Crosland still very ill

Press, 18 February 1977, Page 5

Crosland still very ill

NZPA-Reuter London Mr Antony Crosland, the British Foreign Secretary, who suffered a stroke last Sunday, remained critically ill yesterday. The 58-year-old Minister, the current president of the European Economic Community’s Council of Ministers, is in a deep coma in the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. His family, headed by his American-born wife, Susan, has been keeping a bedside vigil. The latest medical bulletin said his condition was neither improving nor deteriorating. The Prime Minister (Mr Callaghan) has not yet named a successor at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Denis Healey) is generally considered the favourite for the post.

Dr David Owen, senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, has been deputising for Mr Crosland. The collapse of the apparently robust Foreign Secretary has shocked his Parliamentary colleagues and their wives, and some saw him as a victim of a killing pace set for Parliamentarians.

Apart from the heavy pressure of their Ministerial work, Government members have to make frequent appearances at late or allnight sittings in Parliament just to vote. Labour Party members have called in Parliament for an urgent enquiry into “the incredible and ludicrous workload put on Ministers and M.P.s by the ridiculous and outdated procedures of I Parliament.” A former Government Chief Whip, Mr Bob Mellish, who suffered a heart attack while in office, said: "We’ve got to have a rule that the Commons should finish about 11 o’clock at night. Nobody gives a tuppeny damn about what anybody says at four o’clock in the morning.” Pack-rape charges The police in Melbourne have charged eight young men with more than 100 offences relating to pack rapes in the suburban Heidelberg district. The charges follow evidence from 45 girls aged between 12 and 16, the police say. — Melbourne.