As is well known, we operate under the key-of-the-cupboard system for nuclear weapons—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] As is also well known, when we get our Polaris submarines—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]—we shall have our own warhead. I am talking about the nuclear deterrent; the right hon. Gentleman is talking about tactical weapons. If he wants the figure of tactical weapons, I can no doubt supply him with that, but I am now talking about the nuclear deterrent, over which we have complete control and for which we shall have our own warhead—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] That is what I understand the right hon. Gentleman and his Friends are to discard.

The second change that I think the House noted yesterday—perhaps a little less controversial—is that Soviet society is evolving very fast; something, let me suggest, that those who are hottest to act against other political systems of which they disapprove might do well to ponder. As the Russian people get more, they will want more. What is more, they will be less ready to risk what they have. Therefore, on the evidence before me, I have persisted in my view, put rather crudely, perhaps, that a fat Communist is to be preferred to a thin Communist. These arguments seem at long last to be making some impression on the United States of America. [Interruption.] I did not think that right hon. and hon. Members opposite quarelled with that. I thought that their whole purpose—and in this I believe that we feel the same—is that we should increase trade with Russian, and try to take advantage of the fact that I have recorded that society in Russia is evolving very fast.

The difference, if I may say so—and I believe this to be true—between the Russia of Stalin and the Russia of Mr. Khrushchev is that though one was and the other is a Communist—and we must never forget that—the people in Russia today are able to express their views and wishes. I have the strongest impression that any move by Mr. Khrushchev makes towards conciliation or co-operation with the West, to reduce tension and avoid conflict, will have the strongest support of the Russian people; indeed, that they are urging him on.

This we should mark, and did mark yesterday in speech after speech, as one of the significant features of the new world into which we are moving. Therefore, I welcome the increasing contacts, both political and social, that we are making with the Soviet Union. I want them to be multiplied, and I want them to be multiplied, too, with the countries of Eastern Europe.

Therefore, I feel that the foreign policy of this country—which, for the sake of shortness, I have often described as a two-handed foreign policy, is basically right; strength on the one hand, and conciliation on the other. By strength, I mean total firmness when Communist countries do, or try to do, things they ought not to be doing, and dogged determination to find out, or rather to create, common, ground on which we can agree and co-operate.

The result of the foreign policy of strength is shown, in the N.A.T.O. area, in which we have not, let us remember, lost an acre or a free man to the Communist countries. There will, nevertheless, be in the N.A.T.O. Alliance arguments as to how many divisions we might wish to put on the eastern frontier of Germany, or what weight of weapons, or penetration of weapons is to be allocated to SACEUR, but those are quite secondary matters.

What matters, and what matters most, is that N.A.T.O. is fulfilling its primary purpose of preventing the invasion and, therefore, the destruction, of Western Europe. The answer to the fuller use of the N.A.T.O. Alliance lies in two things—the fuller use of the Council by the allies and, as I think the right hon. Gentleman indicated yesterday, the fuller use of the nuclear committee both for nuclear planning and targeting and for nuclear matters in general.

To sum up this section of what I have to say, I think that it is the policy of nuclear strength, above all, that is keeping the peace, but that the policy of conciliation is showing results in the marked reduction of tension between the Soviet Union and Western Europe. The House will have marked the contrast between the urgent, strident demands made on the allies on behalf of Germany and Berlin only two years ago—I remember that very well, because I had to sit with Mr. Rusk at a very dangerous time, when Russia was threatening the Berlin Corridor—with the treaty signed the other day with the so-called D.D.R.

There is less tension, too, between the Soviet Union and the United States since the withdrawal from Cuba. The House will have noted that, though the Cuban crisis is only a short distance in time away, the United States is today selling wheat to Russia. We have been able to agree the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty for banning tests in the atmosphere, there is the outer space agreement and the agreement on fissile material. We have been able to develop Anglo-Soviet trade to quite a significant extent and, as I have said, we have been able to increase the official and social contacts between our two countries.

The hopeful thing is—and this is my strong impression—that both in the Soviet Union and in the West we greatly prefer today to yesterday in our new relationship. But, on the evidence before me, I think it is legitimate to conclude that we are through what I might call the first stage of the trial of strength with this part of the Communist world. A condition of success was that the nerve of the West should hold during the cold war, and it did.

This is no time to weaken the deterrent, but it is time to negotiate, and that, rather than going for the increase in the number of conventional forces all over the world, is the use that I would make of the umbrella of the stalemate of nuclear power. So I claim that we can say that the results of strength and conciliation and diplomacy are with us today, and not the least of the credit for this goes to the British who have played a large part in the N.A.T.O. Alliance.

A number of speeches, particularly from hon. Members opposite, encourage me to say a word about psychological diplomacy when we are dealing with the Russians. We in the West—I think it is worth noting this—are in a hurry for results; the Russian is never in a hurry. I can give several examples of this out of my own recent experience. I have constantly pressed the Russian leaders to tell us what is needed to complete the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, that is to include the underground tests as well. I have suggested to them—I think that this will seem a sensible suggestion to the whole House—that Russian, United States and British scientists should get together to tell the Governments what is required for this purpose. They will not do so; and they will not do so because they are not yet certain that they want it. When the time does come probably we shall have to move with speed, but it is not yet; they take their own time.

It is the same with disarmament. We have come forward with many ideas on disarmament, many of them very reasonable, but so far the Russians have countered them all with the objection that they require inspection—the two right hon. Gentlemen will have found this—and that they equate inspection with espionage. This is an excuse—it is not the reality—and it is, I believe, because, faced with the Chinese, they cannot make up their mind yet whether they want disarmament at all. I judge in this context that, with his problems at home and the difficulties that he has with his friends, Mr. Khrushchev has not a great deal of time to spare at the present moment for long negotiations with the West, and it would be very unwise, if this is so, to press him. Nevertheless, we must use diplomatic channels to the full and have our plans ready in case the opportunity arises.

Under the general heading of disarmament, and in another field to which the hon. Member for Leeds, East referred, I should like to say a word, because I made a suggestion in a speech at Toronto not long ago and invited the Russians to explore the possibility whether they could not join with the United States and the United Kingdom in joint action to assist the developing countries of the world. I made this suggestion because they are neither members of the International Bank—I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition knew this when he was in Russia. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Well, the right hon. Gentleman did know.

I was going on to say that they are neither members of the International Bank nor are they members of the International Development Association; they are members of neither. I think that it would be a very good thing if they would come into these international organisations and therefore show that they could give disinterested aid to the developing countries.