Commons Chamber

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House Of Commons

Thursday 8 November 1979

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

Prayers

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Private Business

DUMBARTON DISTRICT COUNCIL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

GREATER GLASGOW PASSENGER TRANSPORT ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

KILMARNOCK AND LOUDOUN DISTRICT COUNCIL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

SCOTS EPISCOPAL FUND ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

STIRLING DISTRICT COUNCIL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Orders for consideration read.

To be considered upon Thursday 15 November.

Oral Answers To Questions

National Finance

Cash Limits

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish figures

TABLE 1
CENTRAL GOVERNMENT ASSIMILATED BLOCKS (4)
Class and Vote number (1)		Accounting Department	Description of expenditure	Percentage of wages and salaries in cash limit (3)
I	1	Ministry of Defence	Pay etc. of armed forces and civilians, stores, supplies and miscellaneous services	75
I	2	Ministry of Defence	Defence procurement	5
I	4	Department of the Environment (Property Services Agency)	Defence accommodation services	10
I	5	Ministry of Defence	Defence dockyard services	55
II	1^*	Foreign and Commonwealth Office	Overseas representation: diplomatic and consular services	65
II	2	Department of the Environment (Property Services Agency)	Overseas representation: accommotion services	0
II	3	Foreign and Commonwealth Office	British Broadcasting Corporation external services	55
II	4	Foreign and Commonwealth Office	British Council	35
II	5	Foreign and Commonwealth Office	Foreign and Commonwealth services	0

for the total wage and salary component included under each public expenditure cash limit.

I will arrange for a table to be published in the Official Report.

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government will at no stage put forward proposals to increase the cash limits to accommodate wage settlements in excess of the payroll assumptions set out in those limits?

Yes, Sir.

If the right hon. gentleman is setting a cash limit including pay, will he count that as a pay norm?

No. The statement last week on the public spending White Paper indicated that the figure would refer to cost increases rather than to specific wage increases.

Is it not the case that in large areas of the public sector a cash limit on wages is, in effect, an incomes policy? If the Government are running a public sector incomes policy under the guise of cash limits, they should say so clearly.

Nothing about the Government's cash limits policy bears any comparison with the statutory control of wages undertaken by the previous Government.

Following is the table:

Class and Vote number (1)		Accounting Department	Description of expenditure	Percentage of wages and salaries in cash limit (3)
II	8	Cabinet Office	Secret service	N/A
II	10	Ministry of Overseas Development	Overseas aid	0
II	11^*	Ministry of Overseas Development	Overseas aid administration	65
III	5	Ministry of Agriculture. Fisheries and Food	Other agricultural and food services	0
III	7^*	Intervention Board for Agricultural Produce	Central administration	30
III	8	Ministry of Agriculture. Fisheries and Food	Support for the fishing industry	0
III	9	Forestry Commission	Forestry	5
III	10^*	Ministry of Agriculture. Fisheries and Food	Departmental administration	85
IV	2	Department of Industry	Miscellaneous support services	0
IV	4	Department of Trade	Pay, general administrative expenses, export promotion and trade, co-operation, tourism, regulation of trading practices and other support services	50
IV	7	Department of Industry	Scientific and technological assistance	15
IV	8	Department of Energy	Industrial support	0
IV	9	Department of Energy	Scientific and technological assisance, nuclear energy	65
IV	11^*	Export Credits Guarantee Department	Central services	90
IV	13	Department of Trade: Consumer Affairs	Pay, general administrative expenses and consumer protection	35
IV	14^*	Friendly Societies Registry	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
IV	15^*	Office of Fair Trading	Pay and general administrative expenses	80
IV	16	Department of Employment	Labour market services	0
IV	18^*	Department of Employment	Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service	50
IV	19	Department of Employment	Manpower Services Commission	25
IV	22^*	Department of Employment	Departmental administration	(2)
IV	23^*	Department of Industry	Central and miscellaneous services	(2)
IV	24^*	Department of Energy	Administration and miscellaneous services	(2)
IV	25	Department of Employment	Health and Safety Commission	50
VI	3	Department of Transport	Roads etc., England	0
VI	4	Department of Transport	Transport services	0
VI	6	Department of Trade	Shipping and civil aviation services	15
VII	7^*	Department of Transport	Central and miscellaneous services	(2)
VIII	4	Department of the Environment	Central environmental services etc.	10
VIII	6	Department of the Environment	Royal palaces, royal parks, historic buildings and ancient monuments	20
VIII	7^*	Department of the Environment	Central administration and environmental research	70
IX	1^*	Lord Chancellor's Department	Administration of justice: England and Wales	(2)
IX	13^*	Treasury Solicitor	Pay and general administrative expenses	90
X	4	Department of Education and Science	Universities etc.	60
X	6	Department of Education and Science	Educational Services	0
X	9	Department of Education and Science	Libraries, England	40
X	11^*	Department of Education and Science	Central administration services	90
X	12	Department of Education and Science	Agricultural Research Council	45
X	13	Department of Education and Science	Medical Research Council	50
X	14	Department of Education and Science	Natural Environment Research Council	55
X	15	Department of Education and Science	Science Research Council	10

Class and Vote number (1)		Accounting Department	Description of expenditure	Percentage of wages and salaries in cash limit (3)
X	16	Department of Education and Science	Social Science Research Council	15
X	17	Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History)	British Museum (Natural History)	90
X	18	Department of Education and Science	Other science etc.	0
X	19	Trustees of the British Museum	British Museum	70
X	20	Department of Education and Science	Science Museum	65
X	21	Department of Education and Science	Victoria and Albert Museum	55
X	22	Trustees of the Imperial War Museum	Imperial War Museum	75
X	23	Trustees of the National Gallery	National Gallery	30
X	24	Trustees of the National Maritime Museum	National Maritime Museum	70
X	25	Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery	National Portrait Gallery	50
X	26	Trustees of the Tate Gallery	Tate Gallery	50
X	27	Trustees of the Wallace Collection	Wallace Collection	90
X	30	Department of Education and Science	Arts Council and other grants	5
XI	1	Department of Health and Social Security	Health and personal social services, England	75
XII	4^*	Department of Health and Social Security	Administration and miscellaneous services	(2)
XIII	3^*	Privy Council Office	Pay and general administrative expenses	90
XIII	4^*	Treasury	Pay and general administrative expenses	80
XIII	5^*	Customs and Excise	Pay, general administrative expenses and capital expenditure	90
XIII	6^*	Board of Inland Revenue	Pay and general administrative expenses	90
XIII	7^*	Department of Transport	Driver and vehicle licensing	55
XIII	9^*	Exchequer and Audit Department	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
XIII	10^*	National Debt Office	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
XIII	11^*	Public Works Loan Commission	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
XIII	12^*	Department for National Savings	Pay and general administrative expenses	60
XIII	15	Civil Service Department	Central management of the Civil Service	70
XIII	16^*	Public Record Office	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
XIII	18^*	Office of Population Censuses and Surveys	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
XIII	20^*	Land Registry	Pay and general administrative expenses	75
XIII	22^*	Charity Commission	Pay and general administrative expenses	90
XIII	23^*	Ordnance Survey	Pay, general administrative expenses and capital expenditure	(2)
XIII	24^*	Cabinet Office	Pay and general administrative expenses	90
XIII	28^*	Parliamentary Commissioner and Health Service Commissioners	Pay and general administrative expenses	90
XIII	29^*	Public Trustee	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
XIV	1	Department of the Environment (Property Services Agency)	Office and general accommodation services	5
XIV	2^*	Department of the Environment (Property Services Agency)	Administration and miscellaneous services	60
XIV	3	Stationery Office	Stationery and printing	35
XIV	4	Civil Service Department	Computers and telecommunications	10
XIV	5	Central Office of Information	Publicity and departmental administration	20

Class and Vote number (1)		Accounting Department	Description of expenditure	Percentage of wages and salaries in cash limit (3)
XIV	8^*	Government Actuary's Department	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
XIV	9	Civil Service Department	Civil Service catering services	(2)
XIV	10^*	Paymaster General's Office	Pay and general administrative expenses	70
XV	2	Northern Ireland Office	Law, order and protective services	15
XV	3^*	Northern Ireland Court Services	Administration of justice: Northern Ireland	80
XV	4^*	Northern Ireland Office	Central and miscellaneous services	55
XVII	1	Department of the Environment	Rate support grant and supplementary grants to local authorities	0
XVII	10^*	Crown Estate Office	Pay and administrative expenses	90
XVII	14	Department of Transport	Transport supplementary grants: England and Wales	0

TABLE 2
CENTRAL GOVERNMENT UNASSIMILATED BLOCKS(4)
Accounting department	Cash block (1)	Description of expenditure	Percentage of wages and salaries in cash limit (3)
Home Office	HO1^*	Pay and general administrative expenditure	80
Home Office	HO2	Law, order and protective services	0
SCOTLAND
Scottish Office	SO1^*	Pay and general administrative expenses	75
Scottish Office	SO2	Rate support grant for local authorities in Scotland	0
Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland	DAFS1	Agricultural services and fisheries support	5
Scottish Courts Administration	SCA1^*	Pay and general administrative expenses	85
Scottish Development Department	SDD1	Motorways, trunk roads and other environmental services	5
Scottish Economic Planning Department	SEPD1	Regional and industrial development	5
	SEPD2	Manpower Services Commission	0
Scottish Education Department	SED1	Education, libraries and arts	5
	SED2	Social work	0
National Library of Scotland	SED3	National Library of Scotland	70
National Galleries of Scotland	SED4	National Galleries of Scotland	45
National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland	SED5	National Museum of Antiquities Scotland	60
Scottish Home and Health Department	SHHD1	Health	65
	SHHD2^*	Law, order and protective services (central support and other services)	55
Department of the Registers of Scotland	DRS1^*	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
Registrar General's Office, Scotland	RGO(S)1^*	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
Scottish Record Office	SRO1^*	Pay and general administrative expenses	(2)
Queen's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer	QLTR1^*	Pay and general administrative expenses	95

Accounting department	Cash block (1)	Description of expenditure	Percentage of wages and salaries in cash limit (3)
WALES
Welsh Office	WO1^*	Pay and genera administrative expenses	0
	WO2	Health and personal social services, roads, education, libraries, arts, other environmental services and agriculture	55
	WO3	Regional and industrial development	0
	WO4	Manpower Services Commission	0
Notes:
(1) Central responsibility for expenditure control is exercised by the Treasury and the Civil Service Department, depending on the nature of the expenditure concerned. Blocks controlled by the Civil Service Department are indicated by an asterisk.
(2) In certain cash limits, indicated by this footnote, the total of wages and salaries expenditure exceeds the cash limit, which is based on expenditure net of receipts.
(3) Percentages are given rounded to the nearest 5 per cent.
(4) Tables 1 and 2 both relate to cash limits on central Government voted expenditure. The cash limits on the capital expenditure of local authorities and other bodies contain little pay. The limits on nationalised industries relate to their external financial requirement.

National Savings Certificates

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will seek to change the present ineligibility of males between the ages of 60 and 65 years to hold retirement issue National Savings Certificates.

The terms and conditions of all National Savings media are regularly reviewed, and the age qualification and any other proposals received for this issue of certificates will be considered in due course.

I am grateful for that reply. Will my hon. Friend look at this proposal as a matter of urgency? Will he recognise that the proposal meets three criteria supported by the Government? These are, first, that we all want to encourage savings; secondly, that the proposal would not initially cost a penny; and, thirdly, that in an age of sex discrimination, it recognises that men have equal rights with women.

I shall be glad to look seriously at the proposal, as my hon. Friend suggests. However, I believe that when this instrument was introduced, the previous Administration felt that it might be simpler if post offices, where most of the certificates are brought, were to apply the same age limits as for old-age pensioners.

Will the hon. Gentleman accept that the simplest option is to move towards sex equality and allow men to retire at 60? Will he take note of the latest figures produced by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services? They show that the cost of reducing by one year the pensionable age for men would be only about £200 million.

I am glad to tell the hon. Gentleman that sex equality is not one of the Treasury's many responsibilities.

I declare an interest in this case. I am not particularly keen on legal sex equality, but I cannot see why I am not allowed to lend to the Government in the same way as my wife is.

My hon. Friend is welcome to lend to the Government, and there are many instruments available to enable him to do so. However, when this scheme was introduced by the previous Administration it was felt that it would be easier, in order to reduce misunderstandings about the qualifying age, to have the same age limits as those applying to the old-age pension. I shall be happy to look at the matter again.

Will the hon. Gentleman assure us that he will consider the matter seriously and urgently? With inflation rising rapidly towards 20 per cent., and clearly out of control, does he agree that his Government have an additional obligation to protect the savings of the elderly?

I do wish that the right hon. Gentleman, who has been a Treasury Minister in his time, would not take such pleasure in exaggerating the rate of inflation.

Currency (Purchasing Power)

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer by how much the purchasing power of the half pence coin has depreciated since February 1971; how much the penny is now worth in relation to the penny coin in February 1971; and if he will now demonetise the halfpenny and two-and-a-halfpenny coins.

The purchasing power of the ½p coin has fallen by two-thirds since 1971. It follows from this that the purchasing power of the 1p coin now is two-thirds that of the ½p in 1971. I have no plans to demonetise the ½p coin, which is still in strong demand. On the other hand, the old sixpence has effectively dropped out of use and the question of its demonetisation is now under review.

Will my hon. Friend accept that the ½p coin has been reduced to the role of a supermarket gimmick, which is an irritation both to the housewife and the shopkeeper? Has not the time come when we should face the fact that the housewife would be better served by a discount on a special offer at 49p, for example, rather than one at 49½p?

This is a matter of judgment, but there is a continued demand by the banks for this coin, which does not really support what my hon. Friend suggests. I understand that during this financial year the Mint expects to strike more than 200 million ½p coins in response to the demand from the banks.

Would not the housewives of the country be better served if the Government reversed their policies of increasing inflation so that the value of our money remained static?

The Government's policies are precisely directed to bringing down inflation.

Does my hon. Friend realise that to one hon. Member at least his answer is extremely disappointing? Will he confirm that the ½p coin is now worth little more than a farthing was in 1961 when it was abolished? That was 10 years before decimalisation. Will he also confirm that production costs of the coin now exceed its face value? If savings are to be made, why not in this area? Would not my hon. Friend wish to go down in history as the Minister who abolished the absurdity of a vulgar fraction in our currency and removed us from a league of countries with fractional coins, which includes Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Irish Republic?

My hon. Friend is wrong on at least two counts. The cost of striking the ½p coin is less than so there is still a profit in it. Secondly, the one cent coin that is still in currency in the United States is worth less than the ½p here. However, I am glad to hear my hon. Friend's assurance that I will go down in history.

Will the Minister arrange for some professionals to work out the purchasing power of half of the pound note that the Prime Minister spoke about during the election campaign. Will he make a statement to the House on this matter?

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was at that time making the real point that under the previous Administration the value of the pound had halved. In fact, it had gone down to less than half. This points to the mockery of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Labour Benches attacking the Government. We are getting inflation down, although many difficulties are involved in tackling the problems that we inherited from the previous Government.

Is it not the case that the Government increased the cost of living by 4½ per cent. at a stroke in their last Budget and that the increase in the mortgage rate, which is now inevitable in January, as the Prime Minister has admitted, and the increases in fares, fuel charges, rents and rates guarantee that we shall have more than 20 per cent. inflation in the new year?

That question was worth about ½p.

Financial Targets

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what further consideration he has now been able to give to the establishment of medium-term borrowing and monetary targets; and with what results.

I am considering whether there would be advantage in formulating more precisely the Government's longer-term monetary objectives which I set out in my reply of 19 July to my hon. Friend.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend bear in mind that the publication of objectives showing a steady decline over the years ahead in monetary targets, and a commensurate decline in the public sector borrowing requirement, might well be a considerable reinforcement of the Government's central camgaign to beat inflation? Can he assure the House that it remains his intention that in the next financial year the PSBR will have a lower target in money terms than it had this year?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me of arguments that are certainly valuable and important. The PSBR for next year will be announced at the appropriate time. I assure my hon. Friend that it will be consistent with the Government's policy of securing a reduction in the rate of growth of the money supply.

Is my right hon. and learned Friend satisfied with the present method of measuring and controlling the money supply? Is he yet in a position to express a view about suggestions that have been made for moving to a monetary-based system of control?

My hon. Friend will appreciate that all those who are concerned with the management and measurement of the money supply are constantly aware of the imperfections of the instruments of measurement and seek to improve them. One of the suggestions for improvement that is under consideration is the one to which he has referred.

Is it not the case that the PSBR next year is bound to be higher than this year unless there is a substantial increase in taxes in the next Budget? That being the case, is it not necessary, according to Conservative philosophy, for money supply targets to be higher next year than this so that there is no inconsistency between the Government's borrowing and monetary policies?

The right hon. Gentleman must wait and hear what is announced in due course. If his diagnosis is already to the effect that next year's PSBR will have to be substantially increased, I hope that I can look forward to his enthusiastic support in our plans for the reduction of public spending next year.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the publication of these targets is necessary to reassure the public that the first objective of the Government is to control inflation, particularly as recent figures show that the money supply, as widely defined, and including commercial bills, is growing at about 16 per cent. a year?

My hon. Friend draws attention to a significant argument in favour of what has been suggested. However, it is not the only argument to be taken into account. My hon. Friend can rest assured that the Government are determined to bring and keep the money supply under control. The latest figures suggest that it may take longer than we anticipated to bring down the massive rate of growth of the rate of money supply that we inherited from the previous Government.

Is the Chancellor of the Exchequer conscious of the fact that we are once again approaching the "Grand Old Duke of York" syndrome? In effect, the money markets are such that the money supply is increasing not by 16 per cent. but by 17 per cent., including accommodation credits, and that we are on the verge of round-tripping, which will further increase the money supply. Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that by next week, if he intends to finance his PSBR this year, he will, in effect, have to raise the minimum lending rate? When will he do something about the gilt-edged market in order to bring some sense into the situation in which we are confronted with new crises every six months?

It is unwise to speculate on future changes in the rate of interest. That depends on a number of factors. The hon. Member knows that the figures for any one month are bound to be erratic. He will understand that by far and away the most important contribution that can be made to bring all these factors under control is an effective reduction in the size of the public sector as a proportion of gross domestic product.

Is the Chancellor aware that if, as a result of a consideration of medium monetary objectives, he were to adopt the practice of fixed advance public monetary targets he would be adding to the commitments in his party manifesto and creating an unsustainable burden for his office?

I always listen attentively to advice from the hon. Gentleman—but not too attentively.

International Monetary Fund (Substitution Account)

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his policy towards the United States' proposal within the International Monetary Fund for a new substitution account or fund, and if he will make a statement.

If the practical problems involved in setting it up can be overcome, a substitution account of the kind proposed by the managing director of the IMF could in principle make a limited but useful contribution to the stabilisation of exchange rates. Detailed proposals have, however, yet to be formulated and considered.

Does that mean that Her Majesty's Government support this arrangement in principle? Does the Chancellor agree that we need an internationally acceptable currency reserve system that does not depend upon the vagaries of the economy of any one country?

As I told the conference of the IMF in Belgrade, provided that the practical problems involved in setting up a substitution account of this kind are solved it could, in principle, make a limited but useful contribution to the stabilisation of exchange rates.

The limit of the contribution depends entirely upon the size of the account. Does the Chancellor agree that if the Government were to press as many other Governments have done, for an account that starts at at least £10 billion SDR and rises rapidly to £50 billion, that would make quite a substantial contribution?

The answer to the question is that it depends upon the size of the account, although, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, there are many other factors to be considered.

Capital Gains Tax

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what representations he has received to extend relief from capital gains tax to private houses owned by landlords of licensed premises and others who are required, as a condition of their employment, to reside at their place of work.

An employee required to live at his place of work who owns a house which he intends in due course to occupy is entitled to relief from capital gains tax if he sells that house. Landlords of licensed premises employed by breweries are covered by this rule. I have received one representation asking for it to be extended to self-employed landlords.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is unfair that someone who is debarred by the terms of his employment from ever occupying the house that he needs for his retirement should find himself subject, at some later stage, to capital gains tax? Will my right hon. Friend review the situation?

There are real problems of definition in respect of the self-employed, but I give an undertaking that the matter will be reviewed.

In the light of the continued reduction in the availability of private rented accommodation, particularly for single people, will my right hon. Friend consider exempting from capital gains tax those residential landlords who let part of their premises?

That is extending the issue somewhat, and any Chancellor will wish to protect his revenue base in the next Budget.

Exchange Controls

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the net effect of industrial investment in Scotland as a result of his decision to abolish exchange controls.

25.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the effect of the abolition of exchange controls on investment in United Kingdom manufacturing industry.

The removal of controls is likely to benefit industrial investment at home. Overseas investment helps our exports and strengthens our international trading position. The effects cannot, however, be quantified.

If the Chancellor is so confident that the effect will be beneficial, and if the reverse turns out to be the case—with a consequent net outflow of capital investment—will he guarantee that the outflow of private capital investment will be replaced by public investment? If he will not give that guarantee, will he explain why?

I do not give that guarantee because the experience of recent years does not suggest that the answer to our problems lies in an expansion of public investment. Much public investment has been used to little avail in terms of real return. The answer to our problems lies in the creation of conditions that are hospitable for successful and effective private investment. The Government are doing that.

If the Chancellor is so confident about the effects on investment of the abolition of exchange controls, will he explain two things? First, will he explain the projection by his Department on 29 October—leaked in the Financial Times—that over the next four years production in metal using and vehicle producing industries will decline by over 20 per cent? Secondly, will be explain why, since his announcement of the abolition of exchange conrols the Financial Times index has gone down by over 60 points? Is he aware that it is suggested in most of the financial journals that companies fear that money that should be used on investment in this country will be diverted abroad?

The hon. Gentleman's diagnosis on the last matter is entirely at fault. I do not know about the forecast that he has quoted, but if he believes that any forecast that points to a decline in the production of motor vehicles, or anything else, in this country in the years ahead is attributable to an announcement about the relaxation of exchange controls made only a few days ago, he will believe anything.

The hon. Gentleman must surely understand that the reduction experienced in the production of motor vehicles in this country was due not to Government gestures of that sort but to the continuing inability of some sections of the motor industry to achieve sensible patterns of industrial relations to enable them to compete with imported vehicles.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that there has never been a shred of evidence that industrial investment in Scotland has been seriously inhibited by a shortage of finance? Does he agree that the problem has been a lack of profitable opportunities?

My hon. Friend has put the matter precisely in the right perspective.

Is it not serious that the problem of exchange controls is not quantifiable? Does the Chancellor agree that that is hardly surprising, since British banks and their subsidiaries can now lend abroad without the Bank of England knowing? Is not this a serious state of affairs?

It is a serious state of affairs only to those who seek to govern the country by attempting to gain knowledge of everything that happens. That is not possible. The hon. Member would do well to remember that the catastrophic economic conditions experienced under the previous Government developed as a result of their policies and had nothing whatever to do with the existence, or otherwise, of exchange controls.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend comment on a statement made by Sir John Methven, updating Professor Reddaway's report, that, with few exceptions, investment overseas will always encourage British industry and is likely to increase production and jobs?

I agree with that. The analyses that have been made of the likely impact of investment overseas have shown that the main reasons for decisions to invest overseas were related to the creation and expansion of overseas markets. In most cases such investment has been seen to stimulate our exports.

Is it not true that a side effect of the abandonment of exchange controls by the Government is the difficulty in controlling the money supply and the resulting pressure of interest rates created by that abandonment? Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that if MLR rises next week, as is likely, one of the reasons for that will be the abandonment of exchange controls?

The right hon. Gentleman should not speculate on interest rate movements. Surely he appreciates that there are many other factors, of far greater significance, affecting this matter. They include, for example, the sharp upward movement in interest rates in the United States.

Fiscal Policy

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer why he deems it necessary to equate national expenditure with national income.

Any attempt by the nation to spend above its income is likely to lead either to a worsening current balance of payments and higher overseas debts or to a lower exchange rate and faster inflation. Neither is a viable course in the long run.

Has not my hon. Friend merely identified the situation that pertained when the Government took office, namely, that the previous Government were spending more money than the nation was earning? Does he agree that most people dislike the taste of the medicine as it goes down but know perfectly well that what the Government are doing is the only means of reversing the economic course upon which the previous Government set the nation?

The answer is "Yes, Sir".

Does the Minister recall that under the previous Administration some of us below the Gangway advocated that the PSBR should be equated, in percentage terms, to the gross national product, taking into account inflation? We argued that the rise in PSBR should be calculated on that basis. Since PSBR will rise again this year, and thus fail to pacify Tories both in Parliament and in the country, may we have a categorical assurance that the Chancellor and his fellow Ministers will not use the argument about calculating PSBR as a percentage of the GNP?

The hon. Gentleman was a persistent critic of the previous Government. I know of his keen interest in the public sector borrowing requirement. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said, we shall make an announcement about the PSBR for the forthcoming year at the appropriate time.

Economic Growth

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is satisfied with the progress of the economy.

I shall not be satisfied with the progress of the economy until our industrial performance has improved, the rate of inflation has been brought down and sustainable long-term growth has been resumed.

Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer agree that the economic outlook is grim? Inflation has risen by 6 per cent. since the general election, the Government forecast that there will be 300,000 more unemployed by the end of the next financial year, the interest rate is likely to rise and the CBI predicts an economic recession. Is it not time that the Government made up their mind, took their courage in both hands and put the country first, by changing their policies?

I admire the enthusiastic fortitude of the hon. Gentleman urging us to change our policies. He might have noted that the CBI, when commenting on the difficult economic circumstances that lie ahead, made it clear that it looks for no change in policy. It recognises that our policies are necessary to correct the economic decline caused by the previous Administration. It is remarkable that in all the flannel from the Opposition and the demands for the Government to change their policies we have no evidence that the Opposition have a constructive alternative to offer.

In order to reduce the percentage of gross national product taken up by the public sector, will my right hon. and learned Friend consider putting a ceiling on inflation-proof pensions in the public sector? Does he agree that they are likely to accelerate in the next decade?

My hon. Friend assumes that inflation will continue to accelerate in the next decade. I do not accept that. I recognise that attention should be given to the recommendations made by the Expenditure Committee on the way in which and the basis on which the cost of inflation-proof pensions should be paid for by those involved.

Since it is many months since the Chancellor's incentive Budget, does the right hon. and learned Gentleman yet detect any sign of national revival as a result of his incentive policies?

If the right hon. Gentleman were to travel round the country, as I do, he would find many firms, workers, employers and many who have returned to the country since the Budget—[HON. MEMBERS: "Who has returned?"]—who see a great deal more sense now in taking decisions to invest, expand and take risks than they did under the previous Government.

The CBI has indicated its satisfaction with the Government's policies. Is my right hon. and learned Friend satisfied with the response from industry in terms of investment, following his incentive Budget?

It is not appropriate for me to criticise, attack or pass judgment on the scale of response. My hon. Friend must realise that decisions to invest, on the future of businesses and on movements in the pattern of the economy take place over a long period. I am satisfied that there is a great deal more optimism about the future of the economy now than there was before the last election.

Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer agree that the CBI is not putting its money where its mouth is? Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the CBI's last survey of investment intentions showed a collapse in investment, following a collapse of confidence? If the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not listen to his friends in the CBI, will he examine the stock market and watch it giving the thumbs down to his policies?

The right hon. Gentleman is far too enthusiastic in passing judgment on the economy over which he presided until recently. He must recognise that the effective judgment of the CBI on our policies lies in its continued support for the total rightness of those policies in the absence of any alternative being proffered by the Opposition.

Gross National Product

10.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the annual average of growth in the gross national product between 1974–5 and 1978–79.

It was 1½ per cent. at constant 1975 prices.

Does not that miserable figure demonstrate clearly the enormity of the task to which my right hon. and hon. Friends have set their hands? Does my right hon. Friend understand that the evidence is overwhelming from all parts of the country that the wealth creators, large and small, are solidly behind the Government's present economic policies?

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's comments. I am sure that the figures demonstrate that last year's public spending White Paper predicated a rate of growth and a rate of increase in public spending that was in no way validated by the experience of the economy under the previous Labour Government.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the outlook for the gross national product in the first two years of this Government's administration is about minus 1 per cent. or possibly minus 2 per cent.? Does he accept that the Government's inflationary policies are driving the country into a deeper and worse recession than is faced by any other country in Europe?

The White Paper published last week states that the immediate prospects for output are poor. That comment would not have been made without careful deliberation. Behind us is a record of facile and easy promises made by the Labour Government. If the country emerges reasonably unscathed from the economic recession, it will be because profitable activities are encouraged and not harassed.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the previous Government virtually ruined the economy during their five years in office? In view of the need urgently to catch up with other countries, what rate of growth does my right hon. Friend wish to see once the current medicine has begun to work?

I have no particular views about the desirable rate of growth. That is something that industry will tell us, rather than us telling industry.

Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that not only is the immediate prospect of growth poor, but that there is no evidence that over the next four years the growth rate will, on average, be in excess of the 1·5 per cent. that he has mentioned? Will the right hon. Gentleman now reply to the serious question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) about investment intentions?

I do not want to speculate on the average rate of economic growth during the lifetime of this Parliament. However, I know that, on the whole, politically motivated investment has a poorer record than has business motivated investment.

Value Added Tax (Listed Buildings)

11.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will seek to exempt building works on listed buildings from value added tax?

My right hon. Friend has no plans to do so.

Is that not a pity, since all changes to listed buildings must be in the form of repairs because no new construction is allowed and VAT bears heavily upon them? Many of those repairs are paid for out of public subscriptions, and more money has to be raised to cover VAT. Is my hon. Friend aware that much of the money is provided by Government grants? Would it not be better to exempt listed buildings from VAT and allow people to raise more money to protect our historic homes?

We are not out of sympathy with the need to help our national heritage, but this is not the right way to do it. If relief were to be given it would give rise to demands for comparable relief on other types of repair work. The tax at stake for zero rating all building repair and maintenance work is as much as £300 million in a full year.

Were not the problems involved made much worse by the increase of VAT to 15 per cent. in the last Budget? Does the Financial Secretary agree that that was a disastrous decision? Will be re-examine the VAT rate, reduce it, and so bring down the rate of inflation?

The right hon. Gentleman has a curiously simpliste view for one who purports to understand monetary policy and the causes of inflation. Does he really believe that the rate of VAT determines the rate of inflation? If so, how does he explain why, when his right hon. Friend reduced the rate of VAT from 10 to 8 per cent., in the following 12 months we suffered the highest rate of inflation—about 35 per cent.—that the country had ever had the misfortune to experience?

Expenditure

13.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his latest estimate of the savings arising from cuts in public expenditure.

I refer the hon. Member to the White Paper on the Government's expenditure plans for 1980–81, Cmnd. 7746. published on 1 November.

Any savings in expenditure affect the poor and result in handouts to the wealthy—especially in switching expenditure from education to defence and from health to law and order. Will the Minister tell us the human misery effect in real terms that the cuts will have on the sick, the disabled, the elderly and schoolchildren?

As the premise was a travesty of the facts, I cannot answer the second part of the question.

When my right hon. Friend sees some benefits from the savings in public expenditure, will he consider the impact on families of the increased price of school meals and school transport, as there has been a transfer in money and wealth from families to other sections of the community? When the next Budget comes, will my right hon. Friend ask his right hon. and learned Friend to consider increasing child benefits?

My hon. Friend has asked a formidable question. However, I do not believe that he would suppose that I could seek to forecast my right hon. and learned Friend's Budget for next year.

Will the Chief Secretary clarify the unemployment effects of his public expenditure White Paper, to which he referred last week? He told us that the average number unemployed next year would be 1,650,000, excluding school leavers. Will he confirm, as his forecast shows, that if he includes school leavers the figure will be over 2 million by the end of next year?

The unemployment forecast to which the right hon. Gentleman refers was a working assumption. Any student of the exchanges between the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) and the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) will appreciate the distinction between those two terms. As far as there is an impact on levels of employment in the prospective year, it is to be derived not from the public spending White Paper, which predicates stabilised public spending, but from the recession which operates throughout the Western world.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the most rapid increase in public expenditure revealed by the recent White Paper is in respect of interest rate charges? Has he noted that interest rates in the United States are now at a higher level than when General Lee threatened Washington during the American Civil War and that this is undoubtedly a symptom of an international interest rate war which has largely replaced the international tariff rate wars of previous eras? Is my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor contemplating an initiative with OECD countries to prevent any further advance down this road, which must lead to a world depression?

My right hon. and learned Friend is in constant contact with other Chancellors through the medium of OECD and other international institutions. I am sure that he takes my hon. Friend's point to heart.

Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise that just as alarming to the ordinary person is not merely the reduction in expenditure but the increase in charges in the White Paper, which will put up the cost of living considerably, the increases of VAT in the Budget, and the increases in nationalised industry prices still to come? What will be the increase in the retail price index following the White Paper? Does that include or exclude the increases in rates and rents that we now expect?

The increase in the retail price index next year, arising from the items specifically listed in the White Paper, will be approximately 1 per cent.

Avgas

14.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he has any plans to alter the duty on AVGAS.

The taxation of hydrocarbon oil is kept under review, but my right hon. and learned Friend has no present plans to alter the taxation of AVGAS relative to other hydrocarbon oil.

How does my hon. Friend account for his answer when the duty on AVTUR JET A1 gas is 3·5p per imperial gallon, while the duty on AVGAS is 36·77p per imperial gallon? How does he account for the unfairness between the two rates of duty and the comparatively high rate of duty on AVGAS?

My hon. Friend has made an interesting point. However, he must realise that there could be equalisation in the opposite direction. It would be possible to increase the duty on AVTUR.

Prime Minister (Engagements)

Q1.

asked the Prime Minister what are her official engagements for 8 November.

This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, including one with President Kaunda of Zambia. This evening I shall preside at a dinner for President Kaunda.

Why the indecent haste to rush through the Rhodesian legislation today and repeal sanctions next week? Does not the Prime Minister realise that she is taking the risk of jeopardising a peaceful settlement simply to appease the Right-wing racialists on her own Benches?

I thought that my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal dealt with the statement and all the questions superbly yesterday. I have nothing new that I can usefully add.

Will my right hon. Friend take time during her busy day to contact the governors of the BBC to express extreme concern about the way in which the "Panorama" team seems to have encouraged the IRA to break the law in Northern. Ireland?

We got in touch with the BBC the moment we saw this report in the newspapers this morning. Since then the BBC has issued a statement saying that what happened would appear to be a clear breach on the part of the "Panorama" team of standing instructions about filming in Ireland. [Interruption.] I am reading the statement. The governors have asked the acting Director-General to complete his inquiries quickly and report back to the board on action to be taken.

My hon. Friend will know that this is not the first time that we have had occasion to raise similar matters with the BBC. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I think that it is time that the BBC put its house in order.

Following the evidence of this treasonable activity on the part of the BBC "Panorama" team in setting up what was a joint operation with the IRA, may we have an assurance that the names of those concerned will be forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions?

I think that this is a matter for the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions. I think it right that I should leave these matters in their capable hands.

Will the right hon. Lady—as I am sure she understands—convey the feeling of the whole House that it is not the duty of the media in this country to stage-manage news but to report it, and that affairs of this kind, in which the BBC, or anybody else, sets out deliberately to manufacture news to prove a point, are distasteful to and considered reprehensible by every one of us?

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I should like to make it clear that the BBC said that there was no question of this programme being transmitted.

Q2.

asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 8 November.

I refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I have just given.

Will my right hon. Friend find time in the course of a busy day to telephone her European NATO colleagues and urge them to resist the blandishments of President Brezhnev in his attempts to make unilateral reductions in nuclear arms? Does she agree that the West must stand united in the face of the deliberate and continuing military buildup on the part of the Warsaw Pact countries?

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that the first duty of the Western Governments is to provide for their own security. If we wish to negotiate on disarmament we should do so from a position of strength and not of weakness.

It is noteworthy that President Brezhnev's remarks were made at a massive military parade in East Berlin, at a time when the Russians have far more modern theatre nuclear weapons than we have. Therefore, we must bring our own up to strength and up to full modernisation.

During the course of the day, will the Prime Minister consider the humane action of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in attempting to secure the release of the American hostages in Tehran? Does the right hon. Lady support that action? Will she also note the constructive part that that organisation is now playing in world affairs? Is it not time that the Government recognised the PLO?

The hon. Gentleman knows that we are doing everything that we can to assist our friends the Americans in the grievous situation in which they find themselves. Because of that situation, I think that the less said that might do anything to aggravate it the better.

Having regard to the prevalence of the crime of mugging, extending, according to reports, to British Legion poppy sellers, will my right hon. Friend spare time today to discuss with her right hon. Friend the Home Secretary ways of speeding up measures to enforce law and order?

I saw a report in the press to that effect. If that is happening, it is about the most reprehensible and disgraceful action that anyone could possibly imagine. We have given great priority to law and order, and we shall do all that we can to protect poppy sellers.

As the Prime Minister is in favour of public expenditure cuts, will she consider cutting unemployment benefit, by providing public investment to create jobs in the North-West?

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have to get more genuine jobs going, and those come from fostering small businesses in the private sector. We cannot go on staying in yesterday's jobs or putting more into nonproductive jobs when we wish people to put more of their effort into productive jobs with real prospects for the future.

Q3.

asked the Prime Minister if she will state her official engagements for 8 November.

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply which I gave earlier.

Amidst her many preoccupations today, will the Prime Minister pause to think that they would all be wasted in the event of a Third World War? Therefore, will she ask our representatives at NATO to negotiate on Mr. Brezhnev's offer on disarmament? If she argues that we can negotiate only through superior military strength, and if the Russians adopt the same attitude, it becomes a logical impossibility for one side to be stronger than the other, and hence the arms race will end in disaster.

Our best insurance policy against a Third World War is to have regard to our own defences. I think that it was an American President who said "We should never fear to negotiate, but we should never negotiate from fear".

Will the Prime Minister find time today to consider replacing the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland? The right hon. Gentleman has been dithering since his appointment six months ago, he must be held responsible for the failure to provide security for the Ulster people and he is about to embark on a conference without considering the views of the elected representatives of the people of Northern Ireland.

The hon. Member will have anticipated my reply, which of course is "No, Sir". I hope that he will look with interest at the White Paper on future proposals for Northern Ireland when it comes out in about the third week in November.

Will the Prime Minister spare a little time in her busy day to speak to the Secretary of State for Defence and urge him to make a decision on the order for 77 Chieftain tanks for Vickers at Elswick which negotiated the tender? Is she aware that it is five and a half months since my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Cowans) and I first entered into correspondence with her asking for an urgent decision on this issue? Is she further aware that the Vickers plant at Elswick is to go on short time on Monday—probably a two-day week—due to her dilatory action?

I know that the hon. Gentleman has been very active in this matter and has raised it before. He knows that it is under consideration and that the answer partly depends on the further orders for tanks that we hope to receive.

Q4.

asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 8 November.

I refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave earlier.

The Prime Minister will be aware that the residual sanctions that will remain in force against Zimbabwe-Rhodesia after the coming week will permit a degree of discretion to the Government in their enforcement. Will she give instructions to her Ministers to interpret or to apply those remaining sanctions with discretion and flexibility, if only to ensure that British firms are enabled to make the appropriate preparations to establish sales forces in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, ready for the resumption of legality?

The remaining sanctions, which are the vast majority which do not come under the 1965 Act, stay until they are positively revoked. We would expect them to be revoked the moment a British Governor sets foot in Rhodesia. Beyond that I will, of course, draw the mechanism to the attention of my right hon. Friend.

I should like to revert to the Prime Minister's meeting with President Kaunda today. Having already had the advantage of a conversation with him, I shall not be surprised if he raises a point similar to that raised by the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Gardiner). In these circumstances, and as President Kaunda will be here today and tomorrow, will the right hon. Lady consider, at this very late stage, that as the business proposed for Monday, which has not yet been announced, is not vital it could be of great use to the House if we were to take the Second Reading of the Bill today and the Committee and remaining stages on Monday? If she accepts that suggestion I shall use what influence I have, whatever it may be, or however small it may be, with my hon. Friends to ensure that the Government get the Bill, perhaps late on Monday night or Tuesday morning. That would give us the opportunity for discussions with President Kaunda and for reflection.

We are always prepared to consider things through the usual channels. However, as the right hon. Gentleman indicated, our fear is that his influence might fall just a bit short of securing the full guarantee. If we can have that guarantee—[Interruption.] We should have to get the Bill away from the House on Monday, to be in their Lordships' House on Tuesday. If the right hon. Gentleman feels that he can ensure that, I suggest that we consider it through the usual channels.

I give that undertaking on behalf of my hon. Friends if the Committee stage is put back to Monday, although we shall have to go very late in view of the number of amendments that have been tabled. Indeed, we shall go very late tonight and tomorrow if we take them today. I am not bargaining. I am trying to put forward a sensible suggestion. I am commenting on the fact that there are a number of amendments which, if I read the House aright, will take us a long time to deal with tonight or tomorrow. We all know that the length of hon. Members' speeches can depend upon whether there is an understanding. I can enter into an understanding, if the right hon. Lady will, to deliver the Bill to the House in time for her to get her sanctions, even though we are opposed to them. The right hon. Lady has a majority in the House. We shall argue the case, but we shall get the Bill through in time for her to take whatever action is necessary on that matter if she will fall in with the proposal that I have made.

I suggest that it be further considered through the usual channels.

Q5.

asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 8 November.

I refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave earlier.

I accept the necessity for control of Government expenditure, but will my right hon. Friend spend a few moments today talking to the Secretary of State for Social Services about the new heating allowances? It is not intended that those who receive rent and rate rebates should receive these allowances. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that would be unfair because many hon. Members have advised pensioners in their areas to take rent and rate rebate allowances rather than apply for supplementary benefit, with which they would get the heating allowance, and thereby get a little more money?

I am aware of that factor, but I hope that the people affected in that way will consider whether it is to their advantage to take their supplementary benefit allowances rather than rent and rebate allowances. The generous heating allowances under the new scheme can be as much as £50 per person. Pensioners might find that it is better for them to go for supplementary benefit than for rent and rate rebates.

Questions To The Prime Minister

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, relating to Prime Minister's Question Time. I wonder whether you have any helpful suggestions how this tide of almost insatiable curiosity about my right hon. Friend's daily doings should be stemmed. I am sure that we all agree that my right hon. Friend does many interesting things almost every day, but to have no less than 18 people asking, as they have today, what she is doing seems to me to make an undue farce of our proceedings.

Members rose—

Order. The House knows that I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. The open question is quite a change. It happened during the previous Parliament and is happening during this one. It is almost an abuse of our procedures, but the House reacted strongly when I protested. I wish that the Procedure Committee would look at the whole question.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Before the announcement of next week's business, may I, on behalf of most of my colleagues who are supporting the amendments on the Southern Rhodesia Bill, say that we associate ourselves fully with what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said. We hope that that will cause a change in the business announcement that will be made.

Business Of The House

Buisness Statement—the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Leader of the House of Commons

(Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas)

The business for next week will be as follows:

MONDAY 12 NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Protection of Trading Interests Bill.

Proceedings on the Isle of Man Bill.

TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER—Supply [5th Allotted Day]. Debate entitled "The failure of the Government to support the woollen and textile industries," until about 7 o'clock.

Motion on cuts in the British Broadcasting Corporation's external services.

WEDNESDAY 14 NOVEMBER—Remaining stages of the European Communities (Greek Accession) Bill and of the Shipbuilding Bill.

THURSDAY 15 NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill (Lords) and of the Papua New Guinea, Western Samoa and Nauru (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill.

FRIDAY 16 NOVEMBER—Private Members' Bills.

MONDAY 19 NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the British Aerospace Bill.

In view of the exchanges that have just taken place I know that the Leader of the House will be considering the prospect of an amendment to Monday's business and I will urge him further on that, so that the "usual channels" can have their usual discussions. However, we hope that he will be able to come to the House very early in the course of the debate today so as to facilitate progress and also give us an answer on this matter.

Secondly, referring to the business for next week, the Opposition will put down a motion on the failure of the Government to support the woollen and textile industries. As for cuts in the external services of the British Broadcasting Corporation, we shall have no difficulty accepting, and tabling as a motion, the motion that already stands on the Order Paper.

I take it that that is a provisional announcement. With regard to the very reasonable offer made to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, as she made clear it will be discussed through the usual channels. In the interests of the whole House, I hope that it will be possible to make a statement later today.

Is my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House aware of a view expressed by a number of Members during the last two weeks? During next week, will he consider acting on a reference to the Procedure Committee so that we can take steps to try to limit the length of supplementary questions at Question Time? Might we not revert to the practice of only one question being allowed to each Member, instead of two or three questions? Will my right hon. Friend refer that to the Procedure Committee?

In answer to my hon. Friend's supplementary questions, I think that that is a matter for Mr. Speaker.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is great interest throughout the House in the report of the Royal Commission on the National Health Service? Can he give an undertaking that the House will have an opportunity to debate that matter before the Christmas Recess?

I cannot give the hon. Lady an undertaking in categoric terms. I am certainly aware of the importance of that report, and I will consider the matter.

Will the Leader of the House provide an early opportunity to discuss the findings of the committee of inquiry into the death of Darryn Clarke, published one hour ago? In view of the serious implication that starving social services departments of funds can lead to the death of young children such as Darryn Clarke, it is a matter of vital importance that the House should have the earliest opportunity to discuss the findings of that committee. Can the Leader of the House give us that undertaking?

In these controversial matters it is always wise not to jump to conclusions, as the hon. Member has done. I have not read the report. It has only just been published. I shall look at it and consider what the hon. Gentleman said.

Has the Leader of the House yet been persuaded by his right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Defence that we should have a debate on the SALT treaty before it is ratified by the Senate? There are many who think that the contents of that agreement are a very eloquent testimony to Russian skill and determination in negotiations.

I shall certainly consider the important representations made by my right hon. Friend.

Does the Leader of the House recall that he made a commitment to me two weeks ago that he would consult the Lord Chancellor and the Law Officers about making a statement on the iniquitous practice of invading the privacy of jurors by vetting them before they are empanelled? Can he say when that statement will be made?

I said that I would consult the Lord Chancellor. In fact, my right hon, and learned Friend the Attorney-General and my hon, and learned Friend the Solicitor-General are considering the matter and I will let the hon. Gentleman know the result of those deliberations in due course.

May we have a prompt debate on the Government's public expenditure White Paper?

There will certainly be a debate on the public expenditure White Paper before Christmas.

When may we expect a debate on the affairs of the North-West? If time cannot be found for a debate in the Chamber, do arrangements still exist for debates in the Regional Affairs Committee? If they do, we have only then to agree on the team to take part. Does the right hon. Gentleman recollect that the last time we debated the North-West in the Regional Affairs Committee we had an omnibus agenda? I would prefer in our next debate to restrict it to one simple subject, such as the consequences of the Government's expenditure cuts for the North-West.

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a categorical assurance. These matters have been raised in Adjournment debates, I shall certainly look at the matter.

rose—

Order. I appeal to hon. Members to make their questions as brief as possible. If they do I hope to be able to call everyone rising to speak.

Will my right hon. Friend consider saving the time of the House by indicating that the Government will accept the motion on the BBC's external services, which the Leader of the Opposition has said he will put up for debate? That motion will certainly receive a great deal of support from the Conservative Benches.

I will certainly consider what my right hon, and learned Friend said. The whole problem may be solved when the facts are fully known. This year the provision for the BBC external services is £40·3 million—

Order. I have no doubt that the information is interesting, but it had better await a later time.

I am only trying, Mr. Speaker, to help the House. I certainly bow to your ruling, but when the facts are fully known the demand for the debate from both sides of the House will die away.

The right hon. Gentleman has made his point.

Will the Leader of the House ensure that for the debate on Tuesday, which will take place in Opposition time—which perhaps is a measure of the Government's lack of concern for the textile industry—representatives are here from both the Department of Industry and the Department of Trade? If they are, one cannot be played off against the other. In addition, attitudes that are of vital concern to the woollen textile industry about both the industry and the multi-fibre arrangement can be brought into the debate, and Ministers will be able to answer to the fullest extent possible.

I believe that it is ordinary constitutional practice for a Supply day to be used in order to raise these matters. The arrangement has nothing to do with the Government's concern for our future. I shall certainly consider the hon. Member's request about speakers.

Can my right hon. Friend comment on the working and possible impact of the new Select Committees on the work of this House? For example, if the Select Committee on social services should choose as one of its first subjects to examine the Merrison report on the National Health Service, may we be assured that that would not preclude a debate on the subject on the Floor of the House?

I am glad that, as the Order Paper shows, the Committee of Selection has proposed names for all the Select Committees. I shall be tabling a motion to this effect next week. I think that we should wait until the Committees are in existence before deciding on the sort of points that the hon. Gentleman has raised.

In his reflections on the reasonable proposition advanced by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition for changing Monday's business, will the right hon. Gentleman, as well as taking account of the needs and wishes of the House, bear in mind that by transferring the remaining stages to Monday an atmosphere may well be created that will help the Foreign Secretary at Lancaster House?

I am very well aware of the important considerations that have been raised. Of course, I always react reasonably when reasonable statements are made—for instance, by the Leader of the Opposition. I feel a great deal of sympathy for him. He must be the only leader of the Labour Party to be in limbo and purgatory at the same time.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is ample support from the Government side of the House for both the points made by the Leader of the Opposition?

My right hon. Friend referred to the British Aerospace Bill. May I refer him to early-day motion No. 164 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Benyon) and myself and 80 of our hon. Friends which seeks to enshrine the principle of allowing private enterprise to purchase parts of State corporations, particularly where those corporations are unwilling or unable to maintain the manufacture of certain parts?

[That this House welcomes any private sector investment in British motor car manufacturing; and trusts that Her Majesty's Government will not permit, under the guise of non intervention in management, the Board of British Leyland to close M.G. Abingdon by preventing the sale of M.G. to private-sector competitors of the state-subsidised Triumph T. R. sports cars.]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is possible to arrange a debate on this matter as soon as possible?

I shall certainly consider that. I have seen the motion on the Order Paper. British Leyland is prepared to consider any sensible proposal about the future of MG. Of course, it is up to BL to decide which course of action is in its best commercial interest, unhampered by Government intervention.

Since General Suharto will be visiting this country next week, and since discussions will be taking place on many important issues—no doubt including the invasion of East Timor by Indonesian forces, which has led to tremendous suffering and many deaths among the indigenous population—may we expect a statement on the talks? That would enable hon. Members who are deeply concerned about these issues to discover exactly what is happening.

I shall pass the hon. Gentleman's concern to my right hon, and noble Friend the Foreign Secretary.

rose—

Order. If the five hon. Members who have been rising will put brief questions I shall be able to call them all.

When will the Leader of the House give instructions for the restoration and repair of the Palace of Westminster to begin and for the so-called temporary railings in Westminster Hall to be removed? If it is not to be soon, may we have a debate about it?

That matter is being considered by the Services Committee.

Does the Leader of the House realise that there is greater unity behind my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on the Rhodesian question than exists on the Government Benches? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that some of us believe that the enabling Bill has been brought forward to patch up the differences on the Conservative side? In view of my right hon. Friend's constructive suggestion, will the right hon. Gentleman consider an application to Mr. Speaker for a brief adjournment of the House during which discussions could be held through the usual channels before we reach the Second Reading? We should then know what the situation was, and that would have a bearing on the debate.

I appreciate the hon. Member's desire to help, but I think that discussions through the usual channels are now taking place. I hope that they will have a constructive result without the need for an adjournment.

Does the Leader of the House agree that more than just the convenience of the House and of Members is at stake in the discussions that are taking place about how we deal with the Rhodesia legislation? Does he accept that the situation is such that we could risk civil war in Rhodesia? Is he aware that if the legislation is passed precipitately and the Government implement a settlement that does not have the support of the Patriotic Front, they will be culpable, in bringing about the possibility of civil war?

I do not want to follow the hon. Gentleman into the more controversial parts of that question. However, it would be in the best interests of everyone in Rhodesia if the strong views that are held in the House can be expressed within a reasonable compass of time, and if the ordinary procedures of the House can be followed.

Will the Leader of the House undertake to provide time before Christmas for a debate on the effects of Government expenditure cuts on the British Council?

The British Council and the expenditure on it can be discussed within the general debate on the White Paper.

rose—

Order. It appears that my arithmetic a little earlier was wrong. It was my mistake. I realise that three other hon. Members have been seeking to catch my eye, and I will call them.

Does the Leader of the House appreciate that it is important that the House should know what the Government intend to do, in response to my right hon. Friend's request, before we begin to discuss the business motion that is likely to be moved in the next 10 to 15 minutes?

I appreciate that that would be an ideal course of action, but there are complex issues that have to be discussed and the details have to be worked out through the usual channels. I do not think that it is likely that we can meet that deadline, but as soon as possible I hope to be able to tell the House if there is anything constructive to say.

Could the Leader of the House find an early opportunity to provide time for a debate on the report of the Royal Commission on legal services?

I shall consider that request for a debate, together with the request that I had earlier from the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short). There is another Commission report that we have to consider. I shall try to find time for them, but it cannot all be done in a hurry.

Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the disastrous situation in Cambodia and the implications of our continued recognition of the obnoxious Pol Pot regime?

I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early day motion No. 144, signed by a large number of Members of all parties in the House, calling for that question to be reconsidered, so that the House may have the opportunity of expressing its view on this issue.

[That this House, deeply concerned at the effects of famine in Cambodia, welcomes the aid programme of Her Majesty's Government; calls for it to be continued throughout the present crisis; and urges the reconsideration of the recognition of the Pol Pot régime.]

I have every sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's request. What is taking place in Cambodia is an affront to the conscience of mankind. The recognition of the Pol Pot regime is a question that is being considered by the Government and a statement will be made on that in the near future. Meanwhile, I shall give full consideration to the hon. Gentleman's request.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It will be within the memory of the whole House that when I inquired whether he would refer to the Procedure Committee for consideration the matter of raising several different questions under one supplementary question, my right hon. Friend replied that this was a matter for Mr. Speaker. Is it not the case that the Leader of the House is quite within order to refer a matter of this nature to the Procedure Committee? I appreciate that it is not appointed until a matter is referred to it.

Is it not correct that only a few days ago, Mr. Speaker, you indicated to the House that the position of the Chair would be strengthened if the views of the House could be ascertained on this matter and if the Procedure Committee considered the point?

I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman. The House knows that from time to time I appeal to hon. Members to ask but one supplementary question when they are called. As I explained to the House only a few weeks ago, it was indeed the custom until about 15 years ago that if an hon, Member asked two supplementary questions he was chopped down and not called again for a long time. The invisible disciplines were exerted.

The hon. Gentleman is quite right in what he says. Any hon. Member can propose that the Procedure Committee should look at the matter. I do not wish to push the burden on to the Leader of the House. I realise that if I have the good will of the House—but only if I have the good will of the House—I can stop hon. Members who, when I call them to ask a supplementary question, ask two or more questions. But I expect to have the full support of the House when I do so.

Perhaps I may intervene in order to assist my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Mr. Emery). I do not think that I had fully understood his point. I thought that he was referring to the practice, but he was referring to the theory. That is where I come in, and I will consider it, but I do not wish in any way, Mr. Speaker, to encroach on your prerogatives.

I always give way to the Leader of the House on theological matters.

Further to the point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I be quite clear that you are not proposing, now, to undertake the practice of curtailing supplementary questions, and that you are saying that you would do this only when the will of the House was clear, presumably after a debate by the House, otherwise the will of the House could not easily be expressed—

Order. I believe that I know the will of the House. It is only when hon. Members are on their feet that they forget the will of the House. I would not accuse the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) of ever asking more than one supplementary question, but it is quite conceivable that I am wrong on that issue.

Now that a considerable number of hon. Members are present, I will state that on Monday at Question Time I shall intervene when an hon. Member has asked one supplementary question and ask him to resume his seat so that the Minister may answer that question. I look to the House for its support.

Miss Betty Harvie Anderson

I must inform the House that I have written on its behalf to Dr. Skrimshire, the husband of one who is better known to us as Betty Harvie Anderson, whose death was announced today. She was the only woman to act as Deputy Speaker in this House and was held in high affection and esteem by hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. Her devotion to this House was reflected in her distinguished service as Deputy Speaker. As hon. Members will appreciate, it is a difficult job. We salute the memory of a truly right hon, servant of this House.

Bill Presented

British Aerospace

Mr. Secretary Joseph, supported by Mr. Secretary Pym, Mr. Secretary Younger, Mr. Secretary Edwards, Mr. Secretary Nott, Mr. John Biffen, Mr. Adam Butler and Mr. Michael Marshall, presented a Bill to provide for the vesting of all the property, rights, liabilities and obligations of British Aerospace in a company nominated by the Secretary of State and the subsequent dissolution of British Aerospace; and to make provision with respect to the finances of that company: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 9 November and to be printed [Bill 74].

Standing Orders

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am not absolutely certain whether it is Mr. Speaker or the Leader of the House who orders that Standing Orders be reprinted up-to-date. It says on the face of the Standing Orders

"Ordered by The House of Commons"

but I do not remember ever hearing a motion that it be done. As the present issue is as obsolete as 17 May 1979 and additional orders now have all the motions for setting up the new Select Committees, would it be possible to arrange for an up-to-date set of Standing Orders to be printed and made available to Members?

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. I shall find out whether the Leader of the House, myself, or someone else is responsible. I think I have now found the answer—if I can read it. The order is made by a formal entry in the Vote. I shall see that it is done.

Business Of The House

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That if the Southern Rhodesia Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House, further proceedings on the Bill shall stand postponed and that as soon as the proceedings on any Resolution come to by the House on Southern Rhodesia [Money] have been concluded, this House will immediately resolve itself into a Committee on the Bill, and that the Southern Rhodesia Bill may be proceeded with at this day's sitting, though opposed, until any flout.—[ Mr. Waddington.]

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will you indicate whether you will be calling my amendment?

I have not selected the amendment.

Then may I speak to the motion?

Later on, maybe.

The motion is that the Southern Rhodesia Bill should be debated and that the debate should be continued until any hour, in the expectation that the Bill can be completed at one sitting.

This is a Bill of profound significance for the future of Southern Africa, and it is not too emotional or high-flown to say that lives depend upon a wise judgment about the course of the Bill and the time that we take to study it. The Opposition are incensed by the presentation of the Bill at this stage of the negotiations at Lancaster House. We are not opposed to the production of an enabling Bill to allow the Government to carry out the terms of an agreement that has been reached by all three parties to the consultations at Lancaster House, but it is essential before an enabling Bill is passed that there should be such an agreement.

If there is not such an agreement, the effect of the Bill that we are called upon to discuss is that the Government will have the power legally to take control of Southern Rhodesia again, to conduct the business of government in Southern Rhodesia up to the election, to have elected within Southern Rhodesia a Government who, by the time scale envisaged by Her Majesty's Government, are intended to be a Government headed by Bishop Muzorewa, and to confer legality upon that Government by recognising them there and then.

The Government's argument in presenting the Bill is that they do not have the power legally to confer independence because they do not have the independence Bill and the constitution in it. In fact, they will have had legal authority to take Rhodesia up to the brink of independence, to have a Government elected on their terms by their conception of what is a fair election, to recognise them, and, if they are recognised, to try to pass them off as the fully independent Government of Rhodesia, who could in those circumstances call in South Africa and accept the help of a foreign Government in fighting the guerilla forces. If that were to be the scenario, there is no one in the House who would want it. The only reason why there is not the same ferment of revolt by Conservative Members as by Labour Members is that so far the Government have been able to persuade Conservative liberal critics that they are getting near to an agreement at Lancaster House.

If there were an agreement and the Government brought forward the enabling Bill, they could have the Bill in a couple of hours. In those circumstances, no one in the House would want to oppose it. If all the parties at Lancaster House had agreed on the terms of a new constitution and they had all agreed that an enabling Bill was necessary, no one would want to put a barrier in the way of stopping the war and ending the loss of life.

In those circumstances, what is the rush to prepare the Bill now and to produce it today when no agreement has been reached at Lancaster House? Some of my right hon, and hon. Friends take the view that all that this is about is the embarrassment that the Government may feel on having to introduce a sanctions order before next Thursday, and the revolt that may follow on the Conservative Benches. I have no doubt that that is in the mind of the Government, too.

If that were all it were, they know that they could get the sanctions order. They know that there is a majority for the order in the House. It would cause them some embarrassment to have a large revolt, but it would not be so embarrassing if they were ultimately to get an agreement a few days later and were able to say "I told you so.".

I believe that the real reasoning of the Government in producing the enabling Bill before they have an agreement at Lancaster House is that they suspect that they will not get an agreement. I believe that they are hoping to have legal authority to push through an agreement bilaterally with the Muzorewa regime when they do not have the assent of the Patriotic Front. They would have the legal authority of the House to do that because they had already obtained an enabling Bill.

If that is in the Government's mind, nothing more disreputable has been put before the House. In addition, there could be nothing more dangerous for the future of Southern Africa. The reality of power in Southern Rhodesia is that the Patriotic Front has military control of a considerable section of the country. It has the capacity to continue fighting as long as it wishes. Only if the Patriotic Front gives its assent to an agreement will the war stop. If the Patriotic Front is not in agreement, whatever we do in the House will not bring the war to a close one day earlier.

If we were to give the Government the authority to bless the Muzorewa regime and to bring about an appearance of legality that extended the war, the blood would be on our hands as well as on the hands of those who are taking part in the fighting. I do not believe that the House wants that to happen. I do not believe that the House recognises that that should happen.

In discussing the motion, the issue is whether there is such urgency as to make it necessary for the Government to have the Bill this week. If we leave the Bill until there is an agreement, the Government can have it within a day. They have talked for nine weeks on the independence negotiations and another day will not hurt very much. I want the war to end as soon as possible; so does Bishop Muzorewa, so does the Patriotic Front and so does everyone who has the best interests of Rhodesia at heart. I do not want to prolong the Bill by appearing to bless an independent Muzorewa regime that does not have the assent of the Patriotic Front. We must remember that the Patriotic Front can dictate whether the war continues.

Conservative Members, with their preoccupation with sanctions and their own constituency interests, should recognise that there is a real danger if the Bill proceeds today.

I hope that even at this late stage the Government will reconsider. We have made them a reasonable offer. I should prefer not to have the Bill until an agreement is reached. However, if the Government accept our offer, we can delay the passage of the Bill until Tuesday night. By that time President Kaunda will have had discussions with the Prime Minister. By that time President Nyerere could have indicated his view. There could be discussions with the other frontline States about what should happen if there is to be a breakdown in talks. By Tuesday night we will know probably better than we know now what the ultimate outcome of the talks at Lancaster House is to be. If that were possible, I am sure that the House would be in a better position to decide whether the Bill should proceed.

Is the hon. Gentleman talking about all stages by Tuesday night?

I have always understood that we shall reach the end of discussion in the House by the end of Monday's business, which may go into Tuesday but will not interfere with Tuesday's business. It is my understanding that the Bill could go to another place on Tuesday afternoon. It seems that that is a fair offer. Indeed, it gives more than I should want to give if I were asked to consider the matter afresh.

The Government have a majority to push the Bill through. If the offer is accepted, the parties at Lancaster House will have only the weekend to make plain their views about the outcome of the negotiations. If there is to be an agreement, and if all parties agree that there can be an agreement, there is no one in the House who will not give the Bill a fair wind. If there is not to be an agreement, it is only right that we should stop the Bill now. It is dangerous and it could produce more bloodshed than we have seen hitherto.

I also wish to oppose the motion that stands in the name of the Prime Minister and concerns the business of the House. As my right hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Lyon) has pointed out, the motion provides for the Southern Rhodesia Bill to be rushed through all its stages in one sitting.

No one can doubt that it is a most important Bill. It raises issues of vast import for the future of Africa and of this country. In the opinion of many hon. Members, the Bill may contribute to the continuation of the civil war in Southern Rhodesia, and we all wish to bring that to an end. In those circumstances it is vital that the issues involved should not be dealt with at one sitting and rushed through the House in the way here proposed.

That is particularly important in view of the situation at Lancaster House. We were told by the Lord Privy Seal yesterday that an agreement was near, but some of us believe that it is not as near as was suggested, and there is at least doubt about it. If we were to rush the Bill through in one prolonged sitting we might jeopardise the long-term agreement at Lancaster House. In those circumstances it is highly unadvisable for us to proceed at this stage.

Further, the time allowed by the Prime Minister's motion would not be sufficient for hon. Members to express themselves on all the issues that are raised. Yesterday I raised a point of order concerning the position of right hon. and hon. Members who may wish to deal with some of the principal issues at stake. The Bill raises the question of sanctions, security and other issues about the future of Southern Rhodesia or Zimbabwe. The House should consider carefully whether it would be right to rule hon. Members out of order if they raise such matters or if they are not given adequate time to discuss them. If the motion were passed today it would be impossible for hon. Members to discuss those issues in full.

Such important issues require lengthy discussion. I remind the House of the amount of time required to discuss devolution in the previous Parliament. Unless it can be proved that the Bill should go through today because it is absolutely essential for agreement at Lancaster House, it would be totally wrong for these discussions to be thrust on one side and to deny right hon. and hon. Members the opportunity of putting forward their views at this stage.

We have had to discuss on many occasions matters of crucial importance to the future of former British colonies, and in several of those colonies blood has subsequently been shed. Had further consideration been given to the measures at the time, a great number of the problems might have been avoided. As an example, the difficulties in Ireland are still with us, although many people hoped that they would have disappeared half a century ago. We should not today take a decision in haste that could lead to the perpetuation of the problems in Southern Rhodesia and the whole of Africa for a long time to come.

Unless agreement is reached at Lancaster House, the civil war will continue. In those circumstances it is important for hon. Members to have time to reflect.

As my hon. Friend the Member for York said, we do not yet know the position of the front-line States. President Kaunda is here and discussions are shortly to take place. It will be totally wrong if we are unable carefully to weigh the words of President Kaunda and other front-line Presidents before taking decisions on these important issues.

It is not merely a question of the continuation of the civil war or a settlement in Southern Africa; it also concerns Britain's standing in Africa and the world at large. We have international obligations, and if the Bill becomes law and is acted upon we may find ourselves in breach of those obligations. Should that happen, there will be adverse effects on Britain's standing in the world, and some countries may choose to take economic sanctions against us. That would be most undesirable in present circumstances.

If democracy is to have any meaning we must resist the Government's intention to push the Bill through regardless.

A further consideration is that many of us have long felt that if important issues have to be discussed hon. Members are not at their most alert and freshest in the early hours of the morning. Through tiredness, some hon. Members do not make the contributions that they would wish. Unless there is a pressing need, it is wrong for us to embark on an all-night discussion on such an important matter.

Some of us wish fully to express our views on the amendments, and, as all hon. Members know well, we may be subjected to pressures from colleagues who wish to get away. By keeping the House here in the early hours of the morning we may be causing considerable inconvenience and difficult to colleagues. That is a responsibility that we are forced to consider. I do not believe that the Government have made out a case for proceeding through the night and placing hon. Members in that difficulty.

There is no justification for carrying on the debate through the night. The supposition put before the House yesterday, that the Bill is essential to implement the agreement, was based upon the idea that that agreement was near. Many of us believe that judgment to be invalid.

If the Bill is rushed through, the Patriotic Front—the party to the discussions which is unlikely to reach agreement—may see it as an ultimatum. My hon. Friend the Member for York said that it was the Government's intention that if the Patriotic Front did not reach agreement they would not bother about that unduly but would implement the agreement based upon the consent of the Muzorewa Government. The House should wake up to the fact that agreement is not likely to come next week.

Yesterday the Lord Privy Seal, when answering questions on the matter, hinted that he was not clear about the outcome of events if agreement was not reached with the Patriotic Front. Indeed, I believe that his right hon. and noble Friend the Foreign Secretary said something different in another place. My right hon. and hon. Friends would like to know what will happen if agreement is not reached with the Patriotic Front. The Government must undertake not to implement the Bill that we are being asked to rush through the House. Of course, it would be too late to ask for that when the Bill has gone through the House. Therefore, it is important to resist the Bill strongly today, so that all those matters can be cleared up.

Many of us feel that the Government are not only concerned to avoid splitting their ranks on the issue of sanctions next week but are also anxious to present the House with a fait accompli, should the negotiations break down next week.

We all wish to see an end to the war. No. hon. Member can dissent from that wish. We all wish to see peace in Southern Africa—it is in the interests of everybody. Therefore, we should not allow a Bill to be thrust through the House which may jeopardise that peace eventually being achieved. If we allowed the business motion to go through we would be accepting a state of affairs before the outcome of these matters was known. It is vital to resist the proposal on the Order Paper that would give effect to the Bill today.

I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument. Why will matters be different on Monday night? How will the problems be resolved at that stage, in terms of the offer that has been fairly made on behalf of the Opposition and supported by the hon. Member for York (Mr. Lyon)? What will happen over the next three or four days to resolve all those problems?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. These matters are important. If it were clear by early next week that the front-line States were opposed to the Bill and its effects, and that agreement was some time off, even Conservative Members, as well as Opposition Members, would consider the Bill to be inapposite at this time. Perhaps the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) does not share that view, but some of his right hon. and hon. Friends have expressed misgivings about the matter and may feel that we may be placed in breach of our international obligations. The vast majority of Opposition Members, if not all, are opposed to the measure. Strong pressure may well be brought on the Government next week to postpone the Bill if no agreement has been reached.

If it became clear next week that an agreement was unlikely, after the Bill had passed through all its stages, it would be too late. It would be no use crying over spilt milk. Therefore, those of us who can envisage that possibility should object strongly at this stage. I appeal to Conservative Members to consider the points that I am raising. The Bill would carry much more force with the support of the entire House behind it instead of being pushed through by a majority in the face of a determined and convinced minority. The agreement would be more difficult to put into effect at international level if the Bill were pushed through.

The Government should recognise that if the Bill is taken next week and if an agreement has been reached, it will receive the blessing of all parties in the House. That would be preferable to pushing the Bill through the House at this stage without the support of the minority. I hope that the Government will give the matter serious consideration and tell us why, if they do not accept this point of view, they think it desirable and important to push the Bill through the House. If they are pushing the Bill through to save them from party differences—I am not suggesting that that is necessarily the case—all hon. Members would consider that behaviour to be disgraceful. If something is being done purely for party advantage and against the long-term interest of the people in this country and in Southern Africa, it is to be deplored.

I understood the hon. Member for York (Mr. Lyon) to be speaking on behalf of those who wish to amend the Bill. He said that if there was to be a delay until Monday they would not put any difficulties in the way of the Government. However, the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Newens) appears to be saying that the delay should take place in case the Bill is to be put off until Monday. I thought that the hon. Member for York was speaking on behalf of the Opposition hon. Members below the Gangway.

I speak for myself on the issue. No doubt many of my right hon. and hon. Friends agree with me. I was not saying that everyone agreed with me on every aspect of this matter. Nor did my hon. Friend the Member for York say that. My hon. Friend did not say, or imply, what the hon. Gentlemen has claimed. I should like to clarify the position so that the hon. Gentleman need be under no misapprehension.

If it became clear next week that agreement was still some distance away, and that the front-line States were opposed to the Bill and to the effects of the Bill, and if it also became clear that the Bill, in the judgment of many hon. Members, would not help to end the civil war but would perpetuate it, my view, which I hope would be shared by everyone on this side of the House, and perhaps by some hon. Members on the Government side, would be to say that the Bill should not go through at this stage.

Will my hon. Friend explain to the hon. Member for Bebington and Ellesmere Port (Mr. Porter) that the only proposition before the House at this time is that the whole matter should be driven through today? If the hon. Member for Bebington and Ellesmere Port wants to be constructive, he should direct his remarks to his own Front Bench in whose hands this matter rests.

What my hon. Friend says is true. There is no other proposition on the Order Paper except that which provides for all the proceedings to be rushed through today. If any of the expressions of opinion, suggestions, hints and promises that were voiced earlier today are made good, it is possible that our problem will to some extent be resolved, although I emphasise that I am not suggesting that the Bill would be timely, even next week.

The hon. Gentleman seems to be indicating that the Patriotic Front should have the right of veto over these discussions.

I believe that we need to get an agreement. One cannot get an agreement unless all parties to the agreement are eventually satisfied. To talk in terms of a veto, one is posing the question whether there should be an agreement with all the parties or, if necessary, only with some. My view is that we must seek agreement with all the parties. Unless we achieve such an agreement, the civil war will continue. We are talking about the continuation of the killing, the disruption and the ruination that is taking place in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.

We should take a long look at the situation. I believe that the Bill is likely to precipitate a situation in which the civil war will be carried on. Some of my right hon. and hon. Friends yesterday congratulated the Government on the progress that they had made to date in the talks. Many of us would agree that the talks have gone further than we might have expected at one time. Should those talks break down and should the war continue, it will be extremely difficult to take a new initiative and such an initiative would not be likely, anyway, to be in our hands. We are at a crucial crossroads. More care and more delay may enable us to achieve a reasonable result or at least satisfy ourselves that we have gone as far as possible in achieving a reasonable result. Surely we should not accept a state of affairs in which this procedural motion is rushed through the House.

Hon. Members on the Government Benches wish to be helpful, but Back Benchers are in a hopeless state of confusion. To take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bebington and Ellesmere Port (Mr. Porter), how does the hon. Gentleman reconcile what he says with what his hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Lyon) says? I understood the hon. Member for York to say that the Government could have the Bill on Tuesday, come what may. The hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Newens) now says that unless there is agreement between all three parties we shall suffer next week exactly the same resistance as he is now displaying. How does he reconcile his position with that of his hon. Friend the Member for York?

I do not believe that there is any deep rift between my hon. Friend the Member for York and myself. If there is, I respect the view of my hon. Friend, but I still hold to my view. My view is that if the Bill next week is seen to be damaging to the possibility of a settlement, it ought not to go through. If my hon. Friend the Member for York wishes to interrupt, I will give way.

I remind my hon. Friend, and, perhaps, hon. Members on the Government side, who have not looked at the Order Paper, that 15 sets of amendments have been tabled. One of them, at any rate, allows us to discuss the whole of the White Paper and all the constitution. I do not know what hon. Members can do with that. But on that one set of amendments, I could talk for eight hours. Recognising that another 30 votes could take place, I believe it is possible that even if the Government Front Bench are not inclined to allow us to conclude the debate next Monday, it will not be through the House by next Monday anyway. In the meantime, hon. Members will be here on Saturday and Sunday. I intervene in my hon. Friend's speech only to indicate that there may not be much difference in practice between us. It is a question of the wear and tear on hon. Members on the Government Benches.

My hon. Friend has clarified the matter so far as he is concerned. I hope that hon. Members on the Government Benches will see clearly the point I am making. When the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) mentioned that Conservative Back Benchers were hopelessly at sea—

Not only on this matter.

Not only on this issue, as my hon. Friend remarks. I want to ask the hon. Member for Leominster whether he believes it would be a good idea to push this measure through at this stage as swiftly as the Government propose. I believe it is totally undesirable. If Labour Members had remained silent and allowed the procedural motion to go through, we might have been guilty of allowing a Bill to be passed which would have had long term repercussions that none of us, on either side of the House, would think desirable.

There is a suggestion, I am told, that the Government intend to concede that the Bill should not proceed in the terms set out in the procedural motion. But, at this stage, at 20 minutes to five, we have received no definite indication that this is the situation. Hon. Members may say that talks are taking place all the time. But if we were to give way, who is to say that those talks, let alone those at Lancaster House, might not break down? If they broke down, we should still be faced with a procedural motion, and one well knows what the situation would be. If Conservative Members were asked to vote for it and we were asked to vote against it, that would be pushed through.

I hope that hon. Members will not regard this as some sort of fractious and unreasonable opposition. We are very deeply concerned about the fundamental principles which are at stake if this matter goes through.

rose—

Mr. McNamara.

I was giving way to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. Evans).

Order. I thought that, since the hon. Gentleman was making that point for the fourth time, he was concluding.

Perhaps I may tell my hon. Friend that I believe that he and my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Lyon) are doing a service to the House, because it would be wrong for us to proceed to make a decision on this motion without knowing the Government's intentions. It is important that this debate should continue until we know the Government's intentions.

Perhaps I may help the House on that matter. There are several other hon. Members seeking to catch my eye to talk on the motion. Mr. Newens.

I realise that other hon. Members wish to speak, Mr. Speaker, and I shall shortly be bringing my remarks to a close. But I make no apology for taking up the time of the House with what many of us feel is a vital issue. With due respect, we frequently discuss in the House all sorts of trivial matters at very great length. On this issue the future of Southern Africa is at stake. Those of us who feel strongly about this issue would be in dereliction of our duties if we did not raise this matter now.

As my hon. Friend the Member for York points out, at this stage no Government statement is before us. None of us knows that the Government will not stick to this particular motion, nor do we know what alternative, if any, they may be proposing.

In these circumstances, it would be totally wrong of the House to proceed to vote in favour of the motion. I hope very much that all hon. Members will weigh what I have said very carefully indeed, because it will be no use saying afterwards that we ought not to have had the Bill, and had we not taken this step other things might have been possible. Once the talks at Lancaster House break down finally, civil war will continue indefinitely. We here have a duty to see that nothing is done which makes that more likely. I hope that not merely my right hon. and hon. Friends but also some Conservative Members will support my point of view.

Having frequently spoken from the Opposition side of the House in opposition to procedural motions that appeared to be rushed, I can well understand the passion with which the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Newens) has spoken. In the many years that he and I have differed across the Floor, I have never doubted his sincerity. I hope that he will not take it amiss if I say that I have never listened to a more effective demonstration as to why Mr. Speaker is right to be introducing the 10-minute speech rule. I shall be very brief in what I say.

In no way do I disagree with the hon. Member about the vital importance of what is at stake. Of course we all wish to see an end to the war. But I hope that the hon. Member will not conclude that, because he feels passionately about it, he has any monopoly of concern for the ending of this war and that I and many of my right hon. and hon. Friends who support the motion are not just as concerned as he or any of his hon. Friends that this war rapidly be brought to a conclusion. I hope that he will concede us that.

The hon. Member obviously thought that my speech was too long. He must have missed part of it. I said that I believed that all tight hon. and hon. Members were concerned to get peace in Southern Africa. We may differ about the terms, but I certainly believe that the hon. Member and his hon. Friends are sincere in their desire to get peace.

I am grateful to the hon. Member. However, although he made every one of his other points about seven times, he did not make that point very clear.

The hon. Gentleman has referred to the length of my hon. Friend's speech and suggested that it ought to come within the ambit of the 10-minute rule. Is he not aware—he must remember his days in opposition—that the one weapon that an Opposition have is time? The 10-minute rule is not intended to take away that power, be cause that rule is related only to Second Readings, which are within confined limits. If we were not to have the right to delay business in order to get across serious issues of great importance to the country and to the party, we would be emasculated. I hope that there will be no suggestion that because we are delaying this motion today we are acting against the practices or the procedures of the House in any way.

I shall not comment on those remarks, Mr. Speaker, which were obviously addressed more to you than to me. In commenting on the speech of the hon. Member for Harlow, I merely said that I thought that it was a very good advertisement for the advantages of the 10-minute rule.

Two matters concerned me when the debate upon this procedural motion arose. The first was that things might be said in this House that would have a sideways effect on what is going on in the discussions at Lancaster House that would be damaging to the prospects of a settlement. I am bound to say directly to the hon. Member for York (Mr. Lyon), whose sincerity I also recognise, that when he says—I am paraphrasing it—that it is the Government's intention so to arrange things that the Muzorewa party will be given a sort of built-in advantage which will enable it to carry the day, which I refute as being totally untrue, I suggest that what he was doing was making the task of the Foreign Secretary and others at Lancaster House more difficult, because he was virtually placing his name and, by implication, those of many members of the Labour Party, on the view that the Patriotic Front may well come to feel—-namely, that the talks are being arranged to its disadvantage. Whether or not the Patriotic Front feels that, it is not the business and not the duty of any Member of this House to give to the Patriotic Front an impression that could prolong the war in Rhodesia. The hon. Member did that.

The hon. Gentleman has made a serious charge. Therefore, I am grateful to him for giving way so that I may answer it. If we are to discuss the Bill, as we shall, in great detail over a long period, including all the details of the negotiations, it is inevitable that we shall express views about the kind of proposals that have been put forward about the nature of the bona fides of the participants in the discussions, which in some way may inhibit a good agreement coming out of them. Does not all that indicate that it would be far better to have the discussion on the Bill after there has been an agreement at Lancaster House, and not while the negotiations are continuing?

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not give way to him again. I think that I am now entitled to make my speech, just as his hon. Friend the Member for Harlow made his speech. I say only this: it is right, of course, that the hon. Member and all his hon. Friends should give their views, as they undoubtedly will, on the nature of the negotiations and on the nature of the Bill and its implications. I accept that. But there is this difference: we are now discussing a purely procedural matter—the question when we are to discuss the full Bill.

We are talking about a timetable—no more and no less. The difference is that, when we come to the substance of the Bill, a Minister will speak and express the views and intentions of the Government. I believe that the Government will make clear beyond peradventure that the idea that they are arranging things for the exclusive benefit of the Muzorewa Government and the disadvantage of the Patriotic Front will be wholly and convincingly refuted by the Minister. If after that Labour Members wish to express their anxiety, they will have the opportunity to do so.

My concern is that there will be a sideways effect on the Lancaster House talks from what is said in the House this afternoon. When the Patriotic Front forms its judgment about the state of play and assents to an agreement, as we hope it will, it is far better that it should do so in the full context of what the Government are able to explain to the House, rather than as a reaction to remarks made this afternoon by the hon. Member for York without the benefit of having heard the Minister first.

I am sorry that on a procedure motion the hon. Member for York was able to put into the hands of the most doubting members of the Patriotic Front delegation a suggestion which I believe is untrue and which I am sure that the Minister will demonstrate is untrue when he has the opportunity to speak.

My hon. Friends have given a number of reasons why this procedural motion should not be passed. We are now waiting for just one reason why it should be passed. Without elaborating too much, I hope that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) will give us one reason, because the Lord Privy Seal was unable to do so yesterday. We have heard no reasons at all why the Bill should be pushed through today.

I take the point, but it is not outside the calculations of everyone in this Chamber that there are negotiations under way, not only at Lancaster House but also in a smaller room close to us. Therefore, my second concern is not only that some unintended remark could compromise the negotiations at Lancaster House but that it could also compromise the negotiations on the timetable taking place in the House.

The Leader of the Opposition, who speaks for most of the Opposition, said that while he was doubtful about certain aspects of the Bill, particularly the sanctions clause, he would nevertheless give a fair and honourable undertaking that if the Government were to proceed with the Bill, and if they made a concession which would give us Monday as well for the remaining stages, he would see that the Bill was delivered. Those were his words, not mine.

Subsequently the hon. Member for York, who described himself as the one who organised the amendments, gave a similar undertaking. He supported the Leader of the Opposition. On that basis the Leader of the House and the Patronage Secretary began talks with a view to achieving what the majority of hon. Members want—an agreed timetable for the Bill.

Now we are in a different position because it has become apparent that the "shop steward" of the amenders, the hon. Member for York, cannot carry the shop floor with him. Whatever he might say, his troops will not necessarily be bound by it. Thus it is becoming clear that the Leader of the Opposition may not be able to carry out his undertaking.

What will be the position of the Leader of the House and the Patronage Secretary when representing the majority of hon. Members? They seek an accommodation with the Opposition on the timetable motion. I suggest that there is an eloquent revolt against the Leader of the Opposition's undertaking on the timetable—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] That is how it seems to me.

The Leader of the House and the Patronage Secretary are having complex discussions with the official representatives of the Opposition with a view to achieving a timetable which will involve concessions by the Government. I hope that there will be concessions by the Government, but I must point out that the position will be very difficult if the undertakings given by the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. Member for York are not worth the words in which they were couched.

While I am mainly concerned about the possible sideways effect on the Lancaster House talks, I also believe that we need some clarity from the Opposition Front Bench on whether their undertakings on the timetable can be fulfilled.

I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths), but I disagreed with his interpretation of the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for York (Mr. Lyon) and Harlow (Mr. Newens).

Quite apart from the Rhodesia problem, a situation has arisen in which many people on the Opposition Benches felt that there had been an affront to the procedures in the way in which the Government sought to push through the Bill in all its stages in one go. We regard this as an affront to the major minority party, and indeed to all minorities in the House. That was the purpose of my amendment and the reason why we are debating the motion this afternoon. We wished to show the Government that we did not want to be treated in this way.

The essence of democracy is that in the long run the majority gets its way in the House. Although many of us may regret it, that is the case. But, equally, it is the essence of democracy that the minority has a proper opportunity to examine what is being presented by the majority, and that it should also be allowed to seek to persuade the Government to change their mind. The minority seeks to do this by careful argument and by drawing attention to factors which the major party may not have considered in reaching a decision. We would have been denied that process on the basis of the presentation of the Bill yesterday and the suggestion that we should complete all the stages today.

When my hon. Friends and I put down our amendments to the Bill yesterday and the motion today we were seeking to ensure that we would not be trampled on by the Government in the way that they suggested yesterday afternoon and in a way that Conservative Members would never have accepted when they were in opposition. We will not accept that kind of treatment.

Looking at the arrangements made by the Government, it is clear that we will have a paltry Second Reading if we take a vote at 10 o'clock tonight. It is now 5 pm and we anticipate a couple of Front Bench speeches. We might vote on the closure and the substantive amendment. Sonic hon. Members may wish to pursue important points of procedure. Legislation of such constitutional and world-wide importance should not be treated in this way. We must have the opportunity to examine the issues carefully.

My hon. Friend the Member for York pointed out to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow that there would be 15 individual debates within the principal debate. If we assume that, on average, each debate lasts two hours, that totals 30 hours. If we had a vote on the closure or on particular amendments, that might take a further 10 hours. That means that we spend two days on this Bill from whatever time we start the business after the votes this evening. That is not the right way to examine important and historic issues. We must examine them carefully and precisely.

There may be Divisions as the Bill goes through Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow may get the chance to vote against the Bill. We should have proper discussion on all issues. Opposition Members could behave in a dilatory fashion, but it is not our intention to do so even though that is the only weapon of Back Benchers when attempting to persuade the Government to scrutinise these matters more carefully.

Surely, if agreement cannot be reached through the usual channels, we shall complete all stages of the Bill in one prolonged sitting. According to the undertaking by the Leader of the Opposition, if we get agreement through the usual channels, we can take Second Reading today and the amendments and remaining stages of the Bill next Monday by sitting until a late hour. Those are the only two propositions before the House.

I agree. The first option which would take us through all stages of the Bill at one go would work, but it would not be good for the legislation and I hardly think it would be a good thing for Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. A protracted debate would also produce frayed tempers.

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a third possibility—that we should drop this grotesque proposal, introduced in the middle of complicated and delicate negotiations, to push the Bill through?

We might wish that the Government would do that, but it is not their intention. The Government will get their Bill, but they should seek to get it with the minimum of hostility from the House. That will mean, not that there is universal agreement, but that the Bill will go through with reasonably good humoured arguments on the issues and not while tempers are frayed in the middle of the night.

This debate is significant for my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Cray-ford (Mr. Wellbeloved) and myself. My hon. Friend was elected to this House on the day UDI was declared. I was elected in the subsequent by-election and throughout both his campaign and mine UDI played an important part. Since that time we have looked on sadly at what has happened in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. We have seen the failure of talks, the inability to reach agreement, the tragic events in Angola and Mozambique and the pressures forced upon Mr. Smith and others to negotiate. After all that, the Government are now saying, that we can suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, put right in one sitting of this House the mistakes of the past 14 years. For the sake of the people who have died, on whatever side in the Rhodesian conflict, and because of what has happened to innocent people and to the economies of several countries, it would be wrong for us to rubber-stamp this measure.

Yesterday the Lord Privy Seal said that this was simply an enabling Bill, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for York and other of my right hon. and hon. Friends have shown that by their amendments, it is more than that. The powers which can be assumed under this Bill—through Orders in Council and other ways—are such that it would be possible to reach a settlement and establish a constitution for Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. By pushing this Bill through, by agreement with one or other of the parties at Lancaster House, the Government could then wash their hands of the issue and say that, having legislated, that is that. I feel that there are pressures upon us to resolve the problem in this way. In justice to ourselves we should not brush this problem under the carpet in so short a time.

Is my hon. Friend saying that this Bill could be passed before it is established that the constitution has the support of the people of Rhodesia as a whole? That is one of the six principles.

My right hon. and learned Friend has argued my case succinctly.

The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds spoke of his fears that by passing this legislation we might influence events at Lancaster House. I believe that that is the danger. With this Bill the Government could, even with that degree of objectivity that they have shown throughout these negotiations, put a pistol to the head of Bishop Muzorewa or the Patriotic Front and demand acceptance under the threat of a deal with the other side. That will not help.

We should not pass this legislation when every agreement is contingent upon another. A constitution is contingent upon interim arrangements, interim arrangements are contingent upon a ceasefire, and a ceasefire is contingent upon constitutional arrangements. To rush through this measure will do a grave disservice to the negotiations.

The hon. Member is not making himself absolutely clear. Is he saying that we should not consider the Bill at all or that we should not rush our consideration? He has not commented on the Leader of the Opposition's observations both yesterday and today when, in a reasonable way, he asked for more time for reflection. He asked for the Committee stage to be concluded on Monday.

I shall make myself clear. I would not have introduced the Bill at this stage when negotiations are taking place at Lancaster House, nor would my right hon. Friends the Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Foreign Secretary. However, the Bill has been presented and we are faced with that problem. We are faced with either rushing the Bill through today or giving it a Second Reading today and completing the remaining stages on Monday.

Will my hon. Friend make it clear that a number of us are determined to vote against the Bill in any case?

I am dealing with the question of time.

Those of us who are passionately concerned about this issue intend to examine the amendments properly. It is not our intention to prolong business to such an extent that the Government do not have reasonable time to enable the Bill to go through the House of Lords and be passed. That is our intention if the Government give us an undertaking. It is not in my power to say that not one of my hon. Friends will get on his hind legs and seek to prolong the debate by speaking at interminable length. My hon. Friend the Member for York has said that if agreement is not reached he could speak for eight hours on one amendment and then perhaps have to refer to his notes. We do not want that to happen.

We do not want the Government to introduce this Bill, but they have done so. We accept that the Government must have their Bill and that it must go to the other place. We recognise the problems involved in renewing the sanctions order. All we want is a reasonable time to discuss the issues. We want to be treated properly.

There has never been a shadow of doubt in the minds of the majority of my hon. Friends about what the Leader of the Opposition said. I urge the hon. Member to address his mind to the Leader of the House, who has a duty to the whole House. Should my right hon. Friend make an agreement with the Opposition that the Bill will be achieved by Monday night at a late hour in the knowledge that a number of hon. Members will do their verbal best to thwart it? What sort of agreement is that?

Every agreement that is made through the usual channels is on the understanding that each hon. Member is a free agent. That is the way it must be.

Is there a split in the Labour Party?

The hon. Member should not tempt us. We are trying to be helpful during these difficult negotiations. The hon. Gentleman could tempt us into dealing with certain difficulties within his party that would arise if nought came of the negotiations. I am not underestimating the ability of this side of the House to discuss the legislation right through until Monday.

I will see my hon. Friend outside.

Order. Peace has broken out.

I read the footnote to an article by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) in one of today's newspapers. I shudder to think what my wife will say when she reads in Hansard the remark of my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor).

We believe that the Opposition have been trampled. We are trying to accommodate the Government while at the same time preserving our position as Back Benchers. Some statements from the Government Benches are not helpful. Some of us took much persuading to agree with the Leader of the Opposition's proposition. We have undertaken to ensure that, if we achieve a concession, the Government will have their Bill in time for it to go to another place on Tuesday. We believe that that is fair.

The offer made by my right hon. Friend during Prime Minister's Question Time two hours ago should be sufficient for us to reach agreement so that we could now be debating the Second Reading. I regret that the Government have not seized that opportunity so that the issues may be examined properly. If we continue in this manner, neither the Government's case nor the Opposition's case will be presented properly before the country. The Government will lose out as much as the Opposition. That is not good enough when we are dealing with an issue of constitutional and historic importance. I urge the Government to think carefully about what we have said and to accept the compromise that they have been offered.

During my time in the House I have seldom heard arguments from one side convince Members on the other to change their intended course of action. I hope that my remarks on this procedural motion will not result in any hon. Member talking for too long when the Bill is considered in Committee.

It is reasonable for the Government to get into a position from which they can deliver their side of any agreement or settlement made at Lancaster House. I do not believe that it makes a great deal of difference whether the Bill gets through all its stages by tomorrow, or at an extension of this day's sitting, which might be tomorrow, Saturday or Sunday; whether it passes through the House of Commons by Monday; or whether it goes through, by agreement, with a break for the weekend, or straight throught. It is up to the House to decide. It is for the usual channels to say, when they come to their own view.

Two important issues were raised. The first was the effect on the procedures of the House. In my time in the House I have seen Governments, normally of the Labour complexion, force measures through the House. I have no doubt that during the next four years I shall see the same done by my Government. On most occasions I shall be relatively happy for that to happen.

Another issue is the effect of this procedure motion on the negotiations at Lancaster House. The point was made—no doubt it will be made again on Second Reading—that this enabling Bill should not be passed until or unless a settlement was reached at Lancaster House. I do not believe that that view is correct. Whatever arrangement we come to, we should try to ensure that some part of the deadlock at Lancaster House is given a chance to be broken down. I hope that the consultations now going on behind Mr. Speaker's chair—unless they have now finished—will go on at Lancaster House this weekend. Perhaps President Kaunda can help on that.

One matter seems to be dividing the participants. I refer to the length of time up to the elections. It should be possible to take into account the fact that there is a rainy season now in Rhodesia. For that reason the election last year was put off until April. It applies just as much now. There may be the opportunity of persuading the participants at the Lancaster House conference to recognise that they have the opportunity of spinning out their discussions for another few weeks, with a consequent loss of life. Instead of that, I hope that they will come to some arrangement for an earlier ceasefire—in the same way I hope that there will be an earlier ceasefire on this motion in this Chamber—but still fix a time when the elections will take place. In the same way, I hope that we shall know when there is likely to be a decision on the Second Reading, Committee stage and Third Reading of the Bill.

There are other points of deadlock at Lancaster House into which I shall not go. They are probably better kept until the other stages of the Bill. It is important to realise that the Government should have the power to put into effect without delay the provisions of the Bill. It is reasonable for the House to allow the Government to have the Bill passed through all its stages either at today's sitting extended or by Monday. If Government Front-Bench Members are interested in my view, I prefer to take the Second Reading and Committee stage at this day's sitting and keep the Third Reading until Monday.

My hon. Friends, with their well-known eloquence, have already covered many of the reasons why we believe that the proposition put forward by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition is the correct one for the procedure on this Bill, now it is obvious that the Government are determined that the Bill should be before the House at this time. We wish very much that the Government had not decided to bring this Bill forward, for several good reasons.

The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) has his arguments round the wrong way when he tries to put the onus on the Opposition for the way in which we look at the Bill and the way in which we want to have it discussed.

The Government, when having these discussions—which I hope are fruitful—and the whole House must bear in mind that we have sat through many decolonising processes and independence constitutions, certainly over the years that I have been here, and longer than that. None of those constitutions ranks as important as the one we are now discussing.

It is of paramount importance, in view of the history of Southern Rhodesia, and the outcome, if we get it wrong, that every point of view is heard, is seen to be heard and that the proper processes of justice and law are observed.

There were differences in the presentations yesterday, in the House of Commons and in another place, about how the Bill would be considered and what was the situation—differences about emphasis, the ceasefire, and arrangements for the interim period. Those points need deep examination and clarification.

The hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) referred to deadlock at Lancaster House. I believe that that is so. Perhaps for the first time he and I are in agreement. However, the Government have not said that. Yesterday they said that they were on the eve of an agreement and that they would achieve the agreement. Yesterday, from behind the Chair and in another place, I was accused of belligerence. It was said that everything would be all right and that the agreement would be achieved. We are asked what we were worried about. This is what we are worried about.

The Patriotic Front case has not been given anything like the airing that it should have been given by the press of this country. I have sat at press conferences with the Patriotic Front and seen very little reported in the press the following day. I do not blame the Government for that. However, we hear two sides of the story. We are told that we are on the eve of an agreement and that the problems of the interim period, the security forces and the length of time before the elections will be solved. We are told "We can have the Bill. There is no problem. Give us the blank cheque and the legal authority. Everything will be all right." But next we are told that there is deadlock at Lancaster House.

The Government should consider how that appears in the eyes of Africa, the front-line States and of people in this country and abroad who always understood the case of the British Government, of whatever complexion, to be that any agreement must be seen to have the acceptance of the people of Rhodesia as a whole.

Together with my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes), I had the privilege of visiting Lusaka at the time of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference and of monitoring carefully what happened there. It seems to me that what was agreed there has not so far been carried out at Lancaster House. Therefore, for those reasons—for the sake of the appearance of the matter and the questions that need deep searching—it is in the interests of the Government, the Opposition and all parties concerned at Lancaster House that the proposition to change the procedure put forward by the Government should be adhered to.

I do not know what is being said or whether we are on the eve of an agreement. If the matters of the interim period, defence, the security forces, the ceasefire, the refugees, and people returning to vote, have been agreed, would it not, in the interests of democracy and of the future, have been far better for the Government to agree to delay the Bill's passage until it could be discussed in the full knowledge of what had—or had not—been agreed at Lancaster House?

May I repeat what my hon. Friends and I put to successive Opposition speakers? The hon. Lady talked as though the Bill was not appropriate until the Lancaster House conference was concluded. Does she agree with her hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central (Mr. McNamara), who was asked a question a number of times and eventually said that the Bill should be ready to go to the House of Lords on Tuesday? As the hon. Lady is concerned, is she able to give that commitment?

I do not believe that the Bill should be brought before the House unless and until agreement has been reached at Lancaster House by all parties concerned. But the Government, in their wisdom or lack of it, have decided to bring forward the Bill. Therefore, because we do not have the overall majority in the House—we would not be in opposition if we had—we have to use whatever methods we can to ensure that we are able to examine the Bill in detail, to put forward amendments and to argue them.

At the end of the day, whatever assurances are or are not given, the ball is in the Government's court. I shall oppose the Bill unless agreement is announced during the passage of the Bill. It would be a different matter then. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman cannot ask me for a guarantee that I will support the Bill on Tuesday, or whenever it goes to the Lords. I shall oppose the Bill unless the Government are able to say that agreement has been reached and that is verified by all concerned. If all parties reach agreement, we shall cheer as loudly as anyone because we would have a constitution and an interim period acceptable to all.

For me to be asked to drop my opposition to the Bill on condition that the Government allow the new procedure is to put an onus on me which should be on the Government. I suppose that at the end of the day the Government will dictate whether the Bill is carried. I cannot dictate that—I wish that I could—unless my eloquence is such as to persuade enough Conservative Members to come into the Lobby with us if we decide to oppose the Bill. We shall know that only when we know whether there has been agreement at Lancaster House, and that we do not know.

As has been said earlier, the President of Zambia is in this country. The Prime Minister said that she was seeing him today. Considering what was agreed at Lancaster House and as the President of Zambia, the President of Tanzania and the front-line Presidents were all deeply involved in setting up the constitutional conference, it is insulting, not only to the President of Zambia but to the House, for discussions to be taking place with the President—someone closely involved—and for us to be asked to discuss the Bill without knowing his view or the views of the front-line Presidents.

The matter is more complicated than saying that the Opposition wish to frustrate the passage of the Bill. No one would cheer louder than I—and I was involved in this matter even before I entered the House of Commons—if we had agreement at Lancaster House and could proceed to put forward the constitution and have free elections in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.

It is because we fear the outcome if this matter is not considered properly that we ask the Government to delay bringing forward the Bill, to accept the proposition put forward by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, to give us time to examine the Bill, to argue our amendments in the proper way and to get more information on what is happening at Lancaster House. Are the talks deadlocked, as the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) said, or are we on the eve of an agreement? If we are on the eve of an agreement, the Government should give us the details before the Bill is passed so that we know what we are doing.

The speech made by the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) shows the difficulty in which the House finds itself. We have not been able to hear the Government deploy what I should call the broad Second Reading case. Inevitably, the hon. Lady moved beyond the procedural motion, not only on to the Bill, but on to the negotiations. I am sure that she would agree that it is difficult, during the course of negotiations, for those of us not personally involved to discuss blow by blow the successes which are being gained.

rose—

I want to be brief. I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman shortly.

I want to make three points with which I hope the House will agree. First, whatever personal views we may have about the negotiations, we all want to see a successful outcome. We are probably all agreed that it would be better if we could get all-party agreement in the House. That point was made by the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Newens) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley). If this procedural motion stands in the way, I hope that there will be room for negotiation. That is clearly what is taking place now, but some of us wish that it was being resolved a little quicker.

The hon. Gentleman said that he would require to hear the Government's argument on Second Reading for the necessity of the Bill. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has been following this matter, but not in tremendous detail. Does he agree that it would make sense if, having had the Second Reading, we were to have a couple of days for reflection before the Committee and remaining stages?

The hon. Gentleman tempts me. I have such confidence in the ability of my right hon. Friends that I know that I am more likely than the hon. Gentleman to be totally convinced. However, like him, I have not yet heard that argument. It is a pleasure to be anticipated.

My second point follows the point made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central (Mr. McNamara). The hon. Gentleman posed the fair question: why do we need the Bill at this stage? I am sure that point will be dealt with by whomsoever of my right hon. Friends moves the Second Reading of the Bill. However, we must resist the temptation, as it were, to stand behind my right hon. Friends in their negotiations and tell them which cards to play. I have always been doubtful about President Wilson's famous tenet about open covenants openly arrived at. I am in favour of open covenants, but I am almost certain that good open covenants cannot be arrived at openly. There must be a certain degree of privacy and discretion.

rose—

Before giving way to the hon. Member for York (Mr. Lyon), I ask him and other hon. Members to reflect on what is probably the most important negotiation that any one of us has entered into: getting engaged and married. How many of us would like to have carried out the negotiations for that covenant openly? I think that most of us would agree that it is better done with a degree of covertness and discretion. I suggest that goes for diplomatic negotiations, too. The world is the worse for negotiations by television, press conferences, leaks and so on. Debate in the House at the wrong time can be equally bad.

Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that he is arguing against the introduction of the Bill until there is agreement at Lancaster House? If we have to discuss the Bill, we have to take stands; we have to decide on positions; we have to make comments about the negotiating arguments of the various parties. In those circumstances, we shall inevitably be drawn into the kind of quagmire that I, as well as the hon. Gentleman, want to avoid. Therefore, should we not leave the Bill until there is agreement?

With respect, it depends upon the nature of the Bill. That is what we shall be discussing when we get to it. If this were a Bill of great detail, there would be merit in what the hon. Gentleman said. But this is an enabling Bill. There are trigger clauses which will be brought in only when the negotiations are completed. Until the negotiations are completed, the legislation will not be active.

Having given way to the hon. Gentleman, I find myself almost involved in making a Second Reading speech. That illustrates the difficulty that we are in on this procedural motion. I am almost in danger of doing what I criticised the hon. Member for Eton and Slough for doing—namely, discussing the Bill and the negotiations when we are on a procedural motion. I am sure that the House would agree that we should not get involved in trying to mark the cards to be played at Lancaster House.

Much has been made by hon. Members on both sides of the House about the fact that a civil war is going on in Rhodesia and that the aim of the negotiations is to end it. Certain hon. Members have spoken as if only two parties are involved. That view is too simple. Both delegations are complex. Other people are involved, including this House. What are commonly called the front-line Presidents and other countries are involved. The matter is highly complex and it can be over simplified. Therefore, the more quietly these things are done, the better.

Thirdly, I think that we should congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on the enormous progress that has been made. We should recognise that, whichever party is in Government, we have little effective power in Southern Africa. Therefore, if this process is to succeed, it must be largely by influence. I hope that the House will not adopt any postures tonight that will make my right hon. Friend's position in the Lancaster House negotiations more difficult. There is a great deal of good will towards the negotiations and towards a successful conclusion. I hope that we shall keep to that spirit.

Nothing has been advanced so far on this procedural motion to explain why the Bill should go through in such haste. One thing that ought to bind and tie all the Members of this House together, from whatever quarter of the House they come, is the desire to achieve peace in the colony of Southern Rhodesia. So much life has been unnecessarily lost that I am sure we would all wish to end the conflict quickly.

The Government's case, as expounded in discussions earlier in the week, is that the Bill is necessary at this time to facilitate the carrying out of the agreement at Lancaster House. But a great deal of uncertainty and suspicion has been caused, not only in the House but among some of the parties involved in the talks, by the fact that on Tuesday it was widely reported by the news media that the Government were to try to get a Bill through the House by the end of the week.

When I raised the matter on a point of order on Tuesday and asked whether the Leader of the House, who was present at the time, had sought to make a Business Statement, he sat quiet and said nothing. It was only yesterday that we had confirmation that the Bill was to be published and that we would proceed to deal with it in one sitting.

I accept that there is a need for an enabling Bill—there is no question about that. But if we accept also, as I do, that at the end of the day all the parties involved in the discussions and negotiations will sign on the dotted line there will be no need for Second Reading speeches on such a Bill except for those of a congratulatory nature saying what a wonderful thing has happened. Nor will there be need for amendments to be moved. The same process will apply in the other place. The Bill would then be law and matters would be settled. If agreement is so close, why do we have to rush the Bill? If agreement had been freely offered, the Bill would be freely accepted.

What the Government do not understand is that we are seeking to preserve a negotiating atmosphere at Lancaster House. One hon. Member has said that if we were to suggest that the Patriotic Front was suspicious, we would be putting words into its mouth and would be encouraging it to be suspicious. Anyone who has had discussions with the Patriotic Front—or even someone who has not—and who has followed the reports in the press, such as they are, must be aware that there is an intense feeling of suspicion among Patriotic Front members. The Patriotic Front is greatly concerned that every concession it has made has not been matched by any concession by Lord Carrington. Is it any wonder that there is a great deal of suspicion at Lancaster House?

If we think back, we see that Mr. Robert Mugabe and Mr. Joshua Nkomo, quite apart from being the heads of armies that had to fight a war to achieve the conference at Lancaster House, were incarcerated for 10 years hundreds of miles from the nearest city, with very few people around.

Mr. Nkomo then suffered almost the ultimate humiliation. I believe that it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson) who went to Rhodesia and asked to see Mr. Nkomo. Mr. Nkomo was brought hundreds of miles in the back of an enclosed van with not even a cushion to assist him during the journey. Is it any wonder that in such circumstances people are suspicious? There is not one of us who would not be. The same is true of Mr. Mugabe. He spent many years in detention.

The irony is that of all the so-called terrorists—I am glad that that term has been dropped, to a large extent—of all the liberation leaders, the only one who was ever convicted of an offence was the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole. We do not hear much about him these days, but there was a time when he was the darling of the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery). Suddenly, within 24 hours of being a terrorist, Mr. Sithole was a great statesman. It shows how we can come to terms with life.

I have no doubt that if we can reach agreement with all the parties at Lancaster House and there is an election, whoever is elected—whether it is Mr. Nkomo who is President or whatever transpires—will be welcome to come to this country, take his place among the world's statesmen and reside at Buckingham Palace for the weekend.

If there is no agreement, the situation will be entirely different. If there can be no all-party agreement at Lancaster House, not only must everyone think about what he must do, but the Government must think about what they must do with the enabling Act, assuming that it has been passed. We are all realists in the House, and I do not think that anyone will misinterpret my words when I say that the reality is that the Government will get their way and put the Bill on the statute book. They certainly will not do that without opposition. I could never agree to vote for it in present circumstances.

But that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the blunt reality that the Government, having got a majority in the House, will get the Bill through. This is where the suspicious aspect enters into it.

I do not want to make a Second Reading speech, but as I read the Bill there is nothing in it which indicates that it will come into effect only if there is all-party agreement at Lancaster House. It is a straightforward enabling Bill. Once it is on the statute book, the Government can do with it what they will. They can, if they so wish, decide to conclude the bilateral agreement with the Salisbury delegation and proceed to do what is required to facilitate elections.

Hon. Members must realise that discussions in the House have an impact outside. It sometimes seems that some of us think we live in a cocooned world and that what we say will have no effect on the outside world. I do not want to be provocative about this, but the fact remains that the Government's election manifesto, if it did not specifically dot the i's and cross the t's, certainly gave all of us, including many Conservative Members, the distinct impression—almost a distinct assurance—that one of the first acts of the Government would be to lift sanctions and recognise the SmithMuzorewa regime.

Given the fact that we allowed UDI to pass almost without comment or any real action, the history of politics in Rhodesia over the past 20 years, and the fact that we went through producing the sanctions orders and yet connived at allowing oil to enter Rhodesia to fuel the economy, how can we not understand the problems faced by the Patriotic Front when it tries to learn to trust the British Government? Yet it is something that we must understand and come to terms with.

The negotiations are at a delicate stage, and I do not believe that we are quite as close to agreement as the Lord Privy Seal suggested. The Patriotic Front members have made a great number of concessions in order to reach agreement. I am astonished at how conciliatory they have been. However, Lord Carrington, the Lord Privy Seal and others have failed to remove their distrust completely. It is most important that that distrust is removed. We desperately want an agreement out of the Lancaster House talks, but not a paper agreement. We want an agreement that will stick and provide peace and security for the new Zimbabwe.

It will be to the long-term disadvantage if the Patriotic Front is pressurised into signing an agreement which in its heart of hearts it knows it cannot keep. One of the factors that appears to be missing from the Government's calculations is that those who signed the agreement have to be able to sell it to their followers back in Rhodesia. That applies equally to Ian Smith, Bishop Muzorewa, Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo. Perhaps in some respects the task facing the Patriotic Front is the more difficult. They have to sell the agreement to the people who are wielding the weapons and, more important, to those who have been on the receiving end of the weapons of the Smith regime. They have to sell it to people living in refugee camps which have been bombed and attacked by marauding troops who have crossed the border into Zambia, Mozambique, Angola and even Botswana.

I am surprised to have to say this to Conservative Members who seem to fail to understand it, but when a war is in progress it is difficult for people not to hate the enemy. During the Second World War, I was too young to fight, but as a young lad I shared the intense hatred of other youngsters not just for Nazi Germany but for Germany and every German citizen. Today, the Common Market aside, the people of Germany are our friends. When we hear people speaking German in the street we do not spit upon them or show rancour towards them. Such rancour does not disappear in five minutes, however, and that is true of Rhodesia as it is true of Britain.

I am not suggesting that postponement of our discussion through the weekend will end the rancour and bitterness in Rhodesia, because that would be nonsense. However, we are trying to avoid the injection into the situation of factors that would confirm the Patriotic Front in its mistrust of the British Government. By adopting a reasonable pace of progress we may have an impact on the Lancaster House talks far beyond what we might imagine. We are concerned that they should succeed. I am sure that the Government did not think seriously enough about what effect rushing the Bill through would have on the talks.

The events at Lancaster House are not taking place in a cocooned atmosphere. They are susceptible to what happens here and elsewhere. Against that background, the Government could have produced their Bill two weeks ago, timing progress on it to match the progress in the talks. The Second Reading debate could then have taken the form of a broad discussion of how we saw Rhodesia being governed through the transitional period. We could then have seen what came out of the Lancaster House talks before proceeding to the Committee stage and the tabling of amendments. I would hope for a spirit of flexibility from the Government which might lead them, like my hon. Friends, to want to move amendments during the Committee stage.

I have listened to the hon. Gentleman with great care. He seems to be speaking to yesterday's brief, showing his dismay at what my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal said yesterday about the timing of the Bill. Should he not apply himself to today's brief, to what was said by the Leader of the Opposition about extending our consideration of the Bill, with time for reflection over the weekend? Does he not feel that there is flexibility on his own Front Bench?

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch), first for saying that he has been listening with care and, second, for reinforcing the point that I am making.

I see that the Leader of the House has now entered the Chamber to make the statement we have all been awaiting, Mr. Speaker. May I give way to the right hon. Gentleman?

The hon. Member may come to a conclusion if he wishes.

I hope that the proposition so generously put forward by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, which has wide assent in the House, that we have the Second Reading debate today with remaining stages on Mondey, will have met with the agreement of the Government.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Leader of the House of Commons

(Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas)

With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement. I am happy to be able to report to the House an arrangement which I believe will do justice to the different views held by Members on the Rhodesia issue. It will meet the needs of Government and Opposition and will be in accord with the dignity of this House.

The House will be asked to approve the business motion forthwith. The Second Reading debate will commence immediately and will be concluded between 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock tonight. The money resolution will then be taken. The House will then be required to resolve into a Committee and we shall report progress immediately. The remaining stages of the Bill will be taken on Monday 12 November and will be concluded at a reasonable hour—that is to say, in the words of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. The Opposition have undertaken to facilitate progress of the Bill to achieve the Government's date for completion in order to obtain Royal Assent on Wednesday, 14 November.

Accordingly, the business for next week has been rearranged as follows:

MONDAY 12 NOVEMBER—Completion of the remaining stages of the Southern Rhodesia Bill.

THURSDAY 15 NOVEMBER—The business will now be: Second Reading of the Protection of Trading Interests Bill and of the Papua New Guinea, Western Samoa and Nauru (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, and proceedings on the Isle of Man Bill.

I believe that this agreement is honourable and reasonable and will facilitate the successful outcome to the Lancaster House conference that the whole House desires.

The Opposition believe that this agreement is honourable and was worth waiting for. Yesterday, the Opposition indicated that this was an important constitutional Bill that needed full consideration and should not be rushed through. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition took that point further this afternoon, and we are glad that the Government have accepted our view.

We shall endeavour in the Second Reading debate tonight, and again on Monday, to discuss the Bill fully. There will be no fractious opposition. We shall consider each of the amendments. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition put it, the debate should be concluded at a reasonable hour—either late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. We shall facilitate the passage of the Bill so that it will reach another place on time. We shall oppose the Bill, but we shall stick to the agreement, because that is the way that this House conducts its business.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That if the Southern Rhodesia Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House, further proceedings on the Bill shall stand postponed and that as soon as the proceedings on any Resolution come to by the House on Southern Rhodesia [Money] have been concluded, this House will immediately resolve itself into a Committee on the Bill, and that the Southern Rhodesia Bill may be proceeded with at this day's sitting, though opposed, until any hour.

Orders Of The Day

Southern Rhodesia Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

6.3 pm

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I have it in command from the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purpose of the Southern Rhodesia Bill, has consented to place her prerogative and interest, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

In laying this Bill before Parliament, the Government are taking an important step which will set Rhodesia on the path to legal independence, on the basis of an agreement in which we hope that all the parties will participate. Before explaining to the House the details of the Bill, I propose to set it in the context of the Government's policies towards Rhodesia since we took office in May.

The House is familiar with the efforts of successive British Governments over 14 years to find a settlement to the problem of Rhodesia. Despite very considerable efforts, it proved impossible to reach a satisfactory agreement with the white minority regime. The result has been a bloody war which continues to take its toll even now, while talks to find a solution at the constitutional conference at Lancaster House are going on. The war has brought suffering to the people of Rhodesia and neighbouring countries.

When this Government took office in May, we decided to give the highest priority to a further effort to bring Rhodesia to legal independence and peace. We were encouraged in this by the remarkable progress made within Rhodesia following the Salisbury agreement of March 1978 and the first-ever elections held on the basis of universal suffrage in April this year. That election, which saw an impressively high turn-out, produced for the first time an African Prime Minister and an African majority in Parliament and the Government.

The Government recognised this to be a major step forward towards a solution. But, at the same time, it was necessary if Rhodesia was to secure international acceptance, that independence should be seen to be based upon genuine majority rule. We decided, therefore, to consult the parties themselves, with Governments directly concerned and with our friends and allies, before deciding how to proceed. These consultations showed that there was a widespread view that the constitution in force in Rhodesia fell short of genuine majority rule; that there should be a further effort to find a solution which could involve the external parties and thus offer hope of an end to the war; and that a settlement would have to stem from Britain as the constitutionally responsible authority.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and noble Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary went to the meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government with the objective of securing their support for a renewed effort to achieve a settlement and end the war. The communique of that meeting set out the principles on which it was felt by the Commonwealth as a whole that a settlement should be sought. As I shall explain to the House shortly, we believe that we have already advanced a very considerable way towards fulfilling the requirements of the Lusaka communique.

The immediate step which my right hon. and noble Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary took on return from Lusaka was to invite all the parties to attend a constitutional conference at Lancaster House. Our purpose in doing so was to be able to put to them proposals for a settlement comparable to the basis on which independence was granted to other former British territories. With the invitation we appealed to both sides to accept a ceasefire. Although Bishop Muzorewa and his colleagues expressed their willingness to accept this, the Patriotic Front insisted that there could be no end to the fighting until the political issues in the present conflict had been resolved.

The constitutional conference at Lancaster House has now been in progress for almost nine weeks. Throughout the conference, the Government's aim has been to reach agreement which will involve all the parties, since we recognise that only a solution which does so will offer a sure prospect of and end to the war. The Government have remained, during the whole of this period, in the closest touch with the Presidents of the front-line States, as well as other Commonwealth leaders and many other Governments, and have been greatly helped by the encouragement and support which we have received. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and noble Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary are having further discussions with President Kaunda, who is paying a most timely visit to this country this week.

During those nine weeks, many of the objectives set by the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Lusaka have been achieved.

The Heads of Government confirmed that they were wholly committed to genuine black majority rule. The independence constitution, which has been provisionally accepted by both sides at the conference, indisputably provides for this. They recognised that the internal settlement constitution was defective in certain important respects. These defects have been put right in the independence constitution.

The Heads of Government accepted the constitutional responsibility of the British Government to grant legal independence to Zimbabwe on the basis of majority rule. The British Government are exercising that responsibility, and the Bill will enable them to take further steps in the process.

The Heads of Government recognised that the search for a lasting setlement must involve all the parties to the conflict. All the parties are participating in the negotiations and the Government remain determined to do all in their power to achieve a settlement in which they can participate.

The Heads of Government expressed their consciousness of the urgent need to achieve a settlement and bring peace. Throughout the conference the Government have constantly stressed the urgent need to bring an end to the suffering of the people of Rhodesia and of the neighbouring countries—sufferings which are no longer necessary with the achievement of a constitution providing for genuine majority rule.

The Heads of Government accepted that independence on the basis of majority rule required the adoption of a democratic constitution including appropriate safeguards for minorities. The independence constitution contains adequate safeguards.

The Heads of Government acknowledge that the Government formed under such an independence constitution must be chosen through free and fair elections, properly supervised under British Government authority and with Commonwealth observers. The Government have put forward proposals to achieve this aim and have invited both sides to accept them. Bishop Muzorewa's delegation has accepted our proposals.

The Heads of Government welcomed the British Government's indication that an appropriate procedure for advancing towards these objectives would be for them to call a constitutional conference to which all parties would be invited. The conference has now been in session as I said earlier, for almost nine weeks.

Finally, the Heads of Government accepted that it must be a major objective to bring about a cessation of hostilities and an end to sanctions as part of the process of implementation of a lasting settlement. We hope that the conference will be able to move on very shortly to its third and final phase, which is the negotiation of a ceasefire.

The stage which the Conference has now reached is consideration of the means of implementing the independence constitution. The Government have laid before the conference full proposals for this, and invited both sides to accept them. I have arranged for copies to be placed in the Library of the House. Our starting point has been the need, endorsed by the Commonwealth Heads of Government, for free and fair elections supervised under the British Government's authority. The Government decided that the essential basis for such elections was to create the conditions in which both sides would feel able to take part on an equal footing. This could be achieved only with the assurance that the administration of the country during the elections would be fair and impartial. We have concluded that this requires Britain, as the constitutionally responsible Power, to assume direct responsibility for the government of Rhodesia while elections are held.

This was not a light decision. The responsibility will be a heavy one. Maintenance of a ceasefire will present grave difficulties. This is one reason why we have proposed that the interim period should be no longer than necessary for the people of Rhodesia to decide for themselves, under fair conditions, their own political future. But we believe that the only solution which both parties can be brought to accept is one in which the British Government accept responsibility for the election arrangements and for the day-to-clay administration of Rhodesia in the period up to independence. The complex schemes for power sharing during the interim period, which were a feature of the earlier proposals for a settlement, seemed to us impracticable. The crucial political decision in this period will be the choice by the people of the future Government. The role of the political leaders will not be to exercise control over the Administration but to explain their case to the people and seek a mandate from them. The Government will be ready to hand over power in Rhodesia to whatever Government are elected as a result of free and fair elections.

Our proposals required Bishop Muzorewa and his colleagues to relinquish power during the iterim period and hand over their functions to the British Governor. We were conscious that this was a great deal to ask. Bishop Muzorewa's acceptance of our proposals shows how far he is willing to go to bring about fair conditions for elections, and a settlement which will be acceptable to international opinion. We look to the Patriotic Front to show the same willingness to compromise. We are not asking either side to capitulate. We are asking both to compete peacefully for power on an equal footing—and, of course, to abide by the outcome of the elections. There can be no question of our handing over power to any party which is not ready to put its standing to the test in fair elections.

Our full proposals have now been before the conference for a week. They were tabled after lengthy and intensive discussions in the conference. As soon as agreement is reached on the general proposals for the pre-independence period, we shall be able to move on to arrange negotiations on a ceasefire and its observance. In that connection, the Government will be prepared to make proposals for the monitoring of a ceasefire, but we first need agreement on the political conditions for elections and the administration of the country.

It is against this background of progress already made at the conference, and our hopes that it will shortly enter its final phase, that the Government have laid before the House the Southern Rhodesia Bill.

The purpose of the Bill is to give the Government the necessary powers to implement the proposals which they have laid before the conference, so that when agreement is reached, as we hope it will be, there need be no delay in moving towards elections at the earliest possible moment. We are not seeking to pre-empt the decisions of the parties to the conference.

The right hon. Gentleman has just used the phrase "when agreement is reached ". Will he amplify that statement and say that what he means is when agreement is reached by all parties at Lancaster House?

If there is not an agreement by all parties, there is not an agreement. That seems to me to be self-evident. If there is not an agreement and if the conference breaks down, which would be a tragedy, we shall have to consider how to proceed. But the hon. Gentleman is perfectly right in saying that an agreement means an agreement of all parties.

If the Government have to consider how to proceed in such circumstances, will it be their intention to use the powers for which they are asking in the Bill, or could we have an assurance that, if there is a breakdown in the talks, the powers in the Bill will not be used and that, indeed, the measure will be negated from then on?

As I said, if the conference breaks down we shall have to consider how to proceed, and we shall certainly welcome suggestions from the Opposition. It will be a very difficult decision to take. There are no alternatives which are particularly enticing. But I could not conceivably give the undertaking for which the hon. Gentleman asks, because we do not know what the circumstances will be. As I said several times yesterday, we are seeking full agreement. That means the agreement of all parties.

In the right hon. Gentleman's argument yesterday he said that he was very near to an agreement and that the Bill would enable him to do certain things resting on that agreement. The crucial point is the status of the Bill if that agreement is not reached.

If the Bill is passed by the House, it will be in existence. What action is taken by means of the Bill will be for consideration by the Government.

That is a blank cheque.

Is the right hon. Gentleman unwilling to say that the Government would not use the powers under the Bill unless an agreement is reached?

I have already answered that question. If we are unable to reach agreement, and I hope that we shall—it has been our constant objective for nine weeks of hard discussion at Lancaster House—we shall have to decide how to proceed. I cannot go further than that.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one of the components of the agreement that we all seek is the conviction among all parties that they stand an equal and reasonable chance in the elections to which he and we are pledged? If that is not thought to be the position, the agreement that he seeks will be imperilled.

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. We have been engaged on that issue for weeks. The whole agreement depends on that. As I have said several times, we are seeking to provide free and fair elections in which all parties can participate so that a new Government can be formed as a result of the elections, and to which independence will be granted by Britain. That is the objective. We very much hope that all parties to the conference will agree the proposals that we have put forward so that agreement may be reached.

As I said in the House yesterday, the Government regret that the House has been asked to consider the Bill at such short notice. I hope that the consultations that have taken place through the usual channels have received the general approval of the House.

I emphasise that this is not an independence Bill. An independence Bill will be laid before the House in due course. To put it mildly, the circumstances of Rhodesia are unusual. Whereas the steps leading up to independence are normally taken under a constitution previously granted by the United Kingdom, that would not be feasible in the case of Southern Rhodesia. The Southern Rhodesia Act 1965 does not give the Government the powers needed to make the independence constitution or to introduce relevant sections of it before elections. The authority of the House must be sought for that.

The Bill's purposes are threefold. First, it enables the Government to provide an independence constitution for Zimbabwe which will come into force when a later Act of Parliament confers independence on Southern Rhodesia. This power is conferred in clause 1. The constitution will be the constitution agreed upon at the constitutional conference. It will be made by Order in Council and laid before the House before the independence Bill is introduced. I remind hon. Members that as the text of the constitution has been agreed between the parties, contingent upon agreement on the interim arrangements, the order making it will not be subject to either affirmative or negative procedures. This is of course consistent with the practice adopted in the case of other independence constitutions.

The right hon. Gentleman has said that the constitution referred to in clause (1) will be that which has been laid before the House in the form of a White Paper. The Bill in terms does not link the two. In the light of the exchanges that have passed between the right hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members, are the Government giving an undertaking that no other constitution but that one will be made by the powers conferred by the Bill?

I did not say that it would be the constitution laid in the White Paper. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the White Paper is not in legal language but in ordinary language. The actual constitution will be a legal transposition of that. That is the constitution that we propose to enact, and no other constitution.

The first few lines of the clause state that provision may be made by Order in Council for an independence constitution for Zimbabwe. Will my right hon. Friend deal during the debate with the broad outline of the constitution which is in the White Paper, or will it be debated at a subsequent date? There are many items that need discussing.

I have told the House that that constitution will not be subject to amendment. It has been agreed, subject to agreement in later stages of the conference, by two other parties. It would be chaotic if the House were to amend the constitution, as we would have to reconvene the constitutional conference and start again. No doubt the constitution could be discussed on a motion, subject to the ruling of the Chair. It is open to anybody to say what he wishes about the constitution. However, I must make it clear that it is not subject to amendment. There is nothing unusual about that. It has happened in the past.

rose—

I think that I should move on.

rose—

The ratio of interruption to speech has been rather high, and I must move on.

Secondly, the Bill enables elections to be held prior to independence for the purpose of bringing the independence constitution into effect. Under clause 2 it will be possible to bring particular provisions of the new constitution into operation before independence, to enable elections to be held for the Parliament which will be established under the new constitution, there being no "lawful" constitution at present in force under which such elections could be held. At a later stage, but before independence, it will be necessary to bring other provisions of the constitution into operation so that an Administration can be formed following elections. The relevant parts of the constitution would be brought into force by Orders in Council which would be laid before Parliament and expire at the end of 28 days unless previously approved by a resolution of each House.

Thirdly, clause 3 provides for the making of Orders in Council for the government of Rhodesia during the period up to independence.

The Government envisage that such orders will be necessary for a number of purposes. In the first place, an order will be needed to establish the office of Governor and to endow the Governor with necessary powers. As hon. Members will be aware, the appointment of a Governor is central to the Government's proposals for the administration of Rhodesia in the pre-independence period. It is important that we should be in a position to make the appointment and install the Governor at the earliest possible date so that there should be no delay in proceeding to elections and independence.

It will also be necessary for the Government to continue existing laws. This will be needed for the successful administration of the country in the period before independence. It will, of course, be for the Parliament elected under the provisions of the new constitution to decide which of these past laws it wishes to keep and which it wishes to change.

Finally, the clause will give the power to deal with the consequences of the expiration of section 2 of the Southern Rhodesia Act, which, as I informed the House yesterday, the Government do not intend to renew.

A number of orders have been made under section 2. Some concern constitutional matters. The Southern Rhodesia Constitution Order provides the authority of the Crown and United Kingdom Ministers in relation to Southern Rhodesia. The Matrimonial Jurisdiction Order and the Southern Rhodesia (British Nationality Act) Order concern the lives of individuals and seek to minimise the hardships to them arising from the peculiar status of Southern Rhodesia. The Southern Rhodesia (Immunity for Persons Attending Meetings and Consultations) Order is important in allowing the present constitutional talks at Lancaster House to take place.

Clause 3 provides for a number of these orders to remain in force, for the good government of Rhodesia in the period leading up to independence and to avoid hardship to individuals. Many of these orders have been in force for some time, and the House has approved them by resolution. The House has not yet had the opportunity to express views on the immunity order. No further parliamentary procedure is proposed, but the House will have an opportunity to discuss it in the course of this debate.

The Bill does not, however, continue the orders relating to sanctions. In this context, I stress two important factors. First, the Bill now before the House will, if enacted, enable the Government to take whatever action is necessary in relation to Rhodesia, depending on the state of progress at the conference up to and after 15 November. This includes the power to continue those sanctions covered by section 2 although, as I said yesterday, the Government find it hard to visualise circumstances in which this would be necessary.

Secondly, the lapse of section 2 will not mean that Britain will cease forthwith to apply sanctions against Rhodesia. The greater part of our sanctions—those covering direct trade with Rhodesia and the transfer of funds—are covered by other legislation. It is the Government's intention that they should remain in force until there is a return to lawful government in Rhodesia with the arrival of a British Governor and acceptance of his authority. At that moment—and in the Government's view it is no longer far off—all domestic sanctions measures will be revoked. Those sanctions were imposed by the United Nations at Britain's request to effect a return to lawful government in Rhodesia and to defeat the efforts of the white minority to deny full political rights to the African majority. With the appointment of a Governor and acceptance of the independence constitution both these objectives will have been achieved. The full effect of sanctions will be rescinded, therefore, only when return to legality has taken place. It is the Government's hope that this will follow agreement at the constitutional conference to which all parties can subscribe.

It is the agreement of all parties that concerns most of my right hon and hon. Friends. If there is agreement between all parties, everything that the right hon. Gentleman has been describing will be necessary. If that is so, we understand why it is necessary to give effect to the powers in the Bill. If, unhappily, the conference ends without agreement, the proposed constitution will not have the agreement of the people of Rhodesia as a whole. If those are the circumstances, how can the right hon. Gentleman proceed with any of the matters that he has been describing until he has the agreement of the people of Rhodesia as a whole?

If we do not get an agreement, we shall have to decide how to proceed. The right hon. and learned Gentleman will appreciate that to give any party a veto in the proceedings would not be likely to facilitate an agreement. If vetos are allowed, we shall never obtain an agreement. We have made our hopes quite clear. It will be a tragedy if the conference breaks down. If that happens, we shall be faced with a number of disagreeable alternatives. It will be for us to consider how we should act. We shall be open to any suggestions that will lead to an improvement of the situation. I look forward to hearing the Opposition's suggestions on how we should proceed in the event of a breakdown. We must proceed on the basis that the Government need the powers in the Bill. Now that section 2 is not being renewed, we shall be denuded.

I am sure that the whole House follows the right hon. Gentleman completely when he says that the Government need the powers. In the event of there not being an agreement, do the Government propose to use the powers in their purpose of providing a constitutional settlement that is not agreed? If it is a matter of having the powers confined to the constitution which is agreed, it will be possible by a small amendment to make it clear that the Order in Council will be used only to give effect to an agreed constitution. That does not mean the giving of a veto to a disagreeing party. It is merely making it plain that the only constitution that may be introduced by means of the Bill is one that is agreed.

That would be giving a veto. That is not the way in which we are likely to achieve agreement. In the unfortunate event of not getting an agreement, we shall have to consider an alternative. I do not know what alternative the hon. Gentleman suggests. Would he like the present situation to continue without alteration? It would not be an agreeable position to be faced. That is why I say that we shall have to consider what we should do in the light of circumstances which we hope will not arise. However, if they arise, we shall have to consider what to do at that time.

I emphasise yet again that it is the Government's aim to bring the conference to a successful conclusion with the agreement of all parties. The measure now before the House is fully consistent with that aim. It will ensure that once agreement is reached the Government have the necessary powers to implement it and to do so without delay. There is no reason to make the people of Rhodesia wait any longer to exercise their choice of Government in free and fair elections.

The House will now wish to consider and debate the merits of the Bill before it. There will, of course, be other opportunities to debate Rhodesia over the coming weeks, both in relation to the independence Bill which the Government hope to bring forward shortly, and the various orders which will be made.

The Bill sets in motion a process which the Government believe will bring Rhodesia to peace and to legal independence on the basis of genuine majority rule and free and fair elections. That will be to the benefit of all the people of Rhodesia and to the people and Governments of the adjoining territories, which have also carried a very heavy burden. It will bring to an end a sorry period in Anglo-Rhodesian relations. A solution is within sight. The Government have demonstrated their determination to achieve a fair and honourable settlement in accordance with the terms agreed by the Commonwealth leaders at Lusaka. We are ready to shoulder our full responsibilites. We must now ask those who have not yet committed themselves to the proposals which we have put forward to accept our good faith and join in irreversible progress to lawful government, the lifting of all sanctions, fair elections and independence for the country.

I wish to inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment standing in the name of the official Oppostion.

6.39 pm

I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:

this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Bill in the absence of a clear commitment not to use the powers contained therein unless agreement has been reached at the Lancaster House Conference and without a commitment to retain section 2 sanctions during the period before the return to legality.

Our reasoned amendment covers many of the questions on which my right hon. and hon. Friends unsuccessfully sought clarification again and again from the Lord Privy Seal, not only this afternoon but yesterday.

We are embarking on a debate of great importance, and we are united in believing that it is in the highest national interest for the London conference to be successfully concluded. Failure is unthinkable. Misery would ensue for the people of Rhodesia, black and white, and race relations would worsen, not just in Southern Africa but everywhere in the world, including our own country. There would be a loss of influence and reputation for our country and the ominous prospect not just of intensification of the war but the widening of it as other Powers became increasingly involved in the conflict. Those are all nightmare prospects but, unhappily, they are not far-fetched.

The debate must be wide-ranging, and we could not accept that it should take place without some basis of fact. As a result, we persuaded the Government at the last moment to publish yesterday a White Paper on the constitution, together with a document on the interim arrangements, which was presented last Friday to the London conference and on which, I am glad to learn, considerable progress has been made. Both those matters were touched on by the Lord Privy Seal in his speech today and his statement yesterday, as was the still undiscussed final stage of the conference—the ceasefire to which the right hon. Gentleman alluded. We are conscious that the Lancaster House conference is entering its decisive stage, and we must have in mind the overriding objective that there should be a successful outcome.

I shall follow in a sense the pattern set by the Lord Privy Seal in recalling the common ground that has so far been achieved. For 14 years, ever since UDI, Governments of both parties have refused to accept the Rhodesian rebellion. They have annually enacted sanctions against it and insisted that the six principles of a settlement be adhered to. That has not been easy, particularly for the Conservative Party, many of whose members have become vehemently and emotionally attached to the cause of the Rhodesia Front, which they have encouraged in its intransigence over the years. I pay tribute, however, to Conservative leaders who, although often sorely tried and tempted, have in the past refused to depart from what has been a national policy.

We frankly had our moment of great anxiety earlier this year when the Prime Minister in her Australian speech in July appeared temporarily to depart from the general consensus of policy. She indicated that she was thinking of following the internal elections in Salisbury in March by recognising the Muzorewa regime. We sought to persuade her that that would be disastrous when we last debated Rhodesia on 25 July, shortly before the Lusaka conference. Her own second thoughts, advice from the rest of the Commonwealth and perhaps even our arguments led her to make a substantial switch in what appeared to be the direction of her policy and to agree at Lusaka with other Commonwealth leaders the following main points. They were that the Rhodesian internal constitution was basically defective, that the recognition of Bishop Muzorewa by Britain would lead to a disastrous isolation of our country, that an internationally supported settlement was essential and that an all-party conference had to be called and a major effort made to secure agreement and peace.

On the basis of the Lusaka agreement there is much common ground between us. We want, and the Government want, to end white supremacy in Rhodesia by removing the unacceptable privileges that were entrenched in the Salisbury constitution—the blocking mechanism and the de facto control of the whole State apparatus by the European minority. We want, and the Government want, a lawful Government in Rhodesia to be based on free and fair elections. We want, and the Government want, to stop the bloodshed and end the war. All three objectives are central to success at the Lancaster House conference.

The White Paper which we had yesterday shows that agreement on the constitution has been reached, and it is obvious that considerable compromises have been made by all the parties to the talks to make that possible. The document on the interim arrangements reveals that agreement there does not appear to be beyond reach. Indeed, it appears that on many substantial points the parties are very close.

I pause here to stress these points. First, fair and free elections will require adequate time for preparation. It is not a minor point and the Government must not be inflexible about it. If reaching agreement turns on whether the British Government can hold the ring for a period of not just two months and a few days but up to four months or more, it would be intolerable if it were allowed to slip away. It is basically a secondary point but of prime importance to those seeking to participate in and, it is hoped, win a free and fair election.

Secondly, there has to be a positive broad observer role for the Commonwealth. All proposals for bringing in external or third forces have apparently been rejected. The one clear agreement—and it is there in the Lusaka communiqué—is that the elections should be supervised by Britain but observed by the Commonwealth. I hope that Commonwealth observers will be given the utmost freedom to supervise not merely the ballot box operation but all the procedures, including the administration in the country. That is the context in which free and fair elections can be held, if at all. I believe that there could be agreement that the Commonwealth has a positive role to play.

Thirdly, during the election period the coercive military presence must be absent, whether that be the armed forces of the Salisbury regime or those of the Patriotic Front. Law and order must be maintained by an effectively supervised police force.

Those important points are not yet fully agreed, and if we are to convince all concerned that the elections will be free and fair, we must make progress on them. Finally and most crucially, there must be an effective ceasefire and an end to the cruel civil war.

We encouraged the Government in that direction throughout the nine weeks of the London conference, and whenever we met the rival parties, we encouraged compromise. We urged impartiality and flexibility on the Government, and we made restrained and carefully timed comments and suggestions only when we felt that we had a duty to do so.

It is against that background that I turn to the Bill and our reasoned amendment. We believe that the Government have made a major mistake in introducing the Bill now. The Bill should have been introduced not on the eve of the last and most vital stage of the negotiations but immediately after the conclusion of those negotiations. Our amendment states, first, that we want a commitment that the powers within the enabling Bill—sweeping as they are—will not be exercised unless an agreement has been reached at the Lancaster House conference. Secondly, we seek to restore the status quo in relation to sanctions affecting Rhodesia until there is a return to legality. They are reasonable demands.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) made the point yesterday that the powers in the Bill, apart from the single but important exception of sanctions, would have been matters not for controversy but for normal scrutiny if the Bill had been presented at the conclusion of the Lancaster House conference. The Bill is controversial because it has been presented before the last and most crucial stage. Frankly, it seems that the Bill has been deliberately framed and timed to avoid careful and considered scrutiny by the House.

Yesterday, we sought to discover the reason for the extraordinary timing of the measure and the yet more extraordinary timetable for its passage upon which the Government were insisting. So much of the confusion that was witnessed during the early part of today was the inevitable consequence of the rush to get the measure through. Yesterday, we asked why the House was to be subjected to such an astonishing procedure. I listened today to what the Lord Privy Seal said. I heard nothing to convince me that any rushed procedure was necessary. We were offered two explanations. First, the Lord Privy Seal said that he wanted to proceed without delay, that the Government should be in a position to make arrangements to appoint a Governor and proceed with the interim arrangements for governing Rhodesia. As the right hon. Gentleman knows well, that could be done in a few extra days' time. I did not gather from what he said that he was so near the conclusion of the conference that the difference of three days in considering the Bill would be important, and that those days would be lost because agreement had been reached. However, I cannot seriously believe that the Lord Privy Seal would argue that case.

The second reason that the right hon. Gentleman advanced was that the timing of the measure had to be related to the progress of the conference. Those were somewhat sibylline words. In the consequent exchanges it became clear that he was making a deliberate concession on sanctions to obtain the good will of the Muzorewa side of the conference. According to the Lord Privy Seal, to retain what I referred to as the 14-year status quo on sanctions, would be a "slap in the face" to Bishop Muzorewa. That indicates a shift in the Government's posture as the neutral chairman of the Lancaster House conference. Hitherto, the Government's position has been that, within the framework of the 14-year policy that acknowledged the continued illegality of the Salisbury regime, their purpose was to promote a compromise agreement on the three main subjects of the conference, the constitution, the interim arrangements and the ceasefire.

The concession on sanctions to one side is bound to give the impression that the Government have departed from their stance of impartiality. That is bound to be unhelpful to the progress of the talks. Today's 6 o'clock radio news told us that the Patriotic Front did not turn up at Lancaster House. No doubt its representatives have been very worried about the implications of the right hon. Gentleman's actions yesterday. Equally important, there is a danger that what has been done will have adverse international repercussions. Britain went to the United Nations to ask for collective mandatory sanctions. Some of the powers in section 2, which will now lapse, are also contained in the mandatory resolution passed by the United Nations. Will the Lord Privy Seal deny that fact? What approaches has the right hon. Gentleman made or will he make to the United Nations about the shift in British policy? Does he expect other nations to continue the sanctions which we will allow to lapse?

I remind Conservative Members that the renewal of section 2 year by year has been seen as a symbol of Britain's determination not to accept the fait accompli of the rebellion and our determination to return Rhodesia to legality. One reason for the hurried measure that was not advanced by the Lord Privy Seal—one which I suggested yesterday—is that he and his colleagues are not prepared to face up to their Back Benchers over the renewal of the sanctions order. But for that, the proper course of action would have been obvious and clear. There would have been a renewal of section 2 and a separate constitutional Bill.

Time for debating the Bill could have been found easily. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made clear, we would have been entirely content to join in any arrangement to limit the renewal and timing of the sanctions order to any appropriate period the Government advanced. That could have been discussed in the ordinary way. Incidentally, clause 2 also gives power to establish the Governor. We could have reached that point and held proper discussions about an important constitutional Bill. It would not have detained us for an unnecessary length of time. [Interruption.] Surely, that is the reason. I have not heard one reasonable explanation for the rushing of the Bill other than the one which I offered to the House.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the renewal of the sanctions order as a symbol. Does he agree that, thanks to the progress that has been made by all parties in the Lancaster House talks, we have passed the stage of the need for symbols and we are now reaching the conclusion of the negotiations?

I do not accept that that is necessarily so. I hope that that stage will be reached soon. However, the general rules should not be changed in the middle of negotiations. That cannot be done without some impact being felt on the minds of the parties to the negotiations.

The most worrying question about the course of action proposed by the Government is whether they are contemplating, not an agreed solution, a solution accepted by all parties, but a so-called second-best solution—a bilateral deal with the Muzorewa regime. Under the Bill, the Government will have the power to appoint a Governor in Salisbury. When he arrives and assumes executive and legislative power the return to legality will have been achieved. In these circumstances, as I surely do not need to remind the House, a British-appointed Governor will become the commander-in-chief of the Rhodesian forces. If hostilities continue, he will be in the impossible position of directing the war.

The Lord Privy Seal was questioned four times yesterday, by his right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins), by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. Silkin) and by my hon. Friends the Members for York (Mr. Lyon) and for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor). I refer the right hon. Gentleman to some of his replies. To his right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, he offered no reply at all, as he will recall. To my right hon. and learned Friend and to my two hon. Friends, he failed to give any assurance that he would not proceed to implement the Act if agreement was not reached. Replying to my hon. Friend the Member for York, the Lord Privy Seal said:

"If we fail in our endeavours, which I very much hope will not happen, we shall certainly have to consider how we should proceed."—[Official Report, 7 November 1979; Vol. 973, c. 419.]

The Lord Privy Seal has repeated that on two or three occasions this afternoon.

To my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich, the Lord Privy Seal, when asked for the same assurance, said:

"To do that would be to give a veto to one party or the other."—[Official Report, 7 November 1979; Vol. 973, c. 421.]

He therefore refused to give that assurance.

rose—

I am not giving way at the moment.

I believe this to be profoundly unsatisfactory. But the strictures that I would otherwise have delivered, which I assure the right hon. Gentleman are very strong ones, have been somewhat muted since I read this morning the Official Report of the proceedings in another place. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when asked the same question, said:

"Sanctions will be taken off when the governor takes over in Salisbury, and he will take over when a ceasefire has been agreed. I would not say that all the shooting will have stopped, but not until the ceasefire is agreed will he take over."—[Official Report. House of Lords, 7 November 1979; Vol. 402, c. 833–4.]

Comparing what the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs said in another place and what the Lord Privy Seal said, not only yesterday, but also half an hour ago, when the same question was put to him, I cannot help but feel that there is an extraordinary divergence between Foreign Office Ministers and that this is a matter of great moment.

I must now put the issue to the Lord Privy Seal. I ask him to reaffirm firmly the pledge and the words given by his right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and to assert in this House of Commons that sanctions will be taken off when the Governor takes over in Salisbury and that he will take over when a ceasefire has been agreed and that not until a ceasefire is agreed, will he take over. I shall willingly give way to the Lord Privy Seal. He knows that this has been the heart of the question put to him. I hope that he will now give that assurance.

I think that the right hon. Gentleman has misunderstood my right hon. and noble Friend. I do not think that there is any difference between us. It is plain what my right hon. and noble Friend was saying. I think that the right hon. Gentleman was referring to col. 833. There is another passage in col. 835. In that context, my right hon. and noble Friend is plainly talking about the circumstances for which we all hope, that is to say, an end to the conference and agreement between all the parties.

I think that the right hon. Gentleman needs to have some further conference with his right hon. and noble Friend. Either one House or the other is being misled. There cannot be a reconciliation between the explanation that the Lord Privy Seal has offered and the actual context and text of the words used by his right hon. and noble Friend. I put it to him—this is why we have put our reasoned amendment in the form that it appears—that on this issue we want a complete and absolute assurance. If the right hon. Gentleman, in response to my direct invitation, is having some difficulty in construing the words of his right hon. and noble Friend, or if he thinks there is any advantage in having a further discussion with him soon, we are prepared for that assurance to be stated in the Government's reply.

I am aware that this debate has started late, for reasons that are not our fault. I am aware that many of my right hon. and hon. Friends wish to contribute. I shall bring my remarks to a conclusion. We have stated our main objections to the Bill in the terms of our reasoned amendment. We shall vote upon it. We cannot accept a Bill that deliberately excludes the reenactment of sanctions at this time in the context of the Lancaster House talks. We shall therefore not only vote for our reasoned amendment but oppose, and continue to oppose, the Bill itself.

7.6 pm

There is complete agreement on both sides of the House on the objectives with regard to Rhodesia. We want to see a settlement that is genuinely based on the six principles. We want to see a return to legality which leads to recognition. We want to see an end to the war and a stable situation under which the white population of Rhodesia can be encouraged to stay and Communist influence from outside Africa can be resisted. That is common ground.

We have made remarkable progress since the debate that took place just before the Summer Recess. I suggested at that time that the existing constitution in Rhodesia did not provide the basis for a permanent settlement. That was regarded in some quarters as a rather idiosyncratic view. I was delighted to find that it turns out to be official Government policy and that considerable progress has been made. My right hon. Friends should be congratulated on the way that they have handled the negotiations. We now have the best opportunity since UDI to achieve a settlement. All of us must work together to ensure that the settlement is brought about on a satisfactory basis.

I must tell the right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore) that I welcome the Bill. It provides a means of further progress, although a great many obstacles have still to be cleared. We must consider carefully what are the options open to us. I speak with great frankness. The option that all hon. Members want is a settlement on the basis I have outlined. In the absence of an agreement at Lancaster House, we may find that the situation deteriorates further, that the war continues and that, in effect, we have washed our hands of the matter. That would be utterly and completely disastrous. A third option would be for the Government to proceed on the basis of this Bill, even though an agreement had not been reached.

I take up the point which the Opposition spokesman has just made on this matter. Over the years, he and I have studied a great many Bills in this House. Unless I am mistaken, my understanding is that the effect of the provisions for going ahead in the absence of an agreement—if one reads clause 3, which is effectively the clause which would enable the appointment of a Governor, together with clause 1, which I understand governs clause 3—would be that we could not proceed to that situation without a further Bill being passed.

I am not sure whether I am right about that. Perhaps my right hon. Friend will confirm that that is so. But certainly my own feeling would be that if there were not an agreement and we were to proceed to appoint a Governor in the absence of any agreement and a ceasefire, then—at the risk of using an emotive shorthand—we must recognise that we would be creating a Vietnam-type position. I think that that is something on which the House would be very reluctant indeed to engage, and which obviously we would need to consider at a later stage.

I hope that my right hon. Friend can tell me whether my interpretation of the Bill as it stands is correct.

I share the concern which has been expressed about the position on sanctions. It seems to me a rather strange position that we should, in effect, apparently be contemplating a position in which 20 per cent. of the sanctions are not continued and 80 per cent. of them are continued—although, of course if the Governor is appointed in time, that position may never arise at all. I suppose that that is still a possibility.

But again, if this seems to be a development which jeopardises the possibility of an agreement, under the Bill, as I understand it, under an Order in Council, it would be possible to cover what one might call the gap—if such a gap in fact turns out to exist.

Therefore, I think that the right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar is being a little premature in taking the position that he has taken. It depends on how the situation develops in the next few days with regard to both the international community and more generally.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I do not think that I can, because I am not sure what the position is regarding the time limit and I have a complicated argument to put forward. If I have a chance at the end of my speech, I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman.

We can gain nothing from a situation in which the international community does not go along with the agreement which has been reached. That is most certainly so, and I do not think that it can be seriously disputed. Secondly, we can gain nothing if in advance of the elections and the other proceedings taking place either side in Rhodesia can argue that the situation is unfair, because that would not advance the cause of peace there at all. We must take account of both the international factor and the situation in Rhodesia itself, and that means that it must be seen to be fair.

I believe that it is the task of all of us in this House to convince those who might feel that the action which is now proposed on sanctions unbalances the situation that that is not so. We have a task to convince them—I believe it profoundly to be true—that my right hon. and noble Friend the Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal and the Government as a whole are negotiating in good faith and for the reasons I have mentioned, if for no other—that is, the self-interest of this country—that they are determined that elections can be held on a fair and equal basis.

I hope profoundly that members of the Patriotic Front, for example, can be convinced of that, because I myself am convinced of it. We all have a task to persuade them that that is so, because otherwise the situation is fraught with very great dangers of the kind I have sought to outline.

On that, it may be that there is some case, because of the knife-edge situation balancing one way on one day and another way on another day, for saying that my right hon. Friend would be right to consider some flexibility on the question of timing, if only for the reason I have just mentioned. There is no point in having an election about which one side can say in advance "We did not have a fair chance." I hope that the Government will not be inflexible on that point in the course of the negotiations. It would really be very sad if the matter were to become cumulative and if, as a result of that, the situation deteriorated and we lost this chance. We must do everything that we can to ensure that the negotiations succeed.

In that context, I believe that it is important that we should support my right hon. Friends and the Government in the great progress that they have made. We have a real chance of bringing the matter to a successful conclusion. That would be a triumph for us in Britain as a whole, for us as a force in world affairs and, indeed, for the future of Africa and the entire world community. I wish my right hon. Friends well. I hope that we bring the matter to a successful conclusion.

7.14 pm

I do not believe that this Bill, at any rate in its present form, is one which should pass this House, both on grounds of form and on grounds of the policy which it embodies.

As regards form, much has already been said. The Bill gives wide and unlimited powers, first of all in relation to an Order in Council for the creation of a constitution, and, secondly, for arrangements for the governance of Rhodesia and the matter of sanctions in clause 3.

The Government state that both these powers are to be used only in an express and specified context. They point out quite correctly that the constitution which is to be made is a constitution which will have been agreed, and that, therefore, it cannot be submitted to the ordinary play of the House—to consider, to amend, to accept or to reject. But there is nothing in the wording of the Bill which limits the powers of clause 1 to the making of any particular constitution. It is not satisfactory that we should give unlimited powers in an Act of Parliament upon the basis of a verbal understanding given in this House, however honourably meant—and, of course, it is—that the exercise of them will be specifically and, indeed, uniquely limited.

Incidentally, it is a curious paradox that in so far as the interim period is concerned—with which clause 2 deals—this House will be able to say yea or nay to a modification of that constitution in the period up to the holding of the elections.

There would surely have been no difficulty, if the Government realise the importance of this—I hope that they will—in attaching the power conferred in clause 1 to a specific constitution unambiguously defined in the terms of the Bill.

Then we come to the similar difficulty in regard to the powers given by clause 3. There are to be exercised only in the event of what is called agreement—which I take to mean agreement on the published terms of the draft agreement, plus or including a ceasefire. But there is nothing in the Bill which limits in that way the right to use those powers. There is not the slightest reference to any document whatsoever, or any attendant circumstances, however defined. There is even a not unimportant ambiguity in the verbal undertaking that the use of these powers is dependent upon an agreement; for suppose that an agreement is made and is broken, or suppose that a ceasefire begins but does not continue. Does that mean that these powers will continue to be exercised or will not continue to be exercised?

Again, paradoxically, we were told in relation to the constitution that, because it was a matter of agreement between parties, therefore the terms could not be in any sense submitted to the House. In clause 3, on the contrary, this House is given a veto over the use of the powers, despite the fact that they, too, are to be in pursuance of and conditional upon an agreement.

I say, therefore, that as regards the form of the Bill—and I am using the word "form" in a very wide sense—it is objectionable in the unlimited nature of the powers—and they are very sweeping powers—which which it endows the Government. But more serious still are the practical consequences of the use which it is intended to make of them.

In 1965, 14 years ago almost to the day, the House made a statement in the Southern Rhodesia Act:

"It is hereby declared that Southern Rhodesia continues to be part of Her Majesty's dominions, and that the Government and Parliament of the United Kingdom have responsibility and jurisdiction as heretofore for and in respect of it."

I suppose that never before has this legislature, or perhaps any other, written upon its statute book a statement so at variance with real facts; and be it noted that, in case we might have been taken merely to be making a formal statement, to be humbugging ourselves, we were careful to include the word "responsibility".

Parliament not only claimed a jurisdiction—as some Chinese emperor might claim jurisdiction over large parts of Asia—but it also claimed a responsibility that it did not possess. This House can have no responsibility without the power to exercise it. Power and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. For the past 14 years we have lived in a twilight world, an agonising world, in which the pretence that Parliament is responsible for Southern Rhodesia has continued, without any possibility of Parliament realising that responsibility because it did not have even a shadow of power.

In 1965 Southern Rhodesia ceased to be part of Her Majesty's dominions as surely as the American colonies ceased to be part of His Majesty's dominions when that fact was recognised by the Treaty of Paris and the legislation by Parliament that applied the consequences to the law of this country.

The right hon. Gentleman is speaking about Southern Rhodesia today because the Patriotic Front has given him the right to speak about it in a way that other past references that he is making—

Order. The hon. Gentleman must ask a question.

Does the right hon. Gentleman concede that the Patriotic Front has put this on the agenda of the House? That is something to which he should apply his formidable logic.

On the contrary, the statement I have just made was as true when I first made it in 1965 as it is today. If the hon. Gentleman wishes me to enter into the history of the last 14 years, it is my opinion that the decisive moment was the collapse of the Portuguese empire. It was that, more than any other single event, that rendered the continuance of the independent Government of Rhodesia impossible in the long run; but the governance of Rhodesia was not going to revert, whatever happened, to the responsibility and jurisdiction of this House. During those 14 years there were never circumstances in which Parliament had the means of exercising jurisdiction and responsibility in Southern Rhodesia.

We are not now recognising that fact, however belatedly, and whether thanks to the Patriotic Front or to the collapse of the Portuguese empire. We are leaving fact behind and taking off into a further flight of fantasy. We are, we say, actually going to govern Southern Rhodesia now. It says so in the Bill: we are to make provision for the government of Southern Rhodesia under the responsibility of Her Majesty's Government. So Parliament will pass from the 14-year-old absurdity of asserting that it exercises the government of Southern Rhodesia to attempting to carry that out in reality.

The Government will send out a Governor. I do not know what train the Governor will have, or by whom he will be accompanied. I suppose he will have the usual accoutrements of a governor—the plumed hat, the white uniform, the sword.

However, the Lord Privy Seal is not unaware of the illusion and paper-thinness of the pretence upon which he has embarked and is inviting the House to embark. The Lord Privy Seal said that the responsibility was a heavy one. It is indeed. The Governor is to be responsible for the peace, order and government of Southern Rhodesia and responsible to this House for everything that he does, since it is Parliament which gives him the powers. The Lord Privy Seal said that he could encounter grave difficulties. He could indeed. There will have been a ceasefire, it is true, and the Governor will not be sent out unless that is declared. Gordon will not be sent to Khartoum unless the Mahdi has declared a ceasefire. But there have been ceasefires before in other parts of the world which have not lasted. Will the Governor come home when the firing starts, if it does? In fact, as the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary said in another place:

"I would not say that all the shooting will have stopped."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 November 1979; Vol. 402, c. 833–4.]

The Governor will arrive in a country which only a moment earlier was locked in a dangerous and devastating internal war as well as a war on its frontiers. He is to be responsible for and to command all the forces, including the police force. The right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore) said that "peace, order and good government" would have to be maintained by the police force in Southern Rhodesia. I accept that point; and the Governor will also be responsible for the police force. He will run the entire Government, because he will have displaced the existing elected Government—however elected—of Bishop Muzorewa: that gentleman will have bowed out as His Excellency arrives to be responsible for the entire administration of Southern Rhodesia, the "peace, order and good government" of that country as it will be on the day after a ceasefire, and the peaceful and fair conduct of elections that will be conducted in an atmosphere far more electric and where the contending parties have far more to gain and lose than in any election in the United Kingdom—and even there in recent years there have had to be troops available at all the polling stations in one of its provinces.

What is the point of Parliament pretending to accept responsibility for all that, responsibility divorced yet again from power? How many divisions will be sent? How many troops? None at all? Not a platoon? Not a bodyguard of marines? Of course we here miss our "bomber" nowadays, but will there not even be a detachment of the Royal Air Force? Yet upon the basis of an agreement and a ceasefire, a Governor is to carry out all this.

The Government say that the Governor will be sent for only a short time. How do the Government know that it will be for only a short time? Suppose it should turn out that the elections cannot be staged in the circumstances which the agreement requires. What happens then? Presumably we shall continue to exercise the legal powers conferred on the Government—make one Order in Council after another under clause 3 of the Bill. But what real power will there be? We shall find ourselves with a farce on our hands, and what is farce could turn to personal tragedy and to disgrace that will come home to us. The very fact that we do not have power or real responsibility in Rhodesia—

We have responsibility.

We cannot have responsibility without power—

Of course we can. We may not be able to exercise that responsibility but we certainly have it.

I say that there is no meaning in this House saying that it is responsible for Rhodesia. Would we say to our constituents that we are responsible for something when we have no power? Of course we would not—

If Britain's responsibility is only a fiction, and has been a fiction since 1965, why is it that those who declared UDI are very much party to the Lancaster House conference?

Because of the events of the past 14 years.

Our responsibilities remain the same.

I am simply unable to understand the use by hon. Members of the term "responsibility". Responsibility means that one can be called to account for what happens; but one cannot be called to account for that which one cannot control.

Of course one can.

I seem to have embarked upon a much lengthier seminar than I thought. I did not think that it would be necessary to explain to the House of Commons of all places, that one must control that for which one is to be held responsible; but apparently this is not a universally accepted doctrine.

I conclude by saying that what I have stigmatised as a fiction in the last 14 years is now turning into a dangerous charade which may well leave us exposed, in the face of the world, impotent to ridicule and without conferring one atom of safety, security or well-being upon those for whom we purport to be responsible and for whom Labour Members like to think themselves responsible. This is not something for which the House should vote.

7.34 pm

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), especially as he has now put the case against the Bill, and in doing so has shown up the triviality of those in the Labour Party who will vote against the Second Reading tonight. The right hon. Member put the question so clearly—whether the Government can carry out what they aim to do. The House must face up to this. The right hon. Gentleman dealt with historical questions and compared the United States with Rhodesia. But the situation in Rhodesia is quite different.

The Bill, provided it is supported by the country and provided that the Government accept its full meaning, is an action which must be taken. Although in the past I have been of the same opinion as the right hon. Member for Down, South and have taken the view that what is gone is gone, I believe that there is now a great difference. At present some of the main contesting parties in Rhodesia see this country as offering the only chance of a solution to the Rhodesian problem. That is the responsibility that is thrust upon the House and the Government by events.

At Lusaka the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister took an extremely bold decision on an issue that their Prime Ministerial predecessors had avoided. They put themselves back into the driving seat over Rhodesian affairs. We must now concern ourselves, not with the piffling questions raised by the Opposition, but with the vital question as to whether this country can carry out its role. The issue turns on this and this alone, not on the legal points or the interlocutions which we saw while we waited for a decision on whether we should proceed with the Bill. It is simply a question of whether the House and the country will accept responsibility for bringing about a solution to the problem, which is of enormous and immensely dangerous proportions.

It is not just a question of Rhodesia, or of kith and kin, or whether Mr. Mugabe, Mr. Nkomo or Bishop Muzorewa should have power. It is a question of peace in Southern Africa, and these matters will turn on the conference and the resolution of this House.

The right hon. Member for Down, South mocked Gordon in Khartoum and the fact that he arrived there only after a ceasefire. That point was also made by the Shadow Foreign Secretary. The fact is that the British Government cannot know the precise conditions in Rhodesia, and once we have resumed power there we shall have to deal with these conditions as they arrive. I do not want to see a repetition of the Mexican experience, which was bad enough and not dissimilar to the one to which the right hon. Member for Down, South referred. But if these events are not to be repeated there must be a profound decision by the House and the Government. They must back up the settlement and back it up if needs be with a variety of military equipment so that law and order is restored sufficiently to enable the election to take place.

Let no one—the Foreign Secretary. Labour Members or some of my hon. Friends who are trying to manoeuvre for the Left wing or the Right wing—be unaware of the grave dangers facing Rhodesia unless this measure is pushed through. One realises how serious it is as one looks around the world, and particularly at Africa.

There are those who think that we can combine successfully negotiations in the United Nations, negotiations with all the persons and factions opposing a settlement in Rhodesia, and negotiations with the front-line States with their totally different attitude. To succeed in carrying out these things simultaneously and successfully would be like allowing a veto to be put on our proceedings and on peace by hundreds of thousands of foolish organisations throughout the world. That is why I believe the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are right to bring this Bill forward which should show—perhaps more clearly than it does—precisely where we stand.

I am an old mastodon—I see a few others in the House—who attended colonial and other conferences as our colonies moved towards liberation or the formation of new constitutions. In the course of such negotiations there comes a point when we must say "This is it. On this we settle or fail". That moment has arrived in these negotiations and I believe that this Bill, in spite of what some hon. Gentlemen believe, will help to achieve a solution.

7.41 pm

The right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Fraser) spoke of past attempts to solve colonial problems. As a junior and as a senior Minister and latterly as an Opposition spokesman I was happy to share in that experience. In many cases colonial rule was successfully concluded.

I played my part in trying to bring about the same situation in Rhodesia. The right hon. Gentleman said that a legal quibble divides us in our attempts to bring about a peaceful and successful conclusion to the Rhodesian problem. It is not that. It is fundamental if we hope to secure future peace in Zimbabwe Rhodesia that all parties are united in that aim. We do not want history to repeat itself.

When I succeeded the then Secretary of State, in the Conservative Government of 1964, there was all round co-operation on the Rhodesian problem. He told me of the five principles that his Government had put to the Rhodesians as the basis for a settlement and said that, if I could be big enough to put those principles to Rhodesia, the fact that they came from a Labour Government might convince the Rhodesians that they were getting off more easily than they expected.

I did not see Mr. Smith when I became Secretary of State because he would not allow me to meet Joshua Nkomo. Until he had given consent to a meeting with Mr. Nkomo I did not see Mr. Smith. Joshua Nkomo was released from detention to talk to me. I spelt out the five principles to Mr. Smith and he accepted them. However, there was no attempt to keep to an understanding. If left to him, the same would happen today. Had there been a settlement we would not have experienced 14 years of bloodshed, hatred and misery. If we do not act now, that situation will continue for a long time, with the major Powers, and certainly the Communist Powers, spelling out a solution as they see it.

The talks with the Patriotic Front have gone extremely well. Most of them are patriots doing their best to bring about a solution to the problems in their country. We would not have seen Mr. Smith and a Conservative Government parleying with the Patriotic Front had it not been for the Front's military successes. I make one or two practical proposals which may encourage the Patriotic Front to be more co-operative. I have not discussed with it the suggestions I am about to make, though I did talk to Robert Mugabe about trying to get a settlement.

He told me that the Patriotic Front have gone a long way towards this end. He also said that if we asked the Patriotic Front to allow an election to take place and if the people who kept him in prison and murdered his comrades were to decide how the country would be run during the interim period, its answer would be "No". If I was in his position, I would say the same.

It is unrealistic of the Government to think that preparations for elections in Rhodesia can be mounted in two months. The Patriotic Front has a right to go back and lay its ground and build up some kind of support. I plead with the Government to extend that period.

At the last general election I faced an assortment of opponents. One of the candidates was supported by the Fascists. There was a Workers' Revolutionary Party candidate and there were my good parliamentary friends the Liberals and the Conservatives. There could have been ugly scenes, but the police and the local authorities, because of their long experience, ensured that we were all good friends on polling night. There were no fights or difficulties. Not that I sympathised with the causes of some of my opponents. Nevertheless, good spirits and good order prevailed.

Is it not conceivable that a few chief constables or local authority chief executives with reasonable staff support—after all, Rhodesia is not numerically a large country—could run the election there? That would create confidence in the election's being run in a fit and proper fashion. In spite of any ceasefire, however, there could be minor outbreaks. A Commonwealth military presence to keep opposing forces apart is a proposition that should be considered.

I plead with the Government, therefore, if they really want a solution to the Zimbabwe Rhodesia problem, to support the Opposition amendment. I think it is a reasoned and realistic one which will ensure that in the future Britain can hold her head high and say that we secured a peaceful solution on honourable terms.

7.48 pm

The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) read out to us the Act of Parliament by which Britain assumed the Government of Southern Rhodesia in 1965. The then Prime Minister, wisely or otherwise, rightly or wrongly, asked the members of the public services in Rhodesia to remain at their posts.

It would be conducive to the good administration of their country during the interim period when a British Governor is there, and afterwards, if we now guaranteed the pensions of Rhodesia's public servants. The burden would not be very onerous. The total is £20 million a year and I have no reason to suppose that we would have to pick up the bill. Without such a guarantee, I fear that people in crucial posts will leave the country and thus make the peaceful transition more difficult. Heaven knows, there are enough difficulties already.

I do not share the view of the right hon. Member for Down, South that one cannot have responsibility without power. We did have the military power at the time of UDI, but we chose not to use it. We are not totally devoid of military power now and it may be extremely wise not to use it this time. There are in Rhodesia, as in many other countries, experienced administrators who will serve any Government elected in good faith, even a Government formed by the Patriotic Front. We owe it to them to guarantee their pensions. We have the power to do it and it is right and expedient that we should do it.

7.50 pm

The hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) made a constructive and positive speech.

I congratulate the Government on their progress at Lancaster House. They have been negotiating under exceedingly difficult circumstances. Speaking for the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore) summed up the views of the whole House yesterday when he said:

"The prize of peace, a properly elected Government and lawful independence must certainly not be allowed to elude us after so many difficulties have been surmounted."

All reasonable people in the House and the country hope and pray for a settlement. This is not an empty form of words. It is supported by the Opposition's attitude in the last few months during the negotiations. In spite of the differences that emerged during our earlier debate the Opposition's attitude has been helpful, as the Lord Privy Seal confirmed yesterday.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel)—the Leader of the Liberal Party—cannot be present because of domestic circumstances. He has been in touch with the Lord Privy Seal on a number of occasions. From the outset the Government have sought to involve all parties in the House in the negotiations. It is therefore surprising that there was no advance consultation about the presentation of the Bill. I understand that the Leader of the Opposition spoke to the Prime Minister, but there was no contact with the Liberal Party on this matter whatever.

It may be said that the views of minority parties are not significant. That is an arrogant view for a Government to adopt. If there had been contact, our advice would have been that the legislation should not be introduced at this stage. I am anxious to be fair, but the Government's attitude has contributed to our suspicion that their prime motive in introducing the legislation so hastily is to avoid a potentially emotive debate on sanctions renewal in about a week's time. It is hard to see any other reason for the sudden emergence of the Bill. That point was well made by the right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar.

The Lord Privy Seal said yesterday:

"We must be able to act without delay to implement the final agreement … Any delay in putting a settlement into effect would cost further lives and could place the settlement itself at risk.

"The purpose of the enabling Bill that the Government are introducing later today, is to enable us to implement the interim arrangements without delay."

These are assertions, but they are not supported by clear argument. I cannot accept that the House would seek to delay an enabling Bill introduced after the signing of an agreement. I see no reason why, on the signing of an agreement, the Governor should not at once leave for Salisbury, secure in the knowledge that by the time he arrived the House would have given assent to enabling legislation.

We are being asked to give approval to enabling legislation which gives the Government, in advance of an agreement, wide discretion on sanctions and in the event of a breakdown in negotiations—if that unfortunately took place.

The clear and sustained position of all parties in the House has been that sanctions should remain in effect until agreement is reached, whatever form that agreement takes. I agree with the right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar that it is illogical to argue that it would be a slap in the face for Bishop Muzorewa. That is particularly so since the proportion of sanctions under section 2 amounts only to between 15 per cent. and 20 per cent. of the whole.

We are also in the position of debating the negotiations at what is perhaps their most delicate stage. When referring yesterday to the ceasefire, the Lord Privy Seal said:

"That is the main outstanding matter of the conference and it is almost the most important."—[Official Report, 7 November 1979: Vol. 973, c. 406–16.]

It is not simply that Parliament is not the best place for negotiations, particularly those which require concessions. Words spoken here, sincerely but perhaps intemperately, can upset a sensitive balance. They can sour the atmosphere at a crucial stage. That is the major criticism of the Government for introducing at this stage, what we all accept to be necessary legislation.

It is against this background that my right hon. and hon. Friends and I shall vote for the reasoned amendment tabled by the official Opposition. In doing so I wish to make it clear that, while in the first part of the reasoned amendment it states

"That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Bill in the absence of a clear commitment not to use the powers contained therein unless agreement has been reached at the Lancaster House Conference",

and this could be taken to imply that this represents an unqualified support for the Patriotic Front's position and a veto posture, we do not accept that such an interpretation is valid. I emphasise that that is not our view. One of the unfortunate aspects of this debate is that at this time and in these circumstances inevitably people are prone to take sides, and this could be most unhelpful.

Of course we all have established positions. We all have declared views, but if the negotiations are to succeed, what is required are not only concessions from the participants but restraint and a degree of trust from us. That is not such an onerous requirement. It is easier for us to show restraint than it is for those engaged in negotiations. Our lives and future are not at stake—as are theirs. But I wonder whether restraint can be sustained through the long series of amendments with which we must deal on Monday.

During negotiations one strives to avoid committing oneself to either side.

Regarding the final phase of the negotiations I wish to make only two points which are original but which I wish to place on the record. First the Government should look again at the involvement of the Commonwealth in the security arrangements. That makes sense. It is a concession by the Government which would be welcomed.

Secondly, the time scale of the elections should not be too rigid. That does not mean that I am arguing in favour of six months. However, we should look again at the eight-week proposition.

I am fully aware that I have not made what one could exactly describe as an exciting contribution. I did not intend to do so. In the present circumstances, the best speeches today will be the dull speeches.

8 pm

The hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Johnston) made a restrained and objective speech. The reasons why I cannot agree with him will become obvious in the course of what I have to say. I support the Bill. However, it may lead us into a dangerous situation. Therefore I want to start by discussing what might have been.

When they came to power the Conservative Government should have recognised the Muzorewa constitution and the general election in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in April 1979. First, it would have left the future in the hands of Rhodesians and would not have meant the need for a great deal of interference by the Government or people of the United Kingdom. Secondly, it gave the whites a blocking power for a period of eight years. That was important. It would have ensured gradualism. The one thing that we have not had in Africa is gradualism. It was wanted by both races. For the first time the constitution was not imposed by this House as were those which we gave to so many countries in Africa. Gradualism was supported by the African majority in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. That made the constitution unique. I am sorry that that has not been continued—not because I want the whites to have any particular powers but because I want to ensure that there is gradualism.

Those Members who have been in the House for any time know only too well the number of constitutions that we have passed and presented to countries in Africa together with Bills of Rights. Nearly every one has been torn up at one time or another. Those safeguards in the Bills of Rights have disappeared. That is the history of Africa. We must accept that. I hope that the House and the Government will learn the lessons of post-war history in that continent, that irresistible pressures are exerted on even the most moderate Governments. The Government should have recognised that fact and tried to introduce some way of ensuring gradualism in the constitution. However, they did not do so. Why not? Two reasons were given. The first was that they could not recognise the Muzorewa constitution because it would not obtain international recognition; the second was that it would not end the civil war in that country. That is true. However, can the Government guarantee that either of those two problems will be solved as a result of this Bill? We all hope that they will be solved, but there is certainly no guarantee.

The non-recognition of the Muzorewa constitution led directly to the Lusaka agreement. What followed was absolutely inevitable. I congratulate the Secretary of State and my right hon. Friends on what they achieved. Not many Members of Parliament would have believed that the Lancaster House constitutional conference could have gone on for nine weeks and achieved the success that it has achieved so far. We all hope that it will be brought to a successful conclusion.

I am especially pleased with the Bill since it will enable Bishop Muzorewa to return to Salisbury and say that he has achieved the lifting of sanctions. Section 2 of the Southern Rhodesia Act 1965 disappears on Wednesday. The right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore) pointed out that section 2 of the Act was the core of the sanctions policy. Whether 50 per cent., 80 per cent. or 90 per cent. remains, is immaterial. Section 2 has been the psychological core of sanctions. It is important that Bishop Muzorewa should be able to return home after all this time and say "I succeeded in this". Africans tend to support those who they believe will win, and Africans, like people all over the world, want peace.

As an aside I say that if the Patriotic Front obtains power it is most unlikely that there will be peace in Zimbabwe, as its two wings are just waiting to get at each other. However, that is a controversial point. It will, I fear, be proved to be a true one.

I return to the proposed constitution. In an earlier interjection I asked my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal whether we could debate the constitution. The financial and explanatory memorandum says:

"This Bill enables provision to be made, by Order in Council, for an independent constitution for Zimbabwe."

Obviously I shall not go into that at any length. My right hon. Friend said that we must accent the constitution as it stands. It cannot be amended. However, that does not mean that we cannot obtain clarification. There are a number of points that I should like to put to my right hon. Friend.

The lessons of history in Africa show that safeguards and Bills of Rights are valueless unless there is a blocking mechanism in the constitution. The constitution we are given shows that the whites will have 20 per cent. of the seats in the Lower House for eight years and that the entrenched clauses in the constitution may be altered by a 70 per cent. vote. It is clear that the whites have no blocking mechanism. However all our debates on Rhodesia—HMS "Tiger", HMS "Fearless" and the Pearce Cornmission—hinged on giving the Africans a blocking right. In each case the white minority in Rhodesia agreed.

The constitution says that those who live in Zimbabwe will become Zimbabwe citizens as soon as that country becomes independent. What will happen to those people who are patrials, whose father, mother, grandfather or grandmother were born in this country and who, although they may have lived in Rhodesia all their lives, consider themselves to be British? Will they have the right to return to Britain and maintain British nationality? That is an important matter. All Members of Parliament will have engaged in a great deal of correspondence about people from all parts of the old Empire and new Commonwealth, in which those points have been raised time and again. They have caused disruptions and great sorrow and sadness to many families. That matter must be made clear to the House.

I come to the question of confiscation of, and compensation for, land. The constitution says that compensation will be paid to those ordinarily resident in Zimbabwe. What will happen to those who own property in Zimbabwe but who are not resident? Does that mean that they will not receive compensation? There is scope for a wealth of misunderstanding in that clause. When we think of what happened in Tanzania, the correspondence I have had about land in that country and the sad incidents that have occurred to Englishmen and women because of this matter, we realise it must be cleared up as soon as possible.

I now refer to public servants. This point was raised earlier. The constitution contains guarantees to public servants of payment of their pensions. They may remit those payments and pensions out of the country. That is guaranteed. But who will pay them? If things go well, Zimbabwe will enter on independence. If things do not go well and the civil war continues, what happens then? The public servants have no guarantee. I am informed—hon. Members on both sides of the House will think that this is important—that many contracts of the civil servants, the Army officers and police expire next April, at a time when Zimbabwe will enter on indepeendence. If those people pack up and return home—if they leave their country and go elsewhere—the future of Zimbabwe is grim indeed. Their services will be greatly needed in the difficult period that lies ahead for that country. Britain must give a guarantee to the pensioners. If not, they will leave and we shall be responsible for the subsequent crisis.

I turn to the general election. If the war continues during the general election—we hope that it will not—what will happen? The Governor will be in charge of the security forces and can use them. There will, I believe, be much the same result in the general election as there was in April this year. What worries me much more is what will happen if there is a ceasefire.

Anyone who knows about Africa knows that the war will go underground. It will then be far more difficult to control, as it is in Ulster today. As the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) said, we shall have responsibility without power to exercise it. The right hon. Gentleman put it much better than I can.

What will the Governor do in such circumstances? If there is a ceasefire, he must maintain a balance between the two sides. Intimidation is rife throughout Africa and in many other parts of the world. It will certainly be rife in Zimbabwe, because so much depends upon who wins the general election.

There is a grave danger that British troops may have to be called in. We should then have not the Vietnam situation, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing referred, but a Suez situation. I believe that the Opposition would exploit any such situation, as they did in 1956. The country would then be split and the situation would be very dangerous. How will the Government then control the situation?

It is therefore important that the interim period be kept as short as possible. The two months must not be exceeded. I hope that the Government intend to remain firm on that matter.

I believe that Mr. Nkomo will get considerable support in Matabeleland. He is the leading Matabele and is, as it were, the father of independence. I am not sure how much support Mr. Mugabe will get in Mashonaland. In my view, he is much more an Old Testament prophet than a revolutionary leader. But we shall see.

I repeat, what matters is that the general election be brought into effect as soon as possible, and certainly within two months. That is vital if we are to avoid chaos throughout Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.

To sum up: by not recognising the Muzorewa constitution, we are taking grave risks. We may, by this Bill and the subsequent general election, open Pandora's box. We should remember that what happened in Palestine was decided by the House of Commons. The world is still feeling the effects of what happened there as a result of our misjudgments.

We are discussing not only Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, but the future of Southern Africa. If the Soviet Union succeeds in its endeavours in Southern Africa either to create chaos or to install other client regimes, as in Angola and Mozambique, Europe is finished. The House may think that is an exaggeration. However, I remind the House that, because of the strategic importance of Southern Africa on the oil route and the vital need of industrial Western Europe for the minerals in that part of the world, whatever happens there will affect everyone in this country. I hope that we remember that when we consider the future of Zimbabwe. This is the first step along a path which could bring success and peace to all races in Africa and affect the whole balance of the world. If we fail, the world could face ultimate disaster in World War III.

8.13 pm

I think that all who have contributed to the debate have recognised that, whatever course we run, we face high risks. The hon. Member for Haltem-price (Mr. Wall) added his voice to that proposition.

The most ominous contribution to the debate was that of the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell).

As always.

The right hon. Gentleman attacked the Bill on the ground that it would involve us in an unacceptable risk—namely, that in sending out a Governor with the panoply of office but without substantial power we would find ourselves in an insupportable situation. The right hon. Gentleman put forward an argument that the Government must consider. Clearly we cannot duck out of our responsibilitiies for Rhodesia altogether. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was suggesting that we should, though I think he was.

It is clear that there is weakness in the Government's position, and it must be compared with the position taken by the Labour Government. In the Anglo-American proposals, largely brought forward through the influence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen), the then Foreign Secretary, consideration was given to the question of power on the ground to ensure an orderly transfer of authority to the new Government.

We are all filled with admiration for the extent to which there was agreement at Lusaka, but there was a serious deficiency which has not been faced. Therefore, it is right in these discussions to consider what can be done about it. Within the Lusaka agreement, providing for the presence of Commonwealth observers, there is the possibility of giving some substance to the Governor's power on the ground so that we are not isolated in seeking to maintain law and order and to bring about an orderly transfer of power. I do not agree with the right hon. Member for Down, South that, because of this deficiency and danger, we should avoid the responsibilities that we have assumed over many years.

I turn now to why, with some reluctance and regret, I find it necessary to support the Opposition's amendment. My reasons are somewhat different from the arguments advanced by the right hon. Member for Down, South. I say "with regret" because I believe that Governments engaged in delicate and difficult negotiations are greatly strengthened by enjoying, so far as possible, the unanimous support of the House of Commons. It is not desirable that the House should divide on this issue, but regrettably I feel that there is no option because the Government appear to be involving the House deliberately in the diplomacy of the settlement.

The House of Commons, as has been stated by several hon. Members—notably the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Johnston)—is not a fit place to conduct or participate in diplomacy. We can only offer our comments from the sidelines. We are not aware of the precise feelings of the parties participating in the discussions at Lancaster House. We cannot be seized of the considerations in the minds of the participants which are moving them towards or away from a settlement. Therefore, we must be extremely cautious about saying anything here which could influence the talks.

The Lord Privy Seal did not explain, either yesterday or today, the necessity, in constitutional terms or in terms of providing the powers which will ultimately be needed if there is an agreement, for bringing forward the Bill at this time. I textually analysed his remarks with great care in the hope that such a necessity could be demonstrated, but neither yesterday nor today, in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore), was he able to show the need for this Bill at this time.

We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the Bill is not a constitutional necessity, because, clearly, the House would be ready to give the Government the power to set up the governorship as quickly as possible following an agreement. It is, rather, a necessity of diplomacy, which must be a somewhat suspect reason for bringing it forward.

What is that diplomatic necessity? The only explanation we have had is that it would be an affront to Bishop Muzorewa to return from the constitutional conference with sanctions still in existence. So far as I understand it, that is the sole argument that has been adduced.

If that is so, we are bound, as we are party to this exercise, to consider whether there are other arguments of equal weight that would lead us to believe that this is the wrong time to bring forward the Bill, such as the attitude of the other party to the negotiations at the conference.

The Lord Privy Seal made clear in his statement, and in his answers to questions yesterday, that all the other parties at the conference were advised that legislation would be forthcoming. He quoted from that part of the negotiating document setting out the interim arrangements, and indicating that the House would be asked to legislate. What the Lord Privy Seal did not say—I suspect that it was not said in the negotiating chamber either—was that the Bill would be an enabling Bill that would give effect not to the constitution that had been agreed but to any constitution which the Government judged it right to bring forward. This must be the reason why the instantaneous opposition from one of the parties to the negotiations was expressed on the tabling of this Bill yesterday and why, apparently, there has been an interruption in the talks today.

The whole House must hope and pray that the talks and negotiations will be resumed, and that the Government's decision today, which is welcome, not to press the Bill through all its stages with such unseemly haste will be taken as evidence of their good faith. I believe, and I am sure that the whole House believes, that the Government are acting in good faith and want to achieve an agreed settlement. For that reason, I believe that the Government were unwise to bring forward this Bill today. I am not seeking to cast any doubt on the Government's good faith, merely on their wisdom.

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point very well. As he accepts that the Government are acting in good faith, and as he wants the talks to resume, will he say whether the action of the Opposition in dividing the House and voting against the Bill is more likely to bring the Patriotic Front back into the talks, or more likely to keep it out of the talks, as we both fear?

I have already said that I, like every other Member of the House, find it exceedingly difficult to follow the motivations of the Government from day to day and hour to hour. I expect that the parties to the discussions at Lancaster House are following our debates with great interest and that they will follow the substance of what we say as we cannot follow the substance of what they say. They will realise that the objections made by the Opposition to the Bill are founded upon fears that they themselves have expressed, fears that the Bill could be used—though I grant it is not the Government's intention—to bring into effect a constitution to which they have not given assent.

I say to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) that I do not apprehend that the Division on the Bill will make it any less likely that negotiations will be resumed. The participants in these talks believe that the House is concerned about, and taking on board, their points of view.

The responsibility for the success of these negotiations, to which we are all committed, lies not with the House of Commons but with the Government. They have given their periodic and full reports of what is happening, but they have not given us reports which make it possible for us to judge fully the wisdom of the Bill. They have not, for example, indicated how close they are to agreement with the Patriotic Front on the interim arrangements. I do not believe that it would be possible for them to give any fuller reports than they have given on this matter. I do not believe that until an agreement has been reached it will be possible for them to say that it is in the bag. Without such agreement it is very difficult for us to take a wholly supportive view of the Government's reasons for bringing in the Bill now, when clearly it could be used for purposes with which the House would not agree. The House would not wish the Bill to go through if an agreement were not arrived at, and that is why I say, with reluctance, that I find it necessary to support the Opposition amendment.

8.26 pm

I am sure that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) will not take it amiss if I congratulate him on the moderate and temperate tone of his remarks. However, we on the Government Benches regret his conclusion that he will have to support the reasoned amendment tabled by the Leader of the Opposition and his right hon. Friends.

It is five years since I made my maiden speech from the Opposition Benches on the subject of the Rhodesia sanctions order. I recall the right hon. Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Ennals) saying that it was the only maiden speech that he could recall

"which concluded with the words, 'So I shall vote against the policy advocated by my own Front Bench.'".—[Official Report, 8 November 1974; Vol. 880, c. 1497.]

We were a happy band of some 23 or 24 souls in those days. We grew enormously last year, and I am sure that the Front Bench will not take it amiss if I say that there is a possibility that the size of the vote against the sanctions order last year contributed a little to the form the Bill takes today. The Bill takes the first major step towards the abolition of sanctions, and therefore I give it a welcome, albeit a qualified one.

Three years ago we dropped the Beira patrol. That was a great step forward. Now we have lost section 2, which will not be renewed. Regardless of the percentages that have been mentioned as to the proportion of sanctions affected, this is an act of great symbolism which means, as my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) said, that, irrespective of what may happen at Lancaster House in the next few days, the Bishop will be able to go back to Salisbury and say "I have managed to get sanctions dropped."

I give the Bill only a qualified welcome because I believe that the Government, like their predecessors, have gone down the wrong road in attempting to find a solution to the Rhodesia problem. As my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice said earlier, after the election in Rhodesia and after the general election here we should have recognised the bishop's Government. After all, my noble friends Lord Home and Lord Boyd went out to Rhodesia and certified that the elections were free and fair. The six principles enshrined by successive British Governments have been fulfilled. We are therefore entitled to ask our Government today how many more principles they want to impose. Is this, to use the words of one South African Minister, like a game of rugby which has to be played again and again until the right team—depending on one's view—wins?

We may have gone down the wrong road, but we have to live in the world as we find it. We have to live with the policies that the Government have decided to pursue. The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) spoke of power and responsibility. I shall not follow him into the semantic romance in which he indulged, but I must ask my Front Bench, whose business this is. Some years ago Lord Home said that the time might come when we should have to go to the United Nations and say that sanctions had failed and must be dropped. I believe that the right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson) was wrong in 1965 to send his emissaries winging across the Atlantic to the Security Council. I do not believe that the problem of Southern Rhodesia has ever been the business of the United Nations. It is the business of the Government of the United Kingdom and the people of Southern Rhodesia, and of no one else.

On a historical note, may I tell my hon. Friend that with Lord Home, who at the time was Shadow Foreign Secretary, I went to the then Prime Minister, and Lord Home begged him not to go to the United Nations for the precise reason that we would have difficulty in lifting those sanctions in the House of Commons. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson) ignored our pleas.

I am obliged to my hon. Friend. That shows the sort of difficulty that can arise if one takes one's problem to somebody else when that problem is none of his business.

We have heard Labour Members talk about our international obligations. I repeat that I believe that Her Majesty's Government should now tell the Security Council that the mandatory sanctions resolution should be dropped because sanctions have served whatever purpose they were designed to fulfil originally.

One of my main objections to sanctions through the years has been that sanctions have hit black people far more than they have hit the white population of Rhodesia. I find it extraordinary that Labour Members, who purport to be the supporters and friends of the black Rhodesians, should be the people who wish to punish those black Rhodesians and who wish now to punish those who support the Bishop and his Government.

Similarly, I regret very much that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister should have taken the problem of Southern Rhodesia to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference at Lusaka. We should tell the Presidents of the five front-line States to look to themselves—"Physician, heal thyself". I shall mention only two of those States. Tanzania is at present stealing assets from other people. Tanzania is in chaos. Tanzania is like many of the other black African States established north of the Zambesi which have a principle of "one man, one vote"—once, after which a dictatorship is established.

Would not President Kaunda, who is at present visiting this country, be better employed in trying to sort out his own problems in Zambia, rather than interfering in the business of a neighbouring State, and harbouring murdering guerillas who kill, slaughter and maim black and white Rhodesians alike?

I have always thought that it was a remarkably generous gesture of Ian Smith, when he was Prime Minister of Rhodesia, not to close the maize trail but to continue to allow supplies to proceed through his country into Zambia, when terrorists were being sheltered and given accommodation in that country by President Kaunda and his Government.

I welcome the Bill because we have taken a historic step towards the dropping of sanctions. It has taken many Conservative Members a long time to get the message across, but at long last we have done so. It is with great delight that I shall support the Government tonight.

8.33 pm

Any new Member of the House—I have been a Member for only six months—wonders whether there should be an act of rebellion against his own party. I have always thought that one of the issues on which I might rebel would be where a Conservative Government had delivered a Rhodesia settlement which, for party political reasons, my own party opposed. Having heard the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Brotherton) say that he will support the Government tonight, I say that I shall go into the Lobby with my party this evening with a will, energy and sense of purpose which convince me that the Government are on the wrong road and have made a disastrous decision.

I should have liked the British Government to end these 15 years of disaster for the people of Southern Rhodesia on an honourable note. I should have liked a united House of Commons to give backing to Her Majesty's Government on a settlement. The Government have misjudged both the mood of the House and the negotiations by trying to bounce us and the negotiations.

In the past few hours we have heard all the old arguments. McNally's first rule on Southern African politics is that if the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) is in favour, it must be wrong. The right hon. Gentleman has not contributed to the debate tonight, but I listened to him yesterday giving eager support to the Government. I am sure that many right hon. and hon. Members who have worked so hard to solve the problems of Southern and Central Africa must have been very worried by the eagerness of Conservative Members below the Gangway to leap in support of the Government. They were wrong and they are wrong.

They are wrong for two reasons. First, they are wrong to give way on sanctions. I referred earlier to the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell). Those who scrutinise his speech will find that, like so many of his contributions to British politics, it is devastating in its destructive logic and totally absent of any contribution to the solution.

Responsibility without power has been mentioned. In the first hours of UDI in 1965 the British Parliament said "We do not consent." Year after year successive Parliaments, have said, to themselves, to the British people and, more importantly, the African people "We will not consent to an illegal act."

During that period sanctions have proved ineffective. They do not work in weeks or months as some had hoped. However, sanctions were a declaration of intent to keep faith with a moral commitment. They have been the one honourable thread through the period of UDI. It has been suggested that we should have used force in 1965. That is a debate for history. Throughout that period we maintained sanctions. We said "Until we can honourably grant independence we will maintain sanctions."

The Government are abandoning the commitment of successive Administrations. It is a sad day. Conservative hon. Members who have taken a courageous stand against the backwoodsmen know that it is an abandonment and a piece of cheap party political manoeuvring

Oh, really!

That is true, and the hon. Gentleman knows it.

Secondly, there is the issue of the timing of the election. Those who have been involved in the negotiations over the past four or five years know that there are manoeuvrings, deadlines and arguments. It is totally unrealistic to hope to bring an election machine into being within a two-month period, especially when it involves men who have spent a decade in imprisonment and almost half that time again in exile.

I ask Conservative hon. Members who wish to contribute to a solution to use their influence with the Government Front Bench. We are not in the business of wrecking an agreement at Lancaster House. But we do not wish to manoeuvre or appease certain elements on the Government Back Benches. We do not wish to hear that the Bishop suddenly needs to return home with a victory. I ask Conservative hon. Members to use their influence. We are so close to agreement. We must think of ways of putting the agreement into being so that it will work. If we try to rush to a two-month election the agreement will not work.

I am in agreement with the right hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins). The House demands from the Government an answer to the question that he posed about what he rightly described as option three. We do not want the Patriotic Front to have a veto, but running through the negotiations has been the fear that there is another veto available. It is the veto available to Mr. Smith and to the racists who have led Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, that sad country, into its present sorry state. The Government's decision to bring forward the Bill tonight has strengthened the hand of that group in the Muzorewa delegation to apply the the third veto.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Worthing that we want an assurance from the Government that they will not use the Bill, when enacted, to settle without an agreement at Lancaster House. Without that agreement, they would be cheating the House and the British people. I believe deeply and passionately that they would be cheating history as well.

8.41 pm

The hon. Member for Stockport, South (Mr. McNally) has said that he would have wished the Government to end on an honourable note. I merely say to him "Have patience, they will". I have no doubt about that. They have made remarkable progress already in the talks at Lancaster House and they will continue to make progress.

I remember the pessimism that existed in London when the talks began. There was a lack of hope in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, where I happened to be when the talks started. It is fantastic that we have now reached the stage at which a Bill has been presented. Against the inauspicious background that existed nine weeks ago, it is all the more important to congratulate my right hon. and noble Friend the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal on what they have achieved.

I regard the Bill as one more stepping stone on the road to Rhodesian independence. It prepares the ground for the next phase prior to independence. It provides the Government with more flexibility to cope with the developing situation. At the same time it seems, if I read the Bill correctly, that it reserves for the Government fully adequate power to cope with any development that may still arise, whether it be good or bad.

The fears expressed by Labour Members and by the Opposition in the amendment that they have tabled are unfounded. To my mind, the Bill presupposes an agreement. If there is no agreement at the conference, and if by some mischance the conference should fold up, I cannot visualise the Government washing their hands of Rhodesia and immediately granting independence. If they were to do that, why have they gone through the negotiations at Lancaster House with such meticulousness over the past nine weeks? Furthermore, recognition of Zimbabwe against the background of a breakdown of talks will achieve nothing. In the end, the success of the Bill and of the negotiations will be judged not on the end of sanctions, not on recognition of the new independent State but on the stability and viability of that State.

There are clearly two prerequisites. First, if not total agreement, there must certainly be the acquiescence of all the parties. Following from that, there must be an end to the war. After 14 years it is clear that it is a war that cannot be won or ended by force of arms, but every day that it continues it causes more loss of life. Let no one forget that, however many members of the white population may have suffered, the black people have suffered far worse.

Every day that the war continues, a few more young white men from Rhodesia, who could do so much for the future of their country, slip away from it. Who can blame them? One year's national service may be all very well, but a continuing commitment of 180 days a year until the age of 38 makes it totally impossible for anyone to build a career. Too large a part of the country's resources go into the war instead of into industry and agriculture. Daily the problem of rehousing an increasing number of refugees from tribal trust land grows, as I witnessed in Salisbury only in the middle of September.

An end to the war is essential. Without that the future for the economy of Zimbabwe is bleak and the hope of a continuing multi-racial society will disappear. If the war ends, the economy can expand, confidence can return and the outward flow of white people can be reversed. There will be a real chance that Zimbabwe, with the vast resources that it possesses, will become the most prosperous State in Africa.

Finally, while congratulating the Government on the progress so far made—and especially the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal—I hope that at no time will they think that, even after eight weeks, a speedy end to the talks is more important than the agreement or acquiescence of all parties. Fourteen years have passed since UDI, and a few more weeks of talks is a small price to pay on the road to an agreed settlement.

8.47 pm

The official Opposition's reasoned amendment has two additional clauses. The first says that we cannot give a Second Reading without a commitment not to use the powers if there is no agreement at Lancaster House. The second says that there must also be a commitment to retain section 2 sanctions during the period before the return to legality. The Government have made it plain—and it is enclosed in clause 3 of the Bill—that they will keep section 2 sanctions during the period up to legality, so there is no dispute about that.

The Opposition could vote for the Bill if there was a complete assurance about the first qualifying clause of the amendment—that the powers would not be used if there was no agreement at Lancaster House. That is all that separates the two sides of the House. Why cannot the Government give us that assurance? They came near to it in the statement made by Lord Carrington in another place, which was quoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore). It was not quite a full assurance, but it was approaching it.

The Lord Privy Seal quibbled at even that. He suggested that those words related only to a situation where agreement had been reached. Therefore, we are entitled to our doubt.

My hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) has left the Chamber. I do not share his view that the Government are to be trusted about what they will do with the powers. I believe that we are being sold a pig in a poke. We are being asked to pass into law powers that will enable the Government to take Rhodesia to a position where an elected Government are recognised and given lawful authority by the British Government. It is true that there is no power in the Bill to give an independence constitution to that Government. It is also true that Her Majesty's Government can promulgate a constitution under the power conferred by section 1. That power is subject to laying the Order in Council before Parliament. That is all the Government need to do, so far as I am aware. The approval of Parliament is not needed for the laying of the Order in Council; the Government simply have to table it.

Under section 2, the Government must go further. Any part of the proposed constitution which they wish to bring in before the date when independence can be conferred legally must be subject to an Order in Council. That has to be laid before Parliament and it has to be ratified by positive approval of both Houses of Parliament within 28 days. Therefore, the part that enables the Government to bring in sections of that constitution in the interim period is subject to positive approval by both Houses. The first part of the third clause confers the power that is needed to send the Governor into Southern Rhodesia to take over the reins of government and make whatever provision he wishes, under Order in Council, for and in connection with the government of Southern Rhodesia, for a period up to the appointed day. If there is no independence Bill, the appointed day could be infinity.

During that period, the Governor can act in any way the Order in Council permits. The Order in Council does not have to be tabled before Parliament. Nor would it be subject to negative or positive resolution. All that is required is for it to be made by the Privy Council and the Governor is able to do as he wishes.

Once the Bill is passed, the Government can send the Governor into Southern Rhodesia. Once there, the Governor can arrange for elections to take place in such conditions that the Patriotic Front will not have a genuine right to express themselves fully, campaign and receive a free vote. Thus rigged, the vote can give Bishop Muzorewa a majority in such an election. Then the Government can say "We do not need an independence constitution; we have a Government and we can recognise that Government".

Under international law, Southern Rhodesia is a colony. We are the imperial power and we are required by international law to pass the powers to that new Government in an independence constitution enshrined in an Act of Parliament in this place. However, if the Government at any time in the past 13 years had decided to recognise the illegal regime in Southern Rhodesia, from that moment on the regime would have acquired the legality of approval in international law. I beg my right hon. and hon. Friends to recognise that if the Bill is passed tonight the Government will have the power to go for my third option, if they want to.

I believe that that is why the Bill has been introduced. There is no other acceptable reason. The Bill could have been passed within hours of an agreement at Lancaster House. It is no good saying that that short period was too long to wait and that the matter had to be on the statute book. If a ceasefire were to be agreed at Lancaster House next Wednesday, no one can believe that by Wednesday midnight it would be operative in Rhodesia. The orders have to go down the line, if not through Muzorewa, through General Walls, to the security forces on his side, and through the ZANU headquarters and through the ZAPU headquarters to the people in the bush. The chain of communication in ZANU is particularly diffuse. It would take some days before a ceasefire was operative following an agreement. In those few days, we could pass this Bill. Why, therefore, are the Government bringing in this Bill, unless it is for the reason that I suspect?

In an aristocratic, patrician, speech, the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Fraser), who has now walked out of the Chamber, suggested that our fears simply belittled the Opposition. I want to inform him that we have reached this stage and the negotiations at Lancaster House because of the reality of power. The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) talks about power and responsibility. This whole matter is about power. We have reached this stage only because power has been taken away increasingly from Smith and the whites by those who have been fighting for the last 10 years.

rose—

No, I shall not give way. The reality of power is that the Patriotic Front and with it, originally, Bishop Muzorewa, who was also engaged in this operation, have brought us to Lancaster House.

rose—

I am not giving way.

I have listened to the reports coming out of Lancaster House, via the BBC, conditioned by the Foreign Office briefing. Those reports have suggested that the Government believe that the reality of power is with Bishop Muzorewa, General Walls and the security forces and that a deal, therefore, has to be done that recognises that reality. If this is the Foreign Office's advice to the Government Front Bench, I can only say, from my limited experience of Rhodesia, that it is an unreal view of what is happening. Although the whites and Muzorewa have the fire power to make raids into Zambia or Mozambique, or to take over whatever part of Rhodesia they want, because they possess the helicopters, the planes and the bombs, the fact is that, for most of the time, when those forces cannot be deployed in a particular area of Rhodesia, the power is with the Patriotic Front. Ninety per cent. of the land surface of Rhodesia is under the control of the Patriotic Front, with the qualification that the security forces can take it back if they mass their power. From day to day, they do not have that power.

The reality of power is that one has to deal not only with Muzorewa, but also with the Patriotic Front. Without that, it is no use pretending that one has a deal that the front-line Presidents will recognise or that the United Nations will recognise. One will not be allowed in international affairs to get away with recognising the Muzorewa regime. Instead, the war will go on. Nothing will be acceptable to the Patriotic Front until it wins a bloody victory. But that is not what the Patriotic Front wants. If that is what the Patriotic Front wanted, it would not have been talking in Lancaster House for nine weeks.

The Patriotic Front knows the reality of power, and knows what it can manage. It knows that it will win by the bullet. But it does not want that. It is prepared to win through the ballot box, which, it believes, is open to it, and to save lives in that way.

I believe that the House should vote against the Bill in order to ensure that the Patriotic Front has the right to come to an agreement at Lancaster House and that it is not excluded by the tactics of the Government. Until that agreement comes about, this Bill is unnecessary; and that agreement is at present very unlikely indeed.

So far, the Government have been telling the House that an agreement is very near, that they have got past the negotiations about the constitution and about the interim period, and now they have only to have the argument about the ceasefire. The truth of the matter is that the Patriotic Front maintains its difficulties about the constitution, and it only made an agreement to go on to discuss the next stage by qualifying that agreement by saying that it would not have to go back to the constitution if it could get an agreement about the interim proposals.

That qualification was contained in a three-paragraph statement which the Patriotic Front went to the Foreign Secretary to discuss. Having discussed it, he accepted that it was sufficient and that the Patriotic Front would announce it at the following day's discussion in plenary session at Lancaster House. The Patriotic Front went away ready to come back to the discussions and to read out the three paragraphs. The following morning's newspapers contained one paragraph only, one paragraph that had been released by the Foreign Office briefing to the press, which suggested that the Patriotic Front had climbed down.

In that context the Patriotic Front will not be bullied or bamboozled into an agreement. It must be a genuine agreement. If the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary are to conduct the rest of the negotiations in that way, they will not get the agreement about the ceasefire, which is absolutely essential.

I believe that the Bill has been introduced because the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary do not really intend to get that agreement. Because of that, we must vote against the Bill.

9.1 pm

I say straight away how relieved I am that I do not rise to speak following the hon. Member for York (Mr. Lyon) after the eight-hour speech that he threatened earlier today. He has won his point there, but in the speech that he has just made he has not won any points.

Up to a very recent moment in the debate it seemed to be common ground between the two sides of the House that the attitude and the efforts of Her Majesty's Government to attain a solution were sincere. Everything that the hon. Member for York said—at one moment it seemed to be an outright speech on behalf of the Patriotic Front—seemed to belittle the Government's efforts and the good intentions and long-held political beliefs of many Conservative and Opposition Members that a settlement was possible.

Anyone who listened to or who will read the hon. Member's speech and who does not, perhaps, know of his beliefs and all that he stands for, might be tempted to think that there was a little bit, at least, of hard feelings and sour grapes in what he said. The plain fact is that in six months in office the present Government have got further towards a solution than the previous Government did over five years of gravitating around Africa and the world talking to this leader and that leader, and so on.

I totally disagree with the hon. Member when he says that an agreement is not near. Many people on either side of the fence, white or black, acknowledge that we are very near an agreement. If the Bill goes through, I believe that it will make that agreement much more likely, and by that I mean a three-party agreement and not a two-party agreement.

I have a great respect generally for the hon. Member for Stockport, South (Mr. McNally). However, he used phraseology such as "bouncing negotiations" and "cheap party-political manoeuvring". It has emerged in the debate that there are certain little local difficulties on the Conservative Benches over sanctions. However, surely this debate can rise a little above that when we are dealing with negotiations which are rapidly coming to fruition and which are the solution to a war. In that context, such phraseology is not worthy of the hon. Member or the debate.

A settlement is near. I make only four points. First, I am very much in favour of the Bill because speed is necessary. We must be able to act immediately at the moment of that agreement. I do not want to go into a great thesis about the Patriotic Front, Bishop Muzorewa, Rhodesia or anything else, but the plain fact is that any agreement that is achieved, after all these difficulties, by its very nature will be vulnerable.

Britain is negotiating with two parties. One of those parties, the Patriotic Front, is in reality two parties. We all know that and we know of the difficulties that there are between them. We all know that they have plans for when they get back to Rhodesia and that the domestic and political position of one of those parties—whatever may be agreed in London—is vulnerable within Rhodesia. The right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore) and many of his hon. Friends may talk about delaying the process of the Bill for two, three or four days, but judging by the display earlier today it could be even longer if a three-party agreement was not favoured by the Opposition. That period of time could cause much difficulty in Rhodesia.

My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) remarked that there were now grave difficulties because of intimidation. Figures given in the press show that there are about 15,000 guerrillas out of uniform, perhaps with weapons, who represent a great threat as they spread out into the villages. That number is said to be increasing day by day, as more and more guerrillas come into the country ready for a settlement. That is one of the reasons why the hon. Member for York is wrong when he suggests that there will not be a settlement.

The whole strategy of the Patriotic Front is very much dictated by the desire to achieve a settlement and then to exploit that settlement to gain victory. It is our duty to ensure that the elections are free and fair. It is also our duty to acknowledge some of the realities of life. To find a solution it is necessary for there to be strength of purpose. That is where the Government have excelled themselves. That is why they have got where they are. The Government must not weaken now.

I dealt with sanctions when I referred to the hon. Member for Stockport, South. We are dropping only 15 per cent. of the sanctions. Until now, I have voted to retain sanctions. I hope I have proved that I have a certain credibility with Labour Members because it is nonsense to go on with sanctions next Thursday, or before then, when a settlement is about to be reached.

It is our duty to keep a fair balance within those talks, bearing in mind the political circumstances within Rhodesia, an African country, whose politics will not be quite the same as those of Britain. If we were to impose sanctions now, it would have a disproportionate effect on Bishop Muzorewa. It would destroy him in the eyes of his people; and that is a reality of African politics that must be accepted. It is more important than any party differences about a sanctions Bill that will go out of the window anyway, even if it were to succeed. However, I am glad that it will not succeed.

The international mood for settlement is better than ever. The hon. Member for York does not think there will be a understand the realpolitik of the situain his somewhat legalistic way, he should understand the real politik of the situation. The British Government have given a lead that was lacking previously. As a result, Britain has resumed its position as the principal in seeking to solve an issue for which it is responsible. I am glad that we are rid of the Anglo-American proposals. The Americans have been only too happy to assign the leadership to us and the EEC is following. Many people, including the black African countries, are relieved and are pleased with the Lusaka conference. Negotiations and consultations are going on all the time. They are happy with our lead so far, and long may they remain so.

Finally, the front-line Presidents desperately want peace. We must often differentiate between what Presidents—be they African or anything else—say in public and what they say in private. The people of Mozambique, from the President down, have very real fears that that country will become the Lebanon of Southern Africa. We know all about Zambia's problems and we do not need to repeat them. Tanzania is absolutely broke. President Nyerere's attitude has changed remarkably recently. Botswana is moderate and will follow the rest, and Angola has quite enough problems of its own already.

I have tried to make the points as rapidly as I can. We must acknowledge the realpolitik of the situation without going into semantics of any sort, and we should wish this Government well in something which up to now they have handled far better than we had hoped or expected.

9.11 pm

It is grotesque that the Government should bring a Bill to the House purporting to put into effect an agreement which has not yet been arrived at. We are in the middle—indeed, at a very delicate stage—of difficult negotiations, and for the Government to ask for a blank cheque of this kind is absolutely disgraceful. My right hon. and hon. Friends are right to vote against it.

I share the view expressed by the then Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords last November that the powers under the 1965 Act are quite sufficient for the interim period. They are not sufficient for independence but they are enough for the interim period. That is also the view of my right hon. Friend, the former Foreign Secretary. Those powers are there but they are not being used. We know why they are not being used—because of the crack that exists in the Conservative Party over sanctions.

I shall comment on three aspects of the problem. First, there is the issue of the constitution. It is defective, as was pointed out lucidly by Professor Clare Palley in The Guardian a few weeks ago. One could easily have a situation in which there is total deadlock and where the African parties must get 64 per cent. of African seats to form an effective Government. That is a formidable target. If no single African party gets that, there is a danger that any form of coalition could be blocked by the white minority seats. Then there would be a total deadlock and no way forward.

Secondly, there is the issue of the appointment of the Governor. I agree with the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) that the Governor will need to be backed by some effective supervisory force. It is quite absurd to send a man from this country to govern Rhodesia in the present situation of private armies, martial law, widespread brutality, fighting and gang warfare, without giving him effective forces to stabilise the position.

It is totally wrong that the Government should have ignored the proposition for a United Nations force, or at least a Commonwealth force, to exercise some restraint and bring some impartial pressure to bear on the various conflicting forces in Zimbabwe in order to move forward in the elections.

I warn the Government that, if they have forgotten the fate of Lumumba, Mugabe and Nkomo have not. They will not go unarmed into a country where they can be assassinated or gunned down as Lumumba was gunned down in the Congo. Unless there is some sort of effective force on the ground, those men will not go back into that sort of trap and the Government might as well face that fact if they want a successful conclusion.

Thirdly, on the issue of sanctions, it is absolutely essential for the maintenance of our standing in the world, for our relations with the United Nations and the Commonwealth, that sanctions should be fully maintained right up to the time when we can hand over to a lawful, elected Government with an independent constitution. If the Government play around with sanctions they will call into question our good faith with the very powers and the very authorities—the United Nations, the Commonwealth and the front-line States—upon whose power and support we shall rely to bring this matter to a successful conclusion.

It is bizarre to suggest that we can bring a country from civil war to elected parliamentary government in eight weeks. I have never heard of such a weird and impossible proposition. It is a preposterous suggestion and I do not know how the Government have the gall to put it forward. Apart from anything else, there is the setting up of proper facilities so that all the parties may campaign. A large proportion of the population must come in from the country areas to vote. Election machinery has to be established in a country which is still torn by civil war. The suggestion that all this can be done in eight weeks seriously calls in question the good faith of the negotiations at Lancaster House.

We must remember that we are operating amid all the other forces which put pressure on Central Africa and on ourselves. We must keep the good will of the front-line Presidents or the thing will not work. We must keep faith with the Commonwealth and with the conditions set out by the Commonwealth leaders at Lusaka. We have got to get the agreement of the United Nations. We cannot dismiss the United Nations as a body which has no standing in these matters. If the United Nations fails to recognise the eventual outcome, our efforts will be null and void.

Nobody has so far mentioned the shadow of South Africa. What understandings, agreements and promises, perhaps, have the Government with that country in relation to Southern Rhodesia? South Africa could destroy all that we purport to do unless she is clearly and definitely warned that the international community will not tolerate further interference from her of the kind experienced in the past 10 years.

9.17 pm

The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), in a most entertaining intervention in this debate, noted that the British Governor, on his arrival in Salisbury, would lay claim to the control of the Rhodesian security forces both in the police and in the Army. He must have omitted to notice, otherwise he would surely have alluded to it, that in the Government's paper of 2 November on "Rhodesia — The Pre-independence Arrangements" it is said that the Governor also lays claim to control the forces of the Patriotic Front. Paragraph 21 declares that the commanders on both sides would be responsible to the Governor for the ceasefire. I thought that the right hon. Member might enjoy hearing that.

I welcome the Government's decision not to renew the sanctions order and their commitment to lift all sanctions as soon as the Governor sets foot in Salisbury, which could be within a fortnight. The lifting of sanctions cannot come soon enough. With the possible exception of the selling of the Czechoslovaks into Nazi slavery under the Munich agreement, the maintenance of sanctions against Rhodesia, once that country came under attack from externally based terrorists armed, trained and masterminded by Moscow, was the most shameful act ever undertaken by a British Government.

When one recalls the way in which countless thousands of Rhodesians fought for Britain in her hour of need, joining, as did Ian Smith, the Royal Air Force and the Long-Range Desert Group while the Rhodesian African Rifles, all of them black, fought with distinction in Burma it is heinous to see the shameful way in which Britain in recent years has repaid this debt of honour.

This morning I returned from Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. We may think that we have a problem in Northern Ireland where there is a force of some 500 active gunmen. With an army of equivalent strength to the 15,000 British troops in Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe-Rhodesia has to face an assault not from 500 but from 15,000 terrorists who are armed with heavier equipment than that which is available to the terrorists in Northern Ireland.

Fortunately, the Patriotic Front terrorists do not have the skill or motivation of the IRA. Nevertheless, the scale of their terror in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia is 30 times that which confronts us in Northern Ireland. I pay tribute to the young men of Rhodesia whom I have seen in the field this week. They are the finest of their generation to be found anywhere in the world. They are an example of the British at their best, as we always are when we have our backs to the wall.

I am full of admiration for the qualities and effectiveness of the black soldiers who comprise more than 80 per cent. of the Zimbabwe-Rhodesian army. I salute their courage, skill and endurance.

I have been privileged to know this land and its people for 17 years. During my latest visit I was struck forcibly by the fact that the people of Zimbabwe have never been more united than they are today. Before our eyes we see a strong and racially united Zimbabwe being forged in the crucible of war.

I regret that the April elections were not recognised by the incoming Conservative Government. I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of non-Marxist African States would have followed our lead. By failing to seize that opportunity, by insisting on unravelling the internal settlement and by requiring new elections, the Government have taken a dangerous gamble with the future and the lives of all the people of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.

I do not intend to dwell on the past, for only the future is important. The Lancaster House talks, accepted by Bishop Muzorewa and his team, provide a path of hope. The nation's future will turn above all on the outcome of the election. The result is far from a foregone conclusion. I hesitate to give encouragement to the hopes of some Opposition Members, but there can be no question but that the Bishop's standing has been gravely damaged. Any Government who have to face the electoral music within nine months of a general election are not in the strongest of positions. I am not sure that my right hon. Friends would care gratuitously to submit to such a process.

We have denied the Bishop recognition, the lifting of sanctions and the means to end the war. All these factors go far to undermine his position.

The gravest aspect, however, is that the whole aim of the exercise in the Government's and Opposition's estimation is to achieve elections which are even more free and fair than the April elections. I believe that the hopes of both Front Benches will prove false. In April this year there were no more than 10,000 to 12,000 terrorists in Rhodesia; today there are 15,500. By the end of the year it is estimated that there will be 20,000. In addition, there are a further 30,000 ZIPRA and ZANLA terrorists in training in Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania who, in the context of a ceasefire will almost certainly return to Rhodesia. In the space of nine months between those two elections, we will have seen the escalation of the terrorist forces of the Patriotic Front from 10,000 to 50,000—a fivefold increase. If that is not a formidable body of "election agents", I do not know what is.

There is a serious possibility that in those circumstances, with 100 times the number of terrorists in Zimbabwe as those who confront us in Northern Ireland, the Mugabe faction could achieve the largest share of the vote, though probably not a majority. This would in no way be a reflection of the wishes of the people of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia but would merely be a reflection of the extreme pressure of intimidation from 50,000 armed terrorists who maim, murder and mutilate every day that this war goes on.

Nonsense.

The hon. Gentleman should have the honesty to go and see for himself.

A key factor in this process will be the timing of the elections and the control of security. The Opposition, including their Front Bench, wish to give the Patriotic Front a veto on the Lancaster House talks. Furthermore, they wish to renew the sanctions order to put more pressure on the forces of democracy inside Rhodesia. Finally, they demand more time. All those demands are directly in line with those of the Patriotic Front and the friends of Moscow.

Why do the Opposition so totally support the demands of the Patriotic Front? The British Government owe it to all the peoples of Zimbabwe to ensure that their democratic wishes prevail—not the wishes of those outside who fire, fuel and meddle in this conflict.

9.27 pm

I shall be brief. I support the Bill. I shall mention some points that have not so far been brought out in the debate.

I do not take the new constitution very seriously. It cannot, after all, bind Rhodesians in the future. Only Rhodesians of all races can make it work.

Unfortunately, the United Kingdom has not had a successful record in decolonising Africa. The constitutions that we have proposed have all been torn up and usually followed by one dictatorishp or another. A Westminster-type democracy does not suit the whole world and does not appear to be particularly suitable for Africa.

All our ex-colonies in Africa, with the exception of Malawi, are in a poor state. The Zambians are nearly starving; Tanzania is nearly bankrupt; Uganda is in chaos and occupied by Tanzanian troops; even in Kenya, which is sometimes held out as a good example, two Opposition leaders have been murdered. Hon. Members on both sides must devoutly hope that Rhodesian will have a different and better future, especially with her large white population. Everything depends on the whites, especially the white farmers, remaining. The main difficulty in the Bill is whether the Patriotic Front will abide by the constitution, lay down its arms and submit to the ballot box. It is always difficult for terrorists to do that, as we saw in Ireland in 1921–22.

Several speakers have mentioned the various body blows that Bishop Muzorewa has received in recent times. The second election alone appears to invalidate the first election, which was described as free and fair. The fact that he has to give up being in the Government and stand down before the election is also a blow to his prestige. Africans respect power and success.

There will be great dangers for the Governor, as the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) brilliantly pointed out. But I believe that we have no alternative but to take the risk. We cannot let matters go on as they are. I only wish that we had sufficient armed forces to send at least one division and several squadrons of aircraft to assist the Governor.

One matter which has not been touched upon is whether Russia and East Germany will continue to train, support and arm the Patriotic Front. Also, will the two factions of the Patriotic Front agree not to light each other?

Our prime duty is not to forget who are our friends and who are our enemies. The Muzorewa Government have been out friends. The Patriotic Front has not been particularly friendly—certainly not to the West—and its members are not friends among themselves.

Despite these grave risks and difficulties, I support the Bill. The Government are absolutely right in what they have done.

We must try to get the United States to support us. The American people do not know very much about Africa, just as they do not know very much about Ireland.

Our EEC colleagues should not be too difficult. After all, they and Japan, as I saw when I was in Salisbury last year, were the chief sanctions breakers.

Finally, there are the countries of the Third world. I do not think that we should worry too much about the Third world. The countries of the Third world are always hostile to us. So long as there is a large white population in Rhodesia, they will continue to be hostile.

What matters is not the constitution, not even creating a democracy, nor vague liberal sentiments—there is a most successful multi-racial Government now in Salisbury, probably one of the best Governments in the whole of Africa—but Britain's interests and those of the West and the future of our own people in Rhodesia as well as the blacks. Given sound government and stable conditions, Rhodesia could become the happiest and most prosperous State in Africa. These are the stakes for which we are playing, and the Bill is the first throw.

9.33 pm

For 14 years successive Governments and Parliaments have grappled with the problem of Rhodesia. Anyone who has been involved in the various attempts, negotiations and initiatives to resolve the Rhodesian problem—I have had the distinction, dubious perhaps, of being involved in at least two of the major initiatives in the last five or six years—will fervently hope and pray that the initiative launched at the Lancaster House conference will succeed.

I must point out to the Lord Privy Seal that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore) said at the beginning of the debate, we passionately hope and pray that the Lancaster House conference will succeed. We have done, and will continue to do, everything possible to co-operate in the successful achievement of an agreement by all parties to solve this problem. No one can say that we have not done that or endeavoured to do it.

The result of 14 years of failure—this is the background against which the Bill should be looked at—has been the development of suspicion and distrust quickly triggered off by one party or another. What struck me over the last four of five years was the amount of time that one had to spend trying to remove the distrust and suspicion—many times unfounded—because of the 14 years of irritation and frustration at British Governments who failed to solve this problem.

In one respect it is against this background that we challenge the wisdom of introducing the Bill in the manner chosen by the Government, for they are taking a gamble and a risk thereby. In our view, it is an unnecessary risk, for which, throughout the debate, we have not had an adequate explanation.

It is not the actions or words of any of my right hon. and hon. Friends that are the cause of the worry. Anyone who has read this morning's press will know of the comments made by parties at the conference. Already the introduction of the Bill against this background has aroused worries and concerns about the motives and intentions behind the Government's actions.

Those worries and concerns have been expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Lyon) and many other hon. Members. What is worse, the Lord Privy Seal did not give one adequate reason, in his opening explanation, why we must deal with the Bill at this moment and in this way. For that reason, concern and suspicion have been aroused and perhaps wrong constructions placed on the motives of the Government by the Opposition. We have had to ask ourselves why the Government have decided to proceed in this peculiar and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley) said, rather grotesque way.

The Government claim that there is urgency and that the whole future success of the conference depends on having these powers ready in advance so that they can act on them the moment agreement is achieved. Another reason for the urgency, we assume, is that the Government feel that they need to put a Governor into Salisbury as rapidly as possible.

Is it not possible to appoint a Governor and implement many of the transitional arrangements listed in the pre-independence arrangements document under existing legislation? Will the Minister go through the document and tell us which provisions require new legislation as opposed to those that could be introduced by order under existing legislation?

I put that question because, when the Labour Government drew up the White Paper in 1977, much of what is in this document was discussed in the Foreign Office and we had strong legal advice to the effect that it was possible to introduce a host of transitional arrangements, including the appointment of a Governor, under existing legislation. Unless the lawyers have been changed, I cannot see why that cannot be done now. Large parts of the pre-independence arrangements that are proposed by the Government could be introduced under existing legislation.

I understand that the electoral arrangements may require new legislation and new powers, but we can deal with that situation. As many of my hon. Friends have said, the House will give the speediest passage to a Bill, and give the Government powers, once agreement has been reached and a ceasefire arranged. This House will then approve, with rapidity and speed, all the powers necessary for the Government to act. So urgency cannot and should not be the fig-leaf or smokescreen behind which the Government conceal their intentions.

The sad thing about the Government doing what they have done in the way they have done it is that the sense of co-operation that has existed in the House during the last few weeks over the Lancaster House conference has been broken. The Government have now brought forward legislation to give effect to a constitutional conference which has not yet reached agreement. The House will be expected to approve clauses of a Bill referring to a constitution and transitional arrangements that have not been properly put to the House. Apart from a hastily cobbled White Paper that was handed out yesterday and a document put in a box in the Library, the House has not been consulted.

These arrangements have not been agreed at the conference. The constitution is contingent upon an agreement and a ceasefire, and yet we are expected to pass legislation accepting the principles of the pre-independence paper and the draft constitution.

Fundamental to our argument and to the first part of our reasoned amendment is our belief that the Government should not attempt to attain the Bill before obtaining the agreement of all the parties at Lancaster House. We are also seeking a commitment that the powers in the Bill to install a Governor, invoke the transitional arrangements, organise elections and put military and police advisors into Salisbury will not be exercised until the agreement of all the parties and a ceasefire have been achieved.

There is a world of difference between giving the range of powers that the Government are seeking in the Bill once a ceasefire and agreement have been achieved, and doing so in advance of that achievement. Many hon. Members on both sides would take a very different view about the nature and scope of the powers and about the whole operation if there were no ceasefire and no agreement.

The evasiveness of the Lord Privy Seal and his inability this afternoon and yesterday to give a categorical assurance that these powers will not be used unless a ceasefire and an agreement are secured cause us concern. In this respect we return to the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Stepney and Poplar pressed upon the Lord Privy Seal, and on which we have had a totally unsatisfactory answer, concerning the Foreign Secretary's remarks in another place yesterday. I have watched the Foreign Office exercise its infinite capacity to interpret and reinterpret statements. But it would defy even the ingenuity of the Foreign Office to misinterpret or reinterpret the Foreign Secretary's statements yesterday. He said:

"Sanctions will be taken off when the governor takes over in Salisbury, and he will take over when a ceasefire has been agreed. I would not say that all the shooting will have stopped, but not until the ceasefire is agreed will he take over."

He added:

"it is essential that there should be a ceasefire, because if there are to be elections in which everybody takes part it is not possible to have them until there is a ceasefire. Consequently, a ceasefire is necessary. In the context that we are talking about, it will obviously be necessary for a ceasefire and for the governor to go as soon as it is arranged."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 November 1979; Vol. 402, c. 833–5.]

That statement contains no preconditions. It is an absolute statement saying that the powers in the Bill to install a Governor and start the arrangements for elections cannot and will not take place until the ceasefire has been arranged. There is no other interpretation that even the Foreign Office could put on those remarks.

We ask the Minister tonight only to confirm that that is Government policy. If we had used those phrases the Lord Privy Seal would have accused us of giving the Patriotic Front a veto.

I turn now to the second part of our reasoned amendment, which concerns sanctions. We have heard a great deal tonight about the fact that the Government have not been willing to face up to a group of their own Back Benchers and reintroduce sanctions within the next week. If we work back from next Thursday the time scale of the Bill, we can then realise why we have been pushed and pressed. The right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) smiles because he thinks he has won—on points. He has not achieved a knock-out because he is still concerned about the other 80 per cent. of sanctions.

The principle of sanctions is indivisible It does not matter whether we are talking of the 80 per cent. of sanctions applied under other legislation or the 20 per cent. covered under section 2 of the Southern Rhodesian Act 1965. The principle is that of maintaining sanctions until there has been a real and meaningful return to legality in Rhodesia. Until that time, those sanctions should not be lifted, whether they are under other legislation or under section 2 of the 1965 Act.

The Government have given their reasons why they feel that they cannot introduce sanctions for a short period. They have said that it is not possible under the 1965 Act. But it is possible for them to introduce sanctions of the section 2 type under this Bill. All they need to do is to add the existing orders to clause 3(3) of the Bill. They can then introduce sanctions, with the power to terminate them as and when necessary. The Government have claimed that the original sanctions legislation was inflexible and that they had to be brought in for 12 months. That difficulty can now be obviated by the power they have under clause 3(3) of the Bill.

The Government are behaving in a partial way, backing one side and not the other, whereas they ought to be maintaining the principle that Governments have maintained, despite the difficulties, over 14 years. No sanctions should be lifted until there has been a full return to legality. There should be a commitment to maintain and continue section 2 sanctions under the 1965 Act, along with the other 80 per cent. of sanctions applied under other legislation.

It is for these reasons that we move our reasoned amendment. If that fails, we shall vote against the Second Reading of the Bill tonight.

9.47 pm

The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. Rowlands) and I have been on opposite sides of the House on many an occasion when we have debated the problems of Rhodesia in the last two or three years. We may have had our differences of opinion in these debates, but I am quite sure that we have one thing in common, and that is a real desire, as the whole House has, to see an end to this terrible conflict and this terrible war.

The debate has taken place against the sombre background of a war that we are desperately trying to bring to an end as rapidly as possible; my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Morrison) described graphically the terrible situation in Rhodesia. It has also taken place against the background of the conference at Lancaster House which, as my right hon Friend said earlier, has now lasted for nearly nine weeks. It is acknowledged in all parts of the House that a great deal of progress has been made at Lancaster House. A great deal of patience has been shown by all parties.

During this period we have been in constant touch and consultation with our partners in Western Europe, in the United States, and in the Commonwealth. We have been reflecting the views of this House and of those at Lancaster House, and in all these consultations there has been a widespread desire to see an early settlement and an end to the war. Only two weeks ago my right hon. and noble Friend asked me to undertake a tour which has been made by the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil, namely, that of the front-line States, Nigeria and Liberia. There is throughout those countries an urgent desire to witness an end to the terrible conflict that is affecting them as well as the black people and white people of Rhodesia.

When we reflect upon the problem, I believe that the majority of the House will agree that we have never been so close to a settlement. Credit for that goes to the unstinting work and patience of my right hon. and noble Friend and my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal in the Lancaster House discussions.

We are discussing the Bill against a background of remarkable progress and the real hope of the Government that we shall reach an agreement with all the parties so that there may be peace and an end to the bloodshed. That is something to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) referred strongly.

I refute the suggestion made by the hon. Members for Stockport, South (Mr. McNally) and York (Mr. Lyon) that we are trying to bounce the conference. We and the other parties have patiently week after week continued the negotiations in a real desire to achieve an effective settlement.

We discuss these matters against the background of the achievement that I have set out, against the background of the support that we have had from the Commonwealth arising from the Lusaka conference and a remarkable willingness, shared by all the parties at Lancaster House, to show a statesmanlike spirit of compromise. They have shown a spirit of compromise on the constitution. Agreement has been reached on the constitution subject to an agreement on the pre-independence arrangements and on the ceasefire. That is a tribute to all the parties at Lancaster House.

We hope now, as my right hon. Friend said earlier, that in the next few days we shall reach an agreement on the pre-independence arrangements that will enable us to move quickly to discussions on the ceasefire. We hope that that will come in the near future.

The right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore) said that the official Opposition had been encouraging and helpful during the past few weeks. I acknowledge that fact. The attitude of the Opposition has been helpful in the process of the discussions. But it is only right to ask some Labour Members to reflect rather more before they make such sweeping condemnations and criticisms of the Government's efforts and the purposes behind the Bill, which have been so carefully explained by my right hon. Friend.

I turn to the important issues that have been raised, and especially to the criticisms that have been voiced by Labour Members. First, I deal with the question of timing and the reason for speed. I acknowledge that there is anxiety on both sides of the House about any decision by any Government to introduce a Bill and to ask for its speedy passage through the House. I hope that the new arrangements are to the convenience of the House.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) said, we must be in a position to implement the settlement as swiftly as possible after we have reached a conclusion at Lancaster House, and that may be very soon. It was not sensible or possible to introduce the Bill earlier, as has been suggested in some quarters. We tabled our full proposals only last week, on 2 November. It was only right to give all the parties at Lancaster House some time to reflect before introducing the Bill. If we had introduced the Bill earlier, that would have been doing an injustice to all the parties at Lancaster House. We thought it only right that they should have a chance to reflect and react to the proposals that we produced last week.

We are considering the Bill against the background of section 2 of the 1965 Act, and that is important; it would be foolish to deny that. Quite apart from the issue of renewal of sanctions, we are faced with the need for wider powers to deal with the implementation of a settlement if it shortly occurs.

The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil asked about the 1965 Act, but that Act does not give the Government sufficient power to implement a settlement. That is why we need to introduce a Bill which is comprehensive and tidy and which will enable us to act swiftly to implement a settlement. The existing legislation gives us power to appoint a Governor, but without this Bill we do not have power to provide for a new constitution and bring in at an earlier stage certain parts of that constitution to enable the Governor to fulfil his objectives.

Several hon. Members raised the question of section 2 and the lapsing of sanctions. My hon. Friends the Members for Louth (Mr. Brotherton) and for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) have strong reservations about our decision to maintain the bulk of the sanctions until we assume legality. We acknowledge and respect that attitude, but for reasons that have been given it is essential to maintain the bulk of the sanctions until the Governor arrives.

It is important for the House to recognise that Bishop Muzorewa and his delegation have accepted our proposals for a constitution that provides for genuine majority rule. We hope that an agreement will be reached fairly soon, and we shall then be able to appoint a Governor. When he assumes office in Salisbury, we can resume the relationship of legality.

Regarding the remaining minority of sanctions, the Bill gives us powers to re-impose sanctions under section 2. However, as my right hon. Friend said, it is hard to envisage circumstances in which that would be necessary. In any event, that is not applicable until after 15 November. I ask the House to judge the matter in the light of the decisions already made at Lancaster House and the remarkable progress that has been achieved. We believe that it would be absolutely wrong to continue with the limited range of sanctions in such circumstances.

On the ceasefire, the right hon. Member for Stepney and Poplar suggested that there was a discrepancy between the statements of my right hon. and noble Friend and my right hon. Friend on the conditions under which a Governor would be appointed. It is clear from the previous remarks of my right hon. and noble Friend that his reference to the point at which a Governor would arrive in Salisbury was based on the assumption that agreement had been reached between all parties. That is what we hope will prevail and what we are seeking to achieve. Agreement to our proposals will enable that to take place soon. However, if, despite our efforts, we fail to reach agreement, the Government will, as my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal has already said, have to consider how to proceed in that new set of circumstances.

Has the hon. Gentleman cleared that statement with the Foreign Secretary? It amounts to a substantial retraction of the words used by the right hon. and noble Gentleman in another place yesterday.

If the right hon. Gentleman reads the relevant extract from the House of Lords Hansard, he will find that my statement does not involve a substantial retraction. If I had not cleared that statement with my right hon. and noble Friend, I would be in deep trouble—I have indeed done so.

Many points were raised in the debate. I would detain the House too long if I sought to answer every point. I hope that my hon. Friends will forgive me if I do not go into too many details.

The hon. Gentleman has made an important statement with the authority of the Foreign Secretary. I understand that there are circumstances in which, if it was impossible to reach agreement on the terms put forward by the British Government, the Government might proceed to implement the Bill and the constitution that arises under the Bill. I understand that that would take place with the consent of only one of the parties.

Will the hon. Gentleman elaborate upon the circumstances in which the Governor would return and to what extent he would be supported by British troops? On the other hand, will he go without any support? I refer to the phrase used by the right hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins): one thing that we do not wish to get involved in is a miniature Vietnam. If a Governor is sent to Southern Rhodesia at a time when there is no agreement between the parties and the war is continuing, where does Britain stand?

The right hon. Gentleman assumes that the conference will not succeed in obtaining the agreement of all the parties. It is the highest priority of the Government—as the right hon. Gentleman acknowledges—to obtain a settlement with the agreement of all the parties. That is why we have been working on the matter for nine weeks at Lancaster House. We hope that it does not fail. My statement about the failure to reach agreement conflicts in no way with what was said by my right hon. and noble Friend. We shall then have to consider the circumstances and decide what to do. It is madness to expect a Government to anticipate a hypothetical situation.

This is an important point and it is not hypothetical. The hon. Gentleman has told us that he hopes that within a few days there will be an agreement. If that agreement is not reached, he knows as well as I do that the proposals are being rooted around now that we should impose the constitution—[Interruption.] We are discussing a situation in which lives could be at stake.

The hon. Gentleman is envisaging circumstances in which the constitution may be imposed. Will he give us an assurance that in no circumstances will the Governor or British troops to support him be introduced if no agreement is reached between the parties?

It would not be right for the Government or for me to go beyond what I have already said. We want an agreement with all the parties. If it breaks down, we have a new and difficult situation. It would be for us to decide what was the right course to take.

rose—

I do not know whether I am reflecting the desire of the House—

rose—

Order.

I have given way quite a lot. I thought I was reflecting the desire of the House in trying to match the example of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil. I may have gone beyond the time that he took.

The right hon. Members for Stepney and Poplar and for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bottomley) and the hon. Member for Stockport, South asked about the duration of our proposal for the pre-independence arrangements. I stress that we are anxious to strike a balance. We believe, naturally, with the great deal of mistrust that has built up in that country over many years, that we are dealing with a very fragile situation. Opposition Members have experience and knowledge of that situation. Because it is fragile, we believe that the longer implementation is left, the more difficult it will become. That is one of the most important reasons why we want the interim arrangements to be as rapid as possible.

It is also clear that we must satisfy the essential criterion that all the parties who join this agreement should have an equal and fair chance to participate in the election. For that reason, we have proposed that the agreement should last for two months from the date of the implementation of the ceasefire. That proposal emanated after lengthy discussions at Lancaster House.

I should like to comment on the point made by the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Johnston) about the role of the Commonwealth observers. The Government attach the greatest importance to the role that the Commonwealth observers will play. The observers were called for at the Commonwealth conference in Lusaka. Their role will be to observe the whole electoral process. It has been suggested in certain quarters that their role would apply only to polling day. We take the view that the observers should be there for the whole electoral process. It is for them to judge—although it is our ultimate responsibility—whether they feel

Division No. 971	AYES	[10.10 pm
Abse, Leo	Atkinson, Norman (H'gey, Tott'ham)	Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Adams, Allen	Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur (M'brough)
Allaun, Frank	Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)	Bradley, Tom
Alton, David	Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood)	Bray, Dr Jeremy
Anderson, Donald	Beith, A. J.	Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)
Archer, Rt Hon Peter	Benn, Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood	Brown, Ronald W. (Hackney S)
Armstrong, Rt Hon Ernest	Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N)	Buchan, Norman
Ashley, Rt Hon Jack	Bidwell, Sydney	Callaghan, Rt Hon J. (Cardiff SE)
Ashton, Joe	Booth, Rt Hon Albert	Callaghan, Jim (Middleton & P)

that the elections have been held in fair and free conditions.

I will seek to reply by letter to questions such as that relating to pensions, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop), if that is acceptable.

The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) indulged in a familiar argument about responsibility without power into which I will avoid being dragged, although his reference to the fact that Members have both responsibility and power might not command the support or agreement of hon. Members in every part of the House.

For the last 14 or 15 years, many Governments, Labour and Conservative, have been battling, trying hard to achieve a settlement. Many right hon. and hon. Members on the Opposition Benches have been grappling in their own way with this problem over the years. I believe that they, like all hon. Members and the Government, want a just settlement. This must be common ground. We all surely want peace and a settlement. My right hon. and noble Friend, my right hon. Friend and myself, have explained the reasons for the Bill. It enables us to act swiftly once the Lancaster House conference has been successfully concluded, as I am sure the whole House hopes will happen.

The Bill provides the essential mechanism enabling the settlement to be implemented rapidly. I believe that there is a strong desire in the House, among the people of Rhodesia, the surrounding States, the Western world as a whole, and throughout Africa that there should be peace and a settlement as rapidly as possible.

It is in that spirit that I commend the Bill to the House and invite it to support its Second Reading.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 252, Noes 311.

Campbell, Ian	Hogg, Norman (E Dunbartonshire)	Pavitt, Laurie
Campbell-Savours, Dale	Holland, Stuart (L'beth, Vauxhall)	Pendry, Tom
Canavan, Dennis	Home Robertson, John	Penhaligon, David
Cant, R. B.	Homewood, William	Powell, Rt Hon J. Enoch (S Down)
Carmichael, Nell	Hooley, Frank	Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)
Cartwright, John	Horam, John	Prescott, John
Clark, David (South Shields)	Howell, Rt Hon Denis (B'ham, Sm H)	Price, Christopher (Lewisham West)
Cocks, Rt Hon Michael (Bristol S)	Huckfield, Les	Race, Reg
Cohen, Stanley	Hughes, Mark (Durham)	Radice, Giles
Coleman, Donald	Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen North)	Richardson, Miss Jo
Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.	Hughes, Roy (Newport)	Roberts, Allan (Bootle)
Conlan, Bernard	Janner, Hon Greville	Roberts, Ernest (Hackney North)
Cowans, Harry	Jay, Rt Hon Douglas	Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)
Crowther, J. S.	John, Brynmor	Robertson, George
Cryer, Bob	Johnson, James (Hull West)	Robinson, Geoffrey (Coventry NW)
Cunliffe, Lawrence	Johnston, Russell (Inverness)	Rodgers, Rt Hon William
Cunningham, George (Islington S)	Jones, Rt Hon Alec (Rhondda)	Rooker, J. W.
Cunningham, Dr John (Whitehaven)	Jones, Barry (East Flint)	Roper, John
Dalyell, Tam	Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald	Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)
Davidson, Arthur	Kerr, Russell	Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)
Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)	Kilroy-Silk, Robert	Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Kinnock, Neil	Rowlands, Ted
Davis, Clinton (Hackney Central)	Lambie, David	Ryman, John
Davis, Terry (B'rm'ham, Stechford)	Lamborn, Harry	Sandelson, Neville
Deakins, Eric	Lamond, James	Sever, John
Dempsey, James	Leadbitler, Ted	Sheerman, Barry
Dewar, Donald	Leighton, Ronald	Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert (A'ton-u-L)
Dixon, Donald	Lestor, Miss Joan (Elton & Slough)	Shore, Rt Hon Peter (Step and Pop)
Dobson, Frank	Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)	Short, Mrs Renée
Dormand, Jack	Litherland, Robert	Silkin, Rt Hon John (Deptford)
Douglas, Dick	Lofthouse, Geoffrey	Silkln, Rt Hon S.C. (Dulwich)
Douglas-Mann, Bruce	Lyon, Alexander (York)	Silverman, Julius
Dubs, Alfred	Mabon, Rt Hon Dr J. Dickson	Skinner, Dennis
Duffy, A. E. P.	McCartney, Hugh	Snape, Peter
Dunn, James A. (Liverpool, Kirkdale)	McCusker, H.	Soley, Clive
Dunnett, Jack	McDonald, Dr Oonagh	Spearing, Nigel
Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth	McGuire, Michael (Ince)	Spriggs, Leslie
Eadie, Alex	McKay, Allen (Penistone)	Stallard, A. W.
Eastham, Ken	McKelvey, William	Stewart, Rt Hon Donald (W Isies)
Edwards, Robert (Wolv SE)	MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor	Stoddart, David
Ellis, Raymond (NE Derbyshire)	Maclennan, Robert	Stott, Roger
Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)	McMahon, Andrew	Strang, Gavin
English, Michael	McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, Central)	Straw, Jack
Ennals, Rt Hon David	McNally, Thomas	Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley
Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)	McWilliam, John	Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton West)
Evans, John (Newton)	Magee, Bryan	Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)
Ewing, Harry	Marks, Kenneth	Thomas, Mike (Newcastle East)
Field, Frank	Marshall, David (Gl'sgow, Shettles'n)	Thomas, Dr Roger Carmarthen)
Fitch, Alan	Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)	Thorne, Stan (Preston South)
Flannery, Martin	Marshall, Jim (Leicester South)	Tilley, John
Fletcher, L. R. (Ilkeston)	Martin, Michael (Gl'gow, Springb'rn)	Torney, Tom
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)	Maxton, John	Urwin, Rt Hon Tom
Ford, Ben	Maynard, Miss Joan	Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.
Forrester, John	Meacher, Michael	Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)
Foster, Derek	Mellish, Rt Hon Robert	Walker, Rt Hon Harold (Doncaster)
Foulkes, George	Mikardo, Ian	Watkins, David
Fraser, John (Lambeth, Norwood)	Millan, Rt Hon Bruce	Weetch, Ken
Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald	Miller, Dr M S. (East Kilbride)	Wellbeloved, James
Freud, Clement	Mitchell, Austin (Grimsby)	Weish, Michael
Garrett, John (Norwich S)	Mitchell, R. C. (Soton, Itchen)	White, Frank R. (Bury & Radcliffe)
Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)	Molyneaux, James	White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)
George, Bruce	Morris, Rt Hon Alfred (Wythenshawe)	Whitlock, William
Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John	Morris, Rt Hon Charles (Openshaw)	Willey, Rt Hon Frederick
Ginsburg, David	Morris, Rt Hon John (Aberavon)	Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W)
Golding, John	Morton, Barry	Williams, Sir Thomas (Warrington)
Grant, George (Morpeth)	Moyle, Rt Hon Roland	Wilson, Rt Hon Sir Harold (Huyton)
Grant, John (Islington C)	Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick	Wilson, William (Coventry SE)
Grimond, Rt Hon J.	Newens, Stanley	Winnick, David
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)	Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon	Woolmer, Kenneth
Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)	O'Neill, Martin	Wrigglesworth, Ian
Harrison, Rt Hon Walter	Orme, Rt Hon Stanley	Wright, Shella
Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith	Owen, Rt Hon Dr David	Young, David (Bolton East)
Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy	Palmer, Arthur
Haynes, Frank	Park, George	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Healey, Rt Hon Denis	Parker, John	Mr. Ted Graham and
Heffer, Eric S.	Parry, Robert	Mr. James Tinn.

NOES
Adley, Robert	Arnold, Tom	Banks, Robert
Aitken, Jonathan	Aspinwall, Jack	Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Alexander, Richard	Atkins, Robert (Preston North)	Bell, Ronald
Alison, Michael	Atkinson, David (Bournemouth, East)	Bendall, Vivian
Amery, Rt Hon Julian	Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)	Benyon, Thomas (Abingdon)
Ancram, Michael	Baker, Nicholas (North Dorset)	Benyon, W. (Buckingham)

Best, Keith	Goodlad, Alastair	Miscampbell, Norman
Bevan, David Gilroy	Gorst, John	Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Biffen, Rt Hon John	Gow, Ian	Moate, Roger
Biggs-Davison, John	Greenway, Harry	Monro, Hector
Blackburn, John	Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St Edmunds)	Montgomery, Fergus
Blaker, Peter	Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)	Moore, John
Body, Richard	Grist, Ian	Morgan, Geraint
Bonsor, Sir Nicholas	Grylls, Michael	Morris, Michael (Northampton, Sth)
Boscawen, Hon Robert	Gummer, John Selwyn	Morrison, Hon Charles (Devizes)
Bottomley, Peter (Woolwich West)	Hamilton, Hon Archie (Eps'm&Ew'll)	Morrison, Hon Peter (City of Chester)
Bowden, Andrew	Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)	Mudd, David
Boyson, Dr Rhodes	Hampson, Dr Keith	Murphy, Christopher
Braine, Sir Bernard	Hannam, John	Myles, David
Bright, Graham	Haselhurst, Alan	Neale, Gerrard
Brinton, Tim	Hastings, Stephen	Needham, Richard
Brittan, Leon	Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael	Nelson, Anthony
Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher	Hawksley, Warren	Neubert, Michael
Brooke, Hon Peter	Hayhoe, Barney	Newton, Tony
Brotherton, Michael	Heath, Rt Hon Edward	Normanton, Tom
Brown, Michael (Brigg & Sc'thorpe)	Heddle, John	Nott, Rt Hon John
Browne, John (Winchester)	Henderson, Barry	Onslow, Cranley
Bruce-Gardyne, John	Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael	Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs Sally
Bryan, Sir Paul	Hicks, Robert	Osborn, John
Buck, Antony	Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.	Page, John (Harrow, West)
Budgen, Nick	Hill, James	Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)
Bulmer, Esmond	Holland, Philip (Carlton)	Parkinson, Cecil
Burden, F. A.	Hooson, Tom	Parris, Matthew
Butcher, John	Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey	Patten, Christopher (Bath)
Butler, Hon Adam	Howell, Rt Hon David (Guildford)	Patten, John (Oxford)
Cadbury, Jocelyn	Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)	Pattie, Geoffrey
Carlisle, John (Luton West)	Hunt David (Wirral)	Pawsey, James
Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)	Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)	Percival, Sir Ian
Carlisle, Rt Hon Mark (Runcorn)	Hurd, Hon Douglas	Peyton, Rt Hon John
Chalker, Mrs Lynda	Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)	Pink, R. Bonner
Channon, Paul	Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick	Pollock, Alexander
Chapman, Sydney	Johnson Smith, Geoffrey	Porter, George
Churchill, W. S.	Jopling, Rt Hon Michael	Prentice, Rt Hon Reg
Clark, Hon Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)	Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith	Price, David (Eastleigh)
Clark, Dr William (Croydon South)	Kaberry, Sir Donald	Prior, Rt Hon James
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)	Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine	Proctor, K. Harvey
Cockeram, Eric	Kershaw, Anthony	Pym, Rt Hon Francis
Colvin, Michael	Kilfedder, James A.	Raison, Timothy
Cope, John
Cormack, Patrick	Kimball, Marcus	Rathbone, Tim
Corrie, John	King, Rt Hon Tom	Rees, Peter (Dover and Deal)
Costain, Sir Albert	Knight, Mrs Jill	Rees-Davies, W. R.
Cranborne, Viscount	Knox, David	Renton, Tim
Critchley, Julian	Lamont, Norman	Rhodes James, Robert
Crouch, David	Lang, Ian	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)	Langford-Holt, Sir John	Ridley, Hon Nicholas
Dean, Paul (North Somerset)	Latham, Michael	Rifkind, Malcolm
Dickens, Geoffrey	Lawrence Ivan	Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Dorrell, Stephen	Lawson, Nigel	Roberts, Michael (Cardiff NW)
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James	Lee, John	Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Dover, Denshore	Lester, Jim (Beeston)	Rossi, Hugh
du Cann, Rt Hon Edward	Lewis, Kenneth (Rutand)	Rost, Peter
Dunn, Robert (Dartford)	Lloyd, Ian (Havant & Waterloo)	Royle, Sir Anthony
Durant, Tony	Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)	Sainsbury, Hon Timothy
Dykes, Hugh	Loveridge, John	St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon Norman
Eden, Rt Hon Sir John	Luce, Richard	Scott, Nicholas
Edwards, Rt Hon N. (Pembroke)	Lyell, Nicholas	Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Eggar, Timothy	McAdden, Sir Stephen	Shaw, Michael (Scarborough)
Elliott, Sir William	McCrindle, Robert	Shelton, William (Streatham)
Emery, Peter	Macfarlane, Neil	Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Eyre, Reginald	MacGregor, John	Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge-Br'hills)
Fairgrieve, Russell	MacKay, John (Argyll)	Shersby, Michael
Faith, Mrs Sheila	McNair-Wilson, Michael (Newbury)	Silvester, Fred
Fell, Anthony	McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)	Sims, Roger
Fenner, Mrs Peggy	McQuarrle, Albert	Skeet, T. H. H.
Finsborg, Geoffrey	Madel, David	Smith, Dudley (War. and Leam'ton)
Fisher, Sir Nigel	Major, John	Speed, Keith
Fletcher, Alexander (Edinburgh N)	Marland, Paul	Speller, Tony
Fookes, Misa Janet	Marlow, Tony	Spence, John
Forman, Nigel	Marshall, Michael (Arundel)	Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman	Marten, Neil (Banbury)	Spicer, Michael (S Worcestershire)
Fox, Marcus	Mather, Carol	Sproat, Iain
Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford & St)	Maude, Rt Hon Angus	Squire, Robin
Fraser, Peter (South Angus)	Mawby, Ray	Stanbrook, Ivor
Fry, Peter	Mawhinney, Dr Brian	Stanley, John
Galbraith, Hon T. G. D.	Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin	Steen, Anthony
Gardiner, George (Reigate)	Mayhew, Patrick	Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)
Gardner, Edward (South Fylde)	Mellor, David	Stewart, John (East Renfrewshire)
Garel-Jones, Tristan	Meyer, Sir Anthony	Stokes, John
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian	Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove & Redditch)	Stradling Thomas, J.
Goodhart, Phillip	Mills, Iain (Meriden)	Tapsell, Peter
Goodhew, Victor	Mills, Peter (West Devon)	Taylor, Robert (Croydon NW)

Tebbit, Norman	Waddington, David	Wheeler, John
Temple-Morris, Peter	Wakeham, John	Whitelaw, Rt Hon William
Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs Margaret	Waldegrave, Hon. William	Whitney, Raymond
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter (Hendon S)	Walker, Rt Hon Peter (Worcester)	Wickenden, Keith
Thompson, Donald	Walker, Bill (Perth & E Perthshire)	Wilkinson, John
Thorne, Neil (Ilford South)	Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir Derek	Williams, Delwyn (Montgomery)
Thornton, Malcolm	Wall, Patrick	Winterton, Nicholas
Townend, John (Bridlington)	Waller, Gary	Wolfson, Mark
Townsend, Cyril D. (Bexleyheath)	Walters, Dennis	Young, Sir George (Acton)
Trippier, David	Ward, John	Younger, Rt Hon George
Trotter, Neville	Warren, Kenneth
van Straubenzee, W. R.	Watson, John	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Vaughan, Dr Gerard	Wells, John (Maidstone)	Mr. Spencer Le Marchant and
Viggers, Peter	Wells, Bowen (Hert'rd & Stev'nage)	Mr. Anthony Berry.

Question accordingly negatived.

Main Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 39 ( Amendment on second or third reading), That the Bill be now read a second time.

Division No. 981	AYES	[10.25 pm
Adley, Robert	Cormack, Patrick	Hayhoe, Barney
Aitken, Jonathan	Corrie, John	Heath, Rt Hon Edward
Al, Richard	Costain, A. P.	Heddle, John
Alison, Michael	Cranborne, Viscount	Henderson, Barry
Amery, Rt Hon Julian	Critchley, Julian	Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael
Ancram, Michael	Crouch, David	Hicks, Robert
Arnold, Tom	Dean, Paul (North Somerset)	Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.
Aspinwall, Jack	Dickens, Geoffrey	Hill, James
Atkins, Robert (Preston North)	Dorrell, Stephen	Holland, Philip (Carlton)
Atkinson, David (Bournemouth, East)	Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James	Hooson, Tom
Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)	Dover, Denshore	Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Baker, Nicholas (North Dorset)	du Cann, Rt Hon Edward	Howell, Rt Hon David (Guildford)
Banks, Robert	Dunn, Robert (Dartford)	Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony	Durant, Tony	Hunt, David (Wirral)
Bell, Ronald	Dykes, Hugh	Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Bendall, Vivian	Eden, Rt Hon Sir John	Hurd, Hon Douglas
Benyon, Thomas (Abingdon)	Edwards, Rt Hon N. (Pembroke)	Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)
Benyon, W. (Buckingham)	Eggar, Timothy	Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick
Best, Keith	Elliott, Sir William	Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Bevan, David Gilroy	Emery, Peter	Jopling, Rt Hon Michael
Biffen, Rt Hon John	Eyre, Reginald	Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith
Biggs-Davison, John	Fairbairn, Nicholas	Kaberry, Sir Donald
Blackburn, John	Fairgrieve, Russell	Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elains
Blaker, Peter	Faith, Mrs Sheila	Kershaw, Anthony
Body, Richard	Fell, Anthony	Kilfedder, James A.
Bonsor, Sir Nicholas	Fenner, Mrs Peggy	Kimball, Marcus
Boscawen, Hon Robert	Finsberg, Geoffrey	King, Rt Hon Tom
Bottomley, Peter (Woolwich West)	Fisher, Sir Nigel	Knight, Mrs Jill
Bowden, Andrew	Fletcher, Alexander (Edinburgh N)	Knox, David
Boyson, Dr Rhodes	Fookes, Miss Janet	Lamont, Norman
Braine, Sir Bernard	Forman, Nigel	Lang, Ian
Bright, Graham	Fowler, Rt Hon Norman	Langford-Holt, Sir John
Brinton, Tim	Fox, Marcus	Latham, Michael
Brittan, Leon	Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford & St)	Lawrence Ivan
Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher	Fraser, Peter (South Angus)	Lawson, Nigel
Brooke, Hon Peter	Fry, Peter	Lee, John
Brotherton, Michael	Galbraith, Hon T. G. D.	Lester, Jim (Beeston)
Brown, Michael (Brigg & Sc'thorpe)	Gardiner, George (Reigate)	Lewis, Kenneth (Rutand)
Browne, John (Winchester)	Gardner, Edward (South Fylde)	Lloyd, Ian (Havant & Waterloo)
Bruce-Gardyne, John	Garel-Jones, Tristan	Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Bryan, Sir Paul	Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian	Loveridge, John
Buck, Antony	Goodhart, Phillip	Luce, Richard
Budgen, Nick	Goodhew, Victor	Lyell, Nicholas
Bulmer, Esmond	Goodlad, Alastair	McAdden, Sir Stephen
Burden, F. A.	Gorst, John	McCrindle, Robert
Butcher, John	Gow, Ian	Macfarlane, Neil
Butler, Hon Adam	Gray, Hamish	MacGregor, John
Cadbury, Jocelyn	Greenway, Harry	MacKay, John (Argyll)
Carlisle, John (Luton West)	Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St Edmunds)	McNair-Wilson, Michael (Newbury)
Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)	Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)	McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)
Carlisle, Rt Hon Mark (Runcorn)	Grist, Ian	McQuarrie, Albert
Chalker, Mrs Lynda	Grylls, Michael	Madel, David
Channon, Paul	Gummer, John Selwyn	Major, John
Chapman, Sydney	Hamilton, Hon Archie (Eps'm&Ew'll)	Marland, Paul
Churchill, W. S.	Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)	Marlow, Tony
Clark, Hon Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)	Hampson, Dr Keith	Marshall, Michael (Arundel)
Clark, Dr William (Croydon South)	Hannam, John	Marten, Neil (Banbury)
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)	Haselhurst, Alan	Males, Michael
Cockeram, Eric	Hastings, Stephen	Mather, Carol
Colvin, Michael	Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael	Maude, Rt Hon Angus
Cope, John	Hawksley, Warren	Mawby, Ray

The House divided: Ayes 314, Noes 253.

Mawhinney, Dr Brian	Prior, Rt Hon James	Slradling Thomas, J.
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin	Proctor, K. Harvey	Tapsell, Peter
Mayhew, Patrick	Pym, Rt Hon Francis	Taylor, Robert (Croydon NW)
Mollor, David	Raison, Timothy	Tebbit, Norman
Meyer, Sir Anthony	Rathbone, Tim	Temple-Morris, Peter
Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove & Redditch)	Rees, Peter (Dover and Deal)	Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs Margaret
Mills, Iain (Meriden)	Rees-Davies, W. R.	Thomas, Rt Hon Peter (Hendon S)
Mills. Peter (West Devon)	Renton, Tim	Thompson, Donald
Miscampbell, Norman	Rhodes James, Robert	Thorne, Neil (Ilford South)
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon	Thornton, Malcolm
Moate, Roger	Ridley, Hon Nicholas	Townend, John (Bridlington)
Monro, Hector	Rifklnd, Malcolm	Townsend, Cyril D. (Bexleyheath)
Montgomery, Fergus	Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey	Trippier, David
Moore, John	Roberts, Michael (Cardiff NW)	Trotter, Neville
Morris, Michael (Northampton, Sth)	Roberts, Wyn (Conway)	van Straubenzee, W. R.
Morrison, Hon Charles (Devizes)	Rossi, Hugh	Vaughan, Dr Gerard
Morrison, Hon Peter (City of Chester)	Rost, Peter	Viggers, Peter
Mudd, David	Royle, Sir Anthony	Waddington, David
Murphy, Christopher	Sainsbury, Hon Timothy	Wakeham, John
Myles, David	St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon Norman	Waldegrave, Hon. William
Neale, Gerrard	Scott, Nicholas	Walker, Rt Hon Peter (Worcester)
Needham, Richard	Shaw, Gles (Pudsey)	Walker, Bill (Perth & E Perthshire)
Nelson, Anthony	Shaw, Michael (Scarborough)	Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir Derek
Neubert, Michael	Shelton, William (Streatham)	Wall, Patrick
Newton, Tony	Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)	Waller, Gary
Normanton, Tom	Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge-Br'hills)	Walters, Dennis
Nott, Rt Hon John	Shersby, Michael	Ward, John
Onslow, Cranley	Silvester, Fred	Warren, Kenneth
Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs Sally	Sims, Roger	Watson, John
Osborn, John	Skeet, T. H. H.	Wells, John (Maidstone)
Page, John (Harrow, West)	Smith, Dudley (War. and Leam'ton)	Wells, Bowen (Hert'rd & Stev'nage)
Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)	Speed, Keith	Wheeler, John
Parkinson, Cecil	Speller, Tony	Whitelaw, Rt Hon William
Parris, Matthew	Spence, John	Whitney, Raymond
Patten, Christopher (Bath)	Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)	Wickenden, Keith
Patten, John (Oxford)	Spicer, Michael (S Worcestershire)	Wilkinson, John
Pattie, Geoffrey	Sproat, Iain	Williams, Delwyn (Montgomery)
Pawsey, James	Squire, Robin	Winterton, Nicholas
Percival, Sir Ian	Stanbrook, Ivor	Wolfson, Mark
Peyton, Rt Hon John	Stanley, John	Young, Sir George (Acton)
Pink, R. Bonner	Steen, Anthony	Younger, Rt Hon George
Pollock, Alexander	Stevens, Martin
Porter, Georga	Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Prentice, Rt Hon Reg	Stewart, John (East Renfrewshire)	Mr. Spencer Le Marchant and
Price, David (Eastleigh)	Stokes, John	Mr. Anthony Berry.

NOES
Abse, Leo	Coleman, Donald	Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)
Adams, Allen	Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.	Evans, John (Newton)
Allaun, Frank	Conlan, Bernard	Ewing, Harry
Alton, David	Cowans, Harry	Field, Frank
Anderson, Donald	Crowther, J. S.	Fitch, Alan
Archer, Rt Hon Peter	Cryer, Bob	Flannery, Martin
Armstrong, Rt Hon Ernest	Cunliffe, Lawrence	Fletcher, L. R. (Ilkeston)
Ashley, Rt Hon Jack	Cunningham, George (Islington S)	Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Ashton, Joe	Cunningham, Dr John (Whitehaven)	Ford, Ben
Atkinson, Norman (H'gey, Tott'ham)	Dalyell, Tam	Forrester, John
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Davidson, Arthur	Foster, Derek
Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)	Davies, Rt Hon Denzll (Llanelli)	Foulkes, George
Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood)	Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Fraser, John (Lambeth, Norwood)
Belth, A. J.	Davis, Clinton (Hackney Central)	Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald
Benn, Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood	Davis, Terry (B'rm'ham, Stechford)	Freud, Clement
Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N)	Deakins, Eric	Garrett, John (Norwich S)
Bidwell, Sydney	Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)	Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)
Booth, Rt Hon Albert	Dempsey, James	George, Bruce
Boothroyd, Miss Betty	Dewar, Donald	Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John
Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur (M'brough)	Dixon, Donald	Ginsburg, David
Bradley, Tom	Dobson, Frank	Golding, John
Bray, Dr Jeremy	Dormand, Jack	Graham, Ted
Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)	Douglas, Dick	Grant, George (Morpeth)
Brown, Ronald W. (Hackney S)	Douglas-Mann, Bruce	Grant, John (Islington C)
Buchan, Norman	Dubs, Alfred	Grimond, Rt Hon J.
Callaghan, Rt Hon J. (Cardiff SE)	Duffy, A. E. P.	Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Callaghan, Jim (Middleton & P)	Dunn, James A. (Liverpool, Kirkdale)	Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)
Campbell, Ian	Dunnett, Jack	Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Campbell-Savours, Dale	Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth	Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Canavan, Dennis	Eadle, Alex	Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Cant, R. B.	Eastham, Ken	Haynes, Frank
Carmichael, Neil	Edwards, Robert (Wolv SE)	Healey, Rt Hon Denis
Cartwright, John	Ellis, Raymond (NE Derbyshire)	Heffer, Eric S.
Clark, David (South Shields)	Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)	Hogg, Norman (E Dunbartonshire)
Cocks, Rt Hon Michael (Bristol S)	English, Michael	Holland, Stuart (L'beth, Vauxhall)
Cohen, Stanley	Ennals, Rt hon David	Home Robertson, John

Homewood, William	Meacher, Michael	Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert (A'ton-u-L)
Hooley, Frank	Mellish, Rt Hon Robert	Shore, Rt Hon peter (Step and Pop)
Horam, John	Mikardo, Ian	Short, Mrs Renée
Howell, Rt Hon Denis (B'ham, Sm H)	Millan, Rt Hon Bruce	Silkin. Rt Hon John (Deptford)
Huckfield, Les	Miller, Dr M. S. (East Kilbride)	Silkin, Rt Hon S.C. (Dulwich)
Hughes, Mark (Durham)	Mitchell, Austin (Grimsby)	Silverman, Julius
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen North)	Mitchell, R. C. (Soton, Itchen)	Skinner, Dennis
Hughes, Roy (Newport)	Molyneaux, James	Snape, Peter
Janner, Hon Greville	Morris, Rt Hon Alfred (Wythenshawe)	Soley, Clive
Jay, Rt Hon Douglas	Morris, Rt Hon Charles (Openshaw)	Spearing, Nigel
John, Brynmor	Morris, Rt Hon John (Aberavon)	Spriggs, Leslie
Johnson, James (Hull West)	Moyle, Rt Hon Roland	Stallard, A. W.
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)	Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick	Stewart, Rt Hon Donald (W Isles)
Jones, Rt Hon Alec (Rhondda)	Newens, Stanley	Stoddart, David
Jones, Barry (East Flint)	Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon	Stott, Roger
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald	O'Halloran, Michael	Strang, Gavin
Kerr, Russell	O'Neill, Martin	Straw, Jack
Kilroy-Silk, Robert	Orme, Rt Hon Stanley	Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley
Kinnock, Nell	Owen. Rt Hon Dr David	Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton West)
Lambie, David	Palmer, Arthur	Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)
Lamborn, Harry	Park, George	Thomas, Mike (Newcastle East)
Lamond, James	Parker, John	Thomas, Dr Roger Carmarthen)
Leadbitter, Ted	Parry, Robert	Thorne, Stan (Preston South)
Leighton, Ronald	Pavitt, Laurie	Tilley, John
Lestor, Miss Joan (Elton & Slough)	Pendry, Tom	Torney, Tom
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)	Penhaligon, David	Urwin, Rt Hon Tom
Litherland, Robert	Powell, Rt Hon J. Enoch (S Down)	Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.
Lofthouse, Geoffrey	Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)	Wainwrighl, Edwin (Dearne Valley)
Lyon, Alexander (York)	Prescott, John	Walker, Rt Hon Harold (Doncaster)
Mabon, Rt Hon Dr J. Dlckson	Price, Christopher (Lewisham West)	Watkins, David
McCartney, Hugh	Race, Reg	Weetch, Ken
McCusker, H.	Radice, Giles	Wellbeloved, James
McDonald, Dr Oonagh	Richardson, Miss Jo	Welsh, Michael
McGuire, Michael (Ince)	Roberts, Allan (Bootle)	White, Frank R. (Bury & Radcliffe)
McKay, Allen (Penistone)	Roberts, Ernest (Hackney North)	White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)
McKelvey, William	Roberts, Gwllym (Cannock)	Whitlock, William
MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor	Robertson, George	Willey, Rt Hon Frederick
Maclennan, Robert	Robinson, Geoffrey (Coventry NW)	Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W)
McMahon, Andrew	Rodgers, Rt Hon William	Williams, Sir Thomas (Warrington)
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, Central)	Rooker, J. W.	Wilson, Rt Hon Sir Harold (Huyton)
McNally, Thomas	Roper, John	Wilson, William (Coventry SE)
McWilliam, John	Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)	Winnick, David
Magee, Bryan	Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)	Woolmer, Kenneth
Marks, Kenneth	Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)	Wrigglesworth, Ian
Marshall, David (Gl'sgow, Shetlles'n)	Rowlands, Ted	Wright, Shella
Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)	Ryman, John	Young, David (Bolton East)
Marshall, Jim (Leicester South)	Sandelson, Neville
Martin, Michael (Gl'gow, Springb'rn)	Sever, John	TELLERS FOR THE NOES
Maxton, John	Sheerman, Barry	Mr. George Moon and
Maynard, Miss Joan		Mr. James Tinn.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Bill read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[ Mr. John Stradling Thomas.]

Further proceedings postponed, pursuant to Order this day.

Southern Rhodesia Money

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

Resolved,

That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to provide for the grant of a constitution for Zimbabwe to come into effect on the attainment by Southern Rhodesia, under any Act hereafter passed for that purpose, of fully responsible status as a Republic under the name of Zimbabwe, and to make other provision with respect to Southern Rhodesia, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any administrative expenses incurred by the Secretary of State in consequence of the provisions of that Act.—[Mr. John Stradling Thomas.]

Southern Rhodesia Bill

Postponed proceedings resumed.

Considered in Committee, pursuant to Order this day.

[Mr. BERNARD WEATHERILL in the Chair.]

Clause 1

Power To Provide Constitution For Zimbabwe

To report Progress; and ask leave to sit again.—[ Mr. Fox.]

Committee report Progress; to sit again tomorrow.

Statutory Instruments, &C

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bernard weatherill): In order to save the time of House, I propose to put together the five motions to approve the statutory instruments, items 3 to 7 on the Order Paper.

Motion made, and Question put forth-with pursuant to Standing Order No. 73A (Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.)

Customs And Excise

That the Customs Duties (ECSC) (Quota and Other Reliefs) (Revocation) Order 1979, (S.I., 1979, No. 1142) a copy of which was laid before this House on 12 September, be approved.

Social Security

That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating (Amendment) Order 1979, which was laid before this House on 22 October, be approved.

That the draft Social Security (Maximum Additional Component) Amendment Regulations 1979, which were laid before this House on 22 October, be approved.

That the draft Social Security (Earnings-Related Addition to Widow's Allowance) (Special Provisions) Regulations 1979, which were laid before this House on 22 October, be approved.

Highlands And Islands

That the Highlands and Islands Development Board Area Extension Order 1979, a copy of which was laid before this House on 23 October, be approved.—[ Mr. John Stradling Thomas.]

Question agreed to.

Fishery Protection Vessels

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[ Mr. Brooke.]

10.41 pm

I come, Mr. Deputy Speaker, from a city where fishing is of very great importance—indeed, this is true of the South-West generally—and it is of the greatest importance to fishermen and to our fishing industry that we have good protection from offshore patrol vessels.

I believe it is true to say that nearly a million tons of fish was caught in 1978 and that the value was around £250 million. That perhaps gives some background to the importance of what I wish to discuss tonight, and that is the provision of new offshore fishery protection vessels. There are three points in particular that I should like to raise and that I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to answer.

The first is the timing of decision on a new design for a fishery protection vessel to replace the Ton class, which is now rapidly ageing. A decision is long overdue and is becoming truly urgent. I hope that the Minister will be able tonight to give some indication of the time scale for a decision on putting boats out to sea.

My second point concerns the general nature of the vessels which are to be brought into service. At the moment, there is a two-tier system in operation, with the small Ton class going out only to 12 miles and the larger, more modern, Island class going out to 200 miles. I urge upon the Minister the value of having vessels which can all go out as far as 200 miles. This seems to me to give far greater flexibility than having one group which can go out fairly far and another which cannot. I hope that this point will be taken into consideration.

My third point concerns the general capability of the vessel. I recognise, of course, that if it is asked to go out to 200 miles, the vessel needs to be of considerable operational capability.

The "Osprey" has been widely canvassed as a suitable replacement. I hope that my hon. Friend will set out his views. No doubt he will have seen or heard about the BBC documentary programme featuring the "Osprey" that was broadcast on 17 October. The impression given by the programme was that the Royal Navy collectively was a set of stiff-necked fools who could not see a bargain when it was staring them in the face. I do not subscribe to that view, but the programme raised a number of questions that my hon. Friend should be asked to answer.

I shall make several suggestions concerning what should be required of new offshore vessels. First, I believe that they should have a good speed to cope with modern trawlers and other fishing vessels that are extremely sophisticated and can move at speed. We would not send the police in three-wheeled invalid cars when the get-away vehicles are Jaguars. I suggest that the same must apply to patrol vessels.

Patrol vessels have to have a boarding capacity to enable them to check foreign vessels to ascertain whether anything is wrong. It is of the utmost importance that the capacity should be well developed. That is a feature that should be borne well in mind.

The vessels must be tough if they are to venture into the North Sea and the North-East Atlantic, where we all know that weather conditions can be appalling. There have been several tragedies in those areas in the past few weeks. The vessels must be able to withstand severe weather conditions. They need to be able to withstand the possibility of accidental collision. If they are to try to catch vessels that are not where they should be or are doing something wrong, there must be a greater risk of collision, accidental or deliberate.

If the vessels are to be kept at sea for 10 days or longer, htey will need to be comfortable for the crews, who may be operating in difficult weather and other difficult conditions. I believe that the Royal Navy describes that capacity as seakindliness. That is an important feature. All of us who have suffered from being in small boats or in uncomfortable boats while at sea will know how much it matters. Even seasoned sailors need to live in a reasonable degree of comfort.

The BBC television programme made much of the capacity of the "Osprey" to have a helicopter landing on its deck. We were shown a small helicopter landing when weather conditions made the sea like a mill-pond. That was hardly a good illustration of the capacity of the "Osprey". I have lived by the sea for most of my life, and the times when it looks like a mill-pond are few in the course of a year.

It is far more likely that if a helicopter is to land it will be in relatively poor conditions, if not downright appalling. I ask my hon. Friend whether he thinks that that capacity is of importance to fishery protection vessels. If he thinks that it is, I suggest that the "Osprey" is not the vessel to be able to deal with it.

Those are all questions that I cannot answer myself, but they are of the greatest importance. I trust that my hon. Friend will answer them tonight and end the prolonged period of uncertainty about this matter.

10.49 pm

I welcome the debate tonight and should like to follow the speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) with two points. First, the poacher has to be caught, and a vessel will be needed that can make 16 knots. Many of our trawlers can reach that speed.

The hon. Lady mentioned the BBC programme concerning a new type of vessel, the "Osprey", which Denmark has picked up. The old jibe about England is that we invent something good but do not carry it through and someone else reaps the benefit of our technological knowledge. However, is the "Osprey" as good as all that? How does it stand up in tough weather? The hon. Lady mentioned force 8 or 10 gales, and our fishing vessels can catch fish in a force 8 gale in the Arctic.

Speed and toughness are both important. The Minister will have had his experts check the data. I have listened to fishermen in my constituency discussing how good or how bad these vessels are.

I emphasise that we need a decent fishery protection flotilla. We need many more boats and faster and tougher boats. The magic word today in fishing is "conservation". There is no point in conserving our stocks of fish for our men to catch from Cornwall or Ullapool and Mallaig in Scotland if other fishermen can come in with impunity, whether they are the French from the EEC or Communist boats from Archangel or Murmansk. I do not care where they come from. They do not come from here. If we are discussing 200-mile limits, I say to the Minister that they can sneak in within a 12-mile limit, pick up the fish and get away.

I welcome the hon. Lady's contribution and I shall listen with keen attention to the Minister's reply.

10.52 pm

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) for giving me the opportunity to speak about the Royal Navy's fishery protection task. I agree with her about its vital importance.

I also welcome the opportunity to answer some of the critcisms that were levelled not just at the fishery protection vessels proposed by the Royal Navy but at the Royal Navy itself. I wish to correct some of the factual errors contained in the BBC's recent programme about the "Osprey" in its series "The Risk Business".

Since the debate arises mainly from that programme, I must emphasise that the Royal Navy's attitude to "Osprey" relates solely to our assessment of her capability to undertake patrol operations in the offshore zone—that is, out to 200 miles. It was as an offshore patrol vessel that the BBC's programme considered her. That zone includes part of the North Sea and the Atlantic.

For reasons on which I shall expand later, the Royal Navy finds "Osprey" to be completely unsuitable for the offshore patrol duties that would be asked of her. That view is shared by the Fishery Departments, whose policy dictates the way in which the fishery protection task is carried out. There is, therefore, no question at all of her being used for these operations.

To put these remarks in context, I should like to say little about the task of fishery protection.

Just as the Fishery Departments are responsible for determining fishery protection policy, so similarly the Department of Energy dictates the policy for the protection of offshore oil installations, a task also undertaken by the Royal Navy fishery protection squadron. The job calls for long and arduous patrols at sea, and the North Sea, particularly in winter, boasts some of the most extreme weather and sea conditions in the world. It calls for tact and diplomacy in boarding and inspecting fishing vessels of those nations permitted to fish within our extended fishery limits and perhaps for even more tact and diplomacy in boarding those that should not be there. It calls for all the professionalism which is the tradition of the Senior Service that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Duffy) and I know and respect.

As my hon. Friend said, the fishery industry in the United Kingdom is important. In 1978, 957,000 tons of fish, including shellfish, were lander at a value of more than £250 million. In that year, there were some 16,000 full-time fishermen in the United Kingdom and probably three or four times their number in the related shore-based industry.

The fishery protection squadron consists of two elements, the offshore division and the coastal division. The offshore division is the area from 12 to 200 miles on median lines around our coasts, except for the English Channel and the Irish Sea. This area is patrolled by a force of Royal Navy Island class vessels except for the area west of Scotland, which is patrolled by vessels of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland, which are civilian manned. In the Royal Navy's area of patrol are a large and growing number of oil installations for the safety of which the Royal Navy is also responsible. Aerial surveillance of the offshore areas is provided by Royal Air Force Nimrod long-range maritime patrol aircraft, which fly for 180 hours a month. This is sufficient to cover the entire area once every 10 days. But, in practice, they overfly more frequently the area where fishing usually occurs.

The coastal division consists of Ton class mine countermeasures vessels and HMS "Tenacity", a fast patrol boat. These ships patrol the 0 to 12 mile limit around our coasts and the whole of the English Channel and the Irish Sea. The coastal waters around Scotland are patrolled by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland, which has its own inshore vessels. Royal Navy Sea Devons provide our aerial surveillance facility for the coastal division. They are tasked to fly about 65 hours a month.

These are the forces that we dedicate to fishery protection, but we can, and do, provide other resources such as additional RN ships and RN and RAF fixed and rotary-wing aircraft, as and when necessary. As my hon. Friend said, the Ton class vessels used to patrol the coastal zone are ageing warships and their primary role remains mine countermeasures. The new offshore patrol vessel will be procured to replace the ageing Tons. I should like to make clear that it will not replace the Island class vessels, as the BBC programme implied. The criticisms levelled at the Islands when they came into service, which the hon. Member for Attercliffe will probably recall, have proved unfounded. They perform their tasks well and we have no plans to replace them except in the normal course of events.

As my hon. Friend properly said, it is purely to replace the Tons that we need a new vessel. We have already embarked upon a programme to replace them in their mine countermeasures role with vessels of the new design Hunt class. However, advancing technology has dictated an extremely sophisticated vessel to undertake this vital task, which will, of course, be expensive. Frankly, it would be to misemploy these highly sophisticated units to engage them on fishery protection tasks. Thus, the decision was taken to proceed with plans to procure a purpose-built vessel for fishery protection duties.

In defining our requirement for the new vessel, we have kept in close touch with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, whose responsibility it is to advise the other Fishery Departments on what ships and aircraft are most suitable for their tasks. Although no final decision has yet been taken—I appreciate the urgency, as my hon. Friend stated it—I agree with my hon. Friend that it would be preferable to procure a vessel that could operate throughout the 200-mile limit rather than be restricted to the coastal zone, as the Tons must be. This would provide a much more flexible system.

We considered 18 different ship designs to meet our requirements. The hon. Member for Attercliffe will recall this because much took place while he was holding my office. We were looking for a ship with the ability to stay out of port for protracted periods without any deterioration in the efficiency of the crew due to fatigue caused by the ship's motion, to which reference has been made tonight. The ships would need safe and efficient systems for launching and recovering the boat used by the boarding party. Helicopter facilities were highly desirable and the Royal Navy wanted sufficient space to give the vessel a useful role in wartime, such as minesweeping or minelaying, although, of course, this was not a consideration which concerned the Fishery Departments.

It is here that I should like to return to the "Osprey" and answer some of my hon. Friend's questions. I have already said that we have not made a final decision about the new OPV—the offshore patrol vessel—but what is quite clear is that the "Osprey" would not meet our requirements for a vessel capable of operating throughout the 200-mile zone, as was suggested by the "Risk" programme. The design has been carefully evaluated in this context with a full assessment of all the documentary evidence supplied by her designers, together with evidence of first-hand experience gained by the team of Royal Navy, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food representatives who recently made two trips to sea in her.

The first trip was in calm waters off Harwich, and it was there that a small helicopter landed on board to demonstrate the claim that helicopter operations could be undertaken at sea. The second was during a two-day patrol off Denmark when officials had the opportunity to see her operating in the patrol role.

"Osprey" fell short of our requirements in the following way. First, as to her endurance, our requirement demands the capability of remaining at sea without refuelling for up to 21 days. Our information about "Osprey's" capacity and fuel consumption suggests that she is capable of remaining at sea unsupported for only about half that time. Secondly, "Osprey's" motion is very uncomfortable and tiring. In this context, the remark of the senior officer of the fishery protection squadron, Capain Hill-Norton, on the "Risk" programme, that she was the most uncomfortable vessel that he had experienced, is most significant. Frankly, it is not acceptable to put at risk the efficiency of the crew during extended patrol operations.

I might add that during that voyage the sea state never increased above 3 to 4—in other words, in layman's terms, there were no white horses.

:I have written to the hon. Gentleman about this matter. Does he agree that many of these statements are now being challenged by various people who think that there is a bias in the Admiralty against the "Osprey"?

Yes. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. There may be challenge, but I am going on not just a subjective judgment but quite a detailed report by groups of people whose job it was to assess clearly what was happening when they had their two or three days on "Osprey". If I continue, I think that the hon. Gentleman will not be entirely displeased with what I end with.

In all the roughest weathers, it is quite clear that in sea state 5, which is very rough, to mount boarding parties would be just impossible.

My hon. Friend mentioned boat-handling arrangements. I have already mentioned the importance of streamlined boat handling and the boat-handling arrangements in fishery protection. The boat must be launched quickly and safely. The arrangements in "Osprey" were unsatisfactory and dangerous in anything but calm weather. The boat is launched and recovered through a hole in the stern. The crew have to wear hard helmets and lie in the bottom to avoid being hit by the iron transom under which the boat must pass.

My hon. Friend mentioned helicopter operations. We expect helicopters to play an increasing role in offshore protection. This is obviously important. It is our view that, because of the excessive motion of the ship, the number of days per year on which even a small helicopter could be landed on "Osprey" in offshore waters would be very low—probably less than 10.

The speed of "Osprey" as built by the Danes, in its present role, is about 16 to 17 knots with a clean bottom. We are, frankly, looking for about 20 knots in the OPV that we shall procure.

The final comment I make about "Osprey" is on her construction. She is built to a commercial design and we believe that the standards of watertight integrity adopted are insufficient for a ship engaged in activities with a high risk of collision. This fact was mentioned by several hon. Members.

The Royal Navy requires its vessels to be subdivided into watertight compartments so that the vessel can be partially flooded without sinking. There is no such provision in "Osprey". This represents our opinion of "Osprey" as a potential offshore patrol vessel out to 200 miles.

Perhaps I should say that I am not suggesting that none of the features, undesirable from the Royal Navy's point of view, should not in time be improved, nor that the vessel would not be suitable for other less onerous roles. Of course, she has good points. For example, she is extremely manoeuvrable, as was demonstrated on the "Risk" programme. For a ship of her size she certainly packs in a lot of equipment. But the balance of her advantages and disadvantages makes her unsuitable as an OPV out to 200 miles. The "Risk" programme frankly got that wrong. In other tasks "Osprey's" balance of advantages and disadvantages will shape up differently. In fact "Osprey" is one of three designs selected as potential replacements for the Ton class vessels which currently patrol the waters around Hong Kong. Conditions are very different there.

None of the three vessels completely meets the Royal Navy's requirement, but for the small number of vessels involved it would not be a sensible use of our resources to design our own. So procurement will proceed on the basis of a design-and-build competition amongst United Kingdom shipyards. It will be up to "Osprey's" designers to arrange, with an appropriate shipyard, to tender on the basis of their design, if they wish to do so. The tender response will then be considered in competition with others.

Finally, I should say a word about our procurement procedures. We have been criticised for being a bureaucratic organisation, bound by the rule book and unwilling to consider anything new. Our history gives the lie to that. "Osprey's" designer said on television that he designed ships by "the seat of his pants" and rather implied that we should toss our rule books overboard and do likewise.

Of necessity, in a large organisation like the Ministry of Defence, procedures sometimes appear rather cumbersome. The choice of a particular ship design to carry out a naval task is not the result of the whim of a person or group of persons within the Ministry. It is the culmination of a process which involves the most detailed and careful consideration of the task that we have to undertake, as well as all the options available to meet this requirement and the implications of adopting each solution in operational, financial, industrial and other terms.

We first prepare a broad statement called a naval staff target which sets against the proposed task the range of possibilities worth pursuit. This provides the basis for a series of detailed studies which are designed to narrow down the various options open to us.

The next stage of the process is the preparation of a naval staff requirement. This sets out in precise detail the requirement and the way in which we believe it should be met. It exists first in draft form and it lays down parameters for the desired operating characteristics of the new vessel such as its endurance and its seakeeping capabilities, which are very important. These parameters cannot be defined in isolation. They are very much bound together.

We need to ensure that what is proposed is within the realms of what is possible, and there is an almost constant dialogue between designers, shipbuilders and financial experts to identify the construction possibilities. Both the naval staff target and naval staff requirement have generally to be approved by a committee which considers the project not just on behalf of the Royal Navy or the Navy Department but in relation to the defence needs of the country as a whole. It is considered not just "in house" within the Ministry of Defence but right across the board.

In the case of offshore protection, where the task is undertaken by the Royal Navy on behalf of the civil Departments, negotiations with the Fishery Departments run in parallel, with consultation at every stage. Only when these procedures have been followed and Ministers have approved the proposals is authority given to order the new ship.

I hope that I have said enough to satisfy the House that we do not undertake lightly our duty to obtain for the taxpayer the best value for his money. And it is not a consequence of this that our designs are old-fashioned—indeed the reverse is true. Royal Navy ships and weapon systems have a well-founded reputation for continuously pushing at the frontiers of technology. There are many examples of this. One only has to travel abroad to speak to other navy staffs to realise that they appreciate that, if sometimes we do not.

I hope that I have been able to present a fairly clear picture of the way in which the Royal Navy operates its fishery protection squadron, to underline its importance, and to explain why it is that we need the best possible ships for the task—and this does not necessarily mean the cheapest. I hope that I have shown that considerable care goes into preparing a naval staff requirement and that all the right authorities are consulted. I have tried to explain why ships which do not meet the agreed standards laid down in the naval staff requirement are rejected, and why the "Osprey" was rejected in particular.

I hope that we shall be in a position before long to announce our decision about the choice of OPV. But the decision that we make will have implications for the next 25 years and will represent a not insignificant sum of public money. We must therefore continue to ensure that we develop the right solution in the light of all the available evidence, remembering always that it is the taxpayer who provides the money.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes past Eleven o'clock.

Volume 973: debated on Thursday 8 November 1979

House Of Commons

Prayers

Private Business

Oral Answers To Questions

National Finance

Cash Limits

National Savings Certificates

Currency (Purchasing Power)

Financial Targets

International Monetary Fund (Substitution Account)

Capital Gains Tax

Exchange Controls

Fiscal Policy

Economic Growth

Gross National Product

Value Added Tax (Listed Buildings)

Expenditure

Avgas

Prime Minister (Engagements)

Questions To The Prime Minister

Business Of The House

Miss Betty Harvie Anderson

Bill Presented

British Aerospace

Standing Orders

Business Of The House

Orders Of The Day

Southern Rhodesia Bill

Southern Rhodesia Money

Southern Rhodesia Bill

Clause 1

Power To Provide Constitution For Zimbabwe

Statutory Instruments, &C

Customs And Excise

Social Security

Highlands And Islands

Fishery Protection Vessels