Nile Waters

Part of Prayers – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 18 May 1956.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Sir Douglas Dodds-Parker Sir Douglas Dodds-Parker , Banbury 12:00, 18 May 1956

I am sorry, I cannot give the figures offhand. The scheme will make water available after five years, whereas the other overall schemes to which the right hon. Gentleman referred would not yield benefit for nearly 15 years.

Silt is a matter of controversy; it clogs channels and is expensive to dredge. Personally, I am on the right hon. Gentleman's side on the question of silt, but there is, however, another side to the picture. So, in many ways, fertilisers are better than the silt and, as he mentioned, the Aswan scheme will produce that.

One other relatively small but important point, because it affects the whole of this High Dam discussion, is the right hon. Gentleman's proposal for a land tax. That might raise the money internally, but it would not provide the foreign exchange, which is the main reason why the Egyptian authorities approached the World Bank and ourselves, among others, in order to discuss this problem.

My hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine) asked whether consideration was given to comprehensive water use and needs in East Africa, and the reply to that was given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. H. Fraser) on 21st March, 1956. Three East African Governments are now looking at this question of the use of water and their needs, and we hope to have their views on that by the autumn, when we can then go to the other Governments concerned and discuss in more detail plans for the future.

The Nile waters and the Nile as a whole have been of great interest to Parliament for about 70 years, and I think that one can claim with pride the association of this country with the tremendous developments which have taken place during that period in the Nile valley. But, as has been pointed out, more than a quarter of the average annual flow of the Nile escapes unused to the sea; and restrictions have to be placed on the use of the water at certain places and at certain times of the year because this water is not kept, as it were, in reserve.

Engineers have worked out great projects for harnessing the water and irrigating the land so as to settle more people on it. But before any of this big development can be undertaken, the countries through which the Nile and its various branches flow must agree how to share the waters. My hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East said that this work has been carried out with great good feeling between the technical branches of the various Government Departments concerned.

As for the High Dam, which we have been discussing this morning, I think that one might recall with pride that Sir Murdoch Macdonald, who reached his ninetieth birthday about a week ago, and who was a Member of this House for so long, played a prominent part in the building of the original dam at Aswan and thus made made use of the water in Egypt.

This is the best known of the many schemes which have been put before the Governments concerned in the development of the Nile Valley; but I think that the point about this one is that it is planned to provide complete over-year storage of the Nile waters reaching Egypt, so that when all the irrigation works in Egypt are complete none of the river's flow into Egypt will remain unused.