At the beginning of his speech, before his most impressive tribute to the Gurkhas, the right hon. and gallant Member for Norwood (Sir J. Smyth) supported the plea which had been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) to the army and to the other branches of the Armed Forces to alter their arrangements about returning the bodies of people who die abroad.

I had a case eight months ago which I raised with the War Office of a constituent in Tredegar. The greatest possible confusion had been caused by the different advice which had been sent back from B.A.O.R. to the relations of my constituent. I must say for the War Office that when the matter was raised it took it up with the utmost detail, did its best to clear it up and was apologetic for the fact that there had been confusion in the advice given to the family concerned. Another advantage, however, of the proposals put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley is that if they were accepted and carried through such confusion for families at moments of distress would be avoided. I hope, therefore, that the Government will consider carefully my hon. Friend's proposal.

I came to the House today primarily to hear whether the Government had an answer to give to my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), and I shall await with great interest to see whether they have any case to present against the formidable indictment made today by my hon. Friend and which he has made in slightly more abbreviated form in earlier Questions to the Government. Indeed, my hon. Friend, with other hon. Members, has for many months had a Motion on the Order Paper demanding the appointment of a Select Committee to investigate the Kuwait operation. It would have been much better had provision been made by the Government or by the Opposition for a full debate on that Motion demanding the appointment of a Select Committee. I will certainly await with great interest what the Secretary of State for War has to say in reply to the detailed charges which have been made. It would have been better if such questions as this could have been dealt with by a Select Committee.

It is no use the Government escaping with the idea that my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley constitutes a kind of one-man Select Committee in permanent session and that hon. Members may regard this as a substitute for more elaborate procedures. My hon. Friend certainly does it with great skill and assiduity, but he would, I am sure, be the first to demand—he has already done so—that there should have been a proper inquiry by a Committee appointed by the House of Commons to consider the matter.

It would be very unwise for the Minister to try to brush away in a cavalier manner the details which have been presented by my hon. Friend, because there have been too many occasions within the recent memory of the House when my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley has been proved right and hon. Members have been proved wrong. There was a recent case, which I quote only as an example, last week.

On the Friday before last, the Prime Minister said that he awoke one morning and read in the newspapers an astonishing statement of an allegation that the Admiralty had known that there had been a spy in the service of the Admiralty for the previous eighteen months. The Prime Minister was astonished to read that on the Friday morning. Had he listened to what my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley said much earlier, he would have known that the evidence existed long before. This was thought by the Prime Minister to be of sufficient importance for him to set up a tribunal. Therefore, I am sure that hon. Members opposite will take note of what is said by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, because he has an uncanny knack of proving right in these matters.

Moreover, if anyone doubts the wisdom of raising matters in the manner in which my hon. Friend has done, the best remedy which I can suggest to hon. Members opposite is that they should follow the same course as I have taken during the last week or so of reading the recently published memoirs of Lord Avon dealing with the nineteen-thirties. His memoirs dealing with Suez, I am sorry to say, are not so informative.

If hon. Members will kindly read Lord Avon's description of what happened before the Second World War and how we got into that war, they will find it a remarkable book. Lord Avon reveals that on one occasion after another, totally misleading information had been given from the Government Bench and that the House and the country had been grossly deceived on matters of the gravest importance concerning the Armed Services and matters concerned with the conduct of British foreign policy. He gives an account, for example, concerning our plan which is entirely different from that given to the House and the country at the time.

If any hon. Members think that these matters should not be probed and that we should be ready to accept eagerly the words of Ministers, I advise them to refer to Lord Avon's memoirs, covering a period not so very long ago, when there were in office some Ministers who are still in office. I advise such hon. Members to do that when they think that some of us occasionally show an excessive lack of readiness to trust what Ministers tell us from the Dispatch Box.

What is the truth about the Kuwait operation? The two stories cannot be true. There is the story presented by the Government at the time and the story presented today by my hon. Friend, and there is a flagrant clash between the two. Somehow, the truth has to be established. In this case, it was fortunate, if there was to be a campaign, not to have an enemy; that assists, and that is what happened in Kuwait. But there might have been an enemy and it might have been that the claims made by the Government of the time, instead of being exposed massively in a speech by my hon. Friend today, might have been exposed on the battlefield. However, this House of Commons has the duty somehow to try to discover the truth about the Kuwait operation. That was the main purpose of my hon. Friend's speech today and in so doing he was performing a service to the whole House and to the country.

I will not go through all the quotations—my hon. Friend had many of them—but I should like to add a few of the quotations from HANSARD of what was said by the Government at the time. This is the Government's account of what happened in Kuwait, what they said to the House of Commons and what they asked the country to believe. On 10th July, 1961, my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Mr. Driberg) asked the Secretary of State for War to what extent troops serving in Kuwait have been conditioned to a tropical climate and instructed in the elementary techniques of avoiding heat exhaustion. The reply of the Secretary of State for War was as follows: Most of the troops serving in Kuwait are already acclimatised, having been moved from other tropical stations. All soldiers receive instructions in the elementary techniques of avoiding heat exhaustion as part of their recruit training, and special instructions have been issued to troops who have been sent to the Persian Gulf."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th July, 1961; Vol. 644, c, 11.] That seemed absolutely satisfactory.

The following day the former Minister of Defence made an even more elaborate reply in which he said: I quite agree with the hon. Gentleman about the problems of heat. A very large proportion of the statement I am circulating, which is far too long to read this House, is devoted to a detailed description of the medical facilities. They are very large. They allow quick evacuation to air-conditioned hospitals. There are specialist services dealing with the problems of heat exhaustion. The situation is reasonably adequately covered. If it is not, the Under-Secretary of State for War will no doubt report on this as soon as he returns, but I think that it is covered."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th July, 1961; Vol. 644. c. 213.] That was on 11th July.

There are many other things which could be quoted all in the same sense, but I will just quote this one said on 19th July, when the hon. Gentleman the Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw), in the course of an exchange on these matters, said to the Under-Secretary of State for War: May I ask my hon. Friend not to take too seriously the strictures of the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), who has so long enjoyed the reputation of the Cassandra of the British Forces that he is absolutely furious that in Kuwait everything has gone all right? That was what was said by the hon. Gentleman, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley replied: May I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I do not think that Kuwait has gone all right? I think that the Government have used their public relations services to prevent the public from knowing the truth."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th July, 1961; Vol. 644, c. 1220.] Leaving aside the quite unworthy and quite unjustified suggestion made by the hon. Gentleman that my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley would have preferred things to go wrong—which I do not think anybody in the House believes, but leaving that aside—that was the picture given by the Government, and accepted by the hon. Gentleman, for example, that "everything had gone all right". That was the Government's story all through: "everything has gone all right". That was their story about Kuwait. They have never taken the trouble to alter it. They have never withdrawn it. It was claimed as being all right; they said it was fine. Indeed, it was supposed to be a brilliant military achievement, pretty well, according to the way the public relations officers described it, the most brilliant feat in logistics since Hannibal crossed the Alps. That is what the country was told.

What is the truth? Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen have to answer the details given by my hon. Friend. He referred to an article which appeared in The Times recently—23rd July, 1962—that is, almost a year after all these answers which were given here and which were supposed to tell us everything had gone all right in Kuwait. My hon. Friend referred to this article, as he has referred to it before, but for the sake of 'hon. Gentlemen who have not heard all the details I am going to make one or two quotations from it, from the defence correspondent of The Times, one of the most respected defence correspondents in the country. He says: The Army's Operational Research Establishment, which is engaged in a five-year programme of research into acclimatization to heat, has set out the main lessons of the Kuwait operation from the medical point of view in a report which is being circulated in the Army, and which is understood to contain some highly critical reflections on an undertaking which has hitherto been claimed as an almost unqualified success … The aspects of the Kuwait operation, apart from the vital one of acclimatization, which are understood to be causing most concern to those who have had access to the facts are faults of training and equipment … Much of the clothing and personal equipment is said to have been unsuitable in the heat, and the rations, although suitable for temperate climates, were unpalatable in the desert, with the result that many troops suffered from heat illness through lack of food … In the minds of many soldiers is the nagging suspicion that although the Kuwait operation was a model of quick deployment, and although it evidently succeeded in its aim, it has proved one fact beyond dispute—that if a force were required to carry out active operations—actually to fight—in a climate like that of Kuwait, it would be unwise to send units trained on Salisbury Plain. So that is the view of the defence correspondent of The Times a year later. Whatever anyone else may say he cannot say that the views of the defence correspondent of The Times coincide with that which the Government gave at the time it was happening. So somebody has to find out the truth.

Of course, it has been indicated before that, because no fighting developed, some people thought it was not necessary to send troops there and that that indicated that the whole of the events which led to the sending of the troops had been misrepresented to the House. I do not think it proper to go into that now, because that is a question of foreign policy, but it is no good the Government thinking that it is solely my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley who raised this, although he raised it with much more determination than anybody else. There is plentiful evidence to which the Minister has got to reply; and, indeed, many of the allegations which my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley was making at the time are now borne out by what is said by the defence correspondent of The Times, a year later, and, indeed it is not the defence correspondent of The Times only saying this about the Kuwait operation: he is reporting what people in the War Office had to say about it. So we have to find out the truth.

I do not think that the Secretary of State will be able to solve the problem here today. It is a pity he cannot. No doubt, he will get up and will try to dismiss some of the details. I do not think he will be very successful. He will try to create a different impression about them. I do not think the Minister will stand by all the claims he made at the time, or even that the hon. Member for Stroud will stand by what he said, that "everything has gone all right". I do not think he will stand by his statement. He will, no doubt, prefer to qualify it. I do not think he will stand by saying, "everything has gone all right", because the War Office does not think that and I do not think that the hon. Gentleman, who usually concurs with the War Office, will differ with the War Office on that. But the view of the operation in Kuwait has changed considerably since the time those views were being given by the Government.

One of the difficulties of the operation was that when troops were sent to Kuwait we had no debate in the House of Commons about it. We never had a debate in the House of Commons when troops were sent to Thailand. I think it is a most shocking state of affairs that the House of Commons should be invited to support the sending of troops to anywhere in the world without a debate in this House, and I think that both the Government and the Opposition will accept that proposition whenever British troops are sent abroad.

After all, if they are being sent particularly to a country as they were, in a hurry, they may be involved in battle. At least some people thought they might have been involved in battle. We might have had a situation, according to what the Government claimed to have happened, in which they might have been involved in battle in Kuwait, and yet we decided to send them there without debating the matter. The same happened over Thailand. I think it is most reprehensible. We were told in the case of Kuwait that we had to send troops if the Ruler asked for them. It is a most extraordinary doctrine, I must say. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says we were asked for them. We were never asked for them in Thailand, I quite agree. It was very dubious whether we were asked for them but the Government, in justifying their action in sending troops to Thailand said they were asked. It may be that when we read memoirs twenty years later that we shall see that they were misleading us, just as Lord Avon proves to us that his colleagues were misleading the country twenty years ago. I think that the people who requested that we should send troops to Thailand were the United States Government.

Some thirty of us, not sufficient to force a debate, demanded a debate on this issue of sending troops to Thailand, but we were denied the opportunity by the Government and, I am sorry to say, partly by the Opposition as well, but whatever views hon. Gentlemen may take about the rights and wrongs of sending troops to countries abroad we ought always to have a debate when this happens. I would have thought that the Secretary of State for War would have been in favour of it, as also would the Minister of Defence.

Their failure to do so is all part of their attitude, of saying, "If we can get this through Parliament, why worry? Let us push it through. There will be no trouble here." It is all part of their idea of reducing the stature of the House of Commons, and of thinking that when we are dealing with a matter such as the question of what went wrong in Kuwait we do not need a Select Committee. We did not have a Select Committee over Suez, where there was fighting, and many people were killed. Not even the Government will now say that Suez was perfectly managed.

In these days we do not have Select Committees of inquiry, but we did in the old days—even in the midst of wars. We had a full inquiry into the happenings at Gallipoli, in the midst of a war. But now the Whole status of the House of Commons is being altered. First, we do not have a debate when we send troops abroad. Then, if things go wrong, we still do not have a debate. We have no Select Committees to inquire into disasters, when they occur. The whole thing is smoothed over, with the Whips working hard to make everything convenient for the Government. That is what some of us protest about, and that is why my hon. Friend was right to raise the matter in this way.

What happens in the House of Commons when we do not have a debate When British troops are sent abroad? Examples are scattered through HANSARD from July to September, 1961. There are statements by the Minister of Defence on the reason why we went into Kuwait, about supplies to the troops, and about the position there—all dribbled out in a series of answers, many of which are misleading. The Minister says, "We are sending troops to Kuwait. We have no time to tell the House of Commons and the country what provisions have been made, but we will circulate details in the OFFICIAL REPORT". So they did circulate them, and then it was discovered by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley that misleading statements were contained in what had been circulated.

All that would have been avoided if the Minister had thought it his duty to tell the House of Commons why we were sending troops, and what provision was being made for them. If he had stood at the Dispatch Box and had told us that, many difficulties would have been avoided. I do not see how any hon. Member with respect for this House of Commons could think it proper to conduct our affairs in this manner. We want to hear answers to the questions raised by my hon. Friend about Kuwait. It will not be satisfactory for the Minister to tell us that the soldier referred to by my hon. Friend did not actually die through drinking beer.

The weight of evidence is not solely concerned with a few details of that nature; it is concerned with the question whether our Armed Forces are equipped to perform these kinds of task, especially when—on the Government's own confession, although I would never accept it—if any ruler of a country with which we have an alliance—and we did not even have an alliance with Thailand—or with whom we happen to be associated by way of a treaty asks us to send troops we have to send them. That is the Government's theory, but I do not think that it is correct. If it is, we certainly do not have the forces or the means of doing it. Not even the Government would pretend that we have. But if we do not have them, explanations should be made, and the time to make them is, first, when there is a demand that we should send troops and, secondly, when it is discovered that things are going wrong.

I agree with my hon. Friend that it would be very much better if the Government tried to uphold their responsibility to the House of Commons. Many of the things that have gone wrong with this country in the past twenty or thirty years have been due partly to the development by which almighty power is given to the hands of the Cabinet; indeed, almighty power is now in the hands of the Prime Minister. He decrees what is to happen. The Ministers have to obey him, and the back benchers opposite have to obey the Ministers and their Whips, and the House of Commons is deprived of control of these matters. This is offensive to the whole spirit of democracy. In this debate, therefore, we are trying to restore some kind of democratic control over one of the major obligations of the Government, namely, the defence of the country.

Many other matters could probably be sifted out only by such a form of Select Committee as my hon. Friend advocates, not only to inquire into these disasters but into the claims made by the Government for their defence policy. During our defence debates I have never heard from the Government or the War Office any explanation of their view about the use of nuclear weapons in Europe. Many important commentators on military affairs—including the defence correspondent of The Times, on a number of occasions both before and after he paid visits to B.A.O.R. in Germany—have reported that British forces are hopelessly dependent on nuclear weapons.

As far as I can make out, that policy has been pressed even further. Indeed, the Americans, in some degree, are already forcing that policy over. The American Secretary of Defence was returning to Washington just before the Cuban crisis when he said that he had been investigating, reviewing, or at any rate seeing tactical nuclear weapons which the Americans had 15 miles from the frontier. They were the ones put there recently. Apparently it seems to be the continued strategy to pour more of these so-called tactical nuclear weapons into that area, when I should have thought that any Government, whatever view they took about any other aspect of nuclear weapons, would be trying to keep them away from the most dangerous areas. That, again, is a matter not easily decided by debate. There are also secret matters which cannot properly be decided in debate. We understand that the question of spies cannot be dealt with here; they must be handed to an outside tribunal, which may, apparently, hold its proceedings in secret.

This is very unsatisfactory. If the Government take the view that their Ministers cannot give full answers to these military questions—and I understand that it may be difficult for them to do so at certain times—they resort to giving smooth answers, of the kind they gave us during the Kuwait operations. Many of those answers were misleading, in the sense that they said that the whole operation was going successfully and smoothly, and that everything was all right, when everything was not; indeed, a great deal was wrong.

What happens as a result of the contrast between what Ministers say at the time and what is subsequently discovered to be the truth, is that there is an erosion of belief in the democratic process; people believe less and less what Ministers say at the Dispatch Box and, more and more, take the view that Ministers are covering up.

I conclude as I began. If anybody thinks that these are unjustified charges and that we have no right to be suspicious about Ministers' speeches, I ask him to go away for the weekend and read Lord Avon's memoirs.