Mr Robert Carr: My only motivation in approaching this subject is a desire to win the war against terrorism and to protect the British public and enable them once again to live under the Queen's peace. When we ask ourselves about this question, we find that it is inevitably a difficult one. It is a question about which people naturally have very strong feelings. I certainly do. But what we owe the country is...
Mr Robert Carr: This is not a matter to which one can apply a rule and which can be measured precisely. This is more a matter of judgment. I believe that if we spoke to most of the policemen, of all ranks, involved in that operation the majority judgment would fall heavily on the side which I have just put forward. I believe that the greatest deterrent controlling the gunmen in Balcombe Street is the...
Mr Robert Carr: It is giving way, more than anything else, which makes my speeches longer. I should like to do so but I am afraid I cannot. We must also remember that the strength of the terrorists against whom we are fighting depends on money and supplies as well as on people. We must think about where the money and supplies come from. We believe that most of them come from abroad. What would be the effect...
Mr Robert Carr: I shall not give way. The Government's policy must not appear feeble. It must appear strong. We should not be surprised that the public as a whole turn so strongly towards capital punishment. At present they feel that the battle is not being won. They have doubts about the effective will of the Government to prosecute. I am not saying that they are justified, but that is what they feel. It is...
Mr Robert Carr: Will the Prime Minister clarify one point on collective responsibility? We understand that during the referendum campaign Ministers will be free to talk according to their personal views. After the referendum campaign, when the matter is debated again in the House will the Prime Minister restore collective responsibility?
Mr Robert Carr: I thank the Prime Minister for what he said about my right hon. Friend the Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath). May I ask whether, in view of the latest CBI survey—published a day or two ago—which shows the most depressing trends about the likely prospects for unemployment, investment and exports, he will have urgent talks with the CBI about what can be done to help industry to overcome these...
Mr Robert Carr: This is a very important matter. Will the Prime Minister undertake to see, therefore, that the forthcoming White Paper specifically discusses the question of percentage polls in the referendum, and margins of majority one way or the other, and their effect on the decision?
Mr Robert Carr: May I ask the Leader of the House to give the business for next week?
Mr Robert Carr: Perhaps the Leader of the House will help us, because all sides of the House will need some help about tomorrow's business. There is a serious point about tomorrow's business on which I think the House would like some guidance. Will the Leader of the House give some information about the motion which has appeared on the Order Paper today to set up a Select Committee to examine and report on...
Mr Robert Carr: While I appreciate what the Leader of the House said about tomorrow's Bill, I am still not clear whether the Select Committee will be set up irrespective of whether that Bill receives a Second Reading.
Mr Robert Carr: As the hon. Gentleman referred to me, will he tell the House and the country what his enormous programme of municipalisation will do to increase the number of house-owners?
Mr Robert Carr: To revert to the Chancellor's original answer, is it not a fact that in a public speech in September he told the public that he expected inflation to be reduced to about 10 per cent. by the end of this year if the social contract was adhered to? What has happened since September to change his view?
Mr Robert Carr: Reverting to the original Question, may I ask the Chancellor to confirm that the annual rate of inflation over the last three months, on the same basis as he told the country it was 8·4 per cent. in September, is now 23 per cent. and to explain why that change has occurred?
Mr Robert Carr: Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that what the House decided last night, with the co-operation of Labour Members, is unwanted expenditure to help old people? Secondly, he made the claim that it will increase the borrowing requirement by £240 millon. In view of the fact that his arithmetic has no precedent and knows no bounds, will the Chancellor publish in the Official Report how that...
Mr Robert Carr: Is it in the Library?
Mr Robert Carr: Does the right hon. Gentleman wish to achieve the objectives that he has outlined even if the method that he has chosen causes the destruction of existing private businesses—whether firms, manufacturing businesses, or whatever—and prevents the growth of new ones?
Mr Robert Carr: It is clearly of the greatest importance that there should be good international arrangements to deal with the petrodollar recycling problem and to reduce the risk of individual countries being driven to take "beggar my neighbour" policies and push the world into a general slump. Therefore, we welcome the real progress which was clearly made at Washington last week and we assure the right...
Mr Robert Carr: It is astonishing that the Government presume neither to move nor to argue in any way a clause of this kind. When one thinks of what is at stake and the very strong views aroused in the House and felt by the majority of the last Parliament, the thought that the Government should imagine that they will achieve this clause without in any way attempting to justify it is hitting a new low, even...
Mr Robert Carr: I am not sure whether that is in order under this clause. If it is, I will willingly enter into debate with the Prime Minister on it, but what he is saying is complete nonsense. It is not a fact. If all unions had registered, as the Prime Minister himself said they should in 1969, this would not have arisen. The Prime Minister's White Paper In Place of Strife made registration a condition of...
Mr Robert Carr: It may be very important and we could have another debate about it and I could prove that the Prime Minister is talking irresponsible nonsense, but it is nothing to do with this matter of the retrospective repayment of money paid deliberately and properly by unions when they need not have done so. The unions need not have paid this tax, but they did so deliberately because they deliberately...