Mr Alan Clark: That is a very good point, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making it. Not only are the Green Goddess vehicles in many cases older than the crews who are manning them, but when they were first operational the REME privates who were servicing them were on a comparable scale to their civilian counterparts. Now—I know this from letters from my constituents—they have a take-home pay...
Mr Alan Clark: Certainly not.
Mr Alan Clark: None the less, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to repudiate what the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Perry) said, because that is not the impression that I want to give. I recognise that he and many of his hon. Friends and many members of the Government are not of that mind, but I believe that the motive of the majority of Labour Members, certainly those below the...
Mr Alan Clark: Here we are discussing these representatives for the European Assembly when we have not any idea what they will do when they get there other than draw their enormous salaries. The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) has described the anomalies and inconsistencies in the terms of reference by which they will be deemed to be representatives, but, passing that aside, they will...
Mr Alan Clark: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. This is the finally ludicrous aspect of the question. The Assembly cannot construct Governments. It cannot support Governments. It cannot dismiss Governments. The only conceivable excuse that I have heard in its favour is that it may save us from some of the work that we do here.
Mr Alan Clark: It is very agreeable to get to these prompts from all round the House. As we all know, their loyalties are very unlikely to remain for long with the political party under whose nomination they arrived in the Assembly. They might, if the regional list system is chosen, get there by some obscure selection process devised in the smoke-filled rooms of their respective party headquarters. But,...
Mr Alan Clark: Leaving aside all the humbug about racialism, will the Home Secretary tell the House how many members of the so-called Socialist, so-called Workers' Party have been charged with violence against the police, and how many members of the National Front have been charged with violence against the police? If he does not have those figures in his brief—the Home Office is not too keen about...
Mr Alan Clark: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has completed his review of the problem of child pornography; and if he will make a statement.
Mr Alan Clark: Does the Minister acknowledge the very grave and widespread public disquiet on this topic? Will he assure the House that in framing his measures he will not allow himself to be deflected by legal advice on the difficulty of definition? Does he not further agree that a picture of a child under the age of consent indulging in sexual activities with an adult is prima facie evidence of a breach...
Mr Alan Clark: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would it not be appropriate if someone pointed out to those hon. Members who signed the motion that their problems will be not with the judges but with the juries, who are drawn from the public?
Mr Alan Clark: Unlike 1938.
Mr Alan Clark: When the Prime Minister meets the heads of the NATO countries, will he think it appropriate to raise with them the way in which British jobs and technology have been casually discarded in the political wheeling and dealing that governs weapon procurement within the Alliance, of which the rejection of the British tank gun is the most recent example? Is the Prime Minister aware that at the time...
Mr Alan Clark: Do I understand that we would be saving on manpower if we used the larger size? Surely the argument of the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Moonman) and others is that it is in the interest of maintaining a full work force that we should proceed to this large European Community-size metric document. Is my hon. Friend saying that if we have the small or current standard size HMSO will be...
Mr Alan Clark: Will the Minister be telling the House what are these various measures that we shall now be able to carry forward in accordance with our NATO obligations? If not, perhaps he will be able to touch on some of them. For example, are the economy restrictions on cruising speeds in the Royal Navy to be maintained?
Mr Alan Clark: Would the right hon. Gentleman care to remind his hon. Friend how many of the Warsaw Pact countries, towards which they show such feelings of warmth, allow the members of their Armed Forces to join independent trade unions?
Mr Alan Clark: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Even accepting that the overall responsibility for the unemployment problem rests with the Labour Party, is it not rather odd to take two Questions in succession from that side of the House?
Mr Alan Clark: Is the Prime Minister aware that his somewhat qualified comments on protectionism have been noted? Does he not agree that there is a case at least for protecting the livelihood of Her Majesty's subjects against imports from areas which are themselves, in one form or another, highly protectionist and take very little from us in exports?
Mr Alan Clark: Surely those who are in favour of hiving them off simply have the interests of those concerned at heart. If they are hived off, they at least will be saved. If they are left any longer with this dinosaur, they will probably sink into the mud with it.
Mr Alan Clark: Was not the largest single contributory factor in that recovery in the 1930s the protectionist enforcement?
Mr Alan Clark: The hon. Gentleman has used phrases such as "our aim is", "we would" and "we might". Is he referring to what he intends to do in Committee, or is he fantasising about what some future Liberal Government might do? Without wishing to seem ungenerous, that latter possibility seems so remote that it is really trespassing on the time of the House and on the time of a large number of other hon....
