Mr Alan Clark: Since 1964.
Mr Alan Clark: British Leyland.
Mr Alan Clark: I must first apologise for having missed the first few minutes of this debate. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Benyon) did me the courtesy of sending me a copy of the text of his speech which I read with the greatest interest. I can tell the House that my right hon. and hon. Friends are entirely in sympathy with the case made so lucidly by my hon. Friend. Early on in...
Mr Alan Clark: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. That was the point that I was trying to make, in perhaps less pithy language. In these days of greater mobility of the population, people change their addresses much faster and move from one place to another, and it may be that in the industrial climate that will develop over the next few years, with improved technologies, there will be substantial...
Mr Alan Clark: rose—
Mr Alan Clark: No one would deny that there would be a ripple effect, but when a constituency becomes so bloated and cumbersome as to impede the proper function of the representational process and the prospect of a general review remains remote, surely the ripple effect has to be accepted and confined as best it can be. As to the question of wards, of course we all depend on the ward structure for the...
Mr Alan Clark: What does the Minister think would be the effect on food prices of distributing the various mountains of foodstuffs accumulated under Common Market regulations?
Mr Alan Clark: Everything that the Minister says about capital investment in the dockyards is both true and welcome, but does he appreciate that those who work in the dockyards still feel strongly about their rates of pay? Some of my constituents are taking home as little as £36 or £38 a week.
Mr Alan Clark: I do not know whether any of the hon. Gentleman's constituents are in the same position as some of my own, but perhaps he was not here earlier when I pointed out to the Minister that a number of dockyard workers in Devonport would be better off, so they tell me, if they deliberately went unemployed and lived on social security. It is only their dedication and their pride in their skill that...
Mr Alan Clark: That might be a welcome suggestion, but does not the hon. Member agree that, whereas we still have a Navy and a naval policy, we do not have a foreign policy, so that there would be no point in publishing a White Paper?
Mr Alan Clark: No one can claim that the House does not have adequate time or opportunity to debate defence matters. We debate White Papers on the subject; we debate the pay of the Services, Supply Days are allocated to individual Services and we debate them. And the consistent feature of these debates is a very thin attendance, a fair level of agreement, some arguing fervently and others somewhat dimly in...
Mr Alan Clark: It is possibly a valid criticism of the first period. But the 1930s were a period of appeasement. It is just that a few people were aware of the threat that was building up and that there was still time to do something about it. Now there is a kind of paralysis affecting both those who listen to these arguments and those whose duty it is to publicise them. I suppose it is that they feel that...
Mr Alan Clark: rose—
Mr Alan Clark: As a matter of historical accuracy, perhaps I may say that this country has been protected in the past, and very successfully protected, in terms of Conservative Governments. I do not remember any Socialist Government doing it.
Mr Alan Clark: We are in deficit with the EEC.
Mr Alan Clark: Having sat here for four and a half hours, I have heard a number of interesting speeches, and I am now rewarded with having the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster included in my audience. This is a great honour, because his flexibility and receptivity to new ideas is, as my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) said, matched only by the rigidity of his voting habits. In the...
Mr Alan Clark: I am certainly not doing so. I am arguing that protection should be accompanied by other financial measures—incentives, reduced taxation and the lifting of the burden of other forms of governmental interference. That will pay, because if we protect, which costs the Treasury nothing, we shall be free of the obligation, if such it is, to subsidise, to divert money in concealed forms to ailing...
Mr Alan Clark: With respect, it cannot be, can it? That is an obvious mathematical truth. If we are in permanent deficit, as we are, on trading account in manufactured goods, the penetration, so-called, of our exports must be exceeded by the deficit arising from imports. That is mathematically self-evident. In deference to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall not develop this argument at much greater length....
Mr Alan Clark: Yes, I believe that they would, because I believe this would have to come hand in hand with a complete removal of wage control, a return to free collective bargaining and with enormously increased employment opportunities. The pressure upon the unions would come from the trade unionists themselves. They would compel their leaders to fit in with the new arrangements in this new climate.
Mr Alan Clark: That is right. That is exactly what we should say.
