The Lords Discuss The Birth Rate

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30496, 18 July 1964, Page 5

The Lords Discuss The Birth Rate

Under the heading “Lords Impotent in the Face of Fecundity ” the Parliamentary correspondent of “The Times” on July 2, wrote: TT is two years since the House of Lords expressed their deep concern at the global birth rate, and in that time the population of the world has gone up by 100 million. Does nobody listen to their Lordships?

Apparently not, but that has never deterred them in the past and probably never will. Today they returned to the subject of the population explosion and attacked it with renewed vigour. It was a debate of dire prophecies and forlorn hopes. Perhaps this time the world will pay attention. Lord McCorquodale of Newton raised the topic, calling it the most pressing problem of our time. If his estimate of a world population quadrupuled by the year 2040 is accurate,

then that would seem to be an under-statement.

Failing action Lord McCorquodale foresaw a world submerged by its own fertility, or driven in despair to indiscriminate abortion. His own solution lay with the United Nations using its agencies to spread contraceptive knowledge throughout the under-developed countries and conducting research into family-planning methods to meet religious and cultural objections. A splendid idea, but it was quickly squashed by Lord Dundee. The trouble with the United Nations, he told the House, was that it was dominated by Roman Catholic communist and African states, none of whom was in favour of birth control. Britain would do what she could to change the climate of opinion, but he was clearly pessimistic of the chances. In the meantime, technical assistance on family planning would be given to any country that asked for it.

No-one could keep Lady Summerskill out of a debate

like this; no-one would dare to try. Dogmatic and forceful, she treated the House like a class of first-year medical students.

Malthus, Lady Summerskill proclaimed, was an economic peasant. Public users of approved contraceptives were preying on every woman. The pill and the plastic coil could well prove harmful, and to argue that the birth rate would decline if the United Nations distributed contraceptives, was to over-simplify the whole issue. Her own view was that family planning could only follow a higher standard of living; it could never precede it. Economic aid first, and contraception second was Lady Summerskill’s message. Grimfaced, she hammered it home. But Lady Summerskill was in the minority. Most speakers looked at the sombre roundabout of increasing aid in constant pursuit of rising population, and thought that the brake must be applied to the latter, if the former was ever to catch up. Lady Gaitskill put it as well any. “The population prob-

lem is volcanic and grows daily,” she said. “It does not wait for the deliberations of politicians and prelates.” Unequivocally she thought £1 million spent on contraceptive research could do more good than all the economic aid put together. The religious issue was never far below the surface. Protestant peers were tactful to a man: their criticisms implied, but rarely voiced; tolerance and respect for Roman Catholic views were dominant.

It took Lord Longford, a Roman Catholic father of eight, to bring the subject into the open and he put the orthodox view of his Church with quiet insistence and clear sincerity. He did not rule out future change, but neither did he think it likely. It was a perplexing matter to their Lordships. Amid so much evidence of fecundity, they could be excused a feeling of impotence. As Lord Dundee pointed out in a phrase that seemed to sum up the whole debate: “We cannot stop people breeding.” The House of Lords has never heard a truer word.