I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a bill to register certain sections of the travel trade and to introduce a code of conduct for the travel trade.

Happenings in the travel trade have occupied the attention of hon. Members on both sides of the House during the past few years. Indeed, as far back as 30th May, 1962, I was in a similar position as I am today. Great changes have taken place during that period in this rapidly growing industry since the then chairman of the Association of British Travel Agents talked of complaints in the trade as being capable of being counted on the fingers of one hand. That ostrich-like attitude was followed by a number of failures in the travel trade. and bodies like Fourways, Fiesta, Spain Only, Rentavilla and others became national names throughout the country.

Although useful ambulance work to save those ruined holidays by the Association of British Travel Agents, Hotel-plan and others was carried out, many people lost not only their holidays but vast sums of money as well. Throughout this period, the Board of Trade has had to stand almost helplessly by and do little or nothing for those unfortunate people.

The attitude and the procedure appear to be to leave the travel trade to work out its own destiny. The two main organizations—the Association which I have already mentioned and the Travel Trade Association, with members involved in the trade failures to which I have referred—have been unable to clear up the situation that exists.

In presenting a Motion of this nature, there is not time to go more fully into the past and, in pressing for this Measure, I want to look at the position as it exists today and to convince hon. Members on both sides that legislation is even more necessary than ever. So much is the present uneasiness reflected in the travel trade and throughout the community that an organisation similar to the A.A. and R.A.C. has bean set up to give safeguards to holidaymakers which the travel trade has up to this stage failed to give.

In dealing with this rapidly growing industry, the House cannot fail but to be influenced by happenings in other sections of trade and commerce. The insurance liquidations have shown the effect on the public mind of failures in that field, which spring very much from the same causes as the failures in the travel industry. The collapse of Davis Investments, with its effect on Davis Travel, is probably the most recent example that one can give of this situation. At this important time of the year, it has set many people wondering about the security of their holiday arrangements.

It is true, and in fairness it is necessary to say, that Davis Travel responsibilities have been taken over by another firm, but those of us who have followed the happenings in this trade know that a great deal of unhappiness still remains.

We are not alone in seeking this form of registration or licensing. Many European countries have already introduced such a system and found it to be of benefit. At the moment, the Dutch Government are spending over £30,000 to probe into the Dutch travel trade. Our own Board of Trade has decided to await the outcome of the travel trade's own efforts, and the Association of British Travel Agents has introduced what it has termed "Operation Stabiliser". Operating for the last 18 months, it has certainly blocked the entry into the trade of many intending agents, but, in the process, it has raised protests about the closed shop attitude in the trade.

From complaints which have reached me, those seem to be justifiable in themselves. Great delays have taken place which appear to indicate that Operation Stabiliser at best is a clumsy device and at the worst is giving to the trade a system of licensing which it pretends to oppose but which it is actually carrying out. In fact, though claiming to be against the licensing of the trade, the appeal court of A.B.T.A. for entry into the trade is operating in this way. Appeals are heard in secret, with no Press allowed in. Under its regulations, A.B.T.A. travel agents and tour operators are allowed to trade only with each other. I have noticed the argument put forward in travel trade publications that the time is not opportune and that the travel trade can ill afford at this time to come under parliamentary scrutiny. I feel that we are entitled to ask why not. Public money is at stake, and we ought to be demanding that protection be afforded, because some of the journals which are complaining about the trade being put under public and Parliamentary scrutiny go on to say in some of their other columns: "Unwelcome as the facts may be, 1966 has seen an increase in complaints from holiday-makers."

I notice that Press reports, even this early in the season, following the glossy brochures and mass Press advertising, are starting to talk of worried tour operators moving to cut losses. Already firms are beginning to talk about load switching, which is the transfer of holiday arrangements from one firm to another. In itself, that is not necessarily a bad thing, but on being informed of those changes, many people who have paid deposits to the travel trade do not wish to go on the altered holidays, and many of them have been losing deposits in the past on that account. Too many travel agents and tour operators regard the complaints which they receive as frivolous. However, it is not frivolous for great numbers of families throughout the country who have lost their whole savings spent on holidays. I know from my own experience in this matter how long it takes for complaints to be dealt with. I raised a number of complaints with the Board of Trade recently which started back in the middle of October and which now are still being dealt with and investigated.

Even in the short time at my disposal, I feel that the need for this type of legislation has been demonstrated. I trust that the House will agree to the Motion and allow the Bill to go forward to a Second Reading.

rose—

Does the hon. Gentleman wish to oppose?

Mr. Speaker, it has become somewhat usual these days to allow a Ten-Minute Rule Bill to go through without opposition. However, there are two reasons why I oppose this Bill. The first is that last night, on television, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) indicated to the country that, because a Ten-Minute Rule Bill of his on coursing was allowed to go through unopposed yesterday, that was to be taken as acceptance by the House. That in itself would seem to justify my line this morning. If it is of any consolation to the hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Milne), I once had a Ten-Minute Rule Bill which happened to come forward on a big occasion when my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexley (Mr. Heath) was due to make an important speech on the Common Market. I had my Bill and, unhappily, my right hon. Friend had to wait, because it was opposed by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot).

I oppose this Bill rather reluctantly because, as the hon. Gentleman knows, I have a private interest in the matter. Nevertheless, I hope that the House will recognise that, having a financial and private interest, I know something about the business to which the hon. Gentleman has been referring for a long time and has again referred to today. He himself indicated that he has been interested since 1962. The fact that he has seen a great improvement in the period since 1962 ought really to encourage him to get away from the subject now. He has flogged the travel industry to death, with a good deal of exaggeration, to which he has added this morning.

It is not true as he said that, nowadays, many people lose a lot of their savings because of disastrous holiday arrangements. These things have been put right by the travel industry, and I am very glad that they have been put right.

What the hon. Gentleman wants is Government registration and Government control, and that is in line with what hon. Members opposite want in respect of a great many free enterprise activities. The truth is that the Association of British Travel Agents and the Travel Trade Association have got together in recent years and done the very things which the hon. Gentleman wants. Those two associations represent the majority of agencies, and they have registered their members. In addition, they have created a rescue fund to which every member travel agent contributes. That fund now stands at something like £100,000. The claim on it last year was £200 or £300, which indicates to the hon. Gentleman the limited difficulties that arise. They are so minute as almost now to be non-existent. The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, but his right hon. Friend the Minister of State to the Board of Trade answered a recent Adjournment debate and accepted that such complaints had become less and less and that the travel trade had provided this safety net for members of the public.

A.B.T.A. also lays down standards. Every agency which is a member of the Association of British Travel Agents has to provide accounts and has to produce them each year in order to prove to the association that it has stability. Tour operators are governed on safety by Government regulations. The nationalised airlines, quite apart from the private airlines, can check on the financial stability of operators who charter their aircraft. The whole tour operation field is governed by international air transport regulations. All these are safeguards. Some of the trouble in the past and some of that which the hon. Gentleman quoted has been caused by foreign operators and by foreign companies in this country. He knows that perfectly well. However, even they are having great difficulty today, if sub-standard, because of the power of the Association and because of its increased membership. This is all to the good.

The hon. Gentleman really cannot have it both ways. He cannot ask for registration, and then complain, as he did this morning, that there is a closed shop. The closed shop would be even greater if we had Government regulations. What the hon. Gentleman is really doing is having a crack at free enterprise. He is engaged in pinpricking protestations.

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman about this business. It started after the war as a new industry, with no basis. It had to compete with the State through the nationalised airlines, British Railways, and so on. It has helped to make tourism what it is in this country. It has helped to make it a top currency earner. For although we send many people abroad, many people come to this country and spend foreign currency here.

Free enterprise pioneered cheap charter travel; it pioneered air car travel, and it is now busy pioneering hovercraft travel. It saves the carrying companies of this country, including the nationalised carrying companies, millions of pounds a year in promotion costs and in ticket offices, and if the hon. Gentleman disagrees with that it proves that he does not know what he is talking about in presenting this Bill. The hon. Member says these are strong words. They are, because this is a business which I happen to know.

This business has taken a great many risks, and in so far as it has put its house in order, I hope, at the beginning of the holiday season, that the people of this country will have confidence that they can enjoy their holidays. Only one thing is stopping them from doing that and it is not the trade itself. It is the hon. Gentleman's Government, because in so far as the Government have cut the travel allowance to £50, they have made it difficult for the travel industry to keep up the standards that it is seeking to provide. Indeed, the Government are creating a situation in which the very risks to which the hon. Gentleman has referred will be increased, and I therefore oppose the Bill.

Since a Division has been claimed, I have to declare that the proceedings stand deferred. The Order of the House of 14th December provides that the Question may be put before the Adjournment of the House is moved at the end of business tonight, whenever that may be.

On a point of order. Mr. Speaker. Just before midnight last night I was on my feet speaking to an Order placed by the Government arising out of the prices and incomes legislation. It was a debate during which there had been formidable criticism of the Government's judgment on this important matter. At that time an hon. Member called for a Count. The Count was, of course, quite in order, but after the Count was called one of the Government Whips ran down the Chamber telling hon. Members to keep out.

Order. The hon. Member cannot raise his point of order at this stage. Perhaps he may have an opportunity to do so later.

Further to that point of order. I want to raise a point of order on the legislation that we pass at the beginning of every Session, that Members shall not be impeded on their way to Parliament. I submit to you that on this matter Members were on their way to the Chamber—

Order. The hon. Member will have an opportunity of raising this later.

rose—

Order.

On another point of order—

Order. I have ruled that I shall deal with the point of order at a later stage in this morning's business.

Further to that point of order. As we are now working to a new procedure, would you tell the House at which point it would be appropriate to raise this point of order?

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. This is a new procedure, and I have been taking advice while the point was being raised. I understand that it ought to be raised at half-past Three this afternoon.

I beg to move,

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Ministry of Aviation (Dissolution) Order 1967 be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 17th January.

This is an important morning for the House of Commons. We are breaking new ground by being here at this time. When we have been here before at 10 o'clock, the House has had a distinctly jaded look, having sat up throughout the preceding night. What a contrast there is this morning! Hon. Members are here, lively and alert, and no doubt we are going to have a very good debate.

I have some reservations about being here this morning, or at least about being here for this debate at this time, as my Department is affected by two debates on the Consolidated Fund Bill this afternoon and this evening, and perhaps tomorrow morning, and I might find myself seeking to catch the eye of the Chair 14 or 15 hours from now.

It appears that right up to the very end my Ministry is still attracting its fair amount of comment and criticism. It is not going out with a whimper. In view of the subject which has been chosen for the Adjournment debate on Friday next, it could be said that we are going out with a sonic bang.

I am moving this draft Order with enthusiasm. I have seen the Ministry from the inside for 18 months. I have been to the larger research establishments. I have had a very close contact with the aircraft industry, and I am satisfied beyond any doubt that the new organisation within the Ministry of Technology offers the best opportunity for our work to succeed.

I think it is a pity that the advice given by a former Minister, Mr. Amery, some years ago that the Ministry of Aviation should be expanded into a Ministry of Science was not accepted at that time. It was left to this Administration to give the Ministry of Aviation a new sense of purpose and direction.

Of course, this occasion is tinged with some regret. We are talking about a Ministry with a considerable history. It grew out of the Ministry of Supply set up in 1939, and the Ministry of Aircraft Production set up a year following that. It has had its great achievements. Of course, it has made its mistakes, but if I might make this last defence for the ugly duckling among the swans of Whitehall, it is much easier to make mistakes in a fast-moving technological environment than in some other placid pools.

This Ministry has been in the centre of political controversy. Some of these political storms have tended to obscure the peaks of achievement scaled by the men in the Ministry. The scientists and technologists in our establishments have been breaking new frontiers, and the combined efforts of the Ministry have helped Britain to be in the forefront of aviation progress. The Ministry has helped to develop great aircraft in the VC.10, the BAC.111 and the Trident, and it has procured some very fine aircraft for the Royal Air Force. In recent years it has helped industry to achieve a very fine performance in the export field, and I am particularly glad that last year exports totalled more than £200 million. This is a very fine achievement, and all those in the industry deserve credit for it, but my Ministry has played some part in it and we have been glad to have given assistance.

Before we finally disappear, I want to pay a tribute to all those in the Ministry who have contributed to these and past successes. I could spend a long time describing the good work of the Ministry, but I want now to put a finger on its fundamental weakness, and it is this, that in pursuing its sponsorship of the aviation industry it has failed to give top priority to commercial objectives and to its wider responsibilities to the economy as a whole. The Ministry of Aviation has been spending £650 million a year; of this, £550 million in expenditure in industry. Much of this total expenditure has been in original research and development, and the brutal truth is that not enough of the value of this has been flowing into industry generally.

Within the Ministry of Technology this vast purchasing power will now be wed for the wider application of the new technologies. In short, there will be more fall-out. In particular, the research establishments will be more closely associated with research which can be valuable to British Engineering generally, and will help our firms, not only in the aircraft and electronics industries, to utilise new techniques and functions. Original research in defence will become more available, as far as security allows, to firms not normally directly involved in meeting defence needs.

All this opens up a most exciting prospect, but the inspiration of this new opportunity will not detract from the most important task we shall still have for acting as the procurement agency for the Ministry of Defence. When I wear my new hat as Minister of State I shall continue to take special responsibility, under my right hon. Friend, for defence procurement functions. There will continue to be the closest possible contact with the Ministry of Defence.

For the time being my senior staff and I will be remaining in the Ministry of Defence building so as to enable these close ties to be maintained. It will be our objective to obtain what the Ministry of Defence requires at the most efficient price and within the time scale that the customer expects. Wherever possible, we hope that specifications will be drawn to enable a civil application also to be achieved. The Ministry of Technology will continue to have the Ministry of Aviation's responsibilities for assisting military exports. Wherever possible, Ministry of Defence specifications again, will be drawn with a view to achieving exports for the products developed by British industry.

The Ministry of Defence itself is very much alive to this need, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has emphasised, in connection with the Anglo-French VG aircraft, that we hope that if minor amendments can be made which will help to widen the market for this aeroplane these amendments will be incorporated in the plan.

If the House approves the draft Order, the Ministry of Technology will take over sponsorship of the aircraft industry. We believe that this industry has an important part to play. The industry now knows that it will not be spoonfed. In civil aircraft development we must be mindful of the need to secure an adequate return on the taxpayers' investment. New projects will be judged by strict criteria. We will take into account all the factors of import saving and export potential, as well as the fall-out of new developments.

There is every hope that we can establish realistic collaborative projects with Europe and thus secure a basic market among our European allies which will provide commercial opportunities for our industry in this field. It will be the task of the Ministry of Technology to help to secure this opportunity for the aircraft industry.

At present the Ministry of Technology has 6,000 staff, of whom 5,000 are non-industrial and 1,000 industrial. The Ministry of Aviation has about 31,000 staff, of whom 19,000 are non-industrial and 12,000 industrial. Included in the 31,000 there are 18,000 at the eight research and development establishments. All these staff will now join the Ministry of Technology. The combined Ministry will have about 37,000—

My particular interest is that I have the Royal Radar Establishment in my constituency, at Malvern. Where are the employees of that establishment included? Are they in the 19,000? Where will they go?

The employees of the R.R.E. are included in the 18.000 at the eight research and development establishments, in which the R.R.E. is included. All this staff will become part of the responsibility of the Ministry of Technology.

The figure that the Minister gave presumably includes those who have already gone to the Board of Trade, so the total figure would probably be nearer 40,000 than the figure he gave.

Yes. The Ministry has already lost responsibility for supervising the regulations governing civil airlines. That has already gone to the Board of Trade. I cannot quote off the cuff the exact number of staff involved in this transfer.

The combined Ministry will have about 37,000, staff and will, therefore, be among the five largest Ministries in and around Whitehall. From the outset all these staff will be treated together with unified seniority lists and promotion opportunities. I am confident that the men and women who make up the Ministry of Aviation will welcome the change that this merger gives them and the opportunity for services that it provides.

The phoenix of the Ministry of Aviation may die on 15th February but it will fly again with renewed strength and vigour within the new Ministry of Technology. I commend the draft Order to the House.

In opening, the Minister referred to our innovation this morning, and welcomed the fact that instead of being jaded at this hour of the morning we were fresh and vigorous. I agree with him. I only hope that he and I and all other hon. Members—and you, Mr. Speaker—will be equally fresh and vigorous this time tomorrow morning. We have a lot of business ahead of us. I am also somewhat surprised that so many hon. Members opposite who urged upon us these morning sittings, and expressed the view that it was wrong for hon. Members to have other work to do in the morning, should evidently themselves be indulging in a hard day's work elsewhere. It is a somewhat disappointing start from that point of view.

We are dealing with a most important question. It is not a minor affair but a major one. The organisation which the House is being asked to set up today will be responsible each year for the spending of huge sums of public money, measured in hundreds of millions of pounds. The effectiveness with which that money is spent, both scientifically and industrially, will have a great bearing on the future technological capability of this country and our political potency and material prosperity.

Apart from the importance of this section of the Government machine, it has always seemed to me that Parliament has too few occasions on which to examine the organisation and methods of the Executive. We feel that Parliament should take advantage of the opportunity provided by this change to probe deeply into the nature of the change and its purposes. From this side, at least, we shall have many comments to make and many questions to ask. It is only fair to warn the House that we feel that this may take a considerable time—probably longer than we have available to us this morning.

I congratulate the Minister on his appointment. At the same time, I sympathise with him on the somewhat ironical position in which he finds himself, for his maiden Ministerial speech is also his own funeral oration. Politically—and I stress "politically"—he seems to be suffering the fate of the drone. He told us that he goes willingly and gladly to the consummation of his fate. I had better not pursue this analogy too far; one would hate to think of the Prime Minister in the rôle of the queen bee.

I hope that in his new appointment the Minister will maintain his enthusiasm for aviation. He talked about different hats. I notice with interest that he and I are wearing Concord ties. I hope that this is a good augury; although I wonder why his tie is the blue version while mine is the red one?

I must make it clear to the House that because of the antecedents of this Order—what we regard as the unnecessary delays and incompetences which have led up to it—we do not welcome it. But before I come to the substance of the reasons for our objections, I wish to add my tribute to that of the Minister to the Ministry of Aviation and all those who have worked in it since the then Conservative Government established it about 11 years ago. I do not bid the Ministry of Aviation farewell because in spite of our doubts about the Order—because of how it has been arrived at and so on—we may in the end find that there is no need to say farewell to it because although it will be under a different name, its life will continue.

The bringing forward of this Order at this time represents yet another breach of faith on the part of the Prime Minister, who said in reply to a direct question from me about the timing of this change:

"As to implementation of the Plowden Report and decisions consequent upon that, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation will have time while he is still within hi; Department to deal with that question."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 16th June, 1966; Vol. 729, c. 1662.]

I urge hon. Members to note the words "will have time", in reference to my question about the timing of this change. By no stretch of the imagination can anybody claim that there has yet been implementation of the major Plowden proposals. We had vague and woolly-phrased declarations of intent before Christmas about the future structure of the industry, but we know that the discussions and negotiations are far from finality, let alone implementation.

It may be argued, if we accept that the Government are determined to put through this change, that it is better that it should be put through quickly, even before Plowden is implemented. However, this does not alter the fact that, on this matter, the Prime Minister promised one thing and is doing the opposite. Maybe this is becoming such an obsessional disease with him that his name will be left behind in the English language like the names, for example, of Boycott and Spooner, so that we will be able to give moral guidance to our grandchildren by telling them not to do "a Wilson".

My hon. Friends and I see nothing sacred in having for all time a separate Ministry for aviation. However, we believe that the timing of this change has been extremely badly arranged, that the way in which it has been timed during the last year has inevitably caused distraction to Ministers and officials who needed to take extremely urgent decisions and that it has, therefore, caused delay over very important matters. We therefore feel that the operation up to this stage has been put through with incredible ineptitude, for which we primarily blame the Prime Minister.

It seems to us that the distraction and delay which have inevitably been caused by an administrative upheaval of this kind would have been worth while only had the change been part of a really radical reform. But instead of a radical reform, all that we have had so far is the Prime Minister imitating the grand old Duke of York and marching his men up Whitehall and down again. We have had extraordinarily ponderous elephantine administrative manoeuvres merely to reach the present position.

Get on with it.

The hon. Gentleman tells me to get on with it. I tell the Government to get out into the industry, talk to the people who have been affected by these decisions and then to see whether they agree with what I am saying.

I told the right hon. Gentleman to get on with it because I have heard him on at least five occasions leading us up the hill and then down again in respect of what he would describe as "Wilsonian heights".

I repeat that the views I am expressing are strongly held by those affected at all levels throughout the country. It does no harm to make these views clear in the House. It is one of our tasks to air such views.

The right hon. Gentleman is correct in saying that some people in the industry agree with the views he is expressing. However, that is by no means universally the case. I certainly know of leaders in the industry—those with whom I have been in contact—who have not gone on record as being violently opposed to these changes in the terms being used by the right hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood me. I am at present expressing the strong feelings that are felt throughout the industry about the delay that has taken place, and I have been describing the elephantine administrative manoeuvres that have been required to reach this position, regardless of the basic merits or otherwise of the change. When the Prime Minister announced in the House last June his basic decision to abolish the Ministry of Aviation, he broke one of the simplest rules of good management. He announced his decision to abolish the Ministry without first having formed a clear opinion of what he wanted to put in its place. That has caused the delay and criticism to which I referred.

Regardless of the basic merits of whether or not the change is a good one, the way in which it has been done has caused a great deal of criticism and considerable suspicion about its outcome. The way in which the Prime Minister tackled this whole business has resulted in five months of indecision, accompanied by one of the classic battles in Whitehall's corridors of power—and the real problems of the industry got pushed into second place.

What have we got if this Order goes through? We have got, as the Minister made clear in his opening remarks, a Department called the Ministry of Technology in which the old Ministry of Aviation element will be far the biggest and most powerful part. But, if this is what was wanted, we could have got there quite simply and quickly. That is the substance of the first part of my criticism. All that the Prime Minister had to do in November, 1964 was to change the name of the Ministry of Aviation and add some new functions to it. The end product would have been the same. It could have been just what we are getting now.

Instead of that quick, simple and tidy process, which would not have caused delay, we have had the most extraordinary convolutions and arguments spread over two-and-a-quarter years. Parliamentary time and public money have been wasted in setting up a new Ministry of Technology with new Ministers, new officials and new offices. Now more Parliamentary time and public money are being wasted in abolishing the old Ministry and arranging for it to merge with—or, as I think more likely, to take over—the new one.

I wonder if my right hon. Friend would consider delivering these forceful arguments rather more slowly so that they can be assimilated by hon. Members on this side of the House and in the optimistic hope that one or two Socialists will come into the Chamber to listen to them?

I shall bear that in mind because I want to be audible and understandable to hon. Members who are present.

One thing that this proves clearly is that, whatever else the Prime Minister is, he is not good top management material. He seems to have the instincts and qualities of one of those company promoters who shift assets from one shell company to another.

One question that the House should ask before allowing the Government to have this Order is, how does the change marry with the recommendations of the Plowden Committee? The Plowden Committee, after all, was set up by this Government to advise on the future of the industry and its relation to the Government.

I was surprised that in moving the approval of this Order the Minister had nothing to say about this. The proposal before us does not match the Plowden Committee recommendations at all. The Plowden Committee recommended certainly that the Government should undertake an early review of the future of the Ministry of Aviation but it said in paragraph 501 of its Report:

"The main purpose of any change in the arrangements would be to foster a more direct relationship on military aircraft procurement between the Service Departments and the industry."

That, the Committee said, would be the main purpose of any change, but the setup with which we are being presented this morning completely rejects that view. It might he right to reject that view, but when we have had an inquiry such as the Plowden Committee inquiry and we have turned away from one of its most important expressions of opinion, the reasons for that rejection should be explained and closely argued in this House.

The right hon. Gentleman would be more fair if, when drawing attention to paragraph 501, he also read out the drawbacks against the suggested course of action listed in paragraph 502.

Certainly I admit that the Report drew attention to drawbacks, but I did not want to quote too lengthily. As the hon. Member has mentioned paragraph 502, one should also refer to paragraph 503 where the Committee indicated the sort of possible compromise which certainly does not marry with what is being put before us this morning. I think that I am justified in saying that in the proposals that the Government are putting to us, they are departing from the views of the Plowden Committee, and we ought to know, if this is right—it may be right—the reasons for rejecting the advice of the Committee which the Government set up specially to advise them on this matter.

Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that we are limited for time this morning and that a large number of his hon. Friends wish to participate in this debate for constituency and other reasons? We have to finish at 12.30 p.m. and if my right hon. Friend goes on at this pace he will still be occupying the Floor at 11.30 p.m.

I am receiving some conflicting advice from my hon. Friends. I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) that I have no wish to do anything but to put the points which we on this side of the House believe are important and which need to be considered.

The second theme running through the Plowden Committee Report and relevant to this question, was the need for closer and deeper consultation in decision-taking between the Government and the industry. Yet the Prime Minister admitted openly when announcing this decision last June that the industry had not been consulted at all. What is the purpose of behaving and governing like that? All the time the industry, which had not been consulted, had worked out alternative proposals after careful thought and based on great experience. Surely it would have been not only courteous and a matter of good will to the industry but also wise in the national interest that those proposals should have been considered by Ministers before the apparently irrevocable basic decision was taken and announced.

The third dominant theme in the Plowden Committee Report was the need to relieve the aircraft industry of much of the detailed control imposed on it by the Ministry of Aviation. "Getting bureaucracy off the backs of industry" is the way in which some members of the Plowden Committee have described it in conversation. Before passing this Order the House should ask how the proposed change will bring this about, how it will help to get bureaucracy off the backs of the industry.

This seems to require two main things: first, a change of method in evaluating projects, estimating costs, defining operational requirements, developing modern techniques of cost and technical management and modern types of contracts. Does what is proposed mean that all would go on as before? We do not believe that this Order should go through without the Government dealing with some of these questions which are absolutely basic to the effective expenditure of the money—hundreds of millions of pounds a year—to which the Minister referred.

Secondly, and with all respect and admiration for the merits of civil servants individually, getting bureaucracy off the backs of the industry—if it means anything at all—must surely mean having fewer civil servants interfering with it. The Minister told us how many civil servants there are at present in the Ministry of Aviation who are to be transferred to the Ministry of Technology. He told us that all of them are to be transferred, but what are the projected numbers for one, two and three years ahead? What reductions are planned? In what categories are those reductions to be made? Are reductions in some categories to be offset, as they might well properly be, by increases in other categories? If this main theme of the Plowden Committee is to be achieved, reductions in total there must be.

At the moment of introduction of this new system of Government organisation we should have been told what the Government have learned from the further study recommended by the Plowden Committee of American and French methods in this field. What were the results of that study? Are those lessons to be applied, and how does this change affect that issue? What is to be the rôle of the great research stations about which my hon. Friends are so naturally concerned? Are they to continue at more or less the same size? If so, does that mean that their work will be diversified? If that is so, there are many people of great scientific experience who have doubts about the wisdom of that. Or are they to be reduced to smaller size; and, if so, how much?

These are by no means the only question which should be answered. We should be told, for example, how the new organisation affects the management of our space programme. It must be notorious by now that the division of responsibility which exists within the Government for the management of space is proving, as each month passes, to be more and more unsatisfactory and more and more in need of unification. Surely this is the moment to put it right, when Government organisation of these matters is being changed. But is it to be put right? This is one of the important functions which go with the Ministry of Aviation, and we have heard nothing about it.

Then there is a matter of great concern to all of us as individual Members of Parliament. That is the effect of the change on the subject of Parliamentary Questions. Hitherto we have had a Ministry of Aviation. We knew that Questions for that Ministry came on on one day, and we knew that on that day, when the Minister of Aviation was top of the list, we could get our Questions dealt with. But now it seems to be already extremely unsatisfactory. It is now extremely difficult to get Questions down about those functions of the Ministry which have gone off to the Board of Trade. They are swamped in a large number of other subjects and are clearly being dealt with by Ministers—I do not blame them for this—who have so many other interests that they are much less versed in and much less on top of the aviation job than they should be or were under the previous set-up.

There is another aspect concerning Parliamentary Questions which we should get clear as we make this change. We should ask for a clear definition of the division of responsibility between the Secretary of State for Defence and the Minister of Technology with the functions that he will be assuming if the Order goes through. Many hon. Members have found it difficult to understand, and most unsatisfactory, the way Questions relating to the production of military aircraft have been shifted backwards and forwards—transferred between—the old Ministry of Aviation and the Ministry of Defence. There is a difficult borderline here, but it has struck a number of hon. Members—not merely hon. Members on this side of the House either—that this shuffling backwards and forwards was done more often for political convenience than for any other reason. This situation should be redefined at this moment.

Then there is something we want to know about the position of the Minister himself. We understand that he is to become a Minister of State in the new Department. We would like to know more about his real relationship to the Secretary of State for Defence and his real status in the Government. Here, perhaps, his salary is a sign to the House of what that status is to be. We know what it is at present. We realise that this could be explained by the operation, however misguided, of the incomes policy. As a Minister of State in the Ministry of Technology, he could either be a Grade I Minister, as we understand it, with a salary of £7,625 per annum, or he could be a Grade II Minister of State at what we believe is his present salary of £5,625. When all questions of the incomes policy are put on one side and are at an end, in which category is the Minister of State, as he is to become, to be? In view of his heavy responsibilities, and in view of the importance of the function, we believe that he should be—

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I wonder if you could help hon. Members on this subject. There are 11 of us intending to participate in this debate—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hoping to."]—and the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) has already been on his feet for half an hour. Could you appeal to him to curtail the length of his speech?

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This speech has now been going on for nearly half an hour. This is obviously an exercise for Front Bench participants. Many of us are of the opinion that morning sittings are not designed and have net been created to give Front Bench speakers opportunities of this sort. Is it possible for you to say whether you w ill consult Mr. Speaker and discuss this matter with him, with a view to his perhaps issuing an interpretation of the recommendations which have been made, so that there can be some guidance for Front Bench marathon athletes of this sort?

Further to the original point of order raised by the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not a fact that the Order has to terminate in debate at 12.30 in order to leave half an hour for the Adjournment?

No.

Would you rule, then, on the interpretation, Mr. Deputy Speaker? Is it one o'clock?

Of course, it does not.

In reply to that interruption—of course it does not, only if the Government give further time. Will it be extended?

If the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) is addressing me on a point of order, it would be more convenient if he continued to put the point of order to me.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, could you appeal to the respective Front Benches, having regard to the fact that there are 11 Members on this side of the House seeking to catch your eye, to curtail their speeches to a reasonable length? My right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) has now been on his feet for 33 minutes.

A good speech, too.

It may be a very good speech, but there are a great number of other hon. Members who can make very good speeches, particularly on constituency matters. Is it not a recommendation for morning sittings that Front Bench speeches should be reasonably short?

In reply to those three points of order, the House will be aware that no limitation has been placed by the House on speeches during morning sittings any more than during any other sittings of the House. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) will have heard the observations which have been made to me on these points of order.

In reply to the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson), I will certainly bring what has been said to the notice of Mr. Speaker. With regard to the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) the debate will continue until half-past twelve, when we shall proceed to the Adjournment.

rose—

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I ask your advice. Is it not correct that the pressure for morning sittings came from members of the Labour Party? Pressure mounted to such an extent that we are having this debate this morning. Is it not, therefore, extraordinary that the benches on this side of the House should be filled while there are only seven members of the Labour Party present?

It is not in order during the debate on this Statutory Instrument to discuss the arrangements which were made by the House for morning sittings.

Further to that point of order. Is not the point I have made connected with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) about the length of the speech being made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr)? It is a very good speech and a very important speech, because my right hon. Friend is raising some points which are very important to the aviation industry—

It is the Opposition who are complaining.

Behave yourself.

and he is doing so very ably. It is surely not beholden upon hon. Members opposite—the five or six, or perhaps the seven, who are here—to complain.

It is not in order during this debate to consider whether it is a good thing to have morning sittings or not. That is something that has been decided by the House. All I can indicate to the House are the circumstances in which the debate should take place.

If I have been on my feet for about 33 minutes, I can only say that one of the main reasons has been the number of interruptions to which I have given way. Perhaps it was wrong of me to give way, but I was attempting to be courteous to the hon. Members who sought to intervene. Both sides of the House should realise that we are this morning discussing the Government organisation which is to be responsible year by year for the expenditure of—I think this was the figure given by the Minister—£500 million or £600 million of public money. We do not regard this as a matter which can be briefly debated. We do not think that a two-hour debate is adequate for it. If the Government choose to put it on in the morning and that is all we have available, it is not our fault; but we should not be doing our duty if we did not treat it, as I deliberately described it in my opening sentences, as a major subject. That is what we are doing.

I was about to sum up, and this I shall now do. What really matters, and what is urgent for the technological virility and capability of Britain is that Government management of the great lead technology of aerospace should be made more professional and more effective. This goes far deeper than the organisation of Departments. It goes to the very roots of traditional Whitehall methods and to the roots of Treasury control in particular. Let us be honest and above party politics in this and admit that we have not in the past managed these affairs particularly well, and let us admit also that our failures in this field are not to be found or, for that matter, to be cured in terms of party political dogma. They are not due to the incapacity of particular Ministers or officials. They are rooted in the inappropriateness of the Whitehall system itself, a system which was developed in far-off days for entirely different purposes and conditions when problems of Government participation in the selection and control of the advanced technological projects of the modern age were not so much as dreamed of.

In the debate on the Plowden Report exactly a year ago today, I put forward on behalf of the Opposition nine proposals for the modernisation of our management methods in relation to procurement. I did my best to put them on a non-partisan basis, and they were not unkindly received by both sides of the House. We welcome the fact that some progress has been made towards their adoption, but there is still a long way to go.

May we be assured by the right hon. Gentleman, when he winds up either today or on a later occasion when the debate finishes, that the change proposed in this Order will be made the occasion for carrying such reforms forward in a more urgent and radical way? Further, may we be assured that Ministers will look more deeply and with a new mind into the very nature of Departmental responsibility itself? Many people both inside and outside the House who have had some experience of both Government and industry are coming increasingly to think that we shall get the necessary professionalism and continuity of management and the close knitting together in mutual responsibility of Government and industry only if we set up a managerial authority one stage removed from Government itself.

The public expenditure which can be afforded for aero-space development can and must properly be decided only by the Government of the day; but within that limit there is an increasingly strong case for technical policy-making and the programming of major objectives to be put in the hands of new aviation space councils comprising members from the Government, industry and other outside sources and served by independent secretariats providing technical, commercial and financial expertise of the best obtainable quality.

If the Government will make a serious attempt to answer some of the questions I have asked and give us confidence that the Departmental change proposed will be made to mark the beginning of a driving process of Governmental reform and modernisation going to the very roots of Departmental responsibility itself, we shall be glad to see the change go forward with our blessing. But if not, if these questions and points are not to be replied to seriously by the Government, then our worst and original suspicions will be confirmed, suspicions that out of what we believe the Prime Minister started as a piece of political jobbery will be borne nothing but administrative impotence.

I was not happy about the purpose of this Order, and I was a strong opponent in more private gatherings of the proposal to wind up the separate Ministry of Aviation. I do not like the proposal. It may be that this is because my limited experience of Parliament has always been, as it were, under the umbrella of a separate. Ministry and I cannot, therefore, make an objective comparison with the situation as it was before. After listening carefully to what has been said by the Minister and by the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) who, when he got away from the rather heavy political points which, I suppose, he felt he had to make, made some very fair and constructive comments, and after hearing the answers which, I hope, we shall have later this morning, I may feel happier about the proposal than I have up to now.

Those with whom I have contact who have had experience of divided responsibility for this subject, that is, prior to 1959 and the setting up of the separate Ministry, assure me that the division of responsibility had the effect of introducing delay and frustrations which do not augur well for the suggestions being made in this instance. I recognise that this is arguable, and we shall, obviously, have to watch future developments very carefully. We hope that the Minister's optimistic forecast of how it will work will come true.

I particularly welcome the Minister's emphasis on his determination that the future will be used particularly to stress the commercial approach. We have in Britain in the past—responsibility here rests upon both the industry and the Government—missed opportunities which have been open to us in the commercial field, and we shall have to make up for this in the future. My attitude to the specific subject of debate and to all other aerospace questions is determined by my appreciation that the growth of air transport nationally and internationally is proceeding at such a rate that on the passenger side there is a doubling every five years and the freight market is growing even faster. These changes are of such a character that they are not appreciated by many people. I think that this applies particularly to many of the leading people both in the Government and in industry outside aviation, and from this failure spring many of the mistakes we have made in the last two decades.

Trying to be objective, I think it fair to say that there have been mistakes both in the short period when this side has had responsibility for events and, certainly, in the 13 previous years. I think that the main reason is that so many people failed to grasp the rate of growth of air transport. Until one gets that in perspective, so many of the mistakes are made that have led us into the situation where America now undoubtedly holds a commanding position. While those of us who are eager to see our entry into the European Economic Community hope that we shall be able to redress the situation in the years ahead, the gap is now so great that we face an immense task.

I appreciate the eagerness of so many hon. Members to enter the debate and I shall try to be brief, but I shall try at least to answer the right hon. Member for Mitcham in what I thought was his major criticism of the Government, that we were introducing the change before we had implemented most of the recommendations of the Plowden Report. I was brushing up on the Report as the right hon. Member was speaking, and my reading of it leads me to the opposite view, that under the heads of the summary of recommendations at the end of the Report one can pick out item after item where the Government have either taken or are taking steps in line with the Report. Our debate today arises from the recommendation of the Report that the future of the Ministry of Aviation should be looked at.

Another major heading is "International Co-operation". Surely the announcement only a few weeks ago of the successful agreement to go ahead with the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft fits into that category? The agreement is welcomed by the industry and adds to a much happier feeling in it in the past month or two than possibly there has been in the past few years. My impression is that there is a renewed confidence in the industry. As we now know, the Minister is taking his responsibility to the Ministry of Technology, and I am sure that if he has his way that confidence will rapidly grow throughout the whole industry.

Another heading in the Report's summary of recommendations is "Exports", and we have heard the record of the industry there. Steps have been taken and are being taken in regard to civil aircraft. They have not yet matured, but many of us hope that progress will be made this year with the air bus. Aid has been given to specific civil projects, amounting to many millions of £s, which we hope will enable those products to be sold in wider markets.

There is a heading "Light aircraft". We all know of the proposals, which have been widely welcomed on both sides of the industry, for the take-over of the Beagle Aircraft Company, a company which has performed exceptionally well. The aid that we hape will be channelled to it, and possibly the agreement with Sud Aviation, should enable it to meet the very strong competition from America.

Under "Organisation of the Industry", it is true that discussions are still proceeding on the proposals to merge the airframe side of B.A.C. and Hawker-Siddeley and to introduce an element of public ownership. Naturally, such things take time, and I am not surprised that we have not had a final decision. The matter is being discussed with industry and I hope that we can get agreement on it. To complain on the one hand that the proposal to dissolve the Ministry of Aviation was not discussed with industry and then grumble because the Government have not reached finality on the question of organisation seems to me to be wanting it both ways. In proceeding on this matter in the way that they have, the Government are moving in the right direction.

Under nearly all the headings in the recommendations in the Plowden Report, one can point to action that has been or is being taken by the Government, and I therefore think that that part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech was particularly weak.

But when we come to the list of detailed and technical questions he put to the Minister I felt that he was on very strong ground, and that his questions were important and pertinent. I hope that we shall have satisfactory answers. I do not suppose that we shall have them all today, but I hope that we shall have them as time goes on and that we get the sort of answers that will support the optimism which I now have in the aerospace industry.

The right hon. Member asked whether we have looked at the American and French experiences. It is rather interesting to look at the French experience at least. Rather in parallel with our own proposals for the merging of aero-frame companies, such proposals are going ahead apace in France also. It could well be that both countries, recognising the difficulties we have relative to America, are arriving at rather similar conclusions.

I am at one with the right hon. Gentleman in his statement that we obviously need to free the industry from bureaucracy as much as we can. That is a laudable aim with which no one would disagree. But the aviation industry is unique in the amount of money it receives from the taxpayer. Clearly, one cannot hand out something like £500 million per annum to aviation without very strong assurances that it is being used correctly and wisely by those to whom it is passed. I hope that we can develop, on the aeroframe side at least, a mixture of public and private ownership which will get the best from both, and which will enable the initiatives and responsibility which both these sections show to work for the benefit of the aviation industry.

There is one other point which is an encouraging feature of the scene at present, and is undoubtedly linked with the subject under discussion this morning; it is the setting up of the Select Committee on Science and Technology—our first meeting takes place today. Many of us hope that it is possibly a precursor of more specialist committees, and obviously I am thinking of one solely for aerospace questions. That might be optimistic, but there are on the Committee a sufficient number of members with aviation interests to ensure that the aerospace industry is covered in our discussions. I look forward to the development, through the work of that Committee and possibly future committees, of an independent, technical and, certainly on this subject, bipartisan approach which will be of benefit to the nation and the industry.

Finally, I take this opportunity of congratulating my hon. Friend the Minister for his record both in his period as a junior Minister at the Ministry of Aviation and his actions in the short period of his tenure of office as Minister of Aviation. His record is outstanding, and he gained the confidence of the industry. It has come to know that he has the confident that in his new post, as I believe it is to be, as Minister of State at the Ministry of Technology, with responsibility for aviation, we shall have the sort of attitude and encouragement which has been lacking over many years in the past. I am exceptionally confident for the future, despite the unease I had over the proposal to wind up the Ministry. Many of the events over the past few months have completely changed the picture, and I look forward to being a very critical observer of the scene ahead, which I hope will measure up to the forecast of the right hon. Gentleman.

I assure the House that I shall not speak very long. We all, on all sides, would like to wish the Minister well in his new job. It strikes some of us, however, that this has been, so to speak, a reverse takeover bid and that there is little change except that, in the view of many of us on this side, the Ministry of Aviation will be attached to the wrong sponsoring Department. This is an alarming thought after so much time has been given by both the present and the previous Government to the fate of the Ministry of Aviation. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) said, it would have been much easier to have taken over the Ministry of Technology and to put the hon. Gentleman in charge of it.

From the Minister's speech in opening the debate, two themes are clearly dominant in his mind and that of the Minister of Technology. One is that the idea of the possibility of greater aviation sales should be instilled in the Ministry and the other is that in some mysterious way there should be a greater fall-out. I believe that in both these directions—the commercial interest and fall-out—the Government would have been better advised to attach the Ministry to either the Board of Trade or the Ministry of Defence. If we are to pursue the commercial interest, I believe that the Board of Trade would have been a better sponsoring Department. For pursuing the question of fall-out, I am quite convinced that the Ministry of Defence would be the area in which it would be greater.

From my connection with the Ministry of Aviation in the old days, I am convinced that the greatest fall-out comes from the major project and not from tinkering about with minor projects. This is true both in this country and in the United States of America.

The Ministry of Technology is not itself a major Department of State. It is not a Department of great influence of power or a Department with any specific objective except the generally rather vague one of pursuing technological advance. To judge from the Minister's entry into practical economics in various matters, his performance has not been of the highest order. The Ministry of Technology is, therefore, probably the wrong Department, and I am sorry about this.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham has said, the main problem today is to bring the Ministry of Aviation down to size. I am quite certain that we can learn, and should have learned, something from the American and French systems. The Minister would, I think, agree that the great decisions in aviation matters are made not by individual Departments, but by the Cabinet. The Cabinet has to make these decisions because huge sums of money are involved. Looking back, one sees that, whether the decisions which are taken are right or wrong, they are eventually made at Cabinet level.

There is, therefore, a great deal to be said at this stage for the type of organisation, which one certainly sees in the United States and which, I think, we are moving towards in this country, which makes certain that great projects are properly administered. In every department of the Ministry of Aviation, one always saw the problem of the endless escalation of costs. This was not the fault of any one person in particular but was the general fault both of the industry and of the Ministry. I believe that if we could apply the type of management techniques to which my right hon. Friend has referred—the type of techniques which we were in process of applying to major military air projects and which the Americans now apply to things like the S.S.T.—this would be the great area of progress.

The fate of our aircraft industry is today crucial. On the one hand, its exports have been the highest ever, but, on the other hand, no fewer than 1,300 highly-skilled people left the industry last year. The industry is very much at the turning point.

Equally, the problems of the proposed amalgamation are by no means easy. My belief is that this is being done the wrong way round. I am not sure that instead of B.A.C. taking over Hawker-Siddeley, it should not be the other way round. These are matters of decision, and these decisions should be taken by a strong Department rather than a weak and rather airy-fairy Department like the Ministry of Technology.

I should like to ask the Minister this question. We have seen a reorganisation inside the Ministry of Defence. We have seen specialisation, of which I am absolutely in favour, in procurement and one Minister being made responsible for all the goods, services and arms flowing into the Ministry. These are enormous in size. How and where precisely does the Minister stand in relation to the Ministry of Defence today? As I see it, this present proposal makes a further area of discussion between whoever orders military aircraft and the organisation procuring them. This seems to me to be thoroughly bad organisation.

As the Plowden Committee so clearly stated, one thing which should be made absolutely clear is the need for the most direct possible relationship between the biggest sponsor of aircraft, which must remain the Ministry of Defence, and the manufacturer. Under this new arrangement, however, we are to have a system which interposes two Ministers in front of the Minister of Defence when previously there was only one. This must be bad and it must have a bad effect. It is something which needs to be cleared up.

I am sure that the Minister is wished well by the whole House. We have got to wish him well, because the aircraft industry is in such a sad condition. We hope that he will do something to put it right. I believe, however, that the instrument which he is being given is a most difficult one to manage and that, on the whole, this arrangement has been badly done.

We could, I think, agree that the problems covered by the Order are probably as complex and difficult as those faced by any Minister of the Crown in the twentieth century. On this account my hon. Friend the Minister deserves well. As he himself has said, it is easy to make mistakes in a fast-moving technological society. I welcome very much what he said about the future of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. It will bring Farnborough's work far nearer to British engineering in general.

I must, however, tell my hon. Friend, both as a supporter of the Government and as a Member who, since entering the House in 1962, has concerned himself with science and technology matters, that I am profoundly disturbed by what appears to be going on in the world of British aviation. My hon. Friend said that he would have the closest possible contact with the Ministry of Defence, but I hope that in his new rôle in the Ministry of Technology he will consider it his job to probe deeply what is going on in the Ministry of Defence, because frankly it seems to me that what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial nexus has taken over the defence and major technological policies of this Government.

The procurement policies on which decisions are being made between now and March seem to me to be likely to determine our defence, foreign affairs and technological policies for a decade to come. Just as the American order of Minuteman determined the whole American strategy of Counterforce, so I think that Aviation decisions have a great effect on our foreign, defence and technological policies. I must tell him also that, perhaps in a very naive way, the apparent enthusiasm with which he referred to military exports made me feel very sad, and sick.

I wonder if I might ask the hon. Gentleman something?

No. I say that simply because there are many other hon. Members who wish to speak.

Two weeks ago, the Defence Secretary announced an initial agreement on the Anglo-French Variable Geometry aircraft which is to come into service in 1974. This is not the occasion on which to discuss the defence aspects of that. However, the A.F.V.G. is a hugely expensive project, compared with which Sky-bolt, Blue Water and Blue Streak were relatively cheap articles.

The cost of the research and development on the A.F.V.G. is estimated at £200 million, and the unit costs, assuming that 1,000 are required, are reckoned to be;£1·5 to f1¶ million. On another occasion I would argue that these figures are grotesque under-estimates. For what purpose is it intended? East of Suez? I can hardly believe that the Government are making the assumption that Britain will be pursuing roles in the Far East in 1974. It is quite clear that the the decision in favour of the A.F.V.G. stems directly from the supposed future needs of the British aircraft industry. Therefore, the subject is directly relevant to this Order.

Here is the situation which faces the incoming Minister. Many skilled engineers and designers who were engaged in the initial stages of the Concord find that their work is largely completed. In addition, design work on the Jaguar is largely finished, and my guess is that the Government are now face to face with the prospect of design teams breaking up and a consequential brain drain to America unless a vast military order is forthcoming. It may be that this very month the Government will be faced with the proposition that, unless we have a military aircraft industry, we opt out of civil aircraft and a whole range of technologies.

Based on the current state of my knowledge, my view is that the decision to go ahead with the A.F.V.G. is a deeply mistaken judgment. It is up to the Ministry of Technology to do the probing. If I am right, and these decisions come basically not from our long-term defence needs in the 1970s but from the immediate needs of the defence industry, its engineers and designers, it is definitely relevant to this Order and to the duties of the incoming Minister. He should go about his work in an inquisitorial fashion.

It seems to some of us that employees and employers in the defence industry are in precisely the same position as those members of the Trades Union Congress who, in the 1930s, asked for battleships to be built to provide employment to feed wife and kids. The major task of this Ministry may he to bring about a constructive shift in policy. I am very conscious of the needs of those engineers and designers, and so I say to the Minister that his talks on Friday in Paris about the air bus are of crucial importance, and I hope that he will come to some arrangement with Scandinavian Airlines, Lufthansa and Air France on the development of the air bus, because many of our designers and engineers would find that all their talents were fully extended in trying to make a simple, cheap, subsonic air bus. As I shall argue later, markets for it could not be less favourable than the markets for the Anglo-French Variable Geometry aircraft.

If the argument is that the air bus does not provide an exciting challenge to those at the frontiers of aero-space knowledge, then Britain, or better still a European technological community, should become engaged on multi-disciplinary projects such as particle physics engineering or exploration of the seabed and many other matters which we can think of. I would agree with the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) when he talks of the need for a major project which can and does raise possibilities of value to industry and in fallout. A major effort for the exploration of the seabed is the sort of thing which ought to be discussed with the Hornig Committee set up by the President of the United States for co-operation between European and United States technology.

In the meantime, it is the first major and disagreeable duty of the Minister of Technology and of my hon. Friend in particular to have rough, tough, unpleasant scenes with the Ministry of Defence to get it to drop the Anglo-French Variable Geometry aircraft and break the vicious circle whereby we have to build ever more sophisticated aircraft in order to be able to build even more advanced systems in the next generation.

After all, where does this come to a halt, unless one has some kind of a weapons freeze? It is not a question of unilateral disarmament or anything of that kind. We have already reached a situation where no country will risk attacking these islands, in view of our existing defence mechanisms, and no country will ever take liberties with another nation which has Polaris. So I say that this Ministry is intimately bound up with policies of defence and foreign affairs.

Having made that general statement, there are some tasks for next week. The first thing which the Minister has to look at on the question of the A.F.V.G. is third party sales. Some of us cannot believe that the claims made for third party sales are justified. It is argued that for the Anglo-French Variable Geometry aircraft, British needs are between 120 and 150. France's requirement may be between 120 and 150. However, the assumption of a unit cost of £1½ million depends on the production of 1,000 units. It seems to some of us that we are faced with the obligation to sell 700 A.F.V.G. aircraft. But where are our markets for them? Is it argued that Belgium is a potential customer, to whom we have the greatest difficulty in selling the Jaguar? Are we arguing that it is to Germany that we should sell A.F.V.G. aircraft?

Order. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to relate his observations to the content of the Order.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, in his opening speech my hon. Friend himself raised the question of exports. Since Germany has joint funding relations with at least two American aircraft companies, how is it supposed that the Germans will be interested in a substantial order of an overweight Anglo-French Variable Geometry aircraft which—

Order. That may be so, but this Order deals with the transfer of functions and the hon. Gentleman's observations must be related to the proposal to transfer the functions to another Ministry.

In the transfer of functions, the incoming Minister will have to deal with the question of break clauses. Again, the most obvious example is the break clause arrangements for the Anglo-French Variable Geometry aircraft. I relate my argument to this Order by saying that, once we have taken the decision which may be taken in March to go ahead with this kind of order for the A.F.V.G., it affects the industry for which the Minister is responsible.

It is all very well arguing that one can have break clauses. One cannot have break clauses without massive industrial dislocation. Once a decision has been taken, a great deal of momentum gathers. In my view, this is a very serious matter for the Ministry.

Again, there is the Government's claim that we are streets ahead of the United States in variable geometry techniques. That is the kind of ludicrous claim which underlines confidence. If we say that we are ahead of the technology of the United States, how is it that three years before we could do anything the United States had at least 14 F111's swinging their wings over Oklahoma and northern Texas day and night practising variable geometry?

Those are questions of great urgency for this Minister, and perhaps the most urgent question of all concerns Anglo-French relationships. Why is it that they are going ahead with the Mirage 3G and start an agreement with us on A.F.V.G.?

Is it seriously argued that D'Assault would continue the project without a green light from the French Government? For what rôle, in the absence of an east of Suez policy of their own, do the French want on A.F.V.G.? Does De Gaulle, or his successors, want the Germans to purchase the A.F.V.G.? If it is argued, as it has been, that they cannot go ahead with one-engined aircraft such as the Mirage 3G, it is fairly easy to do wing bed testing on one engine and then change to two engines from one.

Discussing this subject is like opening Pandora's box, and a very deep probe will have to take place into it. Yes, Pandora's box. I am sure that it will reveal many of the difficulties which the Governments of modern States have been up against since the Second World War. This situation reflects what is perhaps a quiet change in the aviation policy of the Government, because I understood my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) to say that this Government would not mollycoddle the aircraft industry, and, when he cancelled the TSR2, rightly or wrongly, I was completely behind him. In my view the decision on the A.F.V.G. aircraft is a quiet reversal of Government policy.

The Minister has a duty to the Labour Party, to the Government, and to Britain to make these points clear, because vast expenditure on aircraft will have an effect on all the other policies of the Government, especially in exports, and one can name others, such as science teachers, schools, skill in industry, and so on. It is pathetic that we should have discussions with the Secretary of State for Education and Science about modest help for overseas students. This is miniscule expenditure compared with what we are debating today and the expenditure of the Ministry involved in this Order.

I hope that the Government will give the gravest reconsideration to their important decisions before March, and will instil into their policy a greater ingredient of what I rather modestly call basic Socialist policy, by rethinking the A.F.V.G. concept.

First, I have to declare an interest, as is customary in the House. Those who are connected with either electronics or engineering in any sphere probably have some interest in this subject, because every worth-while firm has contracts with the Ministry of Aviation.

Secondly, it is a rather strange bit of organisation by the Government who have selected such an extremely important debate for this morning sitting, when so many people want to speak. We remember that morning sittings were designed to get us home early. It is rather a strange coincidence that this debate should be held on the same day as a debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill which, by tradition, is not a short debate. I wonder how this strange marriage came about. Many of my hon. Friends wish to speak and make valuable contributions to the debate, but as we are so curtailed this morning I hope that they shall have other opportunities to speak on this vitally important subject.

I thought it a sad reflection on the state of affairs that during the opening speeches there were only five back benchers on the Labour side, after the tremendous demand for these morning sittings, but there were many times that number on our side.

I am sorry not to follow the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell). I want to speak about whether we have got this organisation right. As I said during the debate on the Plowden Report, as did my right hon. Friend, I believe that in this technological age we probably have not got the right organisation. Whitehall is not the right organisation for controlling highly scientific and sophisticated projects of this kind. I believe that in the long run we ought to set up separate corporations or separate organisations for conducting business of this kind. This is bound to take time, and I shall therefore concentrate my remarks on some of the disturbing aspects of the present proposals.

I have worked in the electronic and engineering industry for about 20 years, and for seven years I was a junior defence Minister. One thing that came out quite clearly during my experience was that progress was very much quicker when the customer was brought near to the provider. There were two examples of this up to a few years ago. After the war, the Air Ministry had to go through the Ministry of Supply to get its requirements, and there was this very large buffer state interposed between the operator and the provider. In the Admiralty we had a different system. We did not have to go through a buffer Ministry. We went directly to the supplier, with the result that we got our goods to meet our needs more economically and more quickly. This is one of the basic faults of the present proposals. This is brought out very forcefully in paragraph 499 of the Plowden Report, which seems to have been disregarded, and I hope that when the Minister eventually winds up on some future occasion he will tell the House how he hopes to speed up the system of queries going backwards and forwards when there is this vast buffer state in the middle.

Dealing first with civil aviation, I regret that nobody from the Board of Trade is present to hear this debate. After all, the Board of Trade is to take one-third of the staff, 8,653 people, from the Ministry of Aviation. The other 16,000 are going across to the Ministry of Technology. Presumably the Corporations and the Independent airline operators will frame their requirements to the Board of Trade which will then get in touch with the aircraft companies. The Board of Trade is to be responsible for looking after the export potentialities, so presumably the Royal Air Force attachés in overseas countries, and also the civil air attachés, must now report to the Board of Trade. This is rather muddled and confused, because they will have two bosses, one on whom their promotion will depend and another to whom they will report.

In, the military field we have the Ministry of Defence, and presumably the Minister of State for Equipment will be responsible for these matters. He will report to the Ministry of Technology, and the requirements will then be passed to the firm concerned.

Since this Government came into power, and contrary to what the great majority of the electorate thought, there has been a tremendous cut in the number of aircraft projects. One can think of the P1154, the HS681, and that most promising aircraft that the free world has ever produced, the TSR2, yet there has not been any reduction in staff, in fact rather the reverse as one sees from looking at the figures for the Ministry of Aviation. We have only one advanced military project, the 1127, and outside this field we are dependent on Anglo-French co-operation, on the Jaguar, on helicopters—as we heard recently—and on the Anglo-French Variable Geometry aircraft.

If we have not got a very good organisation for managing and controlling British industry, and a British industry which is far more concentrated than it was a few years ago, is it not even more important that we should have a flexible and fast-reacting organisation when we are concerned not just with our own industry, over which we have considerable power, but with French industry as well?

It is my experience that the French have very strong teams of civil servants, many of whom are trained in technological subjects and who can speak the scientific language of the day. I wonder whether the Ministry has been a little loth to make up its deficiencies. We all acknowledge that, unhappily, our system for recruiting civil servants has not given the priorities which it should have given to people with scientific training, technical backgrounds, and industrial experience. These matters must be put right, and I hope that in due course they will be.

In the interim, however, would it not be wiser to make use of some of the expertise which exists in industry? The Americans take along to their design conferences people from industry. They have never for a moment hesitated to do so. A sort of slightly ivory tower attitude taken in Whitehall suggests that one should not take a person from industry to these conferences because, in some way, he is tarred with the commercial brush. If we want to get this settlement, and to have British units and systems incorporated in these joint projects, it is important that the Minister should take along people who thoroughly understand the systems that are being developed, to a much greater detailed extent than is possible for any civil servant.

We are just starting the Estimates season. How will the Government apportion the defence portion of this large sum of money as between the different Service Ministries? Are we going to see the military portion of research and development, as it concerns defence establishments, reproduced in the Defence Estimates? If it is not, the claim of the Minister of Defence that he will keep the global sums spent on defence down to £2,000 million will be a phoney claim, and there will be a rigging of figures. This problem must be discussed. It should be cleared up before we start the Estimates debates.

Who will supervise the ground environment? The ground control of our civil aircraft generally has risen from and is now co-ordinated with that of our military aircraft. Who will look after this? Again, the development of navigational aids has generally emerged from military navigational aids adapted to civil needs.

Thirdly, who will co-ordinate the activities in space? For week after week, month after month and year after year, we have had no indication from the Government who said that they were devoted to "the white-hot scientific revolution." This is the most important field for the future, and yet we do not know and have never been told who is responsible, and who will co-ordinate activities.

Oh, no.

I am sorry for the only Liberal Member present. I have been on my feet for eleven minutes and I propose to continue.

In introducing the debate, the Minister of State said that he was dedicated to import saving. I only wish that some of his predecessors had been more dedicated to import saving, because we have spent, or have committed ourselves in the last 2¼years to spending 2,000 million dollars on American aircraft. He said that if mistakes had been made they lay in the fact that the Ministry had failed to give sufficient priority to commercial applications. I ask him to revise the general thinking about profits in the aircraft industry. Contracts are being negotiated, but even today they are being negotiated in the aftermath of the Ferranti discussions and debates that took place in the House. If he is to obtain the confidence of the industry, he must realise that if it is to take risks—and risks which cannot be accurately calculated—it must be reasonably rewarded by profits of between 10 per cent. and 20 per cent. This point came out in the Lang Report.

I now pay tribute to the fact that the Minister has not only recruited many new costing officers, but that they seem to be of an excellent calibre and are very competent. But the question of profits is still a dirty word, and the Minister will not get efficiency in the industry unless he can persuade people to take risks and to reward them for doing so. If their profits are unduly high, he might devise some system under which some of the extra profits go back to the Government and the Department. At the moment I am told that they are thinking of 12½ per cent. as the maximum profit. This is not realistic when a firm is developing a sophisticated product in which a tremendous risk is involved.

In this connection, in paragraph 90, the Lang Report said:

"We nonetheless deprecate the idea of a Ministry having a general right to post-cost fixed price contracts."

This practice of post-costing appears to be growing in the Ministry. A fixed price contract is made and it is then reviewed and adjusted, probably downwards. If industry has done its work correctly and has taken a risk, it should get some of the rewards. Unless the Minister works along these lines, he will not get the system into operation and we shall not get the technical strides in the industry—in the thousands of firms involved—that he and the House desires.

If the Minister acts as I suggest he will build up good will. It is a co-operative operation. It can only work with good and close understanding and confidence between the civil servants and the industrial people with whom they are negotiating. I hope that he will give the matter careful thought and will deal with it together with the points that my hon. Friends have raised.

I am concerned about the future of the aircraft industry and the development within our own Ministerial set-up. I am also a willing supporter and admirer of my right hon. Friend, who has undertaken this work for the Government. I would have liked to say something about that this morning, but I am also passionately concerned about the democracy of this House and the rights of back benchers. It is a very sad occasion for me to have to sacrifice my right to talk about the things that I wanted to talk about in aviation, but I want to make one brief comment on the present situation.

The right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) spoke for 40 minutes. I consider this to be a complete abuse of the time of the House.

On a point of order. This is monstrous, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) started the whole series of points of order, which took 10 minutes of my right hon. Friend's time.

The hon. Member is not entitled to accuse another hon. Member of abusing the time of the House.

Withdraw.

I shall not withdraw, because I want to make a further comment on the matter. The right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) recently walked into the Chamber. There is a great danger, under our procedure, that he could be called as a Privy Councillor. It could happen. That was his purpose in walking into the Chamber.

We shall make more progress if the hon. Member confines his speech to the Order dealing with the transfer of functions.

I understand that the Minister would like to reply to the debate at about 20 minutes past 12.

Oh, no. Not on your life.

I understand that this was the—

On a point of order. Can you guide the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker? As the time is now 12.9 p.m., is it your intention to allow this debate to be wound up when—I believe I am correct in saying—12 of my hon. Friends have been sitting here since 10.24 a.m. trying to catch your eye and listening to interminable interruptions, bogus points of order and the like? Can we have your assurance that the Minister will not be called a second time—or that any other Privy Councillor will be called—until back benchers have participated in the debate?

What time this debate ends has nothing whatever to do with me. I shall follow the normal practice of the Chair of continuing to call whichever hon. or right hon. Member happens to catch my eye during the debate.

rose—

Order. Mr. Rankin.

Further to that point of order. In view of my one particular interest in this debate and the fact that there is a duty on me this morning, I am drawn between these two interests. I would like to know clearly what will be the position if the Minister intervenes at any time before 12.30 p.m. Would that mean that at that point, and the Minister having completed his remarks, the debate would be finally terminated?

I will answer the hon. Member's point of order.

rose—

Order. It would be more helpful if I answered one point of order at a time. The answer to the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) is that this debate will continue until it is terminated. [Interruption.] Order. When the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson), who is now addressing the House, concludes his remarks, it will be my duty to call whichever hon. or right hon. Member happens to catch my eye.

Further to that point of order—

Mr. Deputy Speaker—

One at a time, please.

May I inform you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I am in the same position as the hon. Member for Govan? I, too, wish to have an opportunity of addressing the House on this matter, but unfortunately I have been called by the House to take part in a Standing Committee this morning. May I have your assurance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that there will be no question of this debate being closured and that no closure Motion will be accepted by you this morning?

It might simplify matters if I explained, in answer to that point of order, that no question of a Closure arises while I am in the Chair because I have no power to accept a closure Motion.

Further to my point of order. Even if you were not in the Chair, would the Chair have any power to accept a closure Motion this morning?

As I said, I have no power to accept a Motion for the Closure. The hon. Member's point of order is, therefore, purely academic, for I have no reason to suppose that a Motion to closure the debate will be moved.

As the Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party Technological Group, I would have liked to have made a contribution to the debate this morning. [HON. MEMBERS: "Go on."] I propose instead, as a protest against the 40 minutes taken by the Opposition Front Bench speaker, to sacrifice my right to speak in this debate. I do so as a protest to the length of time taken by the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr), which I regarded as an abuse of the democracy of the House. I therefore appeal to the next speaker who catches your eye to allow some time—

On a point of order. Is it not a fact that the limits of time which may be split up among hon. and right hon. Members according to the way they catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, are set by the Government's allocation of the time available and that, therefore, the Government must bear the responsibility if we have insufficient time to discuss these matters?

I do not understand this complaint about insufficient time. The hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) is entitled to take as long as he likes to make his speech, in precisely the same way as the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) was entitled to make his speech.

I am obliged to the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson) for allowing me to make my position clear. Since he has on several occasions referred to my speech and has said that he regarded it as an abuse of Parliamentary opportunity and procedure, I think that he should, in fairness, consider the fact that the length of my speech was due largely to the number of interruptions made during it. I also urge him, in fairness to the whole House and not just to one hon. or right hon. Member, to consider, when referring to Front Bench speeches, whether there should be one Front Bench speech from each side or two shorter ones. The Opposition had the intention of having only one Front Bench speech in this debate.

Nevertheless—

Withdraw.

I will not withdraw what I said. Front Bench speeches of such length represent a denial of opportunity to back benchers. Therefore, as a protest against this sort of practice, I shall sacrifice my right to speak in this debate. I close my brief remarks in the hope that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and Mr. Speaker will have some discussion about the practice whereby three or four hours of our time is taken up each Parliamentary day by Front Bench spokesmen, making speeches which are often devoid of comments which are germane to the debate in hand. I apply the same views to this business of Privy Councillors being called. With that protest, I sit down.

rose—

Order. Sir Gerald Nabarro.

rose—

Sit down.

I thank you very much indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye. I happily give way to the Minister to intervene in my speech.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) for his usual courtesy. I wish to make it clear that if I had the opportunity to catch your eye again, and the leave of the House to speak again, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in view of the great interest in this debate and the large number of hon. Members who wish to contribute to it, I would recommend to my right hon. Friend that more time should be allowed for this debate to be continued. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] That was the only point I wished to make, and if I should have time to speak this morning or on another occasion, I would do my utmost to reply to the detailed, and, if I may say so, some of the very sensible points that have been raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House.

I am sure that I speak for all my hon. Friends in expressing our gratitude and appreciation to the right hon. Gentleman for his realistic assessment of the Parliamentary position this morning. I did not greet with unalloyed enthusiasm the prospect of morning sittings on topics which were supposed to be of non-controversial, mundane and minor matters. [Interruption.] It is true that I had a Question down on this subject, but I urge a closer examination of the Order Paper.

The hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) was just addressing one of his hon. Friends. Although the back of the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South may be a better view than the front, does he consider it in order to present his back to me?

Really.

The topic we have been discussing this morning fulfils none of the requirements of a morning sitting. This is not a minor topic. Indeed, it is a topic of massive national importance. It is not a mundane topic. Flying at 1,500 to 2,000 m.p.h., whether by Concord or military aircraft, cannot be considered of mundane significance. It is most certainly not a non-contentious issue. What is done with the Ministry of Aviation and the massive scientific technological resources which that Ministry commands is anything but non-contentious.

I castigated my right hon. Friend for the length of his intervention. I do not propose to emulate him.I, too, could comfortably talk for 38 minutes on this topic—

Keep going.

—but I will take only another two or three minutes in which to complete my remarks, bearing in mind the number of my hon. Friends who wish to speak.

My constituency of Worcestershire, South contains the Royal Radar Establishment at Malvern which I do not exaggerate in saying has the greatest concentration of scientific and technological manpower in Britain today. The future of about 2,500 scientists there is, of course, a matter of great interest to us all. My desire is that the right hon. Gentleman, when he eventually replies to this debate, will give me a number of important assurances on behalf of those employees of his Ministry at the Royal Radar Establishment.

The first is that the coherence and concentration of manpower at that establishment will not be derogated in any way by the transfer of Ministerial parentage from the Ministry of Aviation, about to die, to the Ministry of Technology. The second question is that there will not be any fragmentation of this important scientific and technological development which has settled and grown up at Malvern since the war years. The third is that the stature of the Royal Radar Establishment, when it assumes the Ministerial parentage of the Minister of Technology, will be at least as great as it has been in earlier years under the aegis of the Ministry of Aviation.

Those are the three questions which I put to the right hon. Gentleman. I assure him that there have been misgivings among civil servants at the Royal Radar Establishment, the more so as the Prime Minister, when I questioned him on this topic after he had made his statement on 16th June last, was somewhat indeterminate in his reply to me. Therefore, when the Minister answers the debate, I should like him to be a great deal more specific in what he says.

I asked the Prime Minister in a supplementary question:

"Is the Prime Minister aware that the greatest concentration of scientific manpower affected by his announcement today is at the Royal Radar Establishment, at Malvern, in Worcestershire? As that Establishment works for the Ministry of Defence, for the Ministry of Aviation and for the Board of Trade in maritime and nautical matters, will the Prime Minister say whether it is the intention to fragment it, to disperse, or to pass it in total to a new Ministerial parent and, if so, which parent?"

We know the answer this morning, that it is being passed to the Minister of Technology, but what has caused a great deal of uncertainty among my constituents are the words which the Prime Minister used in the course of his reply. I shall not read all of it because the first part was a tribute, a very deserved and rightful tribute, to these workers, but the operative words were:

"There is no question at all of fragmenting the establishment. It will continue as it is. I think that I am pretty safe in saying that this establishment will pass, with the rest of responsibility for the electronics industry, to the Ministry of Technology."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th June, 1966; Vol. 729, c. 1664.]

"Pretty safe"—it is for that reason that I ask the rather more penetrating questions this morning in my speech, which has lasted four minutes only—[Interruption.] I wish my right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) would not wink at those behind him—four minutes only in contradistinction to his 38 minutes.

I hope that when the right hon. Gentleman replies he will answer those three particular points that I have put to him. I have no objection to this translation to the Ministry of Technology so long as the stature of the Royal Radar Establishment, with all its ramifications and the great reputation that it has earned in earlier years, is not in any way derogated by the translation from one Ministerial parent to another.

The various important questions raised this morning could not possibly be dealt with in such a short debate as we have had. I am sure we are all extremely grateful to the Minister of State for saying that further time will be given to consideration of this subject. I wish that could have been made clear earlier in the debate, because then many of the points of order with which you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have had to deal could have been avoided and we could have got on with the debate.

In the short time which remains, I want to take up one or two of the criticisms made by the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr), with whom I most heartily disagree. I certainly accept the Minister of State's invitation to give an enthusiastic welcome to this Order, because I am certain that it is in the best interests of the industry and various establishments under the control of the Ministry of Aviation, such as that mentioned by the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro), the Royal Radar Establishment in his constituency. I feel convinced that this establishment and the many others which are passing to the Minister of Technology under this Order will have a secure and profitable future under the able guidance of their new Minister. Many of the criticisms we have heard this morning and on other occasions from the right hon. Member for Mitcham are invalid and of no effect.

The right hon. Gentleman had some fun with the Prime Minister's various statements and the way in which, he alleged, they had been altered by the course of events. He likened the Prime Minister to a company manipulator who transfers subsidiaries from one parent company to another. I liken the right hon. Gentleman to a shareholder in a company which has been taken over but who thinks he still has the right to attend company meetings and pontificate on its affairs. If he studies the Prime Minister's statement in greater detail, he will find that there is no inconsistency in the decision which was finally made, even though a considerable length of time elapsed—and this is the criticism I make of the Government, the seven-and-a-half months delay—since the Prime Minister's statement last June and the transfer of Functions Order we are considering this morning.

The right hon. Member seemed unable to make up his mind whether this transfer was too soon or too late. He said on a number of occasions that he did not object to it in principle, and this morning he reiterated that there was nothing sacred about the Ministry of Aviation but he thought the timing caused distraction and delay within the aircraft industry and the establishments of the Ministry of Aviation. When we first debated the matter on 16th June, 1966, he said that it would be folly:

"to make such an administrative upheaval of this kind when so many fundamental problems of the aircraft industry are in the melting pot …".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th June, 1966; Vol. 729, c. 1662.]

We did not hear quite so much about that this morning, but the fact is that a number of the important problems which faced the industry and the Government at that time have been solved or are well on the way to solution after these seven-and-a-half months.

The aircraft industry has always had fundamental problems because it is an industry of rapid technological change. If one accepts that the time was not ripe to make the change in 1966 an equally good case could have been made in practice every year when there are new pro- jects, development and arrangements for collaboration with Europe and say that it is not the right time. The right hon. Gentleman would then have said that it is not the right time, we are not against the change in principle but would like it to be delayed. Or, as he said this morning—this was a suggestion I have not heard before—if it had been done when the Government first came into office he would have had no objection.

I could have understood this argument if, for example, the Royal Radar Establishment had been put under some other Ministry and the Royal Aircraft Establishment had been taken into the Ministry of Technology. The only criticism one can make of the Government is that in June 1966, when it was first decided to transfer the industry, they did not at once say that it was impossible to transfer one part to the Ministry of Technology and the rest to the Ministry of Defence. That seems to have been the main cause for the delay, and it was quite unnecessary.

This is no more of an upheaval and confusion for staff of the Ministry of Aviation than if there had been a change of Minister without a transfer of functions. If, for example, the Minister of Technology had suddenly become the Minister of Aviation, the staff would have been in exactly the same position as they are now when they come under the control of the new Ministry. I am convinced that this will have no effect on the establishments and staff of the Ministry.

The right hon. Member for Mitcham said that many of the problems awaiting settlement after the Plowden Committee Report still remain to be dealt with.

I am pleased to be able to have an opportunity of bringing to the attention of the House a very serious matter, namely, the amount of exports which are being lost to British manufacturers as a result of plagiarisation of design by foreign competitors. There is a leading article in today's issue of Design which highlights the whole question.

This is a matter of great concern to a number of our industries. It is particularly important at this moment of our history when we need to encourage, stimulate and increase our export trade. There is no need for me to remind the House that we must import 50 per cent. of all our food and almost 100 per cent. of all our raw materials. We will starve if we do not sell our goods abroad.

It therefore goes without saying that we should be encouraging exports of high idea value and low material cost. It is particularly galling to see articles which incorporate this principle being copied by our overseas competitors. It is very difficult to assess the total loss to our economy resulting from the plagiarisation of British designs, but it must be considerable and probably runs into several millions of £s annually.

The Minister of State will know—I entirely accept this—that this is not a new phenomena. A Question was asked in the House on 14th July last by my hon. Friend the Member for Merton and Morden (Mr. Atkins). The Question has been the subject of running correspondence between the Minister and myself. I have been pressing him to implement the Johnston Committee's Report which, I think it is generally acknowledged, would go a long way towards putting a brake on what can only be described as piracy, in the sense of piracy of ideas.

Doubtless the Minister will have seen an article in the January issue of The Director by Mr. Walter Gundrey which highlights the whole problem. The Minister may also have seen a report in The Times of 26th January which gives a number of examples of this very serious problem. I have been in touch with Mr. Leslie Julius who is mentioned in this article and who is the managing director of Hille and Co. The report in The Times quotes Mr. Julius as saying that since 1948, when his company

"first went in for advanced designs, the number of ideas that had been stolen ran 'easily into three figures. Everything they did, he said, was watched closely. The Registered Designs Act was a waste of time."

Mr. Julius tells me that he has recently lost exports to Israel on this same principle and at this very moment he is locked in conflict in Spain as a result of the copying of a chair which he has designed and which is being copied in that country. The chair which is being copied is being produced in inferior materials, with a resulting loss of reputation to his company and, in order to try to get it stopped, very heavy legal expenses are involved.

I have had similar complaints from toy manufacturers. Because of the nature of the toy trade, toys have to be brought out in time for the Christmas trade. They are shown to the trade as a whole many months before Christmas. This gives ample time for copying to be carried out. I have had a number of examples from the toy trade. I want to show the Minister two of them. They are two rattles. I hope that I may be permitted to produce them, Mr. Deputy Speaker. One is made in Holland. The other is made in England. I hold them in my hands. The Minister will see that they are pretty well exact copies, although the colours are reversed. They even make the same noise. Perhaps it would be out of order for me to demonstrate that.

There is another example in my office of two Canadian mounted police models, one made in this country of very high quality selling at about 5s., the other copied abroad and having on its box a description of the toy which is exactly similar. This sells at about half price. This is another very serious matter to the toy trade, which makes a significant contribution to our export trade.

The jewellery manufacturers complain—rightly so. They say that they have to keep first-class designers at work at an extremely high cost. They tell me that over 10 per cent. of their turnover may go in developing a new design. They complain that good designs are being ruined by a flood of copies on inferior materials. They complain also of loss of exports. It often costs £16,000 to design an article which they say may be copied for as little as £500. The price is cut accordingly.

Only this morning the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers has been in touch with me and told me that these men who have vision and initiative to follow an active and positive design policy are losing heart. The consequence is that there will be a decline in the quality of British design, which is at present a most important factor in meeting competition in world markets.

I fully appreciate that Britain cannot directly affect the design laws of foreign countries, but at least we can set an example to the rest of the world. The leading article in today's issue of Design sets the matter out very clearly. It says:

"Most informed people agree that the existing law on the protection of industrial designs (the Registered Designs Act, 1949, amended by the Copyright Act, 1956) is out of date, time consuming and ineffective. It was because of this that in 1959 the President of the Board of Trade set up a departmental committee, under the Chairmanship of Kenneth Johnston, Q.C. to review the law as it now stands and to recommend what changes were needed. The Report of the Johnston Committee was published in 1962, since when it seems it has been quietly forgotten. At the time of going to Press"—

this is very recently—

"a spokesman at the Board of Trade said that there were certainly no plans to bring the Report before the House."

This merely confirms what the Minister of State, Board of Trade, said to me on 22nd September after I had written asking me if he would do something about this very serious problem. He said

"I … accept that the introduction of a copyright type system of protection, as recommended by the Committee, would give the toy and similar industries a better opportunity to protect their designs against copying than is provided under legislation now in force. But, as I said in the House on 14th July, it is not that we are reluctant to introduce legislation but a matter of finding time in a crowded legislative programme. I am sorry that I can give no promise about the possibility of bringing in new legislation, and I doubt very much, therefore, whether anything would be gained from a discussion".

The purpose of my seeking this Adjournment debate is to ask the Minister to reconsider that decision. I accept that the legislative programme is crowded. Nevertheless, this matter is of great importance for the export trade which we must encourage in every possible way, and much more important, therefore, than the London Government Bill, irrelevant in terms of exports, which has occupied the House for so long and more important than the Iron and Steel Bill which has occupied all of us for far too long.

I urge the Minister to take action. Will he now dig out the Johnston Report and implement it as a matter of urgency? I do not suggest that implementation of the Report will completely stop the abuse, but it would greatly simplify the procedures for international protection and, furthermore, it would enable Great Britain to join The Hague Agreement under which a single deposit in Geneva would replace the present need for separate registration in each country. The leading article in Design which I have already quoted rightly points out that other countries outside the Agreement are waiting for Great Britain to give a lead. Above all, it would be an act of support and encouragement for British designers and manufacturers who are fighting for our country in the markets of the world at a crucial point in our history.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Weatherill) for raising the important matter of how best to safeguard our manufacturers' designs. He gives me an opportunity to say that for the past two years Board of Trade officials have been trying to help me to find satisfactory solutions to the problems which he has raised. We agree with his approach to the matter and have no quarrel with any of the arguments he has advanced. We, too, want to put the law and the administration right so that the industrial designs of our manufacturers can be properly protected against what the hon. Gentleman has called piracy by manufacturers overseas.

The task of finding satisfactory solutions which will appeal to and satisfy all our manufacturers—as the hon. Gentleman probably knows, there are some who would disagree with his approach—has turned out to be far more difficult than I expected. I began with, perhaps, an innocent approach. It seemed to me that it should be easy to lay down rules stating that when a manufacturer comes along to register a design, that design cannot be copied. That is how I started off, but the difficulties have subsequently appeared. Even before I began to read it, the size of the Johnston Report sounded a warning note to me. The Johnston Committee, which went into the whole matter most thoroughly, produced 59 recommendations, very sensible, constructive and practical recommendations in an excellent Report.

Incidentally, I do not understand the final sentence quoted by the hon. Gentleman from the leading article in Design:

"At the time of going to Press, a spokesman at the Board of Trade said that there were certainly no plans to bring the report before the House."

The Report was presented to Parliament by the then President of the Board of Trade—it says so on the cover—in August, 1962, so that we have all had an opportunity to study the recommendations.

If the 59 recommendations of the Johnston Committee are to be implemented in one piece of legislation, it will be a major Bill. I ask for your indulgence for a couple of sentences, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I must mention the problem of legislation in order to come to the difficulties of administration and consider whether these difficulties can be overcome. Whether or not such a big Bill could be prepared and introduced in a reasonable period of time is not a matter for me alone—it is part of the general legislative programme—but it would certainly take time, as the hon. Gentleman appreciates, merely to have the legislation properly prepared. We have, therefore, been looking at the possibility of introducing what might be called an interim Measure. It would be a shorter Measure which, for the time being, would leave the existing and admittedly imperfect legislation as it is, but would add to it a simpler system of copyright protection.

Although the hon. Gentleman has dealt with some of the ways in which the international arrangements work, I think that I should for the record explain how the system operates now. I take, first, the patenting of inventions. A manufac- turer's rights, which are called industrial property rights, normally depend on his taking action to protect his rights in each country in which he hopes to enforce them. Regrettable as it may be, if a British manufacturer wishes to protect an invention in, say, six countries, he must make application for a patent in each of the six countries. Equally—though I do not think that we get much advantage here—a manufacturer in this country is free to make use of the inventions of manufacturers overseas, even though they have obtained their patents abroad, if no patent for such inventions has been sought and granted in this country.

The present system is not satisfactory, and, for a number of years now, in the Council of Europe and elsewhere, we have been exploring with other countries schemes whereby a single patent application in a central office would provide at least prima facie monopoly rights in a number of countries. The Common Market countries have produced a draft of such a scheme, and we have said to them that if, as seems likely, the final provisions of the scheme are acceptable to us, we would wish to join provided, of course, that we join as full members having an equal voice with the others in patent-granting procedure. Unfortunately, that scheme is in abeyance at present because of disagreement among the Common Market countries as to certain of its terms. We must wait to see what happens on that front. There must be international co-operation; otherwise, we cannot make much progress.

The same principle of territoriality, if I may use that word, applies to the protection of designs and trade marks. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will agree that we can leave trade marks on one side and concentrate on designs. Here, too, protection must be sought and the design registered in each of the countries in which the manufacturer wishes to protect his rights. There are, however, in this field arrangements whereby a design can be deposited, as the hon. Gentleman said, with the secretariat, in Geneva, of the Industrial Property Convention. The secretariat will then transmit the design to the authorities in the member countries, where it is dealt with as though it were a direct application in each of the countries concerned.

Generally speaking, these arrangements are designed for the needs of those countries which do not, as we do—this is the first complication—make a search for anticipations and for conflicting designs before registration. Our Patent Office does that searching job, and it is impossible under our existing law to join the Arrangement on international designs known as the Arrangement of The Hague, because of the way we set about the job ourselves.

It is a difficult problem for us to deal with, because our design protection is based on what is called a "novelty approach". A design is not registrable, and therefore does not become protected, unless it is new, that is, unlike anything which has gone before. A search is made in the Patent Office to seek to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable, that the application for registration is for something that is new. Under the international arrangement which the hon. Member asks us to join, the Patent Office would never receive the representation of the design which it needs for a search in this country, because that is not the way the other countries work, and therefore, membership is impossible for us at the moment.

That is where we must return to the question of legislation. Under our novelty approach to design protection, once a design is validly registered the proprietor has a monopoly, that is, he can stop the marketing here of articles bearing his design without the necessity of providing that the infringer copied from him. The evidence given to the Committee on Industrial Designs, the Johnston Committee, revealed that many of the present users of the existing system were satisfied with its essential features and did not want them changed. But the Committee felt—and we accept this—that the present system is not suitable for certain industries, including those which the hon. Member mentioned, particularly those producing toys and models. The requirement that a design must be new makes it difficult for manufacturers of models of existing things to obtain a registration at all, because in making a model of a train, an aircraft or whatever it is, their model is not new, and it is necessary to prove that the model they are making is a new thing. Without registration, a manufacturer has no protection unless he is a party to such a scheme as the furniture manufacturers in this country operate among themselves.

The Johnston Committee, examining the problems thrown up by this approach by certain industries, recommended, in addition to certain changes in the existing system, a new sytem of protection to be known as "design copyright" which would be additional to, and not in substitution for, the existing system. That is what we are trying to take up. It would mean that the test for protection would be that the design in question was original in the sense that it was the designer's own work, and no search for novelty would be made by the Patent Office when a representation of his design was lodged there; it was his own work and, therefore, there could not be anything like it. The proprietor's rights would be only against copying, and it would be a defence for an alleged infringer to prove that he arrived at his design independently—that is, without copying either directly or indirectly the design of the person who claims that he is the originator.

We think that such a system would be more suitable than the existing system for certain industries, but if other industries want to work under the existing system, that is all right. Whether it would be equally suitable for, say, the protection of furniture designs in this country is open to doubt. That is something we would have to discuss with the furniture manufacturers; and whether we produced the right legislation if we adopted that course would perhaps depend on the first few decisions the courts would have to make in cases of alleged infringement.

At any rate, it would have the advantage—the hon. Member hinted at it, but I would like to stress it—that it would enable us to join The Hague Arrangement for the protection of designs, and hence enable our manufacturers more easily to gain the protection they want in other member countries, but only the member countries, of that Arrangement. They include four Common Market countries and some others, but not the United States of America, none of the Scandinavian countries and not Russia or Japan.

Whether those countries will follow the example Japan is showing, without coming into The Hague Arrangement, remains to be seen. In recent years, the Japanese authorities have been very understanding about the desirability of controlling design copying, and have done a great deal in their own country to stamp it out even in cases where the foreign manufacturer has not registered his design in Japan but has merely made a complaint.

The full recommendations of the Johnston Committee would involve a great deal of amendment of the existing law, but we think that if we could proceed with a short Measure, which would take up less Parliamentary time, we would leave the existing system unamended and add to it the simpler copyright system that I have mentioned. No doubt these Wednesday morning sittings will help generally in providing extra Parliamentary time for the consideration of legislation.

The hon. Member mentioned the reply I gave to a Question from his hon. Friend the Member for Merton and Morden (Mr. Atkins) about when it can be done. We answered about 35 Board of Trade Questions on that day, and as I went through them, helping to prepare the Answers, I was struck by the fact that in those 35 Questions hon. Members on both sides of the House asked the Board of Trade to introduce 10 new pieces of legislation. If we asked them to sort out their order of priority, I do not know where this would appear. I agree with the hon. Member that this question of copying is tremendously important. Perhaps if he can keep up his pressure he will persuade all the other hon. Members who want Board of Trade legislation quickly on a vast range of subjects to put this matter at the top.

Mr. McMaster.

Question No. 1.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. At about 1.20 p.m. today I entered the Chamber, only to find a considerable amount of torn-up paper on the floor. I inquired of the messengers who was permitted to enter the Chamber and I was informed that as the Mace was still on the Table, nobody other than a Member of Parliament was able to enter. Therefore, I entered the Chamber myself and, with my own hands, I picked up the paper that was on the floor.

I regarded the slovenly condition of the Chamber as most undesirable and I wondered to myself what kind of impression this would create on hon. Members entering the Chamber at 2.30, quite apart from other people who may be observing our proceedings.

I wish to ask, Mr. Speaker—

Order. I hope that we shall not have a long speech on a point of order.

I wish to ask for your guidance, Mr. Speaker, about whether you could use your influence with those responsible for the conduct of the House so that either the Mace may be removed so that the Chamber may be cleaned, or that a squad of hon. Members may be recruited so that they may come in each day shortly before 2.30 to clean up the Chamber.

Further to that point of order—

Order. I hope that we will not lose the valuable time which we are gaining for Questions. Mr. Hughes, a point of order?

May I say a word, Mr. Speaker, further to the point of order? I do not want to delay the House, but is not what has just been said by the hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple) an argument in favour of our reverting to the former time of sitting of the House?

We cannot discuss that now. I will look into the point raised by the hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple). In the meantime, we are grateful to him for helping to clean the Chamber.