Mr Charles Hale: With respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we have had 10 minutes discussing the Budget, and I was not proposing to touch on the Finance Bill. I venture to suggest that my remarks are precisely relevant. The hon. Member for Wokingham was permitted to ask how many people were involved. I am asking how many people are involved, and saying why I think it must be a very small number. The Scheme applies...
Mr Charles Hale: I am not—
Mr Charles Hale: Never before in my 20 years in Parliament have I heard that one cannot refer to the Chair in order to refresh the memory of the Chair. I do not want to refer to every document that we have had in these long days, from industrial development to Budget Resolutions, but merely to return to the terms of the Scheme. The terms are that this is supplementary to the Pneumoconiosis, Byssinosis and...
Mr Charles Hale: I associate myself with almost every word said by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman), dissociating myself from one word only on academic grounds. He said that some of these people were men of good character. Let us start right and say that all people are men of good character until they have been brought to public trial and evidence has been given and...
Mr Charles Hale: With respect, that is rather more unfair to the Minister than my observation, because the Minister said to the House that they were not detained because of political views, but because of acts they have been involved in. This included Mr. Nunes. I am quite sure that the Minister would not have said that unless he had some assurance, either written or verbal, that there was something in it. I...
Mr Charles Hale: I always listen to the hon. Member with, I hope, courtesy and attention. Surely he is at the moment mistaken about the Amendment. The Amendment says unless the Government of British Guiana, acting within their powers under the 1961 Constitution, do release these prisoners, then the House of Commons should not go further on the road to the self-government of British Guiana. It has been...
Mr Charles Hale: No.
Mr Charles Hale: It is not as good as the sort of tribunals Mussolini set up in the early days after the march on Rome. It is not as good as any that preceded the loss of liberty in the world anywhere. My hon. Friend says that these people are charged with something that is not a crime, or with some remote approach to a crime, or with preparatory activity in the direction of doing something that could be a...
Mr Charles Hale: I said nothing about personalities.
Mr Charles Hale: When was that vote taken? The House should be informed.
Mr Charles Hale: I do not want to make a party point but this is an issue which we pressed on the right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) when he was Home Secretary and he announced some minor concessions to the widows of policemen who had lost their lives in the course of their duty. This was strongly resisted for a long time, but in the end there was a minor compromise and improvement as a result of...
Mr Charles Hale: I am getting old, I am getting a little bored and a little cynical and, unfortunately, I am also getting garrulous. I hope, therefore, Mr. Speaker, that when you start to tap the arm of your Chair in reprobation, I shall observe it as promptly as possible and try to be brief. I have nothing new to say on this subject, and I apologise for intruding. Except that, as many of the things which I...
Mr Charles Hale: The hon. Member has said that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has acted too quickly, but could he refer to the fact that the last censure Motion was directed to the fact that he had gone too slowly? We therefore have had an argument all the time about whether my right hon. Friend has been slow or fast. My right hon. Friend consulted the President of the United States, and he got...
Mr Charles Hale: Is my hon. Friend aware that people are now being charged in contributions for litigation much larger sums than they were ever called upon to pay before legal aid was introduced? Does he know that one can still get married, I think, for seven and a tanner, but that it costs £200 to have a divorce—a rather ugly and unpleasant business? One would really have thought that the normal procedure...
Mr Charles Hale: Most of us who rise on these occasions do so feeling that they have something of a tongue in their cheeks and they are a little conscious of a feeling of dishonesty about it. I shall be happy to leave this place. I shall welcome a holiday. However, I have sought over some years to introduce Measures for the benefit of the suffering people of Oldham, people of Oldham who suffer from...
Mr Charles Hale: I appreciate your rebuke, of course, Mr. Speaker. I had it in mind to recall the words—I hope that this is not disrespectful—of an even more well-known Horace: "Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci Lectorem…"— perhaps I might substitute the word "auditorem"— …delectando pariterque monendo
Mr Charles Hale: You compel me, Sir, to immodesty, because, paraphrasing it, Horace said that he preferred to please his audience at the same time as instructing them, and I had not myself wished to put that into English. He also said, Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio that is to say, he was unhappy when he tried to be brief because that was the moment when he became expansive. I return to the question of...
Mr Charles Hale: I am very grateful to you, Mr. Speaker. Had I had your guidance earlier to keep me on the strait and narrow path, I might have got further than I did. I was tempted into diversion, and this has prevented me from making the progress which I might have made. I was making, clearly and briefly, I hope, the point that, if there is no time under the present arrangements for dealing with the...
Mr Charles Hale: I was grateful to my hon. Friend for looking at me with his customary benevolence, and I was encouraged by it. He has made the dreadful statement about the line having to be drawn somewhere. It should not, however, be drawn in the wrong place. Oldham, being a progressive authority with blanket approval, signed contracts for £1,350,000 worth of houses between 2nd and 18th November. The loss...
Mr Charles Hale: I want to try to deal with one or two points only, or to submit my own humble views about one or two points. The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. William Clark), who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench, made a singularly able and temperate statement in which he called attention to a considerable number of problems which arise in connection with Rhodesia. Who is responsible for paying...