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  • Anthony Meyer – 1972 Speech on the Rule of Law

    Anthony Meyer – 1972 Speech on the Rule of Law

    The speech made by Anthony Meyer, the then Conservative MP for Flint West, in the House of Commons on 1 December 1972.

    I beg to move,

    That this House reaffirms its view that strict observance of the law, both by Government and by individuals and organisations within the State, is essential to the maintenance of political freedom, and to the protection of minorities, including dissentient minorities; and repudiates the doctrine that it is in any circumstances justifiable in a free society for any individual or organisation to reject any law.
    I shall not speak today about crime and punishment. I know that this is a matter very close to people’s hearts. They are worried sick about the apparently inexorable rise in the number of violent crimes. I know that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is tackling this problem with courage, imagination and humanity. If things can be made better by a judicious mixture of stiffer penalties and more certain detection and—perhaps rather more to the point—more certain conviction, I am sure that my right hon. Friend will find the right mixture. At any rate, he will not forget that the more we stiffen penalties the harder it is to secure convictions. That is one aspect of the rule of law.

    However, this morning I want to talk about a rather different aspect, namely, the rule of law as the protector not of our lives and property but of our freedom.

    The rule of law is a two-sided coin. We cannot split it down the middle. On one side is the restraint which the law imposes on the exercise of arbitrary or tyrannous power by the Government, and on the other the restraint which the law imposes on individuals, sections or interests within the community.

    I propose to argue that the rule of law in this double sense is one of only two guarantees of our political freedom. The other guarantee, of course, is Parliament. At the risk of shocking some hon. Members, I must say that the rule of law is a more reliable and certain guarantee of our freedom even than a free Parliament—this Parliament or any other.

    A lot of people say that the most valuable gift which Britain gave to the overseas peoples which once she ruled was that of parliamentary democracy. If so, that gift has been frittered away, because in most of black Africa parliamentary democracy in any meaningful sense has disappeared. It is, however, still alive, and in rather more than a purely formal sense, in both South Africa and Rhodesia. Does this prove that those two countries are free? Parliamentary democracy has disappeared, or is apt to disappear, in Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria and, from time to time, Pakistan. Does this prove that they are not free countries?

    If we go by the definition of Sir Ivor Jennings—he was no Right-wing imperialist—there can be no doubt. His definition was:

    “The test of a free country is to examine the status of the body that corresponds to His Majesty’s Opposition.”

    On that definition, South Africa is in the clear and Nigeria very definitely is not.

    But Britain bequeathed another gift to her former colonies—the rule of law. This has shown a somewhat tougher will to survive. In only a few of the countries of black Africa—of which Zanzibar and Uganda are the most notorious—is the rule of law entirely extinct. To the extent that the rule of law survives in, say, Kenya, Nigeria or Tanzania—that is, to the extent that judges in those countries are able to exercise any kind of control or restraint on the Executive or on arbitrary actions by the Executive—Kenya, Nigeria or Tanzania can stake some kind of claim to be as free as South Africa or Rhodesia, where the powers of judges to check the Executive still exist but are being eroded.

    It is not surprising that the rule of law should be at least as effective a barrier to tyranny as is a free Parliament. Parliaments are emanations of the popular will, and there are some hon. Members who consider that this Parliament ought to reflect more closely the popular will as manifested by the Daily Express. At times of real crisis, when popular emotions are overwhelming, Parliaments are sometimes very ready to entrust the nation’s liberties to a strong man. It was not so difficult to get the Reichstag to hand over full powers to Hitler; it was not difficult to get the French Assembly to hand over full powers to Petain, and, for that matter, it did not take us very long to decide to suspend the forms of parliamentary democracy in Northern Ireland. I do dispute that decision, but we did not take very long over it. For reasons which are not particularly discreditable, democratic parliamentarians are not infallible defenders of political freedom.

    Lawyers, on the other hand—and this does them no particular credit—have a vested interest in the maintenance of free institutions. Quite simply, they make their money and their reputations out of them. Blocking the actions of government, whether on behalf of some giant corporation or some obstinate individual, can be highly profitable to a lawyer, and it is no less profitable to assist the Government to attain their ends. There are rich pickings all round.

    A dictatorship governing by decree is very much less in need of lawyers. A dictatorship which snaps even the thin cobweb bonds of its own decrees, as in Zanzibar or Uganda, has no need of lawyers at all. All it needs is the infamous “people’s courts” to destroy any individual or organisation which ventures to defy the current orthodoxy. In such a system of “justice” there is no need even of professional judges. The “people’s courts,” which are nothing better than institutionalised lynchings, are a grim reminder that we do not make justice either more perfect or a better guardian of liberty by bringing it more closely into line with the public will. On the contrary, the best hope of enlarging the area of freedom in a society which has lost it lies in the attempts of a shattered legal profession to rebuild its prestige and its fortunes. I have always felt that the best hope of improving things in the Soviet Union is to build on the gradually increasing prestige of the legal profession there—interpreting Soviet law, true, but gradually acclimatising people to the idea that the State must at the very least obey its own laws.

    It would be unwise to project such hopes too far, as the hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer) has pointed out in his admirable book on Communism and the law. I have argued that the rule of law, in the sense that the actions of the Executive must be subject to check by the judiciary, is at least as important a guarantee of political freedom as is the existence of parliamentary institutions, and that dictatorships have found it easier to destroy parliaments than to destroy the law.

    It was this aspect of the rule of law which concerned the two foremost writers on the subject, A. W. Dicey and Sir Ivor Jennings. Although they wrote from diametrically opposite political viewpoints they were both almost entirely concerned with the control which law ought to exert over Government. In neither writer do we find much awareness of the other side of the coin, namely the obligation of groups or individuals within the State to submit to the law. Yet throughout the free world the problem is not so much of Governments which are too strong but—and this is astonishing in an age of high technology and mass propaganda—that Governments are too weak to defend the general interest against the particular interest. In some ways the need today is to reverse the events leading to Magna Carta. Some of the barons have grown more powerful than the king.

    As the Home Secretary said in his magnificent speech to the Conservative Party conference:

    “The law and its proper enforcement are not the enemies of freedom; they are the very conditions of its existence.”

    In the free world freedom is threatened today not by the arbitrary exercise of State powers but by the actions of certain minority groups. Some of them—hi-jackers, bomb-throwers, and urban guerrillas—are out to destroy the law and to impose on us all some kind of unnamed and insane dictatorship.

    At the opposite extreme are those normally law-abiding citizens—trade union leaders who refuse to accept the Industrial Relations Act and respectable local government leaders who refuse to operate the Housing Finance Act. As a Welsh Member I may be permitted to put into this same gallery of high-minded, wrong-headed lawbreakers the young hotheads of the Welsh Language Society who give such headaches to the Marylebone magistrates.

    Between the wholly detestable terrorists and the respectable non-conformists—the trade unions, the local government leaders and the Welsh Language Society—there is the larger, rather more equivocal group of extremist militants who do not set out to destroy the law on principle but who will readily break the law, and break it repeatedly, rather than abate their claims. Let us be in no doubt about the dangers that these people represent, however inherently justifiable their claims may be.

    It is because this brand of law-breaking—this readiness to break the law rather than abate one’s claims—has become the norm in Northern Ireland that the province has become almost ungovernable. If the tendency is allowed to spread in the rest of Britain—if moderate opinion comes to acquiesce in continued defiance of the law by militants—then the whole of Britain will become ungovernable. No one has perceived this more clearly or expressed it more sharply than Mr. Victor Feather who recently said:

    “Violence and disorder is the certain road to self-destruction. It is that which brings disaster, and if it is not checked, leads to dictatorship.”

    The terrorists and the bomb-throwers are not the most dangerous threat to our future. We are not so craven that we can be frightened into acquiescing in their rejection of the law. The worst that they can do is to call into being a counter-terrorism more substantial than their own. The extremist militants, on the other hand, pushing their claims to the cliff-edge of legality and beyond, represent a much more formidable threat. The greatest danger of all comes from those pillars of rectitude and of the Establishment, who, as the leaders of great trade unions or powerful local authorities, so intensely dislike a particular Act that they will openly defy it and call on others to do so. Only these people could make defiance of the law respectable, normal, unremarkable.

    The Leader of the Opposition has now publicly set his face against this sort of development. Perhaps he will now go further and urge trade unions and local authorities actively to co-operate with the law. We would be wise to do so. Strict support of the rule of law—indeed, active co-operation with the law—is even more important to the party opposite than it is to my own. It is they rather than we who believe in making men good by Act of Parliament, or making society perfect by Act of Parliament. It is they rather than we who believe in the declaratory value of Acts of Parliament such as the Race Relations Act.

    So I say to those very few members of the Labour Party who have been encouraging trade unions or local authorities to defy the law, “Do you not realise that, by naturalising the idea that we can obey the law or not as we choose, you are thereby frustrating your own long-term ends? Are you not going to need the full apparatus of the law if ever, which God forbid, your turn comes to impose upon us all your highly uncongenial remedies?”

    I could address the same argument to the muddle-headed idealists of the Welsh Language Society. A quarter of the population of Wales speak Welsh. The number is showing a tendency to increase, because education authorities throughout Wales faithfully interpret the requirements of the Welsh Language Act to increase the amount of Welsh teaching in schools.

    Now we have the report of the Bowen Committee on bilingual road signs. The three-quarters of non-Welsh-speaking Welshmen will be required to accept bilingual road signs to satisfy the perfectly legitimate desire of the quarter of Welsh-speaking Welshmen. This whole exercise depends for its success entirely on the acceptance by that three-quarters of a legal requirement which benefits them not at all. But if the Welsh Language Society extremists had succeeded in their efforts to bring the law into disrepute they would have destroyed their best hope of achieving the end they seek.

    I have argued that the rule of law is so essential to the maintenance of our liberties—both in the sense of restraining the arbitrary use of power by the Executive and in the sense of enabling the Executive to defend the public interest and public freedom against the anarchic or tyrannous pressures of determined minorities—that it should be upheld at all costs, and that hon. Members on both sides should never allow themselves to connive at deliberate breaches of the law.

    Of course, this does not mean that the Government have but to pass laws and apply them and we have all but to obey The rule of law, however essential to the maintenance of our liberties, will in fact be in danger if the laws themselves are absolutely intolerable to a majority or to a very large, coherent and determined minority. The Government must at all times have regard not to the popularity but to the acceptability of their laws, if only because if they do not, the courts, particularly courts with juries, will not apply the law.

    But, be that as it may, once the rule of law begins to crumble, the end not just of Parliamentary democracy but of freedom itself is very near. That is why it is so important that the House should today remove any possible doubt as to where it stands on this issue by accepting my motion.

  • Anthony Meyer – 1978 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anthony Meyer, the then Conservative MP for West Flint, in the House of Commons on 1 November 1978.

    I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor and Maidenhead (Dr. Glyn) that, if a Labour Government were to be returned with a large majority, the policies about which we heard from the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Canavan) would feature in their programme rather than those currently being defended by the Prime Minister. Indeed, I would go further and say that it would be a question not merely of the size of the majority which would drive them that way, but more the expectation of four or more years of power. In other words, at the beginning rather than at the end of a Parliament they would show themselves more ready to embark on Socialist measures.

    I can see only one consolation in the postponement of the election which the people of this country so manifestly wanted—an election which I am certain, whatever the opinion polls may say, would have resulted in a decisive Conservative victory—and that is the elegant, charming and witty speech made by the right hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Hughes) and ​ the fact that we shall have him with us for the duration of this Parliament.

    If I wanted to find in the Queen’s Speech a convincing reason why the postponement of the election was so disastrous, I should find it primarily in the statement that

    “legislation will be introduced to improve arrangements for compensation of workers on short-time, and to reduce redundancies at times of high unemployment by encouraging the alternative of short-time working.”

    I am sure that that will be an extremely popular proposal. It is a way of masking the unemployment which, despite temporary improvements, is gaining on us apace. Employers’ contributions to national insurance are to be increased to subsidise short-time working. It seems a classic example of the kind of short term measure that we get in a pre-election period from a Government who are worried about their prospects—a measure which certainly will be popular and will equally certainly contribute in the long term to a worsening of unemployment because it will contribute markedly to a worsening of our competitive ability. As an operation, it is like filling in the cracks in the facade by digging away stones from the foundations. I believe that the consequences of this operation, as with other short term cosmetic operations for concealing unemployment, will prove to be disastrous in terms of future unemployment.

    I turn briefly to those items in the Gracious Speech which concern the Principality as I am the first Welsh Conservative Member to speak to the Address. It seems from the Queen’s Speech that the Government have paid quite a high price to secure those three vital Plaid Cymru votes. Having listened to the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mrs. Bain) and the impossibly high price that she was putting on the Scottish National Party’s support to either side of the House which cared to bid for it, I understand why the Government settled for the slightly softer option of buying the votes of Plaid Cymru.

    The proposals in the Queen’s Speech for improved compensation arrangements for the victims of pneumoconiosis and silicosis are welcome, but I hope that no one will run away with the idea that these are the result of a sustained campaign by Plaid Cymru. Its part in this ​ matter reminds me of the fly on the coach wheel which, as the four great shire horses dragged the coach to the top of the hill, triumphantly exclaimed “You would never have got there without my help.” There has been an all-party effort to secure these improvements. I am sure that any Government who found themselves in a position to improve these compensation arrangements would have done so. The fact that this Government have done it at this time indicates that they are anxious to secure the votes of Plaid Cymru. I hope that they are also converted to the need for these improvements.

    There is one other item possibly affecting Wales on which I should like to touch. I note with curiosity that the Government have renewed their pledge or reaffirmed their commitment to the reorganisation of the electricity supply industry in both England and Wales. I think that very early on we should have an assurance that that does not mean that MANWEB, the company which provides electricity to North Wales and Merseyside, is to be split into separate Welsh and English elements. All who know about such matters know that the cost of supplying consumers in North Wales is much higher than the cost of supplying consumers in Merseyside where the population is greater. A split of MANWEB can result only in higher electricity tariffs for people in North Wales.

    I hope that we shall have an early assurance on this matter. If we do not, there will be considerable alarm and despondency at the prospect of still further increases in electricity tariffs which are already bearing heavily on certain consumers, particularly old people and those who are unfortunate enough to have electric heating in their homes.

    I shall deal briefly with two omissions from the Gracious Speech. The first involves a prosaic matter, but it causes considerable and increasing concern to certain people in my constituency. I had hoped to find some reference in the speech to the necessity of amending the Shops Act 1950. I had hoped particularly for an amendment to Part IV of that Act which deals with Sunday opening. We are in an inextricable mess over the law on Sunday opening. This is imposing an intolerable duty on local authorities, particularly in areas which can claim to be resorts. They have the right to permit​ opening on 18 Sundays a year. That figure is not adequate because of the short seasons which affect many holiday resorts. The law imposes upon local authorities the intolerable task of forbidding shops from doing something which they and the public want to do and which is in the interests of all but which is contrary to the law. Local authorities suffer great unpopularity because they must carry out the law. The situation is not their fault. It is time that the law was changed.

    Local authorities are unable to do much to control the fly-by-night operators who set up Sunday markets. These are often in unsuitable areas and they cause traffic congestion and dirt. There are provisions to forbid this activity but they are inadequate. The delays and complications involved in enforcing the law make it virtually impossible to catch the fly-by-night trader. If the laws are enforceable, they are enforceable only against respectable stall operators whom no one wishes to harass. Local authorities need greater powers of discretion both to permit Sunday opening for respectable traders and to prevent the installation of undesirable types of Sunday market.

    I shall make my point briefly. There is one omission from the Queen’s Speech which grieves me. It concerns a matter which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition mentioned. I am grieved about the omission of any arrangements for improving the process of consultation of trade union members on the election of their officers and the decision to take industrial action.

    I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend give a pledge that a Conservative Government would make provision for a postal ballot to be conducted at public expense for major trade union decisions. I hope that that principle will be extended to include the provision for a secret ballot—not necessarily a postal ballot—on every major decision affecting industrial action. I confess that I do not understand the hostility which this proposal arouses on the Government side of the House.

    I am sorry that the Lord President is no longer in the Chamber I have read of the indignation which he summoned up when he commented on the difficulties which were put in the way of ​ the introduction of a secret ballot for parliamentary and other elections when local land or mill owners were able to intimidate those employees who voted in a way which was unacceptable to the boss. The secret ballot is the most elementary requirement of democracy. No system can call itself democratic if it does not, as a matter of course, include provision for a secret ballot.

    This matter is of particular concern to my constituency. In my constituency a number of industrial disputes are being fomented and maintained which were possibly originally caused by direct intimidation by militant elements which do not scruple to use the most ruthless methods to oblige their fellow workers to come out on strike and remain on strike. The consequence is that North Wales, part of which I have the honour to represent, which once boasted that it had the finest labour relations in the country, can no longer make such a boast because a large number of major building projects are being deliberately sabotaged by professional agitators using the art of intimidation.

    A secret ballot for all such decisions would destroy the ability of such agitators to intimidate fellow workers. To argue that a secret ballot among the miners and the railwaymen confirmed a decision to strike is not the answer. In those cases the majority genuinely wanted to take industrial action. In such cases industrial action is justified. But in too many cases the militant minority, using the most thuggish of methods, intimidate their fellow workers into going on strike when that is the last thing that the workers wish to do.

    No one suggests that a secret ballot should be enforced on those who do not wish to vote. The objective can be achieved by providing that unless a decision is taken by secret ballot the decision loses the special protection and immunities which are provided by the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act. The special advantages conferred on industrial procedures should be removed unless a decision has been validated by a secret ballot.

    There are few things to which I look forward more in the programme of the incoming Conservative Government than the carrying out of that pledge which my right hon. Friend repeated this afternoon.

  • Anthony Meyer – 1986 Speech on European Industrial Policy

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anthony Meyer, the then Conservative MP for Clwyd North West, in the House of Commons on 13 March 1986.

    The subject I want to raise is the need for greater industrial co-operation in Europe. By Europe, I do not specifically and solely mean the European community, and when I talk of industrial co-operation I am not solely referring to ordinary industry; I wish to include the defence industries.

    It is a subject to which I propose to return on future occasions because I believe that, if we can inaugurate more far-reaching and more constructive co-operation between the European countries in this field, we can go some way towards tackling the unemployment problem, which must be a matter of concern to every one of us.

    Across the European Community, unemployment in the 12 member states is more than 14 million. While much of this unemployment may appear to be structural and as a result of technological change, and some of it may appear to be the result of temporary economic conditions, the fact is that, during the period that this is happening in the European Community, in the United States there has been a startling success in the creation of fresh employment so that unemployment levels in the United States remain at an acceptable level; and in what are undoubtedly our most dangerous competitors, that is to say, the industrialised countries of the Pacific basin, unemployment is at a very low level.

    The inference is clear, that Europe is not taking advantage of the assets it possesses in order to strengthen its industrial base and to reduce its unemployment. It is, of course, generally known that the European Community is a long way from being even the common market, which is the most basic of its aims, further still from being any kind of an economic unit which would enable the member states composing it to take full advantage of it as a means of securing employment.

    One of the points I will be urging on the Government is that they should live up to their own professions in this matter and that they really should give overriding priority to the completion of the internal market by sweeping away the barriers to trade, and particularly to trade in invisibles, which still exist.
    Generally when Members of Parliament say that they conjure up a vision of obstructive Italian frontier officials, French customs arrangements at Poitiers for the import of Japanese goods and German obstructionism in the market of insurance. But there is a very large beam in our own eyes in the habits and mentalities of HM Customs and Excise which regards itself in many respects as being almost above the law. Anyone who has attempted to import anything through any of our ports will not, I think, rush to the conclusion that our customs is much more attractive in these matters than those of other countries.

    I do not think that Customs is coming under a great deal of pressure from the Government to be any more easy going in these matters. Of course, we bring forward the arguments about the needs to control drugs and to control rabies, and both are perfectly valid arguments. None the less, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that these are being used in many cases as a pretext for slowing up the inflow of goods. What is sauce for the goose has to be sauce for the gander, and if we want our goods to flow freely into Europe we must allow European goods to flow ​ equally freely into us. The Channel Tunnel will be a step in the right direction, provided that other obstacles are not put in the way of the operation of this tunnel.

    However, that is not my main point. Sweeping away obstacles to internal trade will undoubtedly assist in the development of a single market. A single market of 273 million customers must be a very powerful home base for any industry. But there is rather more to what I want to say than that. We have witnessed over a very long time span—in Britain’s case probably since about 1870—the gradual and seemingly inexorable loss of industrial supremacy.

    In the 19th century the United Kingdom was the workshop of the world. Anybody abroad would buy almost anything that was made in Britain, precisely because it was made in Britain. That position has been eroded over the years. Two world wars have wrought their toll. We have gradually seen what were once undisputed British industrial supremacies disappear down the plug hole. What happened to the great British motor cycle industry which at one stage was almost the sole motor cycle industry in the world? Little by little we have seen such industries disappear.

    We are at a particularly dramatic moment in this process of disappearance, with the future of British Leyland very much on our minds. I do not intend to say very much about British Leyland, because there has been a debate on that subject. However, when it became apparent that British Leyland would have great difficulty in surviving as a mass car producer because it is very much smaller that any of its competitors two possibilities opened up for it. One was that it should be taken over by General Motors. The other possibility—the one that is being very much trumpeted by my hon. Friends with constituencies in the Midlands and by the Opposition—was that there should be a purely British rescue operation. Neither of these possibilities meets the bill. I accept that the American takeover makes some kind of economic sense, but an American takeover would represent a very large step towards the abandonment of a true, native-based industry. The British solution would lead us back, I fear, to the time when British Leyland was a permanent pensioner of the British state.

    It is probably too late now for the third and, to my mind, the right alternative. Before we ever got to where we are, there ought to have been in existence the possibility of a partnership between British Leyland and one of the European manufacturers. It need not necessarily have been one of the EEC manufacturers. It could have been Volvo. That would have complemented BL’s capacities in such a way as to produce a viable firm that would have been multi-centred and whose ownership would have been basically European. If British Leyland had joined up with one of the German or Italian manufacturers, it might have contained a very large American element. I am not arguing in favour of a policy that would try to shut out the Americans. However, I am arguing that we should seek to have a policy that includes, wherever appropriate, a very substantial European element.

    The same set of arguments apply to Westland. My right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) made a valiant and ultimately unsuccessful effort to mount a European rescue effort for Westland. Once again it was too late, not due to any culpability of Her Majesty’s Government but largely because such “rescue” as loomed ​ up over the horizon from Europe looked more like an attempt by the European manufacturers to snuff out Westland as a possible competitor. The faults are not on our side alone. But when we add them all together we get a failure both by Her Majesty’s Government and by the Governments of the European countries to make any use of the Community as an institution to exert its influence as a powerful trading bloc to sustain its own industry.

    The argument will present itself in another particularly acute form over the future of the European airbus family of aircraft. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for the City of Chester (Mr. P. Morrison) is not answering the debate, because he has a particular interest in the project. The airbus has been a tremendous success technically. Of course, it is far too soon to prophesy whether the Government, or those who put their money into the project, will make a profit.

    We have the siren voice of that once sensible publication, The Economist, urging strongly that the British aircraft industry should surrender without a fight to the Americans and that we should allow all major civil aircraft to be built in the United States, leaving it to Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas to fight it out between them. That is a craven act of folly when the possibility exists of maintaining a capacity in Europe to produce not just an aircraft but a whole family of aircraft capable of meeting the demands of the world market at almost every level. I earnestly pray that the Government will listen not to The Economist but to those Ministers, of whom I am sure my hon. Friend is one, who will urge the vital importance of maintaining a capacity for the construction of civil aircraft in Europe. Here at least is one industry in which we for the moment are not faced with knock-out competition from the Pacific basin and where we should be unwise in the extreme to surrender all our advantage.

    That leads me to public procurement, which involves not only Governments but also governmental agencies. One sometimes has the impression that European airlines in all too many cases deliberately operate a “buy American” policy. If the airlines operated a European preference when they make purchases of civil aircraft, that might in itself suffice to sustain a European civil aircraft manufacturing capacity.

    The record on public procurement is frighteningly dismal. In 1982, the last year for which figures are available, in all its public purchasing the United Kingdom spent no less than 98·3 per cent. of Government cash on equipment made within our own borders. That left 1·7 per cent. with which to encourage joint ventures overseas. Though a dismal record, it is better than the Germans, who left not 1·7 but 0·3 per cent. for joint ventures; or the French, who left the enormous total of 0·09 per cent., or the Italians, who left nil per cent. of public expenditure to be spent outside their own borders.

    This reflects the enormous public political pressure in favour of a buy native policy, and one need sit in this House for only a few hours to hear it, and understandable it is. Obviously, every hon. Member will urge as strongly as possible the arguments in favour of spending public money in his constituency. I remember fighting hard for the retention, for example, of steel-making at Shotton. From a constituency point of view, that was an unanswerable case. Nevertheless, there was a national case which required that steel-making capacity should be ​ concentrated in those areas where there was a natural case for having steel-making, and Shotton was not one of them. I was, rightly, overruled in that instance.

    When we talk about the car, helicopter or machine tool industries, two sets of arguments operate at a political level. There is a powerful economic argument which says, “Let us go for the most immediately profitable solution which will bring the best return to the shareholders and give the workers in the industry the best guarantee of maintaining their jobs.” That argument often operates in favour of an American, Japanese or even an Arab takeover.

    The other argument, deployed by Back Benchers on both sides of the House, says, “The best way to do it is to use public money to maintain a buy British policy, a subsidy, a purely British solution.” There will always be those who will argue for a national solution for whatever industry comes into the public domain of discussion.

    What never operates is pressure to say, “Let us look for a solution which takes advantage of our membership of the European Community” or, at a lower level, “which takes advantage of our proximity to Europe—be it Switzerland or Sweden—which will enable us to construct an alternative future for this industry or firm and which may, in the short run, not offer the same advantages to the shareholders.”

    It may not even offer the same security of employment to its workers, but it may offer long-term possibilities for industry and for the future of employment in Britain. That may not be available through a purely British solution entailing a permanent subsidy, or through an American solution involving a total takeover, with the risk that, when the chill winds blow, the Americans will close down their out-stations, as it were, and concentrate production at home—after all, they are subject to the same pressures—to safeguard jobs in their country.

    There are no democratic pressures on the Government to exploit to the full our membership of the European Community to ensure the prosperity of British firms and safeguard British jobs. The pressures are all against such solutions. It is for the Government to see matters as a whole and to make the maximum use of our membership of the Community to achieve our objectives.

    There should be much faster progress of the consolidation of the internal market. A substantial step forward could be achieved by stabilising the exchange rate through the exchange rate mechanism of the European monetary system. All of these matters are major policy decisions which can be achieved only in concert with our European allies. I know how difficult that is until we have a much improved decision-making process in the EC, which means moving away from the veto, but I shall not go into that.

    There should be a Minister responsible for coordinating procurement and industrial policies to ensure that, whenever a controversial decision comes up, full weight is given to the European alternative. Several Departments are involved in that. The Department of Trade and Industry is one and the Ministry of Defence is another. Perhaps I should have enlarged on what is happening in the arms industry. Each country, by drawing a narrow specification of its requirements, has made it virtually impossible to achieve European co-operation. The result is that, one after another, we are equipping ourselves with expensive weapons which are unsuitable ​ for use by our allies. This is a NATO matter—the NATO group in Europe is not maximising the opportunities. The Department of Transport has a critical role to play, and the Treasury is also involved in matters such as I have mentioned.

    If, in Cabinet, there was a Minister who could say, “Wait a minute. There may be a better but not so immediately attractive European alternative” we could achieve much more in the Community and in the European part of NATO to sustain jobs and preserve industries which otherwise face a pretty grim future.

  • Anthony Meyer – 1985 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anthony Meyer, the then Conservative MP for Clwyd North West, in the House of Commons on 6 November 1985.

    I welcome many parts of the Gracious Speech, and I join the hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Coleman) in welcoming particularly the proposals to limit severely the use of animals for medical experiments and the Government’s determination to find a way of depriving drug traffickers of their ill-gotten gains, although I have a nasty feeling that that will prove to be a lot more difficult than seems likely at first sight.

    I also welcome the Government’s intention to seek to normalise our relations with democratic Argentina and what they say about the European Community. However, I warn them that if, as they say and as I hope, we are seeking to achieve a true unified internal market, we shall have to be prepared to dismantle the non-tariff obstacles to trade that we expect the rest of the Community to abolish urgently.

    The Gracious Speech mentions the reform of the social security system and the planning system and the ending of restrictions on Sunday trading. In those matters, the Government are broadly right in their aim, but sadly astray in their timing. Such reforms should be brought in at the beginning of a Parliament and not towards the end of one.

    The purpose of my speech is to express concern about some of the Government’s deeper purposes. That concern goes far deeper than mere electoral anxiety, because I am fairly certain that the Conservatives will win the next election. My concern is about what sort of country we shall be trying to govern after that. That concern is shared by a number of my hon. Friends and was eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes (Mr. Benyon).

    The three great achievements of the Government since 1979—the curbing of inflation, the restoration of respect, if not affection, for Britain overseas, and the humbling of the intolerable pretensions of trade union godfathers such as Mr. Scargill—are beyond price and would not have been won by a Government of any other party, self-evidently not by a Labour Government and not by an alliance Government, who would have been obliged to compromise on issues where it was essential to have a clear-cut result.

    Furthermore, I am certain that the Government desperately want to bring down unemployment—and not merely for electoral purposes.

    I am certain that the Government intend to preserve and improve social services and to safeguard the environment. What is more, when Ministers say that the best way to cut unemployment and to finance better social services is to ​ create more national wealth, and that the best way to create more national wealth is to cut all forms of taxation, especially personal taxation, they are totally sincere. They might also be right, although the evidence to support them is slow to appear.

    The Government mix of higher incentives for the successful and less featherbedding for the unsuccessful might be the shortest route to a better future for all, but it is also the bumpiest. Unless we arrive at some recognisable destination much sooner than seems likely, the strains imposed upon the car of state may cause it to fly apart.

    In other words, like a number of my hon. Friends, I am becoming worried about national unity. The Prime Minister does not like the word “consensus”. She is right to dislike the consensus of acquiescence in inexorable national decline. But in chucking out the soapy bath water of that consensus she might be chucking out a very delicate baby.

    British society has been admired for its highly developed sense of solidarity or, at the least, for a respect and tolerance between different classes, regions and races. We do not, outside Northern Ireland, hate one another for our beliefs, as do the French, or despise one another because we are northerners or southerners, as do the Italians. We do not, thank God, despite the malign efforts of the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), seek scapegoats among the minorities in our midst for our own failings, as the Germans once so dreadfully did.

    Southern Britain, with its labour shortages, is properly worried that people in northern Britain, in Wales and in Scotland who want to work cannot find jobs. Those of us who live in safe, white, middle class areas are worried about what is happening in our big cities. We want to do something about it, even if it will cost us money. Most of those who have done very well, thank you, under this Government still want to maintain public health, public education and public pension provision even if it costs them more in rates and taxes than they get out of those services.

    Many of us would like Britain to make a much more generous response not just to short-term crises of starvation in Africa, but to long-term projects for putting the developing countries on the path to sustainable growth.

    I must say frankly that some of the Government’s policies as they seem to emerge from the sparse language of the Queen’s Speech, could only too easily damage the sense of national solidarity. Of course we all want tax cuts if that means that people with barely enough to live on will no longer have to pay tax or that people on low wages or training allowances will no longer be worse off than they would be on social security. Across-the-board tax cuts could widen still further the gap between those who have much more money than they can want and those who are in real need—unless of course tax concessions at the bottom of the scale are paid for by higher taxes at the top. However, that does not seem to be how the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s mind is working.

    I am not entirely happy about the Government’s approach to the all-important unemployment issue. I welcome Lord Young’s appointment, and still more do I welcome the wide powers that he has been given. However, I am none too happy about all the talk about the number of new jobs being created. I do not mind that many ​ of them are part-time jobs because I am sure that that is the work pattern for the future. How are the part-time jobs being shared? Many seem to be going to married women whose husbands are already at work, and some of them seem to be going to people who already have a job. The impact of such new jobs on the total unemployed is worryingly small.

    It is not helpful to say that many people, especially the young unemployed, do not want a job. That is untrue, at least in Wales and in the north. Young people finishing the admirable youth training scheme and middle-aged workers thrown on the scrap heap of redundancy are desperately, pathetically anxious to find work. Even if in such places as London it were partly true, that does not diminish the danger to our social fabric represented by so many thousands of unemployed, particularly young unemployed, and more particularly young black unemployed in our big cities.

    That brings me to the last and deepest of my anxieties. Voices are beginning to be raised from Right-wing press commentators urging the Government to exploit the law and order issue to its utmost. I am sure that the new Home Secretary, who is widely admired on both sides of the House, will have no truck with any attempt to extract party political advantage from the natural worry that people experience at the spectacle of the police facing armed riot in our big cities or mobs of stone-throwing pickets. This is material far too explosive and volatile to be safely used for party political purposes.

    Of course this Government—any Government—must give unwavering support to the police. Of course no Government can condone crime or permit no-go areas. The reaction of some local community leaders who appear to condone violence, even murder, is intolerable. But I warn the Government that, if we are seen to be trying to make party political capital out of the issue and to make it the “Falklands factor” of the next election, it will blow up in our faces. Even if that helped us to win—I do not believe that it would—we would be left with a country which was ungovernable.

  • Anthony Meyer – 1985 Speech on Rail Services in North Wales

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anthony Meyer, the then Conservative MP for Clwyd North West, in the House of Commons on 1 July 1985.

    I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport for coming here at this late hour to listen to the debate. I wish to make it plain that I am not setting out to denigrate British Rail. I enjoy travelling with it. The intercity service which I have used for many years has been, on the whole, clean, fast, comfortable, and remarkably punctual. Much of the tourist trade which is so vital to north Wales continues to arrive by rail, as it has for many generations, and in what is now the second consecutive bad year for the tourist industry we desperately need our trains.

    In north Wales, there has, however, been a steady—I do not wish to say dramatic — deterioration in service over the years, not so much in speed, comfort and punctuality as in the convenience of the timetable and the facilities available.

    I accept that where trains are not full the railway cannot go on running them indefinitely. Services must be cut to reduce losses. The problem with that process is that it feeds on itself. As services are reduced, fewer and fewer people use them and further cuts are required to reduce the loss and so on. However, it is no necessary part of this dismal downward spiral that facilities also be reduced. My first complaint against British Rail—it is the least that I shall voice tonight — is the extreme reluctance and dilatoriness that it has shown in allowing private caterers to take food and drink trolleys on trains on which it no longer operates an acceptable buffet service. Some headway is at last being made thanks to the efforts and persistence of enterprising individuals, among whom my constituent, Mr. Osbiston of Dyserth was one of the first, if not the first, in the area to offer a most attractive trolley service to British Rail travellers in the region.

    I shall not renew my plea that decent rolling stock should be allocated to the north Wales line, although that is a sore point in north Wales. The new Sprinter units are coming in slowly, oh so slowly, to replace the bone rattling diesel multiple units in which it is impossible to read, let alone write and still less to drink a cup of coffee. They are being well received and represent a huge improvement. Nor shall I press for the electrification of the Crewe-Holyhead line, although there is a powerful lobby in north Wales arguing for it. I am not at all sure that it would be a justifiable investment, and the effect on the landscape where the train skirts the coastline would be deplorable.

    The essence of a railway service is that it should be reasonably predictable. Hold-ups are, or should be, less frequent than on even the best roads, and journey times are shorter — or were when the trains ran direct from London to north Wales. In the past few years, an increasing number of trains have been routed to north Wales via Birmingham, thus adding three quarters of an hour to the journey time. Instead of running direct to and from north Wales, more and more trains now require a change at Crewe. I have no strong objection to either of those things, provided that there is a reasonable connection at Crewe and no excessive wait.​

    The main burden of my complaint concerns the effect on services to north Wales of the railway works being carried out at Crewe. I fully accept their necessity. I spent one night a few years ago with British Rail being taken round the signal boxes and junctions at Crewe station. All of my colleagues were as shattered as me at the primitiveness and inadequacy of the equipment, which has to handle the hundreds of trains that pass every day through this immensely complicated station layout. It is clear that the work has to be done, and I do not quarrel with the decision to do it all in one go. I have a serious complaint to make, however, about the period chosen—2 June to 21 July. It is just about the busiest holiday period of the year. Had it been possible to start the work two months earlier, the effect on train passengers — north Wales is still heavily dependent on the railway to bring in tourists—would have been much less.

    Once the work started, the trains had to be diverted round Crewe, which has clearly resulted in longer journey times. That is a pity, and might lose us some day trippers, but we have to accept it. The real burden of my complaint is that we in north Wales, and a good many others who are served by Crewe and stations beyond it, do not know what we have to accept. A great deal of time and effort is required to find out, and the answer is quite likely to be wrong.
    The remodelling of Crewe station started on 2 June, and had been planned several years ahead. On 13 May, and quite independently of the Crewe operation, British Rail introduced new timetables for the area. They are radically different from the old timetables to which travellers to and from north Wales had become accustomed and for which the convenient pocket timetables, which can readily be found in the Travel Office, were available at all stations along the route.

    The new timetables are radically different, but as no new pocket timetables have been issued, it is not too easy to find out about trains. Why on earth have they not been issued? How are intending travellers expected to find out the new times of their trains? British Rail has two suggestions to offer. One is that one should buy its complete timetable, price £3, and far too big to go into an already bulging briefcase, let alone the most capacious of pockets. The other is that one should ring up British Rail inquiries and find out. Has anyone at British Rail ever tried doing that from a pay phone box—if one can find one that is not out of order—with no doors?

    British Rail admits that the plan to produce pocket timetables “ran into difficulties” — nothing like the difficulties that passengers are now running into without them. But I suppose that BR would now argue that it would not have been much use printing the new timetables because the Crewe remodelling, which began only three weeks after the new timetables came into force, would have made them inapplicable anyway. In desperation I wrote on 12 June to the manager of the midland region in Birmingham and asked him how I could now get to my constituency by rail. So far I have not had so much as an acknowledgement, let alone a substantive reply.

    I have managed to procure a document that purports to be a temporary timetable. It is called a “reissued” timetable, whatever that may mean. It gives the timing of the trains to north Wales during this period. It is illegible to the naked eye of anyone over 40. It has now been supplemented by a batch of scarcely more legible leaflets, each one covering a section of the journey. One is entitled ​ “Crewe-Chester-North Wales”. It is the only one that covers the north Wales stations. It also shows the connecting trains to and from London.
    According to that timetable, there are only five trains a day from Rhyl to London, whereas until 12 May there were 14, and there are to be 13 when the remodelling at Crewe is finished. According to the timetable, there is no way to reach Chester from Euston before 12.30 pm or Rhyl before 2 pm. The position for the return journey is very slightly better with six trains, including two morning ones.

    As a matter of fact, I do not believe that the situation is as bad as that. Travellers have been spotted on Rhyl station at 11 in the morning who claim to have come from London that same morning. It may be that there are morning trains, but it is just not possible to find out and, as I said, the midland region of British Rail does not answer letters.

    I do not criticise British Rail for doing the work at Crewe—it had to be done. I could have wished that it had chosen a time of year less vital to our already hard-pressed tourist trade, a period during which, incidentally, anyone hoping to travel from London by coach to north Wales instead of by train will encounter the horrendous problems on the M1 near Hemel Hempstead during the first fortnight of July.

    However, I understand that the work at Crewe must produce extensive changes to the schedule and a lengthening of journey times, but why, oh why does not British Rail take the trouble to get proper timetables printed and have intelligible notices put out well in advance at the railway stations concerned? Travelling by rail from London to north Wales at present is more akin to hitchhiking than travel by any scheduled service.