Orders of the Day — Channel Tunnel Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 5 Rhagfyr 1973.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr Tam Dalyell Mr Tam Dalyell , West Lothian 12:00, 5 Rhagfyr 1973

Perhaps I should declare a very remote indirect interest, in that I work for the New Scientist, and a great deal of work has been done by that paper on the Channel Tunnel, although none of the editorials or other matter has been written by me.

I echo what the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Sir D. Dodds-Parker) said about the importance of air freight. Those of us whose constituents are affected by the various problems of London Airport—and, to be fair to London Airport, of other airports—know exactly the point the hon. Gentleman was making. It is extremely important to get fast freight through to the Continent. The air freight of the world is already clogged, and if there is to be a reduction in the supply of aero-engine fuel it will naturally become worse. As a Scot, I see that as one of many reasons for having a rail tunnel.

As a fellow Scot, I want to refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Alexander Fletcher), against whom I campaigned very hard. I welcome him here as a very clean battler in an election. I was glad that he referred to his predecessor, the Duke of Buccleuch, whom we knew as Lord Dalkeith. Those of us who saw it will not forget Lord Dalkeith on several occasions coming in here in his wheelchair in obvious pain, fighting manfully against the injury that dogged him. Regardless of politics, all of us on the Opposition side in the Scottish Group had the highest admiration for the personal qualities and courage of the former hon. Member for Edinburgh, North.

In the absence of the new Member I should also like to say that he certainly has a challenge. His constituency is perhaps the first planned new town anywhere in the world, and there is a great job to be done in preserving it.

I support the view of the Scottish Association for Public Transport, which has welcomed the tunnel, on condition that it is basically a rail link. Most Scots are keen to see it go ahead on that condition. The truth is that, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North said, short-haul air journeys will become markedly more expensive. As advanced traffic develops on the east coast line, which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Ronald King Murray) and I use quite a lot, the easy 200-mile journey can become a 400-mile journey to important places on the Continent. With the reduction in air travel that will occur that will become more and more attractive. The overnight journey to Paris, Brussels or Frankfurt has great attractions for many Scots.

If I have been nice about the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North, I have nothing but contempt for the preposterous speech from the Liberal benches. I did not give the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Tope) notice that I would mention him, because I thought that, having made such a speech, he, or at least one member of his party, whould be present for the rest of the debate. [Interruption.] He may be a new Member, but he is, after all, his party's spokesman today and his party is always taunting us, saying how the Liberals will obtain more and more votes.

As the spokesman of one's party, one does not come along here with undigested propositions. For hon. Members who were not present at the time, let me say that the proposition was that the Liberals thought that it would be sensible to construct—hon. Members who were not present will not believe it—a Channel dam. It was a Channel dam on the cheap, because no firm would undertake such a project for under £1,500 million. I leave to the imagination the reactions of the mayor of Rotterdam or the mayor of Hamburg to the prospect of international European shipping on its way from the Middle East being diverted round by the Pentland Firth. It sounds absurd, but that is what came from the Liberal Party spokesman.

I happen to believe that hon. Members who are voted in at by-elections should be mainly responsible for the drivel that they talk. It is on the sort of level of the Danish second party now, which apparently has reached the second position in the Danish Parliament on the basis of paying no income tax. Those of us who represent major parties know that we are mutually unpopular in many sectors of our society, but we resent people coming along with harebrained ideas acting as spokesmen for their parties, and then saying, "We did not really mean it; it was just an idea that we were throwing out."

As one who sees part of his rôle in this place, perhaps, as being to put forward unlikely and often eccentric ideas, I resent being branded with this sort of preposterous idea. It brings hon. Members and the whole of Parliament into disrepute to put forward such a silly idea. Those ideas, which may be open to doubt but which, nevertheless, have a kernel of common sense about them, are brought into disrepute by the kind of silliness which we have heard. Although I have made some fairly silly speeches, I have not made any at that level.

I should like to go on record as saying that those of us who attended the briefing meeting which the Minister gave, some months ago, to the all-party group and my colleagues on the New Scientist, are grateful for the amount of information that has been available. I give credit where credit is due.

I want to ask, first, about the management structure. I listened carefully to the Under-Secretary's opening speech. I have read the Bill. I have some doubt whether it is really sensible to have a British board and a French board. Being critical for a moment, I was rather alarmed that the Under-Secretary did not know the basic fact whether discussions had taken place with BAC and others involved in the Concorde project. There may be nothing in common between Concorde and the Channel Tunnel. In many spheres the comparison would be absurd. But, on the other hand, there are common problems of project management. It is on the issue of project management that I am particularly interested in expressing doubt whether it it is sensible to have two separate executive units.

If I have misunderstood the position, no doubt I shall be told, either now or when the Minister concludes the debate. But the Government ought also to look at the project management undertaking based at Munich, of the MRCA project. These international projects are exceedingly difficult to manage. The scope for misunderstanding is great. Whereas there will inevitably be some misunderstandings, it is our job to make sure that at least the framework is the one that is likely to create the least amount of misunderstanding.