Petrol Rationing

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 19 May 1950.

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Photo of Mr John Arbuthnot Mr John Arbuthnot , Dover 12:00, 19 May 1950

I did not make one or two statements—I asked one or two questions. I want now to substantiate further that statement that we are not getting the facts. I want to draw the attention of the Minister to the Question which I asked him earlier this week. I admit that it was asked with a certain amount of malice aforethought, because I wanted some ammunition for today's Debate. I asked the right hon. Gentleman what was the dollar content of petrol which came from various areas. Instead of answering the Question which was put down, the Minister answered an entirely different question and stated that the average dollar content of the sterling oil imported into this country was 30 per cent. If the Minister knows what is the average dollar content, presumably he knows the various factors which go to make it up and, therefore, he was in a position to have answered my Question directly had he wished to do so. This is just another instance of the Government not telling the country the facts.

For all those reasons, I make a further appeal to the Minister. I cannot help feeling that in the short time I have been in this House he has made a singularly able Ministerial impersonation of a cuttle fish. He has been spewing out inky verbiage, which has hidden the true facts and enabled him to slide away without telling the country either the Government's intentions or the facts of the situation. Neither the House nor the country is interested merely in the average dollar content. The interesting point, on which we should like a straight answer from the Minister, is, what is the dollar content in those areas where the dollar content is lowest and what steps are the Government taking to try to expand the production of petroleum in those areas to give us a greater amount of petrol?

I should like to draw the Minister's particular attention to the position in the Middle East. I suggest to him—I may be wrong and I hope he will correct me if I am—but I suggest to him that the average dollar content of the sterling petrol which is coming from the Middle East is somewhere about 10 per cent., and I suggest to him that if he takes the particular instance of Kuwait, which was one of the places mentioned in my Question that he slid out of the other day, he will find that the dollar content of the petroleum coming from there is considerably less than 10 per cent.—I think, probably, 2 per cent., if even that, because there is no gold clause in the contract so far as Kuwait is concerned. What we feel here is that we are not getting the information.

From what we can see of the position we think that there is an area from which we could get petrol without incurring a terrific dollar expenditure. The Middle East and Kuwait is the area on which we should concentrate, because in Kuwait, as my right hon. Friend the Member for King's Norton pointed out, the expansion possibilities, although they may possibly be long-term, are very considerable: production could be stepped up from 20 million tons to somewhere near 50 million tons in time. What action are the Government taking, in conjunction with others also concerned in Kuwait, to try to expand production there?

We are also gravely concerned about the position in Haifa. I do not pretend to know the details of the negotiations that have been carried on, or all the difficulties, but I do think that the House is entitled to a fair statement from the Minister. I have no doubt that these points will be expanded by hon. Members on this side of the House who have a greater knowledge than I have of them. At first blush it seems to be an absolutely absurd position that we in this country are sending aircraft to Egypt at the same time as that country is ignoring international law—violating international law—by refusing to allow our tankers to go through the Suez Canal. I suggest to the Minister that if the Government had pursued a stronger line of action our tankers would now be passing through the Suez Canal and we could, in fact, have the Haifa refinery going.

The Haifa refinery is of enormous importance. It can, in fact, deal with 4,000,000 tons of petroleum which means 800,000 tons of petrol a year. If one compares that 800,000 tons of petrol with the figure of 600,000 tons which we need in this country to solve our petrol difficulties, we see that there they are very largely solved at the outset. But the sad fact is that from one cause and another—and the entire responsibility for it cannot be shuffled off the shoulders of the Government—the position at Haifa is far from good. "The Times" on the tenth day of this month said: It is feared that, in spite of careful maintenance, another winter of idleness would reduce the efficiency of the plant to such an extent that the cost of renovation and replacement might be prohibitive. … The refinery now presents a sad picture of desolation; bushes and weeds flourish in the cracks of the concrete flooring, and a sapling has entwined itself about the support of the distillation unit. One cannot help feeling that the standstill at the Haifa refinery is a direct reflection of the inertia of His Majesty's Government.

There is one final point I should like to make. I wish to draw special attention to the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for King's Norton when he was speaking in the Debate on 29th March. He made a valuable suggestion to the Government which received extremely scant acknowledgment from the Parliamentary Secretary who replied. My right hon. Friend said this: His Majesty's Government should suggest to the United States that the leaders of both the American and British industries should be asked to come together, in proper association with Government representatives, to see whether they can work out, jointly, a solution of the considerable difficulties that face everyone concerned."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th March, 1950; Vol. 473. c. 517.] I suggest that in dealing with the Americans we are not dealing with an alien race. We and the Americans are of one blood; we speak the same language; our gallant men have fought together and died together on battlefields the world over; and our main objective is the same. I trust, therefore, that the Minister, when he is replying to this Debate, will not again brush aside my right hon. Friend's proposal; but that he will take it up and pursue it with vigour, keeping Parliament fully informed. To my mind, along this road lies the solution of our problem.