SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

NIGEL LAWSON

It is not usual for a civil servant to have to use the columns of a newspaper to defend himself against what The Times has called 'a pitiless innuendo' by a Prime Minister. Colonel Lohan, however, writes on the opposite page, at our invitation. because no legal redress is open to him, thanks to the parliamentary privilege Mr Wilson's innuendo enjoys. As it is, Colonel Lohan is further hampered by the imprecision of the charges against him and the inhibitions imposed by the Official Secrets Act. Nor has he been greatly assisted by Tuesday's exchanges in the House. which were notable chiefly for the Prime Minister's new claim that he is not re- sponsible for the words he utters--a novel constitutional theory.

British Members of Parliament in their utter- ances in the House enjoy a degree of privilege unknown in any other democratic system. Even if they insist on remaining beyond the com- mon law. would it be too much for them at least to see that the powers of the Ombudsman are extended so as to allow him to take up cases like that of the unfortunate Colonel Lohan? As things stand, to quote The Times once again, 'DO man's character is safe.'

The perils of Enoch

Mr Enoch Powell's robust speech last week- end, in which he warned against the 'dangerous illusion' of believing that Britain was still a world power, and more or less said that any- one who thought that our military presence East of Suez did any good to anyone, least of all ourselves, must be crazy, must raise consider- able doubts about how much longer the irrepres- sible Enoch will be allowed to remain as Shadow Defence Minister. In spite of Sir Alec Douglas-Home's gallant effort at Tuesday's meeting of the Tory party's foreign affairs committee to argue that there really

wasn't any difference between the Powellite doc- trine and the official foreign policy of the Tory party, represented by Sir Alec, the rumbling dis- content from the mass of Tory members has been far from assuaged.

Happily, a growing number of the younger Tories in Parliament agree with Enoch; but they're still very much a minority and the more the present administration seems to be pulling out of East of Suez the less need they feel to stand up and be counted. By the same token, however, the majority of Tories are increasingly itching to lay into Labour at each retreat from the gunboat era. No doubt events, as ever, will have the last word; but meanwhile I would far rather see Enoch have a go at educating the Tory party from outside the shadow cabinet than fail to do so within it.

Benefit performance

The Institute of Economic Affairs has done a signal public service in publishing Mr Douglas Houghton's recent address to the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants on the future of the social services. It's certainly re- markable and doubly welcome to find a Chair- man of the Parliamentary Labour party con- cluding, after deep study of the problem, not only that there must be a departure from the universality principle towards benefits based on need, but also that there must be increasing direct payment for social services since it would be disastrous to try to finance the growth that is required out of increased taxation.

The second of these conclusions is even more important than the first. Indeed, much of the recent criticism of the Government's decision to make a further flat-rate increase in the old age pension seems to me to have been wide of the mark. Education and the health service are available for all regardless of need : why make such a fuss about flat-rate pensions when the in. cidence of income tax in fact ensures that, in this social service alone, the rich benefit less than the poor?

Whatever improvements may or may not be sensible in this direction, other decisions need to be taken with far more urgency. The first is to scrap the Government's whole idea of earn- ings-related pensions (which, contrary to what some newspapers have assumed, means not pen- sions that increase with need, but pensions that increase with incomes: i.e. the reverse). It's an odd conception that the state's duty is to ensure that inequalities in income during working life are perpetuated in retirement. The Labour party adopted this policy—which would call for mas- sive increases in taxation—simply to do down the private occupational pension schemes. And the second overriding need is to develop a genuine poverty policy, principally by resusci- tating the abandoned Minimum Income Guar- antee scheme—'one of the firmest of all pledges given by the Labour Manifesto, 1964,' as Mr Houghton calls it 'which went on the rocks in the economic gales of July 1965.' This is in- finitely more important than trying to apply 'Receive As You Need' to arbitrarily-selected benefits—and rather more equitable, too.

Aggrandisement

I must confess to remaining unmoved by accusa- tions against Israel of 'territorial aggrandise- ment' in annexing (at any rate temporarily) the west bank area of Jordan. This was after all. only part of Jordan because of the successful 'territorial aggrandisement' of the late King Abdullah in the war of 1948. But at a human level this poverty-stricken land and its suffer- ing people, now faced with well over 100,00u new refugees to settle, urgently need all the help they can get. If the politicians still insist on squabbling over frontiers, at least the rest of us, by contributing now to the Unicef and other Middle East appeals, can do something worth- while to help a country which never wanted a war and has been its principal victim.

Which?

In last week's Granada TV 'State of the Nation' programme, the Prime Minister, referring to my time as a City editor during Selwyn Lloyd's Chancellorship, said to me 'I used to agree with all you used to say in those days.' Certainly, one of us seems to have changed his economic ground rather markedly since then. I wonder which?

Homage

This weekend I've been conned into playing in a father's cricket match at my son's school. Already I'm overcome with a sense of impend- ing doom. Whoever wrote all that stuff about it mattering not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game, was at least realistic enough not to claim that it mattered not whether you were out first ball. Indeed, since it's years I last so much as held a cricket bat in my hand I can't imagine why I allowed myself to be caught this time. I can only think it must be a subconscious act of homage—a human sacrifice—to the heroes of my boyhood—Sgt K. Miller, Sgt Instr D. Compton and all the other dramatis personae of wartime Lords: even to- day I automatically assume that the Beatles' new LP is in honour of that notable Australian all-rounder, Sgt Pepper.