During the 18 months that I have been a Member of this House I have sat through quite a number of all-night sittings, but I do not remember any other occasion when everybody in the Chamber, including myself, was fully awake at half-past seven on the following evening. I think that is a measure of the interest shown in this subject by Members on both sides of the Committee.

I am happy to follow the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) partly because I play, in a very junior manner, a role which he has fulfilled so admirably for so long, and partly because I want to talk, as he did, about the economic development of the backward countries.

I thought the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) made an extremely interesting and, if I may say so, well informed speech, and he was absolutely right to begin with President Truman's Fourth Point in his address of 1949. But it is no good our blinding ourselves to the fact that the Fourth Point has lost something of its impetus during the last few years and that people no longer write about it in the same strain as they did three years ago.

I was looking only this morning at a book by the eminent economist, Thomas Balogh, "Dollar Crisis," a work with which, as hon. Members opposite will not be surprised to know, I have many points of disagreement; but it is interesting to notice that in his chapter on the backward areas, to which he gives the title, "Beyond the Marshall Plan," he wrote that he regarded the Fourth Point as a kind of development of Marshall Aid. Today, everybody feels that it will be a long time before the Fourth Point can be implemented.

I do not believe that is primarily because of the shortage of capital among the Western nations. After all, since the war the American and British Governments have done a certain amount of overseas investment, and there has been a considerable amount of private investment, notably in oil. One of the reasons why the Fourth Point has lost something of its impetus during the last two or three years is because it has become clear that the investment of capital and the sending of technicians to the backward areas will not automatically ensure an improvement in the standard of living of those areas.

The whole subject of the causes and conditions of economic progress is very complicated, and I personally have derived a good deal of benefit from reading the very interesting United Nations Report on the undeveloped areas, which was published last year. If one reads this Report it becomes quite clear that a good many conditions have to be fulfilled if economic progress is to be made in those areas.

The most obvious condition is that those areas should have some undeveloped resources, but there are a great many other conditions as well. For example, we cannot have economic progress unless the legal system of a territory makes it possible to introduce innovations in technique, and economic progress also depends on having a Government which is able to pursue a wise policy and which is also able to provide an honest and firm administration.

We have also to bear in mind the land Laws. The historian Sir Lewis Namier has claimed—and there is a great deal in what he says—that the story of history is largely the story of the interplay between men and tracts of land. In many backward areas it is the backward land laws which make it difficult to secure economic progress.

Finally, we cannot have economic progress unless a considerable amount of money is spent on education. There cannot possibly be progress without a persistent improvement in technical education.