Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 5 Rhagfyr 1973.
After that pathetic catalogue of non-agreement, will the right hon. Gentleman agree that it adds up not exactly to the kind of astonishing progress that he told us about last week, but indeed, that it is evidence that the Community has virtually ground to a stop?
On the first of many major matters about which we need to ask him, I refer to the question of oil supplies in the EEC. The right hon. Gentleman will have seen a statement by the managing director of Royal Dutch Shell, Mr. Wagner, that supplies are being allocated between Community countries regardless of the particular views of the individual companies involved. What the House wishes to know is whether the right hon. Gentleman knows about these arrangements and is simply accepting them; whether he approves of the action of the Royal Dutch Shell Company in allocating supplies and behaving like a good European company, or whether he disapproves of that action and thinks that the company should be stopped and rebuked. [HON. MEMBERS: "What is your view?"] My view is that the consumer nations of the West should get together as consumer nations—