agent should be able to communicate fully and in all security on matters in which he is engaged.

One might hold that that practice was not necessarily applicable to Governments of fairly recent vintage established by revolutionary action, but to the contrary, the Soviet Union, in its Decree of 14th January, 1927, declared that:

"Diplomatic representatives in their country, including commercial representatives, enjoy personal immunity on a basis of reciprocity and are not subject to administrative or judicial arrest or detention."

I think that one can say with justice that the Soviet Union and the other Socialist countries of Eastern Europe look upon the practice of diplomacy slightly differently from Western countries. Those countries, we must note, have one strong thing in common. They have single-party Governments, the basis of which is the Communist Party which owes a great measure of control to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In fact Soviet influence appears to be predominant in all these countries.

The theoretical basis of diplomacy under Communism also has a slightly different slant from that which we have in the West. I think the standpoint has never been lost that Soviet and other Socialist missions in foreign countries—I, of course, refer particularly to the United Kingdom—are useful instruments for the presentation of the Communist image. To put that in general terms, it could sometimes be described as propaganda, which again in turn derives, as I think historians such as the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) would agree, from the very early practical example given by Trotsky at BrestLitovsk of appealing to peoples over the heads of negotiators and over the heads of Governments.

It is quite natural, and perhaps we should not be surprised, that this influence does actually obtain, but there is another and rather more sinister aspect of Soviet Communist diplomacy generally to which I wish to draw attention. It has surely become evident from the events of the past few years that Socialist diplomatic missions in this country are looked upon as useful cover for secret police activities. These can be classified under three broad headings. In the first place, there is published evidence of the attempted recruitment of agents from among British nationals by accredited diplomatic personnel. Perhaps I may mention the name of the Soviet attaché Rogov, whom I knew, and the Yugoslav Pecjak in this connection. Secondly, it is established, again in published evidence, that diplomatic personnel have been used as the so-called "controllers" of existing agents in this country. We had the mention of Gregory in the Vassall case and the reference to Karpekov in this connection in the recent trial of the Italian nuclear scientist.

Thirdly, there is recent evidence of an even more sinister character among these diplomats, namely, the expert conduct of research into the sleazier sections of our society, as exemplified by a naval colleague, Commander Ivanov. Surely, these facts, as I believe them to be—culled from desperately little evidence, I agree—are supported by the fact that since 1949, when it can be said that the Iron Curtain really came down, 17 Soviet and other Communist diplomats have been declared persona non grata by Her Majesty's Government. There are other instances, as the House well knows, of the swift departure of diplomats from these missions shortly before, to use a journalistic expression, the "breaking" of news on security cases.

Here I should like to express a few doubts and to ask a question. Why cannot we have details in this House of diplomats who are declared persona non grata in this way? What prejudice to British interests, if there is such a thing, is involved in not disclosing these matters? Surely, if in the opinion of the country which extends him hospitality a diplomat has been guilty of conduct which requires his removal, the first thing to do, and which is done, is that the Foreign Secretary speaks to the ambassador concerned. Are we, therefore, to assume that if, say, the Polish Ambassador is given such information by the Foreign Secretry, it is to be denied to Members of this House? I should very much welcome a little enlightenment from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State on this subject.

From the weight of evidence available—and a mass of conjecture has rather swamped the facts which have been given to us—it is, none the less, fairly certain that in the opinion of reasonable men embassy contacts in the missions to which I am referring were used for contact lines of communication for such individuals as Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blake and others. I say in parenthesis that this would not apply to a man like Houghton who, some of us think—without much background knowledge, admittedly—was probably working for a different organisation, the G.R.U., and had his extra-diplomatic contact in Lonsdale.

Is it sufficient, furthermore, that if personal contacts exist, as I believe they do, in these cases, they should be left at that? Obviously, they cannot. There must be a physical means of passing the information, where it is bulk information, back to the country where use is to be made of it. An obvious conclusion here must be that the diplomatic facilities accorded in accordance with the ancient practice which I have described are misused and have been misused probably over a considerable period for this purpose.

I think that I have said enough to confirm what must be in the minds of many people who have thought of these affairs, that diplomatic privileges in our sense of the term have been—perhaps, still are being—abused by the missions of the countries to whom I am referring.

Another aspect of this is the treatment by the Governments concerned of United Kingdom missions in their respective capitals. Here again, there are anomalies to which I should like to draw attention. It would seem—this is a long story, but I have had personal experience of these matters—that the Governments of the Soviet Union and the Socialist countries of Eastern Europe look upon United Kingdom missions in their countries from two main points of view: first, as a convenient post office medium for the exchange of official communications, but, at the same time, as representatives of the United Kingdom who must be debarred from any real contact with the peoples of the countries to which they are accredited. One sees in that the remarkable difference in opportunity of real contact with Russians, Poles and others between diplomatic personnel in Warsaw and Moscow and between visiting businessmen, among whom I include myself.

It is, I am afraid, true that our missions in those countries are subjected in vary- ing extent to a degree of restriction and harassment—I cannot express it otherwise—which applies both physically and administratively and which severely reduces the efficiency of these organisations as diplomatic media. They require, in addition, a disproportionate number of administrative personnel to look after what I could describe in military terms as the "teeth" of our missions, namely, the high-grade diplomatic personnel. At the same time, however, they do not allow the full employment of British nationals, requiring the employment of locally-recruited personnel, such as Mikhailsky, the Pole, who was of such considerable use to the Soviet secret police during his term of employment at the British Embassy in Moscow.

That brings me to my second point in that connection. It would seem that the individuals belonging to our diplomatic missions in these countries are looked upon by their hosts as a target for the activities of the local secret services. We have surely had enough examples recently to bear out this conviction. We have had the seduction of Vassall in Moscow by Mikhailsky. We had the subversion of Houghton in Warsaw. We had the seduction—again, I use the word advisedly—of an air attaché in Warsaw by a notorious and extremely attractive Polish agent-provocateur, all these, incidentally, under the noses of their respective ambassadors.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary knows of many other cases, successful and unsuccessful, of action against British individuals in these missions abroad. It is of interest in that connection that over 200 Foreign Service personnel have had to leave their posts in these missions since 1949 before the expiration of their normal term. Seventy-eight of these have left for reasons of misconduct or unsuitability. I cannot believe that these figures do not reflect to a considerable degree the activities of the secret police in those countries. I think that I have said enough to indicate my belief that the principle of reciprocity in diplomatic practice and the same principle in the treatment of respective diplomatic personnel has not been observed between the United Kingdom and the countries to which I am referring.

May I turn to numbers and to the relative strengths of the missions in the United Kingdom and these countries? I think that it will be convenient to the House if I divide them into two, firstly United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, and secondly, the United Kingdom and the remaining countries of the bloc. Where career diplomatic personnel bearing diplomatic immunity are concerned, the Soviet Union, by my calculation, has in this country at present 58 individuals. The corresponding figure for the British in Moscow is 39, a balance in favour of the Soviet Union of 19. Of the others, the British and Soviet nationals attached to their respective embassies and living in London or Moscow respectively, the numbers are Soviet 195, British 70—in this case a Soviet preponderance of 125.

When one breaks these figures down into the commercial representation, to which I shall draw special attention in a moment, the Russians have 125 and the British—and this is a rather difficult calculation—have eight, the figure including two or possibly three B.E.A. representatives in Moscow. This gives a Soviet preponderance in commercial representation of 117. There are three commercial attachés diplomatically immune on each side, which makes no preponderance on either side.

According to my calculations, the other Socialist countries have in this country a representation of 255 diplomatic and non-diplomatic personnel, with 147 British personnel accredited to missions in those countries, a preponderance in favour of the Socialist countries of 108. Therefore, once again we see anomalies and lack of reciprocity not only in diplomatic conduct but also in numbers of mutual representation. Incidentally, nowhere in the diplomatic textbook, which I know many of us have studied, is the word "espionage" even mentioned.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will say that the reason for the disparity on the commercial side is due mainly to a fact which we all know about and of which some of us have had experience. The Russians and these other countries operate State trading organisations which require a higher proportion of State servants in foreign countries to conduct their commercial affairs. We, on the other hand, by our system of private enterprise, send businessmen over to Russia. I would lay a small bet, if that were in order, that my hon. Friend will mention the large number of Soviet trade delegation personnel in this country as being set against a comparable number of British businessmen visiting the Soviet Union. That is really not quite a valid comparison.

A point which is often forgotten in this context is the very large number of Soviet and satellite technical and commercial delegations who are continually visiting firms and institutions in this country. I prefer to set these last against the numbers of British business men visiting the Soviet Union and the Socialist countries, leaving an unexplained preponderance of over 100 personnel by any calculation which I am able to make. This represents a glaring disparity on any count and an unhealthy state of affairs which can and should be corrected in the interests of ourselves and of these countries themselves.

On the security aspect in which I have taken a certain interest and which I consider to be the most serious side of what we are discussing, it is surely reasonable to say, without any knowledge of this service, that our security service must be overburdened by the sheer weight of numbers resulting from the disparity to which I have drawn attention. I wonder whether I shall be greeted by my hon. Friend—though I think he is too wise—by the old reply to such questions, "It is a very good thing to know who the foreign agents are so that we can keep a file and make sure with whom they make their contacts." If that is so, I suggest that the price we have paid over the last 15 years has been heavy, and much too heavy to make up for any reasons which can be advanced in favour of such a state of affairs. The average of over 10 years during which Burgess, Maclean, Fuchs, Pontecorvo, Vassall, Philby and the rest have worked for our enemies is a high price to pay for the luxury of allowing our security service to be overburdened in this way.

It would be only fair at this stage to refer back and give the Foreign Office credit for what has been done in the past to overcome the more glaring aspects of this affair. As I have said, 17 diplomats have been made personae non gratae since 1949. There has been placed on these diplomatic personnel a rather half-hearted limitation of movement, such as that which requires a Soviet or Socialist diplomat who comes to this country to notify the Foreign Office when he wishes to travel a distance of over 25 miles from London.

This is what has been done in the past. I suggest that for the future the circumstances justify a slightly more rigid application of the practice of persona non grata just as soon as it comes to the attention of our authorities that a diplomat is working in a way which excepts him from the normal conduct of diplomacy as defined by our ancient rules. Cannot we take a leaf out of the French book here? The French have turned out over three times the number in the equivalent period. I believe that many of them were Polish citizens. I should be interested to hear what my hon. Friend has to say on that point. Cannot we rectify that disparity of about 20 in the diplomatic personnel between ourselves and the Soviet Union and also pro rata between us and the other nations concerned?

Thirdly, would it not be possible to reduce the very large disparity in non-diplomatic personnel? Cannot my hon. Friend be of assistance to our Soviet guests in particular? Could we not help them to reduce the strain on their administration involved in bringing such numbers over by our supplying them with chauffeurs for their embassy cars, in an exactly reciprocal fashion to the chauffeurs supplied by Russia for British cars—very agreeably and very efficiently in Moscow?

It might, incidentally, help to relieve the traffic problems of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport. I am sure that my hon. Friend could find a section of his Department which could provide the Russians and the others with chauffeurs, in the same way as the Foreigners Organisation in the Soviet Ministry for Foreign Affairs supplies Russian chauffeurs for British cars in Moscow.

Fourthly, on the commercial side would my hon. Friend have another look at the Commercial Agreement of April, 1930, which originally established the Soviet Trade Delegation in London? I have personal friends in this institution. I can testify to the atmosphere of good faith which obtains between the Soviet State trading representatives and British businessmen, including myself. When these establishments are separate from the embassy, as the Highgate establishment is separate from the Soviet Embassy and the British commercial office in Moscow is separate from the British Embassy, why is it necessary that the outlying establishments should retain diplomatic immunity?

Why should our commercial counsellor and the Soviet commercial counsellors necessarily be accredited diplomats? If we are trading in good faith, as I believe we are, it should not be necessary to cast doubt on that good faith by applying immunities which apply for more valid reasons to the main diplomatic establishments of both countries.

This is a subject which interests me greatly. It is a matter on which I do not think that the Foreign Office has advanced very far in the past hundred years, as we had some of the same difficulties with Imperial Russia. I cannot help seeing our diplomatic relations, particularly those with the Soviet Union, in terms of the dance. To me it represents the picture of a slightly self-satisfied elderly gentleman dancing an elegant minuet, quite oblivious of the fact that his partner happens to be doing the twist. I should be most grateful if my hon. Friend would give some attention to these matters, which worry me and many of my colleagues and which I believe command the interest of the country at large. We are all very badly informed and we look to my hon. Friend to enlighten us, at least to a small degree.

Before the Minister replies, may I add one or two questions to the very interesting and important questions asked by the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney)? First, is there more abuse than there has been before? The hon. and gallant Gentleman quoted a whole number of instances, and there is no question that there is a problem. But I should like the Minister to give us some indication whether this is because there is an increase in the amount of abuse of diplomatic privileges by Communist representation here, or whether it is simply be cause we have been more successful in discovering cases of abuse in such a way that they are brought to public attention.

My own impression, for what it is worth, is that it is unlikely that there has been an increase in the amount of abuse and that probably the explanation is that more abuses have been brought to light. My impression is that the manners and conduct of embassies and diplomatic representation by Communist countries in this country have improved, certainly since the war. I recall my first visit to the Soviet Embassy in 1936 and many very happy visits to embassies of Communist countries since the war. I have the personal impression that the situation has improved. I should like to have the Ministers views on that.

There is far more social contact of a healthy character between Communist representatives in this country and the British people than there used to be. I remember the struggle early on after the war even to persuade someone from a Communist country to lunch with one. In the United Nations in 1946 I recall setting out to get my opposite number on the Soviet delegation out to lunch with me alone tête-à-tête. After six months of extremely adroit diplomacy and the use of charm I succeeded. This was a diplomatic event. The situation is better today.

I wish that the contacts were wider. They are still too narrow. We would all agree that the contacts of Communist representatives in London still tend to be narrow. The case of Mr. Ivanov and his efforts during the Cuba crisis showed in a most vivid way the extraordinary misjudgments of which the Communist representatives here in London are capable. They still seem too often to see Britain and British life through the eyes of the Daily Worker. This is a tremendous characteristic of Communist representatives. We may regard it as strange that this should be so; but, after all, if there are many British people living here—about 30,000 of them—who, having lived their whole lives in Britain, still see Britain in terms of the Daily Worker, we cannot be surprised if representatives of the Communist countries also see the same in London.

That is my first question. Are things getting worse, or is it simply that we have been successful in bringing abuses to light? These abuses do go on. I have, as has the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Longden),been very much engaged in cultural exchanges with the Communist countries. I have known the most lurid cloak and dagger methods intrude even into cultural exchanges. The Minister may know of one or two of the instances I have in mind. Nothing is more ludicrous in East-West relations than when the cloak and dagger get mixed up with the ballet costume and the balalaika, but it has happened in the past and it might happen again.

Secondly, would the remedies suggested by the hon. and gallant Gentleman work? This is where I have some doubts. Would reciprocity in diplomatic personnel really help? I cannot think that the opportunities for espionage are greatly dependent on the number of one's representatives who have diplomatic immunity as against the number who have not. Once there is one man with diplomatic immunity, there is a freedom of information, there is the security of the bag and all the other things which are laid down now in the Convention on Diplomatic Immunities of the United Nations. I should not have thought that cutting down their number would be a great check to espionage.

Equally, I doubt whether cutting down the number of Communist representatives in this country would help. After all, if we go by numbers and by counting heads, more British people visit the Soviet Union than Soviet people visit Britain. I hope we shall not suggest that all the people who come here from the Soviet Union help to overburden the security service. I hope very much that we shall get thousands and thousands of Soviet citizens over here, and the security services certainly will not be able to keep a check on them.

I was not talking of visitors, who are welcome in their flocks. I was talking about accredited diplomatic and other embassy personnel.

I rather doubt whether, on balance, it is in our interests to reduce the number of them. I share the hon. and gallant Gentleman's anxiety, but I think that there is something to be said, on the other hand, for giving a wide section of Soviet officialdom a first-hand understanding of this country. There is the security risk, but there are factors on the other side which we should weigh. Myown feeling is that we want more contacts, even if some of them are official. After all, I am sure that the average Soviet official and the average Communist Government have a mass of facts about Britain, probably all the information they want.

In the light of the incidents of espionage which the hon. Member quoted, one would think that they were better informed about Britain than some of us, but it is the judgment that is missing—the experience and judgment of our life which leads them, in many cases, to misunderstand it. For that reason, other things being equal, I would not be averse to large numbers of officials in this country.

We never like diplomatic immunity in principle. Good democrats are chary of giving it to anyone, of putting anyone above the privileges of ordinary citizens. It is for these reasons that I have asked my two questions: first, whether things are getting worse, and secondly, whether the remedy proposed by the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East would work.

The hon. and gallant Member raised one other point, the restrictions on diplomats in London and, reciprocally, the restrictions placed on our people in Communist countries. Will the Minister make a new effort, in the improved atmosphere that now exists between East and West, to obtain an agreed abandonment of these restrictions on both sides? Would it not be a good thing for initiative of this kind to be shown at this time?

Is not the disparity in the size of missions due partly to the simple fact that we are a nation of 52 million people while they have a population of 220 million? Would it not be best, if comparisons are to be made, to make them with the size of, say, the American mission in this country and the other Western missions? Are not the evils about which the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) spoke the by product of the cold war, and are they not also Western problems in roughly equal quantity? Do not an equal number of those who are personae non gratae have to leave the respective countries in cases of espionage? Do these problems not apply to both sides and not just to one?

I join with my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) in thinking that now is the time, in the new and improved atmosphere that exists between East and West, for pressing for a relaxation of existing restriction—for restoring the freedom of movement of diplomats in this country and for urging them to do the same on their side—and for allowing greater freedom for lecturers and speakers generally, even for Press and cultural attachés,here? Instead of tightening things up at this precise moment should we not try to give a lead in further improving the relaxed atmosphere by ourselves taking somewhat more liberal action?

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) is a distinguished former intelligence officer and has great knowledge of these matters. He is respected for this by all hon. Members. I have listened with attention to his remarks and I think that I know his views on this subject.

I can best answer his speech by saying at the outset that I believe that he is thinking of diplomatic relations altogether too much in terms of intelligence and security, though this is important and it is natural that he should be interested in this aspect. I would like to try to put the nature of our relations with the representatives of the Communist countries into a somewhat different perspective.

As to the efforts of any embassy, the collecting of information by legitimate means is an important part of its duty. It is particularly important in Communist countries where, on the one hand, what is regarded as legitimate is much more restricted than it is here, but where, on the other, any information we are able to obtain is, naturally, of particular value to us. A whole range of matters is freely available in this country to anyone who reads the newspapers, matters which are regarded as security matters in Communist countries. Thus, first, there is a difference in kind between the attitude of both sides towards this question of information. And as to the attitude of their embassies, I do not think that the two are directly comparable in terms of the figures of personnel engaged.

I remind my hon. and gallant Friend that there are other exceedingly important aspects of embassy activity, for example, the tendering of advice, advice about the ideas and intentions of Governments. The House will recall how difficult it was, in Stalin's day, to know what the Soviet Government were thinking about. Today, the atmosphere is quite different. Mr. Khrushchev and other prominent Soviet personalities are readily accessible and are ready to discuss their opinions, if necessary at great length and sometimes in a witty and entertaining manner. These are relatively new conditions and extremely welcome ones. In these circumstances, our diplomatic representation in Communist countries, particularly Moscow, although it may, naturally, have attached to it security and other staffing problems to which my hon. and gallant Friend referred, is really of very great utility.

I think that our cause has been particularly well served by the series of extremely able ambassadors that we have had in Moscow, who have profited from the new atmosphere which has prevailed since Stalin's day to obtain a much closer understanding of the character of Soviet policy and the intentions of the Soviet Government. In diplomacy, whether one is dealing with an ally or an opponent, half the battle is fully to understand the people with whom one is dealing and their attitude. This is all the more so if one hopes, one day, to turn what is a difficult relationship into a more cordial and co-operative one.

I also remind my hon. and gallant Friend, in the context of security matters, of the nature of our policy towards the Communist States, because this differs radically from the nature of their policy towards us. For this reason, also, I do not believe that direct comparisons between our diplomatic missions are particularly relevant. Our policy has both a negative and positive aspect. The negative is to defend ourselves against attack or subversion. Here the security services have a very great part to play in seeing that proper security is maintained, both in our embassies abroad and at home in relation to foreign embassies in London. The positive aspect of our policy is, while defending ourselves against attack and subversion, to bring about a position in which ultimately the Communist Powers will abandon their projects of dominating other nations—this country and others—by Communist doctrine and will be brought to co-operate in a more orderly world in which there is a sense of common purpose. This is an objective upon which all hon. Members will be agreed. For this purpose the maintenance of the best possible diplomatic relationship is absolutely necessary. The instruments of diplomacy are essential to the carrying out both of the negative and positive aspects of our policy.

Regarding the Communist missions in London, my hon. and gallant Friend has noted that there is a discrepancy in the figures. It is not a very large discrepancy, and, as I have said, I do not think that it is necessarily relevant to what we are discussing.

The hon. Member for Woolwich, East asked whether there is more abuse than there was before. This is the sort of question which one cannot answer with a "Yes" or "No," but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is right in saying that the diplomatic relationships between our countries, both here and abroad, are infinitely better than they were and that the whole process of diplomacy is more correctly and more efficiently carried on between us. This is certainly nothing but gain.

The hon. Gentleman went on to ask whether, if we insisted on a kind of mathematical reciprocity, this would work. I share his doubt about whether it would. I doubt whether we would stand to gain anything particular from it. In fact, I very much doubt whether it is strictly relevant to the issues at all. The question really is: are diplomatic staffs behaving in a proper manner, and are our security services adequate to detect a situation which is unsatisfactory when it occurs?

In any case, even if we were to take extreme measures to reduce the size of diplomatic staffs, of which my hon. and gallant Friend disapproves, I am doubtful whether this would have any great effect on the security situation. I must, however, point out that in addition to the security risks which attend all diplomatic operations, in a greater or lesser degree, there are great advantages in having diplomatic representation of the Communist countries here in London.

Again, I must take the House back to Stalin's day, and remind my hon. and gallant Friend of one of our principal worries at that time. It was whether Stalin really knew what went on in the outer world. This was a constant source of anxiety. We never knew when, through ignorance or misunderstanding, he might make a ghastly blunder which would cost us all a fearful price.

We are now in a different atmosphere. Mr. Khrushchev has travelled in this country, in the United States, in France, and in many others, and I would be extremely surprised if he were persuaded that the West was about to collapse, or anything of that kind. On the contrary, I think that he has a very realistic view of the outside world. In these circumstances, in which the Soviet Government do, I think, take a realistic view of world affairs, it is our hope that the existence of the Communist embassies in London results in a better understanding of the nature of affairs here.

As my hon. and gallant Friend pointed out, it is true that, whereas in Moscow and other capitals contacts by diplomatic staffs with the general public are strictly limited, here in London there is nothing to prevent the staffs of Communist embassies from contacting ordinary members of the public.

This is a discrepancy, but, on the whole, I think that it is to our advantage that such contact should take place. For if a man is a reasonably accurate observer and talks freely to people in this country, I hardly think that he is likely to be convinced that we are going to be subverted to Communism in the near future. Indeed, I think that the more one learns about this country the higher the opinion that one holds of it.

My hon. and gallant Friend asked why cannot we give full details of all diplomats who are declared persona non grata? I do not believe that this is really a security question. It is rather one of very delicate negotiation and delicate relationships. The whole question of representation, about which, as the House knows, there are quite different approaches between ourselves and the Russians, is a delicate one and it must be handled in confidence if such relationships are to redound at any rate to our advantage. I do not believe that it is ever a good idea to put oneself in the position in which, while negotiating with somebody or discussing with somebody a delicate matter, one is obligated to tell the public what one is doing as well as tell the person with whom one is negotiating.

Finally, my hon. and gallant Friend the hon. Member for Woolwich, East referred to restrictions on the movement of diplomats. The only restriction of which I know is that at present imposed here on the movement of Soviet diplomats, which corresponds with a restriction on the movement of our diplomatic staffs in Moscow.

The House knows that tomorrow the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will be leaving for Moscow for an important ceremony, in circumstances which, I think, have generated throughout the world a restrained but modest optimism that we might make further progress in improving relations between the democracies of the West and the States of the Communist world. In these circumstances, I do not think that the House would expect me to make any particular pledge that we shall do any particular thing in Moscow, but I can say that my noble Friend and those going to Moscow with him hope that we are looking forward to better relations and better times, and that any contribution which can be made to these better relations by the improvement of our diplomatic relationships would be extremely welcome.

:Can the House rely on the Minister putting to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the points that we have made about taking the initiative in removing diplomatic restrictions?

I shall be seeing my noble Friend this afternoon, and I shall certainly tell him what has been said in this debate.

Mr. Speaker, I hope you recognise that we are seven minutes behind schedule in starting this debate.

This debate arises directly out of the statement made by the Civil Lord of the Admiralty on 29th May concerning employment prospects in the dockyards. Perhaps I might, at the outset, say that I was inspired to seek this debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), who apologises for not being here today. He had arranged an important engagement before he knew that I had been successful in getting this debate, and he sends his apologies to the House.

The first point that I wish to put to the Civil Lord concerns the way in which the initial pronouncement was made. It was made like so many other Government pronouncements these days. It was leaked to the Press before Parliament was informed. It was, I know, preceded by a meeting between the Civil Lord and Conservative back benchers representing dockyard constituencies, but no Labour Member representing dockyards was present. Neither my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline Burghs (Dr. A. Thompson), in whose constituency Rosyth is situated, nor I, though my constituents work there, was invited to the meeting.

Perhaps the Minister will defend that exclusion on the grounds that Rosyth was not adversely affected by his announcement; that there was to be no reduction in the work load in Rosyth dockyard. In fact, I learned that from the Press leak before he made his announcement on 29th May. I think that the effect of the not-so-secret meeting of the Tory back benchers was to compel the Minister somewhat to tone down his statement in the House on 29th May. It had the same meaning, in effect, but it was couched in much less brutal terms than it might otherwise have been.

I want to examine that statement in a little detail, and I think that when the Civil Lord has heard what I have said, he will not disagree with my submission. The hon. Gentleman announced that there would be an examination of the work load in all the docks for the next year or so. He announced, as I have said, that there was to be no reduction in the work load at Rosyth. I recall asking a supplementary question and expressing satisfaction at that announcement, although I am bound to say that it is rather a negative satisfaction. What we want is an increase in the work load in Rosyth.

They will get it.

Not immediately, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to give us some good news because we desperately need it.

Looking at the unemployment percentage rates in the dockyard areas, I find that the current rate in Portsmouth is 2·3 per cent. which is slightly above the average. In Chatham, it is 2 per cent., which is slightly below the average; I am not sure about Devonport——

It is 2·7 per cent.

I thought that it was about 2·7 per cent.; that is above the national average. That must give the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers) some cause for disquiet.

In the Rosyth area, which is included in the Dunfermline—Inverkeithing group, the rate of unemployment is 5·2 per cent., despite the fact that this is a development district and has been for a long time.

There is, of course, an increasingly serious situation relating to school leavers in the area. In answer to a Question of mine on 31st July, the Minister of Labour gave me the latest unemployment figures. In Fife, there were 70 unfilled vacancies for boys, and there were 552 boys registered as unemployed of whom 315 were school leavers. That is an extremely serious situation, and I hope that the Civil Lord will be able to announce an increase in the availability of apprenticeships in Rosyth, even though subsequently these apprentices might leave Admiralty employment. I would not regard it as a national disaster if they left, for they are a national asset, and the fact that they are trained as tradesmen is a national and not just a narrow Admiralty concern.

I should like to know from the Civil Lord whether it is possible to extend the employment opportunities for men who are being prematurely retired from the coal mines surrounding Rosyth. I have, in fact, written to the hon. Gentleman on two or three occasions in the last few weeks about men in their late 50s who would normally have worked in the coal mines till their retirement age but who, because the mines have been closed for economic and other reasons, find themselves in very difficult circumstances. They find it almost impossible to get work other than in the Rosyth dockyard and other Admiralty establishments in the area.

I must admit that the Admiralty has been rather helpful in dealing with the case that I have brought to its attention, and for that I am grateful, but I hope that the Civil Lord will take these representations in the spirit in which they are made and will see what he can do to help these men in these very difficult circumstances.

I now turn to the second part of the Minister's statement, which, I think, was rather more serious, although it did not affect my area. The work load at the three southern dockyards will clearly have adverse effects on employment opportunities. There can be no doubt about that, and I do not think the Minister will disagree with that assessment of the situation. As he explained, it is due largely to the completion next year of H.M.S. "Eagle" and the conversion of H.M.S. "Triumph". He admitted that there was no immediate prospect of any similar job taking the place of that work, although what effect the £60 million aircraft carrier will have on their prospects I would not know. Probably it is rather too early to make any firm pronouncement, and I would not ask the Civil Lord to do so.

However, the hon. Gentleman might care to express some opinion on the next part of his statement, in which he referred to some classes of refit work which might lessen the impact of the expected rundown. The Civil Lord asserted that the whole problem could be dealt with by four factors: first, what he referred to as normal wastage, a phrase which was in no way qualified in the original statement of 29th May. He used the expression "normal wastage" completely unqualified. The number other factors were: the adjustment of overtime, a fall in the number of men employed over the age of 65,and a restriction on adult entry.

These were the four developments which he said would go, not the whole way, but a long way towards a solution of the problem. He also said that there was a possibility of actual discharges or redundancy. He said that this could not be excluded, but it would not be on a large scale. Whatever the next effect, there might be some imbalance between trades. Finally, the hon. Gentleman promised consultation with the trade unions as soon as his examination of the situation had gone far enough. I do not think that that is an unfair summary of the statement of 29th May.

In reply to a question by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East the Civil Lord said that he could not forecast exactly how many jobs would be lost. He did not deny that some would be lost, but he could not forecast the exact figure. He implied that it would be possible to give a figure soon, and I hope that he will be able to give us some indication of the sort of figure that is running through his mind at the moment—or perhaps he intends to wait till the middle of the Recess; I do not know.

The only slight criticism of the statement from the opposite side of the House came from the hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden). None came from the hon. Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mr. Critchley). He talked about the possibility of trade union consultation and the rest, but he offered no harsh criticism at all. Perhaps he had done that in the privacy of the meeting upstairs. There was none from the hon. Lady the Member for Devonport. At that point, she was anxious about achieving development district status. The hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth, West (Brigadier Clarke) was, as usual, absent. There was no reaction at all from that side of the House.

The Whitsun Recess intervened and we could not pursue the matter until we came back. Immediately we came back, further information was sought by my hon. and indefatigable Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East. He thirsts for knowledge on these matters. On 19th June—his Question is recorded in column 450 of Hansard—he asked for figures of the annual wastage of manpower in each of the southern dockyards. The Minister will recall that this was one of the factors which, he said, would take care of the lost job opportunities. In reply to my hon. Friend, the Minister gave the following figures for the estimated annual normal wastage rates: Portsmouth, 1,600; Devonport, 1,200; Chatham, 900.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East made what I thought was the quite reasonable assumption that the total decline of manpower would be rather more than this. It was one of the four elements which the Minister said would take care of the problem. Adding those figures together, my hon. Friend made the logical assumption that 3,700 for one of the four elements taking care of the problem meant that the total measure of it would be in the region of 5,000. That may well have been an under-estimate—I do not know—but it is not a bad guess. But the Civil Lord rebuked my hon. Friend, saying that he should not jump to that conclusion. He refused to give his own estimate. He refused to say whether that figure was too high or too low. He did not know. He was very non-committal.

If the Civil Lord was at that time unable to give a figure, how could he say, on 29th May, that this unknown figure would be taken care of by the four factors which he mentioned in his statement? I rather suspect that the hon. Gentleman, when he gave those specific figures to my hon. Friend, committed the fatal error of giving specific information in answer to a Parliamentary Question. The Minister never does that as a rule, but he did on this occasion, and he immediately proceeded to hedge it all round with all kinds of qualifications. It was a very interesting parliamentary exercise, and I must congratulate him on the way he did it. Wastage, he said, "can cover a great many things … There is a lot of room for misunderstanding of what wastage can mean…One has to be a little careful in using the expression 'wastage' ".—[Official Report, 19th June, 1963; Vol. 679, c. 450–1.]

Having given specific figures, the hon. Gentleman said that they did not really mean anything. He almost convinced us that "wastage" was a dirty word. But he had used it unqualified in his original statement of 29th May. The hon. Member for Gillingham was in no doubt about what wastage meant. It meant simply jobs lost. These were his words:

"It really means that when a man retires from a job there is not another job for another man looking for employment".

On 26th June, further attempts were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East and myself to extract information. We sought to get an estimate from the Minister of the number of men over 65 years of age who would be retired this year in each dockyard. By this time, the Minister had learned the gross error of his ways the week before and he did not give any figures at all. He said that no estimate had been made. He could not help us at all, and we did not get any worthwhile information.

Thus, out of the four ways in which the Civil Lord had said on 29th May that the problem would be solved, in regard to only one had he ventured to give figures, and those he very hastily sought to discountenance immediately after giving them. It was again left to his hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham to "spill the beans". He said:

"Does not my hon. Friend realise that this constant uncertainty is most damaging to the morale of everybody in the dockyards and in the dockyard towns?"

He went on to ask for a

"much more tangible answer in the debate next week".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th June, 1963; Vol. 679, c. 1322.]

I think that the Civil Lord said that he would give information the following week if the opportunity arose. He would be as helpful as he could, and all that sort of promise.

The debate duly took place on 1st July. It was really an Estimates Committee debate. It was, perhaps, rather difficult to raise this particular aspect of the matter, since it was to a large extent a discussion on dockyard administration. Whatever the reason, no opportunity was taken by hon. Members opposite to question and harry the Minister on the matter, which I regard as a grave dereliction of duty on their part. The Minister can well imagine what would have happened to him on that occasion if Rosyth had been adversely affected by what he told us about on 29th May, The debate would have been monopolised by Scottish Members if Rosyth had had a reduction in its work load. But there was not a cheep from hon. Members opposite and the Minister did not choose to reply on this point.

In fairness to a number of hon. Members who are not present today, like the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), I must point out that several hon. Members commented on this matter, including my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Portsmouth, West (Brigadier Clarke). There was comment on the matter, but it so happened that no criticism of the rundown situation in the dockyards was developed at any length because hon. Members were concerned with the organisation of the dockyards. It is not true to say that there was no criticism, because there was a lot.

It is a matter of opinion. I have read carefuly the Official Report of the debate. I agree at once that the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth, West made some comments, but he offered no stringent criticisms of the uncertainty admitted by the hon. Member for Gillingham. There was nothing really rough for the Minister to answer. He got away with it very smoothly on that occasion.

We are still left completely in the dark. According to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East—representations have been made particularly to him—there is great concern among the workers involved.

The Minister said in answer to his hon. Friend that he thought that the anxiety had been removed. I assure him that that is not the information which my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East has.

I wish to ask the Civil Lord some specific questions, and I hope that he will be good enough to try to answer them. First, can he be more specific about the number of jobs to be lost in each dockyard? It is important that the men should know where they stand. I must say, in parenthesis, however, that I do not have much hope of anything very specific, judging from the replies which he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East this week. Secondly, to what extent will other classes of refit work help to offset this decrease in the work load? This was one of the categories which the hon. Gentleman said would lessen the impact of this problem on the dockyards. Thirdly, can the Minister be more specific about the imbalance between trades, which is a likely result of this rundown? Which trades are likely to suffer? What will be the effect on skilled manpower? Again, I think that the men concerned will be very interested in what the hon. Gentleman has to say.

Fourthly, can the Civil Lord say how far the adjustment of overtime has gone, or whether any progress at all has been made? The hon. Lady the Member for Devonport and others and myself are concerned about the low wages of many of these men, a number of them skilled craftsmen. If, in addition, they are to have a reduction in overtime they will be passed by, by the affluent society. If overtime is slashed there will be a reduction in purchasing power which in turn will have adverse effects on the business community in the dockyard towns.

Perhaps the hon. Lady the Member for Devonport will tell us about the wonderful new town centre in Plymouth, if she catches your eye, Mr. Speaker. None of us would want that to become a white elephant as a result of a loss of purchasing power among the employees in the dockyard.

Fifthly, can the Civil Lord say to what extent adult entry is being or has been restricted? Can he give us the number of adults who entered the dockyards last year, for instance? Can he give a quantitative measurement of the problem? Sixthly, can he yet say whether any discharges will be necessary, and, if so, how many and when? Finally, what degree of consultation has there been to date with the trade unions concerned?

I hope that the Civil Lord will be more forthcoming today than he has been hitherto. The men concerned deserve the very best that we can give them, and it seems to me that the least we can give them is a measure of certainty about their future employment.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) has raised this subject. I should like to say to him, first, that I certainly did not attend any conference. There may have been a Press leak—that is nothing to do with me—but there was no meeting of Conservative Members.

I wish to follow up the point which the hon. Member made about job security. I referred to this particularly in the Estimates debate because it is very important that men should have a sense of security. I went so far as to say that one could not blame the men for going slow on H.M.S. "Eagle" if they thought that they might work themselves out of a job. I pointed out that they were not doing that, but one could not have blamed them if they did.

I reckon that there will be about 200 fewer jobs in future in Devonport. When I first came into the House in 1955, there was 4 per cent. unemployment. In 1959 we became a development area. The figure is down to 2·7 per cent. For that reason, I was not particularly anxious. We are very much better off than we were. However, I wished to point out that if there was to be no extra work in the dockyards, and if work was to be cut down, we should like to be reinstated as a development area because when we were a development area we were particularly successful in obtaining additional factories which provided 9,000 extra jobs.

I completely agree with what the hon. Member says about apprentices. I hope that the number will not be cut. There is a White Paper which deals with Government training centres, and, if all the apprentices cannot be used in the yard, there is no reason why this should not be a Government training centre. All the equipment and "know-how" are available and I should have thought that this would have been an excellent way to use it should it become necessary.

When the subject of this debate was put on the Order Paper I thought that we would talk about the future of the dockyard towns. Instead, we seem to have been going over past history. I am interested in the future and I suggest to the hon. Member for Fife, West that the future depends on four things. The first is that the Navy is kept up to its present standards. In view of the announcement about the aircraft carrier and the way in which my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence described the future of the Royal Navy, we can see that there will be no rundown at present, which is very helpful to dockyard towns.

Secondly, adequate notice should be given to an area such as a dockyard town if there is to be any major change so that it can if it wishes apply to become a development district. Thirdly, there should be adequate machinery to enable the dockyard to compete with private industry. Fourthly, there should be an adequate career structure within the dockyard so that we keep the highly-skilled men. They are apt to leave because they can go into private industry and get better pay and conditions.

I thank my hon. Friend the Civil Lord for the consideration which he has given to dockyard towns in the short time that he has been in his present office. He has visited all the dockyard towns which may have less employees in future. He has had discussions not only with the Whitley Industrial Council and the trade unions concerned—I can only speak for Devonport here—buthe was also kind enough to come and meet a deputation of aldermen and councillors to discuss the effect that a rundown in the dockyard would have on the city itself. It was recognised, I think, that the problems of Plymouth and of the dockyard are indivisible. This was a very helpful gesture, and we were pleased to get an assurance from my hon. Friend that if in future there should be any major change in the Devonport dockyard, particularly in view of its very difficult geographical position far from the centre of any industrial towns, he would give us at least three years' notice, because it is reckoned that from the time that the plans and agreements are made to getting the first people working in the shops at least two years elapse. Therefore, we wanted the three-year breathing space which my hon. Friend agreed to give us. This will be of very great advantage in planning in future. I understand that Admiralty Estimates are made three years ahead, so that this is possible.

With regard to the future, I suggest to my hon. Friend that consideration should be given to this matter. I realise that the hulk of the new carrier cannot be made in Devonport, but this is the only deep-water port in this country where a ship of this size can come alongside. The men in Devonport acquired exceptional "know-how", particularly of electrical work, on the refit of H.M.S. "Eagle," which cost £30 million, about half the cost of the new aircraft carrier. I therefore hope that if the ship cannot be built in Devonport, interior fittings may be carried out there or some men will be allowed to go to whatever yard it is built in so that their skill is not wasted and they are given the chance of better employment. Over the last 10 years, there has been investment of about £8 million in Devonport, £4 million in works and another £4 million in machinery. It does not, therefore, appear as though there will be any rundown in this dockyard.

In view of my hon. Friend's visit, we are looking forward to constructive proposals later in the year as to the future of the dockyards, and particularly for Devonport the prefabrication shop for the making of ships. We are indebted to the hon. Member for Fife, West for raising the subject, but I hope that when my hon. Friend the Civil Lord replies to the debate, he will deal not simply with past events, but will show us how the dockyards can serve the country in future.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers),I am a little surprised that the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton), who had the opportunity of this Adjournment debate, chose to discuss at length exchanges in the House by Question and Answer as long ago as the end of May rather than the subject which he had put down—the future of the dockyard towns.

I make no complaint, because I am quite willing to deal with the past if it were necessary to do so. I only regret that we had to go to some length" to get full information to deal with the position of the dockyard towns, whereas the questions which have been put were concerned basically with the dockyards themselves. Never mind, I think that I can satisfy the hon. Gentleman's curiosity.

First, and following the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport, I should like to put on record what we conceive to be the position of the dockyards and our views about their future. The House knows that the dockyards are required to repair, refit and maintain Her Majesty's ships. The amount of work to be done at any given time is dependent upon the shape, size and character of the Fleet. In addition to being refitting, repairing and construction bases, the dockyards are also bases for the Fleet where ships berth, store, victual, commission and recommission for service abroad or in home waters.

By tradition, and because it is undoubtedly necessary to get proper training for both the men and the management in the dockyards for design, over seeing and repair work, and to enable them to keep abreast of modern techniques, the dockyards at home carry out a proportion of new construction for the Navy. At present, it is about 10 per cent. of the total and costs are strictly comparable with those obtaining in private shipyards. I do not want the House to be in any doubt that this is a pretty big business that we run.

We employ, I understand, about 41,000 industrial staff and about 8,000 non-industrial—that is to say, about 50,000 men and women. We have a lot of highly valuable equipment. We occupy a substantial area of valuable land and I can say, especially in the light of the visits which I have recently paid to the southern dockyards, which my hon. Friend was kind enough to mention, that our dockyards stand good comparison with private shipyards and ship-repairing yards throughout this country and abroad.

I add by way of gloss that I have not had the opportunity since 1940 of visiting Rossyth dockyard, but I certainly hope to do so, I will not say in the immediate future, because I have certain other preoccupations for the next week or two, but certainly within the reasonably near future, and I hope, perhaps to see the hon. Member for Fife, West when I come.

The dockyards undoubtedly are a substantial source of employment for all the dockyard towns and naturally, in our planning of the future of the dockyards, we are anxious to ensure that their unique position vis-à-vis the dockyard towns is fully taken into account.

The load of repair and refit work in the dockyards at any given time is determined by several factors. First, the shape, size and character of the Fleet as a whole is an important element. Then, there are the characteristics of each ship, its hull, its machinery, the electrical installation, which nowadays is so vital and extensive in any ship, its weapons, equipment, accommodation, and so on. All these things have to be taken into account. There is the number and type of Fleet units which operate on the station and where one wants to refit and dock as frequently as possible on the station rather than sending the ships for a long journey to another part of the world or even of the country.

We are working now towards a longer refit cycle for ships. We have a much more modern Fleet than at any time since the war. This inevitably has meant that over the last few years, there has been a heavy load of work in all the dockyards. Having once modernised the fleet, however, as we have fairly well done, the length of time which must elapse between refits can be expected to be much longer, because we are dealing with much more modern or modernised ships. This in itself is an important element to be taken into account in planning the future of the dockyards.

The capacity of any Royal Dockyard to handle the load of work which comes forward is one of the matters to which we give the greatest possible attention. The dockyards require to possess a balanced labour force, consisting of all the necessary trades in suitable numbers, to meet the full load which can arise from the factors which I have mentioned. I emphasise the importance of a balanced labour force, and when I deal with the misunderstanding, as I think it was, between the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) and myself, I will again return to this point.

In all our forecasts, we are dealing not with a gross total number of men, but with individual totals of men in a number of different trades. It is that one factor which, more than anything else, makes it difficult to forecast with precision some distance ahead exactly what the effect of any reduction in the work load on the dockyards will be.

We have to adjust the capacity from time to time up or down to meet the fluctuations which inevitably arise when policies or operational plans are changed, but in recent years our underlying aim has been to ensure, by all the means available to us, that the load on the dockyard should, as closely as possible, equal its capacity to handle it. A number of methods can be used to adjust either the load or the labour force, which is the other side of the equation, and some of those things were mentioned in the Answer which I gave on 29th May to the Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mr. Critchley) about the future work load.

In practice, there are limits to the extent to which the various regulating devices such as I have mentioned can be used and there are limits to the period over which they can be used. Our aim is to plan the dockyard programme so that one does not have to resort to devices of that kind unless one is forced to do so. One does not, for example, want to say to men who have reached retiring age but who, for their own benefit and for our benefit, too, have continued in work beyond that age and remained with us after nominal retirement, that they must go. This is not something that we want to do.

Nevertheless, if there is to be a rundown in the amount of work that the dockyards have to do, and if, consequently, there is less work for the labour force to do, I regard it as perfectly legitimate to look at that kind of expedient, if necessary, to ensure that the blow is cushioned in its impact upon the active working force. As I say, however, we aim to plan our programme so that methods of that kind do not have to be used except in exceptional circumstances.

Our plan proceeds in two parts. There is, first, the short-term dockyard programme review, which covers the immediate two years ahead; and this is in some detail. Then there is the longer-term programme review, which goes as far as ten years ahead and which must, obviously, in the very nature of things, be a much more sketchy operation than the immediate review. These reviews are undertaken within a year and the resulting plans are based on the latest approved policy of the planning assumptions which we can make including our employment forecasts for the Fleet.

If I may come to recent events, the latest reviews were carried out last autumn and this spring. We now have a much more modern Fleet than we have had for a long time and the reviews which we carried out show there will, in fact, be a greater reduction in the amount of work coming to the dockyards than we had previously foreseen for the financial year 1964–65. It was that fact which gave rise to some concern, and because we saw this situation was emerging we decided to carry out a more intensive study of the position and it was the first results of that study which I announced to the House in the Answer to a Question on 29th May.

We are examining the workload in great detail, but it is still not yet possible to state precisely what the effect will be on each yard. May I just explain why this is so? The need for the reduction in capacity in terms of the labour force required does not arise simply from the completion of the modernisation of H.M.S. "Eagle", the aircraft carrier at Devonport, or the conversion of H.M.S. "Triumph," from an aircraft carrier to a heavy repair ship. It also arises from the trend I have touched on towards longer running periods for Her Majesty's ships between refits.

While this is true, the increasing complexity of ships, the new developments in their propulsion, their weapons and their equipment, have resulted in greater demands on the dockyards and on the skill and versatility of their labour forces and managements. Nevertheless, they cannot entirely offset the net decline in the work load due to the fact that we have now got large scale modernisation and conversions which were undertaken some years ago and which already affect the requirements in particular trades. In short, while the docking and refit programmes for all the yards remain full for the next nine to twelve months there will not be in general so many tasks of magnitude for them to undertake after that.

That is the situation which we now have to live with, a picture of a declining work load in the dockyards. We require, therefore, measures to be taken to ensure that we do not have a superabundance of labour to handle a lesser amount of work than has been the case for some time.

It is quite untrue, I must tell the hon. Gentleman, to say, what seems to be popularly believed, and was reported at the time in the Press, that an initial announcement about this was to be made in the House of Commons, but as a result of back bench pressure it was not made. It was said by the hon. Gentleman that I held a meeting with Conservative back benchers. That is not so.

rose——

Perhaps I might just finish before the hon. Gentleman leaps to his feet.

What I did, as part of the process of a Minister coming new to a particular type of responsibility, was to have a talk with one or two of my hon. Friends. Not all of them by any means. My hon. Friend the Member for Devonport was not one of them. I had a talk with them about this to find exactly what their views were about their dockyard problems, because, naturally, a dockyard is a very important element in a dockyard town, and I wanted to talk to them and find out what their views were, and I discussed these matters in some degree of confidence with them.

It is not for me to say how these matters leaked to the Press, but they were certainly not leaked by the Government. As so often happens when leaks take place, the facts were distorted and completely false impressions given. Many thousands of men, it was said, would be affected and get the sack.

It is quite untrue, and I am very glad to have this opportunity of standing at this Box and to say, what I have already told the unions in the Admiralty Industrial Council and the Whitley Committees in the three southern dockyards, that it is untrue.

Will the hon. Gentleman explain to me how it came about that one of his hon. Friends told me, before he made his announcement, that Rosyth was not affected?

I have no idea. I have not the remotest idea. The hon. Gentleman had better go and ask the one who told him.

I said that it was not affected, because when this came out I asked whether my dockyard was affected and I was told that it would be, but that not all, and I was told that Rosyth was not. I did not know it until it came out, and, naturally, I went to find out, and I met the hon. Gentleman on the stairs and informed him he need not worry.

There we are. That clears that one up.

So far as Rosyth is concerned, let me give the hon. Gentleman a little information, because he sought information about it. The truth is that in Rosyth, quite different from the situation in the southern dockyards, where there will be a declining work load, there will be an increased work load because, as was made clear, Rosyth will build up to a situation where it will be undertaking refitting and repairing of the nuclear submarines.

We do not consider that there is any doubt about the future of Rosyth. We believe that approximately 400 additional employees will be required at Rosyth. That excludes those concerned with what are called works projects. It is too early to be precise about the manpower at Rosyth, but we have already started. The labour force will start to increase as soon as we can recruit suitable craftsmen. When they have had training in nuclear work a small number of staff will be appointed to Rosyth dockyard to plan for the facilities which are required. Our aim is to have Rosyth ready for emergency work on submarines from 1965, and for additional refits as soon as possible thereafter.

A word about apprentices, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. We have already announced that we increased the intake of apprentices during the last five years, when the number rose from 71 to 98 and then in the following year after that to 145, then to 167, and in this year to 190. I cannot yet speak about the year 1964 and beyond, but I say frankly that I do not expect there to be any kind of decrease as I foresee a situation in Rosyth where there should be plenty of work ahead for a long time to come.

Finally, a word about the disagreement between the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East and myself. I am sorry that I cannot say exactly what the numbers are that are involved in our calculations. There are one or two factors which we are now evaluating as a matter of considerable urgency, and if, in fact, we get favourable answers to our evaluations, as I hope we shall, then the whole situation about the three southern dockyards will be substantially transformed and the forecasts we were making a few months ago will be changed considerably for the better. When I am ready to tell the trade unions exactly what the position will be—and I hope that will be by 19th September, when the Admiralty Industrial Council is next to meet—I shall tell them.

I have given them an undertaking that they will be consulted ahead of anyone else. This is the right course for what, I hope, is enlightened management to adopt in the circumstances. We believe that they have the major stake, and that we should tell them first—if we have our sums finished, as I hope we shall, by 19th September. But it is wrong to say that figures of 4,000 or 5,000 are involved.

I can understand how the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East fell into that pitfall. He credited me with a great deal of Machiavellian ingenuity in this matter, but that is not true. The words that I used perhaps gave the impression that since 3,700 men normally leave our service of their own accord, for one reason or another, in southern dockyards, and since a normal wastage of that kind was one of the factors we take into account, one could say, q.e.d., that there must be more than 3,700 involved, because there were three other matters that I referred to.

But it is because of the imbalance between trades—the difference between the different trades—that one cannot say that this problem, which is less in total numbers than 3,700, can be easily got rid of simply by normal wastage. We may well be able to deal with the problem of excess numbers of men by relying on normal wastage in one trade, but in other trades we cannot rely upon it, because in those we may be short of men. In some of the electrical trades we are very short of men, and we shall have to go on recruiting electricians. We cannot say that this is a simple matter, and that we can do the whole thing by normal wastage. If we could, we should be happy, but it does not work out like that.

I apologise to the House and to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) for having gone on for so long, but even now I have not answered all the points that have been raised, and this is an important matter. At any rate, I am glad that I have been able to clear up some of the misunderstandings that have arisen.

I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity of raising the subject of the future development of marine hovercraft. I shall confine myself to the marine side and not go into the attractive features of hovercars and hover rail-cars, because then my remarks would take up too much time.

A number of strands in this problem have engaged my sympathy. First, the hovercraft is one of the greatest and most imaginative inventions since the war. Secondly, the Denny Hoverbus, now running up and down the Thames, is run by Thames Launches, of Twickenham, under the auspices of one of my energetic constituents, a Mr. Caisley. Both he and I have been struck by the tragedy that has befallen William Denny & Bros. Limited, who may be going into voluntary liquidation, with the result that one promising type of hovercraft may be in great danger in the future.

Lastly, and incidentally, Mr. Christopher Cockerell, the inventor or the hovercraft, was born within a mile of me at Cambridge. We used to knock each other about at children's parties. Both of us have a great interest in boats and sailing, but he has put his interest to much greater and more profitable use than I was able to do.

Great work has been accomplished by the National Research Development Corporation in taking up Mr. Cockerell's fundamental invention in 1958, developing it, as it has done, in such a short time. Great credit is also due to four companies—Saunders-Roe, now part of Westland, Vickers-Armstrong Engineers Ltd., William Denny, and Cushioncraft Ltd. They have all played an important part in this programme. The task of the N.R.D.C. is to encourage and develop big ideas which cannot be financed by any one company. The Corporation takes them up in the national interest and, for that purpose, can borrow money from the Treasury at Bank Rate and lend it out to individual firms at 1 per cent. over Bank Rate so as to allow the technological processes to be brought into play.

But these moneys are loans. The Corporation puts money out to a company and hopes to recover its investment over the years by royalties on the licences of the patents or by a share in the profits of successful inventions. Looking at the accounts of the Corporation, I noticed that its indebtedness to the Board of Trade is already nearly £6 million of the £10 million that was originally granted to it by Act of Parliament. I regard the Corporation as a splendid launching machine for new projects, but I believe that more is required in the case of the hovercraft. We have reached the prototype stage in the hovercraft, and now the nation must get it into production.

I shall now explain how I differentiate this invention from the smaller inventions with which the Corporation generally deals. The very size of the project puts it into a different category. The final aim of this great venture must surely be a virile export market. I look forward to British hovercraft, in ten or fifteen years' time, running up and down the Rhine, or even the Danube, sailing over the great lakes of the United States or Canada, running between the islands of the West Indies, forging its way up the Amazon and other Brazilian rivers, running between the Argentine and Uruguay on the River Plate, skidding over the swamps and rivers of Africa and India and even over the deserts of Australia, although I admit, of course, that it would not be a marine craft in that case.

I understand that over 400 serious inquiries from abroad have been dealt with, but, of course, at the moment we cannot show our potential customers a commercially operating hovercraft service. Ws have a lead of one or two years over other countries, but licences have recently been granted to Japan and the United States, and therefore we have very serious competitors who may catch up with us shortly. We have got as far as building a 38-ton vehicle with a payload of 12 tons, but it is not economic for scheduled services or for pleasure services at present.

What I should like to see in the near future are two scheduled services on the most potentially economic routes in the country, which would be showpieces for all the world to gaze at and a shop window to which customers could come and buy things. I believe that these two services could best be run for a number of reasons in the Solent, where, every year, 5 million passengers cross the water between the Isle of Wight and the mainland and where the water is comparatively smooth and not subject to the large waves of the main ocean.

One route for instance, might be from Portsmouth to Ryde and running, possibly, to Sandown on the south side of the island to replace the three old paddle steamers run by British Railways. Another route could be from Lee-on-Solent to Cowes,to carry passengers and cars, because it is ridiculous to find, when one goes to the Isle of Wight in the summer, that one has to book a passage for a motor car three months ahead. What I suggest is wanted for these two services are four hovercraft of about 120 tons each, capable of 40 knots and of carrying 500 to 700 passengers, thus reducing the journey time from 50 minutes to 12 minutes. I believe that such craft would cost about £800,000 each, or perhaps a little more.

By charging a fare of 5s. per passenger, to make them comparable with the present services would not, of course, be fully economic, but they would have great advantages, such as flexibility of operation, landing on beaches, and so on. All the same, there will have to be some terminal, perhaps a concrete ramp on the beaches, and that would require some capital expenditure, perhaps about £100,000 in all. Then there would have to be stores and working capital, so that about £2 million for each scheduled service would be required.

My hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Woodnutt) wishes, I know, to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, for a minute or two, and if he does he will elaborate the need of the Isle of Wight for this sort of service. The total amount of money spent by the N.R.D.C. and by the four firms involved is not, of course, known, but I would estimate that it is not more than £2 million or £3 million in all. That is only about enough to buy the tailplane of a prototype of a modern airliner and nothing compared with the hundreds of millions that have been poured out in the last few years on the development of aircraft and air engines, much of which not only served military purposes but civilian purposes as well. Nearly every plane which is flying has been financed to some extent by defence expenditure, and the Boeing 707 is a supreme example of that. I know that there is one defence contract for a hovercraft and no doubt another would help. But it is not my purpose to discuss that today.

It was reported in The Times of 15th July that the National Research Development Council is prepared to make up the difference between the price which a hovercraft manufacturer would have to charge and the maximum that an operator felt he could afford to pay for a commercial hovercraft, and that is a step forward. I should like my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to confirm that that sort of idea has the approval of the Board of Trade. Such sums as would be advanced for this purpose would, I take it, be loans, carrying interest, and in my view we must go further

My proposal for the operators to get a scheduled service going would be that the operator be asked to put up one-third of the capital, that the N.R.D.C. should advance one-third and that the Government should make a grant of one-third. This is similar in principle to the sort of grant they make for the construction of roads at the present time. It would be in the ratio of £1 per £1 which industry is putting up and similar in principle once again to what the D.S.I.R. does for research. So we have two precedents for that sort of assistance.

If such a scheme came into operation, could we find operators to run these services? I think that we could. There are plenty of people interested in marine transport, particularly in the Isle of Wight and on the Solent; companies like the Red Funnel Steamer Company and the Southdown Bus Company which ran an experimental hovercraft service in connection with Westland. There is the possibility that the Transport Holding Company might be interested. In London, a scheme like this would help the Denny Hovercraft Company, which is a subsidiary of Denny Bros., to keep going and possibly run a service in the future.

The operation of the hover-bus now running on the Thames comes to an end on 31st October. It is much cheaper than a full-scale hovercraft for it is more like a boat than a flying machine. If such a service were developed, it could grow into a commuter service from Hammersmith and Chelsea to the City, running at 20 or 30 miles an hour with practically no wash. It would be independent of the tide because the machine would be powerful enough to disregard it. Such a service would take the place of those gallant old "penny steamers" operated by the L.C.C. for working-men which fell into disuse over fifty years ago. Such a service on the Thames would help to prevent congestion on the streets and revive the dream of that indefatigable champion of the River, Sir Alan Herbert.

In my view, hovercraft have now reached the stage where they are fast, safe and reliable marine vehicles. They exactly fill the gap in carrying passenger freight which exists between an ordinary ship and an aircraft. It is a splendid craft in the form of S.R.N.3 and the V.A.3. But now we need larger successors to those vehicles to operate regular schedule services to show to the customers of the world. I think that this is too large a task for the N.R.D.C. alone. I am sure that the public would be thrilled if such a service could be started and that the Government would receive great credit for the comparatively modest investment of £1⅓ million, which is all that I think that it would cost. We should be modernising Britain and find- ing fresh export fields for our inventive genius.

I wish to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr.Gresham Cooke) for giving me the advantage of two minutes of his Adjournment debate to say a few words on this subject, about which I feel so strongly because the Isle of Wight, my constituency, is the home of the hovercraft.

Of the four companies which have done all the research and development in getting Britain ahead of the rest of the world on this project, two are in the Isle of Wight. Westland Aircraft's Saunders Roe Division carried out all the original research and development which was later taken up by Denny and Vickers and by Britten-Norman, also on the island. I pay particular tribute to Britten-Norman which has developed its cushion craft with no financial help from the Hovercraft Development Corporation and has sold the first commercial craft.

We have got ahead of the world in this development, and we have to keep ahead. The fact, as my hon. Friend said, that we have now granted licences to two Japanese firms and to the United States, means that they will go into production and will be competing with us in selling hovercraft in the rest of the world. We have to devise a means of assuring that this wonderful vehicle which we have produced is sold. Where do we go from here? The answer is that we must have a vehicle that we can demonstrate to show that it does operate successfully.

When I am not in this House, my normal job is persuading foreigners to buy British machine tools. Whenever I have to persuade them I have to show the machines actually working, or people will not buy them. We have to be in a position to show them the hovercraft working. The only way to do that is to set up regular scheduled services. I am very pleased that my hon. Friend suggested that such a service should be in the sheltered waters of the Solent because that would also help my constituency in its transport problems. I suggest to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade that, in view of the fact that the Minister of Transport is hoping to close all the island's railways, he should get a great supporter in him because if we had a hovercraft service it would make the railways far less important.

This is a venture of considerable size and it needs a lot of capital. When a firm has just produced a new project it must recover what it has spent on research and development in its first few sales, which means that the machine is very expensive. I suggest that the Board of Trade should direct the Hovercraft Development Corporation—I know it wishes to do so—and actively encourage it to participate in a private enterprise venture—and I assure my hon. Friend that there will be one—to run a service in the Solent. The extent to which it could participate would be either by guaranteeing the amount required for the original craft or at least putting in funds to cover the research and development expenditure so that the machine is not made too costly to run economically.

We have looked into the figures of running a service from the mainland to the Isle of Wight. I can assure my hon. Friend that a regular service could be economically viable if the price of the machine were reasonable. If he could get together the Hovercraft Development Corporation and the various private enterprise bodies interested in doing this, he would do a great service because then we would be able to show foreigners machines operating. We would sell them and keep Britain ahead in hovercraft development and also increase our exports to the markets of the world.

I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) on choosing for debate this afternoon the future of marine hovercraft. This is an important subject in which I am sure the hopes of many of us lie. With the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr.Woodnutt) and my own reply, plus the fact that so much of the hovercraft development is taking place on Southampton Water and the Solent, we may say that this is almost a Hampshire occasion, for my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham has a home in Hampshire.

There is no doubt that the development of the hovercraft has caught the imagination of many of us. In the hovercraft we see an entirely new method of propulsion, which, I remind the House, could have a land use as well as a marine use, although the marine application has earlier prospects of success.

As hon. Members know, the hovercraft makes use of a new concept of propulsion, which is obtained by the establishment of a cushion of air beneath the craft. This principle of the air cushion as a method of propulsion was worked out by a private inventor, Mr. Cockerell, who, I am glad to say, has been able to develop his ideas, largely as a result of the interest and support of the National Research Development Corporation. As the House will remember, in 1958 the National Research Development Corporation formed and financed a company, Hovercraft Development Ltd., known as H.D.L., to develop hovercraft. The company instituted a programme of advanced research and development and placed a contract for the design and manufacture of the first experimental hovercraft which was completed in June, 1959.

Since then, H.DL. has been collaborating with a number of United Kingdom firms—four to be precise—in the development and testing of a range of prototypes and carrying out various research and project studies. The second generation of hovercraft has now been built and has undergone trials. As hon. Members know, some of them have been subject to experimental operational use in ferrying passengers on selected routes. The potentialities of amphibious hovercraft have now been demonstrated. Some of the collaborating firms have already shown their confidence in the commercial future of these craft by announcing their plans for the third generation of hovercraft. These will be much larger than the present models, and their larger size should make them more attractive commercially.

The progress of this revolutionary project has been relatively rapid, but a considerable amount of further development will be necessary if hovercraft transportation is to become fully established as a paying proposition. On the basis of progress made to date, the collaborating firms are in a position to meet orders for specific requirements. Development has reached the stage where two of the collaborating firms are contemplating the construction of ferries for use, as my hon. Friend indicated, across the Solent and later across the English Channel.

To give the House an idea of the advantages of hovercraft as a cross-Channel ferry over an ordinary ship, I want to give a simple illustration. I am informed that on the basis of current knowledge and within the limit of the current state of the art, a hovercraft cross-Channel ferry would be able to make a speed of 60 knots against a head wind of 30 knots over a whole Channel crossing. In practice it might not be desirable to do so, because I understand that even hovercraft passengers can be subject to sea sickness. I think that I can safely say that N.R.D.C. and these collaborating firms regard the future of marine hovercraft as good. But, of course, there are still practical problems to be solved and regular operating experience to be gained before any assurance can be given about the commercial future of hovercraft.

As I have said, Government finance is being put into the development of hovercraft by the N.R.D.C. through the medium of H.D.L. In general—and this is an important point for my hon. Friend—all the commercial and technical judgments are for the N.R.D.C. rather than for us in the Board of Trade—and this, I think, is basic to the whole concept of N.R.D.C.It is for that body to decide to what use it should put the funds made available to it under the Development of Inventions Act. The development of the hovercraft is the biggest and most costly venture which N.R.D.C. has so far undertaken, but it has every confidence in the future of marine hovercraft and believes that a worth while market for them can be developed.

There is no ground for saying that N.R.D.C. is at present handicapped in the future development of hovercraft by lack of funds. N.R.D.C. can finance the development of inventions in a num- ber of ways, but the method used in each case is a matter for N.R.D.C. to judge, just like the board of any commercial company.

Where the N.R.D.C. is giving, as the phrase goes, "financial assistance" to a firm or "acquiring an interest" in some undertaking, the approval of the Board of Trade has to be given and each case has to be considered on its merits. The actual arrangements made are the results of negotiations with individual firms and the details are regarded as commercial secrets. If they were disclosed, it might make negotiations with other firms in the same field much more difficult. I can tell the House, however, that various types of hovercraft have been developed through joint ventures, with the Corporation paying roughly 50 per cent. of the costs. The Corporation hopes to recoup its investments through royalties on sales. If I had the time I should like to go into the wider question of N.R.D.C.'s finances but I understand that we are now a little behind schedule in our debates.

At present the United Kingdom is well ahead of the rest of the world in the development of the hovercraft principle, but we cannot be complacent. As has been pointed out, firms in America and Japan have taken out licences, and competition for markets will undoubtedly increase. What the United Kingdom hovercraft industry needs now is orders from operators at home and abroad. A successful ferry service in the United Kingdom would be a shop window where prospective purchasers could see hovercraft in operation.

One point which has been raised is whether the N.R.D.C. can participate in the operation of a ferry service. We in the Board of Trade would regard the operation of such a service as one within the Corporation's statutory powers, provided that it was satisfied that it was necessary in order to further the development of hovercraft. It is therefore up to the Corporation to work out a detailed scheme for the operation of such a service together with its prospective partners and submit it to us for consideration like any other project. I understand that talks are taking place now about the possibility of ferry services in the Solent.

Another point raised in the debate was the defence interest in hovercraft. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviations has told me that there is considerable defence interest in hovercraft and their possible applications to the Services are being studied. An Inter-Services Hovercraft Trials Unit has been sot up at Lee-on-Solent and various types of hovercraft have been hired from the manufacturers so that the unit can gain first-hand experience of their present capabilities and their potentialities. Three hovercraft from two different manufacturers have been ordered for research and longer-term evaluation, one by the War Office and two by the Ministry of Aviation. The possibility of placing development contracts for hovercraft specifically for defence purposes is being studied as more information becomes available from the Trials Unit and the research and development establishments.

As for the future of Denny Hovercraft Ltd., the parent company has announced its intention to go into liquidation because of lack of ship building orders, and if the shareholders agree with this proposal a receiver will be appointed. Whilst it is too early to say what will happen, it is important that the benefits of Denny's Hovercraft work on the "side-wall" type of craft, which no other company has been developing, should not be lost. The N.R.D.C. thinks that this craft is very suitable for work in sheltered waters and should have a market if it is developed quickly. The Corporation would be willing to co-operate with any firm which is prepared to develop it.

If my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham and other hon. Members would like to se something of the way in which hovercraft have been developed I should be very happy to try and arrange with the N.R.D.C. for the showing of films here in London or for a visit to the Solent or possibly both. I intend later this month to visit H.D.L. and see something of the present state of the art for myself.

As is usual on a day of Adjournment debates, we have lost time. Consequently, those at the end of the queue begin to wonder whether we shall have an opportunity to address the House. Out of consideration for the hon. Gentleman who has the final subject, I shall attempt to make my speech as brief as possible.

I am very grateful to Mr. Speaker for selecting the subject of the electronics industry in the North-East. I do not think that anyone would deny the need for a new growth industry of this kind in that part of the country. Unfortunately, for reasons which I will explain later, the North-East has not had the opportunity of getting the type of growth industry for which I have been agitating for the last four years.

In view of the continued unemployment in the North-East, I must ask the Parliamentary Secretary to listen awhile to some of the things I have to say so that my constituents will know that this case has been pressed very hard. I am very grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary for all his courtesy during the long correspondence that we have had. The Office of the Parliamentary Secretary for Science, who is also on the Front Bench, has also had some correspondence, even if he knows it only from his noble Friend Lord Hailsham.

I am grateful for all the efforts that have been made to meet me. However, I have not been met and I must, therefore, put the matter before the House. I am a layman in this industry. I am not a specialist, therefore I have no interest to declare, except the urgent needs of my area, the need for a new growth industry, and the desire that the Government should match words with deeds.

I want to refer, first, to the difficulties of the North-East. The first difficulty is unemployment. The labour demand can be measured by comparing the number of unemployed with the number of vacancies. For the second month in succession we have had more unemployed compared with unfilled vacancies than any other area. We have eight unemployed for every job available. With Scotland, we are the worst area in the country. It has happened twice this year. It has happened in the middle of the summer. We shudder to think what will happen in the winter. This is worse than the winter period of 1961–62. Our position is very different from that in London and the South-East where there is a job available for almost every unemployed man.

The position in the North-East has a very distressing effect upon the young. The young cannot get jobs because there are no jobs available. Therefore, there is the problem of migration. About 10,000 people migrate from the North-East every year.

Then there is the industrial imbalance in the North-East. There is a bias in the North-East towards the traditional capital goods industries. These are always the first to suffer in a recession. These industries are coal, steel and shipbuilding. It is not because they are out of date. They have modernised. The very effect of modernisation has been that there are less jobs, apprenticeships and work for the young.

Mechanisation has caused redundancy in coalmining. In Durham, the number of employees fell from 102,300 in June, 1955, to 77,400 in March, 1963, a decline of 24,900. In the first quarter of this year a further 1,000 jobs were lost to the young. I am told that in the next five years there will be a loss of a further 16,500. There is the same story in the steel industry. Since the war £100 million has been spent on new plant, but the tragedy is that too much plant is working below capacity. Another problem in the North-East is shipbuilding. Total orders have been quite insufficient, although it is true that shipyards in the North-East have gained a greater share than others.

Although this may be a sombre picture, it is not a picture of utter hopelessness. I believe that the North-East is an area of potential opportunity. If the area which cradled the first Industrial Revolution is given the necessary help it will be poised in readiness for the second. The North-East has, nevertheless, achieved a good deal. The Team Valley Trading Estate is an example of the progress that has been made. At the beginning of the last war about 5,000 people were employed there. Today, about 66,000 work there. In Durham, we have had a change from the old basic industries to more modern ones and the Team Valley Trading Estate, though spectacular, is not in itself sufficient to solve our problems.

We require a boost. The last Budget provided some sudden advantages and facilities. There has been an extension of development districts and all these things are excellent. However, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the President of the Board of Trade will eventually have to consider how long the additional facilities, some of them provided in the last Budget, will run, for there is a feeling, certainly in the North-East, that the Government and industry must look at least ten years ahead.

Our real need is for more growth industries to be encouraged to be established in the North. This brings me to the subject of the electronics industry. This is primarily a par excellence growth industry. That phrase was used in the Financial Times of 31st January, 1962. The industry's annual output is worth about £400 million, about 10 per cent. of the world's production in the commodities it produces outside the Soviet bloc. A United States estimate suggests that in about ten years' time the sales of this industry throughout the world will double. The electronics industry is a new capital goods industry. Its products are used for research, production, control and communications. In other words, it is an ideas industry and is typical of the sort of growth industry we need in the North-East.

In speaking about the electronics industry I must make it clear that it should not be confused with the domestic electronics industry which produces such things as radio valves, transformers, and so on. I have an extremely bulky file on this subject, but time does not permit me to relate all the details I have at hand. About four years ago I approached the Minister of Supply, as he was then known, and expressed concern about the failure of his Department's contracts to find their way to the North-East. I was told that there were historical reasons—weapons concept policy, and so on—which, it appeared, acted against the placing of contracts in the area.

In 1961, I raised the matter with the President of the Board of Trade and in a letter dated 23rd November, 1961, the then Parliamentary Secretary, the present Minister of Aviation, wrote that my points were primarily for the Minister of Aviation. His letter went on to say:

"You must not, however, take it from this that the Board of Trade are not also concerned. On the contrary, we recognise that the North East has available not only training facilities but an excellent and skilled labour force; and we should very much like to see the electronics industry develop there and add further diversification to the area. I am sure that in considering your letter the Ministry of Aviation will have these matters very much in mind."

My hopes were built up and I thought that some progress would be made, but on 12th December, 1961, I received a letter from the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Aviation, now one of the Joint Under-Secretaries of State for the Home Department, in which he said that while the Ministry was glad to see orders going to the development districts, nevertheless

"The purchasing policy of the Government requires that financial and technical criteria, and not geographical location, should have an overriding influence in determining where orders should be placed."

Surely the policy of the Government, as expressed in the Local Employment Act, should have made it imperative that no major industrial area was left without a knowledge of the techniques of this important new industry. Surely Ministers should see that Government contracts go to this new growth industry in the North-East.

In January of this year one of my constituents put forward a proposal for what might be termed a miniature Ferranti scheme for the North-East. It was based on the "Electronics in Scotland Scheme" administered by Ferranti. In this scheme a contract of £12 million was placed on Ferranti, with the result that there is now a small but nourishing electronics industry in Scotland. The scheme put forward by my constituent was a deliberate attempt to ensure that a major industrial area was not left without a knowledge of electronic techniques. It recognised how out of balance the local scene would be without it, and what a loss of talent would be suffered by the community at large.

But mine was a very modest scheme indeed. It asked the Minister of Avia- tion to place a contract for about £100,000 per annum—not £12 million—on the one substantial electronics firm in the North-East. This company would sub-contract 75 per cent. to the three or four small recently-established firms in the area. The scheme went before the Minister on 12th February, but after several months back came the answer as before, the Ministry was unable to depart from its basic duty in awarding contracts.

What is the present position? The information given to me by people in the industry is that about 70 per cent. of our electronic development and research work takes place within a radius of 45 miles of London. The Minister of Aviation is the largest single originator of research and development work in the Kingdom, and a bigger customer of the electronics industry than all the other home and export customers put together.

This work is of vital importance to the development of new commercial products. Why, then, does it remain in London or within a 45-mile radius of London, leaving the rest of the country bereft and starved of the new technologies and given less opportunity of keeping up to date? Why not a share for the North-East? Why not a share for the North-East for strategic reasons? On this account it would seem to be a necessity, apart from the need to ensure that these large industrial areas axe given some of the "know how" of this new industry.

If confidence and financial considerations are the criteria—and they should be—then surely the North-East should do very well? The Parliamentary Secretary knows that in the North-East we have two universities, two colleges of advanced technology, and a number of technical colleges, which between them train a large number of graduates in electronics and applied physics, but at present most of them are drawn away to the London area.

The North-East is rich, too, in returning Servicemen and merchant seamen who have skills in some of the branches of electronics, but at present most of these men are lost to the industry because of the shortage of openings locally. I take the view that all possible assistance should be given to ensure that no section of the community is deprived of the opportunity to keep abreast of the new techniques upon which industry of the present and the future so much depends. For four years I have been trying to make some progress in this matter. The Board of Trade appears to be on my side. It would like to see the industry develop in the North-East. Only the Ministry of Aviation appears to stand in the way.

It may be that the scheme which my constituent and I put up was too modest. In his reply to me the Parliamentary Secretary did not say this. Indeed, he gave no hint that it might be so, but a recent approach to Lord Hailsham, the Minister responsible for North-East affairs, asking him to intervene suggests that this might be so, because he says that he has asked his officials to discuss with the North-East Development Council the wider issues of the development of the electronics industry in the North-East.

Whilst I unreservedly welcome this news—a gleam of hope at last—I wonder who initiated these discussions. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary can help me. Certainly, there was no hint at all in his letter of 24th May. Who initiated those discussions? Was it Lord Hailsham? Or has the President of the Board of Trade expressed a view? Was it because of the continual pressure from the North-East? Or has there been a change of heart at the Ministry of Aviation?

What is more to the point, what is the object of those discussions? This is far more important. Is it to explain away the situation to the North-East? Or is there now a genuine concern on the part of the Government to help the electronics industry in the North-East? The last thing that I would want to do would be in any way to prejudice the discussions which are to take place, and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will not think that I am trying to tell him how to do his job when I say that I hope that anything he says this afternoon will not prejudice the discussions. I want them to succeed.

I want to be clear whether the Department is at least prepared to consider helping us in the North-East. It has been a long and frustrating struggle. On the one hand, the Government have urged industrialists to go North. On the other, when the Government might well have given a positive lead, as in this case, all manner of excuses have been found for not giving assistance. Are the Government now seeking to match words with deeds, or is the infant electronics industry in the North-East building up vain hopes? I confess that I am anxious to close this bulky file of mine, but everything will depend on the attitude of the Ministry of Aviation.

Is it too much to hope that this afternoon the Parliamentary Secretary will give us a clue? Are we nearing the end of this four-year struggle, or are the contestants merely coming out for the next round? I hope not. I hope that this afternoon, as a result of this short debate, some light will be shed on this subject and that there will be some hope for the electronics industry in the North-East.

I am sure that we are all very pleased to see the hon. Member for Gateshead, West (Mr. Randall) back in the House again and, if I may say so, looking so well after his recent illnesses. I hope that he will have a good rest during the Recess and will not be too worried by his constituents. I am also sure that we are all pleased that after so many months of enforced Parliamentary silence he has been able to have this early opportunity since his return to raise this question concerning his constituency. I congratulate him on his luck in the Ballot.

The hon. Gentleman raised many interesting economic points, but I fear that in the time allotted I cannot answer all of them; indeed, many of them were matters for other Departments. I am sure that his speech will be read in those Departments with great interest, and perhaps they will follow up some of the points which he made.

Clearly, this afternoon I must confine myself to matters which concern the Ministry of Aviation. As the House is aware, the electronics industry is very widely spread. Indeed, I often wonder whether the time will not shortly come when there ought not to be a clearer definition of what is meant by the expression the "electronics industry". The hon. Gentleman quoted some comparative figures relating to what happens overseas, and so on, but it is very difficult to balance one set of figures for one country against our own because of the difficulty of the definition of "the electronics industry". While the Admiralty has a substantial stake in defence electronics research and development, and the Post Office is concerned with the civil telecommunications branch of electronics, the Ministry of Aviation does the majority of business with the electronics industry so far as the Government are concerned.

I should like to deal specifically with the proposition which was put forward by Mr. Loebl, which, in a way, illustrates the point which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. The essence of the proposal is that the Ministry of Aviation should place a fairly large development contract with Messrs. Joyce, Loebl, of Gateshead, which firm, in turn, would place and administer sub-contracts for about 75 per cent. of the value of that contract with three or four smallish electronic firms on the Tyneside. I hope that I have got the proposition right.

I have much personal sympathy with the intentions which lie behind that proposal, but, before deciding whether it is feasible, we have to consider certain criteria. From the extract which the hon. Gentleman read from the previous letter, it will be seen that we are, at least, consistent in our use of words, because the term "criteria" came out in that letter.

In placing contracts, the Ministry of Aviation has, obviously, to be extremely careful about the technical ability of the firms and their sub-contractors, particularly in relation to their design strength and production facilities. The main reason, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman realises, is that, on defence orders in this very sophisticated industry, we expect from contractors not only a "system" approach, but also the ability to take on the responsibility for a whole operational or weapons system or sub-system. Experience has shown that, to do this, contractors must be broadly based and be backed by a formidable amount of experience and expertise of a very high order in research, design and production. In this way, the Government and the country gain very considerable advantages in terms of economies and efficiency in our defence projects.

I am advised—I am sorry to say that this is the advice I am given—that there is no firm in the North-East which will meet those criteria and which could undertake the rôle. What, then, is the answer for firms such as Messrs. Joyce, Loebl, of Gateshead? It is, I believe, that they should seek sub-contracts from the large firms and then, perhaps, forge industrial links between themselves and those large firms. In this way, they can, of course, make a valuable contribution to composite projects, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility—I do not want to be over-optimistic—that they might, from such relatively small beginnings, develop into one of the large firms themselves and so obtain one of the contracts for a whole weapons system.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Messrs. Ferranti. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the situation was very different from today. Then, the defence electronics industry was still at an infant stage and we wanted to increase its design strength and expand its capacity. Ferranti of Edinburgh was assisted somewhat on the lines proposed by Mr. Loebl in his scheme to act as a parent company to a number of small sub-contracting firms in the area. They were awarded contracts. But it was, in fact, Ferranti which largely benefited from the scheme and, in the event, there was little sub-contracting because it was found largely impracticable in the circumstances. This casts no aspersion on Ferranti.

The hon. Gentleman may ask why this could not be tried again today. The answer is that we have more than enough capacity to meet our requirements in this particular field at present. In fact, we are faced with pleas for work from several of the large and well-established electronics contractors which are at the moment under-employed. In the circumstances, therefore, I think that it would be wrong for the Minister of Aviation to increase artificially the capacity of the industry.

However, as the hon. Gentleman will know, the Government do help development districts by offering companies in those areas, which have tendered unsuccessfully for Government contracts, 25 per cent. of the order at a price predetermined by the most competitive bid. I shall not elaborate on that scheme now because the hon. Gentleman, obviously, knows about it. Only recently, moreover, the Ministry of Aviation drew the attention of the electronics industry once more to the Government's wish to see work placed in the development districts wherever possible We circulated to the electronics companies a list of those areas and a request that they should regularly seek to sub-contract some part of their work there when competitive considerations permitted.

The hon. Gentleman asked why we could not move a share of the electronics industry from the South-East to the North-East. It is not within the power of the Ministry of Aviation to force electronics companies to move to the North-East. The hon. Gentleman mentioned, also, the ample technical education facilities available in the area. This is a fact well known to my Ministry, and much credit is due to the people there for having made it available.

Nevertheless, we cannot artificially induce the large companies to move out of the area in which they are established when, in their judgment, their efficiency and, hence, up to a point, our defence expenditure would be adversely affected.

I must emphasise that I do not believe that it would be right for us to try to force firms to move. We certainly take steps to increase the inducements, as the House heard yesterday from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, but we do not seek to override the commercial judgment of the firms. We on this side of the House believe that in principle the acts of government should affect, as it were, the ground swell rather than the surface movements of industry.

What is our attitude to the North-East? The policy of the Government towards the North-East forms a consistent whole. Various measures have been announced to assist the area to which I have referred. The fact that we cannot do all that the hon. Member would have us do must not lead him or others to think that we have no sympathy with the real difficulties to which he has referred. I have been at pains to try to remove any misconception of what is practicable for us in the context of the matter raised in this debate. We are very ready to discuss the situation at first hand to see whether more can be done without going against the principles which I have mentioned and to see whether there are further opportunities for self-help in this matter.

It was to this end that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary for Science told the House last Monday that arrangements are being made for a meeting to take place in the North-East between the electronics industry, the North-East Development Council and senior officials of my Department and of the office for the North-East. The hon. Member asked who arranged it and when it was arranged. The meeting will, I hope, take place within a week or two. It is a question of getting a number of busy people together at the right time. That is the only thing holding it up. I would describe this meeting as being a round-up of the situation to see what, if anything, can be done. I hope that the hon. Member will be satisfied with that. Neither he nor I would wish to put an oar in at this stage, certainly not in the House, to disturb the meeting which will take place.

It is the intention that at the meeting there will be not only a detailed explanation of the considerations governing the letting of defence contracts for electronics, but also a wide-ranging discussion on the ways that electronic firms in the North-East can play their full part in the development of this industry, which is so important to the national interest in the defence and civil fields. I hope that the hon. Member will accept that we are getting on with this matter. I am sure that both he and I hope that the meeting shortly to take place will prove to be profitable to all concerned.

I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for selecting my subject for debate. Owing to the many complaints which I have received, I was intending to press the Postmaster-General for a departmental inquiry into various aspects of the postal and telephone services in Richmond and Barnes, However, I have now received an assurance that the Postmaster-General will carry out my request immediately. I therefore do not feel that I should delay the House with a detailed speech this afternoon.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. Renton) wish to raise an urgent matter before the House rises for the Summer Recess.

I must emphasise that if I am not satisfied with the inquiry which the Postmaster-General intends to carry out, I give notice that I will endeavour to raise the matter when we return to Westminster in the autumn.

I am sure that all my constituents, as well as myself, will be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Surrey (Mr. A. Royle) for his generosity in what he has just said. I think that he appreciates, as I hope the House did yesterday, that the matter which I wish to raise is of great urgency in my constituency and, perhaps, confronts it with one of the greatest problems it has had to face in its long history, which, as I said yesterday, dates back for over 1,290 years, as having some form of separate jurisdiction——

I should like also to express thanks to you, Mr. Speaker, for having allowed me to raise this subject, having obtained the agreement of my hon. Friend. I also welcome the presence of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government on the Front Bench. Normally, these debates are answered only by Parliamentary Secretaries, and I very much appreciate my right hon. Friend's having taken the trouble to come. Indeed, I would go out of my way to express my admiration for his integrity and devotion to service that he gives and the immense pains he has taken over the whole of this problem, as well as the invariable courtesy which he has shown me whenever I have approached him on this or any other matter.

Yesterday's decision came, naturally, as a very great blow, not so much, perhaps, to myself as to my constituents, and not least to the members of the assiduously devoted staff of the County Council of the Isle of Ely. Many people may not realise that the geographical County of Cambridgeshire which they see on the map is not all administered by the Cambridgeshire County Council. Since the last century, the northern half of it has been administered by the separate County Council of the Isle of Ely.

My right hon. Friend indicated yesterday that it had not been a county council very long, but I remind him that in 1783 that eminent jurist, Lord Mansfield, upheld in litigation that the Isle of Ely was equivalent to a county. One can trace the separate jurisdiction of the Isle of Ely right back to the year 673 A.D., when Ethelred a, the wife of Tombert, ruler of the South Girvii, first established a monastery there and settled the government and jurisdiction of her lands upon it. That process will be ended if the Order which my right hon. Friend will be laying when the House resumes after the Recess is passed.

The more right that one might think that this decision is, the more difficult it becomes to understand how the decision over Rutland can be right, too. I welcome very much the decision concerning Rutland, because I like to see independent-minded people respected and given what they want. The upholding of the rights of minorities is one of the greatest prides of our Parliamentary system and I welcome what has happened in the case of Rutland. That makes it all the more difficult, however, to understand the case for amalgamating the Isle of Ely, which wanted to be independent of Cambridge shire County or, indeed, any other county.

On finance alone, one sees how difficult the situation is. In the report of the Inspector to the Minister, a copy of which I received only this morning and, therefore, have not studied in full detail, the evidence is repeated that today the Isle of Ely spends £3,265,252 a year compared with £57,242 in 1900, whereas Rutland's figure is only a little over £500,000 today in all. When one thinks of the financial burden which the Isle of Ely carries and compares it with the burden of Rutland, one can say that if it be right, as I believe it is, to leave Rutland on its own, it is extremely difficult to suggest that it is not right for the Isle of Ely to be left on its own, too.

If I have interpreted it aright, the reason that my right hon. Friend the Minister has had in mind is this. Primarily for political reasons, I think, nobody wanted to have Rutland, and if anybody were forced to have Rutland against Rutland's wishes, or against the wishes of the receiving authority, that would not strengthen the authority which resulted from that amalgamation. Whereas in the Isle of Ely case, as I see it, to amalgamate the Isle of Ely with Cambridgeshire, which is apparently prepared to go in with the Isle of Ely, will strengthen the new Cambridgeshire—by embodying the Isle of Ely and the administrative County of Cambridge.

One of the points which I have been asked to put to my right hon. Friend since his decision is this. Are we now to understand that if one happens to have the same county name geographically which one enjoys administratively that puts one in a superior position to that of a county whose administrative authority has a different name from the geographical name? In Rutland, the County Council is in the County of Rutland, and that is that. The administrative county of the Isle of Ely is in the geographical and indeed the postal district of the County of Cambridge. I have been asked to put this point to my right hon. Friend and I should be grateful if he could answer on that.

The Report of the Boundary Commission has gone out of its way to avoid blaming the Isle of Ely for any shortcomings to date. It has cast no innuendoes, but has emphasised that it believes the amalgamation with the administrative County of Cambridge would result in a stronger authority emerging. But I have lived with this problem for even longer than the Minister has, and I would say to him that I do not believe that, if there is to be any other decision than that of allowing the Isle of Ely to remain, there will be real stability—which is a word which has a special significance throughout the inspector's report—in the new authority. I cannot see how those living on the border of the Holland with Boston division of Lincolnshire on the northern border of the Isle of Ely and those living in the south on the boundary of Cambridgeshire with Essex will have that community of interest which is so important if we are to have good local government.

I think therefore that it is important that so far as possible we should not be too fixed in our ideas about what is the right alternative. If independence cannot be continued—I still hope that it yet may, but if it cannot be—then I would ask my right hon. Friend to appreciate this, and here I have the authority of something said in the consultations which the Boundary Commission itself had on 18th November, 1960, with some of the authorities.

I should explain that the north-south solution is the recommendation which the Minister is to lay before the House in Orders in the autumn, and refers to the Isle of Ely and Cambridgeshire administrative county. It was said by the then Chairman of the Isle of Ely County Council:

"We have discussed this North-South solution quite a lot, and I came to the conclusion myself, listening to what the members had to say, that the majority opinion—and I am probably sticking my neck out when I say this—of the members of our council is that of the two evils, the four-in-one and the North-South, the four-in-one is the lesser evil. I am quite sure that is what the majority of our council will think."

I have, naturally not yet been able fully to consult all my constituents on this matter, but I would say to the Minister that I have seen that Wisbech, the only borough still left, other than the City of Cambridge itself, in the geographical County of Cambridge, is already showing signs of a mixed reaction.

Some are saying that they would far sooner have had the four-county set up. The inspector's report has made it clear to my right hon. Friend that only one county was inclined to this view in any way, and that the only other people who wanted that solution were those in the City of Cambridge. Cambridge wanted the amalgamation of the four counties—the Stoke of Peterborough, Huntingdonshire, the Isle of Ely, and Cambridgeshire. Then the City of Cambridge could have county borough status.

My right hon. Friend has rejected that, rightly in my opinion, because there is a division of opinion as between the university and the city authorities. Whatever the rights and wrongs may be, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Sir H. Kerr) will in due course be very expansive on the subject. Nevertheless, the effect of what the Minister is now to do will divide public opinion in the Isle of Ely in twain. It will not lead to stability in the new authority.

I have no desire to take any action or to say any word which is likely to exacerbate feelings to such a pitch that, as a result of whatever Parliament decides, the task of the new authority will become more difficult. I am anxious that everyone should sit back and contemplate the situation before committing himself as to what he will do. I have held it to be my duty throughout this operation to see that what I honestly believe to be the opinion of my constituents was properly expressed in the proper place—and in my view there can be no more proper place available for a back bencher than to speak in this House to the Minister himself.

Nevertheless, I would feel that, having done my best to do that, it would be wise for everybody to think quite quietly and calmly what are the chances of upsetting this decision; what it would cost to do so, and what would be the effect in the end. I hope that, whatever may eventuate, no one will decide to indulge in what, from the outset, could possibly be regarded as an abortive exercise, simply for the fun of doing it. If anyone does that it will make the task of the inheriting authority more difficult, and no one wants that.

I ask my right hon. Friend to deal with one other matter. His department sent a letter, signed by a Mr. Fox, to the Clerk of the County Council. The Minister has been courteous enough to send me a copy of that letter this morning, although the Clerk had already sent me a copy. It contains this sentence:

"The Minister notes, moreover, that none of the residents in the Isle of Ely made representations to him or appeared at the public local inquiry in support of their county council's case".

I say to him straight away that the reason why I have been badgering his two predecessors in office, as well as himself, is that I knew what my constituents were thinking. I was in touch with all three Ministers.

Surely it is reasonable to suggest that when a county council comes under the hammer in this way, and has to appear at a local inquiry, they can be taken as representing the views of their own ratepayers there. I find it strange that that sentence should be included in that letter, because yesterday my right hon. Friend went out of his way to make kind remarks about my efforts for my constituents. It is monstrous to suggest that individuals who happen to object to what the Boundary Commission was doing had a duty to write to the Minister personally, instead of approaching him through their Member of Parliament, whose duty it surely is to pass on their representations to the Minister. Whom is he representing, if not his constituents? Have not they the right to go through their Member in order to approach the Minister? Therefore, I hope that he can clear that one up. I must say that I regret that he put that sentence in.

Finally, I want to ask my right hon. Friend what his intentions are now. There is one rural district on the North-West of the Isle of Ely called Thorney. It is called Thorney for exactly the same reasons as the Thorney Island on which Westminster Abbey stands. It stuck up with its thorn bushes in the same way as the old Thorney Island did out of the former fen now called St James's Park. That district at one time expressed the preference to go with Peterborough. Later it changed that preference, and I hope that I have the assurance from my right hon. Friend that he will take note of the latest views of Thorney and not only its earlier one.

Can my right hon. Friend also tell me what he is going to do about the membership of the present County Council during the period of transition, and what reasonable information he can give to the employees of the County Council—very devoted public servants they are too—about their future employment. It is obviously of vital importance for them to know if they are going to look for alternative jobs. Quite obviously, they must be made aware of what the Minister's plans are as soon as possible. In other words, I hope that we shall be told whether or not there is going to be a sort of shadow new authority elected while the old ones remain in being, and, if possible, and as soon as possible, what the timing factor is likely to be, assuming that Parliament passes the Orders.

I know that my right hon. Friend will not expect me today to commit myself on what I shall do with regard to those Orders. However, I can assure him that what I shall be doing in the meantime is finding out what my constituents really want and that I shall do my best to do my duty towards them, because I am quite certain that the Isle of Ely never elects its Member to preside over the dissolution of the Isle of Ely. I know that my right hon. Friend understands that.

I not now going to give way in the hope that you, Mr. Speaker, will find it possible to call my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. Renton),who is my near close neighbour and who has been in this battle with us all along.

I wish to join my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Surrey (Mr. A. Royle) and my right hon. Friend the Minister in the way that he did. First, I wish to congratulate the people of Rutland on remaining uniquely small as a county. Their history is almost as interesting as that of Huntingdonshire. But even if my right hon. Friend's decision on Rutland was right, it has, of course, made other counties much larger than Rutland feel that they also could claim to be considered unique.

However, it was said repeatedly by the Boundary Commission—and the Minister accepted it as we heard in his statement yesterday—that there is considerable merit in having larger units of local government than Huntingdonshire and that its union with the Soke of Peterborough would strengthen both counties. Both those counties already have many links with each other and together they will, in my opinion, form a well-shaped, well-sized county for modern administration. The representatives of the Huntingdonshire County Council had all this in mind when, yesterday, they welcomed the Minister's decision, but I must point out that they did so without knowing of his decision with regard to Rutland. It is only fair that I should say that for it is difficult to reconcile my right hon. Friend's two decisions.

The representatives of the Huntingdonshire County Council, with whom I have been in touch today, still feel that the decision to join Huntingdonshire with the Soke of Peterborough is correct in the circumstances and is most likely, in the long run, to provide the best services for both counties. It is certainly preferable to the four-county plan to which all of us in Huntingdonshire were very strongly opposed.

Speaking for myself, I shall do all that I can to help to make the union between these two counties a happy one. There are certain problems yet to be resolved, peripheral decisions which my right hon. Friend has to make, and I will keep in touch with him about them.

:There is much in what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) and by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. Renton) which is wise and which, in the kindness of what they have been good enough to say about me, I much appreciate.

I wish to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his persistent and sustained championing of the rights and interests of his constituents, as he has seen them, both to my predecessors and to me; and to my right hon. and learned Friend for his steady presentation of the interests of his constituents, as he has seen them. But I know that both will recognise with me that change is the very condition of survival—survival, that is to say, in the sense of the achievement and the maintenance of the highest practical standard of living for the citizens. We are talking of the survival and standard of living of the citizen, and not of the survival and, as it were, the status of local government institutions which, whatever their history, must ultimately be the servants and the agents of the citizen. It is the citizen whom Governments must first and foremost have in mind.

If I may take up one of the criticisms of my hon. Friend of part of the letter, issued with my authority, I must say that it is true, of course, that the citizens of the Isle of Ely have made their views known to my hon. Friend in the confident expectation that he would pass on those views with clarity and cogency to the Government. That duty he has honourably and consistently discharged. But it is a duty which other hon. Members also have to discharge towards their constituents.

The fact is, as stated in my letter, that there was in Rutland a far more public demonstration, in addition to the private representations made to the Member of Parliament, than happened in the Isle of Ely. I assert and emphasise that public opinion is not decisive and conclusive in these difficult matters. It is one, and only one, factor. But I maintain to my hon. Friend that the sentence in my letter was accurate and I do not deny that he has received many representations from his constituents.

The whole of the elaborate local government reorganisation procedure provides systematically for judgment to be made by the Government of how local government can best be provided for effective and convenient local administration in the interests of the citizens. There is, as I do not need to remind the House, an elaborate and long drawn out procedure designed for this purpose. It is not the job of the Government to look just at size or any particular manifestation of service, but to try to judge the picture as a whole and to assess what will serve to produce the most effective and convenient local government in the interests of the people. I can assure my hon. Friends that it is a difficult and invidious jurisdiction. Questions of semantics or geographical continuity do not enter into the decision.

I must now deal with the two decisions put to me. First there are the four neighbouring counties, not one of which, according to the Commission, whose findings the Government have accepted, is entirely satisfactory as an administrative county. There is the Soke of Peterborough dominated by the City of Peterborough and Cambridgeshire dominated by the City of Cambridge. The responsibilities of the councils are vastly greater than when they were created in 1888. As my hon. Friend says, the budget of the Isle of Ely is 120 times greater than it was 60 or 70 years ago. That only illustrates the increasing change and responsibility, the latest manifestations of which are the added responsibilities, for example, for mental health, preventive medicine and the care of the handicapped.

It is difficult for small administrative counties—and the Soke of Peterborough, Huntingdonshire and the Isle of Ely are the third, fourth and fifth smallest of the administrative counties of England—to provide the wide range of specialist services and the skills and institutions which are needed to serve the relatively small numbers of specialist demands thrown up by their catchment areas. Not only do such specialist services place a great strain on their financial resources, but a small case load does not make sensible or economic use of the highly specialised skills required.

The Government found that, compared with large counties, these three counties were below average in effectiveness. As my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely said, there was no possible criticism of the members or officers of the local authorities concerned because of this; but the effectiveness of their service is determined to some extent by their size. The Government have tried to seek two better balanced counties, Cambridgeshire with the Isle of Ely, on the one hand, and Huntingdonshire with the Soke of Peterborough, on the other, as a better basis for providing services for the sick, the aged, the handicapped and the young.

My hon. Friend spoke of the distance from the north of the Isle of Ely to the south of Cambridgeshire, but many counties would be passionately and patriotically defended by their inhabitants although they are far larger than the combined county which will evolve. I agree that there is a strong case for amalgamating Rutland with Leicestershire, but if we merged the two the fate of Rutland would be very much more severe. Rutland would be swamped by Leicestershire. It would provide one-sixteenth of the population and less than one-sixteenth of the rateable value, whereas to join Huntingdonshire with the Soke of Peterborough and Cambridgeshire with the Isle of Ely would be to form two partnerships in each of which the participation would be formidable with equally contributing components. That is a very different picture from the possible swamping of Rutland by its merger with Leicestershire.

If Rutland had to rely entirely on its own resources, the case for merging with Leicestershire would have been very nearly unanswerable, but there is this twofold distinction between the two situations. Rutland and Leicestershire would not mutually benefit each other if they were merged, whereas the two combinations of the two counties would be of mutual help to each other. Leicestershire can and does help Rutland to provide a wide range of specialised services needed for its citizens. Rutland has the good fortune to have direct-grant schools inside its boundaries which cater for a large number of its grammar school children.

Both my hon. Friends adopt a very wise and statesmanlike attitude about the future. They reserve their freedom to comment and criticise and take what action they see fit, but, at the same time, they are constructive and accept that if the Government's decision is sustained the best must be made of the decision in the interests of the citizens and staff alike. It is the intention of the Government to lay an Order as soon as possible. I am not yet able to announce the date of the effectiveness of the two mergers, but any transitional arrangements will be made clear as soon as the Order is laid.

As to the staff, it is, in general, true that the purpose of these reorganisations is to improve the local authority services to the public and thus to increase the scope of the staff. There are, of course, compensation arrangements which are normal in these reorganisation procedures.

I do not pretend that these decisions can ever be ideal. They are not easy for a Government to make. But they are inherent in the whole process of modernising the structure of the country. I believe that the Government, in all the decisions announced yesterday, have come to conclusions which will be seen ultimately to be in the interest of the citizens which must be the Government's first responsibility.