Mr Richard Law: At the beginning of the powerful and sincere speech to which we have just listened, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) said that it was his intention to put the tremendous problem of road development into proper perspective. But he ended his speech by saying that the schemes in his own constituency and his own neighbourhood must have super-priority over everything...
Mr Richard Law: Yes, an area with which the hon. Gentleman is most closely associated. I still maintain that that is not putting the matter into proper perspective, because there must be other industrial areas which have equal priority. To get this problem into perspective, one does not have to balance one area against the other. One has to balance the claims of road development against all the other claims...
Mr Richard Law: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government whether his attention has been drawn to the proposal contained in the development plan for Hull, 1951, relating to the area bounded by Anlaby Road, Great Thornton Street, St. Luke's Street, Cambridge Street, Pease Street and Trinity Square, involving the replacement of important business premises by residential flats at an estimated cost of...
Mr Richard Law: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this area, which under the plan is a residential area, comprises about seven acres, and that it contains more than 50 business premises, including a theatre, a brewery, two or three factories and half-a-dozen motor showrooms? Is not it bound to be fantastically expensive to put dwellings on a site of that kind?
Mr Richard Law: I found it a little bit difficult to follow the train of thought of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bromwich (Mr. Dugdale) as he began to develop it towards the close of his speech. It may be that political developments in Kenya are unfortunate. They certainly are, but I do not see that it is possible to argue that to give Mau Mau a free hand would contribute materially to the...
Mr Richard Law: As I say, I found it difficult to follow the train of thought of the right hon. Gentleman, and I still find it difficult to follow. I should like to say this to him, that I believe that in our Colonial Empire we may have left undone things we ought to have done and we may have done things we ought not to have done, but, by and large, what economic prosperity there is and what social and...
Mr Richard Law: I was not able to be here when the right hon. Gentleman was speaking, so I did not hear him say that. If I had, I would not have expressed myself as I have done. But certainly outside the House, and, indeed, in the leading articles of newspapers and so on, there is a general expression of opinion that poverty is the breeding ground of Communism. Yet there is never any evidence advanced in...
Mr Richard Law: Did China go Communist because China had great poverty?
Mr Richard Law: China always had great poverty. China went Communist because the internal organisation of China broke down. Did Czechoslovakia go Communist because of the great poverty of Czechoslovakia? Of course it did not. Czechoslovakia was one of the most advanced States in Europe. There are more Communists in this country today than ever there were before the war—
Mr Richard Law: —yet nobody would suggest that we were poorer today than we were before the war. Certainly hon. Members opposite would never make such a suggestion. The plain fact of the matter is that Communism grows, not as a result of poverty, but as a result of disorder, and it is the breakdown of colonialism over Asia, a breakdown to which many well-meaning people on both sides of the Atlantic have...
Mr Richard Law: Whatever the method, it is quite clear that unless there is a change in the sexual habits of these people, nothing which we or anyone else can do can avail them any good at all. It seems to me, again speaking without the experience which many other hon. Members have, that if we are to help, we shall help them far more by the kind of modest proposals which my right hon. Friend suggested when...
Mr Richard Law: May I, first of all, declare that I have a personal interest in the subject of the Bill, in as much as I am connected with a number of commercial undertakings which exist for the purpose of providing the consumer with some things which are good for him, others which he enjoys and with nothing, I think, which, so far, has done him irretrievable harm. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend...
Mr Richard Law: While it is perfectly true that the court has discretion to award costs, is it not a fact that the Lord Chief Justice has given it as his opinion that the courts ought not to award full costs? If this Bill becomes law does it not considerably enlarge the field of action of the common informer and would it not be a good idea, therefore, to take special measures to deal with the common informer?
Mr Richard Law: Before making the very few observations I have to offer in support of the Bill I must disclose my personal interest in the subject matter of Clause 2. I am a director of a firm which both manufactures and distributes antibiotics. I do not think that anyone could dissent from the warnings given to the House by my two hon. Friends on this side. There would, clearly, be considerable danger from...
Mr Richard Law: We are all agreed that the subject which we are discussing this afternoon is not of a party nature. I hope that I shall be able to keep at any rate within the bounds laid down by the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Foot), that I shall be no more partisan than he and that I shall be able to imitate his humility, if nothing else. As well as being non-party, this is the kind of debate in which...
Mr Richard Law: Certainly the business community of Hull were not as co-operative as the City Council would have liked them to be, and I will tell the hon. Gentleman briefly why that was. The City Council of Hull, which has been in power since 1945, had all the hallmarks of Socialist administration everywhere. It was determined that fact should be made to conform to theory. The fact was that the shopping...
Mr Richard Law: It is all much more difficult than it was. I am glad to say that the people of Hull now know who it is they should blame for the fact that the business centre still does not exist in the main. They do not blame my right hon. Friend. I am glad to be able to say they do not blame the late Labour Government. They blame, and quite rightly, the Socialist administration of the City Council. The...
Mr Richard Law: When I was a young man I was told that secret diplomacy was a very wicked and dangerous thing and that open diplomacy was very much better. After listening to the speech of the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), I think there is more to be said for the old method than people generally think. The hon. Member's speech was not wicked. Foolish, yes; mischievous, yes; but not wicked....
Mr Richard Law: —which will not be a war to end war but a war to end the world. The hon. Member for Coventry, East and some of his friends try to persuade the House and the country—
Mr Richard Law: —that the policy of the new Administration in the United States is bringing that third world war nearer.
