Mr Alastair Harrison: I followed with great interest the speech of the hon. Member for Bilston (Mr. R. Edwards). I must admit that I found it a little difficult to reconcile what he had to say about the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South (Mr. Green) and what was said by the hon. Member for Cardiff. South-East (Mr. Callaghan), who opened the debate. The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East...
Mr Alastair Harrison: I want to draw the attention of the House to the Customs facilities in some of our small ports on the East Coast and, in particular, to refer to two small ports in my constituency, one in the Borough of Maldon and that at Heybridge Basin. For a very long time those have been ports where cargoes have been imported from and exported to the Continent of Europe bust at present, owing to the...
Mr Alastair Harrison: I welcome this Bill for one reason in particular, which I shall mention in a moment. I should like to take up what was said by the right hon. Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mr. Bottomley) on the subject of phosphate deposits and the like. He said that the Australian Government had nationalised. I suggest that he study the problem a little more closely. He will find that the nationalisation...
Mr Alastair Harrison: It is a very sound combination of the two. The reason I welcome the Bill is that think this and the previous Bill dealing with the Cocos Islands highlights something which must be pursued with great force. I refer to the effort to disperse the Commonwealth's responsibilities throughout the Commonwealth. It is because this small Bill makes another Commonwealth country responsible for a part...
Mr Alastair Harrison: No, no.
Mr Alastair Harrison: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) for raising this problem of the glove industry. I know that he has been that industry's standard bearer in the House for a long time and I hope that he will continue to carry that standard. There is a very big glove exporting and manufacturing business in my constituency and it is because of that and the problem that the...
Mr Alastair Harrison: I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof: this House, noting with approval the recommendations made by Commonwealth Finance Ministers at their meeting at Mont Tremblant, Canada, in October, 1957, that arrangements for continuing Commonwealth consultation on economic matters should be included in the Agenda for a Commonwealth Trade and...
Mr Alastair Harrison: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Mr Alastair Harrison: Do I take it that the right hon. Lady is suggesting we should put another 6d. or so on to the contribution in order to increase this service?
Mr Alastair Harrison: I am sure that the hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) will forgive me if I do not follow him through the more economical ways of committing suicide and into methods of dealing with the plague. Although nobody likes a Bill which increases a charge, the most encouraging thing about the Bill is that although the cost of the Service has increased, that has not been due entirely to...
Mr Alastair Harrison: I made no mention of their being built at somebody else's expense.
Mr Alastair Harrison: The hon. Member will find that he can write them off in ten years' time quite simply, if he studies his tax procedure. I will give him a little lesson on taxation afterwards. By altering the time limit in regard to minor capital works programmes, by carrying out non-traditional building, and by going ahead fast with the development of organisation and method teams throughout the Health...
Mr Alastair Harrison: I certainly did not, and I should like to make that clear. But Marks and Spencer did use organisation and method teams and quite a lot of work and study was carried out in connection with that store. It has also been proved in a hospital not far from here that even though organisation and method investigation may result in cheaper service—do not let us object to it on that score—the...
Mr Alastair Harrison: My right hon. and learned Friend, in his reference to the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths), was concerned with the right hon. Gentleman's statement that …the only person who now pays the contribution in full is the person who does not earn enough to pay Income Tax."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th February, 1958; Vol. 582, c 1047.] That is not correct, and that was the point...
Mr Alastair Harrison: I find the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) extremely interesting, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will use it as an opportunity to think again about the Bill. The series of Overseas Resources Development Acts presents a fascinating exercise in how legislation can be modified to suit varying occasions and the growth and...
Mr Alastair Harrison: I regret that I cannot follow any of the previous speakers. They have tried to be logical, and this is not a logical, but an emotional matter. There is no strict reason for saying why something should be called a Colonial Development Corporation, or a British Development Corporation, or a Commonwealth Development Corporation. I am second to none in my admiration of the work done throughout...
Mr Alastair Harrison: Small as the tariffs on tomatoes are, I will not mention them, as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) has already done so. The horticultural and agricultural industries would suffer very considerably if this very sweeping Amendment were adopted. The hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) held out the bait to agriculture that it would get forks, spades, fertilisers...
Mr Alastair Harrison: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, on a point that I had overlooked. I was going to compare that position with what it would be if the industry were not supported. The farmer would lose the 10 per cent. protection on his production. A little arithmetic will show that the loss would be very much greater than the very small saving in the cost of fertiliser. The hon....
Mr Alastair Harrison: I do not propose to detain the House for long, but I want to refer to some of the points which have been made and to the misinterpretations of the Bill in various quarters. Yesterday afternoon I was interested in trying to find just what the party opposite would do in the way of reorganising local government or altering it either financially or structurally. It was extremely difficult to...
Mr Alastair Harrison: I am glad to have this opportunity of raising the matter of the refusal by the Board of Trade to grant a development certificate at Witham. This certificate would have enabled a firm to occupy a factory in the new industrial site in this town. This matter is of importance not only to Witham but to the borough of Maldon and, in fact, to all Essex towns which are trying to develop light...
