Page:MALAYSIA BILL RHODESIA AND NYASALAND BILL (1) (Hansard, 11 Juli 1963).djvu/5

 conference discussions themselves will be of considerable value to those who will be responsible for carrying forward the work of the conference. Even on matters where only a partial understanding has so far been reached, the conference succeeded in focusing those issues of special complexity or difficulty to which the machinery will have to direct its attention.

I do not wish to detain the House by considering the machinery in detail. That is set out at the beginning of the White Paper. It is summarised by saying that there should be a joint committee with powers of general supervision and that that committee should have powers to set up inquiries and sub-committees on the public services, the assets and the liabilities and the debt, and that there should be a second sub-committee to deal with the vital question of future collaboration between the territories themselves.

As for the manning of these committees, I am in contact with the other Governments concerned, but I am glad to give the House the immediate information that there will be no delay in getting the work started. Sir George Curtis, who attended the conference and who has been chairman of the Nyasaland working Party, is now engaged in Salisbury in setting in motion the machinery agreed upon by the conference. I hope, in particular, that the special sub-committee on the public service will be starting work early next week. The United Kingdom representative will be travelling to Salisbury for this purpose on Monday.

I should like now to stress, as I warned the House, the constructive step taken by the conference in setting up the special committee referred to on page 5 of the White Paper to deal with what are known as links between the territories in the future. Hon. Members will see from Chapter V that I stressed to the conference in the following words: "…that it was the United Kingdom's declared policy to seek to assist in the evolution of effective new forms of collaboration between the territories when the Federation came to an end, forms which would be acceptable to each of them and help to preserve and promote, in particular, the economic prosperity of all." I therefore feel special satisfaction that provision should have been madeby the conference to enable questions of inter-territorial co-operation to be further studied by representatives of the territorial Governments assisted by Federal officials under United Kingdom chairmanship.

In the conference, the Federal delegation agreed that future collaboration was a matter for the territorial Governments. It will be noted by hon. Members who have read the White Paper, and this is on page 10, that the Northern Rhodesian delegation "accepted in principle that there should be inter-territorial collaboration in regard to the railways, Kariba and Central African Airways, and recognised the possible need for interim joint arrangements in such matters as currency." The Southern Rhodesia delegation welcomed this, but expressed the hope that collaboration with the Northern Rhodesia Government might go beyond the subjects mentioned. Thus we have so far agreed in a short time that there is a lot of constructive work which I hope will be done in this field and a lot of initiative must be left both by the House and Her Majesty's Government to the two Governments getting together. I therefore welcomed the opportunity given by the conference for the two Government leaders to get together, as they did. That was one of the valuable features of the conference itself. To sum up the White Paper and the conference which leads to the dissolution of the Federation, I should like to make it quite clear to the House that the conference concerned itself not only with dissolution, but with constructive attitudes towards the future of the three territories involved.

I should like to turn for a few minutes only, as the Bill is somewhat detailed, to the detailed provisions of this Measure, as is suitable on Second Reading according to the classical form of a Second Reading speech. Perhaps I ought to say that I took the opportunity during my visit to discuss the provisions of the Bill with the Governments there. We had some detailed discussions about its provision.

I am grateful to the Governments for the helpful comments and assistance which they generously gave. While I cannot mention all the points, because some of them are highly legal, and there is no lack of legal ability in the Central African Federation at present, I think that we have succeeded in meeting most of the points put forward by the