The Brandt Commission Report

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 6:54 pm on 18 April 1983.

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Photo of Mr Frank Hooley Mr Frank Hooley , Sheffield, Heeley 6:54, 18 April 1983

I am beginning to see signs in certain quarters of an anti-Brandt lobby developing, not from people who are hostile to the Third world or to aid, but among people who are very much committed to helping the poorest people in the world. This is an interesting development of which we may have to take account as debates go on. I am not sure of the exact motive for it. It may be cynicism about what has happened over the past three years, weariness of the argument, the hideous prospect of a Reagan-Thatcher combination over the next four years, which is almost too ghastly to contemplate, or the instability, corruption and undoubted tyranny in some Third world countries—El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile and Argentina spring to mind. It may be the problem of population increases, which pose such a tremendous strain on the planet's resources and on economic policies. However, there is a growing feeling among some people—I repeat that it is among people who are passionately devoted to Third world interests and to the poorer people — that Brandt does not have the answer. It is more important to study carefully what Brandt is saying. I do not follow the new school of thought, but I am concerned that it seems to be developing.

The record since the first Brandt report is grim. We all know how it was received by the Government —virtually dismissed in favour of open markets for trade, financial flows and demands that aid should be a matter not of helping the poorest but of political, commercial and industrial considerations, as the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir N. Marten) told us on 20 February 1980. The Government wanted a ruthless pursuit of monetarist policies in this country and abroad, but that had the consequences of mass unemployment, industrial stagnation, falling living standards, the collapse of commodity prices, high interest rates and economic ruin for the poorest countries whose exports can no longer buy them the things that they need to survive.

Although the Cancun summit resulted from the first Brandt report, as the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) rightly pointed out, it was a disastrously lost opportunity. However, the one thing that has undoubtedly changed the climate in the open market has been the debt crisis and the threat to the world banking system. I am not surprised that the right hon. Member for Sidcup, in his fascinating speech, spent much time on the problems of Mexico, Poland, Brazil and Yugoslavia, and pointed out the dangers to the international banking mechanism. I do not take the apocalyptic view that the system is likely to collapse. In the face of such danger, the self-interest— at the very minimum—of the Western world will see that it does not.

However, it is grimly ironic that the very countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, whose Governments for the past four years have been talking about market forces, the free flow of capital and all that claptrap, are now running desperately to the IMF and the World Bank — the international equivalent of public corporations—and saying "For goodness' sake, get us out of this mess." It is a mess that they have got themselves into by their own policies.

This may explain the significant change of Government tone. I am not saying that there has been a change in Government policy because, even if we see a Government change in policy after the election, it will be a change for the worse. However, there has been a substantial change in the tone of the pronouncements of the Foreign Secretary as compared with the tone and substance of Government pronouncements when the first Brandt report appeared. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) suggested that Lord Carrington had made a serious miscalculation in the original response to the first Brandt report.