As for the suggestion, put in the delicate words of the official announcement, that as a concession for the loss of the rum seamen ‘C.P.O., P.O. and R.M.N.C.O. will now be allowed to buy small quantities of commercial spirits",’ I can only say that this will be a constant reminder to the majority of the lower deck of the unfairness and the unscientific foundation upon which the decision to abolish rum has been based.

I now turn to my main point. It may be that the Admiralty Board has all the facts and has carried out a most careful survey based upon scientific evaluation. It may be that one-eighth of a pint of rum mixed with two parts of water, consumed regularly once a day by seamen over the last two or three centuries, can now be shown by their Lordships of the Admiralty Board, beyond any reasonable doubt, to be detrimental to a man's ability to do his duty and to impair his judgment. If this is so for the lower deck, what has my hon. Friend to say about the other side of the coin, the wardroom?+

In the officers' wardroom, wine, whisky, brandy, pink gin—spirits in all their varieties and all their alcoholic strengths, will still be available. What a picture this presents of the Navy of the 'seventies: the keen eyed, clear-headed sober, rum-less, seaman, manning the complex machinery and advanced systems in Her Majesty's ships, ready for instant action, capable of clear judgment.

1667 What of the command structure—the ships' officers, the officers on the bridge, the officers in the other nerve centres of command, the officers who will have to take almost instant action on the information supplied by the rumless seamen manning the machinery and the systems? What of their operational efficiency? What of the lives that depend upon their judgment?

If one-eighth of a pint of rum mixed with two parts of water is, in the words of the Admiralty Board, ‘…no longer compatible with the high standard of efficiency required",’ what does the board have to say about the almost unrestricted availability of strong spirits in the officers' wardroom? Queen's Regulations dealing with the availability of spirits for officers are very short. There is just one paragraph. For lower-deck ratings it extends, of course, into many paragraphs.

The only regulation applying to officers is that a captain may at his discretion limit the amount of liquor consumed by an officer, taking into account the amount that is consumed and matters of that nature—very wide, with no restrictions at all really. It is there, available. That is to say nothing of the officer who may have provided, unknown to the captain, a bottle for himself, and tucked it away in his cabin.

I do not want to give the impression of naval officers staggering about half drunk to discharge their duties. I hold that they, like the British seaman of today, are men of intelligence who know their duty and would not indulge to such an extent as to endanger their own lives and those of their comrades on board. Let us be quite clear, there are not two types of human being in the Navy. If the spirit rum can, as the Admiralty Board claims, impair the operational efficiency of the lower deck, the self-same criterion must apply to alcoholic spirits in the wardroom. Yet the Admiralty Board is not recommending that the Royal Navy should abolish drink. Little wonder that the ordinary serving seaman is outraged by the abolition of the rum issue. He sees it as discrimination—and discrimination at its very worst, because it is discrimination in a fighting service and is based upon the arbitrary division of rank and class.

1668 I defy the Minister to justify this. The date for the abolition of the rum issue is 1st August this year. I implore him to reconsider this matter. So deep is the anger and resentment that there is a real danger that the ghost of the Nore, of Spithead and of Invergordon may once again stalk the Fleet. Once again, loyal and brave men who wish only to serve their country may be driven too far by an Admiralty Board insensitive and blind to the spirit of the lower deck.