Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Southern Rhodesia – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 21 July 1964.
Mr Arthur Bottomley
, Middlesbrough East
12:00,
21 July 1964
Does not the Secretary of State think it rather farcical that just two hours after the end of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, at which the leaders of Commonwealth countries had urged in strong terms that Her Majesty's Government should do something about Southern Rhodesia, the Prime Minister should appear at a Press conference and treat the matter so light-heartedly as a mere nothing and about which he proposed to do nothing?
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.