Mr Gilbert Longden: The hon. Gentleman had better ask him.
Mr Gilbert Longden: I am obliged for your help, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but the hon. Gentleman can go on talking like that until the cows come home for all I care. That article was written less than a year ago, just before stage 1. That is the situation to which we are now returning. I said that I disagreed with the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon that the statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer...
Mr Gilbert Longden: If my hon. Friend can make the public believe that, he can make them believe anything. He deserve-to be returned at election after election. Now something has been done. I am sorry that it is not a great deal more. I do not suggest that it makes much difference one way or the other to the economy, any more than will the 10 per cent. surcharge on surtax. The point is that the methods of...
Mr Gilbert Longden: Much authentic information pours across the Iron Curtain every week. Is that the kind of life we want here? There is a small but highly organised number within our gates whose object it is to establish just such a system here. They are not only militant trade unionists but are to be found among stage and film producers and among employees of the mass media. Sir Arthur Bryant tells us in one...
Mr Gilbert Longden: Could the hon. Member tell the House what the Government could do after such an election that they cannot do now?
Mr Gilbert Longden: Do not Dr. Kissinger's proposals and the energy situation generally provide another argument, if one were needed, that it is absolutely essential that the EEC should speak and act as one?
Mr Gilbert Longden: The hon. Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Deakins) is of course right when he says that the question of political union is quite different and separate from the question of economic union. We have had a mandate for entering the Community—that is, an economic union. We have not yet had a mandate for making it into a political union. I have always said when I have been talking about the...
Mr Gilbert Longden: For the moment my opinion, for what it is worth—I am flattered that my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) should think that it is worth anything—is "Yes ". I will have more to say about that. To make the European Parliament more democratic cannot be achieved overnight, but many, many moons have waxed and waned since it was declared a major objective for the future of...
Mr Gilbert Longden: However, the Open Seas Forum, which, if I may say so with respect to my many hon. Friends who belong to it, is a more honest body, supports the Government—no, I am sorry.
Mr Gilbert Longden: The Open Seas Forum has issued three pamphlets and in a letter the secretary states : They support the Government in showing that our entry into the Common Market is not the only reason why the price of cheese, beef and bacon has risen ; but they also explain that the indirect effect is considerable … the new levies on food have only caused a very-slight increase in prices (as the...
Mr Gilbert Longden: Secondly, I warn the Government and our representatives in the Community of matters which, if allowed to happen or to continue indefinitely, will alienate even pro-Marketeers. One such is the common agricultural policy which was described by The Times as … a costly and socially regressive failure…. to "tinker" with which will not be enough. I know that the CAP is a fundamental policy of...
Mr Gilbert Longden: It is at this moment being renegotiated. [Laughter.] I can see nothing funny in that description of what is going on. Other matters would be if we were to ditch the Commonwealth over sugar, though we have no intention of doing so, or to be made to tax books, or to be required to move goods by road in juggernauts, or to bake our bread in a particular way or pickle our onions in a particular...
Mr Gilbert Longden: No. There is one on the Government Front Bench. I am being serious about this, however, although one might not think so with all these interruptions. As I have said, our task is threefold. It is one not only for the Government. We in our smaller way must help as well. The first is to rebut the allegations of the anti-Marketeers that all our present ills stem from membership of the EEC. The...
Mr Gilbert Longden: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what progress is being made in research into quieter aeroplane engines.
Mr Gilbert Longden: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. May I take it as a categorical refutation of the canard that Her Majesty's Government are deliberately retarding research into quieter jets? Can my hon. Friend say why it is not yet compulsory to fit silencers to light aircraft engines?
Mr Gilbert Longden: asked the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library a copy of the public speech which he made at the El Alamein Reunion dinner on 26th October on the subject of NATO.
Mr Gilbert Longden: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the most important proposals made by the German Chancellor at Strasbourg on Tuesday—I am glad to hear that the German Chancellor discussed them first with my right hon. Friend—would do much to strengthen the European end of NATO? Is not the new French attitude towards European unity much to be welcomed? Would it not be nice if Her Majesty's Opposition...
Mr Gilbert Longden: rose—
Mr Gilbert Longden: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has for encouraging local housing authorities to sponsor low-cost housing schemes for young married couples.
Mr Gilbert Longden: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, but does he recall that it is now many years since I brought the Department's attention to the scheme of the Bushey Urban District Council and only 18 months since he was talking about a conference as a result of the Newham scheme? What has happened since then?