Overseas Service (School Leavers)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 14 May 1965.

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Photo of Mr Philip Goodhart Mr Philip Goodhart , Beckenham 12:00, 14 May 1965

I was a little surprised to hear the hon. and learned Member for Warrington (Mr. W. T. Williams) lending his distinguished support to the plea by the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) to extend greatly the number of semi-skilled and unskilled workers who are sent abroad by this country for voluntary work.

Although, without any doubt, the demands for skilled workers, particularly skilled teachers, is very high, indeed insatiable, I cannot believe that any advantage will be obtained by spending large sums of money to send semi-skilled bricklayers to Nairobi, Mauritius and Bombay. There is already a vast number of such men in these countries who have difficulties as it is in finding employment. It is the skilled men for whom there is a demand and not the semi-skilled and unskilled.

I was interested in the remarks of the hon. Member for Ealing, North, about the Holland Park comprehensive school. I happen to live in the road almost adjacent to the school. I can certainly join with him in paying tribute to the ingenuity and energy of these children, some of which, alas, is only spent in snapping wireless aerials off the cars parked in front of my house. If the hon. Member can do anything to get my wireless aerial back, I should be very pleased. I am sure that many of these pupils will go forward in time to do voluntary work of perhaps a more constructive nature, not only locally but overseas as well.

The hon. and learned Member for Warrington and the hon. Member for Ealing, North, during the election campaign and in the years before the last election, joined with other members of the Labour Party in saying that a great increase should be made in this country's contribution to overseas aid. I doubt whether any hon. Members sitting oppo- site dissented in any way from that cry, but unfortunately, as in so many cases, it looks as though the practice of a Labour Government will be very different indeed from the promises which were held out.

I shall be exceedingly surprised if the overall contribution made by Great Britain to overseas aid and investment in the under-developed countries does not this year decline. There will certainly be a change in the very sharp increases which have come about in recent years. Certainly, on Monday, we were given the stock words on the subject by the Chancellor of the Exchequer during the debate on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill. We heard of the way in which the operation of the Finance Bill will reduce the amount of investment overseas, of which a considerable amount would go to the under-developed countries. I hope that a similar fate will not befall the pro-programme for overseas volunteers, in which a very sharp increase is being undertaken. I think that it ought to avoid the poised Government axe, because it is comparatively cheap, certainly for the amount of publicity which it receives and the amount of good will which it generates.

If there is an increase in the sort of publicity which the hon. Member for Ealing, North, wants and a continuation of the great extension which we have had in the last five years and which was channelled so effectively by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr), when he was at the Department of Technical Co-operation, there will be considerable problems in the Voluntary Service Overseas movement. Expansion will undoubtedly bring very great problems in its train, of which the first which we shall have to tackle seriously will be the problem of leadership and care overseas.

I am delighted at the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Summers) talked about the contribution which the American Peace Corps has made. It has tackled this problem of local leadership and support for volunteers in an extremely imaginative fashion. In every country in which the Peace Corps operates there is a local director, often a man of very distinguished capabilities. For instance, the leader of the Peace Corps in Nigeria was previously the headmaster of the best American public school. The leader of the Peace Corps in Nepal has climbed Mount Everest, which must give him a certain amount of local prestige. In country after country, there are local Peace Corps directors, men of the highest calibre, backed up by an organisation which some of us might think is excessively large, but which is certainly vigorous and efficient.

It is miraculous that, in view of all the enemies which America has in the world, certainly in the under-developed countries, there has been, during the last four or five years, almost no local friction involving American Peace Corps volunteers. I can think of one unfortunate incident in Nigeria about four years ago, but none since then. A great deal of this achievement is due to the fact that they have first-class people in the overseas countries who can look after the volunteers and step in if there is any sign of trouble. Naturally, with our smaller number of volunteers, it is impossible for us to duplicate this form of organisation.

In the past, the care of our volunteers in overseas territories has often been left, on a rather hit-or-miss basis, to the embassies or High Commissions or to employees of the British Council, all of whom have a full-time job of their own to do although, because of the value of the work of these volunteers, they devote much of their own free time to looking after them. As the number of our volunteers increases sharply, it will be more and more difficult for people in the embassies and High Commissions and British Council employees to do this work on a part-time basis, and I hope that the overseas representatives of the Ministry of Overseas Development will devote a considerable amount of their time in future to looking after our volunteers.

The next problem is that of selection. I have had an opportunity of looking at the selection work done by the American Peace Corps, and its scope is quite staggering. An enormous machine exists for checking references. Ten doctors are working full time on the headquarters staff alone. I was assured when I was there, some months ago, that to keep an annual flow of 8,500 volunteers in the field would require a full-time selection staff at headquarters of no fewer than 150, most of whom would have to have psychiatric training.

There is not much need for us to try to duplicate this sort of machine in this country. One can almost say that in the past anyone who has volunteered has virtually selected himself, because so little was known about the scheme that to know about it at all suggested what the American selectors would call a high degree of motivation and also great ingenuity in hearing about the scheme. But as the publicity and knowledge of our scheme increases, it will be more important for us to improve the selection machinery.

The next problem is that of training. It seems to me that the volume of training given to many of our volunteers going overseas is inadequate. I know of a case not very long ago in which five volunteers, all school-leavers, went to a country in Latin America to teach English in the schools. Not one of them had had any experience or training of any sort in teaching, and I am informed that not one of them knew any Spanish, which was the local language. In fact, it all worked out splendidly, and they made a valuable contribution in the 12 months they were there, but this was a matter of chance and good luck and it could have gone badly wrong. One needs greater training before volunteers go out to these countries.

Two years or more ago the American Peace Corps received a request from the Indonesian Government to supply a number of athletics coaches. The American Peace Corps decided that they would try to do this, and about 18 coaches were assembled and given a 14-week course in Indonesian at a university. The coaches were divided into groups and put in rooms of four, in each of which there was an Indonesian student. They ate at tables of three or four, and at every table there was an Indonesian student. Every morning and every evening Indonesian music and Indonesian broadcasts were channelled into their rooms.

At the end of three-and-a-half months, these coaches, who had previously had no knowledge of Indonesia, could get their views across in Indonesian to the Indonesians. I can think of forms of training which I would not want given to the Indonesians at this moment, but it seems no bad thing that the Americans undertook to teach them to take a running jump. I understand that these coaches remain in Indonesia at present.

This is one example of the depth of effort, drive and imagination which the American Peace Corps put into their training programme. Of course, it can go badly stray. A distant cousin of mine volunteered for the Peace Corps some years ago. He was trained in Swahili and then sent to teach in a school in East Africa in an area where Swahili never had been spoken and never will be spoken. Nevertheless, I have shown the efforts which have been made.

Our equivalent to these enormous courses in America is four or five days at the Dartford College of Physical Education. I have the programme for the last course. I am sure that it was a very good course, and that the people concerned with it are extremely hardworking and dedicated to their work, but as an introduction to a year's work overseas it is not, I think, adequate at all. If we are to have a greatly expanded programme, we must pay much more attention to the problems of training.