On 16th July I raised at Question Time the problem of underground supplies of electricity in National Parks and asked the Minister of Power

"whether he is aware that the several area electricity boards are adopting different policies towards meeting the cost …".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th July, 1964; Vol. 698, c. 1396.]

I asked him to issue general directions to the boards to avoid these differing practices. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, in what I would regard as a commendably abbreviated Answer, said "Yes" to the first part of the Question and "No" to the second.

I have no quarrel with my hon. Friend. He is merely carrying out the policy, usually a wise policy, of not interfering in the working of the nationalised industries, but I want the House to look at some of the wider ramifications of this policy because it is causing great injustice in some areas where those who live in National Parks are either being denied electricity or are having to pay for it at a high cost compared with others not for their own delight but for the delight of those who come to areas of national beauty.

The difference of policy is even greater than mere difference between areas, because if it is a question of a line put up by the Central Electricity Generating Board, usually carried on pylons, being placed underground for the sake of natural beauty, the whole nation has to share the cost, but if the area electricity boards are responsible for the line they all have different practices. The North-East Area board, which looks after the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, invariably makes the consumer pay the whole cost of putting the supply lines underground, yet just over the Pennines in the Lake District National Park the area board shouldering the cost spreads it round the consumers throughout the area. The Midlands area board adopts a still different practice. It says that it considers each case on its merits. Whatever the purpose of this policy, it means in the Midlands that there is a long delay before any decision is reached and during that time consumers in that National Park are denied electricity.

To show how this policy operates, I should like to refer to one specific case. In my constituency there is a hamlet called East Moors near the beautiful old town of Helmsley. There are 12 inhabitants in the hamlet who have been asking for electricity for a considerable time. They have been told that it is the wish of the National Parks Commission that the lines to these consumers should be underground and they have therefore been told that they cannot have electricity unless a sum of £3,000 is paid, which means £250 for each consumer. They cannot afford that extra charge. This has gone on for a very long time, with no electricity for them and no alteration of policy by the Board or the Minister.

I was giving the illustration of East Moors because I think it shows the problem which the House and the Minister face in this matter. That particular case was turned down by the area board, which demanded the full charge. The consultative council endorsed that view, and the matter has now been remitted to the Electricity Council. But it is only one of a great many cases in certain of the National Parks. Moreover, there are very many occasions when, because of this procedure, there is undue delay in the provision of electricity.

The origin of this power is to be found in Section 37 of the Electricity Act, 1957:

"In formulating or considering any proposals relating to the functions … of any of the Area Boards … the Board in question, the Electricity Council and the Minister, having regard to the desirability of preserving natural beauty … shall each take into account any effect which the proposals would have on the natural beauty of the countryside …".

That provision was inserted in the Act in the other place by the Minister of Power. In so doing he expressly said:

"… the Boards can provide perfectly well, under the existing financial clauses of the Bill, for any consequent expenditure which they may regard as unremunerative."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 30th May, 1957; Vol. 204, c. 184]

When he gave that undertaking he was asked what would happen about putting a line underground—not the whole circuit but a connection to a particular house. He gave a further undertaking that that type of case would be covered and that the Minister would have power to ensure that that was carried out.

The pesent policy of the differing practices in the different boards is not consistent with the pledge given in May, 1957, by Lord Mills, when he was Minister of Power, by which he bound the Government. This is illustrated in last year's reports of some of the electricity boards. In dealing with this Section, the North-Eastern Electricity Board said in paragraph 64 of its Report.

"The Board continued to consult with local planning and other appropriate authorities to ensure compliance with their obligations under Section 37 of the Electricity Act, 1957. The new overhead lines and sub-stations caused the minimum of damage to visual amenity".

In other words, the Board was ensuring that where the natural landscape demanded it the lines were replaced underground. However, it was not placing the extra cost on all the consumers but merely upon those who were connected.

That is made clear by paragraph 47, which states:

"in addition, the Board invested some £42,000 in replacing or modifying existing works which detracted from the amenity of their surroundings. Of the 30 cases dealt with, the majority consisted of the replacement of overhead distribution networks by underground cables in attractive villages."

We therefore have the further fact that, whereas in this board's area consumers have to pay the cost of a new line when it is brought to the house, if the board later finds that some of the existing overhead lines to villages are spoiling the beauty of the landscape it will put them underground and place the burden of the cost on all of the consumers of the board, which, as I say, should be done in all cases.

The South-West Electricity Consultative Council, in its Report for last year, said:

"The Board have only very limited funds available for allocation to amenity purposes and consequently any demand for unduly high expenditure on amenity grounds can only result in delaying such electricity extension".

The unevenness of the charge on some consumers and the consequent delay in the provision of electricity in the areas of National Parks is a well recognised problem. That was confirmed by the speech of Lord Strang, Chairman of the National Parks Commission, at a conference in Scarborough in 1963. According to page 81 of the 14th Report of the National Parks Commission, Lord Strang, in dealing with this problem, said that he wanted to touch on the

"defrayment of the cost of underground distribution lines by Area Electricity Boards";

and he then made three propositions. The first was this:

"Under the Electricity Act, 1957, the Electricity Boards have an obligation to take into account any effect which their proposals would have on the natural beauty of the countryside".

He then quoted Lord Mills, and went on to say:

"… the Boards can provide perfectly well for any expenditure caused by care for the landscape, which they may regard as un-remunerative. Secondly, in cases where a Board agrees with the planning authority to place a section of a line underground. The extra cost of so doing would, the Commismission hope, be spread over the whole body of the Board's consumers and not be charged upon the immediate consumer. Some of the boards do spread the cost in this way. Thirdly, if a Board and a planning authority cannot agree that a given stretch of line should be placed underground, the proper course is for the Board to refer the differene to the Minister for decision and not to withdraw the proposal, placing the blame upon the planning authority."

I commend all three propositions of Lord Strang to the House. I believe that they represent good planning and good sense and that they follow the undertakings given by Lord Mills in another place in May, 1957. I therefore ask by hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to confirm the undertakings given by Lord Mills when the Electricity Act, 1957, was introduced and Section 37 was placed in it.

The benefit of undergrounding an electricity line goes, not only to those who are resident in the National Park areas, but to those who visit National Park areas. At present, it is the more affluent visitors who come from the towns to the National Park areas who get the advantage of the beautiful scenery and of having the electricity lines placed underground. There is a good deal of rural depopulation in the more beautiful parts of Britain. One of the main reasons for it is that the amenities in those areas are not as good as the amenities in other parts of Britain, and when they are obtained they cost a good deal more. I believe that this is particularly true of electricity.

It is of vital importance to people who live in National Park areas that they should have electricity, especially in the winter. Can anyone give any reason why they should have to pay twice as much as people in other parts of the country for the installation of electricity in their cottages and farms? That is what is happening. They are being denied this facility. It is quite wrong that my constituents in my National Park area should be denied it while the people in other National Park areas benefit from it.

It would be as well if I were to make it clear at the start what we are arguing about. It is the very simple but vexed question of who is to pay. Of course, I make no complaint that my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) should raise this matter, which greatly affects his constituents, and that he should seek to dwell particularly upon any differences in the treatment which his constituents may receive as opposed to that meted out by other boards to other people in different parts of the country. The basic question which faces us and the electricity industry is who is to pay—the individual customers, all the customers of the board or, perhaps, even of the industry as a whole, or, as a last alternative, the Exchequer?

The Herbert Committee took the view very strongly that each area board should stand on its own feet. Of course, the corollary of that independence is that it should have discretion to act as it thinks fit and to adopt and be free to follow the commercial policies which it believes to be right and which fit its own individual circumstances.

The 1957 Act quite clearly endorsed and adopted that view, and since then each area board has been under an obligation to pay its own way. That Act abolished the central reserve fund, following the recommendation of the Herbert Committee. I should remind the House that there is nothing to stop individual area boards balancing losses which they may make in one area or sphere against profits made elsewhere. I should also like, in view of what my right hon. Friend has said, to remind him of the distinction formed by all boards and certainly by the North Eastern Board between the so-called service line, the purpose of which is to serve an individual customer or small group of customers, and the main distribution system.

The cost of the main distribution system is always borne by the board; in other words, by the customers as a whole. It is only the service lines to individuals or to groups of customers that we are really discussing today, and I do not think my right hon. Friend would challenge that. In these cases, I should make it clear that the board is willing to make contributions to individual connections up to a maximum of £480. It is important that one should try to get away from any idea that the boards are particularly niggardly or mean to those who live in remote areas. In point of fact, rural electrification already involves this board in a loss of some £300,000 a year. It is felt, I think rightly, by the Board that if it were to accept some larger burden of the cost of putting lines underground it would open itself to many new and larger demands.

It is very important that the area boards must be free. It would be wholly wrong for the Government, or for any Minister, to seek to press them into commercial policies which they regard as uneconomic. Indeed, it would not only be wrong, but it would be unfair because the Government have placed on them—I believe absolutely rightly and with abundant justification—the responsibility of meeting certain agreed financial objectives. This policy, which I shall not go into in detail because the House is very familiar with it, is, I think, quite indispensable to the common sense commercial operation of these immense enterprises.

I should remind my right hon. Friend of what the Select Committee said on this subject. I am afraid that the views of the Select Committee are of small comfort to him in urging the course that he has urged this morning. The Select Committee suggested that in cases where terms for rural electrification are noticeably easier to the consumer they should be brought up to the level of the stiffer and stricter ones. It would be very difficult to challenge the wisdom of the Select Committee's recommendation in this matter.

I should also like to remind my right hon. Friend that rural electrification which has taken place in the area of the North Eastern Board now covers 93 per cent. of farms and that, I think, represents a very considerable achievement. In fact, over the next year or so, something like 95 to 96 per cent should be covered. Perhaps I should also remind my right hon. Friend that this board has invested a very large sum, amounting in all to £8 million, in rural electrification since nationalisation.

My right hon. Friend asked me point blank whether I could confirm what Lord Mills said in the past. My answer is that the statutory obligation under Section 37, to which he rightly referred, is quite clear. Boards have a duty to pay regard to the beauty of the countryside and to safeguarding it. Equally, they have other duties and sometimes these duties are in conflict with one another. The real point is—I think we must make this quite clear—that it would be wrong to rob this Board, or any other, of discretion in following out its commercial policies.

I know that my right hon. Friend has already referred to the fact that one of these cases is before the Electricity Council at the moment, and, of course, this problem is one which has been frequently considered by the Council. The whole purpose and existence of the Electricity Council is that it should be able to consider in a forum representing the whole industry problems which affect all boards. I shall make it my business to see that my right hon. Friend's words this morning are brought to the attention of the Electricity Council, but I hope that I can carry him with me when I say that it would be quite wrong for me, or for any other Minister, to depart from the principle that these Boards must be free to decide their own commercial policies and use their own wisdom in facing their own individual problems. A constant stream of interfering guidance from Whitehall would be damaging and would, I think, have a result far from that intended or sought by my right hon. Friend.

I wish to raise the case of two young Lanarkshire men, John Currie and Peter Connor, who are, at present, in prison. John Currie is serving a sentence of 10 years and Peter Connor a sentence of seven years. The particular action of which they were accused and sentenced happened a long time ago, on the night of 9th—10th September, 1962.

These two men were tried on the 14th December at Glasgow before Lord Walker and a jury. They were tried on a number of charges, the most serious of which was attempted murder. The charge was that having stolen a motor car from East Kilbride in Lanarkshire, in the pursuit that followed, when they were caught up with by three constables of the Lanarkshire police force, John Currie and Peter Connor and a third man, Joseph Higgins, who was not tried on this occasion, but tried subsequently, on two occasions drove the stolen car that they were driving in front of the police car while both cars were travelling at speeds of 90 to 100 miles per hour, and that they threw various articles, metal objects and the back seat of the stolen car, at the pursuing police car to avoid apprehension and in a manner that showed a complete disregard for the lives of the policemen.

Because of this, they were charged with attempted murder and were found guilty on a majority verdict. I emphasise that only a majority of the jury agreed that they were guilty. As I have said, John Currie was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment and Peter Connor to seven years.

It is a long time since that happened and it might seem strange that I am raising the matter on the last day of this Parliament. The noble Lady the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland knows, however, that both I and my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison), who is also here this morning, have both been concerned about this case for a long time. We first raised it in January, 1963.

While I have every respect for the noble Lady, I am more than disappointed —I am annoyed—that it is the noble Lady who has come today to reply to this case and not her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. The noble Lady—I say this with great respect to her—has had nothing to do with the case. She does not have the power to do what we are asking the Secretary of State to do.

The very fact that the noble Lady has been asked to come here rather than her right hon. Friend confirms me in the feeling which I have had all along when I have heard from her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—and I have heard more than once—that he had given the case the most careful consideration but was not prepared to do what we were asking him to do. This is indicative of what seems to me to be an attitude which did not show that very great care was given to the arguments advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North and myself.

We raised the matter in January, 1963, and were told by the Secretary of State for Scotland that he had given very careful consideration to the case and saw no reason to intervene. We continued to raise the matter. I was given a copy of the direction to the jury by the presiding judge at the initial trial and a copy of the opinion expressed by the noble Lord who heard the appeal on 17th January, 1963. Both I and my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North have studied those documents. After studying them, I told the Secretary of State that it was not possible to argue that one had carefully considered the case if one had no more than those documents upon which to consider it. It seemed that up to that time the Secretary of State for Scotland had no more than those documents.

I directed to the Secretary of State the point that before I could form any reasonable opinion on the matter—because, as the noble Lady knows, there is quite a bit of feeling in Lanarkshire that these men were wrongly accused of attempted murder—I would certainly have to be able to read the verbatim account of the trial. I will say for the Secretary of State that eventually, probably at great inconvenience and trouble, he enabled me to obtain for perusal a copy of the verbatim report of the trial.

I went over it very carefully, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North.

We submitted to the Secretary of State for Scotland a fairly lengthy document based upon our study of the verbatim account of the trial. We alleged, in effect, that the three principal witnesses, the Lanarkshire police constables, had collectively prepared the evidence which they had given at the trial and that they had acted in collusion. We put an abundance of points which we had taken from the evidence at the trial supporting our argument of collusion. We made the point that some of the evidence was so fantastic that it was unbelievable.

On those two points, I asked the Secretary of State to use the powers which he possesses under Section 16 of the Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act, 1926 which gives him virtually unlimited powers if he is satisfied that a matter requires to be looked at again. Whether or not there is an appeal, the Secretary of State has power to refer all or any part of the matter back to the court for its opinion or for retrial. We appealed to the Secretary of State to use those powers. We saw the Secretary of State and spent a lot of time with him discussing the case, but he refused to do as we asked.

On the occasion of our first appeal, he refused to exercise his powers on the ground that what we had submitted in our document about collusion and the fantastic nature of some of the evidence was all contained within the verbatim account of the trial and that we had produced no new evidence. Everything which we had said had already been said and, therefore, as there was no new evidence, the Secretary of State was not prepared to exercise his powers. I agree that there was a certain amount of reason in that view, but it is important to remember that the Secretary of State turned down our appeal on the ground that everything that we said had been extracted from the verbatim account of the trial. We were inventing nothing. We were studying the case, perhaps, more carefully than a jury could have done and, having done so, we were presenting the evidence from a later standpoint. We also have been told on more than one occasion that the case had already been subject to appeal and that the appeal had been rejected.

It is important to bear in mind the grounds on which the appeal was decided. For greater accuracy, I will quote those grounds. There were two specific points on which the case was appealed. This was on 17th December, 1963, and I quote from the expressed opinion of Lord Patrick. This opinion was subsequently endorsed by his two colleagues Lords Mackintosh and Strachan.

Lord Patrick said:

"The first point which is taken in this appeal is that the judge in his charge, when he directed the jury that it was open to them to return a verdict of simple assault if that which had been done was a mere careless or negligent act, and that it was open to them to return a verdict of attempt to murder if they held that these things which had been done were deliberate acts, should have directed the jury that there was a middle course open to them, namely, that they might find the accused guilty only of an aggravated assault, such as assault with intent to cause severe injury. The judge did not do so. He told the jury that the two courses were open to them either of finding guilt of simple assault or of finding guilt of attempt to murder. Now, when one looks at that which was alleged to have happened in this case and that which the jury must have held proved to have happened, I cannot see that any other verdict was open to the jury in this particular case than that of attempt to murder."

That was the first point, that there had been, in fact, a middle course, and Lord Patrick, supported by his noble friends, accepted the argument that there had been a middle course and upheld the presiding judge, Lord Walker, in what he had put to the jury.

The second point on which appeal was made was:

"His charge"—

that is, the judge's charge—

"was also challenged as being defective on the matter of concert. The situation was that Connor, the driver, was said to have made the two attempts to drive the police car off the road, and that Currie, who was in the back seat of the car, was said to have thrown some heavy articles out of it at the police car. Accordingly, the two could not be convicted of all that was done unless the jury found concert proved. I confess that, having read the judge's charge, in which he treated the matter of concert on two occasions, I have found a completely adequate charge on the law of concert, and in this respect also I am of opinion that no justifiable criticism can be made of the judge's charge. I therefore move your Lordships that the applications for leave to appeal be refused."

So the second point was the concept of concert. I hope that I can say without presumption that for my part, having myself read the presiding judge's direction to the jury, I feel he made the point of concert adequately here and I would certainly have no complaint to make in that connection.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North and I continued to feel concern about this question over a long time. We have not lightly dealt with it; we have not felt that it was a matter of unimportance; but neither of us was satisfied, nor are we satisfied, that these two men were in fact properly charged, and that the charge could have been a charge of attempted murder, and on this we continued our efforts to do something on their behalf. We visited them in prison. I myself have been twice to prison to see these two men, and I have talked with them at considerable length to hear their side of the case.

It was in December last year that we got what seemed to be virtually the final notice from the Secretary of State. He refused any appeal we might make to use his powers, and it was then that we returned to the presiding judge's charge to the jury for closer study. It is now on the basis of the judge's charge to the jury that I raise this matter this morning, and what I am putting to the noble Lady, and what I put to her right hon. Friend, is on the basis of there being major omissions in the case for the defence that was presented by the presiding judge to the jury, major omissions which were unwittingly made, but which, nevertheless, having been made, might have had a powerful influence on the jury in favour of the case for the prosecution and against the case for the defence. It is on those grounds that we are making this appeal this morning.

I want to be careful in what I say, and I propose to stick very closely to what I have written here, because I appreciate that this is a delicate matter. In his description to the jury on the law of murder and attempted murder, Lord Walker said:

"Murder itself is essentially a wilful act. A careless act which results in death can never be murder. It must be intentional, and the kind of intention which is involved in murder is this. Murder is a wilful act which is either (a) intended to kill, or (b) intended to injure recklessly and without limitation as to the amount of the injury so as to show complete recklessness as to the consequences to life."

He went on:

"Of course, intention to kill is a very difficult thing to draw because you cannot know what is inside a man's mind, what he means. Therefore the law says that if the nature of the act is such as to show or infer the intention to injure recklessly so as to be regardless of the consequences to life that also is murder".

Would the hon. Member be good enough to assist me? I understand that he is reading a direction which has been given. I am sure he will bear in mind before he comments on it that he could not criticise that save on a substantive Motion.

You put me in difficulty, Mr. Speaker. I am appealing here to the Secretary of State for Scotland, who, unfortunately, is not in his place, to use his powers under the Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act, 1926, and so that I may persuade him that he use those powers I am trying to argue that the presiding judge, in his directions to the jury, omitted major points in the case for the defence. I am not criticising the judge—

I understand what the hon. Member is doing and how he is trying to steer a very difficult course along a knife-edge, but I am involved in the rules of the House, and a Member cannot, save on a substantive Motion, criticise what a judge has done, acting as such, and criticism—the hon. Member will forgive me if I do not use the right Scots word—criticism of the direction, even if used for that purpose for which the hon. Member is now using it, would require a substantive Motion.

In which case Mr. Speaker, I shall be driven to abandon what I had very carefully prepared with the intention of being as fair as I possibly could, and will describe in my own words what happened without giving quotations, and what seemed to me to be those major omissions. I take it that I may, without quoting the judge, describe certain of the features of evidence which were presented at the trial, those parts of the evidence which I have studied in the verbatim account. I can enumerate, I take it, Mr. Speaker, major omissions, but without, in this case, criticising the judge's words, or giving any particular quotation from the judge.

It is very difficult for the hon. Member and for me. What involves difficulty for him is stating alleged omissions from the learned judge's direction. If the hon. Member can manage to refer to the omissions without relating them to what would appear to be an allegation of error in the direction, then he will be all right.

I will do what I can, Sir.

The case hinged around the chase of three men. This afternoon, I am concerned only with two. They had stolen a car on the night from 9th to 10th September, 1962. They were caught up with by three constables from the Lanarkshire police near Abington, on the A.74, which, as you may know, Mr. Speaker, is the principal route from Glasgow south to Carlisle. The police who chased the three men were in a Jaguar, and the men were in a Vauxhall.

During the trial the police witnesses alleged that when they were overtaking a stolen Vauxhall car their vehicle was travelling at a speed of 100 miles an hour. I wish to emphasise that point. Each of the policemen, under oath, insisted upon the accuracy of the speed at which they were travelling. Each was presented by the prosecution as an expert in judging speed, and as officers equipped with a car in which they travelled regularly and capable of measuring speed. Each of those policemen in their sworn evidence stated that they were overtaking the stolen Vauxhall when travelling at a speed of 100 miles an hour. The Vauxhall was travelling at about 95 miles an hour. It was in the middle of the night, when a high wind was blowing and heavy rain falling.

The police witnesses alleged that when the bonnet of their Jaguar car had reached halfway along the body of the fleeing Vauxhall car the driver of the Vauxhall glanced round, saw that the police were overtaking him and suddenly swerved his car in front of the police car. Only by a miracle—according top each of the policemen—and because of the wonderful brakes with which the police car was equipped, was it possible for the driver of the police car to stop the vehicle so that they could save themselves. On the second occasion, only a short distance further down the road, when the cars were travelling at 90 miles an hour the same thing happened, but on this ocassion the police were watching for it and were not in the same danger.

The cars turned from the main road into a little side road called Greenhill-stairs Road. The police allege that while they were travelling along this road a variety of articles were thrown from the Vauxhall car at the police car. They included a hammer, a boring bit, a tyre lever, spanners and the back seat of the Vauxhall car. I ask the House to consider that point. The car was travelling at 80 miles an hour on a little twisty road. The men in the fleeing car were said to have opened the door of their vehicle, while travelling at 80 miles an hour, and thrown the back seat of their vehicle at the police car. They did not just topple the back seat out while the vehicle was doing 20 miles an hour as the men subsequently said that they did. They were said to have thrown out the back seat of their car, while travelling at 80 miles an hour, and endangered the lives of the police and attempted to wreck their car; and so, in this sense they were accused of attempted murder. The men subsequently escaped. They turned their car into a field, smashed through a gate and got on to the hills. They escaped from the three police constables although, as the noble Lady will know, there were many other events that night and, finally, one of the men was picked up.

I wish to make the point about the speeds. Speed in this case is all important. The danger to the constables hinges on the speed at which the cars are alleged to have been travelling. For the defence it was argued that the police had greatly exaggerated the speed at which they were travelling and in so doing had greatly exaggerated the danger in which they were placed. In fact, it was a case of blowing up the evidence about speed in order to substantiate a charge of attempted murder. One of the men had a bad character and it is widely said that it was an effort to get rid of him, the man Currie. The second man, Connor, had no previous convictions against him at all.

I put it that one cannot judge this case subsequently—one can read no documents about it—unless one takes the matter of speed fully into account and considers whether these speeds were possible. The action of the men was described as opening the door of their car and holding it open while travelling along in the middle of the night and throwing articles out of the car—not out of the car windows, but out of the car. One would have to consider whether it was possible to identify the articles as they came out; whether it was possible to identify in the glare of headlights a hammer and a boring bit in the moment when those articles came out, as the police in their evidence said that they did. The case for the defence was that this kind of thing was virtually unbelievable. I say, therefore, that the question of speed is all important when judging the accuracy of the charge brought against the men.

There is also the question of the state of the roads over which the chase took place. It is a remarkable fact that in connection with a charge of this seriousness—I think that it reflects very much on court practice—neither the defence nor the prosecution took the trouble to ascertain the width of the roads or what road works were in progress. I have travelled over a substantial part of the route over which the chase took place and I have checked for myself, although the prosecution did not do so. I do not blame the defence counsel, because he took up his duties only an hour before the trial started and had not much opportunity to ascertain all these facts.

According to information from the proper authorities the first part of the road where the chase really began is a dual carriageway for six miles. This dual carriageway had been opened only recently at the time of the chase, it was opened early in 1962. I have ascertained that the carriageway is 24 ft. wide. In their evidence the police witnesses insisted that the carriageway was 30 ft. wide. After the six miles of dual carriageway there was four-and-three-quarter miles of road which was under repair or reconstruction. Then came two miles of road down to the Dumfries-Lanark border which was clear. I am informed that here the width of the road is 20 ft. to 24 ft. From the Dumfries border to the Greenhillstairs Road the road surface was clear, about 24 ft. wide and in decent repair.

The Greenhillstairs Road where it is said that various things were thrown cut of the Vauxhall car including the back seat, when the vehicle was travel-ling at 80 miles an hour, was said by the police to be 20 ft. wide. The defence said that it was 12 ft. wide. I have ascertained that it is 14 ft. wide and is a most tortuous and twisting road. It is unfenced and has a bad surface. It is on this road that these enormous speeds are said to have been attained and the door of the Vauxhall car to have been hauled open and objects thrown out.

Beyond the Greenhillstairs Road a substantial part of the road over which the chase occurred was also under repair and turned up, but I need not discuss that since most of the action which I am describing took place before the cars came to this part of the road. I put it to the noble Lady, as I should have put to her right hon. Friend had he been present, that the nature of the road surface was a vital matter to take into account in considering the question of the guilt or innocence of the men. No one could have defended or properly prosecuted in the case without knowing accurately what the roads were like. Yet they all guessed at it.

Similarly, with the point I have used about feasibility. If one is to consider a case of this sort one must consider whether the actions alleged were feasible—for example, to overtake a fleeing car at 100 m.p.h. on a road 24 ft. broad—one of the dual carriageways—to look round and, when the pursuing car was half way past the fleeing car, suddenly to swerve in front of the pursuing car. This was described as an attempt to kill or to injure recklessly without regard to consequences to life.

I would have submitted that this was equally an attempt to commit suicide if the action took place in this way. Up to that time these men had done only the crime of stealing a car. That is bad enough, but why should they want to commit suicide? It was just as much an attempt to commit suicide, but no one ever said this in the trial. No one described these difficult circumstances.

I recognise, Mr. Speaker, that I am getting on to difficult ground and I come back to what I will take as a summary. The very kernel of what I wish to put to the House—and I am almost denied the possibility of doing it—is that the men were accused of attempted murder. The jury was asked to decide on the question of attempted murder. It was impressed on the jury that murder entailed deliberate action. Accidental or careless actions without thought could not be murder or attempted murder. Deliberateness was all-important.

In the way in which the case was presented to the jury, the facts upon which the jury was to form an opinion as to whether the actions had taken place or not, there were a variety of actions or a variety of allegations of actions which had to be decided before the jury could decide whether or not the case had been conducted as described. The jury had to take into account the nature of the roads, the question of speed, the feasibility and possibility of holding open the door of a fleeing car and throwing the back seat out while going at 80 m.p.h. on a tortuous road 14 ft. broad.

The jury had to think of the possibility of identifying these articles as they came flying through the air at 80 m.p.h. They had to think of the possibility of each policeman identifying in the same words and the same order and picking on the same articles. They had to weigh in their minds the fact that no one identified these articles as his own. They were not identified by the owner of the stolen Vauxhall. He had never seen them before. He identified some papers that had been on the back seat and the back seat was identified, but the tyre lever, the boring bit, the hammer and one or two other articles which the police said had been picked up subsequently, were never identified by the owner of the car. No one probed the question of where they came from.

If one were to judge whether or not this case had been as described by the prosecution, these matters would be vital. The first question which surely the jury should have decided for itself was whether those actions had taken place sufficiently as described, although not necessarily exactly as described. If they decided that the actions had taken place and accepted all the feasibility of these things and said, "We consider the accused guilty of those actions," the subsequent question would be, had these actions taken place deliberately, bearing in mind that to find them guilty of attempted murder, the question of deliberateness was all-important? The jury was never asked to decide on these prior questions.

Order. The road is getting very narrow at this point because the invitation to them to decide could, I think, only mean one coming from the Bench in the circumstances. I think that the hon. Member will have to be very cautious now.

I have said nearly as much as I want to say about this case. I will give my reasons for raising it this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) and I raised the question with, among others, the Lord Advocate as well as the Secretary of State for Scotland. We went to see the Lord Advocate and discussed it with him at great length. He undertook to inquire into it. He did so and assured us that he was perfectly satisfied that everything had been conducted as it had to be conducted. He said in a letter to us that we should bear in mind that in those matters it was not merely a question of the jury acting on their own and having to be convinced; there was also the question of the judge. Having before him the judge's directions to the jury, he said that these directions had been detailed and eminently fair.

I think that I have said enough to show that in my study, without implying wilfulness on anyone's part, one could not judge this case fairly and reasonably merely on the basis of the directions that were given. I therefore ask that the Secretary of State should use the power he undoubtedly has. This power is given to the Secretary of State precisely because of this possible danger. He, having the facts or arguments advanced, should study these things. We do not want to be fobbed off with a statement that he has given careful consideration to something and then to come to the conclusion that he has not even read what has been submitted.

One of these men is not an innocent person. I do not claim that, but it seems that on this count he has been sent to prison for 10 years on a charge of attempted murder which should have been a charge of stealing a car, perhaps stealing a second or third car. I am not satisfied from all my studies of this matter that these men were rightly charged and convicted of attempted murder. They were sent to prison for 10 years and one of them with no previous convictions, who presumably, was suffering because of the company he kept, was sent to prison for seven years.

Order. The hon. Member cannot criticise the sentence of the court in this matter. He must withdraw the implied criticism.

It is a pity that we set an organisation on a pinnacle and that that organisation is allowed to criticise all sorts of people. However, I will withdraw my remarks.

The hon. Member must not say that. It is only that the occasion he chooses is not appropriate to criticise. He can criticise on an appropriate Motion, but not on the Motion, "That this House do now adjourn".

I do not intend to take much time, but my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) and I have been pursuing this case for a very long time. Peter Connor is a constituent of mine. He is a young man who has never been in any trouble before, as far as I understand. He is now serving a sentence of seven years. He has a fine young wife and a child at home waiting for him. With Currie, he was accused of attempted murder.

I want right at the beginning to say how much sympathy I have with the difficulties of the police in such cases. Neither my hon. Friend nor I make any suggestion that either Currie or Connor was innocent of any crime on that evening. There is no doubt that they stole this car. There is no doubt that my constituent, Peter Connor, was driving this car. My hon. Friend has given many details, and had he not run into difficulties of what one can deal with in the House, he would have been able to give further details. I am in full agreement with all that he said, and there is only one point which I wish to stress before the nobly Lady replies.

Living in Lanarkshire, as I do, I know the nature of this road. I know the dual carriageway and, particularly, I know this side road along which the car travelled. It seems to me that one of the important matters which should have been thoroughly investigated during the trial was the nature of the road over which the two cars were being driven, because it is impossible for me to believe that any car of any kind, even driven by people who wanted to avoid being arrested by the police, could possibly on that night and on that narrow winding road have travelled at a speed of 80 m.p.h. That is part of the case to which I take the greatest objection—the fact that it was not considered worth while that these roads should be thoroughly examined in the light of the evidence which was given in order to ensure what were the possibilities that these speeds could have been reached and even if those speeds could have been reached—and I do not think that they could—what were the possibilities of these men taking the actions which it is said they took in throwing these things out of the car. It is almost on that one point alone that I am asking the noble Lady to ask the Secretary of State to use the powers which he definitely has under the Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act.

I am concerned about this on behalf of all the police in Lanarkshire and in the rest of Scotland. I am concerned that this power should be used by the Secretary of State not only because of my constituent, Peter Connor, but also because of the good name of the police force in Scotland. There is a very strong feeling in Lanarkshire that an injustice has been done to Connor and Currie. If the Secretary of State would use his power under the Act he would settle that matter one way or another.

I have always thought that in this fair democratic country of ours, justice was not only done but every attempt was made by the powers-that-be so that justice could be clearly seen to be done. Because of all the feeling about this case, which has been so excellently described by my hon. Friend, there is a very strong feeling that justice was not done in it. It is for that reason, for my constituent, and also for the good name of the police in Lanarkshire and the rest of Scotland that I ask the noble Lady to urge the Secretary of State to use the definite powers which he possesses.

I admire the diligence with which the hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) and the hon. Lady for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) have pursued this case for over 18 months. In particular, I assure the hon. Member for Motherwell that the care with which he and his hon. Friends have studied all the circumstances of the case have been matched by the equal care shown, certainly by the Lord Advocate and also by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. A great deal of consideration has been given to the matter.

I am sorry that the hon. Member feels disappointed that I am at the Box this morning, but I assure him that I have had the advantage of reading all the memoranda and documents on this matter, including the information on appeal, the judge's charge to the jury, relevant parts of the transcript of evidence and the memoranda and letter from the hon. Member. I have consulted the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor-General for Scotland about this matter, and I think that I am aware of the points with which the hon. Member is concerned.

Before I reply to his speech it is my duty to remind the House of the constitutional position of the Secretary of State for Scotland in regard to persons who have been duly convicted and sentenced by a court of law. My right hon. Friend's primary responsibility is to ensure that the sentence of the court is carried out, but he has two powers which enable him to alter or to bring under review the orders of the court. The first of these is the Royal Prerogative of mercy, under which he may recommend to Her Majesty that a free pardon may be granted or a sentence remitted in whole or in part. The second of these is Section 16 of the Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act, 1922, to which both hon. Members have referred. This enables him to refer a whole case or a point about a case to the Court of Criminal Appeal for determination.

The point which I must make is that those powers are exceptional powers. They are exceptions to the normal rule that the orders of the court are to be carried out, and the powers may be exercised only if there are clear and substantial grounds for doing so. The Secretary of State is not a reviewing body over the decisions of the courts. It is not his function to re-try cases and it is not his function to act as if he were an appellate court of law.

The hon. Member referred to the fact that there is nothing in Section 16 of the Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act which limits the type of circumstance in which the Secretary of State can refer a case to the Court of Criminal Appeal. This is so. But the position must be considered against the general background which I have put before the House. Normally, the decision of a court, subject to appeal to a higher court of law, is final. The late Lord Thomson, when he was Lord Advocate, advised that the procedure was intended to meet very special circumstances and was not to be lightly invoked. Neither my right hon. Friend nor the present Lord Advocate have any doubts but that this advice is correct.

I should like also to summarise briefly the main circumstances of this case. On 14th December, 1962, John Currie and Peter Connor appeared at the High Court in Glasgow for trial on a number of charges of theft and on a charge of attempted murder. It is only this latter charge which arose out of a police chase of a stolen car that concerns us today. In the case of both men, the jury, after hearing the evidence, speeches by the prosecution and the defence, and the judge's charge to them, returned a verdict of guilty by a majority. John Currie was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment and Peter Connor to seven years' imprisonment on the charge of attempted murder.

Both men appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal against their conviction, on the grounds that the jury's verdict was in error and that the trial judge had misdirected, or failed to direct the jury properly, in certain respects. They also appealed against sentence. Their appeals were dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeal on 17th January, 1963. I should add that both at their trial and for the purposes of their appeals Currie and Connor had legal assistance and were represented by Counsel.

Since that time the hon. Member for Motherwell and the hon. Lady have taken a close interest in this case. My right hon. Friend has received a number of representations. I had a list made of the number of representations and interviews which have taken place about this. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to accept that none of his representations related in any way to new evidence or to new questions of fact with a bearing on the convictions in the case.

The hon. Gentleman particularly stressed the point that the convictions were not unanimous, but were by a majority. A conviction by a majority is none the less by Scots laws a conviction. The fact that it was not unanimous does not give the Secretary of State any right or duty to intervene which he would not have had in any other case.

In proposing that the case should be referred back to the Court of Criminal Appeal the hon. Member based his case on various passages in Lord Walker's charge to the jury and his criticisms of those passages. I do not intend to follow this in detail, not only because of the rules of the House on this matter, but also because it is not for the Secretary of State either to defend or criticise passages in a judge's summing-up. That is especially so when the charge has been already examined by the Court of Criminal Appeal. The Secretary of State can only consider whether the case discloses any special or exceptional circumstances which might justify his intervention.

However, if, for example, only two charges were actually considered in Lord Patrick's opinion, the fact remains that the transcript of the judge's charge to the jury was before the appeal court, and it is the duty of the appeal court, if it thinks that a particular point has not even been raised by counsel and that it is important that it should be raised, to consider the point fully.

The hon. Member for Motherwell and the hon. Lady referred to what they described as the difficulties of believing the evidence given by the three policemen in the following police car. The evidence which they gave, both about the throwing out of objects and about speeds, was open to cross-examination at the trial. I thought that a very vivid description of it all was given this morning by the hon. Gentleman. Cross-examination was, in fact, directed to that evidence. That evidence was fully canvassed in the speeches made to the jury. After considering that evidence and the doubts which were cast upon it by the defence, the jury reached a verdict that the accused were guilty of attempted murder.

To summarise the point, after a full trial and after hearing the evidence and the submissions by counsel for the prosecution and for the defence, the jury convicted Currie and Connor of attempted murder. Currie and Connor appealed against their conviction and were represented at the hearing of the appeal by counsel, to whom, as to the court, the transcript of the judge's charge was available. Their appeal was dismissed. Since that time, the hon. Member, like today, has tried to have the case reopened. But he and the hon. Lady have based their case on no factor which was not already available for consideration at the time of the trial or at the appeal. Therefore, there are no special or exceptional circumstances which would justify a reference to this court.

Since the 1926 Act came into being, there have, in fact, been only five cases on which this particular provision of Section 16 has been used. The first case was the famous one of Oscar Slater, which was a rather exceptional case because at the time of his conviction in 1909 there was no Court of Criminal Appeal. The grounds were a large number, including points of law and new evidence. There was a case in 1950 when the Court was asked to hear three new witnesses. There was a case in 1956 where, during a subsequent but unsuccessful prosecution for perjury of two police witnesses in the case, fresh evidence was given. In 1961 there was a point of law regarding execution of sentence. Again in 1961, the Court was asked to consider corroborative evidence which was not before it at the appeal.

The Secretary of State's functions in relation to cases in which there are suggestions of a miscarriage of justice are among the most anxious he has to exercise. He has considered this case most carefully and thoroughly together with the Lord Advocate. But, after taking the hon. Member's representations fully into account, he remains of the view that there are no grounds which would justify him in the exceptional step of referring the case back to the Court of Criminal Appeal

I am very grateful for the opportunity today of raising a question which has concerned a few of us who are interested in these things for a long time, namely, the failure of this country hitherto to have developed a viable type of joint service aircraft. In reply to a recent Question in which I asked whether my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence had under construction or development for the Royal Air Force any military aircraft one condition of which must be the possibility of operating from aircraft carriers. I received the reply that, if my right hon. Friend knew of such an aircraft, he would certainly get on with it and develop it.

I shall endeavour to show that that possibility exists and that there are grounds for believing that it could be something of a world-beater in military aircraft tailored to a new set of tactical requirements. I believe that in the development of an aircraft suitable for joint Service use the number of requirements has narrowed for us over a period of years. It is a sad reflection that after a period of half a century in which man flew in his own projectile—if one can talk about the history of weapons in those terms—such a magnificent tradition as has been built up by the manned fighter defence of Great Britain is no longer a practicable or feasible proposition. I contend that it will be found—and accepted as defence policy in this country in the very near future—that the era of the manned fighter is coming to an end, and that the only defence of this country, as the home base for all for which we stand, will be found to be in a deterrent force, always ready to conduct a second strike retaliatory attack.

In narrowing the requirements, we can cut out the fighter requirement for the United Kingdom pure and simple—the Lightning R.A.F. Mach 2 aircraft, is a magnificent weapon in present circumstances. We have to think of a combined Service requirement that no longer lays emphasis on land-borne fighters operating from long runways, but on ground attack in support of amphibious operations, on low-level penetration, which is now very fashionable, under the radar, terrain-hugging techniques which have a great tactical future, particularly for this country, and on fighter support, not of a home base any longer, but of something equally important, if only this country and this House were to wake up to the real underlying necessities of our strategic situation, namely, the fighter support of amphibious power, as developed throughout the world. I include the fighter defence of the fleet which supports that amphibious power, and fighters operating for the protection of convoys, in which our merchant shipping will inevitably have to proceed in the event of future hostilities, in a manner which has for perhaps four centuries been found necessary.

We must face a situation in which we require to develop tactical air power at widely separated points throughout the world in a changing set of diplomatic and political circumstances, as well as strategic and geograhpical circumstances, to which, in my contention, we have not paid sufficient attention. I cannot help feeling that for years my hon. Friend and his Department, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, have been fairly consistent recipients of faulty technical advice in these great questions, hinged as they are on an aircraft industry and on all the backing of instrumentation and weapons development which is required for military aircraft in general.

I believe that this has been due mainly to a concentration on the air per se—the air, as if it were an element on its own, unattached either to the land or the sea. It is particularly in the latter respect, as we remain an island and a maritime power, that I believe that we have gone severely wrong. The aircraft of the present and of the future—the joint military aircraft which I am trying to describe today—must be related ab initio to the airfield characteristics from which they have to operate. This is where, in my submission, the P1154 project—a magnificent concept—has gone very wrong. There has been a basic failure to appreciate the defence implications and, equally, the fact that we are no longer an imperial Power commanding control over great areas of the world's land surface and the use of land airfieds in friendly and allied countries.

We hear of daily threats to our staging points and to our bases. We cling to the feeling that perhaps Singapore and Aden are solid, static and unshakeable—although even that feeling is called into question from time to time for purely political reasons. We know of the doubts about Libyan air bases and of our feelings towards Malta, changing rapidly defencewise in the light of its present constitution and independence. We know of the possibility of our overflying rights in the case of such a firm and staunch ally as Turkey shortly being curtailed if the Cyprus question is not solved at least with some respect for Turkish national aspirations.

The belated realisation of these facts of life—the lateness of this realisation—has led us into a sorry mess in the production of military aircraft, for, regardless of this factor, we have gone all out for vertical take-off and short take-off characteristics, as if we were sure of those widely flung points from which our aircraft can operate from short runways, utilising these technical characteristics. But the aircraft have to get there. For many years this point has escaped the technical advisers of my hon. Friend and his Department and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence.

There has been a yearning after the retention, somehow, of staging posts and bases from which our land-based aircraft will operate. This has been reflected in the emphasis on ferry characteristics in new types of aircraft. It is said, "We need another 1,000 miles ferrying range, because So-and-So is about to be declared independent, or gobbled up by some modern form of dictatorship." The further emphasis on flight refuelling is all in line with this nostalgic effort to force the present to conform to the strategic conditions of the past.

Here again, we have fallen into grave technical error. In fact, it has been a little worse than that, because there has been a tendency for technical advice to ignore two basic strategic factors which exist—and the existence of which any thinking man in this House or the country will realise, as soon as he thinks about the matter at all. The first is that where we have unreliable or nonexistent land bases overseas it is quite practicable to design perfect floating airfields from which our aircraft can operate. One is accused of Service partisanship at once if one refers to these as aircraft carriers. One is accused of banging the drum and of producing a vast, vulnerable citadel paddling about the ocean and needing great protection itself if it is to operate at all. It would be a repository of immense expenditure financially, and of expenditure in highly-skilled manpower.

Of course, those arguments are valid as far as they go. But what is the alternative? It is that the TSR 2, if present political strategic conditions persist, and the P 1154, if it ever comes into service, will operate, certainly from the U.K., perhaps from Aden, perhaps from Singapore—but I am hanged if I can see them operating from anywhere else.

There seems to be a pathological disinclination on the part of the technical advisers in these great Ministries to consider the floating airfield, the aircraft carrier, as a suitable substitute for land bases, and I contend that that disinclination, and that alone, has been responsible for the terrible to-ing and fro-ing, the appalling arguments and the time-wasting that have gone on in the discussion whether or not we should lay down a new generation of aircraft carriers, the first of which has now been accepted by Her Majesty's Government.

It is pointed out that such carriers are terribly vulnerable. We all agree. But we should point out that they in turn require air defence on the support group which contains the carrier and that is especially important now that the fixed wing aircraft in Her Majesty's aircraft carriers represents what is, in effect, the main armament of the Fleet for surface action—as I have said before this House—in the absence of the development by this country of a surface-to-surface guided missile comparable to that which has been developed most efficiently by the Soviet Union—

Before the hon. and gallant Member leaves the subject of the aircraft carrier, will he deal with the likely cost of his proposals? Will he also say something on what to me has always been the most impressive argument against the big aircraft carrier, which is not only its vulnerability but the fact that it is very likely to be in the wrong part of the world when it is required?

I am afraid that the cost will be very high because, without numbers, one cannot possibly meet that particular difficulty. As to the other part of the hon. Gentleman's question, one knows that these carriers are vulnerable, but I am not so concerned with that today. I am perhaps straying slightly from the rules of order in talking about carriers at all, but they are germane to my subject, which is the development of a new type of aircraft incorporating a British principle which will go a very long way towards solving both those problems, and I hope that I shall be able to show why.

If we are to think in terms of floating airfields—aircraft carriers—the principle of vertical take-off is an expensive absurdity. Why? Because in the carrier we have a built-in, short-take-off capacity—in our catapults, in our angled decks and in our arrestor wires. We can provide on board our floating airfield all that expensive and extremely weighty and complex equipment that must be provided for an aircraft that has to do the same thing from a short airfield ashore. It is surely obvious to anyone who thinks of these things that if we are to operate the P1154 with S.T.O.L. characteristics from an aircraft carrier, because it has too great a technical requirement for its actual land take-off characteristics it must suffer in performance when air-borne, and I am sure that that lesson will be learned shortly, and most expensively, by the Ministry.

Going further back in our examination of policy over many years, it is no coincidence that in the last war the Royal Navy was deplorably equipped with military aircraft. That is common ground throughout the House. That was the reason for the expensive purchase then of American naval aircraft which were adapted to operate from British aircraft carriers. I submit that those same errors of thinking have brought about a situation in which we, in requiring, as we urgently do, a replacement for the Sea Vixen all-weather fighter of the Royal Navy, are forced—and rightly, in the circumstances—to buy the Phantom aircraft from America.

I turn now to the ideal aircraft—and one always strives for the ideal—which I believe would fulfil a joint Service rôle in the new circumstances that I have outlined, assuming, of course, that they are accepted strategically and technically on both sides of the House. From my study of the matter, I am convinced that the answer lies—and it is a complex and a difficult, but perhaps not too expensive an answer—in the application of a British technical principle that was first brought out in this House, I think, by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke), whose speeches on the subject six years ago I have read with the greatest interest.

It is a development associated with the names of Dr. Barnes Wallis and Vickers-Armstrong (Aircraft) as the firm was in those days—it is now, of course, the British Aircraft Corporation. It is a development which, theoretically at least, gives to the military mind the promise of a flexibility of operation in an individual type of aircraft that has never yet existed in the history of military aeronautics.

It provides, as you doubtless know, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for the folding of the wings of the aircraft in variable geometry, a variable configuration, a variable aspect ratio of the wing, adjusted to fit in with operational circumstances of the moment. On widely-spread wings, it will give a low stalling speed, reasonable landing characteristic and safety in the hands of learner pilots. On wings spread out at high altitudes it gives the equivalent, as we would say in the Navy, of a cruiser turbine—an economical means of extending the endurance of an aircraft while on patrol over the sea—a wonderful attribute for the Shackleton as the main Coastal Command aircraft of the moment—and, essential for proper performance for fighter protection of the Fleet. But at the approach of an enemy, at the approach of a threat to that aircraft patrolling over the Fleet with its wings spread, it can draw those wings back and go into its fighting attitude, giving it a mach 2 or 2·5 performance, enabling it to out-distance, out-fight and out-manoeuvre"' any comparable fixed wing aircraft in development at the present time—

I am rather puzzled to know whether the hon. and gallant Gentleman proposes that we should being a completely new aircraft development, or whether he is merely arguing that what we need is the American TFX. I should like to know his opinion as to how far, if successful the TFX would meet the requirements he outlines.

The hon. Gentleman would do me a kindness, and would perhaps do the House a kindness, if he were to wait for me to develop my argument. The TFX is an American version of a British development, and will figure in my remarks. The hon. Gentleman may perhaps surmise what I am leading up to.

I was talking of fighter efficiency by means of the folding of a wing at great height, which gives an aircraft completely different characteristics.

There is, of course, the other response which one can get in its ground attack, hedge hopping rôle, where again the wings are folded back to give it good gust response and a very high supersonic speed. All these can be obtained by utilising the principle of the hinged wing, or the swing-wing, as it is sometimes called, in one type of aircraft. This type has been on the drawing board for many years. It has had perhaps £3 million, a great deal of it Government money, spent on its development. I believe, as I hope I shall show, that it is time that we capitalised on that expenditure and seized an opportunity which I submit exists.

I hope that in considering this joint type of aircraft we have come back to the necessity to observe airfield characteristics and, in the light of the strategic and political situation in which we find ourselves in the world, to realise that any joint military aircraft of the future must per se, right from the start, be capable of operating from our own aircraft carriers. Here, if we wished, we could gain a considerable advantage because, as it is known, there may be some penalty on the operation of Phantom aircraft in the smallest of our three aircraft carriers which will form the fleet of the 1970s, namely the "Hermes". Not only could we discount that disadvantage by the use of the swing-wing variable geometry aircraft, but we could extend the use and operation of the aircraft well below the deck characteristics which we rely on for fixed-wing aircraft to include the Centaur and Albion classes of commando carrier for the swing-wing machine.

I am sure the House would agree that this would be the most economic use of this new type of lighter aircraft with folding wings. I would go as far as to say that in time of emergency this type of aircraft, with its low landing speed and carrier operational characteristics, would be admirably suited if it existed in reasonably large numbers to the swift conversion of merchant ships' hulls into floating platforms for the landing and maintenance of aircraft, adapted to take the arrestor gear and perhaps catapults but not necessarily either of these in emergency when sudden expansion is required, because our only three carriers may be in one part of the world and we are going to need more at the other end.

We should visualise for the Royal Navy these joint military aircraft as a third naval aircraft supplement to the existing Buccaneer, which has a specific rôle to play, and to the Phantom which will succeed the Sea Vixen shortly as an all-weather naval fighter. There might conceivably be an alteration of the Phantom financial requirement if the development of a light type of swing-wing aircraft was to prove as successful as many of us hope.

There is a second very important application for a type of variable geometry aircraft such as I have described. It is that of the advanced trainer which is becoming necessary for all nations that intend to go ahead with supersonic military aircraft. I believe that there is already an embryo requirement in the F.A.F. for an advanced trainer, when the Jet Provost goes, to take over the existing Gnat-Hunter trainer sequence for the training of combat-stream operational pilots, paralleled by a naval requirement which is growing in numbers and importance.

An advanced trainer of this kind would have the inestimable advantage that at some point of the training one would have ab initio the wings spread to give low-flying characteristics and low landing speed. It would have its wings pegged until such time as the pilot could take them out and in the same aircraft go off and do exercises in his fighter rôle with the geometry varying to bring the wings back.

Does such an ideal exist? I come now to the point made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley). Of course it does, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Aviation will not say to me that the Americans, who developed a British idea in producing the TFX variable geometry aircraft, are entirely on the wrong track. I cannot believe that my hon. Friend will tell me that the Americans, having had the benefit of all our experience by virtue of the mutual aid contract of some years ago, are entirely barking up the wrong tree. Rumour has it that they are having difficulties, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will mention this. Sadly, it is always the first reaction of Ministers in these very important matters to bring all these difficulties and potential difficulties into what I think is rather too great perspective. I hope that my hon. Friend will not do that today.

We have it that the TFX is 18 months behind schedule. This may be true, but the Americans are going ahead with it. This great nation, the United States, a continent with far less maritime worldwide commitments than we have, make it a prerequisite of the first variable geometry military aircraft that it should be able to fly from an American aircraft carrier. Here we have an opportunity which the Americans, bless them, may have given us, because the scale of attack of an American project of this kind is grandiose. They go into it up to the neck, and, by jove, they have done just that with the TFX. They have produced aircraft with astonishing drawing board characteristics, and with an all-up weight which we would not dream of producing, because they are going to use them on gigantic floating platforms. Even as an ex-naval officer I hope that we shall not go in for the Forrestal and Enterprise classes of aircraft carrier which alone can contain aircraft of the all-up weight of a TFX.

At last we have a great opportunity. If the Minister and his right hon. Friends change some of their thinking and we re-orientate some of our fundamental ideas, we have the opportunity of producing a small equivalent of the TFX, a swing-wing "Mini" of the future with our military aircraft tailored to fit the existing aircraft carrier fleet and of a size which will suit our needs in the future.

There is one very important point here. Dominion navies, certain allied navies, and perhaps others, have aircraft carriers which will require a military aircraft with a supersonic performance such as is given by this swing-wing "Mini" that I have been describing. I can imagine a very valuable export market in the purely military field for such an aircraft, observing that the American TFX cannot possibly be utilised from the carriers of any of those nations; and it may even be that the Australians, having made their choice of a variable geometry aircraft as opposed to the fixed-wing TSR2, will come round to that feeling in readjusting their ideas and adopting a new British initiative for their smaller carriers. I believe that this is feasible.

We have a flexibility and an adaptability in this British principle of variable geometry which we shall ignore at our peril, while wasting the £3 million that we have already spent on developments, unless we do something about it pretty soon. The export potential not only as a military fighting aircraft but as an advanced trainer, as I mentioned previously, for every country which desires to develop supersonic aircraft is incalculable—a rôle for this aircraft which I suggest must be looked at as secondary to the main one. We are so inclined to get our priorities wrong. We are so inclined to think that because this would be good as a trainer, we should design it with an eye to the training characteristics, rather than go all out for the best military aircraft which we can develop.

I suggest that the French, looking as they are at the moment for a cheaper supplement to the Mirage III series, which of course are vastly expensive, and searching for a subsonic low-level fighter aircraft, might think again and turn to the British swing-wing aircraft which could offer an incomparably better performance. The possibilities are considerable. I am sure that this can be done. We cannot afford to waste time. These things go ahead. Who knows—the Americans themselves might realise the error of the grandiosity of their venture and turn to something rather smaller than the TFX.

I suggest that in what is primarily a defence matter it would have been courteous to have a defence Minister with my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary on the Front Bench today-

Hear, hear.

I would ask him to go into this matter closely and at once, and see whether we, having made so many mistakes in the air industry, in our air corporations, should not be thoroughly dissatisfied with ourselves, despite the immense technological progress which we have made and the immense skills which we have. I believe that the military swing-wing "Mini" would be a means whereby we could return to the forefront in the field of military aircraft.

I think it is appropriate, in the calm of today before the storms which are to come, that we should have a debate on the provision of aircraft which has been a frequent subject in our debates during this very long Parliament, now coming to an end.

Despite the charming and persuasive manner of the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney), I should like to congratulate him on one of the gravest indictments of Government policy that I have ever had the privilege of hearing during the last five years. He said—and I agree with him completely—that the whole of the procurement of military aircraft is in a sorry mess.

I would, however, disagree with the hon. and gallant Gentleman on one point, where he rather passionately attacked the technical advisers of the Ministers. Unfortunately, it is an all-too-common tendency in the House these days to attack civil servants and military advisers who cannot reply to debates. I am sure that, on reflection, the hon. and gallant Gentleman will recognise and accept that his criticism must be taken by the Ministers who are and have been responsible for the state of affairs to which he was referring.

I am sorry. Perhaps I was a little carried away. I should have said "technical advice" and not "technical advisers". Just as we attack each other's policies, we do not attack each other. That is what I intended to convey. I have the greatest appreciation, as I know has the hon. Gentleman, for the ability and integrity of the gentlemen concerned.

I am grateful to the hon. and gallant Gentleman. I am sure that he was carried away by his very strong feelings on this subject and that he would not have wished his remarks to be construed, as they might have been, as an attack on the advisers of the Crown.

I think that the hon. and gallant Gentleman's strategic views can best be summed up—perhaps a little unkindly, but he will understand that time is not with us today—if I say that he believes that the Royal Navy has to do most of the defence jobs for the country in the future. As he was developing his point I was wondering where the other two Services are likely to come in. This is a vital point to settle, because I believe that half the troubles that the hon. and gallant Gentleman was describing arise from the fact that we have not had a clear and settled defence policy over the past years and that we have not got one now. It is because the rôles and the tasks of our forces have not been clearly laid down that we have this coming and going about decisions on aircraft carriers one day, bomber aircraft the next, and so on, and so forth.

The other factor which is of vital importance, with which I realise the hon. and gallant Gentleman, as a back bench Member, was not able to deal adequately, is the cost. All these questions have got to be related within, first, the matter of policy and, second, the matter of what the Americans call the cost effectiveness of carrying out that policy. If, within such a policy, a case can be made for a variable geometry aircraft it should be given extremely careful consideration.

Since we have the Minister here, and since a very large defence bill of £2,000 million was presented earlier this year, I should like him to confirm that none of the aircraft that was discussed at great length at that time were included in the bill for the estimates for this year—the Phantom, the TSR2, the Shackleton replacement, the VC 10, the Argosy and the other transport aircraft—and that only a very small amount of the aircraft provision that the Services required is actually in the estimates for this year. In going through the estimates for next year, as I am sure the Departments are now doing, if they are to meet the amount of aircraft requirement that the hon. and gallant Gentleman said, the defence estimate must be getting nearer £3,000 million than £2,000 million. It is this kind of sum that we should seriously bear in mind. As the hon. and gallant Gentleman said, it is not a cheap exercise to provide an aircraft carrier with the flotilla to support it and the aircraft. I agree that if we are to have aircraft carriers, they must have the best aircraft that can be provided. This is not an inexpensive exercise.

The question of delay, too, is serious. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman's argument is accepted—I do not entirely accept it myself—that we need, as he put it, a variable geometry "Mini", how long will it take to provide it? As he rightly says, we have not thought out our requirements. We have to go to the United States now for a successor to the Sea Vixen and we have not anything ourselves. We have played around and we have not got a good Service aircraft. The operational requirement for the Shackleton replacement has not yet been published, and we shall probably have to go to France, to America or somewhere else for it. It is a very sorry situation, and, because of the neglect over the years, I am not sure that we can wait to develop this kind of plane from scratch.

I think that I am right in saying that the original design for the Sea Vixen replacement was variable geometry. It was turned down on grounds of cost and because of the effort put into the P1154 as the joint Service aircraft. I think that this is so, and I believe that, now delay has been caused and the gap has been bridged by the Phantom, it might well be felt that the present was the right time for working out the new "Mini" which I have described.

I am rather frightened by the cost of all these exercises. If we make mistakes and have to buy aircraft costing £2 million or £3 million apiece to fill the gaps, what will happen to the TSR 2? As I understand, it is to be the Royal Air Force aircraft for the 1970s. Presumably, if we accept the hon. and gallant Gentlemen's view, the TSR2 ought to be scrapped. I do not know what the state of play is. We hear from week to week that it is about to fly. I wonder whether it is being retained to fly in Preston during election week so as to stimulate the Conservative Party's prospects there. As far as I know, it has not yet flown. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us.

What about the amount of money spent? One understands that research and development on the TSR2 has been very great indeed. I believe that only 20 prototype experimental planes have been ordered. Clearly, we shall want more than that. What sort of order do the Government envisage for the TSR2, and what total cost can we expect? It is extremely difficult to take decisions on these matters without some idea of the financial implications.

So far, the Minister of Aviation has spent his time saying that other people's estimates of cost are wildly wrong, or that it will not exceed X per cent. of somebody else's estimate. It is time that the House, even on this last day, was given some hard facts and figures about what the Government have done so far in the provision of the TSR2.

With respect, may I correct an impression which the hon. Gentleman gave? The TSR2 is a fixed-wing aircraft, far too heavy for aircraft carriers and, therefore, it has no possible joint Service use.

I hope that the hon. and gallant Gentleman did not think that I was so illiterate as not to know that the TSR2 was a fixed-wing aircraft or that it was not envisaged as having a joint Service potential. I was merely pointing out the unpleasant fact that his Government have spent a great deal of money on research and development of this aircraft and, unless it is to be required in sufficient numbers and to fulfil a useful military rôle, about £500 million will probably have gone down the drain.

If the Royal Air Force is to have its Canberra replacement in the form of the TSR, as I understand it is, this clearly reduces the potential demand in the short run for the kind of joint Service requirement that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has in mind. It is most significant that the military operational requirement issued by the Air Ministry for the TSR2 was identical—I think that the Americans came along and picked it up—with the actual military operational requirement set for the TFX, so, in terms of military requirement, these aircraft are meant to do the same job.

Obviously, if expense is no object, the idea of having the greater flexibility provided by variable geometry becomes very attractive, but I think that the main reason why the Americans have gone in for this is that they envisage, probably, a long flight from the United States and then the aircraft having to change and go straight into action. I am not at all sure that our circumstances will be parallel. If we are to have aircraft carriers in order to provide a base for aircraft to go on continental-size missions, this, with respect, would appear to be an extremely expensive way of providing a base for aircraft.

Therefore, while the idea is extremely attractive and I regret very much that this British idea has not been developed here in Britain, I cannot altogether accept what the hon. and gallant Gentleman urges upon is. Incidentally, this is another instance of Britain producing the idea. As a country, we spend more on research and development per capita than any other country, perhaps even including the United States, but, somehow or other, it all gets lost and never comes into production. This is true over the whole range of British industry. It is a great indictment of the way our affairs have been conducted, particularly bearing in mind that about two-thirds of all our research moneys are provided by the Government.

This is another occasion when we have, perhaps, missed the boat. I wonder whether the Royal Air Force or the Navy can wait seven or more years. I have rather lost track of time since the TSR2 was first mentioned in our debates. It must have been at least six or seven years ago. It was then spoken of as a Canberra replacement. Then the magic letters "TSR" were attached to it. Then, for a brief moment, it was an answer to the deterrent gap, it would have a strategic bonus, so it was said, although we all know that it was not a strategic plane at all. All this has happened, and the aircraft has not yet flown.

I repeat what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said about the TSR2, when he spoke in Preston on 19th June. He said that the Minister

"is always spreading rumours that Labour will cancel it. I repudiate those rumours. Our position on the TSR2 is exactly the same as the Government's. If it works and does what is expected of it, and at reasonable cost, we shall want it—though not for a nuclear rôle—we shall want it for its original tactical and reconnaissance rôle. The nuclear rôle was a political afterthought. For all we know of it, it is a triumph of British aircraft electronics design, revolutionary and highly sophisticated in its conception. It has yet to prove itself."

As one looks at the aircraft industry as a whole and the orders for aircraft which the Government have placed, one finds that none of these aircraft has proved itself. This House and those outside who wish to take an intelligent interest in defence and aircraft policy have been denied the facts on which to form a real judgment. I hope that a Labour Government will look very carefully into the hon. and gallant Gentleman's arguments, though he will understand that it would be quite impossible for me to embrace them today.

I think that there are about six minutes left for me to speak. I begin by congratulating my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) on having raised this topic. As he so kindly reminded the House, I started to take an interest in these matters way back in 1957. At that time, I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Barnes Wallis who was then trying to prevent the financial taps being turned off on his development of the Swallow aircraft. I think it true to say that, if he were given the opportunity today to renew what he was then trying to do, the sort of aircraft he would design would look very different from the design he then had for the Swallow.

This is always the case in any design. As further experience is gained, great changes take place. But we should remember that if the United States becomes the first country to have a practical variable sweep-back aircraft it will owe Dr. Barnes Wallis an enormous amount, because when the financial taps were turned off he went over to Langley Field in the United States and virtually told them all that he had learned from his research into this matter.

I certainly agree with my hon. and gallant Friend that if there is a particularly suitable type of aircraft which can be used in all three Services, we should seriously consider it. I think that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary would agree that ever since the Defence White Paper which was introduced by Lord Watkinson when he was Minister of Defence, we have been conceiving the defence of our long lines of communication of keeping the peace in various parts of the world on what I call a triadic basis with the three Services working together. If we can find an aircraft which meets the needs of all three Services to fit in with that grand strategic plan, we should be well advised to pursue it with the utmost vigour.

Variable sweep-back conjures up all sorts of ideas in people's minds, but it is important that we should make a clear distinction in the difference between the sort of aircraft which we are talking about—the TFX and others—and variable sweep-back aircraft. It has not been put better than it was put by Oliver Stewart in the Spectator on 27th April, 1962. He started an article called "Polymorphs for Passengers" as follows:

"Those who want to fly at 2,000 or 3,000 miles an hour will eventually be asked to choose between two different kinds of air vessel: the efflux box and the polymorph. The signs are that, for carrying passengers over great distances at great heights and speeds, polymorphs—that is, variable geometry aircraft with wings which can be swept back at different angles to give the shape best suited to any required speed—are to the choice of the future … For military applications, the efflux box, consisting of a cabin or cockpit which lifts itself on jets having fixed or vectored thrust lines and then sits on them, may be preferred. It uses vestigial wings for cruising and top-speed flights, but it is primarily a large lump of undiluted horsepower unlikely to be well received by passengers."

I have always felt that it is very important that we should realise that a vertical take-off aircraft from the time that it is static to the point when it becomes fully airborne and manoeuvrable in the air is working at the maximum aerodynamic disadvantage, and the colossal weight of engine involved in getting that horizontal plane up vertically uses an unnecessary amount of energy once the aircraft is flying in a forward direction. The Swallow conception, with the variable wings, has always appealed to me for that reason. It seems to me that the great advantage of this type of aircraft is that, no matter at what level or speed it is flying, it can always be, as nearly as possible, aerodynamically perfect. For this reason, there are bound to be in the end great economies.

It is a fair estimate of the known facts to say that well before the year 2000 it will be possible for citizens in the United Kingdom to work all the week in Australia and to come home to Britain for the weekend, flying over the sea the whole way, in less time than it takes today to go from London to Edinburgh by train. We must think in terms of flying at 80,000 ft. or more and at 25 times the speed of sound. It was thought that the Swallow would fly at 1½ or 2½ times the speed of sound. Today, we have moved on. Dr. Barnes Wallis is moving on, too. We have to gaze at far horizons. At the same time, we must recognise that unless we come to some decision on the way we shall always be gazing at horizons and never have anything with which to reach them. This is the point which my hon. and gallant Friend tried to make.

Naturally, I should have like to say a lot more on this matter, but I should like to make one appeal, since probably this is the last speech that I shall make in this Parliament. In a matter like this, cannot we get away from party politics on great policy issues? Unless we give research teams some assurance that, whatever the Government, they will have a planned programme to which they can work, we will never get the full benefit of them. It is not fair to these highly skilled men to expect them to give of their best if they feel the whole time that party policy, which has been changed on completely different issues—very often social—can wreck all the work that they have done. Let us hope that that will never happen.

As I understand, the hon. Gentleman is attacking the Government for not giving the research people this assurance. It is nothing to do with the Opposition that this brilliant idea has not been explored. It is he and his hon. Friends who are attacking the Government, and I should not want to get involved in that.

What I had particularly in mind in expressing that desire was the remark of the Leader of the Opposition. He is on record as having said that he wants to harness science to Socialism. Everybody knows that Socialism needs a lot more science, but heaven forbid that we should get the aircraft industry and scientists involved in it.

I must start by saying how much I welcome this debate. This subject of variable geometry is attractive to all those of us who are interested in aviation. I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) on having had the good fortune to be lucky in the ballot and to have chosen this subject for discussion.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) said that the aircraft procurement policy of the Government was in a sorry mess. I should like to take the opportunity to deny that completely. [An HON. MEMBER: "NO."] Whoever said it, it is not true, as was evidenced by our recent conference with the aircraft industry.

Much of this interesting debate has dealt with strategy and diplomacy. I think that the hon. Member will be the first to realise that, in the short time available to me, that is somewhat outside my terms of reference. The hon. Member criticised the Government for having no settled defence policy. Much as we should like to see it settled, I believe that defence policy is bound to go on shifting, as recent political events have made only too clear.

I think that everybody agrees that the proposition which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East put forward concerning aircraft carriers would be extremely expensive. I believe that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Park would agree with that. Many of the developments to which my hon. and gallant Friend referred are attractive, but, in the end, it all comes back to the resources of the nation and to what we can afford to devote to this or that project. Opinions vary on whether we have our projects and priorities right.

Basically, my hon. and gallant Friend criticised our failure fully to develop variable geometry and said that we let the technique of it go to America. We have the possibility of going ahead, and it is quite feasible that what we lack is a requirement from our forces for variable geometry aircraft. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will study my hon. and gallant Friend's speech with the greatest care and will give full attention to his differences of opinon with my right hon. Friend.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Park said that when the Labour Party returns to power he will study this speech with great interest. I suggest that, by the time that happens, the speech will be thoroughly out of date.

It is true that the TSR2 has not yet flown, but I do not think that it will be very long now. I should not be so foolish as to say in precisely which week it will fly, but we hope that it will not be long. We wish it well when it does fly. As the hon. Gentleman will recognise, it is not our custom to give the cost and number of aircraft to be ordered in the House.

For the convenience of those in the House and those who read HANSARD, I should like to say a word to get this question of variable geometry—and, after all, this debate is primarily about variable geometry—and the history of it right for the record. From 1948 to the mid-1950s the Vickers Company, with Ministry of Aviation support, carried out extensive design, laboratory and wind tunnel investigations, culminating in flight trials of large-size radio-controlled models which demonstrated the basic feasibility of sweeping wings in flight.

This work was supplemented by research and design carried out by the Vickers Company on its own account into the operational applications of the concept. These studies were led, as my hon. and gallant Friend said, by Dr. Barnes Wallis, who was for many years in the forefront of research in the variable geometry field, and it is very much due to his technical ingenuity and inventiveness that many of the problems involved have, in fact, been solved, and this we must all acknowledge. He was, of course, the designer of a supersonic bomber project called "Swallow". This was a plane with variable sweep wings, with engines on the wing tips and with no tail on the aircraft. The engines could be swivelled horizontally or perpendicularly in conjunction with wing movement.

It was quite a different thing from what the Americans are doing with the TFX. This concept of the Swallow stirred the imagination of both the public and aviation opinion. The design was considered by those at the Ministry of Aviation at the time, but it was not found to be practical, unhappily, for United Kingdom Services use. The fact that we were unable to develop this idea is no reflection on its designer, who has continued to devote his creative genius to the problems of high-speed flight, in spite of the setback to his Swallow project.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, it is important to realise that the Americans, from 1947 onwards, had themselves been engaged in research on variable sweep and that in 1951 and 1952 two American experimental aircraft made their first flights with this variable sweep. One was the Bell X5 and the other, sponsored by the United States Navy, was the Grumman design. In both these aircraft, however, the mechanical solutions of the wing sweeping requirements were so heavy and complex that the design could not be satisfactorily developed into efficient fighting vehicles.

By the mid-1950s we and the Americans had, therefore, quite independently established the feasibility but, not satisfactorily, the operational advantages of variable sweep. I think that this answers those who feel that the Americans had stolen an entirely British idea.

In 1957, the Ministry of Aviation and Vickers, under a joint programme with the Americans, got together to examine the potentialities of Dr. Barnes Wallis's Swallow proposal and to define the extent to which the variable geometry concept might offer advantage to military aircraft requirements.

Under this agreement—the terms of which, incidentally, made provision for the protection of Vickers' interests in its commercial rights and were agreed by the Vickers Company—information was freely exchanged between the three parties. However, the joint conclusion was that the Swallow design was impracticable as the basis for further development. That fact was extremely regrettable. From that moment both nations, British and American, went their own way into further research and development of this variable sweep or variable geometry project.

When our joint programme with the Americans concluded in 1960, they went on, as we now know, to develop the joint United States Air Force and United States Navy requirement, the TFX. I think that it was my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East who said that this was an American extension of a British invention. After what I have just said, I think that he will see that it is probably an American extension of an American invention, with perhaps a little bit of British "know-how" brought into it. I do not think that the Americans are barking up the wrong tree. But we must see how it works and flies.

At that time, Britain had no requirement for which the variable sweep concept conferred any special advantage. We did not give up the idea, but continued with our research. In 1962, a contract was placed with the British Aircraft Corporation for a project study of an experimental aircraft which did not, in fact, proceed to the construction stage.

Is it not a fact that the Sea Vixen replacement, before it was turned down, was envisaged as a variable geometry aircraft?

I was coming to that point.

As the House knows very strenuous efforts were made by the Ministries of Defence and Aviation to harmonise the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy requirements so that a common aircraft could be produced to meet the needs of both services for a replacement of the Hunter and Sea Vixen. In the event, as the House knows, this proved to be impracticable and it was, therefore, decided to order the P1154 for the Royal Air Force and the Phantom re-engined with the Spey engine for the Royal Navy.

This, I think, answers my hon. and gallant Friend's point. It might be argued that the requirement might have been met by a variable sweep aircraft. Indeed, variable sweep was studied in the context, but, again, it was only one of the designs put forward and I think that if we had gone for the variable sweep aircraft for the R.A.F.'s rôle the result would have been probably appreciably worse than the P1154 and could not have been in service until some years later.

A variable geometry solution might possibly have met the naval requirement alone, but, as I told the House in the Adjournment debate on the 29th April, to develop a new British aircraft to meet the naval requirement would have been very expensive and certainly could not have been justified in addition to the development of the P1154.

As to the future, I would emphasise to the House that we have by no means abandoned research on variable geometry. On the contrary, our research in this field continues as an important element of our aeronautical research programme, but our programme must always provide for research over the whole field of aeronautical science, so it is inevitable that not every research success will find immediate practical application.

I think that this comes out very well on the question of vertical jet lift. One technique in this field is vectored thrust. We have had an opportunity to exploit its practical application in the P1154. I hope that it will have a very good export potential. But the other technique, which is the multi-engine jet lift SCI, is continuing on a research basis only because we have no operational requirement for which it is suitable. I think that similar criteria can be applied to variable geometry.

We have sufficient confidence in variable geometry development to proceed with it when the appropriate application and requirement presents itself. If one or other of the Service Departments were to state a requirement for which the variable geometry concept was considered to offer an appropriate solution, we are confident that on the basis of the considerable research which has already been built up we could proceed directly to an aircraft development programme, or, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East said, we could seize the opportunity. We are poised to do that, but so far we have not had that requirement. I will, nevertheless, draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence to what my hon. and gallant Friend has said about this in the debate.

Naturally, I appreciate that my hon. Friend's Department is concerned mainly with meeting the requirements of the Service Departments, but would he not agree that the impact upon the civil as well as the military field of aircraft of the variable geometry idea is quite as great?

It could be. On the civil side, it must be largely a question of commercial judgment. We are already clear about the rôles for which variable geometry offers advantages and our current research programme aims at adding to our already extensive knowledge and understanding of the concept, in addition to the possibility that we shall one day be required to apply it.

As I have said, that is the essence of the way that we should approach the question of variable geometry. It forms a substantial item on our programme for the next five years. I hope, therefore, that the House will study what has been said in this debate and have confidence that we are going ahead; and that it is not true that the Americans have taken over this scheme from the British, because they have been doing it themselves for many years in parallel with us.

A number of my hon. Friends and myself are grateful to Mr. Speaker for selecting for debate the subject of the shortage of bricks and building materials. I refer particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Dodds), my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Boston) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell). We have been trying by Written Answer to get a statement from the Ministry of Public Building and Works concerning the brick shortage and we have been fobbed off by a considerable amount of complacency and vagueness.

On 20th July, I was told, as were some of my hon. Friends, that

"there is no evidence of any serious or widespread delay to building projects of any kind."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th July, 1964; Vol. 699, c. 10.]

This has been repeated only a day or two ago.

If the Parliamentary Secretary will not believe me, perhaps he will believe those who have their grass roots in the building industry. I propose to direct his attention to some of the Press statements which have been made, not only about the shortage of bricks, but concerning the serious effect which the shortage is having on work in the construction industry. As far back as 21st May, the "Building Industry News" said, as a heading:

"Brick crisis delays jobs".

A week later, it had the heading

"Brick shortage now acute".

It went on to say in the article to which that was the heading that the shortage of bricks was the worst for nearly a decade. It quoted house prices as rising from £30 to £130 per house as a result of the shortage and, somewhat strangely, it blamed the Civil Service for meddling. I do not know that Civil Service meddling is responsible for the situation, but, at least, it looked as though all the Minister's smokescreen of committees, reports and the like had not made much progress with the building industry in that it should turn to criticise the Civil Service for what was happening.

On 9th July, the same paper talked about a black market in bricks. It said:

"… brick shortage gets worse … the black marketeers have moved into the building industry, selling at handsome profit to hard-pressed builders."

My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford is willing that I should state that a neighbour of his, trying to build an extension to his own bungalow, which would not need a great many bricks, has had to go to about 16 different building suppliers before he got his material and that when he did get the bricks, he had to pay twice the market price.

The Minister of Public Building and Works has been warned about this, because in the report of the National Economic Development Council on the construction industry, as long ago as March this year, the N.E.D.C. said that

"there are already delays in the delivery of certain building materials and the very high rate at which houses were started at the end of 1963 could lead to some shortages of materials during 1964."

In the debate on 17th March, the Minister called the N.E.D.C. Report pessimistic and said that its figures were out-of-date. It appears, however, as though the N.E.D.C. was not so much out of touch and that its expectations have been very much fulfilled.

Not only has the building newspaper from which I have quoted increased the tempo of its articles about the shortage of bricks, but local newspapers throughout the country carry headings indicating the desperate shortage of bricks. To quote the Shropshire Express and Star, it said on 8th July that on some sites, not a brick had been laid for days and that firms were prepared to pay three times the normal price. Several local papers in my constituency have spoken in similar terms. Notably, on 2nd July, the Northern Echo referred to the shortage of bricks as being the worst in ten years. This view was based upon the local building people. On 20th July, the Evening Gazette, which circulates in the North-East, quoted the regional director of the Northern Counties Federation of Building Trade Employers as saying that there was a national shortage and that the situation was extremely serious.

The "Cubitt Magazine", which is not particularly given to scaremongering, contained this paragraph in its last issue:

"Labour is not the only factor of production which is causing concern, for the pressure of demand on building will almost certainly create more material shortages before the year end, in addition to the current difficulties with brick and cement supplies. The nationwide building brick shortage is the severest for almost a decade and is resulting in delays and rising costs."

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West has been good enough to give me the results of a circular which was sent out by a leading construction industry trade union asking its district secretaries to report upon the brick shortage. This is the kind of pattern that emerges. In London, it was reported that the Batter-sea Borough Council has had to transfer bricklayers to maintenance. The London Brick Company is quoting delays of nine months in delivery. In South Wales, the shortage of bricks is reported as slowing down work on sites. It is said that this has not resulted in unemployment but that, as in the North-East, it has led to firms not taking on unemployed bricklayers and therefore, not proceeding as fast as they might have done with the jobs in hand. In Yorkshire and the East Midlands, the contractors for the West Burton power station have dismissed bricklayers and at a sub-station at Wilsden, near Bingley, the same sort of thing also happened. In this area the regional employers' secretary circularised members and 90 per cent. replied that they were short of bricks and that delays in the delivery of bricks were up to about six months.

On Merseyside, there are reports of private construction works paying off bricklayers and labourers and work on flats, homes and garages being held up. From specific examples in the North-East, I quote the following. The Sunderland Corporation had to restrict the recruitment of bricklayers and in Sunderland at that time, a few weeks ago, there were 13 bricklayers unemployed. At Houghton-le-Spring Urban, bricklayers were placed on alternative work and at another big private building site where the construction of 1,000 houses was being attempted, only eight bricklayers were employed because of the shortage of bricks.

I quote from this summary of the conclusions. The majority of the building firms appear to be severely hit by the present shortages.

"Redundancy and uneconomical working are being instanced throughout the divisions."

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham who in his division conducted a survey of the leading brick manufacturers and gave me the information he obtained and which I shall refer to now. A large firm of brick-makers is not accepting new orders at all for the rest of the year and is telling customers that they can have bricks some time in 1965. Another firm is not taking on any new customers at all and is telling its regular that they will have to wait from eight to ten months. The managing director of that firm says he would like to invest more money in new plant but the firm will not because of the uncertainty of demand. He complains about stop-go in building work and is influenced by this not to set up more kilns. Another firm of brick-makers says:

"We are dependent upon Government policy. We have repeatedly had stop and go and we do not want to spend any money and then have to stop again. Eighteen months ago we were stocked out with bricks but we are now living from day to day."

So the story goes on. Another brick-maker in the Faversham constituency says that

"What is needed is a little planning."

It is idle for the Parliamentary Secretary to say, as I dare say he will, and as his right hon. Friend certainly has been saying, that there is not a crisis. For example, Birmingham City Corporation has been asking him to meet a deputation about the shortage of bricks. It will be most interesting to know whether he is going to receive this deputation and what he will tell them, because the Building Industry News which carries the news item about the deputation sought by Birmingham has this paragraph.

"Coventry builders are said to be facing the worst brick shortage they have ever experienced. The President of the Coventry F.B.T.E. said that the shortage was causing chaos for contractors, and the future of several small firms was in jeopardy."

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West gave me today as I came into the House a cutting from the Daily Telegraph and it has the heading

"Brick shortage causes orders to go abroad".

The paper says:

"Imports from Holland and Belgium are increasing. An architect employed by a building firm said yesterday that his company was being given delivery dates up to 12 months ahead by British suppliers. Deliveries from Holland were being received in four weeks."

This all adds up to a very considerable indictment of the Government, who have fallen down on their job because they have not supported what N.E.D.C. was saying about the likelihood of insufficient investment in the brick industry and insufficient investment in the cement industry, and did not take steps even before the end of the interim period to see that stocks of bricks were increasing more than they are and, equally important, their being delivered to the sites.

I quote a further example from the Building Industry News in which a leading article writer says:

"Two or three years ago we had a serious shortage of bricks. Now we are faced with the same problem again. The situation affects the medium and small builder most of all To have had this happen once is bad enough. To have it happen again really is the limit. I am absolutely unimpressed by brick statistics. If the large brick manufacturers are unable to supply demands they should at least give up pretending that they can."

It is up to the Parliamentary Secretary to show today that action is being taken and to show that these difficulties are being smoothed out and that improvement of deliveries and improvement in investment are taking place.

We know very well that his right hon. Friend has laid very great stress indeed on alternative systems of industrialised building. All is not well there. I understand that 467 systems have been introduced into this country but only 64 have made any impact on the building industry. There have been several articles appearing in the building trade Press pointing out the difficulties of some of the industrialised builders and saying quite clearly that there is a need almost for bankruptcies among some of those concerns to get down to the bedrock of efficient system building. It seems a curious way of solving the problems of the building industry, to expect that system builders will go bankrupt, and that as a result of the brick shortage there should be bankruptcies amongst small and medium-sized builders.

We cannot afford the sort of mistakes which the Minister of Housing and Local Government has admitted to—of having in London £8 million worth of offices standing empty. That £8 million worth of offices is the equivalent of about 10,000 houses. If mistakes of that sort are being made in the Ministry of Public Building and Works it is a very serious matter for the country as a whole. We have had examples of small mistakes already and it is quite conceibavle that statistical mistakes and other mistakes of the sort have been made.

I refer to The Builder of 5th June which, referring to Ministry policy, said:

"It would be very wrong to suggest that no progress has been made, but it must be emphasised that despite many good intentions at all levels, there is a large measure of 'airy-fairy' still pervading the general scene. Moreover, the question of brick supplies is a problem which also applies to some other materials in varying degrees. Copper tube and tanks, sanitary ware, plaster, concrete tiles, roofing slates, steel rods, joists, channels, etc."

Then comes this important sentence:

"Briefly, the country is not yet geared to the present building programme of both traditional and factory methods of building. The lesson to be rammed home is that the necessary adjustments cannot be achieved on a short-term basis."

One would wonder whether or not a good many of these committees' reports and so on dealing with the industry are not as much conditioned by the imminence of the General Election as they are influenced by the welfare of building and the building industry.

Whether or not prices are going to rise much more, prices certainly have been rising, and this is bound to have a bad effect on the social programmes of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister's jolly optimism puts that of Mark Tapley in the shade, because house building prices have been rising steadily. In an answer to me on 13th July the right hon. Gentleman gave the average delivered price of bricks as being up 7 per cent. in May this year compared with the year before. Compared with May, 1960, the rise in the price of bricks has been 18 per cent. It is no wonder then that the price of houses shows a very steep rise indeed.

In an Answer on 14th July by the Minister of Housing and Local Government I was told that the average contract price for a 900 sq. ft. three-bedroomed house in the first quarter of 1964 was £2,810, a rise of £163 on that for the year before, and practically twice what council house prices were in 1951—the year whose prices Members of the party opposite are very keen on referring to. If we look at the prices of privately built houses we find they have been rising. Taking as the index, 138 for the first quarter of 1964, it compares with a figure of 129 for the first quarter of 1963, an increase of 7 per cent., and this was before the brick shortage and the other materials shortages had really got under way.

I quote again from the Northern Dispatch of 22nd July. The heading is:

"Prices of new houses will continue to rise in Darlington."

The news article says that prices have risen by at least 7 per cent. during the current year and,

"In one case the price of a new house rose by £600 from the time construction was started to the time it was completed. Others have had increases of anything between £100 and £300."

The fact is that in this so-called affluent society the Minister's Department has, produced in the brick industry and other supply industries almost a war-time state of crisis. There are shortages and delays, and men unemployed because of the shortages. There are higher prices for bricks and other materials used in house construction. There is a black market, and bankruptcy is on the way for many of the small builders and system producers. The cost of building for the social services is being increased because of the high and increasing costs of actual construction which is going on. It is all very well for the Minister of Public Building and Works to say that there is no crisis. I think that I have demonstrated conclusively, with evidence from a variety of sources, that a lot of people believe that there is a crisis. It therefore behoves the Minister to take note of the situation and offer some constructive remedies.

The House is indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden) for having raised this topic. He has given a national survey of the situation. I should like the Minister to know that I have been very concerned about the situation which appears to be developing in the West Midlands. The Government do not appear to have taken sufficient care to co-ordinate services in the West Midlands in connection with the gigantic overspill plan for such constituencies as mine.

The transport problem, which was referred to recently, is a case in point, and I have been receiving reports which indicate great anxiety being felt about the shortage of bricks. My hon. Friend referred to reports which have appeared in Shropshire newspapers. I have seen similar reports in the Wolverhampton Express and Star which have called attention to the same problem.

When it is considered that the scale of building for overspill population both in the private and local authority sectors is extremely substantial, I wonder what plans have been made to see that the level of current production is maintained and what has been done by the appropriate Government Department about the closing of small brickyards. I am aware that the economic situation of some small brickyards may be considered to be doubtful, but reports I have received indicate that there has been unplanned closing of small brickyards by take-over bids which is not in the interest of the West Midlands.

To give an idea of the scale of this problem, in one small parish the building programme for the next three years is at the rate of 750 houses a year, which is quite a substantial number for one parish. According to one report there is a case for asking the industrial authorities concerned to have a look at the pressure sales methods which are being employed by salesmen selling bricks to local authorities and contractors. I am informed that some salesmen have urged contractors to place orders for a long time ahead because of the shortage. This could have a distorting effect which may create an entirely wrong impression.

According to my friends, the national situation is serious enough. I urge the Government to see that the situation affecting the overspill areas of the West Midlands is looked at most carefully in view of reports which have appeared in national and local newspapers and the anxieties among contractors to local authorities.

I wish to give the Minister plenty of time to reply to what is a massive indictment. For the past few weeks we have been unable to obtain oral replies to Questions put to the Minister. We do not blame him for that, but it seems to me that the sort of Answers that he has provided would have crumbled had we been able to put supplementary questions to him.

If bricks are in such short supply, and bearing in mind the number of houses which have proliferated on so many sites—one of the alibis in the industry is that too many houses have been started—will the Government reach their much-boasted housing target, or shall we run into a massive mess next September? Shall we see shortages then? One of my friends in the industry suggested that we shall. That would not matter much to the Government if they win the election; it is said that there is no gratitude in public life except for favours to come. But if there is a Labour Government, undoubtedly they would be charged with the shortages which would be discovered.

We do not need to make political points about this matter. We need only refer to the Minister's own statement. He may try to explain the curious discrepancy in the report put out by his Ministry last month and the report this month. Last month, the Minister said that there was a stock of 106 million bricks. I see that according to the report issued a day or two ago, the figure is down to 102 million. This month, the stock of bricks is down to 82 million. It appears to me that we have lost 4 million bricks somewhere on the way, which is to the advantage of the Ministry.

I do not know whether the attention of the Minister has been called to an article which appeared in The Times this morning. I shall not quote what is said there, as the Minister has a copy and I want to be fair to him by not taking up too much time. It would be a bad thing if it were thought that in a matter such as housing for the people—which should not be tied to any political considerations at all—the Minister of Housing and Local Government was bidding up in some sort of auction for houses to a figure which would not materialise, and would prove to be only window dressing. I do not know whether there is anything political in this matter. I can understand the anxieties of hon. Members opposite, but I think that we on this side of the House, and the country, deserve an explanation.

I am glad that this subject has been raised, because it gives me an opportunity to put one or two matters into the right perspective. It would be easy for us to talk ourselves into a crisis over building materials, and I am glad of the opportunity to answer some of the points made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden). It is important that we should get this matter into the right perspective which is what I hope to do.

The construction industries are being run at just about the limit of their capacity. This is a deliberate policy on the part of the Government and we have two good reasons for doing so. We want all the production that we can obtain from these industries if we are to secure the schools, houses, hospitals, roads and all the other things we need for the modernisation of Britain.

Secondly, we want the industry to adopt new methods and techniques. This we can expect to be done only if the industry is confident of a continuing and expanding load of work. Looking at the results so far achieved from the Government's policy of putting pressure on the industry I think we may claim that it has been successful.

In 1962, the industry turned out slightly more than £3,000 million worth of work. In 1963, when we had the very bad winter, work more or less came to a stop at the beginning of the year. The result was that the output of the industry was limited to about the same figure as in 1962, although there were during that year considerable and in some ways dramatic fluctuations.

In the first quarter of 1964 output has been running at an annual rate of £3,400 million, or in real terms, a rise of 7 per cent. in little more than a year. We accept that this fluctuation and the present high pressure on the industry has resulted in some strain. We have made no secret of it. There have been lengthening delivery dates for some materials. I shall have something to say about bricks later, but the hon. Member also mentioned copper tubing, reinforcing rods, cement, roofing tiles and other materials. During the last six months or a year we have carried out very full investigations into each of these materials and the industry has assured us that it will be able to meet all the requirements of the construction industries in the foreseeable future.

We have been having regular quarterly meetings with the building materials producers at which forward trends in demand have been discussed. Where we have found evidence of particular difficulties we have had what we call "bottleneck parties" where we discuss these things in detail, particularly questions of copper tubing, sanitary ware and reinforcing rods. If there are difficulties in regard to particular materials, we shall get the producers, as in the past, to discuss the position with us.

Let us be quite clear about one thing. There are no steps which any Minister or anyone in the industry, or anywhere else, can take to increase production of any particular product in the short term. What we can do, and have done, is to see that the industry is as fully informed as possible as to what are likely to be the demands in future, to take the industry into our confidence wherever possible, to give it the facts upon which it can base plans for expansion. With our greatly improved statistical organisation we now think that the industry is in a much better position to do that than it has been in the past. I think we can claim fairly, and the industry will not deny it, to have been taking these steps in the past 18 months to two years, or even longer than that. Certainly, since my right hon. Friend and I have been at the Ministry we have taken great trouble to see that this is done.

The hon. Gentleman is talking about the fact that he and his right hon. Friend have been in the Department since July, 1962, but what has been done to expand the brick industry? The story in the country is that it is not expanding and refuses to expand because of past experience of stop-go policy.

I wish to devote the bulk of the remainder of my speech to the question of bricks, which is a major question. It is quite true that long delivery dates for bricks have been quoted, particularly for the cheaper kinds and what are called flettons. The hon. Member for Lichfield and Tarn-worth (Mr. Snow) was absolutely right in saying that some of the apparent delay has been caused by duplicated orders. That is why it is important that we should not talk ourselves into a crisis on this matter of materials. By doing that we shall do no service to the industry or to the country or to building the houses we want. Some of the apparent causes have been because of duplicate ordering and sometimes triplicate ordering.

The reasons for delays in brick delivery are perfectly clear, discounting that. In the main, houses in this country are still built of bricks. Two-thirds of the output of the brick factories is used for housing. There is no doubt that the success of my right hon. Friend's housing programme has put an additional strain on brick supplies, as we knew perfectly well it would. In 1962, 320,000 houses were started. In 1963, there were 370,000. In 1964, starts at the moment are running at a rate of 420,000.

When will they be finished?

We shall reach our housing target; there is not the slightest doubt about that.

While the dates for brick deliveries have been lengthening there has been no sign whatever, in spite of what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said, of any surplus of bricklayers. Taking the country as a whole, there are 471 unemployed bricklayers, but there are 2,345 vacancies for bricklayers. The hon. Member referred to the situation in his part of the country. In the North-East Region as a whole there are 45 unemployed bricklayers and 313 vacancies for bricklayers.

They must all be in my constituency.

That is the position in the North-East as a whole. If it were true, as the hon. Member suggested, that building work was seriously delayed by a shortage of bricks, it is hardly likely that there would still be a shortage of bricklayers.

I turn to the question of the production of bricks. Eighteen months ago brick-makers had a stock of 800 million in hand. That was at the time of the bad winter when construction had virtually stopped. The position was so bad that the brick-makers had nowhere to store bricks. They came to the Ministry on a deputation and saw me and I was able, in March, 1963, to assure them that all the bricks they could produce would be used. Today, the level of stocks is down to 82 million. Production this month is running at a rate approximately equal to demand at present levels. Production in June was at an all-time record level.

It has gone down in the last month by about 20 million. Stocks have fallen from 106 million to 82 million. Actually, it is 24 million down. At this rate we shall run out of bricks, even on present production levels, by September.

The hon. Member is wrong. Soon we shall have the period of builders' holidays and brick production will then catch up. I shall explain why, at the moment, production is running at approximately a figure equal to the level of demand.

In the first six months of this year output of bricks was 3,900 million, which is 7 per cent. higher than it was in 1962, the last comparable year because of the bad weather in 1963. This rise in brick production is as large as the rise in the output of the construction industries—7 per cent. In the same period the use of industrialised methods has been increasing, but, on the other hand, one must be fair and say that to some extent this has been countered by the large rise in the demand for housing.

Let us consider what has been done to increase brick production. One of the reasons why one can expect no immediate results, but must look ahead, is that it takes 18 months to build a new kiln and to put it into operation. But the brickmakers have already taken steps this year and last year to increase their-production, and the industry tells us that three new plants are coming into production this year. On present plans brick production should have expanded by 5 per cent. by the end of 1965. The increased capacity should be sufficient to meet the expected increase in demand between 1964 and 1965, and some of the increased production will be coming into production towards the end of this year.

I should like to summarise the position. It is quite true that delivery dates for many materials, particularly for bricks have lengthened. On the other hand, in spite of what has been said this afternoon—and the industry will be able to judge the position for itself—we have no evidence that housing output is being held up to any significant extent by a shortage of building materials, and there has been no sign of unemployment among building workers resulting from a shortage of building materials.

It is difficult to forecast—and one always leaves oneself wide open if one does—but from all the information which I have at my disposal I estimate that we shall get through 1964 without any major crisis in building materials, although there may be some local difficulties, particularly in the supply of bricks.

Looking further ahead to the future, on present plans there will be a large rise in the requirements for construction work and in consequence for building materials of all kinds. The building materials producers know—and we have kept them informed through the machinery which we have—what are likely to be the demands upon them, and already they are taking, or have taken, steps to meet this increasing demand. On the other hand, what we must do is to recognise that the increased demands upon the industry can be met in full only by the greater use of new methods, new techniques and new materials. Industrialised building must fill the gap between the requirements and the output by traditional methods in the coming years.

We have taken steps which will encourage the industry and, what is equally important, will encourage the clients of the industry to make the fullest use of industrialised methods of building. The National Building Agency, which my right hon. Friend set up, will play a big part in this. I believe that, given confidence in a continuing programme for the future, which a Conservative Government will provide, the industry will respond and will provide the goods.

Taking all that the hon. Member said at its face value, and bearing in mind that industrialised building represents only 15 per cent. of the industry, he must agree on his own estimate this afternoon that this industry is not big enough in terms of the nation's need and of the demands which will be made upon it.

I do not agree. We have to expand the capacity of the industry. One of our biggest problems in the next five to 10 years will be to expand the capacity of the industry. We cannot do it to a much greater extent by the use of traditional methods. That is why my right hon. Friend has taken steps, wherever he can, to encourage a greater use of industrialised building. The hon. Member gave a figure for the proportion which industrialised building represents in the building industry. It is our task to see that this proportion is expanded as fast as we reasonably can. In that way we shall meet our target.

On 11th June, at the end of what I regard as a very brilliant speech, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) referred to the welfare of patients in hospitals, and I want to deal with this aspect of our hospital services today. There is no hon. Member who feels a greater sense of gratitude to the hospital services of the country than myself. Metaphorically speaking, I raise my hat every time I pass a hospital. I was brought up next door to a hospital, and I have been associated with hospitals in one way or another as a pastoral visitor, as a hospital chaplain, as an administrator and, last but not least, as a patient on more than one occasion.

I suggest that I am embarking on a far-reaching subject. Every year three million of our fellow citizens in England and Wales leave their homes and their families to enter hospital, and according to the Powell Committee, to which I shall refer again shortly, the average man in the street in Britain is likely to be a hospital patient five or six times in his lifetime. This, therefore, is a problem which comes home to every one of us.

In the speech to which I have referred, my hon. Friend mentioned the greater sense of awareness in the land today of the question of the welfare of patients in hospitals. This awareness has become much more articulate than it was in the past. The old mentality of so many of our people, which could be described as passive and resigned to whatever conditions the hospital régime saw fit to impose upon them in terms of discipline and noncommunication, has largely passed away or is in the process of passing away.

This is mentioned graphically in an excellent: Report of the Ministry entitled "The Pattern of the In-Patient's Day". I quote from paragraph 5:

"In recent years, however, criticism of hospital life has become less inhibited and we believe that unless changes are made in the arrangement of the patient's day, the volume of criticism will grow. The man in the street can expect to be admitted to hospital five or six times in the course of his life: It is inevitable, therefore, that he will become increasingly familiar with hospital and the hospital way of life and increasingly critical of the ways in which that life departs from the pattern to which he is accustomed outside hospital. As a taxpayer who finances the cost of the hospital service, he will be less inclined to accept the way his stay in hospital is organised. In short, up to the present the hospital service has been living on the capital reserves of good will built up in the days of the voluntary hospital: these reserves are running low and will be exhausted unless the hospital service is prepared to adjust its ideas and modify its attitude to the arrangements it makes for the comfort and welfare of patients."

This changed or changing attitude is continually being intensified by the publicising of hospital activities through such media as the television, be it over-romanticised or over-glamourised programmes such "Dr. Casey", "Dr. Kildare" and their like, or the more serious hospital programmes in the "Your Life in Their Hands" series on the B.B.C. There is no doubt that in future we must take cognisance of this changed attitude.

It is reflected also in the increasing number of patient associations being formed. These groups are springing up all over the country. I suppose that the raison d'être of these associations is to ensure a better liaison between hospital staffs and patients. I confess that I personally am a little suspicious of these organisations. I think that the chronic bellyachers may too easily find further complaints in this type of organisation.

In addition, some very thought-provoking books have been published in the last few weeks. I have in mind, first, a book written by a lady called Gerda Cohen in the Penguin series entitled, "What is Wrong with our Hospitals?" She writes with wit, a rather sharp wit, perhaps, but obviously on the basis not only of personal experience but also of wide observation. There is too much truth in some of the rather alarming revelations in her book to allow any of us who are genuinely interested in hospitals to become complacent. A more objective book has recently been published in the Institute of Community Studies by a lady called Dr. Ann Cartwright. This book is based on close analysis and statistical evidence. I found this book very stimulating and challenging. It confirms many of my own personal impressions.

Before these books were published, to the credit of the Ministry of Health it must be said that some absolutely first class pamphlets have been produced by the Central Health Service Council. I have referred to one—" The Pattern of the In-patient's Day ", which was the result of the work of the Powell Committee in 1953. An excellent pamphlet entitled, "The Reception and Welfare of Inpatients in Hospitals" has been published. More recently, a pamphlet entitled, "Communication between Doctors, Nurses and Patients An Aspect of Human Relations in the Hospital Service", was published. This pamphlet is the work of the Cohen Committee, presided over by one of our most distinguished medical men, Lord Cohen of Birkenhead. These pamphlets contain first class practical advice to all those engaged in hospital administration today.

I do not want to exaggerate my case, but I believe that some progress has been made on the lines of the recommendations in these documents, but the progress is far from satisfactory. Much more prompting by the Ministry is needed before we shall achieve the results aimed at in these pamphlets. Naturally, the Ministry is concerned about conditions in hospitals. It has every reason to be concerned. We spend £550 million per year on the maintenance of our hospitals. That makes hospitals in Britain a vast enterprise. We are embarking upon a hospital construction programme which will cost about £750 million in the next ten years. In view of all these considerations, I make no apology for drawing the attention of the House and the country to this aspect.

What concerns me is the question of human relationships. This is the nub of the matter. In the post-war period we have witnessed incredible medical technological advances. Surgical skill seems to go from one new wonderful discovery to greater discovery still. We have discovered drugs which are indeed miracle-working. One would wish that there were a comparable advance in human relationships and that, as medicine has become more specialised and the skill of doctors and nurses more specific, there had been a parallel development in securing that human atmosphere which should prevail in a modern hospital.

One feels that this is not so and that there is a tremendous amount of work still to be done by those engaged on this very important work. I do not think that it is a question of unkindness or callousness. No one who knows anything about a modern hospital would dream of using those words. It is probably more a question of thoughtlessness. It may be merely a question of concentrating on one aspect of hospital work to the detriment of other aspects which, in my opinion, may well be more important. This issue goes wider than mere hospital work. It is a problem in modern industry. We must apply our minds more and more to what can be done.

I want to give some instances—time will not permit me to give many—of what I mean by the deficiencies in the welfare of patients in modern hospitals. I want to take, first, the question of the fantastically absurd early rising of patients. I have tried to approach this problem with all the common sense at my command. I have tried to weigh the justifications which one always hears from hospital staffs about the necessity of waking patients at these unearthly hours. I have not yet been convinced by any of them.

There are a few statistics gleaned from Dr. Cartwright's book. She made a very full analysis of hospitals in different parts of the country. According to her, 62 per cent. of the patients in hospitals are awakened before 6 a.m. Teaching hospitals are slightly better, the percentage there being 50 per cent. That is a poor show, judged on any count. Further, 35 per cent.—more than one-third—are awakened before 5.30 a.m. Of 723 patients investigated by Dr. Cart-wright, only two expressed satisfaction with that state of affairs.

I know the usual excuses. Shortage of staff is a very important excuse, if it can be proved. Then there is the question of the hours of duty. Night nurses must finish their work before the day staff comes on, and that often impels the night staff to wake people up at an unconscionably early hour. We are also told that the wards must be made ready for the entrance of the consultants. One is prompted to ask—I hope that this is not a false antithesis—what are hospitals for? Are they for the convenience of consultants and nurses, or for the welfare of the patients?

The mystique of the hospital, which was for so long fostered by the Establishment, is disappearing, and people just will not accept the old philosophy

"As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be: world without end. Amen."

As I see it there is no justification for this absurd early waking hour, and I speak as a patient and as one who has been intimately concerned with hospitals. People desperately need sleep.

What are they awakened for? They are awakened to have their faces washed, and to have their temperatures taken. According to the Powell Report a tremendous amount of temperature taking is completely unnecessary. This preoccupation with peripheral things is one aspect of hospital work which baffles me—this tidying of the beds, this mouth washing and face washing. I cannot see that it serves any useful purpose. I am sure that patients would be the better for a much more reasonable waking hour. Why cannot we have a three-shift system in our hospitals? I know that some hospitals are working such a system, and that it solves the problem immediately. I believe that 10 per cent. of our hospitals are working this system, and I beg the Minister to see whether more and more hospitals cannot be persuaded to adopt it.

I move on now to the question which can best be summed up in the word "communication" because that is the one thing which concerns all those people who are in any way connected with modern hospitals. The Cohen Report emphasises this in a particularly lucid and graphic way. It is the basic question, in as much as a patient is in a world which in many senses is an unknown one. He is naturally perturbed by his environment. He often feels that he is not encouraged to ask questions and to seek information. Sometimes when he does this he is put off with a platitude—and sometimes with something which is worse.

The eminent medical men presided over by Lord Cohen realised that a hospital is never satisfactorily functioning unless communication is a two-way system—not only communication from the doctor to the patient but also from the patient to the doctor. I was particularly fortunate in this matter. The consultants to whom I owe so much—indeed, to whom I owe my life—treated me with remarkable kindness and understanding. They explained things to me, and answered all my questions. Bat a number of my constituents are forever telling me that they feel completely left in the dark during their sojourn in hospital. Who is to tell them? Many of them just pick up scraps of information from other patients or from some junior nurse.

Someone must take on this task and there is in paragraph 20 of the Cohen pamphlet—"The Personal Doctor"—the following very constructive suggestion:

"… at home the patient has a personal doctor, the general practitioner, who can be expected to treat him as an individual and to interpret the arrangements for his care. The need for a similar service in hospital is not less great, for it is often at the time of serious illness that patients and relatives are under greatest stress.

We suggest that a serious attempt should be made to introduce the concept of a personal doctor in hospital. There can be little doubt that the best person to undertake this rôle is the consultant who has accepted clinical responsibility for the patient's care. But where circumstances prevent this the responsibility should pass (and should unambiguously be understood to pass) to the deputy who supervises the patient's medical care in the absence of the consultant. Under this arrangement a personal service would be seen not as a separate entity but as an inseparable part of the wider concept of medical care. Unless the responsibility for personal care is clearly designated and accepted, there is a risk that failure of communication will occur."

That is a very constructive suggestion, but I wonder whether it could not be expanded?

In view of the vastness of the hospital system and the importance of this problem, can a case not be made for the sitting up in the modern hospital of what it is the fashion to call the "ombudsman"—a person who can act as a liaison, to to speak, between patients and staff. Whether this ombudsman should be a qualified person, as Cohen suggests, a trained nurse, an almoner or a hospital chaplain I would not like to state dogmatically now, but I believe that in a very subtle but important sense there should be such a personage in modern hospitals. I have not followed out the full implications of this, but I sometimes feel that a case could be made out for a new inspectorate. We have inspectors for schools and inspectors for factories; when we are spending £550 million a year on hospital maintenance alone, a case might be made out for some governmental supervision of hospital work.

Other aspects of the problem include visitation, and in this connection these various reports are bearing fruit. I understand that 88 per cent. of hospitals now allow daily visiting—it is not so long ago since visits were limited to two or three a week. This is very welcome progress, but I think that the visiting system could be made still more elastic so that those unable to visit in the evening could have the choice of visiting in the afternoon or the evening.

The supply and service of food in hospitals is good. I had no complaints about the food or the way in which it was served, but there is still that unconscionable gap between a six o'clock last meal and an eight o'clock breakfast. That is a 14-hour fast, and hospital is not the place for fasting. Perhaps something can be done about that.

I do not think that there can be a country in the world with better hospitals than ours, but we have a Welsh proverb which says "Nid da lle gellir gwell"—"It is not good if it can be better". It is because I believe that wonderful though our hospitals are they can be improved still further, particularly on the personal relations side, that I have ventured to address these remarks to the House.

This is positively my last appearance in this place, subject to the cancellation, or, as I hope, the renewal of my contract in the autumn. I should like to support briefly the case which was advanced so humanely by the hon. Member for Abertillery (Mr. LI. Williams). He said that the average person could expect to pay five or six visits to hospital in the course of a lifetime. Perhaps I am unique in that, unfortunately, I have paid three visits to hospital during the time of this Parliament. The first was as a result of a rather serious road accident, the second because of the need for a routine operation, and the third because I happened to catch mumps from my small son.

These visits at least gave me the opportunity of studying the National Health Service from the inside. Twice I went as an amenity bed patient and once as a National Health Service patient. I agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member said about the psychology of the relationship between patients and hospital administrators. We should bear in mind always that people who administer hospitals have a great deal of power over those who come in. It is right that they should have this power, because they are responsible for the curing if at all possible of those who arrive.

The moment one takes away a person's clothes and he is put to bed one has a great psychological power over him. He is put in a position of inferiority. He is probably frightened and anxious about his state, and he is entirely dependent on those who are administering to him. Doctors, nurses and administrators can never be too conscious of this aspect and there is need for a great deal of improvement in the diplomacy of consultation.

The last time that I was unlucky enough to be in hospital I shared a small side-ward with a gentleman who had been taken in unexpectedly with what he thought was a stomach haemorrhage. After two or three days he appeared to be fit and well and he was about to be discharged when a 22-year old house surgeon came in breezily and said, "We have found what is wrong with you. You have a quite serious stomach ulcer and you must be given special treatment." This shocked and worried the man. I should have thought that, bearing in mind that this was a London teaching hospital, this sort of thing could be done much more diplomatically and sensibly by a relatively senior member of the medical staff.

A great deal of understanding of psychology is needed in the matter of telling the patient what is wrong with him and taking him into one's confidence, if at all possible, and putting his fears at rest. Only the other week I heard of an hon. Member who was taken to hospital for a routine operation. After the usual X-ray procedure he was visited late at night by a surgeon who said, "We have found a shadow on your lung. I am afraid that it is far more serious than what you came in for and we shall have to operate." The hon. Member was kept for 10 hours in a state of intense anxiety before he was taken in the morning to an X-ray unit for further examination. Fortunately, it was discovered that he did not have a shadow on his lung and that this was an ordinary error. As a result, he went through the routine operation and was perfectly all right and today he is happily back among us in the House.

These kind of things have a bearing on the situation of the individual patient. Those who are responsible for the administration of our hospitals need constantly to bear in mind the psychology of the treatment of the patient and the fears and inhibitions of those who come under their care.

Also—the hon. Gentleman did not mention this point particularly but I am sure that he will subscribe to what I am saying—we cannot emphasise too much the need for respect for the patient. We have come a long way since before the war, when patients were referred to by their surnames and the sister in charge of the ward was rather like a truculent sergeant-major. Today, whoever the person is, he is treated with respect. Even so, sometimes the routine seems to take precedence over the ordinary individual welfare of the patient. I am sure that just as we as hon. Members of this House should never dream of being patronising or rude to any of our constituents, nor should doctors or nurses ever dream of being patronising or rude to any of their patients, however difficult and troublesome they might appear to be.

The hon. Gentleman has done a service in bringing this matter forward. I do not agree with him entirely on the question of early rising. As "lights out" are fairly early in hospitals, it is a good idea that patients should be allowed to be awakened fairly early. The hon. Member had a lot to say about the three-shift system and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will bear this in mind. I hope that we can do more about it.

I hope my hon. Friend will take note of what has been said and that we may go still further in improving the welfare of patients in the hospital service.

When we discussed health on Monday, the hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Dudley Smith) followed me and took exception to a certain amount of what I had said. It is not entirely because his contract may not be renewed in October that I will turn the other cheek today and say that I agree with virtually every word that he has uttered this afternoon. In the same way, I agree very much with what my hon. Friend the Member for Abertillery (Mr. L1. Williams) has said. I am sure the House is grateful to him in these dying hours of this Parliament in taking the opportunity to raise this extremely important subject.

I shall not come between the House and the Minister at any length, because this is a matter which I have raised on a number of other occasions from this Box and from the back benches. It is a subject to which we cannot return too often. It is a matter which can be put right, and will only be put right if attention is continually called to it. What is wrong stems from attitudes that go back into history and which cannot be changed overnight. But it is because people recognise what is wrong and call attention to it in speeches and books and, indeed, in White Papers from the Department, that there is a steady improvement the whole time, though I must add that there is room for considerably more improvement in the future.

I wish to make only one point. My hon. Friend the Member for Abertillery paid tribute, and rightly so, to a series of White Papers which have come from the Ministry of Health in recent years on different aspects of this subject which generically I think we can call human relations in hospitals. He mentioned a number of White Papers. Two come to my mind which he did not mention. One was on noise and the other on human relations and obstetrics. I agree that the most important of all of them was the Cohen Committee's Report on "Communications between Doctors, Nurses and Patients". The establishment of proper communications within a hospital between doctors and nurses, nurses and patients and doctors and patients is at the root of this trouble.

These admirable Reports come out. They are circulated in regional hospital boards, boards of governors and hospital management committees. One hopes that they get beyond the doctors to the matrons and, if it is not too much to hope, to the consultants. What I am a little worried about is that nobody seems to follow them up. Where conditions are already tolerably good, these White Papers, I am sure, make them better. I have a shrewd suspicion that where conditions are rather bad and ought to be complained against, not very much notice is taken of these White Papers.

Is there in the Ministry any system whereby when a Report or White Paper of this kind is circulated someone, after a suitable interval, chases somebody and says, "What have you done in the light of this Report? What reforms have you brought about?". This is necessary in order to get improvement where improvement is most needed.

At the outset, I can answer the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) by saying that all the Reports which have been mentioned in the debate have already been recommended to regional hospital boards by my right hon. Friend. In some cases, on the in-patient's day and on the visiting of patients, the Minister has called for reports back. The hon. Gentleman can take it, therefore, that these Reports are received, studied, and acted upon.

I had not intended to raise this matter had I been fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I endorse what the hon. Gentleman has said. These circulars are sent out to regional hospital boards. In the responsible ones such as those of which the hon. Member for Abertillery (Mr. L1. Williams) and I are members, they are followed up very carefully. But what assurance can my hon. Friend give us that the Ministry sees to it that reports are sent in within a given period?

I know of no means which the Ministry has yet established of saying, not that such-and-such must be done, because one must not ask that, but, "Please let us know, within a given time, what you are doing about it"? This should be a duty imposed on the governors of teaching hospitals, on the members of regional hospital boards and, through the regional hospital boards, on management committees. I know of no means whereby the Ministry insists on a reply or considers whether such replies have been received when appointments are renewed.

Perhaps my right hon. Friend knows of no such machinery, because it has been quite unnecessary, in the case of the hospital with which he is connected, but I can assure him that, in cases where boards delay in replying, we press them for the information. In the absence of any specific instance which any hon. Member can produce to me, I am at a loss to understand why this charge should be made. Regional hospital boards and hospital management committees are like other human institutions. They are often working under considerable pressure, and there are occasions, I agree, when information from them does not come forward quite so rapidly as one would desire. But we are all seeking to promote the best possible service, and it falls to my Department to chase those who appear to be a little lax in this matter. I think that, with good will, we get an effective response to the requests which we send to regional hospital boards.

I join the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North in thanking the hon. Member for Abertillery for using this occasion to raise, as clearly and as fairly as he has, an aspect of the care of patients which is of the highest importance. Many factors bear upon the patient's welfare besides the actual quality of his medical treatment—the quality of buildings and of furniture, the quality of, if I may so describe it, the hotel service side of hospital management, not least the catering department, of the administrative arrangements made for admitting and discharging him and of the services for his rehabilitation and after-care when he has left hospital.

To an extent, these are practical, tangible matters. New wards and departments, new kitchens and other facilities, sometimes more or better trained staff can, and eventually will, put right any existing defects. But—and this is what the hon. Member for Abertillery said and what the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North reminded us about—the best equipped hospital in the world would fall far short of the ideal if it were lacking in human sympathy with the patient and good, human management of the resources used for his or her benefit. One thinks not simply of the patient as one individual person, but of his family as well, because they are part of his treatment; they are worried and anxious about him. A far from model hospital—and we still have too many—may yet have that essential "human" atmosphere which can so greatly help the patient's cure.

It is with the intangible rather than the physical that the hon. Member is, I believe, primarily and rightly concerned, and it is on this that I propose to concentrate my remarks. First—and I intend no criticism of the hon. Gentleman—it is necessary to get our perspectives right. Nearly 4½ million—not 3 million people were in-patients on one or more occasions last year. There were 13 million new attenders in the outpatient and accident departments, and 43 million attendances all told. How many of these had just cause for complaint? On the other hand, how many of them had nothing but praise for their care and treatment? Working in our hospitals there are 24,000 doctors of various grades, 228,000 nurses and mid-wives, whole and part-time, the equivalent of about 25,000 other professional and technical staff, to say nothing of the administrative, clerical and thousands of other staff who provide the hospital service. How many—or, rather, how few—of these gave cause for complaint? There is no clear statistical answer to these questions, but I know that hon. Members will share my view of what the answers are likely to be.

We in the Ministry hear of many complaints. We receive quite a number of adverse comments during the year. I receive them as Parliamentary Secretary through the medium of correspondence from hon. Members. Hospital authorities get a great many more. Hon. Members remind us by letter and by Parliamentary Question that all is not perfect. But who hears about the great volume of letters of praise that also pours in? Every hospital, doctor, nurse, midwife and almoner has a score who praise for everyone who blames.

The pity is that this is not said often enough, here or elsewhere, and perhaps it is in part because the hospitals and their staff are too modest to say anything about it or consider they have a more important job to do. Good news rarely hits the headlines. It often gets no mention. Such is the perverse nature of human beings that they seem less interested in the normal and the continuing, the constructive and the important than in the abnormal and the unusual, the sensational and the morbid, the trivial and the transient.

I should like to use this occasion as much as an opportunity for expressing thanks for the devoted service which is given as for a rare chance to discuss an important aspect of that service. Bluntly, let us not always seem to "knock" the hospital service—I do not suggest for a moment that anybody has done that today, but it is done—and the professional and other staffs who work in it. If we do—and sometimes we must—let us try not to do so in a way which provokes resentment, especially by appearing to generalise from the particular. As Dr. Cartwright says, in "Human Relations and Hospital Care":

"The majority of patients were satisfied with the medical treatment they received in hospital and had nothing but praise for the nurses and the way they looked after them. Where particular emphasis is put on the shortcomings of the service, this is in the hope that more can be learnt from the occasional criticism than from the general chorus of praise."

The speeches made this afternoon were entirely in that spirit.

The Reports to which reference has been made have a theme—a surprisingly consistent one—which I can summarise as follows. Hospitals are old in form. Professional education is established in patterns of teaching and practice set many years ago. There is a long tradition establishing a particular status for the hospitals and their staffs in the world of health and society at large, easily understood but still largely accepted both by them and by patients. But this world is changing. It is changing in ways which very few individuals are in a position to comprehend fully. Astonishing advances have been made in medicine that are changing the whole pattern of medical care. We should not overlook in this connection the very important part that British doctors are playing.

The rôle of the service is changing. Its activities are quickening with the result that contacts with patients are shorter and the work becomes more specialised and technical. Society itself is changing. Education is more widespread and deeper. Sources of knowledge about health matters multiply and are more easily available. Standards are more frequently challenged and criticised. All of us secretly find that change is exciting and stimulating and necessary—for others. We are much less ready to accept and welcome change that affects ourselves. Doctors and nurses are not translated to angelic status merely because they acquire high, professional qualifications, and people do not necessarily become angels when they fall sick and become hospital patients.

What these Reports seem to say in common is that there is a risk that any institution of a specialised kind may suffer from introversion and be led, perhaps unconsciously, to the view that what is best for the institution is best for its clients. The Reports differ, of course, in kind. The Report on the "Pattern of the In-Patient's Day" is a highly competent review of the effect that changes in a hospital's programme of work can have on the patient and the nurses' work.

It has critical things to say about the continuance of practices that seem to have traditional rather than practical significance and which add to the work around the patient and disturb him. Its main contention is that the patient's active day is too long—this is a point that the hon. Gentleman made—and too strenuous for his good, and that a different timing of the programme of work is practicable, with a period of rest and relaxed arrangements for visiting, producing a pattern more akin to his ordinary domestic expectations.

This is something that hospital managements can, if they will, get their teeth into. The other Reports, while paying full attention to the improvement and better use of resources in a general way, deal essentially with attitudes and communications. Miss Gerda Cohen's book is an account of one person's experience and inquiries. It is pointedly critical and sharply worded, and I have no doubt that it will be widely read.

The official publication "Communication between Doctors, Nurses and Patients" is a distillation of the experience of a number of senior doctors and nurses, an intuitive first account of the problems facing all three, with suggestions of principle rather than practice for a review of attitudes.

Dr. Cartwright's "Human Relations and Hospital Care" goes wider and deeper, but, in essence, its summaries and conclusions derive from facts and figures much the same lessons as are dealt with in the official publication on communications to which I have referred. Much of both Reports deals with the needs of patients for information and the need of the hospitals to decide, with others, how it should be given and by whom, and for developing their own techniques for seeing that the right facts are consistently given. In short, the points made by the hon. Gentleman on this question have been discussed in these Reports. They assert that communication is an essential complement of clinical care and a responsibility primarily of doctors, with the help of nurses and others.

Those are not the only Reports and not the only lines of action. I will remind the House of some others. Almost the basis of all of them was a Report from the Central Health Services Council on the reception and welfare of in-patients in hospital, published as long ago as 1953, based on an earlier Scottish Report dealing with a wide range of topics, including those which we are now discussing. The process continued with another Central Health Services Council Report in 1959 on the welfare of children in hospital.

In 1961, besides the Report of the Standing Nursing Advisory Committee on the "Pattern of the In-Patient's Day", there was a smaller Report on the problem of noise in hospitals and a further Report from the Standing Maternity and Midwifery Advisory Committee on "Human Relations in Obstetrics", based largely on evidence collected by the Cranbrook Committee in 1959. My point is that there has been no sudden realisation of a new problem, but a continual and growing process of attention to the human side of hospital life.

What then are we doing about all this? The word "implementation" is a false friend in this context. It is the policy of my right hon. Friend to expand the hospital building programme, and this is something which he can implement. While, however, it can also be the Minister's policy that all men should wish to be good, implementation here is for all men and not for him. While there are practical administrative aspects to many of the matters with which the reports deal, there are also many aspects in which individual opinion counts for most. For some of them, a clinical opinion may be dominant and, clearly, no Minister would wish to controvert the individual professional view. For others, the mechanical difficulties of an apparently simple operation may be immense.

Others, alas, the patients may not want. Some hospitals, for instance, have found that delaying the morning call was quite unacceptable to their patients. Even if a postponement is accepted, it may require difficult planning. Putting back the alarm clock will, for instance, put back pre-medication and pre-operative procedures. If the theatre is not to work into the night, operating may be curtailed. Putting back doctors' rounds or delaying X-ray or collection of pathology specimens may react on the out-patient programme later in the day. Alteration of meal times means fitting in with all the other work and rationing the catering operations. Local transport times may not fit when dealing with buses or ambulances. Indeed, hospitals have had a very hard time trying to implement revised daily programmes. But I have no doubt—and I am sure that the hon. Member, who knows a great deal about hospitals, will agree with me—of their will to try.

A conference organised by the Royal College of Nursing in 1962 on this topic and addressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, Southwest (Mr. Powell) was very well attended, and reports from my Department's officers show that the Report on the In-Patient's Day has had a widespread influence on thinking. Besides official issues, over 23,000 copies have been sold and for the most part they are circulating in hospitals.

We shall go on keeping in touch with developments and stimulating further thoughts about this. But there cannot be any question of measuring results statistically and, as the Report itself recognised, we should not look for precision and uniformity. What we look for is the will to change, the readiness to think about these things and to try to do something about them.

Noise, to which the hon. Member has referred, in an affront to the patient. A good deal can be done, incidentally, by patients as well as by staff to prevent it. As Dr. Cartwright's book points out, a lot of noise emanates from patients themselves. In part, the avoidance of noise lies in the will and in widely differing individual tolerances and tastes. In part, also, it is a matter of re-equipment as resources can be spared. A great deal has been done in individual hospital surveys to cope with their own problems, notably the radio nuisance, which we have all at some time or other encountered, or about which we have had complaints from constituents.

Noise consciousness has been stimulated by the admirable Fougasse cartoons commissioned by the King Edward Hospital Fund. In large part, the problem is one of design—internal finishing and protection from external noise. Our first thoughs about this have recently been sent to hospital boards, covering internal, external and equipment aspects.

I turn now to the question of visiting arrangements. Liberalisation—an odd word, but I think that it explains what we mean—of visiting arrangements has been a feature of almost all reports. Here again, as I think the hon. Gentleman recognised, there have been very considerable strides despite the practical difficulties of many hospitals and the conscientiously held views of some professional people that too great a change was asked for. In 1962, a hospital memorandum based on these Reports said very clearly:

"Visting should be regarded as an important contribution to the patient's recovery and never as a concession or as an unwelcome interference with hospital routine."

It accepted that restrictions might be necessary in individual cases, to exclude visitors to colds, for instance, or to enable treatment or essential procedures to be carried out.

Since then hospitals and their staffs have done a great deal. In 1961, about 200 acute hospitals did not allow daily visiting. All but a handful of those have now introduced it, and we are still continuing to discuss with a number that have not, but in those cases there are special local reasons.

As to the visiting of children, the Platt Report on Welfare of Children in Hospital said:

"Unrestricted visiting, as we understand it, means that parents are allowed into the ward at any reasonable hour during the day. … The precise times at which visiting hours may begin and end must vary with local conditions. Unrestricted visiting does not mean that parents are in the ward all the time. It does mean that they can arrange their visits to fit in with other family commitments."

Here again, great progress has been made. There cannot, of course, be rigid rules. There must certainly remain a discretion both for the consultant and the ward sister to restrict visiting to particular occasions, or in special cases. We have only recently written to hospitals asking them to abandon any remaining fixed hours of visiting, and to adopt and make clear their view that parents are welcome to visit their children at any time, subject to consultation with the doctor and ward sister in order to avoid particular occasions when it would be preferable not to visit.

The parallel recommendation that mothers should be allowed to come in with very young children is very much in the minds of those concerned with the management of hospitals, but it must await the opportunity of redevelopment of hospital premises.

The problem of "communications" remains. To the Minister the essential task—indeed, the only practicable course—is to see that the best advice is available to those who actually do the job and to encourage continual consideration of it and to stimulate further inquiry and research as opportunity occurs. I have no doubt that Dr. Cartwright's book will get the readership and close attention that it deserves up and down the country. The official publication on communications has already reached a wide audience. Apart from the large initial circulation to hospitals, over 30,000 copies have been sold by Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Certainly, most of those have gone to hospital staffs.

The nub of the matter is that clinical responsibility includes the problem of communication and that steps appropriate to the hospital should be adopted to straighten out lines of responsibility so that this is recognised—and not only in the teaching hospitals, as some seem to think, but in all hospitals. What precise arrangements are made is less important than the will to make them. The senior and more experienced people in hospitals know this. For them it is a question of considering whether the means which have already brought success are still right and will go on serving their turn. Perhaps, on reflection, they will not. The results will be of more value, perhaps, to the younger and to the less experienced on whom new responsibilities continually press and who must often see as their objective the immediate task of care and cure. Some say that all must depend on education, and it is true that formative influences and examples may have crucial effects. This is, however, too easy an answer. The problems confront us now, and they cannot be left to the next generation.

Dr. Cartwright's book deliberately restricted itself to the activities of doctors and nurses in the main, and it is of major interest to them. It has its point for other groups and it stresses the power of management to influence the atmosphere in which the professions work. I have no doubt that the general point is not lost in hospital circles. There will be many ways in which administrators can help materially and morally to make responsibilities clear and help the communicating process in treatment.

At this point, will the hon. Gentleman accept a suggestion that all these brilliant publications to which he has referred have, in fact, reached only a limited section of the population and that we have to get at the patient and to get the patient to fit into the atmosphere which we wish to create? Why cannot we have in every ward of every hospital a hand book for patients setting out the distilled wisdom and recommendations of the Ministry of Health?

I should have thought that we should put first things first and that the whole burden of the argument of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Abertillery has been that those who run hospitals and serve in them, and are responsible for the care and treatment of patients, should first understand the importance of communications. I agree entirely about that.

I have, not unnaturally, been talking about the healing professions. They are responsible, however, for only half of the process. The patient is a necessary complement, I agree. He is endowed not only with rights, but with obligations. If he does not know or does not understand, he can ask and perhaps there is merit in what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting. Often the patient does not ask.

That is the point.

Every hospital has some arrangement to hear any complaints which the patient wishes to make. But these arrangements are useless if the complaints are made after the event, after the patient has left hospital. Every patient must realise that this is part of the educating process but that insistent or excessive demands merely add to the difficulties which already may be very great. Then again the wider opportunities given for visiting throw new responsibilities on the visitor. Visitors should come prepared to make a worthwhile contribution to the patient's morale. Particularly, they should be considerate in not making unreasonable demands to visit and in not staying for excessively long spells which may tax a patient or hinder nursing care.

The hon. Gentleman has raised a most important topic and the House will be grateful to him. I am particularly grateful for the way in which he raised it. Undoubtedly, there is much to be done for the welfare of the patient. There is also a great deal to be thought about and, if I may say so, a great deal for which to be grateful. Let us add to our exhortations, therefore, our gratitude to all who serve in the hospitals.

With your permission, I should like to inform the House of a telegram which I have received today from our High Commissioner in Kenya.

The message reads as follows:

"The Prime Minister has noted with satisfaction the Motion tabled in the House condemning the attempted assault on his person when attending the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in London. He has requested me to convey his gratitude to the House of Commons and wishes to reciprocate most warmly the expression of lasting good relations between Kenya and the British peoples."

I feel sure that the whole House will be grateful to the Prime Minister of Kenya for this generous message and shares his hopes for the future good relations between Kenya and Britain.

Hear, hear.

May I thank the Under-Secretary for the statement that he has made, and associate right hon. and hon. Members on this side of the House with everything that he has said.

This afternoon, I wish to raise two separate and closely related matters. First, the grammar and technical school situation in mid-Kent, and, secondly, the problems facing us in Kent over higher technical education. The population of Maidstone is growing rapidly, and so, also, is the population of certain country areas. Many of the people coming to this district are of a high level of intelligence and the population of mid-Kent expects a high level of educational facilities to be available for the children. The Kent Education Committee has a satisfactory record in the provision of a number of grammar and technical school places. The reply I received from my right hon. Friend on 20th July shows that in Kent 246 children in every 1,000 at the age of 13 enjoyed grammar and technical school education. This contrasts very favourably with the figure for the nation as a whole of 214 per 1,000 at the age of 13 and with 216 per 1,000 in the south-east of England generally.

I am glad to know that this fairly satisfactory position will be improved on still further in each of the next two years because 210 new places are to be provided in the girls' secondary schools in each year. This is very good as far as it goes, but my anxiety is about the future when the new development we are seeing will be completed and the children will be reaching secondary school age with an in-flow of population of the sort envisaged in the South-East Study. I should like as clear an assurance as possible from my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary that the necessary help will be given to Kent County Council when it seeks aid for a new school building programme in future, particularly the building programme for secondary schools.

Secondly, will my hon. Friend give some assurance that his Department will assist Kent Education Committee with its minor works programme because it is quite vital ha children of he high I.Q. which we expect to have in Kent both now and in future children should have a really good primary education if they are to be fitted to make good use of the secondary school education provided. I hope my hon. Friend will help us on our minor works programme which is essential for our primary schools because this does not concern big new building programmes but improving the old existing schools.

I make no complaint at all about the allocation of funds we have had for the new building programme. We were fortunate in Kent for we are to get 24 new primary schools in the current financial year and 29 in the next. In this final debate in this Parliament, I feel I must stress this point, as I have done each year since I came here, for more money for minor works in the county to enable our children to take full advantage of what comes after. With the proposed growth of the Borough of Maidstone and the immediately surrounding countryside and probable population growth in the Sevenoaks area, it will be necessary in the not too distant future for Kent County Council to seek to establish some completely new grammar and technical school unit, perhaps in the Wrotham area in the west of my constituency or perhaps in the east of the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir J. Rodgers). I press my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to give a firm assurance that this proposal will have a sympathetic ear in his Department.

The present proposal is to increase the existing grammar and technical schools, but we want an assurance that there will be help for a new unit when it is needed. Such a school might well be a mixed grammar and technical school. The additional entry form which will be provided in the existing schools in the next year or so will not be sufficient to cope with the growth in the population. I hope my hon. Friend will help us in this regard. When mentioning the possibility of a mixed grammar and technical type of unit, I congratulate Kent Education Committee on its considerable ability in taking the sting out of the 11 plus and making the selection as fair as possible and spread over a considerable period.

The Kent County Council have a very good record in transferring late-developing pupils to selected schools after the age of 11. There is a considerable transfer between the ages of 11 and 13. In addition, they may wish to experiment with blurring the hard edge between the grammar and technical school streams, and I hope that my hon. Friend and his Department will encourage them in any future experiments which they undertake.

The Kent County Council lay great emphasis on technical education. In Kent last year 8·9 per cent. of all 13-year old children had a technical education compared with only 2·8 per cent. for the rest of England and Wales. This is very much in the spirit of our age. I am glad that my right hon. Friend is here, and I hope that he will listen to me on this point and will help Kent County Council in these experiments.

The measure of the success of any educational course at present can only be the measure of G.C.E. results, and it is noteworthy that in recent years the modern schools in Kent have been doing very well. I believe that this is particularly gratifying to the staff of those schools, when we consider that last year the high figure of 25 per cent. of the brightest children had already been creamed off into the selected schools, whereas in the rest of England and Wales the figure was only 21·7 per cent. I believe that the good results of the secondary modern schools are particularly gratifying to the staff.

In 1962, 641 pupils at selected schools in Kent achieved 2,262 O-level passes between them. Last year, rather more pupils, 684, achieved rather fewer passes from the selected schools, 2,166. This contrasts with the modern schools; in 1962, 78 pupils achieved 156 passes, whereas last year 110 pupils achieved 217 passes. I have dealt with the figures in detail because I think that they are important, and they lead me to my second main subject, as they show the importance of the O-level G.C.E. passes and the upsurge of ability among our pupils in the modern schools.

I want to turn to the proposals for the re-organisation of our technical colleges. I was particularly pleased to see the assurance given by my right hon. Friend, as reported in col. 365 of HANSARD, to my hon. Friends the Members for Dover (Sir J. Arbuthnot) and Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain), that the local needs of each area would be kept in mind when there was any further development in the county as a whole. The Kent County Council have considerable plans for the alteration of the pattern of technical colleges throughout the county, but in the main I will deal only with my own area.

These Kent County Council's proposals are put forward only as a suggestion. They are by no means a fait accompli. They are put forward as a basis for discussion. But I have had representations from teachers and others—and it is this which brings me to my feet this afternoon—who are not entirely happy with these proposals. I have mentioned the successes in O-level passes. Many people are perturbed at the proposal to cut out the O- and A-level G.C.E. courses at technical colleges, because in the view of many of the technical college staffs, this would be a denial of opportunities for many young people, since more and more occupations today are specifying a certain number of O-level passes in certain subjects as a qualification for entry to the occupation.

These O-level courses are fulfilling a public demand. People want them, and it is important that these should be catered for. I therefore hope that particularly sympathetic consideration will be given to the needs of some of our late developers and the need to help young people who may after the age of 15 change their minds about what they intend to do with their lives and want to have a G.C.E. course rather later.

I hope that my hon. Friend will bear in mind a number of points when these proposals for the reorganisation of technical colleges in Kent are considered. First, I cannot stress too strongly that Maidstone is the hub of the transport system of Kent. Although I agree that many senior students have their own method of transport. I believe that it places a considerable burden on less affluent younger students to make them travel further to their place of study. It is not only expensive for them, but it is difficult if they have to make a cross-country journey.

I therefore urge my hon. Friend to pay close attention to the geographical and physical fact that Maidstone is the hub of the Kent transport system. For instance, even now many pupils in the Mailing area already find it is a difficult journey to the Medway Technical College. Is it wise to place a proposed great regional college where transport is difficult and where it will be necessary for virtually every pupil to have his own transport?

Secondly, is it absolutely certain that the vague general ideas set out in the South-East Study will dominate our lives for generations to come? It is proposed in the Study that much of Maidstone's development shall be commercial. If this is so, it is not unreasonable to lay stress on the commercial side of our technical college, just as it is sensible to lay stress on the catering side of the technical college at Thanet. I rather doubt whether this shadowy plan of the South-East Study is the last word on what will happen. It is important to realise that industrial employment in Maidstone and the near district increased by 90 per cent. between 1948 and 1960. If this pattern were to continue, it would be crazy to move the higher courses in engineering and building elsewhere. It may well be that this will not happen, but it is important that planning and education should work closely together and that the realities of the situation, and not some vague plan, should be the criteria on which educational proposals are made.

A small but quite essential matter to us in Kent—horticulture is the key to our rural prosperity. The horticultural unit in the Maidstone Technical College must have engineering workshops at hand so that mechanical maintenance courses, and so on, are available to the students. The whole pattern of horticulture is shifting. We even have in the present year the advent of the blackcurrant picking machine. In 20 years' time a horticultural course will be very different from what it was 20 years ago. I hope that this will be seriously watched. One of the great advantages of enlarging technical colleges is said to be—I am sure that it is—to make more efficient use of the expensive equipment which have to be bought and the communal facilities which are available to both students and staffs.

But as further technical education is at present planned in mid-Kent the new Maidstone Technical College will share many of its communal services with our College of Art, so that most of the advantages of a large technical college would already obtain under our existing plan. Is it altogether wise to claim for any new plan some new, hidden advantage of communal services when this already exists?

To give the House some concept of the existing rate of growth of Maidstone Technical College, it is interesting to note that eleven years ago—at about the time of the upsurge of industrial development in the town, to which I have referred—there were 2,273 students of all sorts, whereas two years ago the figure had risen to 3,932—almost a doubling in nine years. In this near doubling there are substantial increases in the "students and others" category, and there is a further category added.

It is significant that the Robbins Committee, which advocates the concentration of colleges, was commissioned to deal with work to university standards. I am not speaking of that this afternoon. I believe that if lower level work is concentrated in large colleges it is doubtful if much benefit will accrue. There is the loss of contact with employers, and the difficulty over transport, and we must bear in mind that transport is costly to the ratepayers because there must be more grants for travel, and so on.

The disruption of existing staff could be fatal at a time when, with the advent of the Industrial Training Act, even more staff is required. I am the first to recognise that teaching staff are not the object of the college. Students are the object, but the needs of the staff must be closely considered. I wonder whether these large plans are altogether in the best interests of the staff at a time when we must look to staff recruitment.

I sincerely hope that my hon. Friend will look today, and that the Minister will look in the future, closely at the claims of Maidstone to continue to expand its technical college, particularly in view of the Henniker-Heaton Report on Day Release. I hope that my hon. Friend will bear this in mind when the problems of our area are being considered.

I pay tribute to the governors, principal and staff of the Technical College, who have achieved these very good results. Before I close I want to make one other point about the building programme in general for education in Kent. I see that my neighbour, the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Boston), had down a Written Question yesterday which seemed to me to be in the nature of a smokescreen. He grumbled about the so-called cuts in education expenditure. There is a degree of humbug in talking about cuts when we have had more expenditure year by year in Kent, and I believe that the financial programme and what we are achieving in Kent are extremely satisfactory.

I hope that the Department will pay very close attention to the needs of our technical college and its staff and also the students of the future. I make no apology for discussing this subject at the close of our Parliament, because technical education is of the greatest importance to our country. The whole future of the nation depends on it, and although there may not be many of us here this afternoon, it is vital to our country's prosperity. It is for this reason that I have raised such matters as our horticultural course, because these are essential. I hope that my hon. Friend will look closely at the two small points that I have raised.

I do not want to speculate about the Parliamentary Secretary's future, but as I think it likely that he is about to make a farewell speech for this Parliament I take this opportunity to thank him for the courtesy and diligence that he has always shown in replying to our debates on education.

I also once again take the opportunity to support the hon. Member for Maidstone (Mr. J. Wells) in pressing some of the points he has mentioned. I do not want to intervene in Kent matters but would rather seek to make a few general observations in support of what he has said. I will not discuss the proposals made for technical education in Kent, but I join with the hon. Member in pressing the importance of paying attention not only to the needs of the staff but to the views of the teachers. In schemes of reorganisation it is essential to carry the good will, and to seek the good will, of those whose duty and responsibility it will be to carry out the reorganisation.

The hon. Member was right to stress the importance of primary schools. If we discuss secondary education we have to pay regard all the time to the disparities that stem from the primary schools. In some respects the hon. Gentleman was too optimistic. I join with him in stressing the importance of minor works, but we must put increasing emphasis on primary school building programmes. As a national effort we must try to remove some of the disparities in education between different regions. The very favourable figures mentioned by the hon. Gentleman emphasise the unfortunate position of children in some parts of the country. We have to pay attention to disparities regionally, and within the regions, between local education authorities—

Of course, we have had a Conservative county council in Kent for many years.

The differences do not represent political differences—we have Labour-controlled authorities with records as good as that of Kent. I emphasise that there are disparities between regions and between education authorities, and also in the areas themselves.

One very disturbing fact emerging from Dr. Douglas's recent study was that if we took ability tests at eight years of age and then had to provide equality of opportunity we would need 75 per cent. more grammar school places. The hon. Gentleman mentioned grammar schools in the interesting context of grammar technical education. I am with him in thinking that technical education should be part of all secondary education; we should recognise that an understanding of the technical side of education should be common to all secondary education.

I am not with him when he suggests that we should have a tripartite system. I think it better to provide this general technical element in all secondary education. We should concentrate on providing adequate secondary education for all. The greatest need is to ensure that young people going to the technical colleges should have a basic, decent secondary education. Therefore, while I support the hon. Member generally about the need for greater emphasis on the technical side in secondary education, I would not seek to meet that need by trying to create a tripartite system.

We have also to think of the very great problem of providing teachers for the primary schools. I do not quarrel with the hon. Gentleman stressing the importance of minor works and buildings, but I am sure that the greater need for the immediate future will be for primary school teachers. This question must be treated differently from any other problem of teacher supply that we have faced in the past few years. There is a desperate shortage here. We must recognise the importance of primary education, and, in thinking of the differences in secondary education, we must realise that many of them stem from the inadequacies—very often local inadequacies—of the primary schools.

I hope that the immediate major effort will be to try to match the needs for teachers in the primary schools. To return to secondary education, I agree with the hon. Member about the late developers. I am encouraged by what happens in Kent, but this does not generally happen and it is a problem which must be faced in secondary education. We have learned with startling clarity over the past few years about the uneven development of the adolescent. This is one of the major faults of the present tripartite division of education. We must provide for much more flexibility, certainly at the earlier ages of secondary education. I am encouraged to hear that Kent is another authority which has this problem very much in mind.

I join with the hon. Member in congratulating the secondary modern schools on their success as attested by G.C.E. results. Those who are marked down at 11 years of age as less able are very often proving their ability when it comes to the test of the G.C.E., and it is a great tribute to the secondary modern schools that in spite of their great staffing difficulties they have been able to meet the G.C.E. needs so well. In general, many of the hon. Member's observations apply not only to Kent but throughout the country.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Mr. John Wells) on seizing this last hour of the present Parliament to discuss the educational affairs of his constituency. It is fitting that the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) has also taken the opportunity to intervene in the last education debate of this Parliament. He has been an occasionally fierce but fair opponent and I am grateful to him for the courteous things which he has had to say.

My hon. Friend has reviewed fairly and accurately the selective system followed by Kent County Council. It is true that the proportion of children in Kent selective schools is high. Not many local authorities choose to divide them as evenly between grammar schools and technical schools as they do in Kent. My hon. Friend has asked us to give encouragement to the authority in any further experiments with secondary organisation in the county. My Department will give all the help and advice that we can with any proposal made to us by Kent or any other local education authority that is considering new arrangements for secondary education.

We do not wish to impose any dogma upon Kent or any other educational authority. Just as my right hon. and learned Friend wishes no return to the rigid tripartite system, so he would resist any attempt to impose some new doctrine. The belief that children are born into two or, even worse, three educational categories is dead. We cannot yet say what will prove to be the best, most efficient and acceptable way to organise education and the Newsom Committee is not alone in warning us not to attempt a final judgment at this stage.

As my hon. Friend has stressed, where there is selection it must not at any stage be final. He rightly emphasised the need in any tripartite system to ensure an adequate interchange between different types of schools, and I was glad that the hon. Member for Sunderland, North joined him in congratulating Kent on the strides which it has made in this direction. On a recent visit to Sevenoaks school, which is both an independent school and the grammar school for the area, I was glad to learn of the increasing number of boys who were entering that school at 16 after secondary modern education.

There is another principle, too, which is of great importance and which successive Ministers of Education have urged, and that is that wherever one draws lines between different types of secondary schools it has got to be recognised that large numbers of children who fall on either side of that line will have similar interests and abilities. It is important that similar provision should be made for them, and on that account possibly my hon. Friend was claiming too much for Kent when he argued that the superiority of his own county was necessarily demonstrated by its large number of technical schools.

The good technical school has to recognise that many of its children will have the same aptitudes and interests as those in grammar or secondary modern schools. I agree to a certain extent with what the hon. Member for Sunderland, North said. A good technical school cannot afford to specialise narrowly or exclusively in technical subjects, just as no grammar, secondary modern or comprehensive school can afford to ignore technical education. We cannot identify at 10 or 11 the children who will ultimately show a technical bias. My hon. Friend will probably allow me to say, therefore, in all fairness to other education authorities unrepresented at the moment in this debate, that it does not necessarily follow that because an area does not have a technical school it is not offering good opportunities in technical education.

My right hon. Friend has raised a number of other matters. He rightly pointed to the fact that in his area there has been over recent years a great growth in population. There is a steady inflow of people from many areas into his constituency, and he asked me for a clear assurance that we would take account of this in framing future building programmes. I can certainly give him that assurance.

The first priority in any building programme must be the provision of new schools for a new population. This is what we have referred to as basic need. Basic need projects have the top priority in any major building programme, and I can assure my hon. Friend that we will carefully study all the evidence as it becomes available about movements of population in his constituency. There is, in fact, in our Department a good deal of expertise in this subject, and the estimates that we are able to make about the numbers of children resulting from different types of housing development tend to be fairly accurate.

My hon. Friend referred to the major school building programme. He knows that the two girls school projects in the 1965–66 and the 1966–67 programmes, to which my right hon. and learned Friend referred in an answer to him on 20th July, represent all that the Kent authority asked for in the way of additions to their selective schools in Maidstone.

These projects will bring the two schools up to standard for four forms of entry. The boys technical and grammar schools are already up to standard for four forms of entry with provision for 80 sixth-formers at the technical school and 180 at the grammar school. I understand that the local education authority has it in mind to provide accommodation for an additional form of entry at all four schools as the number of pupils rises but the education authority has yet to make a formal proposal to my Department.

My hon. Friend asked about minor works. I agree with him on the importance of its minor works allocation to a local education authority. There is a great deal that can be done to improve older schools by means of minor works jobs. For 1964–65 we have been able to give an allocation of about £370,000 to Kent for minor works, and that is the fifth largest programme in the country, only London, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Essex having larger minor works programmes.

My hon. Friend then turned to further education. He will appreciate that I cannot this afternoon comment in detail on the changes in its arrangements for technical education which Kent is considering. No firm plan has yet been agreed by the authority. Although there was a paper considered earlier in the year by the further education sub-committee which seems to have been taken by some people to represent an agreed proposal, it is, I understand, nothing of the kind. The position is that this particular plan was accepted, as my hon. Friend said, only as a basis for discussion.

My Department will be very willing to give any help which is required. Already, a meeting has taken place in the Department with officials of the authority. Our preliminary observations on their plan are, I understand, to be considered by the authority at a meeting in October. At the end of the day, any proposal from Kent to amend its approved scheme of further education will, of course, require the approval of my right hon. and learned Friend.

My hon. Friend raised a number of points which we shall certainly bear in mind. I agree with him that it is important to see that there are adequate opportunities for all young people who want to take O- and A-level courses. It is true that some courses in O- and A-level subjects are not available in the schools, so that while the great majority of children will take their G.C.E. courses in the schools, it will undoubtedly be the case for borne time that children will wish to pursue G.C.E. courses in further education colleges.

My hon. Friend discussed the merits of concentrating certain courses at certain colleges. It is sensible, of course, to have some concentration of staff and equipment, and one wishes to have as economical and efficient a deployment of resources as possible, but there is a limit to which the creation of colleges specialising in just one area of study is desirable. Where one has what is called, in the ghastly jargon, a mono-technic college, this clearly means that the students have to travel further and they may be denied the advantage of mixing with students who are pursuing other kinds of courses. There is also advantage in having a number of disciplines interacting on one another.

My hon. Friend referred to the achievements in recent years in technical education. Since the publication of the 1957 White Paper, there has been something of a revolution in the provision of technical education in this country. The number of full-time students in grant-aided colleges of one kind and another rose from 56,500 in 1955–56 to 140,700 in 1962–63, and the number of part-time day students increased from 390,500 to 601,500. These figures represent a great expansion of opportunity and a great enrichment of the nation's skills.

At the end of a Parliament in which there has been much interest in the advance of technology and technical education, this is by any standard a fine record, and these achievements provide a sturdy base upon which the Government will build when we return in the autumn.