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GUY BURGESS IN HANSARD ARCHIVE 1951-1989 I Compiled by Eliah Meyer FOREIGN SERVICE (MISSING OFFICIALS) HC Deb 11 June 1951

vol 488 cc1668-75 1668 The following Questions stood upon the Order Paper: 58. Mr. SOMERSET DE CHAIR,To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the disappearance from this country of two 1669 members of the Foreign Service and their dismissal from it as from 1st June. 59. Miss WARD,To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a statement on the disappearance of Mr. D. D. Maclean and Mr. G. F. de Burgess. 61. Mr. BELL,To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a statement about the absence from duty since 25th May of two senior officials of his Department, Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess. 62. Mr. NIGEL FISHER,To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any information as to the present whereabouts of Mr. D. D. Maclean and Mr. G. F. de Burgess; and if he will make a statement. 66. Lieut.-Commander R. H. THOMPSON,To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the two members of the Foreign Service who have been suspended on account of absence without leave. 68. Mr. J.LANGFORD-HOLT,To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what action he has taken following the disappearance of Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess, two officials of the Foreign Office; and whether he will make a statement. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Herbert Morrison) With your permission, Sir, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement in reply to Questions Nos. 58, 59, 61, 62, 66 and 68. I have little to add to the Foreign Office statement issued on 7th June. The absence abroad of Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess was established on Tuesday, 29th May. Mr. Maclean had asked for and been granted permission to be absent from duty, for private reasons, on Saturday morning, 26th May. Mr. Burgess was on leave pending a decision as to his future. The matter was at once placed in the hands of the appropriate authorities who are receiving full collaboration from my Department in their enquiries. On the same daynamely, 29th May, it was found out that they had left Southampton ostensibly on a week-end cruise on the night of 25th May. They disembarked at St. Malo on 26th May, 1670 but no further confirmed information of their whereabouts has so far been received. Mr. Maclean, as has already been stated, suffered from a breakdown in Cairo a year ago due to overstrain. When he recovered he was appointed to the Foreign Office as Head of the American Department. Mr. Burgess had recently been recalled from H.M. Embassy at Washington owing to his general unsuit-ability in the position he held, and the question of his further employment in the Foreign Service was under consideration. With reference to the Question of the hon. Member for Bucks, South (Mr. Bell), I should like to state that Mr. Burgess is not a senior official. He is not a member of the Senior Branch of the Foreign Service, but he held the temporary and local rank of Second Secretary in His Majesty's Embassy, Washington, for a trial period. Neither Mr. Maclean nor Mr. Burgess has been dismissed. They have been suspended from duty with effect from 1st June pending the results of the inquiries which are being made. The question of their dismissal will depend on the result of these inquiries.

I should inform the House that the security aspects of this case are under investigation and it is not in the public interest to disclose them. Mr. Eden There are just two questions I should like to ask about this. First of all, in view of the very wide anxiety outside this country about this unhappy event Sir H. Williams And inside. Mr. Eden Of course, there is anxiety inside as well, but it is the outside anxiety I want to put in my question. In view of that outside anxiety, would the Foreign Secretary be good enough to keep the House informed of any developments about which he hears in course of time? Secondly, there is one point which arises from his answer. He refers to Mr. Maclean's breakdown and then he remarks that when he recovered he was, appointed head of the American Department. The right hon. Gentleman knows-that is perhaps the heaviest and most onerous post in the Foreign Office at the present time. Were his advisers absolutely satisfied that when they made their decision Mr. Maclean really had recovered? 1671 Mr. Morrison There was medical evidence that he had recovered. I would not quite accept the description of the American Department in the way the right hon. Gentleman gives it. That is not out of disrespect for the importance of American matters, but the fact is that many matters concerning negotiations with the United States are dealt with in other Departments, for example, the Japanese treaty is dealt with in the Far Eastern Department, and there are other things to that effect. The report on his work is that he was an exceedingly able official. Mr. de Chair Would the right hon. Gentleman say whether there has been any systematic check on the loyalty and the affiliations of members of the Foreign Service like Mr. Burgess, who joined the Service during the war when we were fighting as allies of Soviet Russia? Has he considered that aspect of the matter? Mr. Morrison Yes, Sir. Security checks are made on members of the Foreign Service on their appointment and, if it proves necessary, from time to time. I did not answer the first question of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) as to whether I could make any further statement to the House. I will certainly consider that, provided always, of course, that the security aspect is not thereby prejudiced. Mr. Bell Can the right hon. Gentleman say how long each of these Gentlemen had been employed in the Foreign Service? Mr. Morrison I could not say exactlycertainly a number of years. Mr. Fisher Would the right hon. Gentleman explain why there was an apparent delay in seeking the co-operation of French and perhaps other authorities who might have been able to help us in the matter of these officials had they been informed earlier? Could he also inform the House whether these officials possessed knowledge potentially valuable to Russia, not only as it applies to present policy but possible future Government intentions? Mr. Morrison

The first point was a matter for the discretion of the security services, of course. I do not think that there was any undue delay there 1672 Lord John Hope Six days. Mr. Morrison and on the second point, I have no evidence that they have taken documents with them. Mr. Emrys Hughes Is my right hon. Friend aware that we are now spending 3 million a year on security and the Secret Service? Is he satisfied that we are getting value for money? Mr. Morrison I think so. If my hon. Friend would like to propose we should spend more, no doubt that would be considered by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. The reference made by the noble Lord opposite to six days is wrong. I think that in the context of this question it should have been one day. Miss Ward Could the right hon. Gentleman tell us how this information came to be made public, having regard to the need for keeping it as secret as possible until the right hon. Gentleman was in a position to deal with the facts of the case, which is most important to this country? Mr. Morrison I have a lot of sympathy with the purport of the hon. Lady's question, but when inquiries were instituted on the Continent it was possible that they would leak. As a matter of fact, we did not at first issue our own announcement, for I did not particularly want to do that for the reason given by the hon. Lady, but we had to do so. One national morning newspaper had some information and had already published a story about it. Mr. George Wigg Would the Foreign Secretary institute inquiries into the suggestion made in a Sunday newspaper that there is widespread sexual perversion in the Foreign Office, and if his inquiries prove these allegations to be unfounded will he consult with the Law Officers of the Crown with a view to instituting proceedings for criminal libel against the editor and the writer of the article? Mr. Morrison I should not like to answer on the spur of the moment the question about legal implications. I can only say that perhaps I have not been long enough at the Foreign Office to express an opinion. I should think that any such implication was unfair and irresponsible. In any case, the writer of the political stuff in the Sunday paper 1673 referred to is not a gentleman to whom any of us need pay too much attention. Mr. Duncan Sandys Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether, when the last security check-up of officials took place, the Foreign Office were satisfied that Mr. Burgess had no Communist associations? Mr. Morrison I did not imply that there is a regular and systematic week-by-week check-up of all Foreign Office officials and I should not like it to have to come to that. Indeed, I do not think that the Department deserves such a check-up. Mr. Paton Is my right hon. Friend in possession of even a shred of real evidence which would connect the disappearance of these men with Soviet Russia?

Sir H. Williams Why have they gone, then? Mr. Morrison I think we should all be wise not to prejudge anything one way or the other. Brigadier Head May I ask a question further to that regarding the check-up? The questioner said that when Mr. Burgess went to the Foreign Office we were allies with Russia and the question asked was whether subsequent events had caused another check-up to be made. May I ask the Foreign Secretary, further, whether it was not a fact that Mr. Burgess made little or no secret of his extremely Left-wing political views? Is it not curious that no check-up was made subsequently regarding them? Mr. Morrison I am not aware of that, but if the implication in the question is that we have one test of suitability for the Foreign Office according to whom we are in alliance with or who we are at war with at the time, then with great respect I am bound to say that these are not considerations which would conclusively influence my mind. Mr. Chetwynd Does my right hon. Friend discount the theory that the absence of these two gentlemen is connected with their private lives and has nothing at all to do with their Foreign Office connections? Sir Jocelyn Lucas Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Sunday newspaper mentioned, the "Sunday Dispatch," 1674 says quite openly that Mr. Burgess had admitted his Communist tendencies and hated America? In that case, why was he sent to the United States? Mr. Morrison If that was by the same writer as that one to whom my hon. Friend referred, with great respect I would not take any notice. Mr. Godfrey Nicholson Can the right hon. Gentleman say, or will he make inquiries to discover, whether the conduct of Mr. Maclean in Egypt was at all times consistent with the high level required of Foreign Office officials, because there are rumours, to say the leastand to put the matter as carefully as possiblethat he was of a highly erratic nature? Lieut.-Colonel Lipton Does my right hon. Friend's original answer mean that these two gentlemen have not yet done anything to justify their immediate dismissal and that it is possible that they may provide some explanation which will mean that that course will not be necessary? Mr. Morrison If I may say what I have said before, I would impress upon the House that it would be premature to come to a conclusion either one way or the other about it. That is the only position one can adopt at this stage. Mr. Eden May I be allowed to say, as Mr. Maclean was serving under me at the time in Egypt, that in all the reports I received the work he did there was very good indeed. Lord John Hope May I ask a question about the delay in sending information to the French authorities? Am I not right in saying that there was a delay of six days after the Foreign Office knew of the disappearance of these men before the French were informed? Mr. Morrison No, Sir. Mr. Hastings

How long was Mr. Maclean away from duty as a result of his breakdown, and was it quite clear on his return that he had fully recovered? Mr. Morrison I could not say exactly how long he was away from duty, but there was medical evidence that he had recovered. 1675 Colonel Gomme-Duncan May I ask whether, in the case of officials of the Foreign Office, as in the case of serving officers in the Service Departments, before they go abroad they have to obtain permission and state to which country they are going? Did these officials obtain that permission? Mr. Morrison I do not know, but I think it can be taken that if that question arose they must have had such consent, otherwise we should have heard about it. Sir W. Smithers May I ask the Foreign Secetary Mr. Morrison If the question of the hon. and gallant Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel Gomme-Duncan) concerned the countries to which they have now gone, that is another matter. I thought that what he meant was the countries to which they were formerly appointed. As to whose consent they have got to go wherever they are, I have no idea. Sir W. Smithers Would the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the security measures of the Government are effective and, in order to restore confidence, would he ask the Secretary of State for War publicly to repudiate the statement he once made, "Like all Socialists I believe that the Socialist society evolves into the Communist society"? Mr. Speaker I could not hear a word of the hon. Gentleman's question, but I think most of it was out of order. Sir W. Smithers I asked the Foreign Secretary, Sir, whether he was aware that we are doubtful at all levels of the sincerity of His Majesty's Ministers? FOREIGN SERVICE (MR. GUY BURGESS) HC Deb 18 June 1951 vol 489 cc30-3 30 47. Mr. Duncan Sandys asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what positions in the public service were held by Mr. Guy Burgess in the last five years and during what periods; and whether the Government was aware of his associations with Communist circles. Mr. Younger On 5th June, 1944, Mr. Burgess joined the News Department of the Foreign Office where he remained until December, 1946, when he was appointed an Assistant Private Secretary to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, who was then Minister of State. In November, 1948, he was transferred to the Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office and on 7th August, 1950, he was appointed to His Majesty's Embassy in Washington with 31 the temporary and local rank of Second Secretary. The Government were not aware of Mr. Burgess having associations with Communist circles of a kind which throw doubt on his reliability. Mr. Sandys

Were the Foreign Office not aware of the strongly expressed Communist sympathies of Mr. Burgess when he was given the very confidential appointment as personal assistant to the Minister of State? Were they not aware of those Communist sympathies when they decided to put him on the permanent establishment in 1947? Mr. Younger I have already said in my answer that the Government were not aware of any associations with Communism or any Communist views which were thought to affect the reliability of Mr. Burgess. The right hon. Gentleman must appreciate that in speaking of "strong Communist views" he is using a phrase which is very vague and is liable to be misinterpreted. Mr. Sandys May I ask whether the information now available to the Foreign Office about Mr. Burgess was available to them at the time when his appointment was made or whether they have subsequently acquired information about this gentleman's views which, if they had had it at the time, would have precluded them from appointing him to this position? Mr. Younger I am not prepared to make any statements about very recent inquiries, but before these recent events Mr. Burgess was subjected to a security check. Mr. Pickthorn Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Foreign Office, when it appoints persons with university or similar degrees, always consults those academic authorities who know most about the person so appointed? Mr. Younger I think that under the modern system which has been adopted since the war general inquiries of many kinds are made, not only about people's academic attainments but also about their general character, and no doubt the sources which the hon. Member has mentioned are among those from which inquiries are made. Mr. Somerset de Chair Is it not a fact that the Government themselves recently instituted a purge of people with Com- 32 munist affiliations who were holding positions of a confidential nature in the Government service? If so, how is it that Mr. Burgess escaped that scrutiny? Are we to understand that nobody in the Foreign Service was subjected to the scrutiny? Mr. Younger It would not be correct to assume that. As I stated in a previous answer, a security check was made on Mr. Burgess some time ago and it was negative in its result. Brigadier Head When Mr. Burgess was taken on as a permanent member of the Foreign Office staff, was he again screened before he entered this confidential employment? Mr. Younger I do not think so. Frankly, I do not see why he should have been. That does not seem to me to have been a particularly appropriate moment. He had already been in the Foreign Service and other forms of Government employment some time before that. His establishment did not give him an any more confidential position than he had before, and I do not think that a check was made at that time. Mr. Godfrey Nicholson Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to leave the House and the country with the impression that there may be other members of the Foreign Service in similar confidential positions who hold views of the same nature that Mr. Burgess was known to hold at that time?

Mr. Younger No, Sir, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not make any remark which is a general reflection on the Foreign Service or, indeed, upon the public service generally. We may not all take the same views of people's political views as the hon. Gentleman does. Hon. Members Oh! Mr. Emrys Hughes Has my right hon. Friend seen the statement in the American Press that some of the stiffest Notes to Russia, which were approved by the Opposition, were composed by Mr. Burgess? Mr. Eden I should like to elucidate the right hon. Gentleman's last answer about political views. Has it not always been the assumption by us all that the Civil Service has no part in political views? 33 Mr. Younger That is absolutely correct. I should like to say that it is very dangerous to bandy about these general phrases as if any of them constitute a proper criterion for checking the views of civil servants and members of the public service. The phrase "Communist sympathies" has been used in a very inaccurate manner on many occasions. Mr. Eden Then I cannot understand what the right hon. Gentleman's answer means. Mr. Younger If I am right in remembering the answer to which the right hon. Gentleman is referring, I was saying that to use a phrase such as "the sympathies which Mr. Burgess was known to hold" was far too vague. We may have very different views about what people's sympathies or political views portend. Sir W. Smithers What are the views of the right hon. Gentleman? Mr. Younger I have known many people referred to as having Communist sympathies who held views which were normally Liberal. Mr. Sandys Does the right hon. Gentleman, by his latest answer, imply that the highly Communistic views which have been widely expressed by Mr. Burgess could by any stretch of official tolerance be regarded as consistent with holding a position of confidence in a Minister's office? Mr. Younger I do not know to what particular views the right hon. Gentleman is referring as he has not explained it to this House. To try to make this a little more precise, perhaps I might say that what the Prime Minister said when we were discussing this matter some three years ago, was that it was the policy of the Government that no one who is known to be a member of the Communist Party or to be associated with it in such a way as to raise legitimate doubts about his or her reliability is employed in connection with work the nature of which is vital to the security of the State. I think that is a very reasonable way of putting it and that it is about as precise as one could make the standard. ********************************************************************** FOREIGN OFFICE STAFF (SCREENING) HC Deb 27 June 1951 vol 489 cc1368-9 1368 40. Major Tufton Beamish

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to what grades of the Foreign Service does the ruling that membership of or association with the Communist Party or other Communist-influenced or dominated organisations is a bar to employment on work the nature of which is vital to the security of the State apply; how many members of the Foreign Office have been removed from their positions for the above reasons; and whether he will give an assurance that the Prime Minister's statement of 15th March, 1948, has been and will be rigidly enforced. Mr. H. Morrison As regards the first part of the Question, the Prime Minister informed the House on 15th March, 1948, that no one who is known to be a member of the Communist Party or Fascist organisations, or to be associated with them in such a way as to raise legitimate doubts about his or her reliability, should be employed in connection with work the nature of which is vital to the security of the State. This ruling applies without any regard to grade throughout the Foreign Service. As regards the second part of the Question, I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to replies given to the hon. Member for Paddington, South (Mr. de Chair) on the 18th June and the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) on the 25th June. The answer to the last part of the Question is "Yes." Major Beamish Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in replying to a Question last week the Minister of State said about Mr. Burgess that he was not known to have had associations with Communist circles of a kind which throw doubt on his reliability."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th June, 1951; Vol. 489, c. 31.] 1369 May I ask the Foreign Secretary, in view of those precise words, which Communist circles, in the opinion of the Foreign Office. are respectable? Mr. Morrison I am sure, whatever my right hon. Friend the Minister of State said, the hon. and gallant Member may confidently take it that it would be right. Mr. Edelman In supporting the purpose of the Question, may I ask my right hon. Friend also to keep a look out for Fascist fellow travellers and those with Fascist associations? Mr. Morrison Yes, Sir, I think it has been clear ever since the announcement by the Prime Minister that it is treated on the basis of equality, and I shall not forget them either. Mr. Braine Does not recent experience suggest that Communists most dangerous to the safety of the State are rarely those who are open members of the Communist Party, and is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the growing feeling in the country that no ex-Communist, nor anyone with Communist affiliations, should be employed in any position of trust? Mr. Morrison I am not without some general sympathy with the hon. Member's view, but it really is not wise to be so dogmatic and so rigid from the point of view that there is never any hope that any human being will ever see the error of his ways and reform. ********************************************************************** FOREIGN SERVICE (MISSING DIPLOMATS) HC Deb 19 November 1951 vol 494 c30 30 54. Mr. Erroll asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he is able to inform the House of the present whereabouts of Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess; and what steps are being taken to repatriate them.

Mr. Eden I have no information about the present whereabouts of Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess. The second part of the Question does not therefore arise. Mr. Erroll Is the right hon. Gentleman making further inquiries? Mr. Eden I have nothing to add to that statement at present. ********************************************************************** FOREIGN SERVICE (MISSING DIPLOMATS) HC Deb 30 January 1952 vol 495 c171 171 18. Brigadier Ralph Rayner asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any further information to give concerning the whereabouts of Mr. Donald Maclean and Mr. Guy Burgess; and about the extent to which both, or either, of these men were acquainted with confidential matters. Mr. Eden No, Sir. ********************************************************************** FOREIGN SERVICE (MISSING DIPLOMATS) HC Deb 20 February 1952 vol 496 cc222-3 222 30. Mr. Ernest Thurtle asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if his Department is still pursuing its inquiries into the unexplained disappearance of two members of its staff, namely Messrs. Burgess and Maclean; and what indications the evidence already in his possession regarding their movements gives as to their intended destination. Mr. Nutting The investigation into the disappearance of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess is not yet closed. The only firm information about their movements so far obtained is that they disembarked at 223 St. Malo on 26th May last, which, however, provides no real indication as to their destination. Mr. Thurtle Does not the existing information suggest that these men, like all fellow-travellers, were looking to the East? ********************************************************************** MESSING DIPLOMATS HL Deb 26 February 1952 vol 175 cc201-2 201 2.40 p.m. LORD VANSITTART My Lords, I beg to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. [The Question was as follows: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether any further information has been received on the position of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess, and whether measures have been devised or are under contemplation to safeguard the Foreign Service from such contaminations.] THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS OF READING) My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have received no further positive evidence about the position of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess since these two men disembarked at St. Malo on May 26 last. Telegrams ostensibly sent by them from Paris and Rome

respectively were received by Mr. Maclean's mother and wife and by Mr. Burgess' mother on June 7. Inquiries failed, however, to confirm that they had themselves despatched these messages. Investigations are still continuing, but by the use of the word "contaminations" the noble Lord appears to be prejudging the issue. If the purpose of the second part of his Question is to inquire as to the application of the procedure for barring Communists and Fascists from positions where they may have access to information vital to the security of the State, I can assure him that that procedure applies equally to the Foreign Service as to other Departments. Further, as the noble Lord is no doubt aware, it has recently been announce I that special inquiries will be made about persons holding key posts in the Government employ. This procedure also will apply to the holders of key posts in the Foreign Service. LORD VANSITTART My Lords, I thank the noble Marquess for his reply. I would ask him whether he is awareprobably he isthat the system of screening in the past has not been reliable, and whether he will consider measures to improve or tighten the system in future. THE MARQUESS OF READING My Lords, as I indicated in the last part of my answer to the original Question, a 202 new system is about to be introduced, and I hope that that system will prove as efficient as both we and the noble Lord desire. ********************************************************************** MISSING DIPLOMATS HC Deb 15 May 1952 vol 500 c144W 144W 80. Lieut.-Colonel Hyde asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department why the names of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean have been removed from the list of suspected persons compiled by his Department for the use of immigration officers at British ports. Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe It would not be in the public interest to say what names are or are not on the list referred to. I can, however, say that no instructions have been issued to immigration officers in recent months about Messrs. Maclean and Burgess. ********************************************************************** MISSING DIPLOMATS HC Deb 19 May 1952 vol 501 c13 13 7. Sir H. Williams asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean have now been struck off the Foreign Office staff. The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Anthony Nutting) The two officers concerned have now been absent without leave for nearly a year and action is being taken as a routine disciplinary measure for the termination of their appointments. ********************************************************************** MISSING DIPLOMATS HC Deb 26 May 1952 vol 501 c931 931 12. Wing Commander Hulbert asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs up to what date Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean were in receipt of the pay and allowances attaching to their appointment. Mr. Selwyn Lloyd Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess were in receipt of pay and allowances to 31st May, 1951. **********************************************************************

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FOREIGN SERVICE (MISSING DIPLOMATS) HC Deb 02 July 1952 vol 503 cc416-8 416 23. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on what date the appointments of Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean were officially terminated. Mr. Nutting The appointments of Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean were terminated on 1st June, 1952, with effect from 1st June, 1951, the date on which they were suspended from duty. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton Can the hon. Gentleman explain the reason for this extraordinary delay of one year in finally deciding to dispense with the services of these two men? Mr. Nutting It is because the search for them was continuing. Indeed, the search is still continuing. But, having been absent without leave for a year, my right hon. Friend has considered that as a disciplinary measure their appointments should be terminated and that they should be dismissed the Service. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton Is it to be understood that disciplinary measures can be applied to absconding Government civil servants only after they have absconded for 12 months? Is that an essential qualification which must be taken into account before people are given the sack? Mr. Nutting No, Sir. 418 Sir H. Williams Was not this information given about a fortnight ago in answer to one of my Questions? Mr. Nally In view of the fact that among large sections of the Press, during slack periods, it is becoming customary to fill in with stories about these two gentlemen, could the hon. Gentleman confirm or deny that it is a fact that prior to the departure of these two gentlemen they were in fact already being considered by the Foreign Office as not quite suitable for the offices which each of them held? Mr. Nutting That is another question and, what is more, it happened at a period when the present Government were not responsible. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could address his question to his right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison). Mr. Nally On a point of order. I am sorry, but this is a relevant question and I would ask your guidance, Mr. Speaker, whether, when a question is within the purview of a Minister and he has the information which would enable him to reply nowalthough he can refusehe is in order in referring me to his predecessor and suggesting that I take advantage of the procedure which does exist in this House but which is not used, whereby one private Member can address a question to another? Mr. Speaker I understood the reference to be somewhat jocular in its tone. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton In view of the unsatisfactory reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter at the earliest possible moment on the Adjournment. **********************************************************************

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FOREIGN SERVICE (MISSING DIPLOMATS) HC Deb 02 July 1952 vol 503 cc416-8 416 23. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on what date the appointments of Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean were officially terminated. Mr. Nutting The appointments of Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean were terminated on 1st June, 1952, with effect from 1st June, 1951, the date on which they were suspended from duty. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton Can the hon. Gentleman explain the reason for this extraordinary delay of one year in finally deciding to dispense with the services of these two men? Mr. Nutting It is because the search for them was continuing. Indeed, the search is still continuing. But, having been absent without leave for a year, my right hon. Friend has considered that as a disciplinary measure their appointments should be terminated and that they should be dismissed the Service. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton Is it to be understood that disciplinary measures can be applied to absconding Government civil servants only after they have absconded for 12 months? Is that an essential qualification which must be taken into account before people are given the sack? Mr. Nutting No, Sir. 418 Sir H. Williams Was not this information given about a fortnight ago in answer to one of my Questions? Mr. Nally In view of the fact that among large sections of the Press, during slack periods, it is becoming customary to fill in with stories about these two gentlemen, could the hon. Gentleman confirm or deny that it is a fact that prior to the departure of these two gentlemen they were in fact already being considered by the Foreign Office as not quite suitable for the offices which each of them held? Mr. Nutting That is another question and, what is more, it happened at a period when the present Government were not responsible. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could address his question to his right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison). Mr. Nally On a point of order. I am sorry, but this is a relevant question and I would ask your guidance, Mr. Speaker, whether, when a question is within the purview of a Minister and he has the information which would enable him to reply nowalthough he can refusehe is in order in referring me to his predecessor and suggesting that I take advantage of the procedure which does exist in this House but which is not used, whereby one private Member can address a question to another? Mr. Speaker I understood the reference to be somewhat jocular in its tone. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton In view of the unsatisfactory reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter at the earliest possible moment on the Adjournment. **********************************************************************

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FOREIGN SERVICES (MISSING DIPLOMATS) HC Deb 10 July 1952 vol 503 c116W 116W 94. Colonel Gomme-Duncan asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will recommend the appointment of a Royal Commission, or appoint a suitable fact-finding body, to inquire fully into the disappearance of Messrs. Burgess and Maclean and all the circsumstances connected therewith. Mr. Nutting A full inquiry has already been made by the security authorities with the assistance of the Departments concerned into the disappearance of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess and the investigations are still continuing. I am satisfied that nothing further would be gained by the appointment of a Royal Commission or other fact-finding body to inquire into the matter. ********************************************************************** MISSING FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIALS HL Deb 30 July 1952 vol 178 cc438-9 438 2.49 p.m. EARL JOWITT My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. [The Question was as follows: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether their attention has been drawn to a circular letter entitled: "Russian Spies in Britain," signed by a Mr. K. de Courcy, and to the statement made therein that "there has been no full investigation into the case of Burgess and Maclean because a number of highly important persons are known to be involved in it," and whether there is any truth in this allegation.] THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS OF READING) My Lords, there is no truth whatever in that allegation. The fullest inquiries, the records of which I have myself carefully examined, have been made and are, in fact, still continuing. I can only assume that the object of publishing a sensational story of this kind is to promote the circulation of an Intelligence Digest issued by Mr. de Courcy. On July 26, 1950, Mr. Attlee, the then Prime Minister, said in another place, on the subject of a report published in that paper: The dissemination of scare stories and unreliable information of this sort only helps those who wish to confuse us and lower our morale And he added: This paper has quite a large circulation, particularly I think in the United States. It is very mischievous. I am sorry to say that this criticism appears still to be valid. 439 EARL JOWITT My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Marquess for his answer to the Question, and in that this lamentable incident happened in the lifetime of the last Government I have every reason for knowing that his information is correct. I should like him to keep this matter under careful review, because those who publish sensational stories which tend to lower morale by denigrating the public standard of morals in this country are doing a very great disservice. At home, of course, we can treat them with contempt, but no one can say what harm they may do abroad. I want to be assured that the Foreign Office will keep this matter under their most careful attention. THE MARQUESS OF READING I am obliged to the noble and learned Earl for the first part of his remarks and his assurance with regard to the previous Government. As regards the second part of his

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question I have clearly in mind what he is referring to, and most certainly we are not only keeping a vigilant eye on this matter but will continue to do so. ********************************************************************** Missing Diplomats HC Deb 22 October 1952 vol 505 c995 995 39. Colonel Gomme-Duncan asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he is now in a position to make a further statement on the disappearance of Mr. Burgess and Mr. MacLean. Mr. Nutting No, Sir. Colonel Gomme-Duncan Is my hon. Friend aware that there is very grave disturbance in the public mind about these happenings and that the sooner some full investigation can be carried out and a report made, without damaging security thereby, the sooner will the public mind be put at rest? Mr. Nutting Inquiries are continuing into these cases, as I have often informed the House. As to the possibility of a public inquiry, an open inquiry of this kind could not be held without revealing highly confidential details and methods used in the current investigation and the channels through which inquiry is being conducted. I think that my hon. and gallant Friend would agree that disclosure of such information would be prejudicial to the public interest. ********************************************************************** Foreign Office Appointments (Security Precautions) HC Deb 22 October 1952 vol 505 cc995-6 995 40. Colonel Gomme-Duncan asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what reports on individuals are called for and examined before appointments to important posts in the Foreign Office are made. Mr. Nutting Recommendations for appointments to senior posts in the Foreign Office are made on the basis of the confidential personal records of the officer concerned kept by the Personnel Department, which include periodical reports made by his superiors, and of the personal knowledge of him possessed by the Senior Promotions Board of the Foreign Office. In addition, special inquiries are now made about Government staff employed, or who are under consideration for 996 employment, on exceptionally secret work. This procedure applies to all important posts in the Foreign Office. Colonel Gomme-Duncan If that is the case, can my hon. Friend explain how it came about that two disreputable characters such as Burgess and MacLean could have been in important positions in the Foreign Service? Mr. Nutting The question of security precautions and the vetting of staff to be engaged on highly secret and important work has been tightened up since the incident to which my hon. and gallant Friend refers.
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MISSING FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIALS


HL Deb 28 October 1952 vol 178 cc1027-31 1027 LORD ELTON My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. [The Question was as follows: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether their attention has been drawn to articles published in two recent issues of the Sunday Times purporting to describe the personalities and careers of Messrs. Burgess and Maclean, who absented themselves without leave from their official duties in 1951, and alleging that Maclean had openly declared himself a Communist, had been drinking heavily, and had violently assaulted a colleague, in spite of which he was appointed head of the American Section of the Foreign Office; whether there is adequate foundation for these allegations; and if so, how the appointment can be justified.] THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS OF READING) My Lords, the attention of Her Majesty's Government has been drawn to the two articles referred to in the noble Lord's question. It will be realised that much information about Mr. Maclean has come to light since his disappearance which was not in the possession of the Foreign Office at the time when he was appointed Head of the American Department in October, 1950. It is now known, for example, that on more than one occasion before his dis- 1028 appearance Mr. Maclean made remarks suggesting that he was a Communist or sympathetic to Communism. This was not known at the time of his appointment. Until the incidents mentioned in the question, Mr. Maclean had served with distinction in various posts, including Washington, since 1935. In May, 1950, he had a breakdown in Cairo and was sent home on leave. Reports then indicated that he had been drinking heavily and had assaulted a colleague. A serious view was taken of his conduct, but it was attributed to overstrain. In view of his state of health, he was not sent back to Cairo, and he underwent medical treatment in this country. In October, 1950, he was pronounced fit for duty, and, in view of his outstandingly good record before his breakdown, it was decided that he should be given another trial in an appointment which would not subject him to undue strain. It should be understood that most of the more important questions affecting our relations with the United States are handled not by the American Department but by other departments dealing with the region, international organisation or particular question concerned. Mr. Maclean performed his official duties satisfactorily up to the date of his disappearance. LORD ELTON

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My Lords, while thanking the noble Marquess for his characteristically lucid reply, I must express a certain disappointment. If I followed him aright, the general tenor of the noble Marquess's reply is that much is known about Maclean and Burgess which was not known before. I should like to ask him: Does he not now think it ought to have been known before? I should like to ask him, for example, why the Foreign Office did not know that this man had been repeatedly drunk in public places? And is the noble Marquess aware that there is in existence a recording of a speech which Maclean, when in New York, long before the incidents with which we are now dealing, had insisted on delivering into a recording machine in the private apartments of a friend of a noble member of this House; that in that speech he openly declared himself a Communist, and a proselytising Communist, and that that record has for many years been available for inspection if required? 1029 THE MARQUESS OF READING My Lords, it is very easy to say that we ought to have known. If I may say so, with great respect, it is always easy to be wise after the event. But we knew Mr. Maclean's background, we knew his distinguished career in the Foreign Office up to that time, and there was no reason to entertain any suspicion of him. Really, we cannot have people listening and taking down notes at every private party which a member of the Foreign Office attends. It is easy to say afterwards that we ought to have known, but we had no reason to be put upon inquiry. In fact, we did not know, and I see no reason for alleging that we ought to have known. As regards the somewhat detailed statement that the noble Lord made about the speech by Mr. Maclean, I have no information about that. If the noble Lord desires, I will make some inquiry about it and write to him. In the absence of any previous indication that he was going to raise this matter, I can only say I know nothing of it. LORD ELTON My Lords, the relevance of that question is that I am informed that the recording of the speech in question has been in the possession of the F.B.I. in the United States for many years, and the suggestion behind my question is that therefore it might have been known to Her Majesty's Government. May I ask one more questionthat is, whether the persons who recommended and approved these appointments are still recommending and approving appointments and, if so, whether the noble Marquess is perfectly satisfied that their judgment is reliable? THE MARQUESS OF READING My Lords, there was nothing unusual about this appointment. It was made in the normal course and because, as I said in my original answer to the Question, it was decided to give Mr. Maclean a further trial in view of the fact that he had had medical treatment and was declared fit. There was nothing unusual about it, and the procedure which was followed was not in any way an abnormal procedure. LORD VANSITTART

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My Lords, there is one question I should like to ask about something of which I am not quite clear. Is it not a fact that the occasional violence of Maclean when in drink was a 1030 matter of considerable comment in at least one of his posts before he came hack to the Foreign Office? THE MARQUESS OF READING My Lords, I have already referred to that. I said that we had had reports of the actions of Mr. Maclean in Cairo and that we then realised he had been drinking. I do not know if that is what the noble Lord wants, but that is the position. That is all we knew, and it was because we thought that that was due to overstrain, and because he underwent treatment and was reported to be fit for further employment, that further employment was, in fact, given to him on trial. LORD VANSITTART My Lords, my point was not so much that he had been known to drink, but that it was known that the drinking had been accompanied by violence. THE MARQUESS OF READING My Lords, it is in the question that he had in the course of a violent bout broken a colleague's leg. There is no denial of that. Rightly or wronglyI am not for a moment saying wronglythe view was taken that this was due to overstrain, and that it was capable of cure; and when he had undergone treatment, the view was taken that he had been cured and should be given further employment upon trial. VISCOUNT STANSGATE My Lords, did the noble Marquess observe the apparent desire of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that we should invite the American F.B.I. to assist us in finding out the records of our own public servants? LORD ELTON My Lords, we are not intending to debate this across the floor of the House, but I should like to say that the point of my question was that if this was known to officials in America, it ought to have been known to officials in this country. LORD SEMPILL My Lords, may I ask the noble Marquess if the appointments to which he referred are controlled by a committee or by an individual; and if by a committee, would he tell your Lordships the names of the persons on that committee? THE MARQUESS OF READING My Lords, I have said that the normal Foreign Office procedure was followed. 1031 With respect to the noble Lord, I have no intention of giving to this House the names of civil servants who are carrying out their tasks.

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LORD ELTON My Lords, I am not clear from the reply of the noble Marquess, when he refers to what was known before, the drunkenness, whether he says it was fully known to the Foreign Office that these men were proselytising Communists. THE MARQUESS OF READING My Lords, I am sorry if I did not make that clear. What I said in answer to the question was that it was now known that on more than one occasion before his disappearance Maclean had made remarks suggesting that he was a Communist. I dealt with the drunkenness question in the other part of my reply, where I was dealing with the reports upon him on his return from Cairo. I think that that is quite clear. ********************************************************************** Missing Officials HC Deb 29 October 1952 vol 505 cc1912-4 1912 19. Colonel Gomme-Duncan asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will give an assurance that, before the appointment of Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean to their most recent posts in 1913 the Foreign Office, their confidential personal records were consulted, including the periodical reports of their superiors; whether he is satisfied that their records and reports were up to date at the time of their appointments; and whether, after examination, he is satisfied that these records and reports were a true and accurate assessment of the character and qualifications of these two men, in view of subsequent events. Mr. Eden The answer to the first part of the Question is: "Yes, Sir." As to the second and third parts of the Question, these records and reports accurately represent the information in the possession of the Foreign Office at the material date; but, in view of information subsequently received from outside sources, they clearly did not represent the full picture. Mr. Stokes Is it not a fact that one of these persons was, in fact, sent home by the Ambassador in Cairo, and how was it that a man who was then involved in what I call disreputable conduct in connection with the Americans should ever come to be appointed in charge of the American Department at the Foreign Office? Mr. Eden It really was not my responsibility, and it is no good the right hon. Gentleman getting angry with me about it. Mr. Stokes I am not angry about it. Mr. Eden I have looked into these papers very carefully, and what happened was that this officer, who clearly had a very good record previously, had been sent home on medical advice, and it was thought that he had made a sufficient recovery to be entrusted with the work of that Department, which, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, does not, in fact, despite its name, deal with important confidential American matters. Captain Waterhouse

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Has my right hon. Friend any information whether or not Mrs. Maclean, who recently left this country, is now in touch with her husband? Mr. Eden No, Sir, I have no reason to believe that she is. 1914 Mr. Bellenger Although it is a well-recognised fact that Ministers have to take responsibility for what happens in their Departments, nevertheless is it not strange that those in charge of personnel at the Foreign Office were unaware of very serious incidents which have shocked the public and which have now emerged as, for example, in a debate in another place yesterday? Mr. Eden They were aware of the incidents in Cairo, but as regards the accusations made in another place about a record supposed to have been made by Mr. Maclean, I have been unable to trace any such record at all, though there was, in fact, a record made by Mr. Burgess at a private party. I have not had it played to me, but I understand that it does not contain any professed Communist views, but only, in most part, comic imitations of, in some cases, quite well-known public figures. ********************************************************************** MISSING OFFICIALS:PERSONAL STATEMENT BY LORD ELTON HL Deb 05 November 1952 vol 179 cc23-4 23 2.37 p.m. LORD ELTON My Lords, I ask permission to make a personal statement with regard to a supplementary question which I put to the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, on Tuesday of last week. On that occasion, after the noble Marquess had made his reply to my main Question, which was directed to two articles in a Sunday newspaper dealing with the records of Messrs. Burgess and Maclean, I put to him a supplementary question in which I spoke of a recording having been made a good many years ago, in a private apartment in New York, of a speech by Maclean, in the course of which he made it clear that he was a proselytising Communist. The information on which I based that supplementary question had been offered to me not long before in all good faith from a source of the highest integrity, and I believed that what I was saying was accurate. But, as has already been made clear by a statement in another place by Mr. Eden, which, naturally, I gladly and at once accept, it was in fact wholly erroneous and untrue. The recording was made not by Maclean but by Burgess, and it contained no profession of Communist faith. I am therefore taking this first available opportunity of correcting and apologising for my misleading statement. I should like to say that I am more than sorry to think that this additional and baseless charge must have caused unnecessary pain to the relatives and friends of Mr. Maclean. I would wish to apologise most sincerely to the noble Marquess and, through him, to his Department, for it is clear that if a statement of such a character had been made by Maclean, who was last in New York 24 in 1948, it would have followed that the Foreign Office had been negligent in not being aware of, or in not acting upon, the incident. Whereas, of course, a politically innocuous speech by Burgess in 1951 reflects no discredit on the Foreign Office or anyone else, and is, indeed, wholly irrelevant to the matter under discussion. Finally, my Lords, I would wish to express to the whole House my very great regret for having, in this respect, unintentionally misled it and having given currency to this untrue statement. VISCOUNT SWINTON

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My Lords, it is characteristic of the noble Lord, if I may say so, and in accordance with the best traditions of this House, that he should have taken the first possible opportunity to correct so fully and so frankly the misstatement which he inadvertently made to your Lordships on a previous occasion. I am sure the House will gladly accept his explanation in the spirit in which it has been offered. I would add only this: that I hope this full and frank statement which the noble Lord has made at the earliest possible opportunity may receive as wide a measure of publicity as did the original statement which he made through inadvertence. ********************************************************************** Missing Officials HC Deb 12 November 1952 vol 507 c932 932 33. Colonel Gomme-Duncan asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in view of the fact that the most recent appointments of Mr. MacLean and Mr. Burgess have been proved to be most unsuitable, what disciplinary action he is taking against the officials in the personnel department of the Foreign Office who recommended these appointments. Mr. Nutting No disciplinary action was taken against individual officials or would have been appropriate. Colonel Gomme-Duncan Is my hon. Friend aware that this will still further add to the disquiet in the public mind that somebody is being shielded about this matter? Will he not go into this question, which could never have happened in a Service Department, where the officials concerned would have been severely reprimanded? Mr. Nutting No, Sir. Nobody is being shielded in this matter at all. I have said often enough in the House, surely, that the reason why we do not wish to have public inquiries or to publicise more details than we have about this case is that we do not wish to give information about the methods of inquiry or to disclose other confidential matters. Mr. W. R. Williams Will the Minister not agree that allegations of unreliability come rather badly from the hon. and gallant Member, having regard to experience of him in a recent statement which he made? Colonel Gomme-Duncan Is my hon. Friend aware that what has been suppressed is not something which will affect security, but is a matter of the appointments. It has nothing to do with the disappearance of these people but has to do with their appointments. No question of security arises. Mr. Nutting The answer to the question, in that case, is that I am not prepared to lend myself to a witch hunt of this character. ********************************************************************** HC Deb 24 November 1952 vol 508 cc17-8 17 33. Mr. Baker White asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what report the security authorities gave before Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess were appointed to the posts held by them on their disappearance. Mr. Nutting The security authorities were not asked to report on Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess immediately before their last appointments, but a security check had been made on Mr.

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Burgess some months earlier and it was negative in its result. The very strict checks now being applied in the Foreign Office were not then in force, but, as was stated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) on 9th July, 1951, the Government at that time were not aware of these officials 18 having had any association with Communist circles of a kind which threw doubt on their reliability. ********************************************************************** FOREIGN SERVICE (MESSRS. MACLEAN AND BURGESS) Mr Anthony Nutting Commons November 24, 1952 The security authorities were not asked to report on Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess immediately before their last appointments, but a security check had been made on Mr. Burgess some months earlier BRITISH SECRET SERVICE (WAR-TIME ACTIVITIES) Mr Arthur Lewis Commons February 16, 1953 asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what position Mr. Guy Burgess held in the Ministry of Economic Warfare, Special Operations Executive, during the war; what was the nature of his BRITISH SECRET SERVICE (WAR-TIME ACTIVITIES) Mr Arthur Lewis Commons February 16, 1953 time Guy Burgess was connected with this Department? Can the right hon. Gentleman make some inquiries as to whether he had any other connection with this Department? BRITISH SECRET SERVICE (WAR-TIME ACTIVITIES) Mr Anthony Eden Commons February 16, 1953 In 1941, which I think is the last date that I have, Burgess joined the B.B.C. and was employed exclusively on the Home Service, so I think that it must be quite clear that he could have had MR. GUY BURGESS Mr Arthur Lewis Written Answers February 17, 1953 asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what position was held by Mr. Guy Burgess in connection with the operations when a number of British Secret Service agents were parachuted Road Junction, Newcastle-under-Lyme Written Answers April 20, 1953 My right hon. Friend hopes to be able to reply fully to the hon. Member's letter as soon as a reply from the solicitors to Messrs. F. H. Burgess, Limited, which is now being awaited, has been FAMOUS PARLIAMENTARIANS (MEMORIALS) Dr Horace King Commons April 21, 1953 contribution to Parliamentary democracy is of historical significance, should be honoured by some memorial in Parliament. No one spoke against my Motion; it was supported from both sides, but it has yet PRESS COUNCIL BILL Mr George Thomson Commons May 8, 1953

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years of the way in which the Press intrudes in private lives. There was recently the case of Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess, the two diplomats who are missing. I recalled seeing in one of the Sunday Junction, Newcastle-under-Lyme (Property) Mr Stephen Swingler Written Answers May 20, 1953 asked the Minister of Transport how soon he expects to be in a position to reply to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme about the property of Messrs. F. H. Burgess, Limited, at the junction EX-FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIALS (DISAPPEARANCE) Sir Frank Medlicott Commons October 26, 1953 asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he has now any further statement to make arising out of the disappearance of Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean. ********************************************************************** FOREIGN SERVICE (MESSRS. MACLEAN AND BURGESS) HC Deb 24 November 1952 vol 508 cc17-8 17 33. Mr. Baker White asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what report the security authorities gave before Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess were appointed to the posts held by them on their disappearance. Mr. Nutting The security authorities were not asked to report on Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess immediately before their last appointments, but a security check had been made on Mr. Burgess some months earlier and it was negative in its result. The very strict checks now being applied in the Foreign Office were not then in force, but, as was stated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) on 9th July, 1951, the Government at that time were not aware of these officials 18 having had any association with Communist circles of a kind which threw doubt on their reliability. ********************************************************************** BRITISH SECRET SERVICE (WAR-TIME ACTIVITIES) HC Deb 16 February 1953 vol 511 cc866-7 866 25. Mr. Lewis asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what position Mr. Guy Burgess held in the Ministry of Economic Warfare, Special Operations Executive, during the war; what was the nature of his duties; and to what extent he had any connection with any of the agents who were subsequently executed by the Germans at Mauthausen. 867 The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Anthony Eden) The answer to the first part of the Question is "None, Sir." The second part of the Question does not therefore arise. The answer to the last part of the Question is "None, Sir." Mr. Lewis May I thank the Foreign Secretary for that reply? May I ask whether he is aware that I have spoken to some of the Dutch underground people who escaped execution and they have stated that at some time Guy Burgess was connected with this Department? Can the right hon. Gentleman make some inquiries as to whether he had any other connection with this Department? Mr. Eden

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In 1941, which I think is the last date that I have, Burgess joined the B.B.C. and was employed exclusively on the Home Service, so I think that it must be quite clear that he could have had nothing to do with this event, which was in 194243. ********************************************************************** MR. GUY BURGESS HC Deb 17 February 1953 vol 511 c126W 126W Mr. Lewis asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what position was held by Mr. Guy Burgess in connection with the operations when a number of British Secret Service agents were parachuted into German hands in Belgium. Mr. Nutting None. ********************************************************************** EX-FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIALS (DISAPPEARANCE) HC Deb 26 October 1953 vol 518 cc2407-8 2407 4. Brigadier Medlicott asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he has now any further statement to make arising out of the disappearance of Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean. Mr. Eden As is now well known, Mrs. Melinda Maclean, the wife of Mr. Donald Maclean, herself disappeared without warning on Friday, 11th September, from her home in Geneva, taking her three children with her. No news has since been received from them but the investigations carried out by the police of Switzerland and neighbouring countries point to the party having crossed the Swiss fronties into Austria the same night. 2408 Other than this, I can add nothing to the previous statements made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham (Mr. H. Morrison) and myself. Brigadier Medlicott Is it now possible to say whether Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean left their posts at the Foreign Office of their own free will, or whether they were taken against their will? Mr. Eden It is not possible to say anything more than was said before. Mr. Woodburn Was Mrs. Maclean subject to any supervision? Did she owe any obligations to report her progress to anyone, or was she an entirely free agent? Mr. Eden I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman raised that point. I, of course, have no responsibility whatever for keeping Mrs. Maclean under surveillance. She was a free agent, and no form of surveillance would have been either feasible or proper. Mrs. Mann Is the Foreign Secretary aware that these people's property is being disposed of in England? They are able to instruct their solicitor and, doubtless, money will accrue from the sale of their house. Can the right hon. Gentleman inquire to whom the money will be transmitted? Can he not get the address? Mr. Eden I do not think that that is a matter for me. There are relatives. ********************************************************************** EX-FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIALS (DISAPPEARANCE) HC Deb 25 January 1954 vol 522 c1447 1447 21. Lieut.-Coloael Lipton

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asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what further investigations have been made and what further information is now available about the disappearance of Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean. Mr. Selwyn Lloyd Investigations are continuing, but the hon. and gallant Gentleman will understand that no detailed account of their nature can be given without prejudicing the chances of their success. The House will, however, be aware from the Press that a letter in Mr. Burgess's handwriting, and dated November last, was received by his mother on 22nd December. It was posted in London, but contained no indication of the present whereabouts of either Mr. Burgess or Mr. Maclean. No more definite information has been received. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton In view of the fact that these men are apparently still able to maintain communication with persons in this country, is the Foreign Office still unable to say where they have gone, or is this secrecy just a veil for gross negligence on the part of the Foreign Office? Does the Minister think that the public is not entitled to any more information about this matter? Mr. Lloyd The hon. and gallant Gentleman will realise that it was not this Administration which was in charge of affairs at the time of their disappearance. So far as concerns the present whereabouts of these people, I think that if the hon. and gallant Gentleman presumed that they are behind the Iron Curtain he would probably be right. ********************************************************************** THE SCOUT MOVEMENT AND COMMUNISM HL Deb 11 March 1954 vol 186 cc297-354 297 4.36 p.m. EARL WINTERTON I agree with the noble Viscount that his interruption is wholly irrelevantto help our enemies in the cold war, and to injure our means of combating them. I put those specific questions in the manner in which the noble Viscount and I have done elsewhere down the corridor, and I hope he will answer them. Does he, or does he not, accept what I have described as the 323 avowed and hidden objects of the Communist organisation of Great Britain? How anyone can have the effrontery to come and tell your Lordships that this is a political issue, I cannot understand. it is not a political issue at all. The Communist Party is not a political Party. It is a threat to everything in which we believe and, I may say, a threat not only to the property but to the lives of your Lordships in this House. We should be in a concentration camp all right if the Communists ever got control of this country. If ever Paul Garland, for whose conscience as a boy scout the noble Viscount has shown such concern this afternoon, were Fuehrer of this country I know where we should all bein a concentration camp. And the noble Viscount would be with us. He would not be saved. He would be described as a representative of the "Bourgeois Socialists." But one must not treat this matter lightly, and for this reason. I have always charged the leaders of the Communist Party in this country, including the Dean of CanterburyI have charged him in your Lordships' Housewith being associated with murderers and torturers. I said that of the Dean of Canterbury. I would say it of Mr. Pollitt or of any of the other leaders of the Communist Party. I feel that I am entitled to say thatand many of your Lordships also feel strongly in this matterbecause I have known of friends of my own who have been murdered and tortured by these people in various foreign countries. I do not think it necessary to take up more of your Lordships' time by

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pressing that point further. But I cannot conceive that anyoneeven the noble Viscount, who has such a charming character in private life, and who is so invariably wrong when he comes to deal with public affairscan deny the truth of what I have said. I therefore just cannot understand why he puts such a Resolution on the Order Paper, suggesting that this is a political issue and that there is interference with a man's political views, when the Communist Party is concerned. I regret that the noble Viscount who, I believeI hope he will not think I am giving away confidences when I say thishas studied this particular issue for quite a time and has read a great deal 324 of literature upon it, did not, in the course of his speech, refer to the matter which has been so ably and eloquently dealt with by Lord Rowallan. He never told us, though I should have thought he must have known, that it was not the Boy Scout Movement of Great Britain or in the world generally that started the struggle with Communism. It is the Communist Party which has persecuted followers of the Scout Movement all over the Communist world. I hope the noble Viscount, when he comes to reply, will admit that. He did not do so in his opening speech. All over the Iron Curtain world these people have been maltreated and imprisoned. The Communists undoubtedly regard the Boy Scout Movement as one of the barriers to their obtaining power in this country. So I very much hopein fact, I do not hope, I anticipatethat this debate will do good, because I do not believe that the noble Viscount will have a single supporter for his Resolution or for the contentionwhich I suggest is the only issue in this debatethat here is a question of civil or religious liberty being at stake. My Lords, I would end on this note. I want to get away from the main subject of the debate. Partly because of the recent activities of Senator McCarthy, a great many people in this country are in the habit of suggesting that the Americans are too much concerned with Communism and with its effects. Responsible American citizens do say, on the contrary, that we are too little concerned about Fuchs, Pontecorvo, Burgess and Maclean. The last mentioned pair were of course the centre of one of the greatest scandals that ever happened in administration in this country. They were two apparently prominent members of the Foreign Office and they have vanishedas we now know they havebehind the Iron Curtain. I hope that the enemies of Communism abroad and our friends in the United States will be encouraged by this debate. I believe the effect of it will be to show that the whole thesis of the noble Viscount in his Resolution is a completely false one that there is no question of political and religious liberty being at stake, and that the Boy Scout Movement is perfectly right in doing what it has already done and what I hope it will do in the futurenamely, preventing the movement from being destroyed by 325 Communism and its leaders from being treated in this country as they have been treated elsewhere. ********************************************************************** MISSING DIPLOMATS (MR. PETROV'S INFORMATION) HC Deb 03 May 1954 vol 527 cc6-8 6 13. Mr. Iremonger asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what light has been shed upon the disappearance of two Foreign Office officials in 1951 by information recently made available by Her Majesty's Government in Australia as a result of disclosures by the Soviet diplomat Petrov. 12. Mr. Rankin asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he is now prepared to make a further statement on the disappearance of Mr. Donald Maclean and Mr. Guy Burgess. 14. Mr. Llewellyn

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asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will now make a further statement concerning the missing diplomats, Burgess and Maclean. 15. Mr. McAdden asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is now in possession of further information regarding Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean; and whether he will 7 request the Australian Government to supply any information regarding these persons which they have received from Mr. Petrov. Mr. Selwyn Lloyd We are in close touch with the Australian Government, who have appointed a Royal Commission to investigate the case of Mr. Petrov. The interrogation is at present in progress, but such information about Messrs. Burgess and Maclean which has so far been elicited is of a limited and general character, and it is not yet certain whether it is based on Petrov's personal knowledge or on hearsay. I will consider making a further statement in due course. Mr. Iremonger Would my right hon. and learned Friend assure the House that the results of such inquiry as is made are made available to the public in the United Kingdom? Further, will he consider endeavouring to arrange that Mr. Petrov is made available for interrogation by the officials of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom? Mr. Lloyd I will certainly bear that in mind. So far as the first part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question is concerned, I have said that I will consider making a further statement in due course. But it should be remembered that in these security matters it is important not to let the other side know how much we know. Mr. McAdden Will my right hon. and learned Friend assure the House that there will be no complacency in this matter, that we shall not adopt the attitude that, as Burgess and Maclean have gone, it is best to forget all about it? Will he bear in mind that the revelations that have been made so far by diplomats who have defected from the Soviet Union have revealed spy rings in Canada, the U.S.A. and Australia and that it would be gratifying but none the less surprising if there were not similar opportunities of revelations in regard to this country? Mr. Lloyd I can assure the House most emphatically that there is no complacency about this matter. Mr. S. Silverman Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman bear in mind that a man who confesses that he has for years been conducting a system of threats and 8 spying and, at the end of it, betrays his own side is not necessarily the most reliable witness? Mr. Lloyd We shall certainly attribute to each piece of evidence the appropriate value. ********************************************************************** MISSING DIPLOMATS (MR. PETROV'S INFORMATION) HC Deb 05 May 1954 vol 527 cc17-8W 17W 49. Mr. McGovern asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what information Her Majesty's Government has about the disappearance of the Foreign Office officials Burgess and Maclean and other matters made available as a result of information given by the Soviet diplomat Petrov and his wife to the Australian authorities. 18W

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Mr. Selwyn Lloyd I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave on 3rd May to Questions on this subject. I have at present nothing to add to that reply, but I am still considering the possibility of making a further statement in due course. ********************************************************************** Burgess and Maclean HC Deb 31 January 1955 vol 536 c683 683 38. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he now has any further information about the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean. Mr. Nutting I have no statement to make at present. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton Does that answer mean that the Minister is likely to make a statement on the matter in the not-too-distant future? Has the Foreign Office information, which, for some dubious reason, it will not disclose, or is its Intelligence not very intelligent? Is the Minister aware that back benchers of this House often know more about these disappearances than does the Foreign Office? Mr. Nutting The reason why I am not in a position to make any statement at the present moment is that I would not wish to make a statement based on inadequate information and insufficient researches, seeing that the investigation into these questions is still being pursued. Captain Kerby Has the Foreign Office studied the book published last week in which the allegation is made that both these men were notorious perverts? Can he deny that allegation? ********************************************************************** REFUGEES HC Deb 23 February 1955 vol 537 cc1266-7 1266 29. Sir T. Moore asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what information he has from United Nations sources as to the number of refugees who have fled from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the satellite States to non-Communist countries during 1954. Mr. Turton The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 1267 estimates the figure at 1,800. This estimate does not include refugees to Yugoslavia, and excludes refugees from East to West Germany, who are not a United Nations responsibility. Sir T. Moore While thanking my hon. Friend for that incomplete information, may I ask him if he has any information as to the numbers of people who make the reverse journey? Mr. Turton Of the 1,800, there are none who made the reverse journey. There are some going from West to East Germany. Mr. Fernyhough Surely, the recent cases of Burgess and Maclean and of Dr. John reveal that this is a two-way traffic, and, in order that we may get a balanced picture, should not the hon. Gentleman provide the information? Mr. Turton

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I tried to do so. I said there was a certain flow from West to East Germany. In the last year, there were some 200,000 who went from East to West Germany, and the return flow was in the region of 50,000. ********************************************************************** BURGESS AND MACLEAN HC Deb 27 April 1955 vol 540 cc909-10 909 4. Lieut-Colonel Lipton asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what further investigations are being made into the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean; and what is the result of these investigations. Mr. H. Macmillan I cannot add anything to the reply given to the hon. and gallant Member by the Minister of State on 31st January last. Lieut-Colonel Lipton Will the Minister say for how much longer this solemn four-year-old farce of investigation will be continued? What, if anything, has been the result of his investigations to date? Will he abandon what looks like a foolish expenditure of time, money and effort? 910 Mr. Macmillan I shall consider how to resolve that dilemma. Mrs. Mann Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the very simple expedient of asking the Russians if they know anything about Burgess and Maclean and telling them that if they would like any more like Burgess and Maclean they have just to ask us and we will send them over? [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] I want an answer. Has Russia been asked? ********************************************************************** BURGESS AND MACLEAN HC Deb 20 June 1955 vol 542 c1006 1006 4. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what further inquiries are being made into the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean. Mr. Turton I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the reply he received from my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on 27th April, to which I have nothing to acid. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton Does that mean that the position is exactly what it was on 31st January, when the Minister said that the information was inadequate and that researches into the matter were not sufficient? If I put down a Question in three years' time to the hon. Gentleman, shall I get a better answer? Mr. Turton If the hon. and gallant Gentleman will study very carefully the reply given by my right hon. Friend, I think that he will see the full implication of that reply. ********************************************************************** BURGESS AND MACLEAN HC Deb 25 October 1955 vol 545 cc28-9 29 48. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton asked the Prime Minister whether he will move to appoint a Select Committee to investigate the circumstances of the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean in particular, and the efficiency of Civil Service security arrangements in general.

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The Prime Minister No, Sir. Lieu1.-Colonel Lipton Has the Prime Minister made up his mind to cover up at all costs the dubious third man activities of Mr. Harold Philby, who was First Secretary at the Washington Embassy a little while ago; and is he determined to stifle all discussion on the very great matters which were evaded in the wretched White Paper, which is an insult to the intelligence of the country? The Prime Minister My answer was "No" to the hon. and gallant Member's Question, which was not about all that but asked for the appointment of a Select Committee. My answer remains "No." So far as the wider issues raised in the supplementary question are concerned, the Government take the view that it is desirable to have a debate, and an early debate, on this subject, in which I as Prime Minister will be glad to take part. Mr. Robens Has the Prime Minister made any investigation as to the reason why briefs supplied by Foreign Office officials to Ministers answering Questions in this House have been at so much variance with the facts of the case? The Prime Minister That seems to be one of the matters which might well be raised in the debate. ********************************************************************** ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL POLICY HC Deb 31 October 1955 vol 545 cc683-802 683 3.46 p.m. Mr. Daines (...) It is a public scandal for the House of Commons to be shut up for three months in the summer. The public are getting cynical about it. We are becoming the subject of cheap jokes and jibes. I believe it to be fundamentally wrong. There is not only this great economic issue, but there are many other questions which ought to have been debated in the last three months. I know that it is very nice to put off the Burgess and Maclean question for seven or eight weeks after it "blew big" so that we can be much more "reasonable" and our interest flag, but it is the wrong way to treat this House. ********************************************************************** BURGESS AND MACLEAN HC Deb 31 October 1955 vol 545 cc63-4W 63W 56. Mr. Shinwell asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will state the nature of the security checks imposed by his Department immediately following the departure of Burgess and Maclean from 64W this country; and whether he is now satisfied that no disclosure of secret information is likely either at home or overseas. Mr. Turton I would refer the right hon. Gentleman to paragraph 27 of the White Paper Cmd. 9577. The answer to the second part of the Question is "Yes, sir." 75. Mr. Iremonger asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will amplify the statement in the White Paper that Maclean was under suspicion at the time of his disappearance. 86. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many officials have been dismissed, transferred or permitted to resign as a result of disciplinary measures arising from the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean.

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Mr. Turton It is proposed to have a debate on this subject at an early date. I would ask hon. Members to await that debate. ********************************************************************** BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE HC Deb 03 November 1955 vol 545 cc1214-20 1214 Mr. Attlee May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business for next week'? The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Harry CrookShank) Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows: MONDAY, 7TH NOVEMBERDebate on the disappearance of two former Foreign Office officials, which will take place on the Motion for the Adjournment of the House. It is hoped to obtain the Second Reading of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, and the Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution. TUESDAY, 8TH NOVEMBERSecond Reading of the Finance Bill. WEDNESDAY, 9TH NOVEMBERSecond Reading of the House of Commons Disqualification Bill. THURSDAY, 10TH NOVEMBERSecond Reading of the Sugar Bill, and Committee stage of the necessary Money and Ways and Means Resolutions. Committee and remaining stages of the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage Bill. FRIDAY, 11TH NOVEMBERSecond Reading of the Post Office and Telegraph (Money) Bill, and Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution; and, if there is time, Second Reading of the Local Government Elections Bill. Mr. Attlee May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he could arrange for there to be more time to discuss the Prayer which is being put down against the Post Office telephone and telegraphic charges, because usually Prayers can be discussed for only a very short time in the evening? In view of the great amount of interest in the country in this matter, could the right hon. Gentleman find time for a more extended debate? Mr. Crookshank I do not know about that, because I do not yet know on what date the Opposition are proposing to put it down, but no doubt talks will take place about it. Mr. C. Davies In view of the statements made today and also last week, by the Prime Minister, could the right 1215 hon. Gentleman find time in the very near future for a debate on the question of the 14-day rule which applies to broadcasting? Mr. Crookshank I have not promised any time yet, and the reception of the supplementary question of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) to Question No. 46 did not sound as if such a debate would be desired by all quarters of the House, but if there is a general wish for a debate on this subject, then, as the Prime Minister said, representations can be made through the usual channels. Dame Irene Ward On the business for Monday, may I ask whether the Foreign Secretary will be replying to the questions in the Motion* which stands in my name on the Notice Paper? I should very much like answers to those questions. Mr. Crookshank It is intended at present that the Foreign Secretary should open the debate. Dame Irene Ward And answer those questions?

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Mr. Crookshank I cannot dictate his speech, any more than my hon. Friend can. Mr. C. Davies With regard to the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion that a debate on the 14-day rule could be arranged through the usual channels, how can they possibly work in this case when the leading Members of the Opposition are really the strongest supporters of that ban? Mr. H. Morrison The right hon. and learned Gentleman was, too. Mr. Davies Cannot we make direct representations to the right hon. Gentleman on this matter? Mr. H. Fraser Would my right hon. Friend consider, before the Christmas Recess, having at least a half-day's discussion of the Reports and Statements of Account of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electricity Board? In ten years they have not been discussed. It seems to me that at a time when the capital expenditure of the Government and others is being considered there should be reassurance that the very large sums involved in those accounts are being entirely well spent. *[See OFFICIAL REPORT, Monday. 7th November, 1955, column 1485.] 1216 Mr. Crookshank I cannot pledge myself as far as Christmas. We have only just come back again. However, I will note what my hon. Friend has said. Mr. Glenvil Hall Have the Government yet come to any conclusions on the Report of the Select Committee on Private Bill Procedure? Mr. Crookshank No, but I hope that we shall be able to make a statement fairly soon. The matter is still being considered. Mr. Nicholson Reverting to the answer given to the Leader of the Opposition, did my right hon. Friend imply that he was going beyond or outside the arrangement at present adopted, and which was adopted on the recommendation of a Select Committee, for the way in which Prayers should be dealt with? Mr. Crookshank I do not think that that was implicit in what the right hon. Gentleman asked me. Mr. Monslow Would the right hon. Gentleman consider having a debate on what, in the light of the Budget, has now become the parlous plight of the old-age pensioners? Mr. Crookshank That is not likely in the immediate future. Sir F. Medlicott In view of the seriousness of the issues raised by the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean and the fact that these issues have occupied a term of over twenty years, is it not possible to give rather more than three hours to the discussion of this matter, which is vital to the security of the Realm? Mr. Crookshank I think my hon. Friend is under a misapprehension. The debate is for all Monday, not only three hours. Mr. Paget

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Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Committee stage of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill is the only opportunity this House has to discuss a number of highly important subjects, including the whole of the aliens' law? That being so, is it really fair to put that down for after business on Monday? I shall be putting down a number of Amendments, and I think that some of my hon. Friends will be, too. 1217 Mr. Crookshank I am sorry that there seems to be some misunderstanding about Monday. I said that there will be a debate on the disappearance of the two former Foreign Office officials, which will last the whole day, and that it is hoped to obtain the Second Reading, not the Committee stage, of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. Mr. Paget It was a slip of the tongue. Mr. Crookshank It was a slip of the hon. and learned Gentleman's ears. Mr. Usborne Referring to the 14-day broadcasting ban, may I ask whether the Leader of the House remembers that the Prime Minister, I think on two occasions, said that so far as he was concerned it would probably be possible, after discussion through the usual channels, to have a debate on the ban? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I suspect that the House cheered what my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) said a few minutes ago probably not entirely because it approved of the content of what he said[HON. MEMBERS: "We did."]but because of the way in which he said it, which was very funny? Mr. Donnelly Could we have an answer on what is to be done about the 14-day rule? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the very worst way in which we could deal with it is to listen to the hidebound or the envious, and that this ban involves people outside the House as well, and that there is a principle involved? Could we not clear the matter up and have done with it by having time allotted for a debate upon it? Mr. Crookshank I think I made it quite clear. First of all, my right hon. Friend did not promise any debate. What he said was, and what I say is, that if there is a general desire for a debate it can be made known through the usual channels. Mr. Usborne But what is the use of the usual channels in this case? Mr. Lewis Has the Minister's attention been drawn to a statement in last night's "Evening Standard" which says: The Burgess-Maclean debate is to take place on Monday. The Prime Minister is to take part in that debate."? 1218 Can I ask whether or not this information was given to the "Evening Standard" by the Government last night before the House received it, or is this another official leak that we keep getting from Government Departments whereby the House does not receive information before the Press outside? Has the Minister's attention been drawn to this? Mr. Crookshank I have not seen that. Mr. Speaker That is really not a question on business at all. Mr. Rankinrose Mr. Speaker

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Does the hon. Member wish to ask a question on the business for next week? Mr. Rankin Yes, Sir. I should like to ask the Leader of the House, in view of his failure to reply to the question by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis), whether he can say whether it was Burgess or Maclean who supplied the information? Mr. Lewis On a point of order. May I raise this matter with you, Mr. Speaker, as something which affects every hon. Member, particularly back benchers on both sides of the House, in connection with business? We are told that as back benchers we can obtain information which is usually asked for by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on Thursday afternoon. I should like to ask what safeguards and guarantees we have as back benchers when it is obvious from this Press report that an official hand-out must have been given to the Press, since there was a verbatim statement in last night's "Evening Standard" that a debate would take place on Monday next and that the Prime Minister would take part in it. To what extent can we as back benchers have the right to see that the Government do not give the Press information before we receive it in the House? Mr. Drayson Is it not a fact that discussions take place between the usual channels before the business programme is agreed upon? Mr. Speaker No doubt they do, but what people write in newspapers is no concern of Ministers and really should not be the basis of a Parliamentary Question. I do not think that there is anything very serious in this. Newspaper 1219 reporters are often very intelligent men. They often anticipate events, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. I do not think that there is any great principle involved in this. Mr. H. Morrison I submit, with respect, Mr. Speaker, that my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis) is in order. The Leader of the House has announced the business for next week and I submit, with respect, that it was legitimate for my hon. Friend to ask why a newspaper had information last night about some of the business next week, which is only conveyed to the House this afternoon. I submit that my hon. Friend's question was relevant to the statement about business. Mr. Speaker I did not in any sense rule the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis) out of order. I only said, in doing my best to reply to his question, that I did not think that there was any great point of principle in it, because newspapers publish all sorts of things and I do not think that one can make a great point of constitutional principle about something that appears in a newspaper. Mr. Lewis Perhaps I did not put my point of order to you in clear enough language, Mr. Speaker. The point that I want to make is that we as back benchers have very limited rights in the House. As back benchers, we do not know officially about the following week's business until 3.30 on Thursday afternoons. Then, if hon. Members wish to raise certain matters they can, subject to catching your eye, put a supplementary question. But if, in fact, the Press has quite obviously been given an official hand-out[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] If it is not an official hand-out I do not know how the Press can say definitely what type of debate is to take place on a certain day and who is to take part in it. Can back benchers have the same privileges given to them as are obviously given to the "Evening Standard"?

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1220 Mr. Speaker I do not think that the hon. Member has proved his case that special privileges have been given to the "Evening Standard." I have seen many instances in my life of intelligent anticipation by newspapers, and that is all that I can say about it. As regards back benchersand I here speak as a fairly old Memberif I wanted to find out in advance what the business was to be, so as to make some arrangements of my own about it, I generally found what are called "the usual channels" very helpful, in so far as they could be. I think that the advice that I can give to the hon. Member is that if he wishes to have the earliest possible information about any particular item of business that is coming on he should ask his Whips. I am sure that they would be quite as helpful to him as to others. Mr. Bellenger Would it not be true to say, Mr. Speaker, that your own experience in obtaining advance information was due to the way you proceeded to obtain it? Mr. Crookshank May I finally settle this matter by saying that no statement was made to the "Evening Standard" or anybody else about Monday's business? What I announce to the House on Thursdays is very often fluid until the last few minutes. There is always the possibility of last-minute changes, so that anything said anywhere prior to that is not much more than intelligent anticipation. Mr. Berwick Does not much of this arise from the statement made yesterday, or the day before, by the Prime Minister, who said that it was possible, within a fortnight of what was to be debated in the House for any individual, whether on behalf of the Press or the radio, to obtain information? Mr. Speaker It seems to me quite clear that the business of the House can never be rigidly forecast. There are always all sorts of contingencies that arise and upset the most carefully arranged plan, but we have to put up with that. If the hon. Member for West Ham, North asks his Whips, I am sure that they will help him in every way they can. ********************************************************************** FORMER FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIALS (DISAPPEARANCE) HC Deb 07 November 1955 vol 545 cc1466-7 1466 17 and 18. Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) why the secret and widespread inquiries begun by the security authorities in January, 1949, as stated in Command Paper No. 9577 of September, 1955, included no inquiry into the background of Mr. Donald Maclean before he joined the Foreign Service in 1935; (2) how many Foreign Service officers, having access to highly secret information, have been discharged from the service or removed from their posts as a result of the security checks on all such persons recommended in the report of the committee of inquiry in November, 1951, and put into effect in 1952. 23. Dame Irene Ward asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in view of the fact that Guy Burgess's Communist leanings were common knowledge during his career prior to his applying for entry to the Foreign Service, why his Department was unaware of this information; and what steps he has taken to satisfy 1467 himself of the suitability for further employment in the Foreign Office of the persons who sponsored his entry into the Department.

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31. Mr. Warbey asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will appoint a committee to inquire into methods of recruitment to, and promotion and training within, the Foreign Service. 32. Dame Irene Ward asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many entrants to the Foreign Service have been accepted since the war in each year in spite of unfavourable security reports. Mr. Turton I would ask the hon. Members to await this afternoon's debate. Dame Irene Ward Would not my right hon. Friend be helping the debate if he gave us a little more information before the Foreign Secretary speaks? Mr. Turton I am sure the Foreign Secretary is going to make a very full statement at the beginning of the debate, which will give my hon. Friend all the help she needs. ********************************************************************** FOREIGN SERVICE (MOTION) HC Deb 07 November 1955 vol 545 cc1481-2 1481 Dame Irene Ward On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask for your guidance? Last Thursday I asked the Leader of the House on the business statement whether the Motion standing in my name would be dealt with by the Foreign Secretary when he replied to the debate today. Contrary to practice, the Motion did not appear in HANSARD, and, as I had specially arranged with my right hon. Friend to ask this Question so that it would appear in HANSARD in order that the Foreign Secretary could have a chance of answering it, may I ask whether it might be put in HANSARD tomorrow so that it can be there on record, as is the usual practice? Mr. Speaker The hon. Lady is quite right in saying that when an hon. Member refers to a Motion which is on the Order Paper, and does not in his Questionor her Questionread the terms of the Motion, it is the usual practice for the OFFICIAL REPORT to print in italics the terms of the Motion referred to. If that has not been done in this case, it must have been due to inadvertence, for which I can only express my regret. 1482 However, I will make further inquiries and see what can be done. Dame Irene Ward Thank you very much, Sir. [The following is the Motion: That this House is of the opinion that full Parliamentary support is due to the Foreign Service in the difficulties it has faced through the behaviour of Burgess and Maclean; that the Foreign Secretary should state what powers are vested in his office as Secretary of State and those of other Ministers to appoint to confidential positions members of the service and what is the usual procedure followed; that information should be given as to what authority exists and in whom the power is vested to disregard adverse reports from M.I.5 and M.I.6; that in any debate in the House of Commons the Prime Minister should make clear the powers that the Foreign Service has to advise on the suitability of new entrants into the service and what machinery exists for ensuring that departmental views are not disregarded by holders of Ministerial appointments without adequate independent consideration at a high level: that, in view of the general anxiety caused by the Burgess-Maclean incident, a full factual account should be made available as to

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what part, if any, holders of Parliamentary office played in the fortunes of these men as members of the Foreign Service; and that, in view of the confidence the country has in the Foreign Service, it would welcome a clear unequivocal statement couched in less ambiguous terms than that of the White Paper.] ********************************************************************** FORMER FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIALS (DISAPPEARANCE) HC Deb 07 November 1955 vol 545 cc1483-611 1483 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Buchan-Hepburn.] 3.34 p.m. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Harold Macmillan) It can rarely have happened in our long Parliamentary history that the political head of a Department should have had to unfold to the House of Commons so painful a story as that which it is our duty to consider today. To understandthough not, of course, to excusethis story, it is necessary to cast our minds back to the 1930s and to recall the kind of background against which the two principal characters grew up. At that time all kinds of violent opinions were being expressed. The circumstances of the Spanish Civil War, with Fascists and Communists backing the rival forces, divided British and, indeed, European opinion acutely. This had a particularly disturbing effect upon young people, many of whom, we remember, thought it their duty actually to take part in these fierce revolutionary struggles. When Hitler had made his pact with Stalin and the Second World War began, some of those who had espoused extremist views found that their ideological beliefs exerted a pull which was to prove stronger than their patriotism. This clash of loyalties was buried in 1941 by our alliance with Russia. But, when the war ended and there came an estrangement between this country and Communist Russia, it revived. Thus it was that men could be found in Britain who could put the interests of another country before those of their own, and could commit the horrible crime of treachery. This occurred not only among criminals and degenerates, but in men holding high technical and scientific posts, among men of philosophic and literary attainments, and, finally, in these two cases, the subject of this debate, in the Foreign Service. There are many on both sides of the House who, as Ministers or as private Members, have seen the work of the 1484 Foreign Service at home and abroad. I know they will agree with me when I say how fortunate we are in this country to have a Foreign Service of the highest quality, giving the most loyal and devoted service to the Crown and to the nation. I think that all of us today are feeling how severe is the blow that has been struck against its reputation. Our Foreign Service regards this case as a personal wound, as when something of the kind strikes at a family, or a ship, or a regiment. We must recognise, too, that this case has caused a profound shock to Parliament and to the general public, both at home and abroad. Before dealing with the actual handling of this affair, I want to say a few words on the subject of ministerial responsibility. When what is known as the Maclean and Burgess case was entering its final phase, with the findings of the Australian Royal Commission and the publication of the White Paper, I made it clear that full ministerial responsibility must be taken by those Ministers, past and present, who presided over or were connected with the Foreign Office during all this period. This was not a mere act of quixotism or chivalry; it is a plain constitutional truth. It will be a sorry day when we try to elevate something called the Foreign Office or the Treasury or any other Department of State into a separate entity enjoying a kind of life, responsibility and power of its own, not controlled by Ministers and not subject to full Parliamentary authority.

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Ministers, and Ministers alone, must bear the responsibility for what goes wrong. After all, they are not slow to take credit for anything that goes right. This does not mean that they have to accept responsibility for wrongful acts on the part of their officials of which they have no prior knowledge. But in discussing this case it is quite wrong to assert that the Foreign Office, if by that is meant "officials" made decisions of their own. Ministers are responsible and, in fact, took all the important decisions. Moreover, they took those decisions in full knowledge of all the relevant facts so far as they were known at the time. The House will realise that both the Opposition and the present Government share the responsibility. The main acts in the drama took place while the Opposition were in power. The investigation 1485 into the leak, the narrowing of the suspicion down to Maclean, and the escape of the two traitorsthat Government took a number of steps before, during and after their flight. When the present Government succeeded in October, 1951, much had already been done to investigate the whole circumstances of the case and to improve our security measures. From that point, the responsibility rests with them. The White Paper published on 23rd September has given a short, but, I believe, correct and objective, account of the story of these two men and of the various incidents that surround this strange drama. I have seen a large number of criticisms in the Press and elsewhere arising from the White Paper, and I fear it will be necessary to deal with them in some detail. First, there is the general question of the amount of information given to the public. We are accused of having said too little and too late. Secondly, there are the detailed criticisms of the way the affair was dealt with throughout its various stages. The chief points at issue are, I think, as follows. There is the question of the original appointments of Maclean and Burgess divergent as they were. There is the question of their progress in the Service. There is the question of whether, in view of certain incidents in their careers, Maclean and Burgess should have been dismissed the Service, or, at least, whether they should have been posted as they were. There is the question of the watch kept upon Maclean when he became suspect. There is the question of the escape of Maclean, and how he got warning, and whether he should have been prevented from leaving England taking Burgess with him. There is the question of the defection of Mrs. Maclean. There is a general criticism of the incompetence or inefficiency of the security measures taken both by the Foreign Office and by the Security Service. I will try to deal with all these if I can, but before I do so perhaps the House will allow me to make one or two preliminary observations. It has been stated that security in the Foreign Office ought to be in the hands of 1486 the Security Service. It is argued that Foreign Service officers who are dealing with security are amateurs or are doing a job for which they have no background or training. At present, as the House perhaps knows, each public Department is responsible for its own securitythe Foreign Office, the Ministry of Supply, and all the other public Departments. The officials who are for the time being in charge of this work are in the closest and most constant touch with the Security Service and continually seek their advice, and I know of no case where their advice has been disregarded. It is true that the Foreign Office officialsit is true for the Ministry of Supply or other Departmentsare amateurs in the sense that they do not spend their whole careers upon this job. Nevertheless, this has a corresponding advantage, for it means that an increasing number of officers in the Service, both at home and abroad, gain some experience of security work. Security work in the Foreign Service really falls into two

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categories. Many hon. Members will know this well. There is what one might call the physical and technical sidethe boxes, the keys, the ciphers, the precautions against listening in apparatus, and all the rest of that side of it. Then there is what one might call the human side, involving personalities. It is argued that members of the Service itself have a natural reluctance to report adversely on or to take action against their own colleagues. But I believeI hope the House, on reflection, will share this viewthat, broadly speaking, security as well as efficiency is better safeguarded in this way and a due sense of responsibility is thus maintained. For my part, I am not much attracted by the only other alternative, that there should be a kind of N.K.V.D. or Ogpu system in our public offices; in other words, that everybody, wherever he goes and whatever he does, high and low, should be watched by an appropriate officer of a police department. Mr. Percy Daises (East Ham, North): rose Mr. Macmillan I have a long speech to make. Perhaps I might be allowed to develop what I have to say in detail. 1487 Mr. Daines Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us the status of the chief officer in charge of security at the Foreign Office? Mr. Macmillan The Permanent Under-Secretary, the Head of the Department. The status of the officer upon whom this would mainly devolve would be that of an Under-Secretary. Having made that point, there is just one other point that I should like to make before I come to the details. All through the criticisms which have been madeI do not complain of themI have felt a sense of impatience, and, indeed, natural impatience, that action of a precautionary kind was not taken or could not have been taken when it might still have been effective. I am bound to say that I think some of these complaints are based on a misapprehension of the rights of a citizen in a free society in time of peace. I shall revert to this point at a later stage, but I should like to mark it here. I would only venture to add this warning. Action against employees, whether of the State or anybody else, arising from suspicion and not from proof may begin with good motives, and it may avert serious inconveniences or even disasters, but, judging from what has happened in some other countries, such a practice soon degenerates into the satisfaction of personal vendettas or a general system of tyranny, all in the name of public safety. Now I should like to say a word on the question of the handling of publicity. It is said that the statements made either by Foreign Office spokesmen or by Ministers during all these years have been disingenuous and obscure. Why, it is asked, was not more information given earlier in greater volume and spontaneously? Of course, I do not intend to try to convince the House that everything that has been done by myself or my predecessors has been absolutely right and prudent in every detail. Happily, there is very little experience of this sort of thing in our country, and successive Ministers have not found it easy to strike just the right balance between saying too little and saying too much. I am sure, however, that they have all been influenced by one over-riding consideration. Naturally, the disappearance of the two men opened up a large new 1488 field of investigation for the Security Service. These inquiries continued for a long time; indeed, for several years. At any stage while they were in progress a full statement would have indicated to the world the degree to which they were meeting with success.

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Consequently, as anyone with any experience of this kind of work knows, the investigation itself might have been compromised. If one is working on a line which may lead to success and perhaps to prosecution, the less one talks about it the better and that is what we meant by the paragraph in the White Paper when we said: Counterespionage depends for its success on the maximum secrecy of its methods. Nor is it desirable at any moment to let the other side know how much has been discovered or guess at what means have been used to discover it. This governed the problem of the timing of public statements. Unless we were to publish a kind of running commentary such as would have been highly prejudicial to the work of the Security Service, we had to decide on the right moment for telling what we knew of the story. Ministers may have decided wisely or unwisely, but the paramount considerationand I want to emphasise itwas for facilitating the work of investigation in its widest sense and, above alland perhaps this is the most important pointof not endangering valuable sources. It is worth looking back to the way in which the case developed. When Maclean and Burgess fled in May, 1951, the first thought of those responsible had to be not how much they could tell the public, but what they could do to minimise the harm that had been done. The Security Service still had extensive inquiries to make, not merely to reconstruct the story but to improve the Service. But when Petrov defected on 3rd April, 1954, a whole new vista on the case was opened up. On 3rd May, 1954, the Australian Government set up a Royal Commission and it was clear that the hearing of Petrov's testimony in many mattersin many matters quite unconnected with Maclean and Burgesswas to be a vital part of the work of that Commission. From then on his credibility as a witness was to be under examination. We knew in April, 1954, that the Australian Government intended to set up a Royal Commission. 1489 When, therefore the Press announced on 28th April, 1954, that Petrov possessed information bearing on the case of Burgess and Maclean, we were unable to confirm or deny the truth of that information. The statement was made in the first place on 28th April that his information was hearsay information, which, of course, it was, and was to be treated with reserve until a fuller account had been received from Australia. Petrov let it be known that if, as soon as he said anything to the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation it was to be given publicity in this country, he would then refuse to say any more at all. This is a most important point. Since it was essential that Petrov should give his evidence before the Royal Commission, it was decided not to make any further announcements bearing on his testimony. The Report of the Royal Commission is dated 22nd August, 1955. It was laid before the Australian Parliament and first became public on 14th September, 1955. It then became possible to answer questions which had hitherto remained unanswered and that was done by the Foreign Office spokesman in reply to questions arising out of an article in the "People" on Sunday, 18th September and the White Paper published nine days after the publication of the Royal Commission's Report. Having made those first points, I should now like to deal with the specific questions which I mentioned earlier. Since the first three all related to the official careers of Burgess and Maclean and their progress in the Foreign Service, I will deal with them together. I should first emphasise, however, that the circumstances in which the two men entered the Service were very different. Maclean came into the Diplomatic Service before the war by a very severe competitive examination, in which he showed conspicuous ability. I have heard it said that the Civil Service Commission Board, who interview all candidates for the Service, ought to have known of Maclean's reputation

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for extreme Left-wing opinions while he was an undergraduate. In fact, his college authorities gave him an exceptionally good report in which no mention was made of his Left-wing views. But even supposing that the Board had known that 1490 he had expressed Communist opinions as an undergraduate Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West) On a point of order. In the nomenclature of politics, "Left-wing" is a connotation for this side of the House. Can I ask you, therefore, Mr. Speaker, to ask the Foreign Secretary to use plain English and refer to Communist affiliations and not Left-wing affiliations? Mr. Macmillan I said extreme Left-wing, which I think was a fair point. Perhaps the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) will wait for what I was about to say. I was about to ask the House, whether supposing the Board had known that he had expressed even Communist sympathies as an undergraduate, in those days would the House have felt that such a man should automatically be excluded from the public service? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Would the House not have regarded those leanings as one of the aberrations of youth which he might be expected to live down? It is not fair to bring in an atmosphere of today when judging events of the 1930's. It is important to realise that until and after Maclean's appointment in Cairo in 1948 the quality of his work was not only good, but outstanding among his contemporaries. During his first fourteen years in the Service his conduct gave rise to no adverse comment. His behaviour in Cairo, which culminated in a sudden application for sick leave, at the time was interpreted as the result of a prolonged period of overwork and strain. He was regarded as a valuable member of the Service and there was every reason to suppose and to hope that he might make a full recovery from what appeared to be a sort of nervous breakdown. The Foreign Office, like, I think, any other decent employer in the circumstancesit should be remembered that at the time there was no suspicion of any kind as to his loyaltytried to see that a man who had served for fourteen years got the right medical treatment and had a chance of recovery. It is quite easy to say that our trusting him in that position was wrong. Perhaps it was. It is very easy to be wise after the event. But he was given a second chance, and at the end of five months' medical treatment 1491 was put at the head of the American Department. This Department in the Foreign Office deals principally with Latin-American affairs. Major questions relating to the United States are dealt with regionallyfor instance, N.A.T.O. affairs would come under the Western Organisations Department, Middle East affairs would come under the Middle Eastern Department. The United States questions which are dealt with by the American Department are largely routine, welfare of forces, visitors, and the like. The appointment implied no promotion for Maclean and provided an opportunity to watch his conduct and his health. At this time, may I remind the House, no suspicion rested on him. As soon as he fell under suspicion, in the middle of April, 1951, one of those informed was Sir Roger Makins, now our distinguished and highly successful Ambassador in Washington. Sir Roger was then his immediate chief, being the Superintending Under-Secretary of the group into which this Department fell. It is, however, quite untrue, as has been suggested, that Sir Roger Makins was in any way responsible for the conduct of an inquiry, or that he checked or cleared Maclean. It is not the case at all and such a suggestion is false and grossly unfair to Sir Roger Makins. That is the career of Maclean up to date. Burgess's career Mr. E. Shinwell (Easington)

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How did Maclean come under suspicion? Mr. Macmillan I am coming to that later. It is in great detail. That is Maclean's career up to date, how he got in, how promoted, and what was his career up to the date of the suspicion. Burgess's career in the Foreign Service was, of course, totally different from that of Maclean's. He was taken on as temporary Press Officer in the News Department of the Foreign Office, which was then housed in the Ministry of Information, in 1944. His previous career, to the extent that it was then known, gave what seemed to be a respectable background. He had served with the B.B.C. for six years. From early 1939 until the end of 1940, Burgess worked in the special Department which, on the outbreak of war, was 1492 responsible for propaganda to neutral countries. The appointment to the News Department was temporary and did not involve establishment. In 1945, he took advantage of the opportunity open to temporary officers to apply for establishment in the junior branch of the Foreign Service. He appeared before a Civil Service Commission Board which duly recommended him for establishment. In fairness to the Board, I ought to say that it was impressed by Burgess's excellent academic record as well as by the good reports which it received covering his employment in the B.B.C. and in the Foreign Office News Department. However, I must also say that we now know that Burgess's work while with the wartime Department, to which I have referred, had been unsatisfactory. It is, unfortunately, the case that during the warand perhaps one can hardly wonder at itmany wartime Departments did not keep good records about their temporary staff. The fact remains that neither the Foreign Office nor the Civil Service Commission knew of Burgess's failings. This process by which he was established was not completed until October, 1947. In the meantime, the late Mr. Hector McNeil, who was then Minister of State, asked that Burgess be appointed to his private office as a personal assistant because of his experience in drafting and general publicity work, and this was done in December, 1946. Burgess proved useful to Mr. McNeil who recommended him for promotion to the senior branch of the Foreign Service, but as there was a good deal of doubt about his suitability for the senior branch, and as he had little experience of the ordinary duties of the Foreign Office it was decided that he should be given a thorough trial on routine work in the Far Eastern Department. While he was working in that Department, allegations were made that during a period of leave abroad, late in 1949, he had been guilty of a serious indiscretion about intelligence matters. The charges were fully investigated by a disciplinary board, and he was severely reprimanded, informed that he would be transferred and that his prospects of promotion would be diminished. 1493 There was much discussion as to his future post. It was desirable to send him to a post where his general suitability for the Foreign Service could be properly tested. It was, therefore, decided to send him to Washington for a period of trial on routine work. There have been suggestions that, having been guilty of serious indiscretions, he was promoted. That is not so. He remained, as he had been since his establishment, a member of the fourth grade of the junior branch of the Service. In Washington, Burgess was a failure. The Ambassador reported unfavourably both upon his office work and upon his behaviour outside, and in May, 1951, four years after his establishment and nine months after his appointment at Washington, he was recalled, and the conclusion was reached that he would have to leave the service. Until the day of Burgess's disappearance there were no grounds for suspecting that he was working against the

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security of the State. He had been indiscreet, but, then, indiscretion is not generally the characteristic of a secret agent. There is one further point that I think, in fairness to the late Mr. McNeil, I ought to mention. I observe that a former Minister and Privy Councillor recently stated that he had warned McNeil about Burgess when he became his personal assistant. I am bound to say that I feel very sorry about the timing of this particular revelation. So much for the official careers of the two men. I think that I have said enough to show that it simply is not true that they were protected by senior officials. It may be argued that their superiors ought to have known more about them, and I shall have something to say later about the subsequent improvements in the Foreign Office system of reports on the staff. I must now deal with the other questions which I posed about the escape of the two men, the competence of the measures taken to keep Maclean under observation and how he got warning of it. To understand the problem, I must first say something of the background. It was in January, 1949a very important datethat a report was received that certain British information had become available to the Soviet authorities 1494 a few years earlier. However, there was no indication as to how it had become available. The leak might not even have been from British sources. Diligent inquiries were begun immediately, but the field of possibilities to be covered was very large. Further evidencewhich was not available when the investigation begangradually came to light, and it is, in fact, greatly to the credit of the security authorities that the circumstance in which that information had leaked to the Soviet Government became known at all. I cannot give the details, but it was an almost incredible act of skill that, given the magnitude of the task, how broad the possible field was and the paucity of the information available, the field was gradually narrowed down in the course of two years to one suspect, and that the right one. The House will not expect me to give full details of the investigations, but I hope that it will accept my assurance that they were pursued with diligence and efficiency. But, even when suspicion narrowed down to Maclean, the evidence was both inconclusive and circumstantial. The best, perhaps the only, chance of obtaining evidence which could be used to support a prosecution lay in obtaining admissions from him. But there was no firm starting point for an interview with him. It was highly desirable to obtain further information about his contacts and activities which could be used as a reason for questioning him. A watch was, therefore, put upon him for the primary purposeindeed, the sole purposeof securing such information. As was said in the White Paper, everything depended upon the interview, and its success depended also on the use of an element of surprise. If he were alerted to the fact that he was under investigation or suspected it, all hope of obtaining the essential confirmatory evidence would probably have gone for good. For that reason, the decision not to watch him at Tatsfield was deliberately taken after a careful survey had been made of the technical problems involved in keeping him under observation in the neighbourhood of his home. The conclusion was that the risk that he would be put on his guard would be too great. Obviously, it is far more difficult in the country to conceal from a man the fact 1495 that he is being watched than it is to watch his movements or his contacts in London. I should, perhaps, remind the House that in the case of Fuchs the Security Service decided to take exactly the same risk, and they were justified in the result. The object of the watch was to obtain evidence of contact or of something that he did that would be conclusive against Maclean. It was in no sense its purpose to prevent him leaving the

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country. It is perhaps worth remembering that there is no power to prevent a man against whom no charge can be brought from leaving this country. Whether this gap in our security ought to be closed is another question, and I will come to it in a moment. Mr. David Logan (Liverpool, Scotland Division) Would the right hon. Gentleman explain how two men in responsible positions and guilty of an aggravated offence, if proved, both got leave of absence at the end of the week, and why both of them, when they were supposed to be guilty of treason, were allowed to leave the country? Mr. Macmillan The first point was, of course, that to have refused weekend leavewhich would have been very unusualwould have put the man on his guard all the more. And as the object was to try to catch him in an action which would justify a charge, it was very important not to refuse leave or any other normal advantage given to the servant; and, as I have tried to explain, there is no power under the law of England to prevent a man leaving against whom the Executive is not prepared to produce a charge. Whether there ought to be I will come to in a moment, but that was the law as it then stood, and, indeed, as it stands today. Nevertheless, it seems more than probable that Maclean somehow discovered that he was under observation. How, I do not knowwe do not know. We do not know for certain. The arrest of Fuchs on 2nd February, 1950, may well have caused Maclean to wonder whether his activities in America might not eventually be uncovered. Looking back on it, we may wonder whether this event contributed to his breakdown in Cairo in April, 1950. Assuming he was suffering 1496 from a general uneasiness on this score, it would need only the slightest indication that the circle was narrowing to put him on his guard. He would have been particularly sensitive to any hint, direct or indirect, that he was under investigation. Although, therefore, the circumstances of the disappearance are certainly explainable in terms of what is called a "tip off," it is quite possible that Maclean may have taken flight with Burgess because one or other of them noticed circumstances, or a combination of circumstancesto which they would have been particularly sensitive, of coursewhich may have aroused their suspicions. Mr. R. T. Paget (Northampton) Did not the withdrawal of the secret documents give that "tip off," and in view of that why have we to assume that there was a third traitor here at all? Mr. Macmillan I am coming to that point. That is another possibility, and I am trying to deal with all the possibilities. Although, as I say, the circumstances are explanatory in the terms of a "tip off," they are not necessarily the effect of that. That is what I am trying to say. However, the possibility of a "tip off" had to be seriously considered and searching and protracted investigations into this possibility have been undertaken, and are proceeding even at the present time. In this connection, the name of one man has been mentioned in the House of Commons, but not outside. I feel that all hon. Members would expect me to refer to him by name and to explain the position. He is Mr. H. A. R. Philby, who was a temporary First Secretary at the British Embassy in Washington from October, 1949, to June, 1951, and had been privy to much of the investigation into the leakage. Mr. Philby had been a friend of Burgess from the time when they were fellow undergraduates at Trinity College, Cambridge. Burgess had been accommodated with Philby and his family at the latter's home in Washington from August, 1950, to April, 1951; and, of course, it will be realised that at no time before he fled was Burgess under suspicion.

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It is now known that Mr. Philby had Communist associates during and after his university days. In view of the circumstances, he was asked, in July, 1951, 1497 to resign from the Foreign Service. Since that date his case has been the subject of close investigation. No evidence has been found to show that he was responsible for warning Burgess or Maclean. While in Government service he carried out his duties ably and conscientiously. I have no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of this country, or to identify him with the so-called "third man," if, indeed, there was one. As regards others whose names have been in any way associated with this affair, I have made, or caused to be made, and studied myself, the most careful, rigorous and impartial investigation into each case which I have been able to have made; and I can assure the House that nobody is being in any way shielded. I am sure that my predecessors would not have hesitated to have taken the appropriate action, if they had found evidence of guilt, but, in fact, no such evidence was found. A number of Foreign Service officers who had associated, as office colleagues or outside, with Maclean and Burgess were examined by the Foreign Office Security Service. If, of course, any evidence not already available can be produced by anybody either inside or outside this House, I trust that it will be made available to the authorities. Mr. Herbert Morrison (Lewisham, South) It is said in a newspaper this morningthough I appreciate entirely what the Foreign Secretary has saidthat Philby and his family have disappeared. Does he regard that a matter of significance in all the circumstances of the case? Mr. Macmillan I have no reason to believe that they have. In fact, I think it is very improbable that they have. Mr. R. J. Mellish (Bermondsey) It may be that Philby has gone into hiding because of the scandalous publicity arising from certain statements. Mr. Macmillan Well, I was trying to state the case as fairly and as absolutely accurately as I can. I must emphasise, however, that on the important question of what decided the two men to escape we really have, as the hon. Member has suggested, very little evidence. 1498 As stated in the White Paper, arrangements were made to keep certain highly classified material from Maclean, but these arrangements were not as ham-handed or crude as some people may believe. Nevertheless, it is not impossible that in spite of all the precautions. Macleanwhom we now know was an experienced agentmay have become aware of them. Suspicion has also been cast on those who were aware of the decision of the then Foreign Secretary that Maclean should be interrogated. That decision was taken on 25th May, 1951, but the evidence of Petrov suggested that the flight of the two men was planned well before that date and, therefore, that really answers the case of any suspicion falling upon those who were privy to the decision of the right hon. Gentleman. Mr. Sidney Silverman (Nelson and Colne) I understood from the right hon. Gentleman's account of the matter earlier that right up to the day when Burgess fled this country there was no suspicion against him at all and there was no investigation on security grounds. If I have that right, can the right hon. Gentleman then say why Burgess should run away? Mr. Macmillan

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Well, the fact that there was no suspicion on the part of the authorities against him does not mean that he may not have been conscious of his own guilt, and, therefore, thought that the best thing was to be off. I am just stating that there was not any suspicion against him. I think that that deals with that matter. I have been asked for full details, and I think that I ought to give them. There is then the question of Mrs. Maclean. It is said that she ought to have been prevented from going to Switzerland to live with her mother, Mrs. Dunbar. It may be said that it was naive to rely on Mrs. Maclean's assurance, and her mother's assurance, that they would keep in touch with the Security Service; and on Mrs. Maclean's alleged desire to educate the children out of England. However, the point is that Mrs. Maclean is really of little importance. Anything she knew before Maclean left she must have got from him. She had no means of obtaining any information after he left, and whether she remained in this 1499 country or left made little difference. She could do no particular good in England; she could do no particular harm abroad. Again, the over-riding fact remains that there is no power under the law of England to prevent her from leaving this country. Hon. Members will ask what lessons have been learned and what steps have been takenthat really is the vital pointto try to ensure that there can be no repetition of such a deplorable story. This leads me to the question of security checks. Since 1945, a check has regularly been made on all new entrants into the Foreign Office and all new temporary employees. This check is made to ensure that no adverse security record is held against candidates for employment. Since 1945, all officers already employed have been so checked, but it is acknowledged that this check is not adequatewhat is called the negative checksince it will only reveal persons who have already come to the noticeunfavourable notice, if you like of the security authorities. Indeed, when applied to Maclean and Burgess, it revealed nothing about the subversive political associations of their early days. From 1951 onwards, it was recognised that more must be done to check the reliability of persons holding important positions in the public service. At the beginning of 1952, a regular system of positive vetting was introduced. This procedure entails detailed research into the whole background of the officer concerned, including his school and university career and any previous employment before joining the Foreign Service. In a large number of cases, personal inquiries are made of university tutors, past employers and others who have personal knowledge of the candidate. Since 1952, about 900 cases, involving the senior, junior and clerical branches of the Foreign Service, have been examined. So far, there have been four cases in the Foreign Service in which an officer's political activities and associations have led to his leaving the Service altogether. In about half-a-dozen other cases it has been considered prudent to move officers to other work of less importance to the national security, or to accept their resignations. This positive vetting procedure is not confined to the Foreign Service. It is 1500 now operated in all Government Departments having access to classified material involving the security of the State. Immediately after the disappearance of Maclean and Burgess, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South, who was then Foreign Secretary, set up a committee to look into all aspects of the security arrangements in the Foreign Service. The committee was an official one, and it may perhaps be criticised on that account, but I think that it was a wise act of the right hon. Gentleman, who chose officials singularly well suited to their taskmen with great records of devotion to the public service. The committee was presided over by Sir Alexander Cadogan, and Sir Nevile Bland and Sir Norman Brook, Secretary to the Cabinet, were the other members.

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The committee reported in November, 1951, approving the security check, including the plans for positive vetting which had already been prepared. It recommended that vetting should be extended to all members of the senior branches and the senior grades of the junior branches of the Foreign Service. In fact, the present practice of the Foreign Service goes beyond that recommendation, since many more junior grades, which must inevitably be employed on highly classified work, are positively vetted. The committee considered not only political unreliability in itself, but the problem of character defects, which might lay an officer open to blackmail, or otherwise undermine his loyalty and sense of responsibility. Shortly after the disappearance of Maclean and Burgess, and before the Cadogan Committee reported, fresh instructions had been issued by the Permanent UnderSecretary of the Foreign Office to heads of missions and other senior officials impressing upon them the need to watch in particular the forms of behaviour among their staff likely to sap an officer's discretion or sense of responsibility or his public duty, or to expose him to undue influence or blackmail or to heighten in undue measure the tension of his existence. The committee commented on these instructions with approval and emphasised that not only the heads of missions but some junior officers in charge of sections throughout the Foreign Service, and, indeed, in other services, ought to be reminded of their 1501 responsibility for the security and personal reliability of the staffs serving under them, and instructions were issued in this sense. Mr. R. H. S. Crossman (Coventry, East) May I ask the right hon. Gentleman one question on vetting? Did he say that there was no vetting at the Foreign Office before 1945; that is to say, between 1939 and 1945 officials were not submitted to political vetting to which other people who came into the Government service had to submit? Mr. Macmillan I said it was of a negative kind. It was merely said, "Have you got anything against this man?" and the point of the positive vetting is diligent research into the previous records. In the old days, we should have been rather shocked at positive vetting, but we have had to accept it as one of the necessities of present conditions. I want to refer to a point to which I have seen some allusion maderecruitment for the Foreign Service. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman is to raise the matter, because I saw something in one of the newspapers this morning which made me think that he might intend to do so. It is said that recruitment is kept to a closed circle, and that its members are taken too narrowly from one social group. I think I should remind the House exactly what has happened about the Foreign Service. There is so much going on that it is always difficult to remember, and the public memory is short. During the war, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, then Foreign Secretary, gave great thought to the question of the future of the Foreign Service. He proposed a scheme to his colleagues in the Coalition Government on which much labour was spent, and this scheme made certain radical changes. The scheme was set out in a White Paper, and certain arrangements under it required an Order in Council and a Bill. All this was under the Coalition Government in 1943. The Leader of the Opposition, the deputy Leader of the Opposition and Mr. Bevin, who subsequently became Foreign Secretary, held high positions in the Coalition Government. After the war, Mr. Bevin succeeded as Foreign Secretary 1502 and held that office, if I remember rightly, for five years. He was certainly not the man to be unduly impressed by the outward semblance of things; he went to the inner core. He was not a defender of privilege, and, at the same time, was not a man to yield to prejudice. It fell to him to implement the scheme which had been laid down by the Act

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of 1943. If he had not been satisfied with it, I am sure that in his five years at the Foreign Office he would not have hesitated to propose some amendment or alteration. Actually, he felt for the Foreign Service a loyalty and devotion which has been amply rewarded by the respect and affection in which his name will always be held at the Foreign Office. It may be worth emphasising what were the major points of the Eden-Bevin reforms, if I may call them that. First, the amalgamation of the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service with the Consular Service and the Commercial Diplomatic Service into a single whole. That was the first big point. Secondly, the reorganisation of the arrangements for recruitment and training with a view to opening the service to anyone with sufficient qualifications. I ought to add, for there has been much misunderstanding on this point, that the work of selecting recruits for all except the most junior grades of the Service has for a long time been in the hands of the Civil Service Commissioners. I want to emphasise this. The Foreign Service is not a service renewing itself by co-option. Its new members have for a long time been chosen by an outside body. It is sometimes said that the Foreign Service, like the rest of the Civil Service, is a sort of closed shop, that its failures are protected and that there is no means of getting rid of incompetent or unsuitable people. I would, however, point out, that since the introduction of the Foreign Service Act, 1943, members of the Foreign Service have not enjoyed the same degree of security as that of the rest of the Civil Service, for this Act introduced arrangements more like those of the fighting Services, which provide for compulsory retirement of established members who do not make sufficient progress to justify their retention or promotion. Fifty-nine officers have been retired under this Act in the last ten years. The House will also observe that the new scheme for the conduct of the Service and the amalgamation and other 1503 conditions applied not merely to new entrants but to existing officers who became subject to the new conditions as to postings, promotion and retirement. The House will see that the remodelling of the Foreign Service was initiated by a Conservative Foreign Secretary and, after exhaustive inquiry, by a Coalition Government. It was implemented by a Labour Foreign Secretary only ten years ago in a Parliament which, with all its faults or merits, cannot be accusedI am speaking of the Parliament of 1945of being too prejudiced in favour of the past or standing too rigidly upon ancient ways. Therefore, it does not seem to me that a case for a further inquiry into the recruitment and organisation of the Foreign Service has been made out. Now, with regard to the Security Service and the Maclean case there is one point that I should like to emphasise. I spoke just now of how this information was got and how it had to be sifted. The information originally available necessitated a search in a field of about 6,000 people. That is to say, on the technical character of how this was got, there were 6,000 people each of whom might have been the man. These the Security Service eventually narrowed down to one. That in this case, unlike the Fuchs case they were unable to obtain sufficient evidence to justify a charge is, of course, to be regretted. The difficulties in our system of law are very real. Of the skill, perseverance and loyalty of the Security Service there can be no doubt. I should like to add this tribute. It is indeed remarkable that we are able to recruit men of such high character and attainments. The rewards are not very large; the responsibilities are very great. After all, most of us gain some satisfaction in life not only from doing a job well but from the public acknowledgment of success. These men are cut off from all that. They work in secret. Most of their successesand there are, indeed, successesmust be kept quiet. Any failure hits the headlines. For this service, then, not fame but patriotism is the spur and the reward.

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On the more general aspects of security I should like to add this: I am satisfied, and I hope the House will be satisfied, that all these new arrangements which 1504 have been made have enormously strengthened the security system. I doubt whether any substantial improvement can be made within our existing system of law, on which I will say a word before I sit down; but, unfortunately, it is not sufficient to satisfy ourselves that we have taken all possible steps. We cannot ignore the fact that this incident, following upon others in the world of science, has had a serious effect upon our reputation abroad. That is inevitable. Of course, many of the allegations made by irresponsible people are so exaggerated that they carry with them their own refutation. Nevertheless, there is a real danger that a feeling might be spread among our Allies that our own reliability, hitherto regarded as a model, is no longer to be trusted. It is of the greatest importance for our defence and our safety, depending as they do on close relations of confidence with our Allies, in the old world and in the new, that successive Governments should be known to have taken all steps within their power to stop any loopholes and to strengthen any legitimate methods of defending our vital secrets. Do not let foreign observers compare the present position with the situation as it was some time ago. I can honestly say that it is my belief that every practical means has been taken which is open to the Executive. I would, therefore, make an appeal that we should not injure our own interests by spreading abroad a false and, still more, an outdated picture of our security system as it stands today. Before I conclude I hope the House will bear with me for one or two moments more for some final reflections. As I have already stated, we have to face a world completely changed from anything the older ones among us knew or thought possible; and what a change it is. Since 1689 in England and since 1745 in Scotland there has been no real dispute about the character of the rgime. Bitter as have been political conflicts at certain times, there has been no question for all these years of serious acts of treachery to the country. We have to go back to the period of the wars of religion to find any parallel for the new ideological conflicts which divide the world and which may continue to divide it for many years to come. It is difficult for the older ones among us to realise the new situation which 1505 Fascism, Nazism, Communism and other totalitarian methods of government have produced. It is hard for us to conceive of a son betraying his father or a father denouncing his own children. We cannot imagine a state of mind which regards spying as a virtue and treachery as a duty. We have to read again the problems that confronted the Elizabethan statesmen, Burghley and Walsingham, when the Secret Service first developed, when espionage and counter-espionage, plot and counter-plot were inseparable from international politics. This brings us up directly against a new problem. It is really that of public security in a free society during a period of intense ideological warfare. We could, of course, reintroduce some methods and take again some powers which we abandoned long ago and we hoped had gone for ever. Even in a modified form these would have been very helpful in dealing with the case which I have had to outline to the House today. The story might easily have been unravelled if less regard had been had to the law. Here, may I say that I was struck by a criticism which appeared recently in one of the popular papers. Why, asked this critic, was Mrs. Maclean not prevented from leaving England. This is what it said. I quote from the article: the authorities said they would have had no legal power to stop her. There is no law for this. Then it goes on: Could not they have found one? There we have the very nub of the problem. Could not theythat is, the authoritieshave found one? Hitler would have found one, of course. Mussolini would have found one. Stalin had got one.

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In time of war we, too, were forced to find new measures to control the rights of the individual, but they were never very much liked here, and I do not suppose that there was any product of war more distasteful to those who had to operate them or to the general public than the powers under Regulation 18B. In recent years, however, the question of treachery, particularly treachery inspired not by motives of personal gain but by misplaced ideological convictions, has loomed much larger in our national life than at almost any time in our long history; and nowadays it is not only the bureaucracy who 1506 are the holders of our national secrets. Perhaps even more secrets are in the hands of large sections of industry and of the scientific world. With this extension of the problem we are brought face to face with the fundamental question of liberty. How can the interests of security be maintained without damage to our traditional liberties? At what point do reasonable and necessary security measures become the repugnant attributes of the police State? In short, how do we, in modern times, achieve good security in a democratic society? The review which I have given of the security measures taken in recent years will, I hope, convince the House that everything that it is possible to do under existing lawor everything that we can seehas been done to protect us against treason and subversion by Government servants, or by others, who have secret material. To the extent that security practices can be improved under existing laws every effort has been made to achieve it, and I believe that these measures make the recurrence of an affair such as this exceedingly improbableI do not say that they make it impossible. I repeat, however, that these measures do not, and in my view cannot, go beyond the letter and the spirit of the law. At any rate, before the limitations of the existing law were relaxed, were it no more than this, I think that Parliament would have to weigh very carefully the balance of advantage and disadvantage, for it would, indeed, be a tragedy if we destroyed our freedom in the effort to preserve it. 4.40 p.m. Mr. Herbert Morrison (Lewisham, South) Mr. Deputy-Speaker, before I proceed with my speech, perhaps I may be permitted to stray beyond the bounds of order for a few moments to refer to the deeply regretted death of my right hon. Friend William Whiteley, Member for Blaydon. He was respected in all quarters of the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] He was a very fine Member of Parliament, a man of the most upright character, and I would say, having seen a good many Chief Whipsand I think that the Government Chief Whip will agreethat William Whiteley will stand out as one of the great Chief Whips in the House of Commons; a 1507 servant not only to his party, but a man who also had a sense of duty to the House as a whole, including the Opposition. We all deplore his passing. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear. hear."] We have heard a very able, full and competent speech by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and I am sure that the House as a whole is thankful to him for the information which he has given this afternoon. I think the Government were right themselves to take the initiative in offering a debate on this matter, and that it is right that a debate should take place. It will probably be rather less exciting than one felt that it might be when the Government announced it. The atmosphere has somewhat cooled down. We are grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his speech, although I must say that while I agree with the great bulk of itas will be apparent in the course of my observationsI am not quite as satisfied as he is with things as they are. This is not a party political matter. We are concerned with a problem of Government and administration, and I hope that it will be handled as such throughout the debate. We, in our country, have a very great Civil Service, of which we can be proud. I do not

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think that there is any better in the world. I agree that the Civil Service of the Foreign Office is also one which does credit to the country, both at home and abroad. It is true that, now and again, a tradition of earlier policies and earlier biases is to be found in the Foreign Office, and it is necessary for the Secretary of State to push hard to get it altered. The Foreign Service is a very good one. Having had for a short period, contact with other foreign services, I am inclined to say that I know of none better than ours. But there is always a temptation for a Minister in charge of a Departmentor a Minister who has been in charge of a Departmentrather to assume that that Department is completely perfect. That, of course, would be foolish and unwise. There are always imperfections, and it is as well to bear that in mind. The Secret Servicefor which, in its wider aspects the Prime Minister is responsible and wasis also a good one as a whole. During the greater part of the war I was Secretary of State for the 1508 Home Department and Minister of Home Security. I had a good deal to do with the Secret Services or, at least, had a good deal of knowledge from them and, although I was not in charge of them. I watched their work. Compared with the secret services of Nazi Germany ours were eminently superior. I did not think much of the Nazi secret services. I thought a great deal of our own. In the beginning of the war, they were, perhaps, a little reckless in their political judgment, and sometimes saw Communistsand even Fascistswhere they did not fully exist; but my experience was that they improved as time went on. I agree with the Foreign Secretary that we all feel that this incident of Burgess and Maclean is a disgrace to our country. With him, I know that the Foreign Officethe Foreign Service as a wholefelt that it was a disgrace and a reflection upon the Service. It was also an unhappy incident for the Security Service. We are all sad about it; just as we were sad about the case of Fuchs, of Dr. Nunn May, and of Pontecorvo, cases which were, if anything, more serious even than these cases, and which might have a greater effect upon the future peace of the world even though they did not raise so much excitement. However, we have to keep a sense of proportion about these things. If we remember the number of men employed in our public services, the number of cases of this kind are very limited. That does not mean that we should underestimate them, nor that we should not be worried about them. Each is a worrying incident, but things have occurred in this way before. After all, the noblest band of men in history had their Judas. He suffered, and I think that these men will suffer, in one way or another, in due course. The existence of Communism and Fascism creates a new security problem. The Communistand, indeed, the Fascist; he does not exist so much now, but he could again if our economic situation became really seriousare both different from the ordinary espionage agent, in this respect: they both have a loyalty, not to their own country but to another country or other countries. I do not know that they have a sense of guilt about this external loyalty. They may even feel that it is a virtue. If one 1509 reads the Communist daily newspaper, or reads the periodicals or other information coming one's way, one cannot help but feel that they have not the slightest feeling of obligation or loyalty to the United Kingdomthat their loyalty is to another country. I reserve the right to disagree with my own country if I think that my own country is wrong in a given course of policy. I reserve the right to agree with other countries if I think that they are right, but I am always very suspicious of anybody, whether a Government servant or somebody else, who persistently expounds the view that our country is always wrong, and the Communist countries are always right. There is something wrong with that, and it gives rise to legitimate suspicion.

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It is sometimes said that Communism is a religion. I do not think that is fair to religion. I think that in some ways it is a disease. In fact, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan), some years ago, very rightly said, "The Communist party is not a party; it is an organised conspiracy". There is a great deal of truth in that. Mr. Emrys Hughes (South Ayrshire) Churchill said that about the Tories. Mr. Morrison If I could think of something to quote to please my hon. Friend, I would do so, but I have not got such a quotation ready. Nevertheless, there are some Communists who are innocent, sincere but deceived. It is the case that in the Security Service we are up against a new problem. Formerly, a man who was a national of another country was hired as a spy, or even a national of one's own country was hired as a spythat was the game, and they were often very brave men. But the new situation of a voluntary act of service in the interests of a foreign Power against one's own country is a very serious matter for security in all sorts of ways. Let no one think that this aspect is confined to the working classes: I do not think that anyone does think so. In fact, the cases with which we are concerned are not of that character. There have been some working-class cases, but the funny thing about the middle and upper classes, the well-to-do class, is that if they go 1510 wrong in this fashion they are, if anything, worse than other people. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It is so. They begin by revolting against their families and they may finish up by secretly revolting against the State. That is rather curious. What I have said about the Communists is equally true about the Fascists. Mr. C. Pannell Perhaps my right hon. Friend will address himself to the point to which the Secretary of State did not address himself, namely that, generally speaking, this talk about the liberty of the subject has not been applied circumspectly to members of the working-classes; the Ministry of Supply screened, and effectively screened, persons, including members of my union, on the slenderest suspicion, and that, broadly speaking, the tests of the Foreign Office were not equitably inflicted upon the working classes. Mr. Morrison I think that there may be some truth in what my hon. Friend says. I was Minister of Supply for a few months. Some workmen were dismissed before my arrival. I had complaints from a Labour Member of Parliament, the late Arthur Jenkins, about it, and I went into it and came to the conclusion that they had been dismissed on inadequate information and on inadequate grounds. Therefore, I think there is, or that there was at any rate, some truth in what my hon. Friend says. I agree that it would be wrong to assume that because a man is a Communist or a Fascist at university he must be necessarily guilty for life. All sorts of things happen among university undergraduates. I never studied at a university. I am a product of the elementary schools, and I am not ashamed of the fact. But all sorts of things happen at the universities. Abnormal ideas are evolved, and, indeed, sometimes university students are encouraged to evolve them because they are thought to be good for the youthful mind. There was, for example, the motion carried at the Oxford University Debating Society that they would not fight for their King and country, and many people were understandably shocked about it. But the House may be sure that three-quarters, and may be more, of those young men did fight for their King and country when war came. So what happens at university is not conclusive either 1511 way if we were to take it as

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conclusive that because a man was a Communist or a Fascist in his university life, he must, therefore, be permanently held under suspicion as likely to betray secrets of State, I think that we should be degenerating into McCarthyism, because that was exactly what McCarthyism wasa probing back and the assumption that if there had been such a relationship the man must be held to be guilty. The dates of all these incidents are revealed in the White Paper, and five Governments in all were involvedthe pre-war Conservative Government, the Coalition Government, two Labour Governments and the present Government. Therefore, we are all in it. Five Governments have been concerned with these two men, and I feel that we must all do our best to help the House, but we must have due regard to security in the process. I will tell the House what I know about this matter during the short period that I held office as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. So far as I can recall, I never met Mr. Burgess. I think I met Mr. Maclean only once, and that was at a social gathering, which bears out the point that his office as Head of the American Department was not of the kind which would bring him into frequent contact with the Secretary of State. I will tell what I know. As I say, five Governments were involved, as well as a number of Ministers at the Foreign Office. Unfortunately, two of the Ministers who were at the Foreign Office during part of the timeMr. Bevin and Mr. McNeilhave died. Nothing I shall say should be taken as criticism of themthey are not here to answer for themselvesbut I may have to refer to matters which occurred during their period of office. I will tell the story of my own part in this matter. In the middle of April, 1951, I was verbally informed, in general terms, of leakages that had occurred. At that time, it was still not known who were the informants, although suspicion narrowed down to a quite limited number of people. To the best of my recollection the names were not mentioned to me. The Security Service arranged to investigate, and it sought and obtained full Foreign Office co-operation. I hope that no one here or outside the House 1512 will think that anybody in the higher reaches of the Foreign Office who were responsible in this matter would for one moment have sought to protect any of their colleagues from a charge of espionage. I am quite sure that they would not. That would be an unjust suspicion. At a later date, as outlined in the White Paper, Maclean became the principal suspect, and as a consequence some top-secret papers were withheld from him. That was a decision which, no doubt, occasioned some difficulty because it might arouse suspicion. On the other hand, if the papers had continued to be supplied to him, it would have laid the authorities open to great criticism in due course if trouble arose. In all these matters we have to remember this dilemma of the security authorities. Apart from the small security branch of the Foreign Office, the wider security authorities, of course, were responsible to the Prime Minister and not to the departmental Ministers, which is quite right. The evidence against these men at the material times right up to their departure was insufficient to warrant decisive action on charges of espionage. If they had been arrested and ultimately found innocent, that would have brought discredit both on the Foreign Office and the Security Service, and charges of goodness knows what would have been made. The evidence was insufficient. It could not justify arrest, and further evidence was needed in order to justify effective action. There was another reason why precipitate action could not very well be taken. That was that one of the most valuable things to do in counter-espionage is not only to find out the man or the men who are responsible for espionage but to find out their contacts and the channels through which they act and from whom they receive their orders.

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Therefore, precipitate action might destroy the wider operation of unravelling the network of espionage against our country. Mr. Daines Could my right hon. Friend, who was Home Secretary at this time, explain why the ports were not alerted in case Maclean went; and, secondly, could my right hon. Friend explain why Maclean's passport was not withdrawn? May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the fact that passports have been withheld from British 1513 citizens. There was the case of Dr. Burhop, who wanted to attend a scientific conference on the Continent, and his passport was withheld. My main question is, why were the ports not alerted? Mr. Morrison That is a perfectly legitimate point to raise. I am inclined to think that they ought to have been alerted, but, having said it, I do not know what one would have done effectively if they had been alerted. There is this to be said, of course, that it would have been very useful to have known immediately if they had gone and by what route. They might have been followed. Therefore, I think that my hon. Friend has raised a fair point of criticism. With regard to the withdrawal of passports, I do not think that can be done. Of course, in war we did all sorts of thingsI had a hand in them. Mr. H. Macmillan The law about passports is very complicated. I think it is possible to refuse a passport. I do not think it is possible effectively to withdraw a passport. In law the passport, it is quite true, is the property of Her Majesty, and the person who holds the passport does so as a kind of tenant, but the only way in which one could effectively get a passport back would be by applying to the court, and therefore evidence would be required to prove to the court why the passport ought to be withdrawn. Therefore, it cannot effectively be withdrawn except by the kind of evidence which would be regarded as satisfactory enough to support the bringing of a charge. Mr. Morrison There would have had to be some sort of charge, some sort of evidence given, in which case one is in a dilemma. Undoubtedly it was done in war-time. On the spur of the moment I cannot deal with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Daines), but undoubtedly it was done in war-time, when there used to be a delightful area of doubt at to who was most responsible for the passport and visa businessthe Home Secretary or the Foreign Secretary. We got on as best we could. Nevertheless, there is something in what my hon. Friend says. It is important that the contacts should be touched and the network of espionage uncovered. I would remind the House that it is not unusualand I think this is well knownfor the police even to 1514 leave at liberty a known criminal against whom they have got complete evidence and against whom they would undoubtedly secure a conviction. Sometimes the police leave him at liberty for a time in order to find his contacts and to spread the net rather wider. That is what happened in April, 1951, except that our evidence was inadequate. The first minute that I received on this matter from the officers of the Department was on 25th May, 1951. On the same day the Security Service reported to the Prime Minister as their political chief. On that day I authorised the questioning of Maclean. The Security Service took the view that they must choose the right time for that questioning, for the reasons which I have given, and which are outlined in paragraph 10 of the White Paper, and to secure further evidence.

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In the light of the Maclean and Burgess experience, I set up the committee of inquiry to which the Foreign Secretary has referred, and I was grateful to the members of that committee for the work they did, though they reported after I had ceased to be Foreign Secretary. They reported to my successor in November, 1951 and, as we have heard, further security checks were recommended, and according to the White Paper they have been put into effect. It has been asked why Burgess was on leave. Burgess was not exactly on leave. He was in substance suspended with a view either to his resignation or dismissal after he had been heard by a disciplinary board. It was during this period that he disappeared. But I will return to the merits of these two gentlemenif that is the right wordlater. I must say in justice to myself that the case of Burgessthat is to say, of his troubles in Washingtonwas not raised with me as it was hoped he would resign. It would have come to me after the disciplinary board had heard him. I think I ought to have been told earlier about the troubles of Mr. Burgess in Washington, and I am inclined to take the view that after he had been heard by the disciplinary board I should have dismissed him. Further, it must not be forgotten that even then it would not have prevented him from escaping from this country. Mr. Daines My hon. Friend said a moment ago that he set up a committee 1515 of inquiry just after he heard of the Maclean affair. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] What my right hon. Friend conveyed to me was that he was cognisant of the Maclean case only just before the setting up of the committee of inquiry. Clause 10 of the White Paper says: In January, 1949, the security authorities received a report that certain Foreign Office information had leaked to the Soviet authorities some years earlier. Was my right hon. Friend, as Foreign Secretary, informed of that by his heads of departments, or by the Security Service? Mr. Morrison I said I was informed in general terms about certain problems which had arisen in the middle of April, 1951. To the best of my recollection that was the first time. I do not know, of course, what had been conveyed to earlier Foreign Secretaries. My hon. Friend has misunderstood what I said about the inquiry. It was not into the case of Burgess and Maclean specifically but into the question whether the internal arrangements affecting security were adequate. It was a useful inquiry, which I think did useful work. I come to the record of these two men and my reasons for thinking that there is ground for some unhappiness about the way in which they were treated. Maclean was guilty of disgraceful conduct in Cairo in 1950. Apparently he got drunk, got out of hand, went to a party in a flat and proceeded to smash the place up. I do not think that overstrain and drunkenness are adequate explanations or, if they are, that they are adequate excuses for conduct of that sort on the part of an important officer of the Foreign Office serving abroad. Both men were Communists at Cambridge, and I have dealt with that point. The White Paper says both of them were cured when they left the university. Whether that was so or not we cannot now be quite sure. The White Paper assumes that because Burgess joined the Anglo-German Club that is evidence to the effect that he was cured. I am speaking from memory, but my recollection is that the Anglo-German Club about 193536 was a body under some suspicion as being under Nazi influence. Mr. Hugh Dalton (Bishop Auckland) It stank with Nazis. 1516 Mr. Morrison

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My right hon. Friend, being more proletarian in his language than I am, and having had a university education, says it stank with Nazis, and I am prepared to accept that. It is no defence of Burgess, in any event, that he slid from the Communists to the AngloGerman Club. It is recorded in the White Paper, and has been stated by the Secretary of State, that early in 1950 Burgess was reported for indiscreet talk about secret matters in the later part of 1949. For that, after a hearing by a disciplinary board, he was severely reprimanded. Laterbut this was not until 1950 or 1951, I am not quite sure which there were complaints as to his work and behaviour at Washington. The State Department complained about his reckless motor driving, and he was careless with confidential papers. That situation was dealt with and he was brought home and was due for either resignation or dismissal. In my judgment, in the case of Burgess also, in view of careless talk about secret matters in 1949, a severe reprimand was not good enough. I think that in both of these cases they should, for those offences, have been dismissed. I do not like to say this but I feel I must say it. It is not a peculiarity of the Foreign Office for it runs through the Civil Service, and the motives are, I think, in many ways meritorious. It is not a matter to be recklessly condemned. I think that in the Civil Service as a wholewhether it is more so in the Foreign Office I do not knowthere is a tendency, if an officer falls down on his job or is guilty of an offence which is somewhat serious, to say, "He is an old colleague. Can we not do something about it to prevent him from being fired?" Often what happens is that he may be transferred to other work. [HON. MEMBERS: "Promoted."] I would not say "promoted," for that is perhaps going rather far, but one never knows. He may be transferred to another State Department, and new State Departments are particularly likely to get such men. Or he may be rebuked. I think that a little sacking now and again would not do any harm. It would do some harm to the men concerned but it might do a lot of good to the rest of the Service. 1517 I think that in the Civil Service generally, and to some extent in local governmentwhether it is more so in the Foreign Office I do not knowthere is a tendancy generally to help colleagues out of trouble. In some cases that is right but in some cases the colleagues ought to be left in trouble and ought to be fired. But do not let the House think from this that there is any legitimate charge against the Civil Service that they would seek to protect a man who had been guilty of espionage against his country. The next question I ask myself is this: was Macleanand therefore Burgesstipped off, as the saying is? Or was it the cut in confidential papers which warned him? I am inclined to think that he was tipped off by somebody. If so, I wish we could find the somebody. I am inclined to think that these men were tipped off. Certainly it was a remarkable coincidence that I should have given that order on 25th May and they were missing on the night of 25th May. I have received a letter from a respected friend of mine whose judgment of men and affairs I respect. He asks me not to give his name, although it is available to the Foreign Office if they want it and if it is any use to them. He does not want to be pursued with publicity in this matter because it is not very nice. This is what he says: I was very interested to read your remarks about Maclean and Burgess the other day because I know them both and actually lunched with Maclean the day before he disappeared. The point I wanted to mention to you was that on that day I am sure that he had no intention of leaving England in the way he did. He spoke to me so normally of his private affairs, his wife's confinement and his plans for the immediate future that I am convinced he was not then intending to leave the country. This makes me feel that subsequent to

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meeting me on 24th May he received some warning that he was under suspicion and immediately left the country with Burgess. It may be, therefore, that someone in the Foreign Office told him on 25th May that you had author iced him to be questioned. Of course, it was not only the Foreign Office who knew, for the Security Service knew as well. I read that letter for what it is worth as the impression of a man who lunched with Maclean that day before his departure. I am inclined to think that Maclean was tipped off by somebody who knew what was going to happen. 1518 We are much obliged to the Foreign Secretary for telling us about Mr. Philby. There are definite statements that the family are missing and no doubt if it should become of significance the right hon. Gentleman will be good enough to inform the House. I come to my conclusions. I think that any wild or extreme criticism of the Foreign Service would be unfair and would be wrong. I have met a large number of the members of the Service, as have other hon. Members without experience of Ministerial office, in other countries. It is clear that the Secretary of State must be the master of the Department, irrespective of what his political opinions may be, but the latest reforms were made as recently as war-time. There have, of course, been roughly three stages in the history of the British Foreign Service. There was the old days, when aristocratic gentlemen became ambassadors without any pay at all. Then there was the later period when competitive recruitment had developed in part but not to its present standard. Then there were the reforms initiated by the present Prime Minister and, as has been said, largely carried out by Mr. Ernest Bevin. The second stage of Foreign Office people have survived and their ideas are not quite the same as those of the postwar, reformed recruitment. There are survivals but time will solve that problem, and it is passing. They are largely university menall of them I suppose in the higher reaches. That is true of the home Civil Service as well. Whether it is necessary that there should be such a high proportion of university people I do not know. Whether the products of primary and secondary education could get through I do not know. Many people who are now getting to the universities started their education in primary schools. They get through by certificates and competitive examinations which did not happen in the early daysand enter the public service. Recruitment to the Foreign Service, so far as I know, is substantially the same in principle as recruitment to the home Departments, that is to say it is all through the Civil Service Commission. The examination is somewhat different from that for the home Departments but by and large it is not enormously different. 1519 The question I want to submit for the consideration of the Prime Minister and the GovernmentI was involved in earlier arguments about itis based on the fact that the Foreign Service is separate from the home Civil Service. It is separately recruited, it maintains its own life and, I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton) will agree, it is not as much subject to Treasury co-ordination as is the home Civil Service [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend thinks it is much the same. The point I want to raise is whether it is right that the Foreign Service should be entirely separate from the home Civil Service? In the home Civil Service there are transfers between one Department and another. It is a very good thing that there should be transfers between Department and Department. That gives men a varied experience, and their knowledge becomes richer and more varied in knowledge. I readily concede the point that we must have a substantial proportion of Foreign Office people who are to be in the Foreign Office for life. There is some dilution now, however, in respect of the labour attaches, who are recruited

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through the Ministry of Labour, but I am not at all sure that it would not be a good thing for more men from other home Departments to be transferred to the Foreign Office and for men from the Foreign Office to be transferred to home Departments in order that they might get a wider variety of experience through the collective experience of the Foreign Office and the home Civil Service. I suggest to the Government that in these circumstances, and in the light of these unhappy and beastly incidents, there is a case for an inquiry. I still think, in view of public apprehension, or even misunderstanding, that there should be an inquiry into recruitment to and promotion in the Foreign Office and into the administration of the Foreign Office. That should include the problem of the very heavy burden which falls on the Secretary of State in modern times. It is much heavier than it used to be, and has had grave effects on the health of more than one Secretary of State. I think that aspect ought to be looked into to see whether there could be more delegation to existing junior Ministers and for Parliament to be told about it. 1520 Such an inquiry would do no harm; if the Foreign Office emerged well out of such an inquiry that would be for the good of the Foreign Office, and, if there were improvements to be made, that would be for the good of the country. That task could be done by a Select Committee or some other suitable body. I think the Foreign Secretary is wrong in resisting any inquiry into that matter because we should remember the heavy burden on the Foreign Secretary. It is almost impossible for him to devote the attention to administrative details and personal questions in the Department which is possible for a Minister in charge of a home Department. The Department knows that, with the consequence that it is quite possible for the Department not to take to the Secretary of State or one of the other Ministers matters which in a home Department would be taken to the Minister. That is not because the Department is trying to dodge the Minister, but because it knows that the Secretary of State is so heavily burdened that it must "chance its arm" a bit. I think these matters need looking into. Otherwise we shall have trouble over the health of future Foreign Secretaries, as we have had over the health of past Foreign Secretaries. Secondly, there is a case for looking into security, partly in the light of the circumstances of the Burgess and Maclean case, and partly in order to be satisfied that the Security Services are good. Here we are dealing with a different story altogether. It is much more difficult to have an inquiry into the security services. It clearly cannot be a public inquiry; that would be ridiculous. Nor can it be an inquiry with a public report; that, I think, is out of the question. We cannot expose to the public view the security machine of our own or other countries. We cannot risk a divulging of the secrets either of espionage or counter-espionage. On that matter there should be investigation by a judge or judges in private, a private report being made to the Prime Minister, but I think that step ought to be taken. I hope that the Prime Minister, in his reply can give us and the country some comfort about that matter. I do not know whether all my hon. Friends will take this view, but both fields might be covered by a Committee 1521 of Privy Councillors, representing both sides of the House, and with experience which makes them specially qualified in these mattersbut inquiry there must be. We are up against a new problem in these matters. The country will not be satisfied without an inquiry of some sort, covering an adequate field, for our country has a right to know that adequate action is being taken arising out of an experience which is disturbing and worrying to us all. 5.27 p.m. Colonel Alan Gomme-Duncan (Perth and East Perthshire)

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The two speeches to which we have listened this afternoon will undoubtedly have impressed the House. Although we may not agree with everything that has been said, I think it most desirable that the debate should open with such thorough speeches, one from each side. It seems to me that there are three main issues before us. The first I do not think has been mentioned so far in Parliament or in the Press, but it may be a vital link in the whole story, or mystery. What connection is there between Guy Burgess and Dr. Otto John, the West German security chief, who defected to the Communists in 1954? Otto John was chief legal adviser to Lufthansa before the war and became a member of the Canaris Group, which plotted the death of Hitler. When that went wrong his brother was executed by the Gestapo and he escaped through Spain and came to London about the end of 1944. In the last months of that year he worked for the B.B.C. Later he was employed in the Foreign Office and afterwards by a London law firm. He returned to Germany in 1949 and was appointed president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitutionwhich is a high falutin' way of saying, the security machine watching and reporting on neo-Nazi activities. That appointment was made with the consent of the British and American Governments. Is it a factmy information is that it is in the B.B.C. offices and, later, in the Foreign Officethat there is information to the effect that Otto John was a close associate of Guy Burgess? I hope that my right hon. Friend will answer that, if he can, when he replies. They certainly had all too much in common outside their public duties. 1522 As head of the counter-Communist intelligence in Bonn, John would have received information from British and United States sources. It is known that he was in touch with a number of what might be called double agents, agents working each way. Did Otto John maintain his contact with Burgess? If he did, he could have been very useful indeed to him and Maclean, and possibly also to Mrs. Maclean. I believe that the Government have the information that can answer this question, and I hope that if possible, if security will permit, something may be said on that point. The second vital issue affects the internal administration of the Foreign Office, to which both right hon. Gentlemen who have spoken have already referred in some detail. I should like to say straightaway that I have not the slightest reflection to make on any of the right hon. Gentlemen who have held the important and difficult office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. In spite of anything that I may say, I hope that that is fully realised. The Fighting Services have a system of regular confidential reports on officers. They are made annuallyin the Navy, I believe, it is sometimes six-monthlyand they give their seniors a clear picture not only of their ability, but also of their moral character and behaviour and that is very important. Excessive drinking is a weakness that would be recorded. The Foreign Office, I understand, has a similar system of reports. I asked my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary in two Questions the other day if he would place in the Library a copy of these forms, which he very kindly did. But I also asked what arrangements existed in his Department for the submission of confidential reports on personnel. On behalf of the Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Joint UnderSecretary replied: The heads of Foreign Service missions abroad and of departments in the Foreign Office report regularly on their staffs on printed forms which vary for each branch of the Service. A report on each member of the senior branch of the Service is sent in at least every two years. For new entrants to the branch reports are submitted every six months during the period of probation. Reports on all other branches are sent in at least once a year."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th October, 1955; Vol. 545, c. 35.]

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1523 So we have the clear statement that there is a comprehensive system of reporting on forms for the purpose in the Foreign Office in much the same way as in the Services. Lieut.-Colonel Marcus Lipton (Brixton) Was the hon. and gallant Member told how or on what date the forms to which he has referred were introduced? Colonel Gomme-Duncan No, I was not; I did not ask for that. I asked what the system was at the moment. I agree with the hon. and gallant Member that the date is of some importance in this case. From that reply given by my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary arise questions of great importance, questions that must be answered by the Government if they will do so. Who reported on Burgess and Maclean, and what was written about them? There are these different forms, particularly the one which is called F.2 and which deals with Branch A and the first four grades of Branch B in the Foreign Service. That one has a section which calls for reliability reports, contact with foreigners reports and social behaviour reports, and at the end a large space is left for a detailed pen picturethat is the actual wordingof the officer reported upon. The reporting on officers of any branch of Service, including the Foreign Office, is a most distasteful job for the senior officer who has to do it. That makes it all the more important that there must be a man of moral courage to say what is correct. In the Fighting Services, the officer reported upon has to sign the report himself, but as far as I can make out from the Foreign Office forms, the officer reported upon does not have to sign. That makes it much easier for the officer making the report to be absolutely frank than if he had to show it to the man, human nature being what it is. It does away with any excuse for moral cowardice. Was there a report on Burgess and Maclean? Was their behaviour, or misbehaviour, recorded, and what was said? Was this very important item of information included: that in 1940, I understand, Maclean was associating with the representative in London of the Tass Agency? Everybody knows that the Tass 1524 Agency, in any country where there has been an inquiry, has been proved to be the centerpiece of an espionage system. Was that known at the time? It seems to me that a very great deal depends upon the answer to that question. The third issue arises from a statement made by the Leader of the Opposition when he was Prime Minister in March, 1948. He was explaining the proposals of the then Labour Government for screening State employees. Very briefly, not giving the whole details, the right hon. Gentleman said: I have said that there are certain duties of such secrecy that the State is not justified in employing in connection with them anyone whose reliability is in doubt. Experience, both in this country and elsewhere, has shown that membership of, and other forms of continuing association with, the Communist Party may involve the acceptance by the individual of a loyalty, which in certain circumstances can be inimical to the State. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say: The Government have reached the conclusion that the only prudent course to adopt is to ensure that no one who is known to be a member of the Communist Party, or to be associated with it in such a way as to raise legitimate doubts about his or her reliability, is employed in connection with work, the nature of which is vital to the security of the State"[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th March, 1948; Vol. 448, c. 17034.] That is a very prudent, very comprehensive and very desirable state of affairs, which the right hon. Gentleman deserves full credit for bringing into effect. But why was the principle laid down by the Prime Minister of that time and not carried out, apparently, in the case of Burgess and Maclean? Both were known to have past associations with Communists, and while in Paris in 1938 Maclean made no secret of

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his sympathy with the Spanish Communist Party. In the same year, as has been mentioned by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), Burgess underwent the mysterious conversion into pro-Nazism. But both were undoubtedly employed in connection with work, the nature of which is vital to the security of the State. Both had access to secret papers, and it is known now that Maclean was making microfilms of them for the Russians. How and why were they exempted from the screening which was supposed to have been applied to all servants of the State, 1525 as laid down by the Prime Minister of that day in 1948? It is much more important to probe these things than to chase individuals in the security department. There is, however, one thing that Parliament can and should do, and I think that this debate will bring it out more clearly than before. There should be sufficient money and staff for the security services to do their jobs properly. I believe that they have been starved of these things. The worst thing that could happen would be for the BurgessMaclean incidentI call it no moreto develop into a party wrangle. I see no signs of that happening and I am quite convinced that the House would not lower itself by doing it on such a vitally important matter for the country. Parliament's duty is to ensure that such a thing cannot happen again. After all, it is a truism, but it is quite true to say, that what has happened has happened; but that is no reason why those who have been proved incompetent should be employed in high office any longer. What this House wantsand, I believe, the country as wellis reassurance and evidence that such things cannot occur again reasonably. It is no good saying that something is utterly impossible, but we want to be reasonably sure that that cannot happen again. I doubt whether, so long as the men who were responsible for security at that time remain in high positions, the confidence of the country will be maintained. Let us, however, keep our consideration of the matter on the high level at which it has started, I beg the House with great humility, for it is not a matter for party wrangling, is not a matter of personalities, but a matter of the national interest and of the best possible safeguarding of our beloved country. 5.40 p.m. Mr. R. H. S. Crossman (Coventry, East) I shall try, in saying what I have to say, to keep the debate on the high level that the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel GommeDuncan) has set for us back benchers in following those two excellent speeches from the Front Benches, the speech of the Foreign Secretary and the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison). 1526 Indeed, as a Labour back bencher who has from time to time criticised the Foreign Secretary, and the Prime Minister, too, I should like to congratulate the Foreign Secretary, for the second half of his speech, which dealt with the tremendous problem of the combination of freedom and public security in a world of clashing ideologies, was a classic statement of principle which we can all, I hope, agree upon and accept. It can do nothing but good that that statement of principle was made. However, the first half of the right hon. Gentleman's speech was a completely unsuccessful effort to explain away his own White Paper, and that is something which we must discuss. I think it is rather futile to waste our time holding an inquest on Burgess and Maclean. What we ought to consider today are the lessons we can learn for the future from that lamentable incident. I shall try to confine most of my remarks to that problem, but I think that in this debate we are faced with two opposite difficulties. Certainly, there is a danger that we shall encourage witch hunting, and, goodness knows, at one part of the Foreign Secretary's speech I was slightly afraid. That was when he said that we had to

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consider our allies in what we did. I hope he did not mean that he thought our allies, the Americans, had been more successful in dealing with these problems than we have. I am sure he did not mean it, because if we have shown a degree of lassitude they have shown an extreme in loyalty tests which, I think, has done more damage to their liberties and to the strength of America in the world than Burgess and Maclean have done to us. Think of the State Department. Think of the panic efforts to impose loyalty there by elaborate code! Think of the effect of the feeling that officials could not risk writing what they really meant in their diplomatic messages for fear of being read aloud at a Congressional inquiry. That is an object lesson of the dangers of extreme panic about security. But there is another side to this. We must see that the cause of McCarthyism was not so much the effect of the fear of espionage as the popular suspicion that for political reasons either politicians or high officials were covering up the signs of people in privileged places. Indeed, I believe that if the Truman Administration had gone into matters thoroughly and 1527 had been seen not to have been covering up matters, then the McCarthy hysteria might have been prevented beforehand. Therefore, it seems to me absolutely essential in this Burgess and Maclean case that any suspicion of covering up, any suspicion, not of these two, but of other people, being covered who were responsible for the fact that they could do what they did must be removed. Frankly, neither the White Paper nor the Foreign Secretary's speech has wholly removed those suspicions from my mind. I was very glad that the Foreign Secretary said that we have to remember that security does not apply only to a couple of thousand high officials in Whitehall who are dealing with secret documents. It applies to the tens of thousands of industrial workers, especially those in aircraft factories. They are subject to security, too. When I was listening to my right hon. Friend's description of his perturbation of mind when considering the case of Maclean, to his description of what was the real agony of making up his mind whether the man should be kept on, and when I considered all the trouble that was taken for Maclean, I could not help recollecting an incident brought to my attention last August of a constituent of mine, an aircraft factory worker in Coventry. He was sent for by the personnel manager and was told that he was a security risk because he was a member of the local branch of the Communist Party. He was dismissed from the factory overnight. There was no court of appeal for him. There were not "three wise men" to consider his case. There was no sort of protection for him. He was chucked out because of an untrue allegation. I do not want to argue the case, because I am dealing with it elsewhere, and I acknowledge that the Minister of Supply has been very helpful, but it made me think, and I made some inquiries. We have to face the fact that security covers all our aircraft factories and that literally scores of people are now being moved from one position to another, very often without their knowing why, and having their careers blighted by security charges. I wonder whether the procedure in other cases is based on as idle gossip as the accusation against my constituent, from which I am trying to liberate him. 1528 I say to the Foreign Secretary and to the Prime Minister that the faintest suspicion that security regulations are enforced ruthlessly on the small fry in the factories but with infinitely greater restraint and conscientiousness the higher up a man isthat suspicion is utterly destructive of democracy in this country. I must say that I wish my constituent had received the amount of licence which was accorded to Burgess and Maclean. My constituent was completely innocent, but was thrown out on common gossip. There was not the care taken over him that was taken over these two men in highly key positions.

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The thoroughness and care taken in their cases contrasts with the rough treatment accorded to an aircraft factory worker who talked one night out of school. Therefore, I say that our major preoccupation must be to seeif we are to have security regulations, as we mustthat they are imposed with the most ruthless equality. No. That is wrong. They should be imposed with greater severity the higher one goes. Surely those who have official State secrets in their hands, those who have access to secret documents, must accept a severer interpretation of security than workers in aircraft factories. If some of them say, "We are such sensitive souls, and our talents, though very great, are not the sort of talents which can thrive in a world of red tape security," then they must be told they must go elsewhere. They must be told that their genius must be dispensed with. But although security is essential, we ought to keep its range as small as possible, and it must be enforced most of all in areas like the Foreign Office or the three Services. With that as a background let us consider the White Paper on Burgess and Maclean. I start with the last paragraph of it, which tells us why we could not be told. Counterespionage depends for its success upon the maximum secrecy of its methods it says. I had better declare my interest in this subject. During the war I was a temporary member of the Foreign Office, and so directly responsible to the present Prime Minister. I was also a member of a secret department and at one time 1529 responsible to the present Foreign Secretary in Algiers. When I talk of secrets and security, therefore, I talk with some personal experience. I know perfectly well that much of what I learned about it is now out of datethe type of security which we accepted and which included the steaming open of one's letter and the tapping of one's telephone conversationsnot unusual things to happen, I then supposed, when one had secrets. I am sure the Prime Minister will know what I mean when I tell him that in a secret department the greatest temptation in the world is to use secrecy not in the national interest but in the Departmental interest, or in the personal interest, to "cover up". Every politician, every Minister, every general is tempted at some time or another to suppress information, not because it is helpful to the enemy but because it may be harmful to his future reputation or to a friendor to that organisation to which he belongs. Every ambassador, also, is constantly tempted to suppress information which seems to contradict the way in which he is running the policy of our country in his area. But secret departments are the worst because they are subject to no Parliamentary control. The Prime Minister technically is responsible for the Secret Service, but it is clear from the Burgess and Maclean case that the Service did not bother to tell many Cabinet Ministers what it was doing. I gather that the Foreign Secretary hardly knew before 25th May, and I gather that the Prime Minister of the time was not told, although the Secret Service was responsible to him, that for two years it had been investigating somebody at the Foreign Office. Mr. H. Morrison I said that the Prime Minister was told at the time I was toldon 25th May, to the best of my recollection. Mr. Crossman Therefore, for two years our counter-intelligence had been doing an elaborate investigation of 6,000 people. The investigation was narrowed down to one person, in the course of two years; of all this the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary were told nothing. That may be perfectly all right. I know enough about secret departments 1530 to know how much they resent telling politicians anything at all, because they regard politicians as very "leaky" people and very dangerous people to whom to tell

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secrets. The trouble, of course, is that secret departments are not responsible to Parliament. Despite the Foreign Secretary's commendation of their patriotism, which I do not deny, I say that there is nothing more morally corrupting than the power to lie because it is claimed to be in the nation's interest, or to keep secrets by saying that it is in the nation's interest. That corrupts. And that is why these Secret Departments, in the very essence of their nature, are liable to the moral corruption of constantly using national security to "cover up." They do it either out of rivalry with another Departmenta rivalry on which Secret Service organisations seem to spend most of their timeor because a friend has gone wrong and someone wants to cover the matter up. Therefore, when someone quotes this paragraph from the White Paper, I as an old member of the gang do not believe a word of it. That is just what the Minister was bound to say if those concerned were "covering up." I admit that The Times has been getting rather extreme of late in its judgment on all sorts of issues, but on Saturday, in a leading article headed "The Ostriches," I think it got matters roughly right. It said: As the authorities no doubt calculated when holding back information for so long, many targets for criticism have now moved on The suspicion is bound to be that, after the early days when the interests of secrecy had to be heeded, there were political reasons for putting off information in the hope that the storm would blow itself out. This, of course, is confirmed by the Foreign Secretary's speech today. The right hon. Gentleman was just a bit short about the Petrov case, but those of us who have read the Petrov material know that Petrov provided no evidence whatsoever except hearsay evidence. At least nothing else has been published. He said what he had to say, for 5,000. I gather from an extraordinary passage in the Foreign Secretary's speech that Petrov refused to talk if his revelations were published in Britain. Presumably, he wanted to sell his information to a newspaper, because he then would be paid for the articles, whereas if what he 1531 had to say was reported as straight news he would not get the money. All that Petrov said was what he picked up in gossip from somebody else. The hearsay blew up into a major scandal and the Petrov case forced publication here. There is reason to believe that we would have had no White Paper if the Petrov case had not forced publication upon the Government. That worries me and makes we wonder a little, and that wonder is increased when I look at the White Paper itself. The Foreign Secretary very properly said that he believed in Ministerial responsibility. All right. Let him be responsible for this. It is easy to talk about Ministerial responsibility if it consists only of being nobleand staying in office. Ministerial responsibility to me means taking the punishment if something outrageous is done. If the Foreign Secretary takes responsibility for this, the only decent thing to do is to resign. The White Paper, as it stands, far from defending the Foreign Office, puts it deeper into the mire. If, after four years, this tissue of palpable half-truths and contradictions is the best that the Government can produce, the impression of "covering up" is more strongly substantiated than ever. Those responsible are very highly intelligent people, and if this is the best that they can do there must be some reason for what they are doing being so completely unconvincing. Paragraphs 10 and 11 of the White Paper give elaborate reasons why these people were allowed to get away. We are told in paragraph 11 that it is possible that Maclean observed that he was no longer receiving certain types of secret papers. The Government are now saying, "We were not quite so ham-handed as that in denying

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secret papers." But if Maclean had been a spy for 16 years, and if the chief reason for his being a spy was removed from him, I do not see how one could stop his access to top secret material without his noticing it. If he was denied the papers that must surely have tipped him off. We are told, by the way, in an earlier paragraph of the White Paper, that he was given a job in the American Department in order to give him an unimportant rle where he might rehabilitate himself. But the Head 1532 of the American Department seems to have had access to the most secret types of papers. Anyway, Maclean is tipped off by not having the papers. Then comes the problem of whether to search his house or not. We are solemnly told that his house cannot be searched, or that there must be no suggestion of it for fear he runs away. It was not uncommon, during the war, for a man to be suspected. I dare say that the Prime Minister was responsible for us when we did certain things. When we had a person under suspicion and he was denied secret papers all we did was to say to him, "I warn you that you are under suspicion. Of course, you are not guilty. We are only investigating, but one way in which your guilt will be proved will be if you 'skedaddle.'" We found it a very effective way of keeping people still while investigation was going on. Am I now to believe that Maclean could not be detained at the ports if he had been warned that his flight would prove his guilt? Anybody knows that that could have been done, and we ask ourselves why that was not done in this case. Why, in this case, was there such solicitude about the lady? I know that she was going to have a baby, but such solicitude is not always shown. I know of times when people have been treated rather roughly. This was an astonishingly tender treatment. The Prime Minister (Sir Anthony Eden) This is very interesting. The hon. Gentleman is making points to which I will try to reply later, but the parallel which he is making between wartime and the case of Maclean is not, of course, a true parallel. The control which we had over the ports during the war was quite different from the control of the ports under the right hon. Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), when he was Foreign Secretary. The hon. Member may have other information, but I believe it to be true, and the legal opinion given to me has always been that there has been no power within the Government of this country to stop British people at the docks. That was the problem, both in respect of Maclean and of Mrs. Maclean. For the latter, I take personal responsibility, for it was my own decision in her case. I 1533 had all the papers and I came to the conclusion that I had neither the possibility of stopping, nor the right to stop, Mrs. Maclean. Mr. Crossman I entirely agree about Mrs. Maclean. I do not see why she should not have joined her husband, but I was talking about a search of the house not being made because she was expecting a baby. My suspicions are nearly all based on this paragraph. It is not a question of the ports. It is a question of whether we could not have kept Maclean from going by telling him frankly that he was under suspicion. I assume that he had already been tipped off by not having the secret papers. I now ask why we might not have tried saying to him, "Maclean, you are under investigation, and if you move that proves your guilt." I think he would have stayed in that case. At least, it would have been a risk worth taking, whereas, this way, it was certain what would happen. You tip him off, you do not keep a watch on him, you allow him a long week-end. After that it is certain that he will "skedaddle." whereas, by my method, we might possibly have bluffed him into staying.

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I would remind the Prime Minister, if he has Dr. Fuchs in his mind, that at the critical moment the police bluffed Fuchs into a confession before they actually had the evidence in their hands. I am asking myself, therefore, why that was not done in this case, when we had already withdrawn the papers and had, therefore, warned Maclean of his plight. It still puzzles me. The Foreign Secretary made it clear to us that one of our difficulties was that M.I.5, the counter-intelligence organisation, is not responsible for the actions which are taken. It is responsible for advising each Government Department upon the records and the personalities of the people there, but the actions are left to the Department in question. Therefore, we can never know whether the Foreign Office was not sufficiently strongly advised by M.I.5 or whether, despite the advice, something held it back from taking the necessary action. That brings me to my own suspicionMaclean belonged to the lite of the lite; he was one of the inner group of really gifted men, one of the half-dozen 1534 stars for top promotion; an intimate friend, a confidant, a man who spent long evenings with half-adozen people who are now in key positions. I am not blaming anyone. I am only saying that if a man has been desperately misjudged, if risks are taken for himand, of course, risks were taken for Maclean; if a risk is taken and it does not come off, then certain people are not very anxious to have the extent of the risk they took on his behalf exposed. We find a striking sentence at the beginning of the White Paper about Maclean's conduct: Maclean was guilty of serious misconduct and suffered a form of breakdown which was attributed to overwork and excessive drinking. Surely it is clear that the excessive drinking was the result and not the cause? Anybody looking at this can see that the man was suffering from a terrible psychological strain, the strain of being a traitor. He had those two loyalties which drove him into drink and drove him into treason. [Interruption.] [An HON. MEMBER: "Wise after the event."] Very well. I say this to the Prime Minister: it is rumoured that before he went Maclean hinted to certain close friends that he was under a terrible strain. I have even been told that he gave broad hints as to what the strain was; and I am further told that his friends regarded all this merely as signs of nervous breakdown. The trouble is that we cannot investigate these rumours. If there had been a full investigation, we could have found out from his Foreign Office confidantes exactly what Maclean said in his confidential talks. The curse of the policy of the White Paper, the policy of concealment, has been that those rumours have grown and grown in this country. And not unreasonably, for someone has to explain why, when suspicion had narrowed down to one man, there was this curious hesitation to take the risk which was taken with Dr. Fuchs. We are not talking about ports now; we are talking about facing Maclean with it and breaking him down. We are talking about the long shot which came off with Fuchs. Why was it not tried with Maclean? I do not think that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will think me unfair when I say that, at least until recently, the Foreign Office has been under 1535 one great difficulty, the defect of its virtue. It has a sense of exclusiveness about it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South hinted at this. I believe there is a sense in the Foreign Office that when a chap has become a member of the club, he can do no wrong. Everybody outside, of course, knows nothing about foreign policy. Even if The Times correspondent has been a long time in a place where the ambassador has been working only one month, the ambassador apparently is capable of telling the expert truth in his telegrams, but The Times can say nothing of value. I accuse the Foreign Office of the

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kind of exclusiveness shown by those who are defending a privileged position somewhat precariously. This is a peculiarity of the Foreign Office. As I have said, during the war I was a member of a secret auxiliary department for psychological warfare, attached to the Foreign Office. The Prime Minister knows, because he was in charge of our department, that we had to obey the security rules. It was a nuisance that we could not telephone over an ordinary line the content of a secret document but, instead, had to use a "scramble." It was a nuisance that we could not recruit certain people. I may have thoughtindeed, I did thinkthat the security regulations which prevented me from recruiting those people were wrong, but I had to observe them. It was much more irritating when I found that although we had to keep the regulations, the Foreign Office next door did not have to bother about them. The Foreign Office was too high and mighty. It was infra dig. for the Foreign Office to abide by the common laws of security. The Prime Minister laughs, but he knows that this was a fact The Prime Ministerindicated dissent. Mr. Crossman If the right hon. Gentleman shakes his head again I will say one of the unpleasant things which I did not mean to say. There was a difference in the security treatment of the auxiliary department and of the Foreign Officebetween the types of people we could recruit and the types recruited by the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office was allowed certain moral types which were forbidden to us. That has now been admitted by the Secretary of State for 1536 Foreign Affairs when he revealed that those types have been dismissed since 1952. Yet they were there in 1945 and during the war. I could go into detail about this disparity. There was a curious perverted liberalism which tolerated as eccentricity inside the Foreign Office conduct which would have been condemned if anybody else had done the same thing outside the Foreign Office. The plain fact about this case is that the security officer ought not to have come into this question at all. For even if these men had not been suspected of any relationship with Russia, they were unfit to be members of the Foreign Office. Yet they were permitted to be members of the Foreign Office. What did the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs say? That the Foreign Office felt this as a personal wound. I could not agree more. It was a personal wound requiring to be "covered up." In a sense, it was the tradition of the Foreign Office which had been jeopardised by Maclean and Burgess. They had been allowed an eccentricity and it had turned out to be treason. Of course, the Foreign Office was extremely upset when what it had regarded as Donald Maclean's funny way of "talking Left-wing" turned out to be treason. As for the other fellow, I am amazed that the Foreign Office could consider accepting him as a member when they knew all about him. I am amazed that the Foreign Office considered a man of that type, a man who had been noted in his previous secret department as a "no good" as brilliant, irresponsible, utterly "gabby," the very type who should not be allowed anywhere near a secret paper. How did he get in? It was mentioned that Hector McNeil was the Minister. I appreciate the way in which the right hon. Gentleman made this reference. But I want to add that it is the job of senior civil servants to advise young Ministers. Was there any advice given to Hector McNeil that another type of personal private secretary might be better than Burgess? No, something much queerer occurred. The Foreign Office accepted Burgess not for the "A" but for the "B" class. His mind was absolutely first-rate, he was a brilliant fellow, wonderful at languages. The deficiencies in Burgess were moral. Are we to be told that "A" class means 1537 that people are moral, but that "B" class people are immoral?

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What is even queerer is that when Hector McNeil asked whether Burgess could be put up into the "A" class the request was resisted. Why? If the grounds were failings of personal character he should not have been either "A" or "B"[An HON. MEMBER: "Or 'C' or 'D'."] As an hon. Friend says, or "C" or "D," and if he was merely being judged on his intellectual merits, he should have been in the A class or nowhere. This is proof that the Foreign Office was worried about Burgess, but not worried enough, because he had already got his foot inside the door of the lite. There we have the two of them, Maclean right in the lite of the lite and Burgess pushing his way up by means of some somewhat unsavoury personal connections which perhaps got him in in the first place. A competent establishment officer should have forbidden Burgess ever to have been appointed, and should certainly have thought twice about giving Maclean, only three months after his nervous breakdownnotice that it was only three months after the breakdownthe appointment as a head of a department. It is no good the Foreign Secretary or the Prime Minister, or, indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South, telling me that I am a suspicious type of person. Perhaps I am, and perhaps I understand this, because I lived in this sort of world. But the average man in the street, when told that this is a true and satisfactory explanation, knows perfectly well that whatever clever men produced this type of bunkum, it is always for the same reason. In Britain, influential people do not want to have too much interrogation or inquiry into what went on in the Foreign Office lite. The crime in the Foreign Office was, first, to turn a blind eye to Maclean's deficiencies for far too long; to prefer private friendship and belief in him to public duty, and then when he had gone, to prefer Departmental loyalty to duty to this country. We are a democracy and we really have the right to know the facts when something has gone wrong. I want, in conclusion, to say two things briefly about the proposals for an inquiry which have come from this side of the 1538 House. First of all, I will say a word about our proposals for an inquiry into security. After the Foreign Secretary's speech I feel much less need for this inquiry than I did before the debate. But, then, I never believed that security was the main problem in this case. The main problem is the establishment of the Foreign Office, and the conduct that was committed in the Foreign Office. Still on security, I have one point to make in addition to what my right hon. Friend said. I think the Foreign Secretary was absolutely right in saying that we are back in the Elizabethan age and that treason has become a possibility; I would say that it is a possibility for every thoughtful man. Everyone who faces the world's dilemmas today finds his national loyalties in conflict with others. We have talked about Russia, but there might be a conflict between our national loyalty and American interests. The Russians are not the only people who have secret services. I can conceive of a time when an Englishman might think it his duty to pass information on to America, feeling he had a moral duty to do so, and then, later, he might well be proved to be a traitor if the world went the wrong way for him. The Foreign Secretary is right. This is a basic problem. Surely, then, the Prime Minister will agree that policemen are really no good for this job. We have to detect the type of person who is not a common criminal. Such a person is not detectable in the ordinary way; he is not a spy selling himself for money. For this task one has to have an understanding of Marxism and other philosophic problems of the modern world. I should feel a great deal more confident if I had been told that we are to have a heads of M.I.5 not ex-policemen but people who have studied deeply the ideologies of the modern world and can put themselves in the place of young men and know what they

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are feeling. We want a new type of person for this task. The less we have of security the better, provided that the quality of it is really first-rate. Secondly, I would remind the House that this searching for spies is really a relatively small part of security. Nine-tenths of security means security against carelessness, security to prevent information going to the enemy, either because of their technical power to break down 1539 our codes, because of documents being left about, or because of careless talk; and it should be that way, for we get nine-tenths of our information about the other side by reading their newspapers, by doing things which can be done in public, or by using techniques for getting inside which are not known to them. This means that the Foreign Office, like every other part of the Civil Service, must have strict rules about carelessness and cannot go on saying, "We are too talented and sensitive to work under security rules." As a matter of fact, it is a great relief to have security rules. Those of us who had the secret for ten weeks before D-day thanked God for security. There it was, a corset to keep us safe. If we put the documents back in the safe, we were safe. If we telephoned on the correct line, we could not be courtmartialled. It is untrue to say that this type of security, if sensibly enforced, is demoralising. If there is not too much of it, and every regulation makes sense, the Foreign Office should not think it infra dig. to be like an ordinary officer in the Army or an aircraft worker, who is subject to this sort of thing. I hope that what the Foreign Secretary means is that the Foreign Office did learn this lesson in 1951 and has already accepted the need to observe security regulations. As for security against the spy, I think that this issue is relatively unimportant. The number of people to whom this sort of thing will be applied in our country is small. Our great danger is that of getting so panicky about the relatively small problem of searching out spies in the Foreign Office that we shall neglect the big problem of setting up a security organisation against leaks. The final point is this. The real problem of the Foreign Office is not security at all, but whether the reforms which were introduced ten years ago were soundly based and have produced the right results. I may be told that they were introduced ten years ago and that it is much too early for another inquiry. I should have thought that the period of ten years was just about right and that it was, therefore. Just about time to look at the effect. As The Foreign Secretary reminded us, this was. after all, a Coalition reform. Again, we are looking at the matter as a Council of State and not as parties. What did the 1540 reform do? It cut the Foreign Office off from the rest of the Civil Service and made it autonomous, and, at the same time, sadly undermined the specialised services inside the Foreign Office. I was very struck by three excellent articles in the Manchester Guardian last week three thoughtful articleson this subject. My tentative conclusion is that we got the worst of both worlds. We certainly lost by the diminution of the specialised services; and we probably gained nothing, instead. The autonomy granted to it only increased the arrogance of the Foreign Office and the jealousy of the rest of the Civil Service. That was the result of giving the Foreign Office this privileged position. I should like to see the Foreign Office part of the Civil Service along with everybody else, but encouragement to foster the specialist services, which it requires just as every other Department requires them. I do not see that the case for cutting it off has been proved in any way, nor, if I may say so to some of my hon. Friends below the Gangway, do I believe that the so-called democratisation of the Foreign Office has had any of the effects which Ernest Bevin hoped for.

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Let us be candid. If we take 100 boys from lesser grammar schools, we do not take 100 people who are less snobbish than those from larger grammar schools. What we have done generallyI am glad we have done itis to take the best from the secondary and smaller grammar schools in rather larger quantities and so reduce the high proportion of the old public school. But if anybody thinks that that is democratisation, that is not the case. It very often happens that a person who comes up from below and enters the Foreign Office, with its august position, in order to obtain the protective colouring required, becomes more Foreign Office than the rest. Indeed, in my little experience of going round embassies, I have found that, on the whole, the man from the smaller grammar school is even more Foreign Office than those who came from the kind of school from which I come. Therefore, do not let us talk too much about the effect of democratisation on the Foreign Office. I do not think there has been any democratisation, and if there had been, I am not sure that it would have the effect we desired. 1541 Mr. T. L. Iremonger (Ilford, North) Is there not a slight difficulty there? If one were to insist upon comparatively high academic requirements, would it not be slightly difficult to recruit pupils from secondary modern schools? Mr. Crossman I did not suggest that it should be exclusively from secondary modern schools. I do not think that anybody seriously maintains that we should recruit for the Foreign Office any differently than for the rest of the Civil Service, that is to say, predominantly from the universities. I said that the effect of the democratisation was merely that we took recruits from slightly lesser known grammar schools as well as from the better ones. I suggest to the Prime Minister that there is really a case for looking at the position again after ten years and seeing how it is working; for seeing whether we should not put back the Foreign Office as part of the Civil Service; for seeing that security arrangements are accepted and not thought to be infra dig. I beg everyone to realise that the best sort of security is to choose one's civil servants correctly, and to trust them. Nothing is more disastrous than to believe that one will catch a lot of spies by being terrified of one's civil servants. The method of recruitment must be made correct; the discipline of the office must be made correct; the heads of Departments must be people who know their stuff; the establishments officer must be correct. If all those things are done, we will have a Civil Service far more loyal than we would have if we introduced American loyalty tests. 6.21 p.m. Mr. Rupert Speir (Hexham) Like the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), I should declare that during the war I was connected with some of the Intelligence departments of this country. I confess, to my surprise, that I agreed with a great deal of what the hon. Member had to say. This is the first time I have found myself in so much agreement with him. Having said that, I must also say that I do not think that he was altogether fair to the Foreign Office. He omitted to point out that the Foreign Office had already decided to get rid of Burgess before he fled from this country. I also feel that the hon. Member was somewhat 1542 wise after the event. If he and some of the other critics had been as wise at the time as they now are, they would have been very useful members of our Intelligence Services. I cannot agree with the hon. Member when he says that the debate should be entirely dominated by the Foreign Office and conditions of Foreign Office recruitment. After

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all, both the individuals concerned might have been employed by any other Department of State. We ought, therefore, to give consideration to the adequacy of our security services as well as to conditions of recruitment for the Foreign Office. The debate is very much to be welcomed, because, during the past four years, our secret services have been very much maligned. Some wild and irresponsible charges have been made against them, and not being able to answer or refute the charges has put them very much in the same position as the unfortunate patient of a garrulous dentist who carries on a conversation with the patient who is not able to answer back. The Secret Service does not come out of this affair too badly. Sufficient credit has not been given to M.I.5 for the fact that it was on the tracks of Maclean when he left the country. Indeed, it was probably because M.I.5 was trailing him that he bolted. But for M.I.5's investigations Maclean might still be in the Foreign Office, still be betraying his country and still be passing secrets to foreign Powers. M.I.5 ought to be given considerable credit for the fact that out of 6,000 possibles they had spotted who it was who was responsible for this leakage of information. As the Secretary of State said in his opening remarks, it is indeed easy to be wise after the event. It is easy now to ask why the two men were not more carefully watched and why they were allowed to leave the country. I do not believe that those critics and others appreciate to the full the difficulties which face a Security Service in a free society. As paragraph 26 of the White Paper points out: In some countries Maclean would have been arrested first and questioned afterwards. We do not do that sort of thing in this country. The difficulties are immense. If one is carefully and closely to watch a suspectand Maclean was only a suspect 1543 the difficulties of not arousing his suspicion are tremendous. It was the hon. Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Daines) who asked why Maclean's passport was not withdrawn. I can think of no more certain way of arousing a suspect's own suspicion than to withdraw his passport. Mr. Daines The hon. Member rather misunderstands the inference of what I said. I was saying that the order should have gone to the ports, so that if Maclean had got to the ports, he could have been held there and had his passport withdrawn. That was done in the case of Dr. Burhop. He had his passport withdrawn. Mr. Speir I misunderstood the hon. Member. What I wanted to emphasise was that there are immense difficulties in the way of keeping a 24-hour watch on a suspect without his knowledge, and that, unlike in a police State, the resources of our security services are comparatively limited. As has been already emphasised, the great point now is to see that all the gaps in our system have been adequately dealt with. Everyone is agreed that what we want to do is to make sure that the lessons of this unfortunate case have been properly learned. I was very glad indeed to hear from the Secretary of State that our system of vetting for confidential employment, not only in the Foreign Office, but in other Government Departments, has been tightened up. I agree with the hon. Member for Coventry, East when he says that it is just as important that we should have a proper system of vetting for employment in secret research work in industry. He spoke about one of his constituents who had been removed because he was a branch secretary of the Communist Party. Mr. Crossman Falsely alleged to be. Mr. Speir

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I find it difficult to believe that he was removed if the information was really false, because in my experience the security services have been very careful indeed in the advice which they have given. It is my belief that they have all too often given the benefit of the doubt to the individual. In these conditions of cold war we just cannot afford to take any risks. Although I do not want to see a McCarthy attitude growing up in this 1544 country, although we do not want any kind of witch hunting and although there is no need for panic action, there is a need for tightening up the arrangements for vetting all those connected with confidential employment, be it Government employment or otherwise. Anyone with doubtful affiliations should not be given confidential employment. After all, today there are plenty of other jobs available. I hope that the vetting will, therefore, be carried out in a thorough and fearless fashion. While talking about the work of our Intelligence Services, I should like to put in a plea for greater support for some of them, whether they deal with counterespionage or otherwise. At present, economy is in the air and every Government Department is being urged to cut expenditure as much as possible. I am convinced that it would be false economy of the worst kind now to reduce our expenditure on our Intelligence Services. I agree with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel Gomme-Duncan) when he says that he considers that the Intelligence Services have, in the past, been kept far too short of funds to enable them to carry out their proper work. There is, of course, the difficulty which the right hon. Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) mentioned, and that is that so much of the work of our Intelligence Services is not known to the public, or to Parliament. That is obviously so because their work is of a secret nature and has to be carried out behind the scenes. It is quite true that since the war a great deal has been published about their activities; some of us think that far too much has, in fact, been published. However, for all that, a great deal still remains unpublished, and I hope that it will continue to remain unpublished. But discretion has one very definite disadvantage. It is that Parliament and the public cannot assess the true value of these Intelligence Services. I agree that it would reassure the House and the country if an inquiry were held at the present time into the adequacy of our Intelligence Services. It certainly seems to me that some of those services could be considerably improved. To give one small example, it is fairly obvious that the work of our forces in Cyprus 1545 has been handicapped and hindered by lack of adequate intelligence. Mr. Crossman Bad policy. Mr. Speir Bad policy may enter into it, but there has also been a lack of adequate intelligence, as there was, first of all, in Kenya and originally, too, in Malaya. Bad intelligence means that our men are killed and wounded unnecessarily. I believe that we could improve our Intelligence Services all over the world. At the moment they are being neglected and skimped, and I should like the Government to give an assurance that they intend to see that, whatever economies are made, they will not be false economies so far as the Intelligence Services are concerned. It is quite clear from what is going on in the Far East, the Middle East, the Near East, in Europe, and, indeed, all over the world, that, in spite of the welcome smiles now emanating from Moscow, the Communists are still waging a ruthless cold war. A cold war is, very largely, an intelligence war; and I hope that the Government will note that fact and will act accordingly.

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6.33 p.m. Mr. Frank Tomney (Hammersmith, North) It seemed to me that the Foreign Secretary in opening this debate was not primarily speaking to this House in confidence. He was trying, if I understood his speech and its tone aright, to reassure the people of England that although we have been through a difficult time, we have now got the issue under control and that, from now on, everything will be all right. That, shortly, seemed to me to be the message that he was trying to give to the House and the country. Quite frankly, nobody that I have met believes in either the content or the essence of the White Paper, and that goes for the men in the pubs, the factories, the workshops and the clubs. It is, as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), an attempt to cover up something within a circle of associates in the Foreign Office, to protect somebody from the follies of misjudgment, mismanagement and neglect. Unless there is an independent inquiry into the workings of the espionage and security services of the Foreign Office, the thinking man in the street will not 1546 be reassured. We have moved on a long way since 1867. We have moved on from the initial conditions qualifying entry into the Foreign Service; we have moved on into another world populated by opponents of a cunning and vicious natureinto a world of Communism whose methods and policies, and the way in which they must be fought, do not yet seem to be fully understood in some circles in Whitehall. I think we can say that at this moment civilisation as we know it is poised on a fine point of judgment in time, and what we may or may not do within the next few decades may well decide whether the world goes Communist or not. What in its most simple entity is the Communist doctrine? It is a belief in the sovereignty of man over the sovereignty of God. That is what gives it its faith. It attracts to its ranks, by virtue of its faith, liberal and progressive thinkers, eccentrics, people with grudges and those who either on account of physical or mental failings are political or moral outcasts. That is why it recruited to itself Burgess and Maclean. I beg the House not to misinterpret or to misunderstand the full force of the threat and challenge of this danger. It is now known that both Burgess and Maclean were watched from their university days onwards and up to the time that they entered the Foreign Service. It is well known that men with these peculiar weaknesses are the subject of political blackmail and can be used in the chancellories of the world against their own country. It is known that the Communists use such men to their own advantage. Until we get in our security services, whether M.I.5 or anywhere else, a new type of mind conditioned to the forces with which it has to deal, we shall never be able to combat the challenge which the Communist doctrine offers to the free world. It has used and will use in every country into which it goes every progressive movement, whether it be the British-Soviet Society, the National Council of Women,* this or that front, the British Peace Committee or any other organisation, to infiltrate and to start world movements in order to take Western civilisation and democracy off their guard. * [See OFFICIAL REPORT, Friday, 11th November, 1955; Col. 2133.] 1547 Some very cryptic things have been said today about the American system of security. We know what happened in the case of Burgess and Maclean. I take the view that neither of these men should ever have been employed in the Foreign Office in view of the reports which were forthcoming about their conduct. I have inquired into this matter very carefully and have read much about it, and it seems to me that what was known about both Burgess and Maclean was more than enough to justify, not the penalty of resignation, but the penalty of their expulsion before they had held their posts for even a year.

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Maclean's habit of getting habitually drunk and of letting off steam in pubs and clubs are things which should not have been tolerated for one moment. They would not have been tolerated in some pubs and clubs that I have known. Maclean would quickly have been put in his place. This country is faced with the responsibility of looking again at the method of recruitment to the Foreign Service from this numerically small circle of people coming from the public schools. From my slight contact with the foreign embassies, I cannot say from whence the different secretaries have come or to what kind of school they went, and neither do I know what sort of background they had; but to my way of thinking there is something wrong with our great public schools. For instance, I cannot understand why they do not send more men into the scientific industrial professions where they are so badly needed. When these boys have gone through the schools and the universities, having received a good education in the arts and graces, and then look round for something to do, do they qualify by virtue of examinations for the Civil Service or the Foreign Service? Do they qualify on the basis of a desire to make a career; because of an impetus within themselves to do something good for the country? Do they wish to make a career for themselves, or do they qualify because they want something to do? If after they are trained in the skills and arts and graces, they enter the service for the sake of something to do, the country has no use for them, because inevitably they will fail in whatever job they take on. 1548 If the accusations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East are substantiated, there is something seriously wrong with our methods of selection, recruitment, entry, promotion and general direction. I heard the Foreign Secretary, when discussing security arrangements, refer to reports from the ambassador downwards about his staff. Today the world is so locked in the conflict of a cold war that every possible contingency has to be covered. Who investigates the top man in the first place, or is he never investigated? It is all very well saying, as has been said today, that our liberty is a precious thing which we must not discard when making sure that our freedom is not destroyed. But, in a world where such forces are ranged against us, can we seriously depend on our archaic laws ill deciding whether or not we shall arrest or interrogate a person on suspicion? Does that position hold good in modern politics and in the atmosphere of a cold war as we know it? History can teach us some sharp and potent lessons about what has been going on in international modern politics since 1939. The United States have been mentioned several times in this debate. Let us take the case of Alger Hiss. He was first brought to the notice of President Roosevelt in 1939 by Adolph Berle, and at that time President Roosevelt pooh-poohed the idea and said that it was impossible. The activities of Alger Hiss were further brought to the notice of President Truman and the same thing happened. But who or what was Alger Hiss? He was one of the First Secretaries in the American State Department. When we realise what tremendous power these people can wield, when we remember what happened at Yalta and how it affected the politics of Europe and elsewhere, especially the United States and Britain, when we remember the penalties that Yalta imposed on the foreign policies of the Western world, and when we realise that behind President Roosevelt sat Alger Hissa self-confessed perjurer and Soviet espionage agentthat is a very sobering thought. We do not desire McCarthyism in this country. But, in defence of our liberties and our people, we have the right to ask for an inquiry into the Foreign Office and our security

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services and the way they work. I do not think we can depend any 1549 longer upon the established system and the methods we have known. One can trace back to 1951, when the Burgess and Maclean case first broke, a period of three or four years when the matter was toned down. Nothing was heard about it until the Petrov trial in Australia, and one begins to wonder why this matter was not dealt with in the meantime. Inquiries may have been conducted by our security services. Inquiries may have been conducted by the F.B.I. in the United States. Although the advice of Adolph Berle was not taken, they may have been going on. But it was the Petrov trial which brought the Burgess and Maclean case to the light of day, and let no hon. Member imagine that Petrov was not a brave man. The Soviet espionage system does not forget its enemies. The clearest example I can give to the House is that of the murder of Trotsky in Mexico. After fifteen years of patient waiting on their part a manservant in his house, an employee of the Soviet espionage system, took a pickaxe and murdered Trotsky. Other murders have taken place throughout Europe, because we are dealing with a Government which does not recognise the sanctity of human life or the human soul, a Government which has condemned people to death, not by hundreds but by millions, a Government which has forced through policies that have resulted in the death of millions. That is the kind of thing with which we are faced in the world today. That is why I cannot speak too strongly in condemnation of the Foreign Office and their handling of this matter. Whoever is covering up whom and on what pretext, whether because of the membership of a circle or a club, or because of good fellowship or whatever it may be, they must think again and think quickly. Make no mistake about it, the Soviet protects those it values. Although my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) read out a letter from a friend of his who dined with Burgess and Maclean the night before they escaped and who at that time had no idea, nor was he given any idea, that Maclean was going to escape, this escape had been engineered for at least a month in advance. If a man who is valuable to the Soviet services might talk and give 1550 people away, he is taken care of and got out of the country. This thing did not just happen in a day. That is where our security services were wrong. The escape must have taken at least a month to organise. Mr. Daines Surely my hon. Friend would agree that before Maclean went he would have to get permission from the party in order to make sure that he would gain entry into Czechoslovakia or Russia? Mr. Tomney That is right; so the escape was not organised overnight. It must have been organised one or two months in advance. I have seen the same pattern repeated all over the world. I was in Japan with the hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson) at this time last year. We saw a strike of municipal employees. I watched them march along the streets, and I saw the same technique used there as in Western capitalsthe cheer leaders; the coaches going along; the loudspeaker vans; the band at the assembly point; the full battery of loudspeakers; the flags and bunting. I have known of the valuable work done by labour attaches in that part of the world because they understand the forces at work. The labour attachs, introduced by the late Mr. Ernest Bevin, were probably the last and best innovation of the Foreign Office reform in 1947. I should like to see them established in all our embassies. If we are to have a balanced view about the forces with which we must contend, it is essential that we consider statements of persons who know the point of view of the man-in-the-street. Otherwise we shall not obtain a proper

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assessment of what is going on. In my view, it is absolutely essential that the Foreign Office consider this. It should establish labour attachs in every capital. That is an urgent and absolute necessity; not just in order to study labour problems or give advice about industrial problems, but in order to keep a matter-of-fact workaday eye on the world at large. I now want to say a word or two about Burgess and Maclean and their conduct in the Foreign Office. I am not going to take part in any witch-hunting, but I will give the Under-Secretary, if he will 1551 see me privately, the names and sources where I got my information. My first question is this: is it or is it not the fact that, on the first day when Maclean entered the Foreign Office, he declared to a colleague that he was a member of the Communist Party? My second question is this: why have M.I.5 not yet interviewed members of the Washington staff of the Foreign Office who were directly associated with Burgess and Maclean? Why have they not been interviewed? [An HON. MEMBER: "And grilled."] The third point, and on this I am prepared to give names and dates if necessary, is that I have always taken the view that a secret service should be absolutely secret and that most of its members should not be known to each other. To be successful, it has to work in an atmosphere of great secrecy. I do not know, and the public at large do not know, how the members of M.I.5 are recruited, whether they are more military or more intelligence, whether they are ex-policemen or retired generals, but, if they are, it will not do. In the circumstances of the ideological war with which we are now dealing, we want a new type of man, the type of man who understands the principles and ideology of Marxism, a man who can interpret and read the minds of the men with whom he has to deal. When Petrov finally defected, the man with him was a member of the Australian Secret Service, who had worked for two years to get the desired resultand got it. That is why I want to know more about M.I.5. I take the view that this service would be better vested in a special branch or superspecial branch of Scotland Yard. I cannot for the life of me see how any Department in Whitehall can use its own security forces which are attached to each particular Department. It is tantamount to saying that each atomic plant in this country shall have one security man in each department, all perhaps conflicting, all having different friendships and loyalties. I take the view that this job should be a professional job, that the pay and pensions should be adequate, and that the staff should be recruited from the best type of man available. This Service is supposed to be secret. I travelled back from Thailand last year by air, and we had to stay in Rome overnight. On the same plane was a man 1552 who had been to China. He was the general manager in London of a large mercantile and commercial bank. I know nothing at all about mercantile and commercial banking, but I struck up an acquaintance with him and I had a long talk with him while flying half-way across the world. When we stayed in Rome, at the breakfast table next morning he said "The man at the next table is M.I.5." "How on earth do you know?" I asked. "Because he told me," he replied. If that is soand this information can be checked, because the details of the flight can be checkedit is stupid police folly. Let us make no mistake about it. Our military destiny is tied up with N.A.T.O., and the United States is the strongest and most permanent member of N.A.T.O. The Burgess and Maclean issue has made a tremendous impact on the United States security service. Unless we are prepared to put our house in much better order than is envisaged by the Foreign Secretary, I am afraid that our journey from now on will not be very happy.

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6.55 p.m. Mr. Peter Rawlinson (Epsom) I have been chiefly impressed in this debate, apart from the length of the speeches, by the loyalty, which I have always heard of and read about previously, of political chiefs to the Service they represent or the Department to which they are responsible. The loyalty which they have shown, tributes to which I have listened to here today for the first time, has impressed me, although I well appreciate the constitutional position of the Minister who is responsible for the Department. I have wondered sometimes if some of the more junior civil servantsnot the heads of Departments, with whom I have no acquaintance whatsoeverwho make criticisms of their political chiefs should not sometimes take a lesson from those political chiefs who have to stand here and answer for some of their misdoings. No one in this House desires that there should be any witch-hunting in this matter. As has been said by many speakers, no one supports the kind of system which is found in other countries, under which individuals can be harried and bullied by committees set up to investigate their behaviour; but the ramifications of a conspiracy are extremely 1553 difficult to trace. They might range throughout the whole body politic. Therefore, there must be a sufficient, sensible and proper investigation into the background of those persons who have undertaken the Government's service. There must beand I was glad to thear the Foreign Secretary say sothese positive checks, but I wonder whether, in the positive checks that are now made, when inquiries are made about certain people, answers in writing are obtained, or whether they are purely oral. That is something which, I feel sure, would add further to the investigations which must be made into a person's background. We cannot escape the obvious conclusion that this is a story of incompetence. The law has been mentioned on several occasions, and it has been stated that there is no law by which these people could have been prevented from leaving the country. It was said by the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Cross-man) that there was no law to prevent them leaving the ports. Why was there no guard on the ports? Is it really seriously suggested, if somebody had been guarding the ports, had been looking out for these people and had been warned that they might take it into their heads to try to escape, that when they arrived at Southampton to board the packet for St. Malo and were approached by a security officer and asked their business, they would have been able to march on board and sail away to St. Malo, having informed the security officer that that was what they intended to do? Is it seriously suggested that no pretext could have been made whereby these people could have been taken back to London and have been required to answer questions on certain matters of which, by their flight, they had shown they were guilty, and which we now know to be treasonable activities? Surely, the technicality of arrest, mentioned by my right hon. Friend, is not in this case a real answer. The real answer was that no one thought that these men were going to flee. It was thought that security had been such that these men were not aware of what was happening. It was a grave story of incompetence. Mr. Speir Will my hon. Friend allow me? Is it not the case that only one of these individuals was suspect, and that the other was not under investigation at all? 1554 Mr. Rawlinson

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My point is that, in these circumstances, the ports should have been watched. If it was thought that these people might flee, if they were known to have had some association, these steps should have been taken. Mr. Daines Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that, as the interrogation had been ordered by the Foreign Secretary, even the fact of applying for a weekend pass was suspicious and should have sounded the alarm? Mr. Rawlinson I agree to this extent. If there had been this thorough investigation and one had eventually reached the conclusion that this man out of some 6,000 should be investigated, then not to have taken the proper and sensible precautions seems to be an incredible piece of bungling. It is quite clear, from what has been said by some people who seemed to know them or their acquaintances well, that these two persons were people who must at all times have been an extreme risk. Apparently, they had "chips on their shoulders" of various kinds which one would have thought straightaway would have led their superiors to suspect that they were persons who were not proper or suitable to hold such responsible jobs. Our good fortune has been that in the immediate past we have not had persons who have been in control of various public matters, or in responsible positions, whose loyalties have got across the frontiers. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that since 1689 and the wars of religion there have been no such circumstances; but in fact there have been. In the history of our relations with Ireland there were persons such as Erskine Childers. There always have been, and always will be, people whose loyalties conflict, who do not put patriotism as the highest of loyalties. In this House it seems wrong to suggest that, because it is only a new phenomena, people might in fact be putting disloyalty ahead of patriotism, and that the security people were not in fact aware of the matter. Then after the flight comes the story, which has been adquately dealt with, of the information which was being supplied. It seems to me that what must be hidden is the source of the information or knowledge about what the Government may know of Burgess and Macleanthat 1555 is, of course, vitally importantbut not the extent. Surely, if inevitably we compromised the source by revealing the extent, that would be dangerous; but what danger was there in telling the House or the country immediately after the flight all the matters that have now been told us so very much later on? The inadequacy of the White Paper has also been discussed. Mention has been made of how in paragraph 3 it talks about Maclean being the head of the American Department and says that it does not deal with major problems of Anglo-American relations. Paragraph 11 says that one explanation may be that Maclean observed that he was no longer receiving certain types of secret papers. It appears, once again, to hon. Members on both sides of the House and to the people in the clubs and pubs that here there has been some covering up by bureaucracy. The story has been heard, and read of, of Departments where the bureaucrats have attempted to "cover up" after initial mistakes have been made, and it has been suggested that there is a feeling among the people who are in the same Service that they must assist those who have made the error to prevent them being entirely shown up. I agree that we cannot have, and would not want to have, in this country a secret service having any executive power. It must rest upon the criminal law and the executive power of the police. If we had a secret service which had full executive power obviously it would degenerate into something which nobody in this country would want. Security is the real part of the problem, and this is a matter in which security was bad. I have

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listened to what most hon. Members have said about the Foreign Service and these people who are members of it. I do not agree with much that has been said. It appears to me that security is the failure here. In security it is not so much money or measures that matter. What matters is having the right man at the head of the Security Service to ensure that the best security this country can have is provided. 7.5 p.m. Mr. Malcolm MacPherson (Stirling and Falkirk Burghs) I must say that after a beginning with which I did not agree I found much in what the hon. Member for 1556 Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson) said later with which I did agree. I thought that the statement by the Foreign Secretary on the rights of a person under suspicion was much preferable to the opening statements in the speech of the hon. Member. However, my remarks will be concerned not with the security side of the matter but with the question of the personnel with whom we are concerned in the Foreign Office. It has already been suggested that the Foreign Office ought to be grouped together with the Civil Service as a whole. As a matter of principle, I am inclined to agree with that suggestion. I take roughly the same line about the wartime reforms as that taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman). In principle, it is a sound idea that the Foreign Service should be part of the Civil Service as a whole; but there will be practical difficulties. One of the difficulties which has faced the Civil Service as a whole in recent years has been that of getting the right people for the administrative class, which corresponds to the branch in the Foreign ServiceBranch "A"to which Maclean belonged. The situation has already been stated by the Civil Service Commissioners to be one of considerable difficulty, but if I can believe recent reports it has this year become extremely bad, so bad that the number of candidates acceptable has not been equal to the number of vacancies. In the Foreign Service, on the other hand, if one can take the evidence of an article in the Observer yesterday, there seem to have been this year quite sufficient candidates for the vacancies. Even if one skims away half of them with the first qualifying examination and assumes that they were not serious candidates, there were still ample to fill the vacancies. If we merge the Foreign Service with the Civil Service as a whole, let us make no mistake that very shortly we shall run into an acute problem of staffing the upper branches of the Foreign Service. This difficulty is not confined to the Civil Service. It is one that concerns all, or nearly all, the public services. There are just a few exceptions. When business is booming and attracting people with the offer of high salaries and extraordinarily good prospects, we find difficulty in attracting scientists to the public services and administrative people 1557 to the first division of the Civil Service. There is difficulty in attracting all the officers we need for the Armed Services. There is difficulty in staffing the local government services. We cannot get sanitary inspectors, and we cannot get the specialists such as tax inspectors for the Civil Service, because industry and commerce are booming and offering far better prospects. That is the difficulty behind the whole question of staffing. That will be immensely emphasised for the Foreign Service once we link the Foreign Service with the Civil Service as a whole. What I wanted to talk about was not so much that general problem which the public services in general are facing as a result of the present economic situation, but rather the intake of the upper branch of the Foreign Service. They are, of course, university recruits like those for the first division of the Civil Service. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East, I was struck by the articles that appeared recently in the Manchester Guardian. One of the points they made was the extreme variety of interests

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for the Foreign Service now. They used a phrase like "Atoms, oil, international payments" to illustrate the new and highly technical interests that the Service now has to deal with. Again, like my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East, I was struck by the fact that the reforms of the war years had destroyed a number of sources of expert knowledge without replacing them properly. But, in general, we have been producing rather more of these experts in languages and the affairs of particular regions, and these experts in matters of "atoms, oil and international payments," than we formerly did. Since the war the universities have given far more attention to these things, with the establishment and development of the schools of African and Oriental languagesat London University, for instanceand more attention to the Slav languages and cultures elsewhere. We have far more people who can be considered as replacements than we had formerly. There is, however, very little sign that the Foreign Office has been making use of these new sources. Since the war recruitment to Branch A seems to have been exactly of the sort that would justify the accusations of inbreeding and so on 1558 that are currently being made. I have not the figures for this year, but from 1945 to 1954up to and including last year's intake426 appointments were made to the senior division of the Foreign Service. Leaving aside figures and turning to percentages, I find that 77 per cent. of those appointments were to graduates of Oxford or Cambridge; 5 per cent. to graduates of London; 5 per cent. to Scottish graduates; 1 per cent. to graduates of all provincial universities; a very small percentage to graduates of universities outside this islandIreland and New Zealand, for instanceand 8 per cent. to candidates who had no university education at all. Mr. Godfrey Nicholson (Farnham) To present a fair picture, perhaps the hon. Member would give similar figures of the candidates? Mr. MacPherson That point was made previously, and the Joint Under-Secretary answered it in a way which completely destroyed his own case. He said that the high Oxford and Cambridge figures reflected the high number of applicants from those universities, but the figures he gave for 1954 proved exactly the opposite. In 1954, of 30 vacancies in the senior branch, 28 were filled by Oxford and Cambridge graduates. The hon. Gentleman stated that there were 287 applicants, of whom 221 came from Oxford and Cambridge. Now, 221 is not to 287 as 28 is to 30 but as 23 is to 30. In other words, the proportion of Oxford and Cambridge appointments in the one year for which we have figures was very much greater than the proportion of Oxford and Cambridge applicants. I think that that answers the hon. Member for Farnham. I mention those figures because they give some shadow of backing to the suggestion that the Foreign Office is a kind of club, that there is a certain exclusiveness about it. After passing through a university one assumes that one will be thrown among people of all sorts of different types of education and coming from other types of universities. In the Foreign Office, however, appointees come from Oxford and Cambridge and are put right into the middle of a group of people who also come from those two institutions. That must lead to some possibility of inbreeding, of narrowness of interest, 1559 of loyalty to the club from time to timeto put it mildlybecoming an obstacle to one's greater loyalties. I must say that I do not think it at all likely that this intake reflects in any serious way the intellectual requirements of the Foreign Office. I should not imagine that there is all that difference, intellectually, between the products of Oxford and Cambridge on one hand and those of London University and the provincial and Scottish universities on the

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other. Nor would anyone suggest that there is any ground for thinking that there is any wide divergence in the moral qualities and characters of the graduates. But, despite the fact that recruitment is farmed out to the Civil Service Selection Boardas it should bethere is still far too narrow a range of intake. That must be bad for the Service and must have played some part in creating some of the difficulties to which we have been addressing ourselves this afternoon. During the period from 1945 to 1954 to which I have referred, there has been a great influx of people from the elementary schools, and the maintained secondary schools coming under the public authorities, into the universities generallybut mainly into the provincial and Scottish universities. In spite of that huge influx, the high figures for Oxford and Cambridge have continued. No sign of it has been reflected in the appointments to the Foreign Office. I regret this. I think that it is one of the things that make a case for an inquiry into the methods of appointment, the sources of appointment and, indeed, into the methods of training after a man has entered the foreign service. On the previous occasion to which I have referred, the Joint Under-Secretary seemed to be rather complacent and said that he was quite sure that the best candidates were obtained. I suggest very strongly that, however good the present candidates are, the Service would be improved as a whole if they came from more varied sources, had more varied experience, were of more varied types and had more varied backgrounds. The hon. Gentleman said that there was no need to widen the source of recruitment. I doubt it. I think an inquiry might well look into the possibility of widening the sources of recruitment. 1560 We have to remember that the reality of some of the popular feeling about these things lies in the fact that it is popular feeling. If people think that the people in the Foreign Service spend a lot of time drinking cocktails and that sort of thing, and are the type to whom this comes naturally because of their social background, the habit is developed of thinking of diplomats, and of the Foreign Office generally, as being rather different from the rest of the people. That is rather unhealthy. If there were two universities dominating the intake into the Foreign Service, I would far rather they were Liverpool and Bristol, for example, than Oxford and Cambridge. Admirable institutions though they are, of our 16 or 17 universities Oxford and Cambridge are the two which, to the ordinary man in the street, are a little more distant and represent a life rather different from his ownmuch more than do the provincial universities. There is undoubtedly a great deal of loose talk about the way in which diplomats live, but there is a strong case for trying positively to improve the understanding of diplomats by the people in general and of the people in general by diplomats. As long as we adhere to the present very narrow intake, there are potential difficulties. In addition, we are losing an immense amount. The wider our net is castI do not think that it is necessarily a matter of democratisation, which the hon. Member for Coventry, East, was talking aboutprovided we keep to the approved standards, the more variety and the better and stronger as a whole will be the Service that we shall build up. 7.20 p.m. Mr. Godfrey Nicholson (Farnham) The hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson) made an exceedingly thoughtful speech, with much of which I am in full agreement. He said that the wider our net is cast the better Service we would get. But I reach different conclusions from those that he reached. For instance, I am quite certain that the Foreign Office is making every effort to cast its net wider. Then is the hon. Gentleman really saying that the Civil Service Commissioners are actively prejudiced in favour of Oxford

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and Cambridge? I know that he is not saying that, so he need not trouble to deny it. I 1561 am sure that he would not dream of saying so. If one admits that only educational examinations and personal qualifications are taken into consideration, if one admits that examinations are conducted fairly, and efforts are being constantly made to interest the provincial universities, I do not think that the burden of his charge is so heavy as he makes it out to be. With regard to Oxford and Cambridge, I do not know exactly the proportions, but the vast majority of the undergraduates of those universities are maintained by grants from Government or public bodies. My experience of the Diplomatic Service is not extensive, but I certainly know a number of its members. Last year, I went with a Parliamentary delegation to the Far East and saw a great deal of three Embassies in Tokyo, Bangkok and Rangoon. I was deeply struckand I am very glad to have an opportunity of paying this tributeby the exceedingly high standard of integrated efficiency typical of each of those three Missions, and I was immensely struck by the wide variety of social background of the members of those Missions. I am talking not only about the senior branch. I could not have been more favourably impressed than I was. My opinion was backed up in each of those three capitals when I talked to English businessmen and British citizens resident there. All of them said that the foreign nationals there were constantly expressing envy of our Foreign Service and saying that they wished their missions were as efficient and as representative. I am sorry that this debate has so much taken the tone of an attack on the Foreign Service. We must avoid complacency, but Mr. Malcolm MacPherson I am sure that the hon. Member will not take it that I am attacking the Foreign Service. I am trying to suggest how we can improve it. We are continually doing that in public life in this country, without necessarily attacking something which we want to improve. It is not simply a matter of the social background when one talks about Oxford and Cambridge, although that is important. I think that the proportion of maintained scholars is probably less at these two institutions than the hon. Member thinks. Apart from social questions, there is the purely 1562 intellectual question of people coming from the same kind of intellectual channel. These two universities are like each other and different from the universities of Leeds or Glasgow. The channel they come from is the same kind intellectually, apart altogether from the social side. Mr. Nicholson The hon. Gentleman is very disarming. I was not accusing him of making an unfair or unreasonable attack. I was thinking of the speech made by the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), which I regarded as most unhelpful. I do not want to be led away by the hon. Gentleman into the question of intellectual channels. I think that everyone bears the stamp of the institution at which he was educated, but I think that social background is perhaps one of the most important things. I was saying that I believe that it is the experience of hon. Members in this House that wherever they go, or almost everywhere they go, they find that the British Mission in a foreign capital has the highest reputation of any mission. It is a great pity, as I have said, that this debate has taken that particular trend. While we must avoid complacency, it is not only unjust and unfair but shortsighted and inimical to the best interests of this country if it goes out to the world that the House of Commons has spent the best part of a day in attacking a service that is the envy of every other nation in the world. There have certainly been these mistakes over Maclean and Burgess, but the fact remainsand I say it categoricallythat our Foreign Service is

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varied in its personnel, is democratic in the sense that in all ranks its members are drawn from the most diverse social background, is efficient, and is envied. While not attempting to cover up what has happened, I do beg the House to keep a sense of proportion and a sense of balance. Something was said by the Foreign Secretary about members of the Foreign Service having fewer of the rights of the ordinary citizens than do members of the rest of the Civil Service. He referred to the committee which gets rid of people who are considered unsuitable. I believe that if the confidence which has been a little shaken is to be fully restored, the work of that committee will have to go further, and I think that members of the 1563 Foreign Service will have to accept a further diminution of their rights. I was struck by the fact that the Foreign Secretary seemed to think that there was very little intermediate stage between retaining a man in the Foreign Office and prosecuting him. I believe that more use should be made of transfer to other branches of the Civil Service. There are two criteria. The first is reliability, and the second is vulnerability. I am not talking about political reliability, but about reliability of character. In the course of our lives we meet many peoplewe are probably very often of that type ourselveswho are very well-meaning, but are not of the strongest character, and because of that they are bound to be weak links in any chain. They may be indiscreet; they may contract unfortunate marriages, and they may mix in questionable circles in foreign capitals. I believe that members of the Foreign Service, because they have a position which is highly responsible and exceedingly honourable, must be prepared to accept to a greater extent than they do at present transfer to other branches of the Civil Service if their characters are thought to be weak. So far as vulnerability is concerned, there have been references to the unfortunate habits of Burgess and various people. Without delivering moral judgment, we must face the fact that people who are perverted in their tastes are extremely vulnerable to blackmail. I did not know Burgess well. I met him once or twice. At one time, he was the B.B.C. representative who arranged the speakers for "The Week in Westminster." One had only to look at his eyes to see that he was an unreliable and shifty type, brilliant though he was. I believe that if in those days there had been the same careful scrutiny of people's character, habits and background as there is today he would not have been in the Foreign Office for one week. Apart from that trend in the debate, which I deplore, there has also been the undertone, voiced by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney), of general anxiety so far as our security services are concerned. This debate may indeed have done good if it calls the attention of the Government and of public 1564 opinion to the grave uneasiness which is felt by people who "know their stuff" about the way in which we are dealing with the Communist menace in this country. By "people who do know their stuff" I mean people like the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North and many of his friends. Our security services are necessarily shrouded in secrecy, and no one demands an open inquiry to bring all their methods to light. This debate will have done good if it shows the Government that there is keen anxiety. It will have done harm if, to public opinion throughout the world, it reflects serious anxiety over the Foreign Service. I start where I began: do not make any mistake about it, we have the finest Foreign Service in the world. It is democratic, varied, efficient and the envy and object of respect of every other people. 7.30 p.m. Mr. A. J. Irvine (Liverpool, Edge Hill) I did not have the advantage of hearing the early stages of this debate, but I am tempted to intervene by certain observations which I heard in the speeches latterly delivered. I

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listened with great interest to the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson), and with a great deal that he said I agree. But I found difficulty in finding the connection between what my hon. Friend had to say and the particular issue of security with which, I understand, the House is concerned in this debate. It may well be that the Foreign Office suffers from not having as widely representative an establishment as one would wish, but I should have thought that it would be a difficult case to argue that one consequence of that was that its position in terms of security was, by that circumstance, in any way endangered or diminished. Mr. Malcolm MacPherson I do not think there was any suggestion at any time that the debate was concerned entirely with security. Indeed, it seems to me that one of the advantages of a debate like this is that we can try to look forward and deal with positive suggestions for reform rather than concentrate simply on the individual issue that causes the debate. On the question which my hon. Friend has raised about the connection 1565 between the type of personnel in the Foreign Office and security, I think he probably did not have the advantage of hearing the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Cross-man), who went into that fairly fully. Mr. Irvine I am obliged. I made my observation regarding my hon. Friend's remarks only in order that the position might be made clear. In considering the whole extraordinary and almost incredible story of Maclean and Burgess, I feel that it is a great mistake to attach too much importance to the detail of their escape and to the detail of the manner in which they were able to evade the authorities. There was, obviously, some bungling. There was, quite clearly, a failure to keep the watch that should have been kept and to put upon them the restraints which, in the light of events, it is quite clear would have been desirable. But there is another side of the picture which compels us to recognise how extraordinarily difficult it must be to ensure that two people of that type and character and with those objectives are not able to escape. It is a task involving considerable difficulties indeed. I am reminded of the story of Gilbert ChestertonI think it is "The Man Who Was Thursday"which begins, if my recollection is aright, with a picture of twelve anarchists, or it may be more. One by one, as each chapter of the story unfolds, an anarchist turns out to be a detective. In the last and culminating chapter the position is reached where they are all standing at the end of a pier at some point on our coast. The last anarchist who has been discovered to be a detective looks round upon his colleagues and says, "But where are the anarchists?" The reply comes back, "There aren't any anarchists. We are just a lot of bally policemen looking at each other." There is no doubt that in all these affairs it is easy to criticise and deride the forces of security. The advantages are with the culprit who is seeking to get away and the disadvantages are with those who are trying to prevent him from doing so and who, at the same time, are obliged to keep within the law and obliged to avoid the danger of letting it be known prematurely that a man is suspect. Therefore, for my part, I would think it 1566 is quite wrong to found any serious criticism of the Security Services upon the details and circumstances of the escape of these two men. The anxiety that I feel about this whole affair relates not to that but to what appears to me to be a far more important matter, namely, the breakdown which the incident appears to reveal in the intuitive sense and judgment of the associates and superiors of these men in the Foreign Office. That is what causes anxiety, not any trouble in the mechanics of the matter and not, in my view, any particular detail of the Security

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Service. But that it should have been possible for two people of this kind, of whom we now know all that we do, to remain so long in the Foreign Office and hold at one time or another positions of considerable importance, suggests that there was the most astounding breakdown in what one had always liked to think was the traditional faculty in the Foreign Service to distinguish between the good and the evil and between the sensible and the foolish. Mr. Nicholson Judas amongst the Apostles. Mr. Irvine That is a parallel I do not intend to follow. That is the matter that gives rise to anxiety. I can only conclude, however, that the breakdown of intuitive sense in the Department cannot have been as bad as at first sight it appears to have been. It must have been widely known within the Department that these two were undesirable men. If one takes that view, if one takes the view that it must have been apparent long before these two men escaped that they were undesirable typesif one takes the view, in other words, that there cannot have been such a complete breakdown in the intuitive perspicacity and judgment of the Department that their true character was not known within itone turns to the reason why the judgment which must have existed about these men was not exposed and made public and why action was not taken. I can only assume that the reason for that was the deeply rooted desire in the Department amongst the civil servants there to be loyal to each other. One feels, then, that the real lesson to be learnt from this incident is not that the security services were necessarily 1567 gravely at fault, or necessarily that there was as complete a breakdown in the intuitive perspicacity and judgment of members of the Service as at first sight appeared, but that we are dealing with the consequence of men in a great Department feeling that their obligations to each other and to the Department were such that the truth should not be revealed. It is a difficult thing, of course, to suggest what is the proper remedy for that. It may well be that in this context the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs have particular relevance. Mr. Nicholson Would not the alternative explanation, and the more reasonable one, be that there was anxiety to secure evidence for a prosecution? Is not that conceivable? Mr. Irvine I should have thought that that was an unlikely explanation of what occurred. The suggestion that crimes can go on being committed indefinitely because it is thought undesirable to check them for fear that there is insufficient evidence is a line of thought, and of inaction, that is full of danger. We are speaking about conjectures here, and for my part I do not know any of the persons concerned, but I should certainly say that it is very unlikely that the explanation for this incident is to be found in the reluctance of persons to take action before there was sufficient accumulation of evidence. It may have played a part, but it does not seem to me to go to the root of the matter. I think that, in the last analysis, when the matter is traced to its source, probably the real root of the trouble here is a kind of inverted virtue on the part of the Department. I think that the sense of loyalty and of keeping together was carried to the point where things which should not have been allowed to continue in the public interest were allowed to continue. It may well be that the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs are particularly relevant to this point, and that the mistake because that is what it isof too intense a loyalty to a Department and to one's colleagues in a Department, to the point where it is not compatible with loyalty to the

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highest national interests, can be treated best by expanding the sources of recruitment into 1568 the Department. To find the remedy for that is a very difficult task, and for the moment I am not able to think of another than the remedy which my hon. Friend has suggested. I would say, in conclusion that one further lesson, which I have no doubt is felt in all parts of the House, of all this is that an incident of this kind must not be allowed to be made the occasion or the excuse for any kind of illiberal witch-hunting and pursuit. I am not at all sure that the most valuable outcome of a debate like this may not prove to be the insistence by the House as a whole that that shall not be. I speak as one who prefers contention in political life, but perhaps we are discussing today a theme upon which Members in all parts of the House can find a very large measure of agreement. We do not want in this country any processes which can be regarded as witch-hunting. At the same time, we can, perhaps, agree that an example has been provided here of how loyalty among colleagues in a Department has been carried to the point where the national interest has been adversely affected. If there be any substance in that view, offered to the House only after consideration of all the aspects of this extraordinary case, we may be confident that no section of the community will be quicker to learn the lesson than the Civil Service itself and the Foreign Office in particular. 7.45 p.m. Lieut.-Colonel J. K. Cordeaux (Nottingham, Central) The hon. Member for Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine) has, I think, exonerated the security services, although possibly he may have been referring to this case only. I do wish I could agree. All of us who have had the honour to serve in any of the security services of this country and two have already spoken todaywould like to take that view. I cannot, and it cannot be doing any service, I am sure, in the long run to the branch of this great Service whose reputation is at stake in this debate to try to minimise what I feel is the seriousness of the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Speir) and the Foreign Secretary both referred to the extreme new difficulties which are now faced by our security services thanks to the fact that agents can now often be recruited not 1569 only by giving them money, not only by threatening them, not only by any of the old-established ways, but by appealing to their ideology. It is very true indeed. What I contend, what has been suggested by many hon. Members in the debate, and what is certainly suggested in the White Paper, is that since the war, at any rate, our Security Service has been going the wrong way about it to detect those people. This particular failure by the Security Service in the case of Burgess and Maclean is bad enough in itself, but I maintain that it cannot be considered in isolation. As I see it, it is the culmination of a series of failures, which were far more damaging to the safety of this country than this one. I refer to the cases of the three Russian agents engaged on atomic research in this country, that is to say, Dr. Alan Nunn May in 1946, Dr. Fuchs in 1949, and Professor Pontecorvo in 1950. I hope that the House will bear with me for a few minutes while I say a few words about each of them, for that leads to the point I am anxious to make. The first of these three agents and traitors, the least considerable and the least harmful, was Alan Nunn May. At Cambridge he was definitely recognised as a Communist. When he left there he went to Russia on a visit, and when he came back he joined the editorial board of the Scientific Worker, which is the official journal of the National Association of Scientific Workers, and which at that time, I think it would be quite fair to say, included many Communists amongst its directors.

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I am not suggesting that for these reasons Nunn May should not have been employed on atomic research in this country. After all, in those days, in the 'thirties, it was not so very uncommon to have those views when one was an undergraduate. What is more, when Nunn May was engaged by Tube Alloys, the cover-name used for atomic research in those days, any person who was a strong pro-Russian was considered also to be strongly anti-Hitler. When, however, after the war our actual enemy, Germany, changed to potential enemy, Russia, men like that in such vital positions should have been considered by our security services not, perhaps, with suspicion but, at any rate, with a very inquiring eye. I do not think that too much blame can be attached in the first case, but the 1570 point is that, as a result, our security services apparently made no sort of inquiries about the antecedents and background of other atomic scientists who were working for us. If they had done so, they would have found a very much more important man, Dr. Klaus Fuchs. They would have found that he was a refugee in this country from Nazi persecution in Germany in his youth, that he had been a member of the Communist Party all his adult life, that all his brothers and sisters were Communists, that he had been reported to the Chief Constable of Bristol as a Communist, and that his name had been found in the note-book of one of the chief suspects in the Canada spy trial. Yet, apparently, none of these facts was discovered by our security services, and it was only three years later, when word came from America, that we were able to get busy on him. One would have thought that after that, at least, our Security Service would have been alerted in this kind of case, but not a bit of it. We then come to the worst of the three cases, that of Professor Pontecorvo, which followed very soon afterwards. Professor Bruno Pontecorvo, like Fuchs, was in his youth a victim of Fascist persecution, this time in Italy. He had a brother there who was a well-known and active Communist. He had a sister who was married to a professed Communist, and his first cousin was a member of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party. After those two earlier examples, it was nothing short of shameful that our security services knew nothing at all about this. After Pontecorvo had escaped and Questions were raised in the House, these were the kind of replies that were given. On 23rd October, 1950, in answer to a supplementary question by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Erroll), the then Minister of Supply, the right hon. Member for Vauhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss), said that Pontecorvo has been screened several times during the last few years by our security officers. In answer to a further question, the right hon. Gentleman said: according to the security officers, the screenings were particularly satisfactory."[OFFICAL REPORT, 23rd October, 1950; Vol. 478, c. 2489.] 1571 How easily satisfied some people can be, particularly when we recall that, according to a further reply by the right hon. Gentleman that day, there had been since the Fuchs case a certain tightening up of the system. I wonder what it amounted to. Heaven knows what it was like before. Early in 1950, apparently alarmed by the Fuchs trial, Pontecorvo himself went to some of the security authorities and told them that he had Communist relations in Italy and had recently seen them when he had been over there. At about the same time we received a report from Sweden saying definitely that both Pontecorvo and his wife were Communists. Pontecorvo continued to carry out his highly secret work, and in July of that year he blithely set forth with all his family for a motor tour of Italy. He did not come back on the day that he was due to return. Instead, he wrote a letter to the atomic station at Harwell, where he was employed, telling those in authority there that he could not come back on time because his car had broken down. The reply given by the right hon. Member for Vauxhall in the House of Commons on 6th November, in answer to a

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Question, was Dr. Pontecorvo's leave expired on 31st August. On this date he had written a note to Harwell, received on 4th September, saying that he had trouble with his car In reply to a further Question, the right hon. Gentleman said of Dr. Pontecorvo, the reasons for this man over-staying his leave seemed quite normal. He had a motor-car breakdown, and was asked to visit some people in Switzerland, and it was, naturally, only about a week afterwards that those at Harwell became worried about him."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th November, 1950; Vol. 480, c. 56781.] "Normal" and "natural." Ye gods! All I can say is that if our security authorities consider that sort of behaviour in the case of a man of Pontecorvo's antecedents and background normal and natural, none of them is fit to hold his job. I am sorry to have inflicted this old history on the House at such length, but it leads me to the point that I want to makethat these three top-grade Russian agents, all atomic scientists, men varying very widely in every way, in character and upbringing and so on, had one thing in common. It is that if, when the poten- 1572 tial enemy became Russia instead of Germany after the war, our security authorities had carried out even the most cursory investigations into their backgrounds, all three would have been found utterly unfit for their jobs. It seems barely credible to me that, after all that, the same thing should have happened in the case of Maclean; but in fact it did. Maclean was of about the same age as the three and was at Cambridge with Nunn May. He was then recognised as a Communist. He went into the Foreign Service immediately afterwards. But although we are told in the White Paper that in January, 1949, knowledge came to those concerned that information was being sent from our Foreign Office to the Russians and highy secret but widespread and protracted inquiries were begun, those widespread inquiries were not spread widely enough even then to include Maclean's background just before he joined the Foreign Service. A year and a half later, in April, 1950, the inquiries were not even spread as widely as that, when, in fact, the suspects had been narrowed down to two or three of whom, of course, he was one. They were not even spread widely enough to include his background immediately before he joined the Foreign Service when the suspects had been narrowed down to onehe himselfbecause paragraph 4 of the White Paper states that the information was obtained only after Maclean had escaped. Therefore, it amounts to thisthat all this time the security services have been neglecting what should be the chief channel of their inquiries, because, as has been said, these spies are now recruited very frequently for ideological reasons rather than for what I might call the old-fashioned reasons. These facts are not in doubt. They are stated in the wretched White Paper, but the White Paper also discloses that in many other ways our security services did not prove up to the job. Paragraph 26, which has been enlarged upon in the debate today, states that no watch was set on Maclean, except in London, as it would have been too dangerous and would have been likely to have alerted him, because he lived in a quiet country area. Surely our Security Service is not going to confess that its trade craft has fallen to that level? 1573 Of course nobody who knows anything about this subject imagines that such a watch is kept by the village policeman doffing his uniform and putting on a bowler hat and a tweed suit above his uniform boots and following somebody down a country lane. There are other methods, and the fact that apparently no watch of any kind was placed on Maclean during the week-end in which he escaped is nothing short of shameful. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) agreed to the interrogation on that Friday morning of 25th May. Maclean had asked for and obtained leave for the following Saturday morning. Therefore he was not due in the Foreign Office between the Friday evening and the Monday morning. Whatever may

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have been the reason why he went when he did, whether it had been arranged long before or suddenly we do not yet know, but it must have been obvious to our security authorities and those in charge that this week-end was the danger period. Yet, as I said, not a step was taken to keep any surveillance on him throughout that period. It has been said once or twice in this debate that the chief value of a secret service is that it should be secret. Unfortunately that excellent maxim has been so consistently flouted since the war by amateur authors cashing in on their experiences and breaking into print as a result of two or three years' temporary service in one of our great Services in wartime that we can well afford a slight risk of loss of secrecy once more in a good cause. The cause I am suggesting is an inquiry into our Security Service. I do not feel that whitewashing will satisfy the people of this country about this case. Their faith in our Security Service has been sadly shaken, and it must be our first resolve to try to restore it at all costs. The same thing applies to their faith in our Foreign Service. My hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson) said that the public confidence had been a little shaken for the first time by this case. That was a triumph of understatement in view of what people are thinking. Our Foreign Service has always received the criticism from which, to a large extent, our Security Service has been free. It has been accused of being too much 1574 divorced from reality, of having too many receptions and cocktail parties, of being staffed by too many old school ties. Yet even its more severe critics in their wildest moment have never before this case suggested that it harboured traitors, and now people know that it did and they believe that it still may do so. The only way in which we can be fairly sure of reassuring the people of this country, both as regards the efficiency of our security arrangements and about what has happened in this case, is to appoint a committee of inquiry. I would suggest that it should be a committee formed of the judicial members of the Privy Council, sitting in secret and reporting to the Prime Minister. That would go far to reassure our people who deserve reassurance. Therefore, most earnestly I ask my right hon. Friend to reconsider the decision that it is not necessary to hold any such inquiry. 8.5 p.m. Lieut.-Colonel Marcus Lipton (Brixton) I find myself in cordial agreement with the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux). I hope that there will be a judicial inquiry along the lines he advocated and mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) earlier in the debate. This debate will be a sham exercise unless it is followed by such an inquiry. We want an inquiry into the recruitment and staffing of the Foreign Office. We also want an inquiry into the efficiency of our Security Service. Those should be two separate and distinct inquiries. It may be found necessary to have a different form of inquiry in each case since exactly the same security considerations do not apply to an investigation into the staffing and recruitment of the Foreign Office as would obviously and necessarily apply to an examination of our Secret Service. Unless there is an inquiry people will remain profoundly dissatisfied with the official pronouncement made on the subject by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. I will not go as far back as did the hon. and gallant Member for Nottingham, Central. I will go back only to 1951. In the light of what the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said today, I 1575 have come to the conclusion that if Burgess and Maclean had not left the country all that would have happened would have been that Burgess would have been asked to resign on pain of dismissal and would probably have resigned in that way. Maclean might still have been carrying on in some capacity in the Foreign Office

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because, up to the time of his disappearance, there was still no evidence against him to justify proceedings under the Official Secrets Act. When these two men disappeared, the first statement on the subject was made on 11th June, 1951, in this House. I suggested on that occasion that it looked as if perhaps their immediate dismissal might be justified. I was told that it would be premature to come to a conclusion about it one way or the other. The House seemed to accept that, and as the White Paper reveals, one year afterwards these two men were suspendedalmost a week after they had disappeared. It took a week for somebody to make up his mind that they ought to be suspended. After they had been suspended they were still kept on the Foreign Office list because a decision to terminate their appointments was not taken until 1st June, 1952, with effect as from 1st June, 1951. That struck me at the time as very odd and I asked a Question about the delay of one year and when it was finally decided to dispense definitely and permanently with the services of these men. This is the reply I received from the right hon. Gentleman who is now Minister of State at the Foreign Office: It is because the search of them was continuing. Indeed, the search is still continuing. But, having been absent without leave for a year, my right hon. Friend has considered that as a disciplinary measure their appointments should be terminated and that they should be dismissed the Service." [OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd July, 1952; Vol. 503, c. 417.] In July, 1952, a year afterwards, somebody had taken the terrible decision that the time had come when the appointments of these two men should be terminated. I merely mention that because it is symptomatic of the attitude, atmosphere or spirit which apparently prevailed in the Foreign Office at the time, and still 1576 prevails. As a matter of fact, I was so flabbergasted and breathless at that reply that I was unable to ask another Question about the subject for eighteen months. On 25th January, 1954, I decided to take the plunge again. I asked the right hon. Gentleman who is now the Minister of Supply what was going on, and he said that investigations were continuing, but no detailed account of their nature could be given without prejudicing the chance of their success. I was then told, in another blinding revelation of the obvious, that if I presumed that these two men were behind the Iron Curtain I should probably be right. It will be noted that even then the right hon. Gentleman was not committing himself to anything. Anyhow, I waited another year. On 31st January, 1955, I asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affiairs what was going on. The right hon. Gentleman who is now the Minister of State replied that he had no statement to make at that momentthis is the illuminating sentencethe reason being that he would not wish to make a statement based on inadequate information and insufficient researches seeing that the investigation was still being pursued. So at the beginning of this year no statement could be made, research was still going on, the information was inadequate, and there was "nothing more to say at the moment." The Foreign Secretary was asked about it on 27th April"Nothing to add." One of the Joint Under-Secretaries was asked about it on 20th June"Nothing to add." Then we got a White Paper which virtually had nothing to add to what everybody already knew, and we have today had an eloquent speech, full of interesting political philosophy, by the Foreign Secretary which adds nothing at all to what anyone who has been following this matter with his own unaided resources has been able to discover. In those circumstances, it is not at all surprising that the White Paper has met a unanimity of obloquy rare in the history of White Papers issued by any Government since White Papers have been issued, whatever that date might have been. It has been condemned everywhere. I will not weary the House by detailing the journals from

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which these 1577 comments on the White Paper have been extracted: disingenuous reticence buckets of whitewash paucity of information cover-up to protect men guilty of supplying successive Ministries with incomplete information admission of failure an insult to any reasonable man's intelligence. Those are quotations from comments made by papers representing almost every shade of political opinion and thought in this country. I quote them because they bear out what I believe every speaker in the debate has tried to adopt as the tone of his speechthe non-party political approach that we have been trying to make towards the very serious problem which has been exposed by the events in the Burgess and Maclean case. Very many Governments are involved, perhaps ever since the time when Maclean entered the Foreign Service. It is idle and unprofitable now to apportion blame, and I am glad we have not wasted our time trying to do so. There is one quotation which I should like framed and hung in every department of the Foreign Office. It is from "Gulliver's Travels": Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended by a few persons of sublime genius. I should like that quotation hung in every Government Department, but particularly in the Foreign Office, because there, over the years, has been created a kind of order which I can only describe by saying that they have tended to regard themselves as a new Samurai of twentieth century England. It is an attitude of mind which has been stressed by previous speakers. What is wrong with the Foreign Office is not only the inefficiency of its security servicesthat is one of the issuesbut the attitude of mind and spirit of the place, which makes it an extremely awkward problem for any Government to deal with satisfactorily. The point that I want very seriously to make is that there is a reluctance, from which many Governments have sufferedthe present Government suffer from itto tell the people the truth and the whole truth. The people will know how to judge all right if they are told what the truth is. Never was there a more intelligent or fair-minded public than is now to be found in this country. What have we to be afraid of? Why not on every possible occasion give the benefit of the doubt 1578 to the principle that, as far as possible, the people of this country should be told the truth and the whole truth? One of the difficulties about the matter over the past few years has been the reluctance to tell the people the truth. That is responsible for all the omissions from the White Paper, the evasions in answers to Questions in this House and in another place, and the stupid situations in which successive Governments have found themselves involved as a result of following the Foreign Office tradition that the world will come to an end if ordinary people are told a little too much. I will not go through the White Paper in detail. That would be a waste of time at the present stage. I merely want to draw attention to two or three points, and I will do so very briefly. On the Friday before Maclean had his Saturday morning off, just at the time when everything was approaching a climax, and after it had been decided that there should be questionsincidentally, it was not even known that Maclean was missing until the Monday, as has been pointed out by previous speakersthe senior security officer, who knew that Maclean was under observation, saw him go off in a taxi-cab but had no instructions to stop him. What sort of security arrangement is that? We now learn from the White Paper that the Foreign Office was aware for two years and three months before the disappearance of the two men that secret information had leaked out. Then suspicions narrowed down to two or three people, and somewhere about that period, so careful were those concerned not to give Maclean any warning that he was under observation that it was decided to deny him access to secret papers which would normally have gone to him in the course of his duties. Of course, anyone as

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intelligent and as competent as Maclean had been certified to be by Sir Roger Makins and others who had had him under observation would have easily smelled a rat, to put it no higher, as soon as secret documents were being withdrawn from his observation. Even when Maclean had disappeared and investigators rushed to his home at Tatsfield, they did not trouble to examine the mass of papers which he had left behind. It may well be that Maclean had extracted anything that might be of value 1579 or which might have created suspicion. After Burgess was recalled to London and was on the way out, as has been made clear by preceeding speakers, he made a telephone call to the United States and talked to some unknown person. That is known because he left a friend of his to pay the bill of 7. Here was a man in that very short period since his return to this country with a view to having some disciplinary action taken against him making a long telephone call to the United States to somebody or other and apparently nobody was concerned about what he was doing or what his intentions were. I will say for the British Security Serviceand I agree with a great deal of what was said by the hon. and gallant Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel GommeDuncan)that within a few days of the disappearance the British Security Service had all the facts of the tip-off. I do not want to take up the time of the House, but let me now come to the situation that existed in the middle of April, 1951, when, according to the White Paper, the field of suspicion had been narrowed to two or three persons. The Government cannot even make up their minds whether it was two or three. Why is there this "or"? Either the field had been narrowed down to three persons, or it had not. Let us have a little more precision. Let us at last depart from the verbal gymnastics in which, whoever it is who draws up these documents, is so proficient. Had the field of suspicion been narrowed by mid-April to three persons? That is a simple question which I hope can be answered. Why play around with "two or three"? I said that but for the fact that Burgess and Maclean disappeared, the Security Service might still have not had any firm evidence against them. The reason for that is very simple and is tacitly admitted by the White Paper. It is that even by April, 1951, and possibly since, there was no legally admissible evidence to support a prosecution under the Official Secrets Acts. That is from paragraph 10. Are we to allow the security of the country to hang in the balance until legally admissible evidence to support a prosecution under the Official Secrets Acts is available? It is quite obvious that the 1580 Foreign Office Security Service and the Foreign Secretary himself could have had powers and sufficient information on which to act which would have enabled the Foreign Secretary, without any prosecution under the Official Secrets Acts, to take steps to ensure that the security of the country was not endangered in future. If we are to rely on prosecutions under the Official Secrets Acts, then goodness knows in what difficulties and imbroglios we shall find ourselves. Mr. John Peyton (Yeovil) Is the hon. and gallant Member suggesting that these two men should have been arrested, without a charge being levelled against them under the Official Secrets Acts? Lieut.-Colonel Lipton No. All I am suggesting is that these two men, for reasons quite apart from the Official Secrets Acts, proved themselves unfitted to be in the Foreign Office. Why, therefore, do we have to wait for the accumulation of sufficient evidence under the Official Secrets Acts to get rid of some drunks, homosexuals, or people temperamentally unfitted by reason of their characters to occupy any position in any Government Department?

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That is the point I am trying to make and surely it is not a point which is difficult to comprehend even by the most ignorant members of the general population who must not be told too much by the Foreign Office about what is going on. It is said that the field had been narrowed down to two or three persons. Let us assume that what the White Paper means is that the suspicions had been narrowed down to three persons. We still do not know whether one of the three was Burgess. We have not yet been told that. The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. R. H. Turton) The hon. and gallant Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) should remember what was said by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He said that no suspicion rested upon Burgess at the time of his disappearance. Clearly, the hon. and gallant Member did not listen to my right hon. Friend's speech. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton I did hear him say that, but I hope that the Under-Secretary will also recall that I referred to that point earlier when I suggested that had he not disappeared, Burgess would 1581 still be in the country and probably reemployed in some other Government Department. All that would have happened would have been that he would have been asked to resign. We are now left with two people whose identity is not yet disclosed. Three people came under suspicion, one was Maclean and the other two did not include Burgess. Why is there such great reluctance by the Foreign Office to say what has happened to those two people? Mr. George Thomas (Cardiff, West) Does my hon. and gallant Friend think that it is the job of a Government Department to smear people on suspicion? Lieut.-Colonel Lipton I will come to that point in a moment. There is a very simple answer to it and hon. Members will have an answer to that criticism. I am not asking the Foreign Office to mention any names, but why is it that they will not disclose and have not yet disclosed how many people have been asked to resign, have been dismissed, or transferred to other positions as a result of, or following, the inquiries arising from the MacleanBurgess disappearance? Mr. Turton My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary gave the exact number in his speech. Perhaps, again, the hon. and gallant Member for Brixton was not present when the speech was made. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton I listened as carefully as I could to the speech of the Foreign Secretary, and I apologise if I did not catch that figure. However, the right hon. Gentleman has added one little crumb of information to the inadequate information provided in the White Paper. When the speech of the Foreign Secretary is carefully analysed, as it can only be carefully analysed when we see it in print tomorrow, the general public will see how very little he added to what was already known to anyone who has been following the matter. I now come to the remarks made by the Foreign Secretary about Mr. Philby, but before dealing with them I will deal with the question of smear referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas). One of the things which deliberately encourages the spreading of what we all deplore and know as McCarthyism is the reluctance on the part of the Government to disclose informa- 1582 tion. The withholding of information creates the very risks which we all want to avoid and which every decent-minded person deplores, the risk of suspicion and distrust in which McCarthyism flourishes.

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If only the Government had had the courage to take the people of this country into their confidence four years ago! There is nothing in the White Paper, except the disappearance of Mrs. Maclean, which could not have been disclosed four years ago. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) pointed out, the Petrov trial added little or nothing to the known facts. Nothing has happened in the past four years to suggest that it would have been contrary to the public interest if this White Paper had been published four years ago. Mr. Daines Before my hon. and gallant Friend leaves the case of Mr. Philby, I would point out that in the course of a Question, which was greatly publicised, he made what was tantamount to a charge against that gentleman. The House is in a privileged position, and I think that my hon. and gallant Friend owes it to the House to give the source of that information. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton I was saying that the information given by the Foreign Secretary in the course of today's debate has added little or nothing to what was already known, and that it is the withholding of information which creates an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Mr. G. Thomas Give the information and we shall all be satisfied. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton We had to wait four years before the Government made a statement. The hon. Member Mr. Daines On a point of order. My hon. and gallant Friend has made what amounts to a charge against an individual who cannot defend himself in this House. I repeat that he owes it to the House to give the source of his information, or should withdraw the charge. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton The question of what I owe or do not owe to the House is a matter not to be decided by my hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Dailies), but by the House as a whole and by you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and the general public outside. However, let us 1583 Mr. Peyton Further to that point of order. Would you care, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to enlighten the hon. and gallant Gentleman on what he owes to yourself and the House? Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris) That is not a point of order. The hon. and gallant Member is himself responsible for any statement he makes in the House. Mr. Tomney Will you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, give the hon. and gallant Member directions that he should inform the House? Mr. Deputy-Speaker I cannot give any such directions. Every hon. Member is responsible for any statement he makes in the House, and the hon. and gallant Member is likewise responsible in this case. Mr. H. G. McGhee (Penistone) You do not know him, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton I am very glad, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that you have helped to dispel the queer illusions which exist in the minds of some hon. Members as to what you can and cannot direct.

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I made as careful a note as I possibly could of what the Foreign Secretary said in his speech. He said, "There are still inquiries being made. The name of one man"I am quoting as accurately as possible"has been mentioned in the House of Commons, but not outside." I hope that I am not quoting the right hon. Gentleman inaccurately. My first comment on that is that in itself the statement is inaccurate, because the name of this man has been mentioned outside the House of Commons. Not only has it been mentioned, but it has appeared in print. I have now had sent to me a copy of the American newspaper the Sunday News of 23rd October, that is to say, the Sunday before the House resumed after the Summer Recess, from which I extract the following quotation from a long article entitled, "Identify 'Third Man' who helped spying officials flee Britain." The quotation which I wish to extract from this article reads as followsand do not forget that this article was published on 23rd October, that is to say, two or three days before the House resumed: 1584 Although the Foreign Office is dead sure Philby triggered the 25th May, 1951, flight of Burgess and Maclean, his only punishment was being fired. In view of the fact that the name of Mr. Philby had already been reproduced in print outside the House, I do not think it is quite accurate for the Foreign Secretary, if he was sufficiently wellinformed in the matter, to suggest that the name of one man has been mentioned here and not outside. That is just not an accurate representation of the position. Mr. R. Brooman-White (Rutherglen) I wish to ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman to clear up one point. He has a great deal of information about this. Has that name been mentioned outside the House in this country in any circumstances which would leave the way open for legal action by the man whose name has been smeared? Lieut.-Colonel Lipton I am dealing with the statement of the Foreign Secretary. I did not know what he was going to say. All I know is that a little while ago the Foreign Secretary said, in a very carefully prepared part of his speech, that the name of one man has been mentioned in the House and not outside. I produce evidence to indicate that when the name of this man was mentioned in the House it had already appeared in print outside. The Foreign Secretary went on to say that he had been privy to much of the investigation into the leakage. I do not quarrel with that. I expect that is an accurate statement of the case, because it was part of his duty, in the position he occupied at Washington, to discharge certain responsibilities in connection with security. But what the Foreign Secretary went on to say was that Mr. Philby was a friend of Burgess at Trinity College, Cambridge; that he had Communist associations during and after his university days, and that in those circumstances he was asked to resign from the Foreign Office on 1st July, 1951. I suggest that this part of the Foreign Secretary's speech is on a par with the verbal gymnastics that were displayed in another place by a Government spokesman and is not as frank as it ought to be. The only interpretation I can place on these remarksif I am quoting the right hon. Gentleman correctlyis that because of these Communist associations 1585 with Burgess during their university careers, and their Communist associations after their university days, Philby was asked to resign from the Foreign Service on 1st July, 1951. Then the Foreign Secretary went on to say that, since that date, he has been the subject of the closest investigation. I have no doubt that that is so. I have dealt with the point previously, namely, that if the Foreign Office is to keep on investigating people until it has sufficient evidence under the Official Secrets Act to prosecute, it may well be that all kinds of people will be able to get away with all kinds of things.

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The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Anthony Nutting) As the hon. and gallant Gentleman has based a great deal of his case on the statement that certain statements appeared in the American Press before the House of Commons met on 25th October, can he confirm or deny that the statements from the American Press of 23rd October to which he has referred were based on disclosures which had already been made by the hon. and gallant Gentleman himself to newspapers in this country? I was myself in the United States on 23rd October, and read various Press reports which referred to Mr. Philby, and these Press reports were based on allegations made by the hon. and gallant Gentleman himself in this country. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton The very simple answer to that is this. While it is true that the name of an hon. Member is mentioned in this particular article, that hon. Member is not myself, and I do not know[HON. MEMBERS: "What is the date?"] It is 23rd October, 1955; that is the date of the article. According to some articles in unspecified American newspapers on unspecified dates, the right hon. Gentleman has suggested that I mentioned the name of Mr. Philby. If that is so, I should be very pleased to examine these particular periodicals. At the moment, I personally have no knowledge whatever of any articles appearing in the American Press to that effect, and, therefore, I am not able to answer the right hon. Gentleman or make any withdrawal based upon the statement which he has just made. What I was in the course of saying was that the Foreign Secretary himself has 1586 said that since that date1st July, 1951Mr. Philby has been subject to the closest investigation, and that there was no evidence to show that he was responsible for warning Burgess and Maclean, but that, while he was in the Government service, he carried out his duties competently and conscientiously. I have given way far too much, but I am willing to give way once again. Mr. Raymond Gower (Barry) Could the hon. and gallant Gentleman say whether he heard the name of Mr. Philby at any time before he happened to read it in an article in an American paper? Lieut.-Colonel Lipton Yes, the name has been the subject of comment for months and months past in this country. The name has been literally hawked about. As a matter of fact, if the hon. Gentleman takes the trouble, he will see that one paper, the Daily Sketch, published a special interview with Mr. Philby, which appeared, I think, in the issue of 3rd October last. It must not be suggested that the American article to which I have referred, while it may be the first mention in print possibly associating Mr. Philby with the third man, is necessarily the first mention or discussion of his name in this country. The Foreign Secretary went on to say that he has no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby had at any time betrayed the interests of this country, or identified himself with the socalled third man, "if indeed there was one." Now we are entering into the field of imagination, because I am not quite sure what the Foreign Secretary meant when he talked about the so-called third man, "if indeed there was one." Everything depends on what the Foreign Secretary meant, or what he intended to convey, when he read out the very carefully prepared section of the speech which he gave to the House earlier today. Is he trying, or does he wish, to suggest that of the three people to whom the field of suspicion had been narrowed down by mid-April, 1951, Mr. Philby was not one? If so, will he please say so? A statement about that would help to clarify the position. I am very sorry that after considering as carefully as I possibly could the note that I made of what the Foreign Secretry said, I cannot depart from the terms of the supplementary Question that I put 1587 to the Prime Minister on 25th October last. That

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is a quite serious statement to make, but I make it because I am absolutely convinced that I am serving the public interest by forcing the Government, and in particular the Foreign Secretary, to provide much more information than has been provided hitherto. It may be that I have some other information which, as it involves what was said by Secret Service agents, I cannot quote in this House. What I suggest to the Government is that the case for some inquiry, first, into the staffing arrangements of the Foreign Office, and, secondly, into our security services, has been made out. It will be found, if both these inquiries are embarked upon, that many people will be induced to give information, especially to a private inquiry which we hope will be made by a High Court judge, into the Secret Service. Perhaps people will be more willing to give information than they have been up to now. Mr. Nutting May I ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman to be good enough to forward to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary the evidence upon which he is basing his charges against Mr. Philby? I quite understand the reluctance of the hon. and gallant Gentleman to bring that evidence before the House of Commons, but perhaps he would be good enough to forward it to my right hon. Friend. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton No. I am prepared to forward that information to a judicial member of the Privy Councila High Court judgewho, as has been suggested from this side of the House, should carry out an investigation into the operations of the Secret Service and who should report to the Prime Minister in a private report. Surely that is not an unreasonable offer to make. All I want to say, and I must rapidly draw to a conclusion[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Before I draw to a conclusion, I want to say that I will not be gagged by anybody in this House or outside in the performance of my duty. [HON. MEMBERS: "Say it outside."] Even Mr. Philby has not asked for it to be repeated outside. Let us leave it at that for the time being. 1588 In the course of carrying out what I believe to be my public duty as a Member of Parliament I say quite deliberatelyand I think that when the verbal niceties of the Foreign Secretary's statement are examined in the OFFICIAL REPORT tomorrow it will be found that I am justifiedthat I will not make any withdrawal at all at present. The whole tendency of the debate has been to stress the importance of this two-pronged inquiry, first, into the staffing and recruitment of the Foreign Office and, secondly, into our security arrangements. The whole of the debate will have been a complete waste of time unless it is followed by one or both of the inquiries which quite a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House are very anxious to see instituted at the earliest possible moment. Mr. Daines In spite of the intervention of the Minister of State, I think that my hon. and gallant Friend owes the House an answer. The only evidence he has brought against Mr. Philby is a quotation from the American Press which emanated, apparently, from a British Member of Parliament. He is a lawyer, and knows that that is not evidence, and I think he should withdraw what he said. 8.50 p.m. Mr. R. Brooman-White (Rutherglen) The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) has been somewhat diffuse, and a little difficult to follow. I shall turn my attention to one phrase only, in which he brushed aside the whole speechwhich was welcomed on both sidesof my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary as "interesting political

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philosophy." My right hon. Friend's main theme was that in the conditions of the postwar world we are again facing a security problem which has not had to be faced since the wars of religion. We are dealing with the extremely difficult and delicate balance which has to be struck between the needs of national security and the rights of individual liberty. We must have constant and difficult decisions to make as to how far any action is justified on suspicion. After listening to the hon. and gallant Member, one is at least quite clear where he stands on that. He is in favour of acting on suspicion, of smearing on suspicion, by 1589 directing public suspicion on to an individual against whom nothing at all has been proved. We must leave it to his own conscience to straighten out what that may cost in personal suffering to the wife, children and friends of the person involved. Other and serious issues have been raised. The hon. and gallant Member, in his conclusion, stressed that, apart from the general question of balance between liberty and security, there were the problems of whether or not there should be an investigation into the efficiency of the security services; and whether or not there should be further investigation into personnel and staffing, promotion and security arrangements within the Foreign Service. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Brixton is in favour of bath such inquiries. I differ from him. I do not see that any case has been made out for either. There has been public agitation, and that public agitation is admittedly a serious factor. The aftermath of the Press comments, ably stimulated, or followed, by the hon. and gallant Member, has given rise to a public uneasiness andI agreea public demand for some kind of action. But is action justified just because there has been a good Press story? Has any stronger case been made out? Let us be very careful about the ground on which we are to act. We know that public anxiety arising out of the Algar Hiss affair caused widespread uneasiness and was followed by disastrous repercussions in the United States. It is very easy to say that it cannot happen here. In a very minor way this is our Algar Hiss affair, and the remarks of the hon. and gallant Member have shown how near to the wind it is possible even for the House of Commons to sail. Let us be quite sure before we embark on investigations. There are four quite separate issues, and they have been confusion in the public mind and in the hon. and gallant Gentleman's statement. Firstly, there is the question of Burgess and Maclean being Soviet agentsought it to have been found out earlier? Then, that they had certain Communist contacts in the universityshould more direct security action have been taken on those grounds? Thirdly, there is the case that they were personally undesirablethat 1590 raises the disciplinary aspect in the Foreign Service. Finally, there is the question of whether or not the Government ought not to have said more, and said it earlier in their statements. I will try quite briefly to deal with each of these four headings. The first is: what is the ground for demanding at present stage that there should be an investigation into the security services? Public interest has been aroused, but let us try to see this in proportion. Surely, what the public has seen is only one corner of the battlefield on which there is unceasing conflict between the rival intelligence services of the great Powers. They have seen one corner of one action, and even in that we were not doing so badly. We have been told that a six thousand to one chance was just coming off. Out of 6,000 suspects, the security services were about to take action against one man to whom it had been narrowed down.

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Reviewing the field as a whole, is the public interest which has been aroused in this sufficient grounds for demanding an inquiry into the security services? Can one envisage, without knowing, whether we are doing well or badly? Indeed, how well we may be doing nobody outside the smallest possible group ought to know. One sees from Soviet statements that many prominent people, members of Communist Governments and the like, who have fallen from popular favour have been, or are said to have been, in touch with the allied or Western intelligence services. Even if 1 per cent. of that is true, we are doing all right. If there had been no recent public outcry or clamour about espionage cases, I should be a great deal more worried. If nothing had been heard of Soviet agents, I should have thought that there might be more cause for alarm. All this outcry has arisen because in one case there was a near miss. We have been told that the trap was just about to close on these people. If it had closed, it would have been a great success for us, because under interrogation they might have divulged a great deal of valuable information about the Russian security services. In fact, it just missed and they got away. Is that sufficient ground for demanding a searching inquiry into the security services? I do not think that it is. 1591 We all know roughly what happens when there is a Government inquiry. The Department under investigation starts preparations to defend itself against the investigation to show that it has not done so badly after all. We all know that. We have seen it happen in various Government Departments. A great number of people start spending their time preparing to give evidence and to answer questions. And in order to do that they have to stop getting on with the day to day job which they should be doing. I entirely agree with everything that has been said on both sides of the House as to the need to give adequate facilities and the best possible personnel to the security services. I do not think that because they have failed to make an arrest in this case there are adequate grounds for an inquiry, which can do no other than impede their day-to-day work. This is not justified unless there is, over the whole field, a feeling that they are falling down on their job. That feeling must arise in informed circles; it cannot be found in this House or in the popular Press. Mr. Daines On that point, did the hon. Gentleman read a very interesting article in the Observer a week or two ago by a man who was a Russian espionage agent, according to the article, against Germany until 1947? He pointed out that the withdrawal of these men to Russia was quite contrary to the usual Russian practice, and he therefore suggested that it was because of fear of interrogation and break down and of information being given that they took that action. If that is so, surely it is a very important reason for an inquiry to be held? Mr. Brooman-White I do not agree that that follows. I said that we scored a near miss. It bears out my point that had we had these people in time it would have been a great success. Let us see this thing in proportion. I am not concerned to protect the security services against the inquiry. I am only concerned to see that we do not lose more in trying to create efficiency than we gain. The Soviet services with whom the Western services are in competition, have great advantages. On the repressive side, they have the full machinery of a police state. On the 1592 offensive side, they have the system of a nation which sets the greatest virtue on under-cover work. Their national heroes of the past were all men who, in Lenin's phrase, had "To know hunger, work illegally, and be anonymous." All their thinking is geared to that sort of thing. That gives them an advantage. They all understand that sort

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of work. Their Intelligence services probably have much more money and resources than our people. But they have a weakness. Periodically, quite frequently, they indulge in purges and blood-letting, which must be just about as debilitating as medieval medicine. To knock off the heads of the Soviet Chief of Secret Police and his various assistants may be good for promotion, but it cannot lead to the efficient functioning of the Department. Unless a very strong case is made, I am not in favour of messing around in a similar though milder way in that Department of our own against whom there is no solid ground for suspecting that on balance it is not doing fairly well. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary paid the Security Services an eloquent tributeand only he and the Chiefs of Staff and a few others are in a position to see the picture as a whole and to measure the successes it has been achieving. Let me pass to the second point. During their undergraduate days, these men had Communist associates. There is no crime in that. Indeed, the only thing that has been proved against Mr. Philby is that he had Burgess staying with him and he had certain Communist friends. He may not have been very wise in his choice of friends, but what hon. Member of this House could say that all his friends were people against whom no shadow of suspicion could ever be cast? That point has been adequately dealt with. I should like to come to the question of the staffing of the Foreign Office departments and the question, which has been cogently argued from both sides of of the House, as to whether at this stage there is a case for further investigation and reform of the Foreign Office administrative machine. I think it was the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) who said that there was public uneasiness because there was a feeling 1593 that the personal judgment of the senior members of the Foreign Office had been at fault. Mr. C. R. Hobson (Keighley) Hear, hear. Mr. Brooman-White That is an important point. It is obviously true that the judgment was at fault. Mr. Hobson The record of Burgess was well known before ever he went into the Foreign Office. That is the gravamen of the charge of many hon. Members on this side and on the hon. Member's own side of the House. We want to know what people were doing ever to start the man. Mr. Brooman-White The point I was making is that after the war there was a great change in the whole system with the reforms instituted by Mr. Ernest Bevinthe great change in the whole structure of the Foreign Service, the bringing in of a consular service, and the rest of it. The numbers were vastly increased. In those circumstances, it is quite obvious that the senior personnel must have lost some of the contact which had previously existed between members of the Foreign Service and that they had lost the intimate touch with and the intimate knowledge of their subordinate staff. It may well be that the Foreign Office was slow in reorganising itself, in instituting the system of confidential reports and similar things which have now been instituted; but again one must say that the reasons which have been given today seem convincingly to carry the point that the necessary reforms have now been made. In present circumstances, the difficulties arising from that major reorganisation have been overcome. To my mind, no evidence has been advanced to the contrary. Time is running short and I must abbreviate my remarks.

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The whole tenor of the debate has been to stress the extremely difficult problems in striking the right balance between security and individual liberty. I am sure that the feeling of the country and of the House is behind the Government in ensuring that we do not depart from our traditional attention to the rights of the individual and the maintenance of personal liberty. 1594 9.5 p.m. Mr. Alfred Robens (Blyth) The hon. Gentleman the Member for Rutherglen (Mr. Brooman-White) has resisted the proposal put forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) that there should be a judicial inquiry into the Security Service, and he produced as his main argument for that that the Maclean incident was a "near-miss," that the Security Service had narrowed down to Maclean an inquiry in which there had been 6,000 suspects, and that Maclean just escaped the trap at the last moment. I suggest that it is for that very reason that there ought to be a judicial inquiry. It must be remembered that the attitude of our allies throughout the world, and particularly the United States of America, to the exchange of atomic secrets is conditioned by their fear of or confidence in our security arrangements and our ability to ensure that their secrets, imparted to us as friendly and co-operative allies, will not go to a foreign Power because of either the laxity or the inefficiency of our Security Service. Therefore, the proposal to have a judicial inquiry is one which, I hope, the Prime Minister will not lightly turn aside tonight. I hope that he will undertake to give it some consideration. What we want is security without McCarthyism. I very much regret that one of my hon. Friends mentioned in the debate the name of an individual other than Maclean and Burgess, because that is exactly what happened in the United States. It was because the United States Administration refused themselves to inquire into a number of rumours and allegations about their security that McCarthyism arose, and if the Truman Administration had not brushed aside the allegations which were being made and had examined their own security arrangements, then McCarthyism could never have been born. McCarthy stepped into the vacuum created by the refusal of the United States Administration to look into their own arrangements. We ought to learn from the lessons of the United States and the case of Alger Hiss. I agree with the Foreign Secretary that the standard of our Foreign Service is high, and that the Foreign Service is one of which we can be very proud. It is all the more to be regretted that we have the case of Burgess and Maclean. The 1595 case has often been referred to as the mystery of the missing diplomats, but it has not been a mystery for many years now, and reading the White Paper is rather like reading the back-files of one of our daily newspapers. The story has not been added to today, except that the Foreign Secretary termed them "traitors," and that it has become clear that they are behind the Iron Curtain, and, presumably, working for a foreign Government. The Foreign Secretary said he accepted the doctrine of Ministerial responsibility, and none of us would want to depart from that doctrine, but the doctrine of Ministerial responsibility, to be accepted to the full, presupposes that it is the duty of Ministers' advisersand that it should have been the duty of Ministers' advisers in the pastto keep Ministers informed of what it is important they should know. It is strange that the Security Service can have investigated 6,000 suspects and yet the first time my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South, who was then the Foreign Secretary, knew anything about this was on the very day Maclean and Burgess left this country.

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I say there is something wrong about a security system that works within a vacuum and works without some consideration of the responsibilities of its political chief. About 6,000 suspects were being dealt with over a long period. Therefore, it seems to me that the Secretary of State should have been informed a very long time before that that this investigation was going on. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) when he says that Burgess and Maclean as such are not important any longer. What is important is the lessons to be learned from them. Two things emerge. One is the question of establishment within the Foreign Office. It does not matter what the Foreign Secretary may have said earlier today, or indeed what the Prime Minister will say later, the fact is that the public and many people in the House are quite sure that within the Foreign Office there is a close circle of "cover up" for one's friends. Mr. Nuttingindicated dissent. Mr. Robens The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but if that is not the case how can it be that a couple of drunks, a couple of homosexuals well-known in the City, could for so long occupy important 1596 posts in the Foreign Office? There is no commercial organisation anywhere that would not have fired them years ago. [Interruption.] The Prime Minister appears to be asking who put them there. The right hon. Gentleman is making a mistake in turning this into a political party issue. Maclean went into the Foreign Office in 1935. This is not a question of when these people were engaged. This is a question of the establishment of the Foreign Office, because the Prime Minister does not make these appointments. The Foreign Secretary does not make all these appointments. The appointments are recommended to Ministers on the basis of the advice of their advisers. The Minister does not go through the list and say, "We will now promote Jack Jones as head of the Department." He takes advice. I repeat that there is a feeling in the House and among the public outside that there is this "cover up" within the Foreign Office and I say that this is a matter which ought to be investigated. Mr. Nuttingindicated dissent. Mr. Robens The right hon. Gentleman goes on shaking his head. Let us have a look at Maclean and at one incident in Cairo. What happened? What does the White Paper say happened? It says: In May, 1950, while serving at His Majesty's Embassy, Cairo, Maclean was guilty of serious misconduct and suffered a form of breakdown which was attributed to overwork and excessive drinking. What are the facts about one case? I will not deal with all of them about a fight that he had with an Egyptian guard, about the breaking of an Embassy colleague's leg on a boating trip. Maclean and a friend, both in a drunken state, went into the flat of a girl who was the librarian of the United States Embassy in Cairo. She was absent. They forced their way in and then began to drink all that was available. Having done that, they pushed a lot of the girl's clothing down the lavatory, they smashed the table and they knocked into the bath a heavy slab of marble fixed as a shelf over the radiator. It broke the bath. They returned to a flat in the same building belonging to a colleague. Maclean was with a man friend, and he had homosexual tendencies when in drink. 1597 As the Minister of State shook his head, I am now giving the facts. As I was saying, they returned to the flat belonging to a colleague in the same building. They collapsed on a bed and fell asleep. It was here in the evening that subsequently his wife

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found Maclean and, with help from a sister, half-dragged a completely sodden husband downstairs to a car and took him home. Is the right hon. Gentleman telling me that everybody in the Embassy did not know about that incident? Is he suggesting that this White Paper reveals one-half of that shocking story? It was not the only incident, but what happened to him? This poor, overstrained, overworked gentleman came back to this country, was given six months' leave of absence, and then was given the job in the Foreign Office. The Prime Minister Who was to blame? Mr. Robens I am not allocating blame to individuals. I am saying that within the Foreign Office there is a close circle of covering up. I repeat to the Prime Minister and to the Foreign Secretary that it does not matter how many times either stands at that Box and says that it is not so. I do not believe that the public will accept that this is not the fact. Disgraceful behaviour of the kind in which Maclean indulged, not only in Cairo but in Washington and in this city, which was well known within the Foreign Office, ought to have been dealt with years ago and he should have been sacked. So I say that there is a need for two inquiries Mr. C. Pannell Before my right hon. Friend leaves that point, will he ask somebody representing the Foreign Office whether the facts of that incident were ever brought to the notice of the then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs? If he was not acquainted with those facts it is wrong to ask the Minister to "carry the can" in the last resort. Ministerial responsibility depends upon knowledge being brought to the political head, and I say that it was not brought. Mr. Robens That is the point I have been making, that if the doctrine of Ministerial responsibility is accepted, and I accept it, it is the responsibility of the Departmental advisers to keep the Minister fully informed. I was asking whether these facts were known to the 1598 individuals concerned, because I am suggesting that they were not. I say, therefore, that there should be two inquiries. There should be one into recruitment for the Foreign Office. There should be an investigation of what has happened since the changes decided upon in 1943, whether they have broadened the basis of recruitment, whether a close circle exists or not and in what way covering up takes place. That kind of inquiry could be made easily by a number of methods which the Prime Minister can envisage for himselfeither by Privy Councillors, by a Select Committee or by some other method. If we want to wipe out of the public mind the idea that there is any covering up inside the Foreign Office, then we must have an inquiry in which these facts can be brought out. The second inquiry should be in relation to security and this could not be carried out by a Select Committee of this House. We suggest that it should be done by way of a judicial inquiry, the judges reporting to the political head of security, who is the Prime Minister. If the right hon. Gentleman refuses such an inquiry, the report of which obviously would be private, other than to himself and his immediate advisers, then we shall fall into the same error as the United States Administration fell into, and we shall make things unhappy for many people for several years. Of Burgess, what is it that the security people were able to say? Nothing at all. Indeed, but for the fact that he left this country, Burgess might easily he working at the B.B.C. today. He would have been fired from the Foreign Office because he was due to be fired. Here again, we had the same type of individual. All these things were well known.

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I repeat that the Prime Minister should be prepared to have some sort of inquiry, not necessarily on the lines we indicate, although what we have advocated seems to us to be the best way to do it. We contend that only a searching inquiry can reveal why both men were not dismissed the Service as completely unreliable and unfitted to represent their country at home or abroad. Another interesting thing is that while these men were protected and excuses were made for their drunkenness and perversions, ordinary working men who had Communist affiliations were kicked out of their jobs almost at a moment's notice. 1599 Does this mean that there is one law for a Communist sympathiser from Bermondsey and another for a Communist sympathiser from Cambridge University? These are matters that trouble us and trouble the general public, and we believe that only inquiries on the lines that we have indicated will do anything at all to allay public disquiet about them. I hope that the Prime Minister will not turn them lightly aside, but will recognise that he has a duty to the House and the country, and will be prepared to accept the suggestions about inquiries made by the Opposition. 9.22 p.m. The Prime Minister (Sir Anthony Eden) I can at least assure the right hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) that I shall not lightly turn aside any suggestions which have been made in this debate, which, I must frankly say, is the one out of my thirty years' experience of the House of Commons in which I take part with the greatest personal regret. It so happens that nearly all my public life has lain in work with the Foreign Office. For ten years I was Foreign Secretary, which is a long time by any standard. It was in 1926, just after the Locarno Treaties, that I first worked there. I have known individually, as many right hon. Gentlemen have known, many of the leading members of the Foreign Service. The right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton) was one of my predecessors as Under-Secretary. I must start by saying that this has been a very sad day for the Foreign Service, and a very sad day for our country, too, because the reputation of the Foreign Service is part of our national reputation. Personally, I think we could have done no other than offer and hold this debate in view of all that has happened. I do not want to stress the personal side of it too much, but I should like to say how much I agree with one observation which fell from the right hon. Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), that whatever mistakes there might or might not have been in this business, one thing which is quite certain is that nobody at the Foreign Office at any time, no senior official or other official, tried to cover up any form of disloyalty to the State. 1600 It is very important that we should have that clearly in our minds. I do not think that anything the right hon. Gentleman said was meant in any way to deny that, but this is something that goes out beyond the confines of our discussion, and I think that for the reputation of our Service, which is still very high in the world, we ought to make that absolutely plain. If mistakes were made, they were not that kind of mistake; they were not mistakes even remotely tinged with disloyalty. Before I come to the subject of the debate, I want for a moment to refer to what was said by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, South at the beginning of his speech. From our side of the House I should like to say a word about Will Whiteley, because although he was Chief Whip of the Opposition and earlier Chief Whip of the Government, I am sure that it would be true to say that he had countless friends on this side of the House and not a single enemy. It is men like him who do the toiling and work in this Chamber quietly who do so much to make our Parliamentary institutions possible. We should

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salute his memory from both sides of the House in that spirit, a great Parliamentarian though he was silent. Now I return to the questions I have been asked and to the debate. The right hon. Member for Lewisham, South said something about the duties of the Foreign Secretary and how heavy they were. I do not at all deny that. How could I? But they are heavy in a way somewhat different from other Departments of State. The Foreign Office is essentially a policy-making Department and therefore the Foreign Secretary's duties are a strain, because at any hour of the day and most hours of the night he may be asked to make some decision which affects policy. That does not happen in the same way in other great administrative Departments. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman meant to give the impressionif he did, I should like to correct itthat on that account Foreign Secretaries do not give pretty close attention to the personnel of their office, both at home and abroad. They do, and all important appointments both at home and abroad, certainly in my experience, were brought to me. That brings me to say a word on the subject of the Foreign Service as it is now and the reforms of which the 1601 hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) spoke. Perhaps the purposes or the context of those reforms are not yet entirely understood. What happened was that before 1919 there was a Foreign Office in London and a Diplomatic Service, entirely separate. In that year they were brought together. Before they were brought together, it can be fairly said that they had a certain fairly close affiliation with the rest of the Civil Service. They were as part of the Civil Service before the two joined together. Then in 1943 we added to those two organisationsthe Foreign Office as it then was and the Diplomatic Servicetwo numerically very large organisations, the Consular and Commercial and Diplomatic. We made the whole into one single Service. One or two hon. Members in the debate have suggested that that was not a very good plan and that we should go back to considering putting the Foreign Service as it was, making it part of the Civil Service. Frankly, I think that that is absolutely unworkable, and I should like to tell the House why. The first reason is that members of this amalgamated Foreign Service undertook thereby to accept service either at home or abroad. That is something which cannot be asked of anybody who is in the Civil Service today. In fact, at the moment in the Foreign Office there are three abroad to one at home. The larger proportion is still overseas. So any question of merging them with the Civil Service more closely must be ruled out. As a matter of fact, there are very considerable temporary exchangesand that is all to the goodexchanges with the Commonwealth Relations Office, with the Board of Trade and with the Ministry of Labour. Those are all helpful and, over and above that, today individuals do sometimes transfer from the Foreign Office to other Departments, or vice versa. That has been going on ever since the reforms were instituted. I am frankly a believer in those reformsnaturallyand I think that they are having their effect on the working of the Foreign Service. When I asked the Cabinet to approve those reforms, my main concern then was to prevent the continuation of the Foreign Service in its various Departments, to prevent having a Foreign Office that did 1602 not go abroad, a Diplomatic Service which operated entirely abroad, a Consular Service again abroad and a Commercial Service yet something else. That seemed utterly wrong in these modern times and it seemed that the thing to do was to bring all four Services together and to make it possible for members of all four to move from one to the other according to where they were best fitted to go.

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I am quite sure that that conception is still the right one, and that it is right for someone in the Consular Service, if he shows the particular quality, to become an ambassador, as some have in recent years, or for someone in Grade A of the Foreign Service, to do a good consular job in some post, probably learning a great deal more of the aspect of commercial matters than he would otherwise be able to do. Therefore, my strong advice to the House on all that is not to touch these arrangements yet. We must give the matter a little time to see how it is going to work out. I do not want now anything in the nature of a formal review of how these changessome of which have been in force for only a very few yearsare, in fact, working out. But that does not prevent us from taking any action we think fit at any time to make adjustments as they seem necessary as these reforms develop. I say frankly that I deeply regretand I know that the whole House doesthat Mr. Bevin is not now here to take part in this debate tonight. I am revealing nothing which is not known to many people when I say that we had many discussions on this question of reforms when Mr. Bevin succeeded me at the Foreign Office I believe that they must be given a full trial. When that has been done, and, if the House is not satisfied with their working, then by all means let us have a review, but I do not want to have that review now after such a short spell of experiment. I will now deal with some of the questions which have been asked about Maclean, and to which the right hon. Member for Blyth added. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel Gomme-Duncan) asked whether there were any reports on Maclean. Yes, most certainly there were, and they were uniformly good until 1603 Cairo, in May, 1950, that is to say, until he had been 18 months in Cairo. Several people have said tonight that the behaviour in Cairo was so bad. There had been the drinking bouts, which the right hon. Member for Blyth described with a wealth of detail. I, of course, did not know about them at the time. I was not in the Government. I make no complaint; there is no reason why I should. Several right hon. and hon. Members have asked why, after all that, he was not dismissed the Service. That is an arguable proposition, and I have no doubt that it was weighed very carefully in the Foreign Office at the time. I am not going to say what I would have done if I had been Foreign Secretary and had had to take that decision. I think that it would have been an apallingly difficult decision to take. The House must remember, in all fairness, that up to that time there was no hint or the remotest suspicion of treason, or of anything remotely resembling it. Therefore, what the House is asking us to say is, was it wrong that this man who had a brilliant record should be given a second chance? It is a subject on which I should hate to be dogmatic in the abstract now, just looking back on what has happened since. I believe that there are a great many employers who would take on a man a second time. I have known in regiments somebody who had a pretty bad go and who, perhaps, lost a stripe as a result; but he may have come back not so long after and proved himself in action with his comrades. I am not asking the House to judge thisthank God I do not have to judge itand all I can say is that I think it is rather harsh to say that there is nothing to be said at all in favour of giving anybody a second chance. I think that is a doctrine that this House should hesitate about before it lays it down. As for his leave, it was not three months, as someone said, it was five months' leave that he had; and after that a medical examination. I have been asked a number of questions about the private contacts of Burgess and Maclean. Many of them I cannot answer, because I do not know the answer. But this I

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can say. It was as a consequence of this that we were led in 1952, following on the examination which, quite 1604 rightly if I may say so, was set in train by the previous Government, to adopt this whole series of measures which we have taken. I was interested to watch the mood of the House this afternoon as my right hon. Friend described those measuresthe "positive vetting," as it is called. Personally, I think it is right, and I think it is inevitable. But I do not pretend that I like it very muchgoing along to the tutor of someone and saying, "What did you really think of So-and-so when he was in your college at So-and-so?" It is very disagreeable to the ordinary British instinct. But I think we just had to do that much. Mr. C. Pannellrose The Prime Minister I hope the hon. Gentleman will not interrupt me, unless it is very important. Let me get on a little further and I will then give way. I want to be sure that I shall be able to finish tonightnot like the other night when I could not; but that was my fault. What I was saying was that I think this was the minimum we had to do, and also the maximum, in fact, that we could do within the existing law. And therefore I believe that we have acted rightly in the spirit of what the House would wish. Now let me answer another question that I was asked. There is no reason to suppose, I am told, that there is any connection between the departure of Burgess and the defection of Otto John. That does not mean to say that we know everything about these things, but that is our information. I was asked also something which is more importantand I think that we must get this clear if we canwhy was not the Fuchs treatment applied to Maclean? My answer, after elaborate researches, is that I think it was applied to Maclean in exactly the same way. As I understand it, what the Government at that time, the Foreign Office at that time, were trying to get was evidence with which to confront Maclean as Fuchs was confronted with evidencenot complete evidence, but enough evidence to have a chance to get him to confess more. As I understand it, the trouble about Maclean was that there was not anything like the amount of evidence to enable him to be treated on that subject as 1605 Fuchs had been treated. But it was hoped, by using this method, to get enough evidence against Maclean to treat him specifically as Fuchs was treated, and the intention was exactly the same in the Maclean case as in the Fuchs case. I think that is right, and I think that is necessary, but what the hon. Gentleman was Mr. Crossman Surely, the trouble is that Fuchs was not "tipped off" whereas in the case of Maclean, if we understand aright, the denial of secret papers to Maclean gave him warning? The Prime Minister I wonder. I know the hon. Gentleman said thatI am afraid that I am not familiar with all the details of what secret papers were stopped and what were allowed to go through. It could have tipped him off, but I imagine that it was very intelligently done. I would rather doubtthough I do not knowwhether that was what tipped him off. I was rather puzzled when the hon. Gentleman went on to ask why the Government at that time did not warn the ports and withdraw the passports. Mr. Crossman No, I did not say that. The Prime Minister Well, somebody else did. That, most certainly, would have alerted him completely. It would have been a most fatal step to take, because if we had alerted the ports all round the countryand they are very numerousit must have been known to a very large number of people, and would certainly have got back in due course to Maclean.

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Personally, if I may put my view, I think the Government were right not to warn the ports and not to withdraw the passports, but were right to try to treat him as they treated the Fuchs case. I am sorry that, though it worked in the Fuchs case, it did not work in this one. I should like to say one final word about the question of the present arrangements in respect of the Foreign Office. I say this deliberately, after having spent, I can assure the House, very much more time on this topic than I would have wished over the last year. I am convinced, as Prime Minister, that the Foreign Office is now following a correct and careful security procedure, and that its standards are of the very highest, 1606 either in this or any other country. That does not guarantee us against future disasters, but it does give the strongest assurance that I can give to the House, with all the responsibilities that rest on me, that we have done all that we can do within the law. Now I want to connect with that the Security Service and say something about it. My right hon. Friend spoke of the creditable piece of detection by which the Security Service got on the trail of a spy. Unfortunately, I cannot explain in detail how the Security Service followed Maclean's activities and eventually detected them. I admit and one has to say this to the Housethat this is something that has been concealed from the House and must continue to be concealed, for good reasons. I cannot and I shall not reveal the methods and sources on which our Security Service relies, but there is one thing that I can say that might help the House about this. The Foreign Secretary mentioned the initial information on which the Security Service was working in 1949. I think it is quite true that the right hon. Gentleman was not informed until the spring of 1951, the reason for that, as I understand it, being that even thenand I have to be careful how I express thisthe shred of evidence was pretty thin when they informed him. Before then, it was of very little value. However that may be, my right hon. Friend referred to the fact that during that period after 1949, over a long period, a field of investigation was opened which covered 6,000 people and they narrowed it down to one. That indicates the complexity of the inquiry and the care and patience with which it was pursued. It also indicates the continuing information on which it rested. More than that I am not prepared to say. In this case, as in every other case of counter-espionage, it is, of course, essential not to let the others know what you know. As one hon. Gentleman rightly said, we must not let them know all we know lest that might guide them to know how we know it. That was the problem which there has been throughout this case. I cannot say any more about that than that this consideration played a continuing part throughout all the years when we have been dealing with this case. Some hon. Members of this House may have had the experience which I once had 1607 of dealing in military operations, as I think the right hon. Gentleman had, with mining and counter-mining. You try to do the best you can so that the other fellow shall not hear or see what you are doing, and he does the same. That is the closest parallel to espionage and counterespionage, and in both exercises silence is the essence of success. I still look forward, though without much confidence, to a debate in the Soviet Parliament on the defection of Mr. Petrov. The truth is that there are one or two Ministers who are responsible and who can judge the current record of the Security Service on the basis of facts and figures; but, in the nature of things, we cannot disclose all that. Too many people would like to know, but there is one test which can be applied, and I think the House would perhaps like to have it applied. It was touched on gently earlier in the debatewhat they achieved in the war.

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Curiously enough, this record can be quite accurately assessed and measured, because, of course, it can be checked against the German records captured at the end of the war. Unfortunately, we cannot do that in the other case. It may be discussed because it is a closed chapter. I can say in general terms that, as checked against German intelligence, the right hon. Gentleman is perfectly correct. The counterespionage achievement of our Security Service during the was was quite outstanding. I want to give a practical illustration of this which may interest the House. The Normandy landing in 1944, in which some hon. Members probably took part, achieved a complete tactical surprise. We know that not only because of what happened at the time but from the German records which now make it quite clear. That could never have happened if our Security Service here had not achieved such outstanding success in purging away enemy spies from the home base from which it was launched. Hon. Members knowhon. Gentlemen have referred to ithow many people, how many soldiers, knew; yet the base was so purified that in fact nothing at all was gained by the enemy. That is perhaps the greatest tribute to the Security Service that there has been, 1608 and it deserves credit for it. It is a remarkable record. I do not knowI cannot go into our record against Communist spies since the war, but I think on the whole that the result will compare not unfavourably. Now I come to the question of an inquiry into the Security Service. I do not think that there is need for such an inquiry, but I will make a suggestion. I should like to say why I do not think it is really necessary. Following the Fuchs case, and in part as a result of the criticism of our security organisation, an official inquiry was made in 1950that was not referred to by my right hon. Friendwhen the Socialist Government were in office. It was a secret inquiry. Its report was secret, but I think I can tell the House that the conclusion of the report was that the Security Service was found to be well equipped, well organised and capable of adapting itself to its admittedly quite different tasks, as several hon. Members have said. I have no doubt that that is true and that we can have confidence in the Security Service. As the Foreign Secretary explained earlier this afternoon, for many generations past, perhaps for centuries past, it has happily been unnecessary to question the loyalty of men and women in the public service. Perhapsand I admit this to the hon. Member for Coventry, East; I think perhaps there is something in thisthat induced a certain tendency to feel that it cannot happen here. That, I think, may well be true. Perhaps we were a little laggard to realise the danger for that reason, but there is no doubt at all, and I really can assure the House of this, that any such comfortable illusion was finally shattered by the disappearance of Maclean. No time was wasted once the extent of the threat was understood. There has been a progressive tightening of security measures throughout the public service. The Foreign Secretary has described the positive vetting, and I do not want to go into that any further, except to say that I think those proposals go as far and are as stringent as this House would be willing to approve without encroaching on those principles which hitherto Parliament has most jealously guarded, and, I think, rightly guarded. Let me conclude with this observation. This debate has shown that this is not a 1609 matter which concerns only the political party which happens to be in office. We are all agreed about that. We are all agreed to see that every justifiable precaution is taken to ensure that men and women in the public service shall not work against the security of the State. I would, therefore, proposeas I have proposed to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Oppositionthat we should convene a small, informal conference of Privy Councillors from both sides of the House.

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I say Privy Councillors not, I beg the House to believe, because we think that we are better than any other people, but because it is those who actually dealt with these matters who, I think, can now usefull discuss them further. I propose that we should examine togetherif the House were willing that we should do sothe security procedures which are now applied in the public service; and also consider whether any further precautions can properly be taken to reduce the risk of treachery such as that which we have been discussing today. That is the offer I make. I do not ask for an immediate answer, but I would ask the House to ponder it. In certain measure, I think that it covers all the suggestions made this afternoon, but behind it there is a larger question, and I want to close by putting this to the House. Mr. Tomney Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that all the Privy Councilors connected with the Foreign Office would be on that Committee? The Prime Minister Nothat would be discussed between the two sides of the House. What I suggest is that a number of Privy Councillors who have had experience of thisnot necessarily Foreign Office experience, but other experience as wellshould be appointed, perhaps two or three, as would be agreed on both sides, to examine this matter together to see whether there is anything further we can do within the lawor whether, in fact, there are any changes in the law which Parliament must be asked to face. That is the concluding comment that I wish to make in the last few minutes, because I have given a great deal of thought to this very difficult question. Behind all that the House has been discussing this afternoon, behind the anxieties, the fearsto some extent the confusionthere is a larger question, and it is this. How far 1610 are we to go in pursuit of greater security at the cost of the essential liberties of the British people? That is why I have suggested Privy Councillorswho are not judges. This is not, I think, a matter for judges, but for Parliament. The only reason that I said Privy Councillors is that they are Members of Parliament. It is essentially Parliament's decision. For instance, it has been suggested that Burgess and Maclean should not have been allowed to escape. All right. Under the law as it stands today they could not have been prevented from escaping, unless a charge could have been preferred. No charge could be preferred. Now, would the House like that law altered? Would the House agree that the law should allow any British subject to be detained on suspicion? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] But we have to face these questions. When there is no evidence on which a man can be charged, would the House be willing that people should be held indefinitely by the police while evidence is collected against them? In this case, as we now know, detention would have been justified; but some hon. Gentlemen think, too easily, that because that was so it would always be justified. It is not so in the least. Who could tell then, at the time when the right hon. Gentleman rightly took his decision to take the action he did, whether Maclean was innocent or guilty? No one knew. British justice over the centuries has been based on the principle that a man is to be presumed innocent until he can be proved guilty. Are we going to abandon that principle? Perhaps, worst of all, are we to make an exception for political offences? In this debate I have said something in defence of the Security Service because I think that it has been criticised, but the last thing that I would wish to see in this country is the Security Service having the power to do some of the things which some of our friends of the Press do not seem to realise would flow from what they advocate.

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It may be trueit probably is truethat if the Security Service had those powers, Burgess and Maclean would not be where they are today. I think that is true. I think that if the right hon. Gentleman had had the powerand Burgess and Maclean is not the only case; we have had problems of this kind, he and 1611 I; certainly I have had them many times ariseif he had had those powers, they would not be where they are today. But what would have been the consequences, if he had had these powers, to British freedom and the rights which this House so far has always been determined to defend? I want to make one thing quite clear before I sit down. I would never be willing to be Prime Minister of a Government which asked those powers of this House. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. P. G. T. Buchan-Hepburn) I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion. Motion, by leave, withdrawn. ********************************************************************** PERSONAL STATEMENT HC Deb 10 November 1955 vol 545 c2014 2014 Lieut.-Colonel Lipton In a supplementary question on the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean, on 25th October, I asked the Prime Minister whether he had made up his mind to cover up the dubious third man activities of Mr. Harold Philby "[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th October, 1955; Vol. 545, c. 29.] some-time First Secretary at the Washington Embassy. During my speech in last Monday's debate I said that after considering my note of what the Foreign Secretary had said I could not depart from the terms of my supplementary question on 25th October. I have since considered carefully the full report of Monday's debate and, in particular, the speech of the Foreign Secretary. I have also read the statement issued to the Press by Mr. Philby, in which, according to The Times newspaper report of it, he refers to his personal friendship for Burgess and says that he regards his resignation from the Foreign Office as a direct result of an imprudent association. As a consequence of that further examination, I am satisfied that there is no justification for the allegation that Mr. Philby is the person who warned Burgess and Maclean, or that he engaged in dubious, third man activities. In such circumstances, I consider it proper, and regard it as my duty, to withdraw unreservedly the charge implied in my supplementary question and in my remarks during the debate last Monday, and, accordingly, I have asked permission to make this statement to the House, so that it may appear in the OFFICIAL REPORT of the proceedings of this House, and in order to say how deeply I regret that the charge was made. ********************************************************************** Burgess and Maclean (Departmental Heads) HC Deb 14 November 1955 vol 546 cc9-10W 9W Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will cause to be printed in the OFFICIAL REPORT the names of the superintending undersecretaries and heads of department of the Foreign Office personnel and security departments on the date when Messrs. Maclean and Burgess were appointed to the last posts they held in the Foreign Office; and if he will do likewise in the cases of the superintending undersecretaries and heads of the two departments in question who were in charge on the day that these two men made good their escape. Mr. Turton When Messrs. Maclean and Burgess were appointed to the last posts which they held in the Foreign Service, in October, 1950, and July, 1950, respectively, the head of the

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Personnel Department of the Foreign Office was Mr. G. H. Middleton and the head of the Security Department was Mr. G. A. Carey-Foster. The Superintending UnderSecretaries were Mr. H. Ashley Clarke and Mr. D. P. Reilly. When Messrs. Maclean and Burgess disappeared in May, 1951, the head of 10W the Personnel Department was Mr. R. W. J. Hooper and the head of the Security Department was Mr. G. A. Carey-Foster. The Superintending Under-Secretaries were Mr. H. Ashley Clarke and Mr. D. P. Reilly. ********************************************************************** BURGESS AND MACLEAN (FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICIALS) HC Deb 21 November 1955 vol 546 cc84-5W 84W 116. Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many Foreign Office and Foreign Service officers were temporarily suspended from service, and for what periods, following the inquiries instituted after the escape of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess; how many officers thus temporairly suspended were subsequently reinstated; and how many have been transferred since their re-instatement, or promoted. Mr. Turton The answer to the first part of the Question is "None". The other parts of the Question do not therefore arise. 117 and 118. Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) what financial settlements were reached with, or lump sum payments made to, Foreign Service and Foreign Office officers who were dismissed, or permitted to resign, as a result of the inquiries instituted following the escape of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess; (2) how many Foreign Service or Foreign Office officials were dismissed, or transferred, or asked to resign, or permitted to resign as the result of the inquiries instituted following the escape of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess. 85W Mr. Turton No officials were dismissed or transferred as a result of the inquiries into the Maclean and Burgess affair. One was asked to resign in consequence of such inquiries and received a financial settlement in accordance with the terms of his engagement. One was permitted to resign in view of his relationship to one of the persons involved, and was given a gratuity. ********************************************************************** DISAPPEARANCE OF BURGESS AND MACLEAN HL Deb 22 November 1955 vol 194 cc708-31 708 4.8 p.m. VISCOUNT ASTOR rose to call attention to matters arising from the disappearance of Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean (Cmd. 9577); and to move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, since I put down my Motion this distressing matter has been considered in another place, and it has been put to me politely that to have this debate to-day is perhaps inopportune. However, I have carefully searched my conscience on the matter and I feel it would be wrong that this subject should not be discussed in your Lordships' House. It is a matter that is irrelevant to Party but of the utmost importance to the State, when treason apparently is esconced for many years in the very centre of a great policy-making Department, and where conduct unworthy of officers and gentlemen is tolerated for a considerable time. I am aware that on our side the Whip apparently considers disappearing diplomats less important than reappearing rabbits; but

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I am surprised that noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite, who were in power at the time, are not proposing to speak in this debate. I was induced to go on with this Motion because of the somewhat unsatisfactory character of the debate in another place. Although the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary made remarkably eloquent debating speeches, there were many questions left unanswered which, if full confidence is to be restored, had better be answered once and for all. If there is to be this private meeting of Privy Counsellors, surely it is right that the opinion of this House should be known to them. And should we not know that certain questions will be considered? I would ask the noble Marquess who is to reply for the Government to tell us whether those Privy Counsellors will make a report which will be debatable in this House in due course. That this matter has gone on as long as it has done is largely the Government's own fault. In the early stages of this sad affair they seemed concerned more to hide the truth than to uncover it. Answers given here and elsewhere gave the minimum of information. Inquiries, journalistic and others, were discouraged. But, surely, the sad affair of Crichel 709 Down should have shown the Government that nowadays the affairs of great Departments cannot be carried on veiled in mystery, and that it is far better to get the truth out and finished with than to try to save prestige by hiding it. I think it is particularly unfortunate that the Minister of State should have used the phrase "witch hunt" for those who were trying to find the truth. The term "witch hunt" got into disrepute because the existence, let alone the prevalence, of witches was a highly hypothetical and uncertain matter. On the other hand, Communists are not uncertain and hypothetical. Nor are traitors, any more than murderers or burglars. To try to uncover treason is as much a duty as it is to prevent burglary, and the honest attempt to clear up these matters should never have been stigmatised by the highly questionable phrase, "witch hunt." We then had the White Paper, which was like the magistrate, in the sad affair of young Albert, and the lion, who seemed to come to the conclusion that "No-one was really to blame." If the Government had come forward with honest apologies, and had said that great mistakes had been made, that the responsibility was taken and changes had been made, it would have been far better than that curious White Paper which was criticised by all the organs of the Press, including those most favourable to the Government. I think we have seen from these sad events that there has been a lowering of the discipline and standard of conduct in the public service which would never have been tolerated in the old days. That is quite apart from any question of treasonable conduct. This question of the standard of conduct of people in representative capacity is as important as the other question of extreme Left Wing opinions leading to treason. The cases of these two gentlemen were quite different. I do not want to talk further about the terrible behaviour of Mr. Maclean in Egypt. What Mr. Roberts said was true, and a great deal more, too. What was surprising was that, after this behaviour, he should have been appointed to an important department in the Foreign Office. It is ridiculous to pretend that the American department deals only with sending ballet dancers to Bolivia: it is a most important department. The head of a great department in the Foreign Office sees the flow of papers on all sub- 710 jects, and this ridiculous "playing down" of the matter did no credit to anybody. What was curious was that after this gentleman had had this very bad record in Egypt, not only was he appointed to an important department but he continued that extraordinary standard of conduct in this country. He used to go out in the evenings and get disgustingly drunk at a certain club. He twice engaged in drunken brawls with former Left Wing friends, in one of which they were rolling on the floor. This was the head of the American department of the Foreign Office. In each case the

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cause of his attack on these gentlemen was that they had betrayed their former extreme Left Wing opinions. The question I want to ask the Government is: Did the Foreign Office know of this conduct and tolerate it, or were they ignorant? If they were ignorant, it is hard to believe that they live in such an ivory tower. Can one imagine the colonel of a regiment, the general manager of a bank or the head of a university not knowing about such conduct among important subordinates about whom they had already been warned? I am afraid that what happened was that the view taken was: "As long as you do your work properly, what you do in your spare time is your own business." But surely people, whether they are Members of Parliament or diplomats, who are in a capacity representative of their fellow citizens should have a higher standard of personal conduct, whether they are in their office or not, than those who engage in purely commercial and private pursuits. We want the answer. Was this conduct known and tolerated, or was it not known? At no moment in the House of Commons debate was it said that this form of conduct cannot be passed over among people who hold important public office. In the case of Mr. Burgess, he came into the Foreign Office; "through a side door." I think it only right to the memory of Hector McNeil that I should say there was no more loyal person than Hector McNeil: he was the last person who would have consciously tolerated treason in any form. I am one of the few people who never knew Guy Burgess, and apparently I missed a lot. By all accounts, he was one of the most amusing and clever conversationalists there was, who charmed a great many people. But 711 he was a drunken, dirty and a sexual pervert. He had been ever since his school days. He made no pretence about it, either in his conversation or his conduct. Now the question I ask is: Did the Foreign Office know about his peculiarities and tolerate them, or were they the only people who did not know about them? At no moment was it said in the House of Commons debate that people with this unfortunate habit are not suitable for confidential positions in the public service or to go abroad in a representative capacity. I am not one of those who takes the view that the homosexual is a criminal. Those of us who are lucky enough to be normal should, I think, have nothing but pity for people in that situation. But when it is a crime, and when it brings a country into disrepute or lays a person open to blackmail, surely it should be laid down quite clearly that people of those characteristics should not be used in the Foreign Service. If we are to regain full confidence in the Service, which should never have been lost, we must have assurances that there is a tightened discipline and a most careful recruitment. I think the members of the Socialist Party in the House of Commons who wanted an inquiry into the recruitment of the Foreign Service were, on this occasion, hunting the wrong fox. The only thing that might be said as a result of some inquiry is, of course, that "More care must be taken that people of Left opinions do not get in." That is all wrong. No sensible person should say that civil servants should all be Conservatives; but what we can sayand it should be pointed out to the Civil Service Commissionis that character is as important as cleverness. That was completely ignored in the cases of these two men. We also want to be assured that the system of confidential reports has been improved. If there had been a system of confidential reports such as that to which those of us who were in the Navy submitted, these gentlemen would not have lasted for more than a very short time It must have been a bad system, laxly applied, with low standards. We must be assured that it has improved. Turning from personal contact to the subject of Communism. I think it is remarkable how slow in this country we 712 have been in realising the theory of Communism and its importance. We are practical people; we cannot understand that people of other

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nations, habits and thoughts put theory above facts. In Communism we see an expression of Russian nationalism or of agrarian reform in China. We say that surely the third generation are looking after their comforts and their vodka and are not devoted to theoretical Communismas if people who have known nothing but theoretical Communism, who have been stuffed with it educationally from their youth, could not be as strong Communists as their predecessors. It is only by reading the abominably dull works of Communists, as dull as Hitler's Mein Kampf, that we can learn about them. And if our enemies write such dull books, we cannot persuade the British people to read them. We do not know the full horror of what we are up against because of the sheer dullness of Das Kapital and Mein Kampf. But those people are dedicated enemies with no standards of honour, no patriotism as we know it, no possibility of compromise. They despise socialists even more than they despise capitalists; and the first thing they do in any country is to put all socialists and trade union leaders into concentration camps. We have to recognise that, for the first time since the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth, we have a fifth column in this country, a fifth column that has penetrated, apparently, the highest ranks of the Civil Service, the scientists and even the Church. We are neither at peace nor at war but are in a cold war in which we cannot judge by the normal standards of peace the measures which it is right to take. While the Prime Minister's peroration was remarkably effective. I could not help thinking that, if we were betrayed by Communists and should go down, it would be rather ironical to think that, if the Prime Minister met the Foregn Secretary in the corridors of the Lubianka prison, after a particularly grilling and horrible interrogation, he might say: "But in any case, my dear Harold, we did nothing to interfere with the liberties of British Communists." We have to face the fact that we are in a cold war. We have to look at our traditional practices from that point of view. The first thing about which the 713 Committee of Privy Counsellors has to make sure is that no organisation or body of men should consider itself above security. In the past, the atomic establishment at Harwell would have nothing to do with M.I.5. The highly elite organisations feel: "We know each other so well; we are all such good chaps and there is no need for security procedures." We must be assured that that attitude has ceased. Secondly, we must be assured that security gets full co-operation from all Government Departments. It should not be regarded as "the fellow with false whiskers who is a bit of a bore and tells silly tales," but should have full access to the heads of Departments and should be considered seriously. All of us who are ever concerned with naval, military or other intelligence have considerable sympathy with St. Paul when he wrote "Who hath believed our report?" I do not think that the change we make need be large or drastic. The Prime Minister rather over-dramatised the issue. I feel sure that there is no need for powers to arrest people on suspicion. No one has proposed that. The power to question a civil servant would be quite sufficient, because if anybody refused to be questioned it would show an immediate guilty conscience, and the right deductions would be drawn. We must be assured that the security service has ample facilities, in men and money, as well as the appropriate technical means at its disposal. That needs to be assured to us. There is one liberty which is a very uncertain one, and I hope this Committee of Privy Counsellors will pay attention to itthat is: is there an undisputed right to leave this country? Is a passport a privilege or a right? We have had contradictory answers from Government spokesmen on this point. I have been told by a member of the Cabinet, since these discussions began, that anybody could leave this country without a passport. I had to go to France, and when I tried, the following Sunday, to leave without a passport I was very politely told by the Scotland Yard man at London Airport that, if I did not produce

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a passport, he would not allow me to leave. I said that he had no right, and he replied that he knew that but still I was not going to 714 catch the aeroplane. He was absolutely right. I told him why I had tested him. LORD SHERWOOD The noble Lord can leave without a passport if he goes to Newhaven. VISCOUNT ASTOR I am well aware that there are some passportless excursion trips. LORD SHERWOOD I have been on one. VISCOUNT ASTOR I congratulate the noble Lord, and I hope he enjoyed himself. To return to the point, should there be an unlimited right of leaving this country with or without a passport? Does it exist? Should it exist? Just think of the liberties which we have given up: you cannot cut down a tree, you cannot remodel a cottage, you cannot build a cow-house, without somebody's permission; a diplomat cannot write his memoirs; you cannot float an issue; you cannot do anything 'without permission. Should there be this complete right of anybody, in any circumstance, possessing confidential information, to walk out of this country? Surely that is a point which deserves attention. Whether it is right to have these passportless excursions in which the noble Lord has indulged, and whether it is one of the liberties which, in the minds of all, should not be curtailed, is a question to which I hope the Privy Counsellors will address themselves. My Lords, to return to the Diplomatic Service, there is no doubt that this affair has been a severe blow to the prestige which the Diplomatic Service and the Foreign Office should, and deserve to, have. Nowadays one of the troubles is the lack of respect for prestige. It was easy enough to say that the fact that a person was a Peer or was rich did not mean he was better than anybody else. As a result, there has grown up among the public a feeling that everybody is as good as anybody else, and that people in the Diplomatic Service are no better than they. It has become a subject for musical hall jokes and' so forth. I think one of the important points is to re-establish that prestige which has been harmed. In my view, the Foreign Office must consider its public relations in the general sensethe way it meets the public in different spheres, whether it be a person 715 who goes casually to ask for information, the business man or the journalist. I submit that we are doing no harm to this great Service, the vast majority of whose members have been the most disinterested public servants imaginable, in raising this debate so that these points may be cleared up, and so that in future we can be quite certain that the Service is living up to its high traditions. I beg to move for Papers. 4.33 p.m. LORD AMULREE My Lords, I must apologise for my rashness in addressing your Lordships a second time in one afternoon, but this is an occasion when necessity knows no law. I do not want to follow the noble Viscount in the broad survey which he has given you, ably wandering about the various paths of security. I want to put my remarks in the form of one rather simple question. Apparently, the names of Burgess and Maclean have been indissolubly linked together because both ran away from the country at the same time. When we consider Maclean, Her Majesty's Government appear to have a pretty considerable amount of evidence that Maclean had been acting as an agent for a foreign Power for quite a long time. But I wonder whether we have the same knowledge about Burgess. Certainly, upon the occasion when the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs spoke in another place, I think on November 7, he declared upon two occasions that at no time before Burgess left was he under suspicion. Furthermore, in reply to a Question, the

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Minister said that there was no suspicion on the part of the authorities against Burgess. But that does not mean that Burgess may not have been conscious of his own guilt, and therefore felt that the best thing to do would be to be off. That may well be correct. But there are one or two other alternatives which I feel we should, in fairness, consider. Before I come to them I should like to mention three things about Burgess: first, that he ran away with Maclean; secondly, he was known to have Communist sympathies, even when a young man; thirdly, nothing has come out in the White Paper issued by Her Majesty's Government, though there is a possibility that the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, may have some additional facts which have not yet emerged. There may be two alternatives which may be worth con- 716 sidering, in the case of this unfortunate and stupid man. One is that, as a result of his stay in the United States, he came back here, returned to his former allegiance, and took the opportunity of going to the country of his choice. I think it is fair to say of a person with the curious, unsettled, paranoic mind of Maclean, that perhaps he thought war between the two countries was inevitable, and that he might be able to do something by going to Russia or vanishing from this country. Officially, neither I nor anybody else knows where he has gone, but at any rate he may have gone to do something to prevent war from taking place. I put forward that suggestion to the noble Marquess, but I shall quite understand if he says that he has no further information, and I certainly shall not press him if he says that he has information which he cannot disclose because of security reasons. 4.38 p.m. LORD TEVIOT My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships long. I am not going to approach this subject from the angle adopted by my noble friend Lord Astor; I am going to take a more general line. I am glad that he has brought this noble House into this question. I have felt that for us deliberately to ignore what has taken place would not do us any good and would damage the prestige of the House. Undoubtedly this whole episode has been a dreadful blow to Government prestige, not only here but in foreign countries as well. I think it essential that both Houses should show the strongest support for the proposal of the Prime Minister to set up a committee of Privy Counsellors. I hope that the terms of reference will be as wide and comprehensive as possible, so that the committee can really get down to the roots of this question. Beyond doubt, it appears that Ministers were not given information which they should have had. From what I have heard, not only in this House but elsewhere, that is a point that has impressed me. In regard to the traitorous side of the matter, any nation may have "bad eggs," but we must do every thing we can to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. If we look back, we find that it has happened five times before. Five men have been caught out as traitors to their country. To me, the most important 717 thing is that we should do all we can to see that men of such low character and with such well-known reputations should never be promoted to represent this country again. The respectable worldpart of it is still respectable, I thinkexpects this of us. Do not let us be misled by what I am afraid I must look upon as nonsensethe allegations of "witch-hunting" and "McCarthyism." I feel confident that this House will be rendering a great service to the nation by taking a strong view on this whole matter. Our future must be secured in the hands of worthy men. I commend those few thoughts to your Lordships for your sympathetic consideration. 4.40 p.m. LORD CONESFORD My Lords, in examining this scandalous affair to-day our purpose should be severely practical. Nobody would wish to probe the wounds of a great and honourable Service

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except for the purpose of finding out what went wrong in order to make it as certain as possible that similar mistakes will not again be made. II should certainly not take part in this debate but for two considerations: the defects and contradictions of the White Paper and the fact that these have not been wholly remedied or removed by the fine speeches of my right honourable friends the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister on November 7. The two principal points to which I wish to direct your Lordships' attention are, first, the appointment of Maclean to be head of the American Department of the Foreign Office in October, 1950; and, secondly, his flight from the country on May 25, 1951, without let or hindrance. I believe that both these events cast discredit upon the authorities and that the reasons hitherto given in explanation or excuse will not bear examination. To deal first with Maclean's appointment, he was appointed to be head of this Department five months after his serious misconduct in Cairo. My first regret concerning the White Paper is that it does not tell us what that misconduct was. I do not think that the omission can be on security grounds. Had the White Paper set out clearly and definitely what the misconduct in Cairo was, then the public, and both Houses, would be in a better position to judge whether it was reasonable or unreasonable to give this man 718 further employment. But if the White Paper does not state what that misconduct in Cairo was, a Privy Counsellor in another place, winding up the debate for the Opposition, gave particulars of it; and the Prime Minister, who followed him, did not question the accuracy of what was said. I would not make too much of that, but unless the noble Marquess corrects the particulars given by that Privy Counsellor I shall assume that those particulars were, in substance, true. I would also point out to your Lordships that the Privy Counsellor said that the matter of which he gave full particulars was only one among others, two of which he identified sufficiently to indicate to Her Majesty's Government what he had in mind. I believe that if a man employed by any business or industrial concern had behaved in this way he would have been instantly dismissed altogether from his employment. I believe that the same is true of the fighting Services. If I am wrong in the assumption that he would have been dismissed altogether, I submit that one thing is absolutely certain: he would not have beer given a new post without searching inquiries into all that was known about him, and into the probable cause of his breakdownif breakdown it was that caused the misconduct. Why was it assumed, in this case, that this man's misconduct had a purely physical explanation? Everybody who has made the smallest study of Communism must know that the Communists will seek to have agents in the Foreign Office and in other Departments. We very much hope that their attempt to secure such agents will be frustrated; but that they will make the attempt we know. If they succeeded in having an agent in such a Department as the Foreign Office, what could we expect? Is it not obvious that their agent would be a man subjected to very great strain? If a breakdown of this nature occurs within the public service, the possibility of a mental cause should not be excluded without inquiry. Had adequate inquiries been made at the time of the breakdown. Maclean's earlier Communist sympathies would have been discovered then and net later. Let me say at once that I agree with honourable and right honourable members of another place and noble Lords on both sides of the House that the activities 719 or political leanings of a man in his university days need not he fatal to him in after life; of course not. But they may have to be inquired into, and in this case they were inquired intobut after these men had fled from the country. I submit with some confidence that those aspects should have been inquired into after the events in Cairo and before Maclean was appointed to another position.

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In the debate in another place it was said that there was no suspicion, at that time, regarding his loyalty: but why not? Since January, 1949, it had been known that there had been a leak of information from the Foreign Office to the Soviet authorities and, therefore, that someone in the Foreign Office might have been disloyal. I should also like to remind your Lordships that in January, 1950, some time before these events, Alger Hiss had been found guilty at his second trial in the United States; so the possibility of treachery in high places was certainly vigorously brought to the mind of authorities in all countries. What excuse was there for not considering treachery as a possible explanation of the strain to which this man's misconduct was attributed? After his misconduct in Cairo he should either have been dismissed at once or, at the least, the most searching inquiries should have been made before he was given a further post. Incidentally, was it wise to treat the post of head of the American Department of the Foreign Office as of minor importance? There are two disadvantages in such a course: first, the Americans will not believe us, and, secondly, they would be very much insulted if they did. It really will not do to say that the Foreign Office acted as a good employer in giving him a further post of responsibility without searching inquiries. It simply is not true that a good employer places kindness to a servant above public safety. Let me pass now to his escape on May 25, 1951. By that time, your Lordships will recall, he was the principal suspect in a very grave matter. Your Lordships will also recall that it had been decided that the security authorities should question him in the hope of a confession or statement which would support a criminal prosecution. Let me say at once that I fully accept what the Government say about the importance of not alarming him prematurely and the difficulty or impos- 720 sibility of an arrest at that time. Let me make it absolutely clear that I am not asking for any change in the law that would remove or modify the presumption of innocence or justify imprisonment without a charge. But does it really follow that nothing could have been done to prevent him from leaving the country before he had been questioned? I submit that it ought not to have been beyond the means and the skill of the security services to watch the principal ports and to take his passport from him as he went aboard the ship. I revert to passports again for a moment because the noble Viscount. Lord Astor, alluded to them, and I think there has been some confusion about the law upon this subject. Fortunately the law was explained accurately and recently in this House by the noble Marquess who is to reply for Her Majesty's Government when he answered a Question put by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, on the first of this month. The reply made it absolutely clear that the property in a passport had been and remained the property of the Government, or the property of the Crown, and no person could complain if it was taken from him. I dismiss at once the question of taking it from this man before he got to the port because, of course, that would have alarmed him. I merely say that it ought to have been taken from him before he went aboard. I say that the law was accurately stated by the noble Marquess, but it was, inadvertently, wrongly stated by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. In an extempore intervention in another place the Foreign Secretary wrongly assumed that some legal process would have been necessary to remove the man's passport. It may be urged, of courseand this was admitted by the noble Viscount, Lord Astor that if the passport had been removed he could, nevertheless, have left the country if the shipping line had been willing to carry him without one. That is true. I do not think the deprivation of a passport would have meant in law that he could have been prevented from leaving this country. But the lack of a passport would have made a very great difference to his being admitted into any other country when the boat arrived on the other side. It seems to me quite useless to say that there was any legal necessity for

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allowing him to leave the 721 country in this way without any let or hindrance. I cannot believe that the Government will seriously contend that they could not legally have prevented Maclean from going abroad in possession of his passport, and I am bound to point out that my view of this matter appears to have been shared by the draftsman of the White Paper. I ask the House to permit me to read the first sentence of paragraph 13. This runs: Immediately the flight was known all possible action was taken in the United Kingdom and the French and other Continental security authorities were asked to trace the whereabouts of the fugitives and if possible to intercept them. Well, my Lords, what is the legal principle which makes it quite impossible to prevent these men from leaving the United Kingdom but makes it easily possible to intercept them abroad when they have landed? I confess that the legal principle evades me. Perhaps the noble Marquess when he replies will make this matter clear. I have heard of only two possible suggestions to account for this discrepancy between the statement that nothing could have stopped them from leaving and the statement in the White Paper that when they had left every effort was made to intercept them. I have heard two suggested possible explanations neither, I may say, from a lawyer. The first was that the flight provided that additional proof which was needed as prima facie evidence of Maclean's guilt. But that will not do as an explanation, because, of course, that part of the evidence was complete at the moment he went aboard. The other suggestion was that when he was abroad, after at least a clay or so, he had overstayed his leave from the Foreign Office. That does not really sound to me like an extraditable offence. I am bound to point out the difficulty of this explanation, in the unlikely event of the Government's wishing to resort to itmy noble friend indicates that he will not resort to it. It would, of course, be quite untenable because the passage I have read from the White Paper applies not only to Maclean but to Burgess as well, and he was not overstaying his leave. In fact, they were wishing to get rid of him from the Foreign Office. I am not going to say much about Burgess but I would draw your Lordships' attention to one passage in the White Paper. After stating that Burgess 722 was asked to resign from the Foreign Service, we get at the end of paragraph 7 of the White Paper this statement: Consideration was being given to the steps that would be taken in the event of his refusing to do so. It was at this point that he disappeared. I am bound to say that it is interesting to speculate in what position we should next have found him had he refused to resign and not disappeared. Before I leave the question of Guy Burgess entirely I should like to say that I am also a little astonished at the naivt of the White Paper in saying that he apparently lost his Left Wing interestsindeed he was known after leaving Cambridge to have had some contact with organisations such as the AngloGerman Club. I hope it may have occurred to the security services that he, possibly, did that under instructions. There is only one other matter to which I wish to refer. In a very fine speech, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary dealt with some of the grim facts of the conflict in which we find ourselves and he referred to the New ideological conflicts which divide the world. My Lords, the only word in that to which I object is the word "new." New, indeed, they are, if we are considering our whole lifetime, but they were not very new in 1950. I hope I shall be excused if I attach some importance to this matter. For many years I have done my best, by speech and writing, in Parliament, and outside it, to draw attention to the Communist menace. For twelve years the Communists have proceeded with terrifying success towards the achievement of their proclaimed purpose, the conquest and enslavement of the world. In that progress they have had many triumphs and a few setbacks. Possibly in some Foreign Affairs debate we may consider

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that topic further. The most astonishing minor success which they have had was one to which the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, alludedtheir astonishing success in applying the term "witch hunt" to the search for Communist agents. As my noble friend pointed out, the term "witch hunt" has an ugly connotation, because we do not now believe that there were witches and therefore hold that the search for witches who did not exist was an excuse for tyranny and persecution. Does anyone seriously believe that Communist agents do not exist? Of course, they exist and are dangerous. I agree that, in 723 seeking to discover them, Governments can act wisely or unwisely, can act with due respect for human liberty or act with tyranny; but let us abandon at least the use of so misleading and question-begging a term as "witch hunt" as applied to the search for Communist agents. The use of this term can have some amusing results. I have in my hand, and I should be happy to show it to your Lordships, a fascinating cartoon that appeared in the New Statesman of October 1 of this year. It depicts two witches riding on broomsticks and underneath is written, McCarthyism's dead, huh? Perhaps we can cash in on this Macleanism the cartoonist of the New Statesman being under the illusion that a witch hunt was not a hunt for witches but a hunt by witches. As the result of these events, various inquiries have been suggested. It has been suggested that there might be an inquiry into recruitment to the Foreign Service. I cannot think why, and on that matter I agree entirely with what has been said by the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister. It has been suggested that there should be some general inquiry into our security service. I confess that I do not see such a necessity. That is, perhaps, 'because I have confidence in Her Majesty's Government and know that this is a matter on which they will satisfy themselves without an inquiry. There is one matter, and one matter alone, on which I think there should be the most direct and careful inquirythat is, into the events of this specific case. 5.4 p.m. LORD SALTER My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Astor said that he wrestled with his conscience on this point, I want to say strongly that I think he was right to retain his Motion on the Order Paper. It is true that since he first put it down we have had a White Paper, and that since the White Paper there have been important statements and developments elsewhere. We now know much more than we did before: we know that there has been a progressive tightening of security arrangements; we know, too, that a small and formal conference of Privy Counsellors is about to consider what further precautions are needed. I am sure that all of us to-day have had these facts truly in mind and none of us 724 has wanted to go into the past or to make an attack on the Government or the Foreign Office or anybody else, except in so far as it seems to us necessary in order to ensure, so far as we can, that any additional precautions that are needed will in fact be taken in future. I think, too, that it may be said of all who have spoken to-dayand I hope it will be true of myselfthat we are careful of the dangers of hindsight in looking at and criticising the action, or inaction, of any authority at a particular moment. We shall be careful to take into account only what was known, or could reasonably have been known, at that time and not judge them in the light of later events of which we have subsequently been informed. Why then is it desirable, after the information we have had, to have this debate? First because, as the speeches which have already been made have shown, there are certain questions unanswered which ought to be answered. If they cannot be answered in public in this House, at least they ought to be answered in private for those who are about to conduct an investigation. Secondly, because it is just at the moment at which this

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informal but authoritative conference is about to take place that it is most useful for us to express any opinions we have; and thirdly, because, when national security is involved, as it is in this problem, I think it is only right that this House should make its contribution and should do so by means of a discussion held under the particular and distinctive traditions of discussion in this House. I am not concerned with the cases of these two officials as such. All I care about is the light that they throw on the two continuing problems of the public service, first how to ensure that officials are not retained in positions of trust when they have shown themselves unsuitable, by faults of misconduct, or in temperament; secondly, how to act in the much rarer, but very important, case of suspected treachery or disloyalty. In offering reflections on these two I shall confine myself to the case of Maclean and to two stages only of that casethe Cairo affair of 1950 and the disloyalty inquiry of April-May, 1951. The earlier of these illustrates the first of the two problems I have mentioned, and the later one illustrates the second. For convenience may 725 I call them Maclean, 1950, and Maclean, 1951? I apologise if to some extent I have to cover some of the same ground that has been covered by those who have preceded me, but it will be from a slightly different angle. I come now to the first question, Maclean, 1950the decision to reinstate Maclean in October, 1950, after his serious misconduct in May of that year, and to make him head of the American Department. I realise that at that time the Foreign Office had no suspicion of treachery or disloyalty. I shall not discuss now, though others may, whether they could reasonably have been expected to have such a suspicion at that time. I only ask now whether, on what was admittedly known of his conduct, it was right to reinstate him. As my noble friend Lord Conesford has said, the White Paper does not give us details of the Cairo incident. However, these details were given in horrifying detail by a Privy Counsellor in another place, and so far this account has not been denied or, I think, seriously questioned. If that account is true, does it not certainly show that the man who was guilty of such conduct was really unsuitable by temperament and personal habit to occupy a high position of trust in the Diplomatic Service? I agree with my noble friend Lord Conesford that it really will not do to say that he was appointed to a position of no great importance, a department dealing with routine and welfare, and, as has been said elsewhere, that he was not in a position to deal with questions of major policy. Our concern is not that a Foreign Secretary was guided in his decisions on major policy by advice from Maclean; but that, after what Maclean had disclosed of his character and conduct. he should then be put in a position in which most certainly he had access to the most secret papers, and in which personal relations requiring personal discretion were involved. Having that in mind, I want to ask, first of all, whether when this incident took place in Cairo in 1950, the Embassy there gave full information as to what had happened to the Foreign Office. Secondly, if they did, or when the Foreign Office learnt of the events, did they then take the trouble, in the five months which elapsed between the incident and the time of reinstatement, to see if there was evidence as to whether or not this was indeed 726 a solitary lapse, or whether similar lapses, showing similar faults, had occurred in the past? Thirdly, when they had reinstated him, I ask whether in the light of what was known about Cairo, they took special steps to see if in the subsequent months between then and the Spring of 1951 there was any similar recurrence of behaviour. As I say, I think these questions ought to be asked and answered, if not now at least for the meeting of the Privy Counsellors. I think that is sufficient to illustrate my first criticism about 1950, which does not concern the question of treachery and disloyaltyand for the purpose of my argument here I am accepting as fact that nothing was then known or

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(though I doubt it) could reasonably have been known, to give grave suspicion of disloyalty. I want to press home this point of what is done when an officer has behaved, and is known to have behaved, in a way that, on the face of it, shows him to be unsuitable for a position of public trust. There was a reference made in another place to what is the duty of a good employer. I think that is an extraordinarily dangerous doctrine to apply to a case of this kind. What is the duty of a good employer depends a great deal on the character of the misconduct and on the character of the work which the individual is doing. If the employer is concerned with the foreign relations and foreign prestige and reputation of this country, if the misconduct is of such a kind as was in this case known to have taken place, surely it is monstrous not to recognise that the first duty of the employer is to his country and to the Service, and not to the admittedly flagrantly guilty employee. I am not now pursuing this same point, though I think: I might, in regard to Burgess; I am content to take Maclean for the purpose of discussing this question. I wish also to suggest that there is an important distinction as to the grounds upon which action should be taken between the appointment and retention in office of a public official, on the one hand, and, on the other, the grounds upon which a court would convict a man of a criminal offence. Of course, I do not mean that rumour or baseless suspicion should be sufficient to deal with the first case; we all realise the dangers and injustice of that. But if, in the careful judgment of those in a position to inquire and assess 727 an officer's conduct in the public service, and with due safeguards against arbitrary or purely individual decision, it is clear that an officer has shown himself not to be qualified for a position of trust, surely it is essential that he should be removed, even though, on the evidence available, he would not be convicted in a court of a criminal offence. I wish to press that distinction strongly. So much for Maclean, 1950. I now come to Maclean, 1951. In January, 1949, it was known that there was a serious leakage of Foreign Office information. By mid-April, 1951, the field of suspicion had been narrowed from 6,000 people down to two or three persons. By the beginning of May, Maclean had come to be regarded as the principal suspect, even though there was no legally admissible evidence to support an actual prosecution. At that time (we do not know the precise date, but I presume the early weeks of 1951), papers to which Maclean had previously had access were withheld from him. I want to direct your Lordships' attention to that point. Then on May 25 the then Secretary of State sanctioned a proposal that the security authorities should question him. During this period of days, or perhaps' a few weeks, during which papers which he had been accustomed to receiving were withheld from him, apparently he was not watched at all except in London. He was not watched in the country, nor was any watch kept at the airports or seaports in case he should attempt to flee the country. I ask: Why not? Why in these last days, at least, from the moment when the papers were withheld, was a continuous watch not kept on an officer who was by then certainly believed to be guilty of treachery, after a careful inquiry conducted over two years which had narrowed the field of suspicion from 6,000 to one? Two reasons are given. The first is that it would have increased the danger that he would suspect and be more likely to flee. Are we really expected to accept that? Maclean, whatever else he was, was a highly intelligent man. Did the Foreign Office really think that, when papers he had previously been receiving for years were suddenly withheld from him, he did not begin to ask himself whether he was under suspicion? Would 728 the most discreet watch that could have been made when he was in the country, or a watch at the ports, in case he might go there, have seriously added to the

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danger that he would have suspected and changed his conduct accordingly? Really we cannot accept that. The second reason givenand the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, has dealt with itis that anyhow he could not have been kept in the country. Can we really accept that? Supposing that he and Burgess had been followed to the ports and had been seen to be about to embark at Southampton on the night of May 25; or supposing watch had been kept at the ports, and when these two people presented themselves they had been stopped, because they were the people for whom instructions had been given to watch, could nothing have been done then? Is it really impossible that they could have been asked to give up their passportsa request which they were very unlikely to have refused? But even if they could not have been stopped there, supposing they had gone with their passports, was it not possible to telephone to the French authorities at St. Malo?because whatever may be the doubt as to the legal powers that the British Government had to keep these men in, there can be no question whatever that the French Government had ample power to keep them out, and they could have been returned. Then the main question of disloyalty would have been solved. The very fact that these two men had been fleeing together would have answered the question, and any remaining doubt, though it was a very small doubt at that moment. on the part of those who were conducting the investigation, would have been removed. I press this point, partly because I can hardly believe that the Executive could not find in their existing powers a way of dealing with such a case, but also to suggest that, if it was indeed impossible, then a short, simple amendment of the law to till up this gap in the Executive's powers would be quite easy, and would not involve any infringement of personal rights. The law could provide, for example, a right to bar the exit for a limited period, subject perhaps to a certificate given by an authority other than that of the employing departmentlet us say, the Home Secretarythat there was grave ground of suspicion with which he 729 was concerned. I do not press that point hard, because I find it difficult to believe that, had the Government really known that these men were getting on this ship, they could not have stopped them. I have taken these two cases, and these only, because they illustrate the two kinds of danger against which I think any new procedure must provide. Maclean, 1951, is perhaps the rare casebut when it occurs it is, of course, an extremely important case of treachery and disloyalty. Both problems exist not only and not mainly in relation to the Foreign Office, but in the Civil Service and, indeed, the public service as a whole. Treachery is rare, and doubtless is less likely in the older Departments than in some of the new extensions of the public service; but it is possible anywhere and, as we have been reminded, it is much more likely in present circumstances at a time of conflicting ideologies than it has been in the past. We have to face the fact of a fifth column in this country, and we have to adjust many of our notions and procedures to that sinister and serious fact. I remember that many years ago Leon Blum was attacked because he had taken some action against French Communists. He was attacked on the ground that he, as an old internationalist, was acting against his creed, to which he replied (I do not vouch for the precise words): "My complaint of these French Communists is not that they are the servants of an internationalist creed; it is that they are the agents of a foreign and a hostile nationalism." That is the sinister and serious fact to which we have to adjust the whole of our procedure and policy in these clays. However, I do not now propose to go further with this question of suspected treachery. It is, of course, true that we may rely upon any Department, and the security officers and personnel officers concerned in every Department, to refuse to conceal or withhold grounds for considering that a man was guilty of treachery. But the same cannot be said

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with the same confidence, for reasons we all appreciate, about those who, though innocent of crime, have shown themselves to be unsuitable by misconduct or by serious faults of character and temperament for continuance in their present offices of trust. Here I come, as an old civil servant, to the question of security of tenure. We all realise the reasons for, and the 730 advantages of, security of tenure in the Civil Service, but I think it is essential that we should understand clearly what we mean by this. Security of tenure should mean security against the risks to employment that might result from political changes, personal prejudice or favouritism, or the fluctuations of demand to which others in other occupations are subject. It should mean that and only that; it should not mean in any degree security against the consequences of gross misconduct and gross incompetence and unsuitability. There must be a system which really works in the appropriate casesnot frequent, but importantto transfer, demote or dismiss, according to the seriousness of the offence or defect of character and according to the character of the work involved. What I have been saying does not refer specially to the Foreign Office; it applies equally to the whole of the Civil Service and, indeed, the public service. I know how high are the traditions in the Civil Service. I am confident that it is only in a very small proportion of cases that disciplinary action would be necessary, but I suggest that it is vital that where it is required it should be taken, and that security of tenure should not mean, or be reasonably suspected of meaning, security against the consequences of incompetence and misconduct. In conclusion, I should like to make a comment on the question of ministerial responsibility which was referred to by the Foreign Secretary. Of course, ministerial responsibility must be maintained. Of course, the Minister must stand between his officials and external criticism. But I suggest that there are two indispensable corollaries and conditions of this. The first is that the officials should present the issues fairly and fully, and with all the requisite information, to the Minister for his decision, so that the decision can be really his and the responsibility really his, not only in constitutional doctrine, but in reality. The second is that when officials fail in that respect the Minister should take appropriate steps in his own Department. These are the reflections I wish to put before your Lordships, and before those who will be considering this problem elsewhere. Such questions that I and my colleagues have asked as cannot be answered in public to-day, if there are 731 any, will, I trust, be considered by those who are about to consider, less publicly, the questions which now concern us. 5.26 p.m. LORD KILLEARN My Lords, may I detain your Lordships for just one moment? I know that there is a Royal Commission at half-past five, and apart from any other reason that is sufficient to cut my remarks short. I hope that when the noble Marquess replies to this Motion he will find it possible to cover two points. The first is a question: Why were both men not dismissed the service as completely unreliable and unfitted to represent their country at home and abroad? The second is an inquiry: Whether we could be informed if the results of thisI do not know what to call itinquiry, or this Privy Counsellors' conference, will be published, and, if so, whether there will be any opportunity for public discussion in Parliament. LORD GIFFORD My Lords, may I ask one question? It has been said that it was impossible to prevent these men from leaving the country. In the three armed Forces it is the ruleand I have verified itthat no officer or man may go on foreign service leave without the permission of his General Officer Commanding or his Commander-in-Chief of his

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group or area. Is there any system in the Foreign Office whereby Foreign Office officials must get permission to have foreign service leave? THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY My Lords, I beg to move that the debate be adjourned during pleasure, and we will resume immediately after the Royal Commission. Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.(The Marquess of Salisbury.) On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly. ********************************************************************** FOREIGN SERVICE ACT (COMPULSORY RETIREMENTS) HC Deb 23 November 1955 vol 546 c118W 118W 73. Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many of the 21 Foreign Service and Foreign Office officers who were compulsorily retired since 28th May, 1951, under the provisions of the Foreign Service Act, 1943, were thus retired as a result of the inquiries following the escape of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess. Lord John Hope None. The Foreign Service Act is not designed to deal with security or disciplinary cases, for which there are quite different procedures. The object of the Act is to provide for the retirement on pension of established officers who have not made sufficient progress in the Service to justify their retention or promotion. ********************************************************************** Schedule HC Deb 24 November 1955 vol 546 cc1662-763 1662 3.54 p.m. Mr. R. T. Paget (Northampton) I beg to move, in page 3. to leave out lines 7 and 8. We have now an annual opportunity to discuss the affairs of strangers within our gates. I believe that it is to the credit of our Parliamentary institutions that this should be so. Each year we discuss the rights, responsibilities and difficulties of aliens within this country, and so far, in so far as I have been able to observe these debates, instead of there being an expression of xenophobia, which so often occurs where majorities resent minorities among them, hon. Members have risen to ascertain whether the lives of these people can be made easier and freer. It is in that spirit that I rise to draw the attention of the Committee to various proposals which have been made at the Council of Europe to enable the lot of aliens to be made freer and easier. The first point that I want to raise is the question of refugee passports. Ever since the days of Nansen, whose wonderful work, practically single-handed, on behalf of refugees is, I believe, one of the 1663 great stories of humanitarian endeavour in the history of the world, and upon the basis of one man's tremendous reputation and faith, a document was provided for those who had been homeless and expelled which enabled them to become, in a certain sense, citizens of the world. The necessity to bring home to people the idea of the rights and difficulties of people who are without a country, or who, because of intolerance, cannot return to their country, has been very constantly before our minds. Great advances have been made. The numbers of the refugees after the last war were tremendously swelled, but, as a result of agreements arrived at in both London and Geneva, a form of passport was provided for the refugee who had settled in a country which would enable him to travel upon the country within which he was settled undertaking to receive him back.

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Recently, in Paris, a meeting was held between a committee of the Council of Europe and the High Commissioner for Refugees, who came over from the United Nations. As a result, certain proposals were made. I do not say that they are very wide and important proposals, but they are, none the less, proposals to which I feel Her Majesty's Government should give more serious consideration than they have so far done. The first recommendation which was made concerned the form of refugee document which should be issued. The report says: It is considered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and your Committee endorses this view, that besides conforming in text to the provisions of the Convention, refugee travel documents should also be uniform in appearance, so as to make them easily recognisable to consular and frontier officials and thus contribute to speed up frontier formalities for everybody. With this object in view, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees prepared a specimen travel document which was duly submitted. Therefore, it is proposed that the refugee passport should be something in common form, of a common appearance, so that it can be recognised at frontiers and at consulates and will provide a recognised status for these people. It is something which both the High Commissioner and the Council of Europe have regarded as important. 1664 The reply which the Government have given is that they quite agree but they have a stock of some 16,000 of the existing documents and these must be used up before they can comply with the request. Really, if we are to take part in the activities of international organisations, if we are going to that expense at all, ought we not to take their recommendations a little more seriously than that? Is it not frivolous to say, "Here is a good recommendation; we quite agree with it, but we must use up our own stationery first"? I ask the Government to reconsider this matter. In all conscience, one finds on the Continent the attitude that it is not always M. Molotov who says "No," but it is "les anglais qui disent toujours 'Non'." 4.0 p.m. Far more important that that, which is a small matter, is the question of visas. Why should we require visas for refugees, if we do not require them from the citizens of the countries which issue the refugee document? Visas tend to be an expensive matter to people of small means. Why are they necessary? I want the Committee to consider what is the point of a passport. I would submit that it certainly has no security function whatever. If a spy arrives, one may be quite certain that the people who send him have provided him with a passport and probably with half a dozen. Equally, he will have no difficulty in having visas. He will have plenty of those, too. Passports provide one with no assistance whatever from a security point of view. The whole point of the passport, and in my submission the only point of the passport, is that it enables one to get rid of somebody, if one wants to get rid of him, because if he has a passport, that amounts to an undertaking and a recognition by somebody of a liability to take him back, if we wish to deport him. Captain J. A. L. Duncan (South Angus) If one has a criminal in this country, one can take his passport away and prevent him leaving the country. Mr. Paget No, even that is not correct. We have no right, as was pointed out in the recent debate on Burgess and Maclean, to stop anybody leaving the country because he does not have a passport. 1665 Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West) And no right to say that a man is a criminal before he is convicted.

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Mr. Paget That is the situation, but we are not here considering what passports we give to people. We are considering what passports we accept from people. It would be out of order to consider what passports we give to people. ********************************************************************** Burgess and Maclean (Officer's Resignation) HC Deb 28 November 1955 vol 546 cc166-7W 166W 74. Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will state the exact sums paid out of public funds by the Foreign Office, in the one case in the form of a financial settlement and in the other as a gratuity, to the two Foreign Office/Service officials who were asked and permitted to resign, respectively, from Her Majesty's Service as a result of the inquiries instituted following the escape of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess. Mr. Turton As I stated on 21st November, in answer to another Question by my hon. and gallant Friend, the Foreign Service officer who was permitted to resign did so not as a result of the inquiries but only because of his relationship to one of the persons involved. It is not customary to reveal the amount paid to individual officers upon the termination of their services and I am not prepared to do so in these two cases. 75. Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will cause to be printed in the OFFICIAL REPORT the exact terms of engagement under which a Foreign Office/Service officer, who was asked to resign from Her Majesty's Service in consequence of inquiries into the Maclean-Burgess affair, 167W was enabled, and in accordance with the terms of this engagement, to receive from the Foreign Office a financial settlement out of public funds; and how many Foreign Office service officers are at present serving on similar terms of engagement which, in the event of their being asked to resign from Her Majesty's Service, would entitle them to financial settlements out of public funds. Mr. Turton I am not prepared to meet either of these requests. ********************************************************************** FORMER FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIALS (DISAPPEARANCE) HC Deb 30 November 1955 vol 546 c204W 204W Mr. Emrys Hughes asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what has been the cost up to date of the inquiries into the disappearance of Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean. Lord John Hope I regret that it would not be possible to estimate the cost of these investigations. ********************************************************************** Security and Disciplinary Procedures HC Deb 05 December 1955 vol 547 c12W 12W 62. Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the nature of the different procedures in use in his Department designed to deal with security and/or disciplinary cases amongst established and temporary Foreign Office/Service officers suspected or known to be guilty of such lapses; and how these special procedures were applied in the cases of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess before they made good their escape. Mr. Turton

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I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the speech by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in this House on 7th November. ********************************************************************** Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the number and whereabouts of the Foreign Office Security Department regional security officers serving abroad today, and at the 13W time when Messrs. Maclean and Burgess made good their escape from this country. Mr. Turton There are now three regional security officers, in Bonn, Vienna and Washington. In May, 1951, there were also regional security officers in Cairo, Buenos Aires and Singapore. Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the annual cost of the Foreign Office Security Department during the financial years 195051 and 195152, and if he will give the exact sums expended in pay and allowances, and as between the Foreign Office proper and its regional security officers, for each year, respectively. Mr. Turton The annual cost of the Foreign Office Security Department in the financial years 1950 51 and 195152 was 12,574 and 15,336 respectively, of which 12,060 and 15,007 represented pay and allowances. The annual cost in pay and allowances of the regional security officers abroad was 13,300 and 14,139 in these two years. ********************************************************************** SECURITY (CONFERENCE OF PRIVY COUNCILLORS) HC Deb 24 January 1956 vol 548 c29 29 45. Mr. Emrys Hughes asked the Prime Minister what progress has been made by the Committee of Privy Councillors appointed to investigate the question of security following the disappearance of Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean. The Prime Minister (Sir Anthony Eden) I understand that the Conference has nearly finished its work and hopes to report to me very shortly. Mr. Hughes Is the Prime Minister aware that we all wish him a happy New Year and continued health and strength to struggle with the Tory Press and with General Eisenhower; but can he assure us that Messrs. Maclean and Burgess have not returned with Doctor Otto John and are not advising the Middle East section of the Foreign Office? The Prime Minister May I thank the hon. Member for his good wishes, and say that his remarks are of an assorted medley which will entertain me a great deal on the Queen Elizabeth? ********************************************************************** BURGESS AND MACLEAN (STATEMENT) HC Deb 13 February 1956 vol 548 cc2079-82 2079 Mr. H. Morrison(by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can make a statement with regard to the appearance of Messrs. Burgess and Maclean in Moscow. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) Yes, Sir. I have certain comments to make on the appearance of these two men and their Press conference. First, it brings out into clear relief the consistent lack of candour of the Soviet authorities in their statements about these men. In addition to what had

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appeared in the Soviet Press, suggesting that the whole story was Western anti-Soviet propaganda, in October of last year before the debate in the House about the two men, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked Mr. Molotov in Geneva for information about them. Mr. Molotov said that he was quite unable to provide any. As recently as 12th January, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) saw Mr. Khrushchev, he put the same question. Mr. Khrushchev was reported to have replied, "Are they in our country, then? I have not heard anything of them from any Soviet officials, nor have I ever met them, so it stands to reason I cannot know what they are doing." The House must form its own opinion about the veracity of those statements in view of this latest development. This kind of conduct shows how difficult it is to establish the relations of mutual trust which the Soviet Union profess so much to desire. The second comment I have to make is with regard to the contents of the statement itself. The House will have noted that it is designed to be used for propaganda purposes and that the two men were not permitted to answer any questions. In fact, no credence can be placed in their word. There is nothing in the statement which causes me to modify that view. 2080 My third comment is that there has been a certain amount of speculation as to the reasons which have led the Soviet Government to change their ground and to announce, through this interview, the presence of these men in Moscow. One view is that it was to forestall awkward questions during the visit of the Soviet leaders to this country and to clear the air. That may be so. Another view is that after the visit of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and myself to Washington, and the close accord we reached with the United States Government on so many matters, the Soviet authorities wished to create distrust and to drive a wedge. If this is the explanation, they will not succeed. Mr. Morrison May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether there was anything to prevent the resignation from the Foreign Service of these two persons and their conducting propaganda on the lines of their opinions in our own country? May I also ask him whether it is not a fact that during the war, and since, all British Governments have sought the most friendly relations with the Soviet Union in the cause of peace? Finally, may I ask whether there is now any evidence that these two men were agents acting on behalf of a foreign Power or the Communist Party? Mr. Lloyd It is a fact that there is nothing to prevent anyone in the Foreign Service from resigning and conducting such propaganda in this country. In reply to the right hon. Gentleman s second question, the answer is definitely that, in my view, all Governments since the war have sought most genuinely to seek improved relations with the Soviet Union. As to whether there is any evidence that these men were Soviet agents, suspicion of the person responsible for a known leakage of information to the Soviet authorities was, as was stated in the White Paper, narrowed down to Maclean before he departed. This was confirmed by his departure and, subsequently, by what Petrov has said. No suspicion attached to Burgess before his departure, but strong suspicion fell on him when he departed, and that, also, has been confirmed by what Petrov has said. Sir J. Hutchison Would my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, if their 2081 statements are correct, it is disquieting that two men, who confessed that while they were at Cambridge they were members of the Communist Party, should both subsequently be employed in the Foreign Service and that one of them should be employed in the B.B.C. and the Secret

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Service? Does my right hon. and learned Friend consider that the steps taken as a result of the Privy Councillors' examination would stop a repetition of that possibility, if it be true? Mr. Lloyd I do not accept what my hon. Friend said about the employment of these men. The employment of Burgess is described in the White Paper. On the question of the future employment in the Foreign Service of such men, I think, as was indicated in the debate in the House, that adequate steps have been taken. The Report of the Conference of Privy Councillors is not, I think, a matter for me. Mr. Daines May I ask whether the Foreign Secretary noticed in the statement from Moscow that Burgess claims to have served in the Secret Service and M.I.5? Is that correct or incorrect? Mr. Lloyd I do not think that that is exactly what Burgess claimed. The fact is that he was employed in a Department which, at the outbreak of war, dealt with propaganda to neutral countries. It was an organisation which later came to be known as S.O.E. Mr. Peyton Does my right hon. and learned Friend realise how welcome his clear statement will be in proving beyond doubt that the ludicrous pantomime which was staged in Moscow will gain them nothing? Mr. Morrison Arising out of these exchanges, may I ask the Prime Minister whether he has any intention or otherwise of making a statement to the House on the report of the Conference of Privy Councillors on the Secret Service? The Prime Minister I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman and to his colleagues for the Report which they have been good enough to present to me. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, it reached me the night before I left for Washington. However, I have given it careful study and we are now engaged in considering the steps to be taken to give 2082 effect to it. I hope to be able to make a statement upon it in due course but, as the right hon. Gentleman would understand, and all concerned would agree, I should not be prepared to make the Report public. ********************************************************************** DEFENCE HC Deb 28 February 1956 vol 549 cc1017-143 1017 3.41 p.m. Commander J. W. Maitland (Horncastle) I am very glad to follow the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) because I found that I was in agreement with a great deal of his speech. I agree entirely with his definition of the background against which we are having this debate. I agreed with many of the other points which he made and I shall follow them in the course of my speech, but he will forgive me, I know, if I do not follow him in the lecture which he gave to the House during the last five minutes of his speech. Mr. Callaghan A jolly good one. Commander Maitland That may be so, but I did not think so. Mr. Callaghan Another unguided missile.

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Commander Maitland I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman when he took the economic background in particular and considered all the points in the White Paper against our present economic difficulties. Out of every difficulty one can generally wring an advantage, and the present economic difficulty which we are going through helps to present a clear picture of the peculiar and particular problems which we have to face in trying to meet our defence commitments. It underlines what all of us know in this Housethat if we commit ourselves too much, we may very easily destroy ourselves in the cold war without having to wait for a hot one. So I should like to keep my few remarks to two or three 1110 points which I believe will definitely bring greater effectiveness to our efforts and, at the same time, provide some economic relief. The first point I want to make concerns something which I was very glad to hear my right hon. Friend and also the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) mention, because I think that it is, of all matters, the one in which there can be the greatest saving of economic effort and greater improvement in the effectiveness of our effort. That is the question about which we all know, the question of increasing integration at all points in the initial development of all types of projects with the U.S.A. All of us know the problem. I think that all Governments should never relax their efforts to try to induce the Americans to get over the great difficulty of their atomic law, which prevents them giving us help which would be of such tremendous advantage not only to us but to themselves. The development of the atomic submarine is an obvious example. We shall be faced with years of effort if we go on with the atomic submarine, which might be cut to months if only we could have the hard-won experience and knowledge which the U.S.A. has gained one can understand the attitude of the U.S.A. to this matter. There has been terrible treachery as a result of which one can well understand America bringing in that Act. At the same time, we must remember that certain other feelings also exist. It is perhaps too much to call them feelings of jealousy for they are normal and ordinary feelings which have existed between the two Services time out of mind. In years past, for example, the navies of the United States and of this country have had a not always friendly competitive feeling. It is only natural that such things help to prevent the United States from giving us those secrets which would help the effort which we are jointly making. While, however, treachery has allowed Russia to catch up with both the United States and ourselves, we should not further handicap ourselves by lack of co-operation. The first stage of atomic development has probably been reached, and we are now dealing with what might be called the applied science aspect of 1111 atomic energy. In the newspapers the other day I noticed the rather sensible suggestion that the revelations which Maclean and Burgess are making are largely an effort on the part of Russia to keep open the small wound of suspicion existing between ourselves and the United States. If that is so, I think that it is, in itself, the very finest proof that the Soviet Government dread the possibility of the United States and ourselves pooling our knowledge. That would, in many cases, increase the efficiency of development and production, while reducing the time taken and lessening the cost. ********************************************************************** State Security (Hostile Acts) HC Deb 01 March 1956 vol 549 cc1340-1 1341 4. Mr. W. Yates

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asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if Her Majesty's Government will introduce legislation to outlaw those who are deemed to have committed a hostile act against the security of the State outside and in addition to the Official Secrets Acts. Major Lloyd-George I am not sure what my hon. Friend has in mind, but I do not think that the revival of this ancient procedure would serve a useful purpose today. Mr. Yates Is my right hon. and gallant Friend aware that if Burgess or Maclean claimed political asylum, and returned to this country, the law provides three months' imprisonment or a fine and nothing else? Is this satisfactory, in view of the cold war competition? Major Lloyd-George I think my hon. Friend will agree that this is an extraordinarily complicated matter to be dealt with by Question and Answer. Cases have been raised with regard to two other people. The whole question is under consideration, but it is not an easy matter. Mr. Younger Can we have an assurance from the Home Secretary that irrespective of any particular case which may happen to be of current interest, he will think carefully before introducing any new, and rather vaguely expressed, criminal offences, particularly if they have political implications? Major Lloyd-George I think I can do that easily because, although the crime of outlawry was abolished in 1938, the last case was in 1855. ********************************************************************** PUBLIC SERVICES (SECURITY) HC Deb 21 March 1956 vol 550 cc1255-314 1255 3.43 p.m. Mr. Kenneth Younger (Grimsby) I rise to ask the Government some questions and, I hope, also to initiate a general discussion upon Cmd. 9715, entitled "Statement on the Findings of the Conference of Privy Councillors on Security." As the House knows, the origins of this Report lie in the debate we had in the House on 7th November, on what is now very widely known as the Burgess and Maclean case. That resulted in a Committee of Privy Councillors, representing both sides of Parliament, engaging upon an inquiry into security procedures under the following terms of reference: To examine the security procedures now applied in the public services and to consider whether any further precautions are called for and should be taken. Although that is the very recent origin of this Report, this is only the latest chapter in what is now the lengthening story of the attempts of successive Governments since the war to safeguard the security of the State in a manner consistent with the preservation of the essential liberties of the individual. Prior to this Report, the last major stage in the story was the announcement made in the House in March, 1948, by the then Prime Minister, my noble Friend Earl Attlee, as he now is, when he made his statement about the introduction of new security procedures which the Government of the day thought necessary as a result of the security dangers which had become evident following the end of the Second World War. We all know that since the war there have been some notable cases of the failure of our security arrangements to detect subversion or espionage until fairly late in the activities of the person concerned. There is, therefore, with that knowledge in the background, fairly general acceptance by 1256 the public that we must be constantly reviewing our security arrangements.

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On the other hand, we all realise, too, that the introduction of more effective security arrangements has been making some inroads upon our democratic tradition. That is recognised in specific terms in this latest Report, where it is stated that the Conference of Privy Councillors recognise that some of the measures which the State is driven to take to protect its security are in some respects alien to our traditional practices. Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne) A masterpiece of understatement. Mr. Younger One of the things I want to discover is to what extent it is an understatement. I hope that the Government will be able to give us some reassurance. Whether it is or not, that frank admission in the White Paper is sufficient to justify the deep concern of Parliament every time a tightening of security procedure is proposed. It also justifies our asking today what the attitude of the Government is towards the problem and to warn them that we shall exercise the very closest vigilance on the way they carry out the principles laid down in the Report. When we debate a security failure, such as the Burgess and Maclean case, the tendency is for there to be some atmosphere of alarm about security and to demand, as was the case during that debate, that some further powers should be taken, whereas today, when we come to debate the security measures themselves, I think that we shall find that the emphasis tends to be the other wayon the necessity for safeguards for the liberty of the subject. That indicates that in this difficult matter there can only be a compromise between these conflicting considerations. I do not know whether this commands general agreement, but I believe that we have no reason to be ashamed of the compromise which we have struck on this matter in recent years. All of us have experienced about 40 years of world war and revolution with men's minds all over the world being torn between conflicting ideologies. We have lived in an age which was described by Miss Rebecca West a year or two ago as "The Age of Treason," yet I think it is commonly 1257 believed that, despite that, our public service is not riddled with disloyalty. I think that all of us in the House believe that in the overwhelming majority our public servants, of all ranks, are loyal and reliable citizens. No doubt it may be said that that situation has been secured at a cost. There must have been some cost in the operation of our security measures to date. There must be some people with grievances, some no doubt with justifiable grievances, because there are uncertainties in this matter which seem to me inevitable. Nevertheless, both the officials who have operated the system and the public who play a very important part in security by their general attitude to the problems of espionage and subversion, both these categories, have, on the whole, kept their heads and shown considerable moderation. When the system was tightened up in 1948 there was a debate in this House and anxieties were rightly expressed. I think I am right in saying, however, that in the eight years which have since elapsed there has been no really serious volume of complaint. There must have been individual cases of complaint, but I do not happen to have had any. Also, there may be some grievances unresolved, but the lack of any public difficulty of any kind shows that, on the whole, the compromise adopted has not been too unreasonable. Some statistics were given to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn), in a Written Answer yesterday from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, indicating that the numbers of people in the higher grades of the Civil Service who have either been dismissed or moved, or who have resigned following the better security measures introduced eight years ago, have been small. However, those figures related

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only to higher grades and I ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can give us precise figures or a general indication of whether the number of people affected by the regulations have been also small in the lower grades. We know that the public service is a pyramid, with relatively few people in the top grades and far more in the lower grades. There has often been a feeling that less care is taken in the individual 1258 investigation of people in the lower grades. This may be inevitable perhaps because they are more numerous, and if there are injustices these are more likely to be at the lower end of the scale than at the top. If the right hon. and gallant Gentleman can tell us the figures for persons affected in the lower grades are as encouraging as those for the higher grades, I shall be grateful. Because I think that the compromise has worked well, I am glad that in the Report no major changes are demanded. Paragraph 8 states that the main conclusion of the Conference was that there is nothing organically wrong or unsound about the present arrangements, but the paragraph continues by stating that there are certain recommendations, the purpose of which is to strengthen the system in some respects. And adds that Her Majesty's Government have accepted them all. I hope that those recommendations are purely procedural. They may be of a kind which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman cannot reveal in public. I hope he can give us an assurance that there is nothing new and radical which has not been made public, and that it is true that in approving this Report we are not accepting any major changes in the system as we have known it up to date. I am glad to note, also, that there is no demand for statutory powers. Paragraphs 18 to 20 of the Report refer to the matter which was raised in the Burgess and Maclean debate, namely, whether new powers were required to prevent suspect persons from leaving this country. The conclusion of the Conference and of the Government is that no new statutory powers should be introduced. I accept the argument in those paragraphs and I am glad that this is the conclusion. May I say, in passing, that I never really thought that the absence of powers was the basic difficulty even in the Burgess and Maclean case. It is true that there is a certain gap in the statutory powers of the police, for the very good reason that we do not allow persons to be held indefinitely without a charge. The real difficulty in these cases, however, is not the absence of legal power so much as the difficult question of knowing how long 1259 it is wise to let investigations run when the evidence is incomplete; the desire not to alert somebody about whom inquiries are still in progress, and so on. I believe that none of those difficulties would have been affected even if the Government had decided that they would give additional statutory powers, as I am glad they are not doing. It is important to realise, in this connection, that even if one is prepared to give the maximum of arbitrary powers to security authorities, as has been done in some other countries, this does not ensure 100 per cent. security. There could not be a better example than Nazi Germany, with the arbitrary powers given to the Gestapo and a society riddled with treason before the war and during the war and right to the finish. It is easy, by overdoing the granting of powers to security authorities, to damage the liberty of many innocent people without ensuring the apprehension and conviction of the few who are guilty. Nevertheless, although no new powers are asked for, I think that there is one major new departure in this Report. This arises from the mere fact of committing to print and putting into an official document, a Government White Paper, a number of general propositions about security which are very wide in their character and capable of very varying application. I feel that there is some danger that this White Paper might be

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regarded as a kind of charter of what may legitimately be done in the name of security. A practice might arise of people saying that anything which is covered by one of these general phrases is, ipso facto, legitimate. An appeal may be made to this document in many cases where it is not appropriate. I do not think that this is a fit document to be used for any such purpose. There are at least three major reasons for my saying that. The first is that this is not a full Report of the Conference of Privy Councillors. It is a Government statement based on the full Report which was submitted to the Government by the Privy Councillors. While I have no doubt that the Government have done their best to balance it, to reflect the attitude of the Privy Councillors the fact remains that this is only a potted edition of some parts of the full Report. I am not complaining about this, because quite clearly, 1260 the House expected some report from the Government on the outcome of the deliberations of the Conference. The second reason why I should not like to see this White Paper used in the way I have suggested is that by its terms of reference it is strictly limited in its scope. The Report relates to security procedure in the public services and to nothing else, and it would be dangerous to try to apply its wide generalisations in any other connection. I hope I shall not be thought to be unnecessarily introducing any party pointbecause that is not my intentionif I call the attention of the House to the fact that during the recent debate on Cyprus the Secretary of State for the Colonies referred to one paragraph of this Report on a topic completely divorced from anything which the Privy Councillors were considering. It is not part of my business today to say whether the sentence quoted by the right hon. Gentleman from paragraph 16, about the possibility of revealing evidence, was apt to his argument or not. It is a bad practice, however, if people get into the habit of quoting this document as though it were the British bible on security. It is not. If it is accepted by this House, as I think it will be, it is accepted on the assumption that these general phrases will be applied only in this narrow scopethat they relate to the employment of Government servants in the handling of secret information and to nothing else. The third reason why I do not want to see this White Paper regarded as a document of general authority is that the generalisations in it are necessarily so vague that in themselves they carry very slender guarantees, if any guarantees at all, of the liberty of the subject, and that everything depends upon the way in which they are applied. In fact, in this work, general rules, general statements about the class of person who may be regarded as less than reliable, can never be a substitute for the exercise of intelligence. They can never be a substitute for discriminating knowledge on the part of the investigating authorities and for the readiness of Departmental heads and Ministers to take the very worrying and difficult decisions which they have to do in every individual case. Standing by themselves, these general statements are 1261 dangerous. I shall examine some of them in a moment. I have read one or two letters in the Press from people, writing with the very best intentions, who are worried by this document, suggesting very precise and concrete safeguards which should have been in the White Paper. Most of them are under a misapprehension about the real problem here. The intrinsic difficulty of the problem of security lies in the fact that, unlike the operation of the criminal law, we are not concerned with convicting someone on a precise offence, in which case we demand proof beyond reasonable doubt. What we are seeking to do is to take preventive action which, we hope, we are taking before any precise offence has been committed. The information on which we act is in most cases, I think, somewhat less than conclusive. Perhaps mainly for the reason that it is not information about a precise

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offence but information about the much vaguer topic of whether a person is of a type who might be likely to prove unreliable in certain hypothetical circumstances, it is very much more difficult to have conclusive evidence than to obtain proof of a specific criminal offence. There is the additional difficulty, although I suppose it sometimes applies under the criminal law, too, that the evidence cannot be produced. People sometimes comfort themselves by saying that, after all, it is quite unlike a criminal trial. There is no inherent right on the part of anybody to be employed on highly secret matters. II is not a basic human right to be allowed to handle top secret documents, so one can be much more cavalier about it. It is true that merely to transfer someone from secret work to other work is not like sending him to prison, but it must be remembered that it may ruin a career just as effectively. Therefore, the House must take the matter very seriously. I want to say a few words about certain of the points of doubt and danger which seem to me to arise here. The first issue that I want to discuss is what is commonly called "guilt by association." That is a phrase which has become familiar to most of us in reading the accounts of the security troubles which have occurred in the United States and the campaigns led by Senator McCarthy. 1262 This is not entirely a new thing to introduce into our security procedure. I would refer to one sentence used by Earl Attlee on the occasion in 1948 which I mentioned. Having discussed the dangers arising from the double allegiance felt by many Communists and, at any rate potential, Fascists, Earl Attlee said the only prudent course to adopt is to ensure that no one who is known to be a member of the Communist Party, or to be associated with in in such a way as to raise legitimate doubts about his or her reliability is employed in connection with work, the nature of which is vital to the security of the State."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th March, 1948; Vol. 448, c. 1704.] There was the doctrine of guilt by association being introduced. A good deal more precision is given to it in the White Paper. For instance, paragraph 4 says: This risk from Communists is not, however, confined to party members, either open or underground, but extends to sympathisers with Communism. That is a much vaguer conception. Paragraph 6 says: One of the chief problems of security today is thus to identify the members of the British Communist Party, to be informed of its activities and to identify that wider body of those who are both sympathetic to Communism or susceptible to Communist pressure and present a danger to security. I would say, in passing, that I find that a rather oddly expressed sentence, and I should like some comment upon it from the Home Secretary, if possible. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman talks about those who are sympathetic to Communism or susceptible to Communist pressure. He then says that they must present a danger to security, as though there was some quite separate consideration, apart from sympathy with Communism or susceptibility to Communist pressure, which constituted grounds for the decision that they were dangerous to security. Finally, and perhaps still more worthy of our consideration, there are the sentences in paragraphs 14 and 15. Paragraph 14 says: The Conference also makes a series of recommendations which turn on the risk presented by those in regard to whom there is no evidence that they are themselves members of the Communist Party, but evidence exists of Communist sympathies or of close association with members of the Communist Party. 1263 Paragraph 15 continues: The Conference is of the opinion that in deciding these difficult and often borderline cases, it is right to continue the practice of tilting the balance in favour of offering greater protection to the security of the State rather than in the direction of safeguarding the rights of the individual. They

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recommend that an individual who is living with a wife or husband who is a Communist or a Communist sympathiser may, for that reason alone, have to be moved from secret work, and that the same principle should be applied in other cases of a like nature. The House will agree that that opens a door very wide indeed, for it relates not only to Communist sympathies on the part of the person under investigation but association with somebodynot only somebody who is a party memberwho may have Communist sympathies. Mr. S. Silverman And without the second requirement of the provision in paragraph 6 to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) has already drawn attention. Mr. Younger I agree with my hon. Friend. We have to recognise that a very dangerous system could be operated while still remaining within the terms of the paragraphs that I have quoted. One of the things that we want from the Government today is an assurance about their intentions in this matter. It is an extremely difficult thingno doubt some of us have had sufficient experience of security work, during the war if at no other time, to know thisto reach with confidence any conclusion about people's sympathies, for they change from time to time and have a different significance from one period to another as political situations change. We all know, for instance, that there are at any given moment many topics upon which Communist Party policy happens to coincide with the policies of many non-Communist bodies. Perhaps the most striking instance at present is that throughout almost the whole of the Arab world it is often impossible to distinguish a Communist agitator from a nationalist agitator. They may, essentially, be miles apart in motives, but the propaganda which they put out and the causes which they advocate are for the moment identical. We have had a lot of experience of that kind in this country in the past. 1264 There has often been a suspicion in the past that the difficulties of distinguishing a Socialist perhaps particularly a Socialist of rather Left-wing views or of a rather agitational temperamentfrom a Communist have proved too great for the authorities. When the matter was debated in 1948 references were made by Conservative hon. Members, then in Opposition, to an occasion when Earl Attlee, then Prime Minister, gave in Spain what was described as the Communist salute. The person who raised that matter was unaware that the Communist salute in Spain at that time was also the salute of all the elements making up the Republican side in Spain, and that there was no necessary Communist connotation to it at all. I am sure that one could find many other examples where this confusion is likely to arise. When we come to the question of family connections, we are on very dangerous ground indeed. I suppose that all of us agree that if one came to the conclusion that a woman was very deep in the councils of the Communist Party and that she might be a grave danger if employed in the service of the State, it would be only a matter of common sense for one to have some doubts about her husband living with her in the same house. Mr. Silverman Why? Mr. Younger My hon. Friend must have a very curious conception of relationships within families if he thinks it is possible, as a matter of common sense, absolutely to ignore family relationships of this kind.

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This is not a thing newly recognised in this Report; it was also recognised in 1948. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) was at the Treasury, he was questioned on this subject and replied quite simply, and, I think, very wisely, that when considering cases of civil servants who might have Communist wives each case must be taken upon its merits and that he was not prepared to give any answer of general application. I think that that is the sound line to adopt, though, goodness knows, it is difficult enough to carry it out in each individual case in practice. I would not like to think that the rather greater detail which is entered into in this Report compared with the statement in 1948 indicates 1265 that some sort of overall rule has now been adopted. I would like an assurance that in these family matters every case will be treated on its own merits. At the end of paragraph 15, there is the slightly worrying phrase: the same principle should be applied in other cases of a like nature. That means cases of a like nature with those of wife or husband. I do not know how far the Government intends that phrase to extend. Does it include brothers and sisters? Does it include lodgers? I know it is very difficult for the Government to give a precise answer, but I hope that at least they will give us an idea of their approach to this problem. The second major point to which I want to refer relates to the problem of character defects as affecting security. This is dealt with mainly in paragraphs 10, 11 and 12 of the Reportwhat may be called the relation to security risks of defects of character and conduct. I suppose it is quite true, as is said here, that any defect of character or conduct may make a person somewhat more liable to Communist blackmail than an ordinary citizen. But I should have thought that, quite apart from the possibilities of blackmail, this subject of defects of character is something which is relevant to the holding of all confidential posts, whether they be in defence Ministries, in the Treasury, or in private employment such as in the banks: you cannot ignore the question of whether a man is, generally speaking, of good character or not. In the Civil Service, as elsewhere, the problem of trying to ensure that you do not have people of bad character employed in your organisation is really not so much a question of making intelligence inquiries through security authorities as a question of good personnel management and good human relations. I believe that in no organisation, whether it be in industry, in trade, or in the Civil Service, can one have good morale if people do not know the men and women with whom they are working on a human level, and are not in a position to judge them as one citizen should judge another. I do not think there need be any snooping or spying on one another in this at all, if the human relationships in the organisation are good. Of course, there are certain types of work where there is a very high degree of secrecy where, if 1266 there is a slight doubt in the mind of a superior about the promotion of one of his subordinates, the superior may inevitably have to give the work, as it were, the benefit of the doubt. One really cannot make a comprehensive list of the sort of vices which are relevant to security. There is some sort of list given here in paragraph 10; it speaks of serious failings such as drunkenness, addiction to drugs, homosexuality, or any loose living. Those are not, and do not claim to be, an exhaustive list, but I do hope that the Government will not make the mistake of thinking that the sins which affect security are only what I might call the more Rabelaisian sins. I can think of other defects of character just as likely to make somebody liable to blackmail or pressure from a source as the ones mentioned there. For instance, I would have thought that a more usual and just as important matter was being seriously in debt. Mr. Raymond Gower (Barry)

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The right hon. Member might carry this argument even further. Often the most effective workers in this field where one considers whether there is a threat to security are people with very strong characters, though misguided. Mr. Younger That is a fair point. One of the real problems necessarily is that some of the people liable to be most dangerous are idealists of the highest personal character and integrity who happen to be serving a different loyalty. The only one of these defects mentioned in the Report on which I want to say a word is homosexuality, not because I think it is given undue prominence here but because, in my view, it has been given undue prominence in investigations in the United States, where it has been treated as something on quite a different plane in security from almost any other form of character defect. I do not believe that that is right. I believe many of those who talk as though they thought it were right are really, in the words of Samuel Butler, trying to Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have no mind to. It is worth reflecting, also, that in so far as there may be something to be said about homosexuality being more of a security risk than other defects, the reason lies probably in the very curious state of 1267 the criminal law relating to homosexuality, which is something to which I hope the House will be giving attention before we are very much older. On this matter of character defects and the obligation of Departmental chiefs to know about their staffs, I hope the Government will be able to tell us something about the type of directive they are proposing to give. It is clear from the Report that they are aware that there is a danger of tale bearing and malicious gossip. If they emphasise, as they do, this responsibility resting on Departmental chiefs, they must have something in mind. If the Home Secretary can clarify it for us, I shall be very glad. I want to emphasise how important it is that we should narrow as far as possible the field for inquiry and action in these matters. In paragraph 9 of the Report it is recognised that there are specially sensitive areas in the public service which have to be watched more carefully than othersthe Foreign Service, defence, the atomic energy organisation. It is immensely important that we should limit the practice of what is called "positive vetting" and detailed inquiries sufficiently to make the process manageable for the services involved. I believe that nothing is so much the enemy of intelligent work in these matters as mass operations. The larger the number of people the security services are called upon to investigate, the less can they ensure that every case is looked at by a highly qualified person, and the more difficult it is to give sufficient time to each inquiry. In my view, what went wrong principally in the United States in this whole matter of security, was that they did not succeed in limiting the field in which it was essential to have a very strict measure of security; it was allowed to spread to the whole public service and far outside even to the point where actors could not get minor parts in films because they were thought at some time to have shown some Communist sympathy. I think we ought so far as possible to avoid dismissals, particularly if there is any doubt in any case, and to use, instead, the procedure of transfer to other work. There is a reference in paragraph 13 of the Report to the possibility of blocking 1268 promotion. On that, I would like to ask the right hon. and gallant Gentleman whether he envisages that the appeal procedure which is applicable to people who are asked to resign or who are to be dismissed will also be available to those whose promotion is blocked. I can conceive of very unhappy situations where it might be decided that the proper course to take was not dismissal or resignation, but that the person concerned could not be trusted above a certain level in the service and, therefore, the full procedure might

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never be put into operation. What would happen, however, is that promotion boards would never recommend him. I think it should be an instruction in the public service that if a clear decision is made that somebody is not to be promoted for this type of reason, the appeals procedure should be made available to him also. I want the Home Secretary to tell us whether, in his view, the appeals procedure has worked well. I understand that he is not proposing to introduce anything which has not already been in operation for several years. At the end of paragraph 16 there is a reference to the widening of the terms of reference. Can he tell us what that means? Is it only a reference to the fact that in paragraph 21 it is proposed to extend the appeal procedure in some form or other to persons outside Government service who are engaged on Government contracts? If that is all it means, we welcome it. I certainly welcome an extension of some kind of appeal procedure to industry, where industrial firms are working on matters involving State secrets. It is not really clear and perhaps the right hon. and gallant Gentleman is not himself yet clear exactly how he is to do it. Can he tell us whether, in the case of persons not employed in the Government service, it is intended that a Minister shall be the person on whom lies the responsibility for the decision? In the Civil Service itself it is the Minister who is responsible, but if the procedure is extended to people for whom he is not directly responsible, will he be answerable? Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West) My right hon. Friend will appreciate that we are talking about a very restricted field. It is the easiest thing in the world for the upper ranks to find fault with the work of the craftsmen on the factory 1269 floor and to get rid of him for the flimsiest of reasons on the mere suspicion that he may be married to a member of the Communist Party, or living in sin with a woman who is a member of the Communist Party. I hope that my right hon Friend will appreciate and emphasise that this classic defence of liberty should be extended to the fitter on the factory floor and the labourer on the broom, and that it is not so extended at present. There can be the resort to all sorts of curious subterfuges to get rid of people on the flimsiest sort of suspicion. No amount of denial from the benches opposite will get over that difficulty. Mr. Younger I agree that there is a very grave danger. I was about to say that the number of persons involved, that is to say, employed in industry in relation to Government work, is probably far greater than the total number of people covering the whole of the Civil Service. 'Precisely because they are very often people in a humble station of life, they feel that they can easily be dismissed. They are not in established employment, and it may be possible to turn them out at relatively short notice, with practically no reason being given. I recollect that the first time this topic was raised in its present form was on the occasion of some dismissals from a Royal Dockyard, in 1937. Reference to that was made in our 1948 debates. In its own way this is quite as important, and in some ways more important, than the many branches of the Civil Service, and I welcome the fact that appeal procedure of some kind is to be extended into this sphere. I hope that the Home Secretary can tell us a little more about his intention. Those are the points I want to put to the Government. This is a distasteful subject, because it involves investigation of our fellow citizens and action which, in some cases, is certainly believed by the victim to be victimisation. But we all know that the danger exists and we must attempt to meet it rationally and efficiently. I believe that nothing can be more certain than that an inefficient security system which is not properly and rationally supported by the Government merely invites occasional glaring failures

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which excite public alarm and lead to spy mania and witch hunting which we saw in the United States. 1270 Much of what happened in the United States could have been avoided had there been in existence a reasonable security system in the years before agitation broke out. We are prepared to support the Government in tackling this problem so far as necessary and no more; but we will, of course, watch with the closest vigilance how these procedures operate in practice, because some of the provisions to whose danger I have called attention are clearly open to abuse. What we ask the Home Secretary today is that he should give us all possible supplementary information and, above all, evidence that the Government are as conscious as are we on this side of the possible pitfalls and that they are properly concerned for the rights of the individual citizens. 4.25 p.m. Lieut.-Colonel J. K. Cordeaux (Nottingham, Central) I could not help feeling that the speech of the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) was slightly overweighted on the side of the freedom of the individual, important as that is. There is one thing which is even more important, and that is the safety of the country. I very much agree with him that we need not more powerful but more efficient security services. I could wish that he had dealt with that aspect of the matter rather more than merely with the question, important though it is, of the freedom of the individual. The right hon. Gentleman also said, as, of course, we fully recognise, that the recommendations in the White Paper and, indeed, all the matters which it discusses, are but a very small part of the subjects with which the Conference of Privy Councillors dealt. It is perfectly obvious that for security reasons that must be the case. The only thing that the White Paper could have done for the people of the country was to give them some reassurance that the tragic events with which it deals are not likely to occur again. The public would have been more satisfied if they could have had that reassurance, even the reassurance that the State was not more gravely threatened than it had been before. The right hon. Gentleman quoted from paragraph 8 of the White Paper, which says: Against the background of this general analysis, of which only a very brief outline 1271 has been given, the Conference address themselves to an examination of the Government's security arrangements. Their main conclusion is that there is nothing organically wrong or unsound about those arrangements. "Organically" is a rather vague word. The one synonym which could be found in a dictionary would be "fundamentally." Are we to believe that our security arrangements and security services have been fundamentally sound? I want to suggest that they certainly have not. Paragraph 4 of the White Paper very truly points out that our security services, since the the war, have been faced with a type of problem quite different from that which faced them previously. Previously, as paragraph 4 points out, they had mainly to deal with the person who might be called a professional spy, an enemy generally acting for gain of a monetary or some other kind. Since 1945, we have had to deal with a quite different type of enemy, at any rate as a rule. That is the type of man who puts a loyalty to a political ideology before his loyalty to his country. He may be a member of such a party, he may be a fellow traveller, or he may be only a sympathiser, but he is the type of man with whom we have to deal. But that is not a matter on which our security services should have had to be instructed by the Conference of Privy Councillors. It is surely elementary and something which they should have realised themselves in 1945. Mr. Younger

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Is the hon. and gallant Member not making much too much of this point? He is now suggesting that the security services had to be informed by the Conference of Privy Councillors of the issue to which he refers, but there can be no possible evidence of that. This is not a new issue. It goes back, beyond 1945, for at least twenty and possibly thirty years. There were people before the war who were very sincerely Nazi, and who fell into the category about which the hon. and gallant Member is talking. Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux I would not entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman about that. We have to deal with that type of agent in these days infinitely 1272 more than was the case in 1945. Certainly, 1945 was a turning point, when there were some people whom the security services should have considered and not regarded in a complacent manner, as when Nazi Germany was the principal enemy. After 1945, when our potential enemy became Russia, the security services should have regarded them if not with suspicion, then at least with an inquiring eye. However that may be, they did not appear to appreciate that point in 1945, and, worse than that, they appeared to be absolutely incapable of learning, despite the fact that they had had some very severe lessons, which surely should have taught them. I do not want to delay the House by inflicting on it the long history of these particular cases, but there were three of themthe three atomic scientists, Nunn May, Fuchs and Pontecorvo. These cases had occurred in 1945, 1949, and 1950 respectively, and the point about all of them was that they had one thing in common. A proper inquiry into the background of these three men would have revealed the fact that in all three cases they were all utterly unfitted for the positions which they held. So far as can possibly be seen from the inquiries made afterwards, results of which came to light in this House, no such proper inquiries were made at all. The last of these cases occurred in 1950, the case of Professor Pontecorvo, which was the worst of all, only a comparatively short time before we had the Maclean and Burgess case. Even as a result of that, apparently, our security services had not learned their lesson, because we were told in the White Paper on the Burgess and Maclean case that, in January, 1949, it was known that there was a leakage from the Foreign Office to the Russians. But no inquiries were made about the antecedents of Maclean before he joined the Foreign Office. There may have been a very great number of suspects; I do not know. We were then told in the White Paper in April, 1950, the following year, that the suspects had been narrowed down to only two or three. That was after 16 months of intensive inquiries, we must presume, and still, although Maclean was one of these two or three suspects, no 1273 inquiries had been made into his antecedents. The following month the suspects had been narrowed to oneMaclean himselfand still no inquiries had been made. If they had been made, of course, they would have revealed the fact that he was a member of the Communist Party, and a well-known Communist sympathiser, only a very short time before he actually joined the Foreign Service. These inquiries were not made. The White Paper went on to tell us that, later, inquiries did reveal that fact after Maclean had left this country. I would submit that, in view of these facts, it really is impossible to say that there is nothing organically wrong or unsound about our security arrangements. All I would ask of my right hon. and gallant Friend is this. Could we not have at least an assurance that a drastic overhaul of our security arrangements will be made, or rather, is now being carried out, to ensure that the people responsible for these lapses of security are not leftnever mind whether they are in the upper or the lower gradesany more in positions in which they can let the country down in the same way again? I believe that if

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we can get this assurance from my right hon. and gallant Friend it will go further towards satisfying the people of this country than any questions of personal liberty and freedom not being interfered with, important as these are. Finally, if we do get that assurance, we can at least feel that from now on, and as a result of these inquiries, we have reached a position when we have learned our lessons, albeit at such terrible cost to the nation. 4.35 p.m. Mr. E. C. Redhead (Walthamstow, West) In the light of the traditional restraints which are laid upon a Member of this House when he first addresses it, it may seem a trifle strange to elect to speak on the subject of this debatea subject which is fraught with possibilities of a highly contentious character. It is not, however, my intention to approach the subject in a highly contentious way, and if I should seem to err in that respect, I hope that I may have the indulgence of the House on the assurance that such will be completely unintentional on my part. I desire only to draw the attention of the House to one or two considerations in 1274 this matter which I think it is important should not be overlooked. I am facilitated in my approach by the circumstances of this debate, separated as it is by an interval of time since the matter was last discussed in this House, on 7th November last, for since then there has been the inquiry which the House itself quite properly asked for, and there has been time for reflection. My main purpose in intervening in this debate is to make a very special plea for a dispassionate review of this problem with a sense of balance and a sense of proportion. What the House is now considering are not merely the circumstances associated with the Burgess and Maclean case, disturbing as they wereand one can appreciate that, when the matter was last debated, those disturbing revelations should have charged the atmosphere of debate with a degree of shock and anxietybut the issue which we are discussing today is of wider character. It is not only Burgess and Maclean; it is not only the Foreign Office, detached to some extent and different as it is from the generality of Government Departments; but we are now considering recommendations which have a vital importance and effect upon a whole range of Government Departments, involving virtually the whole of the Civil Service. I recognise, and in this I am sure that I echo the view of the overwhelming majority of civil servants themselves, who have indeed through their representative trade union bodies repeatedly made it abundantly clear, as hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House will be aware, that they themselves recognise, the needthe unfortunate necessity in present circumstancesto ensure that the security arrangements are vigilant, effective and adequate. The right of the State to protect itself against potential traitors is undeniable. In anything I say I do not seek to question that right. Nor do I seek to defend, excuse or condone those who, in abuse of their trust, are caught in acts of flagrant disloyalty. Nor, indeed, do I wish to make easier the path of those who may be tempted to follow their example. But I wish to urge on the House the necessity of recognising the extreme rarity of that type of case. It may be true that security arrangements have not hitherto sufficed to avoid 1275 some getting through the net. It is perhaps pertinent to say that other countries, whose security arrangements are much more severe, still have not found them sufficient to prevent some of their traitorsas they would think themfrom getting through the net, and we, in our turn, have been only too glad to avail ourselves of the evidence provided by those traitors.

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That there should be such cases is, in my submission, no ground whatever for extending security arrangements in the Civil Service, or in the public services generally, in such a way as to endanger the conditions of the whole, the majority of whom are loyal public servants. Nothing could be further from the truth, and nothing could do greater damage, than to create, by what is said or done now, the impression that the Civil Service is riddled with Communist conspiracy, or overstocked with potential traitors, moral perverts and delinquents. It has been my privilege to know the Civil Service and have a close association with it for nearly forty years. For thirty years of that time I was proud to serve as a member. Admittedly, I did not belong to the "upper crust," which is sometimes erroneously spoken of as though it constituted the whole of the Civil Service. Mine indeed was a very much more humble grade. I mention this personal aspect only to give point to the conviction and the assertion that the Civil Service consists of a body of men and women, the overwhelming majority of which has a high regard for its duty and its loyalty to the State. Those civil servants have a high regard for the good name of the service in which they serve, and when incidents of the kind of Burgess and Maclean occur, they are as wounded and hurt in their pride in their profession as is any hon. Member of this House. It is this vast majority which tendsin the excitement, and in the more lurid aspects of the Press accounts, when incidents of this character occurto be overlooked in our consideration. Security is a vital and important thing, but I submit it is no less important that what we do in this regard should take due cognisance of that vast majority. The morale of these people is important. They resent the suggestion that their service is 1276 of the character that these more sensational events would suggest. They are restive under the demand that there should be ever increasing measures of securityand let us remind ourselves that this is the third operation since the end of the war. I wish emphatically to say that this White Paper gives rise in my mind to quite serious misgivings. I appreciate that it does not purport to cover the whole of the Report of the Conference. In those circumstances, it may well be that it has suffered somewhat in the process of prcis and paraphrase. My right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) alluded to some of the points, and I shall listen with great interest to the reply of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman on behalf of the Government. I wish only to refer to one or two points. According to the White Paper, the heads of Departments are to enjoin supervising officers as to the necessity of vigilance; of reporting what they know and can discover, not merely of the political associations of those in their charge, but of the personal character and life of those individuals. These are all perfectly proper things about which a supervising officer should know something when judging the fitness of those who work under him. But when this is done under the impetus of special instructions under this particular heading, I suggest there is a very grave danger that that which starts off with the best of motives may degenerate into the kind of thing which has poisoned the atmosphere of the public services of other countries; and I am anxious that it should not happen in this country. We see these words used, "loose living" and "association with Communists." I have never been able to understand what is meant by that latter phrase. Indeed, if it is to be taken at its literal face value, there would be precious few hon. Members of this House who would escape high suspicion. It is not a complete answer to the assertion that these provisions, pressed in this way, will give rise to tale bearing, and informing against colleagues, to say that the ultimate decisions are taken by Ministers themselves with the help of the three advisers.

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1277 I would not question for one moment the great care and impartiality with which the ultimate decisions are arrived at. But in many cases that is far too late. The damage has already been done. The poison in a man's life, both official and social, has already been introduced. The civil servant is suspended while his case is under review, and he is sent away on a period of leave. His neighbours whisper between themselves. This is not fanciful. I have handled some of the cases which have arisen in this connection, and I know what a damaging effect it can have on the minds of men whose only crime is that they thought there was reality in our principle of freedom of thought and freedom of expression. Paragraph 15 of the White Paper has already been referred to, but the last sentence is worth quoting again. I hope that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman will address himself to that paragraph with the intention of giving a clear assurance about it. The paragraph states that "they"that is the Privy Coun-cillors recommend that an individual who is living with a wife or husband who is a Communist or a Communist sympathiser may, for that reason alone, have to be moved from secret work, and that the same principle should be applied in other cases of a like nature. That is a very dangerous doctrine. It opens up the most appalling and alarming Possibilities. It is one which, if it be implemented, must be implemented with the utmost care. I wish to know how far it is to extend. It conjures up possibilities of this kind. A civil servant with long service and an impeccable official record may have a son or daughter who, in youthful indiscretion, and against parental desires, joins the Communist Party. Incidents of that kind will happen even in the best regulated of households. Is such an incident to make that civil servant suspect in his official conduct? Is that man not only to suffer opprobrium in the process of the investigation of his background but also to be caught under the equally nebulous and questionable paragraph which talks of the possibility of unfavourable effects upon an officer's promotion prospects? I do not wish to weary the House, or to take advantage of its indulgence, by traversing all the points which raise serious doubts in this matter. The last 1278 point to which I want to refer is in relation to the so-called appeal tribunal of three advisers. The White Paper recommends that its facilities should be extended to those who are affected by these processes outside Government employment. To my hon. Friends who may draw some comfort and reassurance from that recommendation, I would say that they should be cautious in their acceptance of it until they examine its effect. I do not wish to say one word in criticism of the eminent gentlemen who constitute the tribunal. I have no shadow of doubt that they struggle hard, with complete impartiality, to be fair in all the cases which come before them. But there is one fact which hon. Members must remember. An unhappy officer may be innocent of any intention of acting disloyally; he may have been the victim of a whispered allegation by someone who has seen him talking to a Communist, or reading the Daily Worker, and has drawn the worst possible conclusion; or it may be that he is suspected of having associations which cast doubts upon his reliability. He may then elect to go before the tribunal. But he does not know upon what evidence the allegation is based; he is not allowed to know that evidence. What is more, he is not allowed any form of advocacy or representation. I know that there are difficulties about the situation. The Civil Service trade unions have repeatedly pressed upon successive Governments the view that in these circumstances men who find themselves in such a situation, which may jeopardise the whole of their official careers or even bring them to an end, should have the opportunity of advice and representation by their appropriate trade union. I hope that the right hon. and gallant

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Gentleman will consider that point. I submit that it constitutes a very serious deficiency in these arrangements. Eloquent tribute is frequently paid to the Civil Service. It is often referred toI think with justiceas the finest Civil Service in the world. If the tangible expression of that high regard is not as clearly evidenced in certain respects as it should be, I nevertheless hope that in this regard both this House and the Government will treat the Civil Service as if they really believed in that tribute. I say that because it is important to have 1279 regard to a body of men and women who constitute an honourable profession; who are as loyal as any other section of the community, and are entitled, not merely on their own behalf, to expect the most meticulous care to be taken in this matter by the Government, as their employer, but also to expect the Government to set a standard and example in upholding the traditional concepts of human freedom and civil liberty which exist in this country. If I have transgressed in any way, either through the length of my speech or in anything that I have said, I can only ask the House to pardon me. I have done so only because I should have regarded myself as lacking in my duty if I had not sought to speak thus for an honourable and loyal Civil Service. 4.56 p.m. Mr. Anthony Marlowe (Hove) I am extremely happy to have caught your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, because it affords me very considerable pleasure to be able to offer the congratulations of the House to the hon. Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Redhead). We heard from him one of the most remarkable maiden speeches which we have had the good fortune to hear within the lifetime of this Parliament. The hon. Member speaks with such an ease and assurance, and a knowledge of his subject, that bad he not told us that he was addressing the House for the first time, I should not have recognised his speech as a maiden speech. The hon. Member follows a number of distinguished predecessors at Waltham-stow, West, and, therefore, carries a heavy responsibility. I would remind the House that both his immediate predecessors in due course made their way to the Upper Houseand it may be that he will complete the hat trick. We shall all be very glad to hear the hon. Member speaking in this House upon any future occasion, and I hope that his promotion to the Upper Chamber will be long delayed. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux) criticised the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) for havingas he put itoverweighted the importance of the liberty of the subject. I cannot subscribe to my hon. and gallant Friend's criticism. In my view, 1280 it is impossible to overweight the importance of the liberty of the subject in a matter such as this. We in Parliament have no heavier responsibility than to ensure that as few inroads as possible are made into individual liberty. Our prime duty is to protect the individual against the Executive. Therefore, in common with the hon. Member for Walthamstow, West, I view some of the statements in this White Paper with misgivings. It is a masterpiece of understatement to say that the procedure envisaged and involved is alien to our traditional principles. In many respects it runs counter to practices which have been built up in this country over hundreds of years, in the fight for liberty. We naturally regard these steps with alarm. Today, we have an increasing number of instances of decisions being made behind locked doorsdecisions which affect one of our fellow subjects, very often without his even knowing what has been decided. I want to examine one or two more of the sentences which occur in this White Paper. Paragraph 15 says: it is right to continue the practice of tilting the balance in favour

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of offering greater protection to the security of the State rather than in the direction of safeguarding the rights of the individual. That is contrary to the long-established practice of giving the accused person the benefit of the doubt. It means that the balance is to be tilted against the individual. While no one denies that the powers which are sought by the Executive in this White Paper are essential upon the grounds of security, it is absolutely vital that we should ensure that those powers are operated in accordance with the principles of natural justice. It does not come within the four walls of what I have always understood to be natural justice to tilt the balance against the individual. If there is any tilting to be done at all in the balancing or juggling, it should certainly not be against the individual. The scales of justice should weigh evenly, but if they are to be tilted they should not be tilted in favour of the Executive. The White Paper goes on to say: in order not to imperil sources of information, decisions have sometimes to be taken without revealing full details of the supporting evidence. 1281 That raises a number of difficult points. First, who decides whether or not it is a case which can be dealt with on the ordinary basis of evidence? If the matter is not properly safeguarded it will become a common practice not to bother about evidence at all, but always to shelter behind this idea that the sources cannot be revealed. In a large number of cases, it simply is not true. There are many cases where it is quite possible to reveal sources of information or to give evidence without endangering the security of the State. Dozens of cases were tried during the war, in both civil and military courts, where the sources of information were given in evidence; some of them were tried at the Old Bailey with a jury, so that the twelve members of the jury went at large into the world afterwards knowing perfectly well what had happened, and in most of those cases never was there any question of not producing the sources of information. Indeed, as they were dealt with under the ordinary processes of criminal law, the sources of information had to be disclosed. In a great number of cases it can be done without danger. I agree that there are cases in which it cannot be done, but it should not be thought to become the common practice that because this sort of rule exists, every case should he dealt with on the basis of not revealing sources of information. On this paragraph, I am concerned about taking cases as proved against a man on standards which would not be accepted in a court of law. Again, one agrees that there may be cases in which that is essential, but they must be kept to the very minimum, and wherever the ordinary standards which would be acceptable to a court of law could be adopted without danger to the security that ought to be done. There is one other point with which I want to deal and which is not strictly within the White Paper, but which I should like the Government to consider. As I have said, there are today far too many cases of decisions being made behind locked doors. In addition, there are other cases involving another procedure which is akin to the subject under discussion today. There have been raised in this House two or three cases of National Service men who have been 1282 selected for a potential officers' course, and who, before that course is completed and they go before the War Office selection board for a commission, are suddenly notified that they are no longer on the potential officers' course and coat the reason is a suspicion of association with Communism. These are very unfortunate cases, because in these cases there is no appeal tribunal. I have discussed with the War Office a case of a young man who went to Oxford before doing his National Service. While he was at Oxford he joined a Communist organisation or club. When on National Service he suffered this very fate, that he was not allowed to go before a War Office selection board and was never given any reason.

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When he went to his commanding officer and asked why, the commanding officer said, "I do not know. It is an instruction from the War Office. I have only had one or two similar cases before. The only ground that one can suppose is security." That is all the man was told. Many young men join foolish clubs when they are undergraduates, but it is most unfortunate if they are to be branded for the rest of their lives merely because they have done so. In that procedure there is no kind of appeal, nor is the man concerned officially informed. He is simply withdrawn from the officers' course and returned to his unit. In such cases a man ought to be given an opportunity at least to defend himself. He ought to be brought not necessarily before a tribunal, but at least a competent authority which could give him the opportunity of explaining whether he is still tainted with the organisation which he had joined as an undergraduate. I hope that the Government will consider that point, because it deserves the consideration of this House. We all recognise that some of these powers have to exist, but we have our prime duty to see that they are exercised only in cases of extreme urgency. We are here to defend our liberties as far as we possibly can, and we must never surrender them more than is absolutely essential for the security of the State. 5.7 p.m. Mr. W. Griffiths (Manchester, Exchange) I have often heard the hon. and learned Member for Hove (Mr. Marlowe) during the time that I have 1283 been in the House, and more often than not I have failed to agree with him, but today I agree with most that he has said. He has touched on some very important matters indeed. I am one who regards this White Paper as being almost wholly a deplorable document. I am very sorry indeed that my right hon. Friends the Members for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) and Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) have subscribed to it. I am not so surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Jowitt, did so. Those who subscribe to this policy are here setting their hands to a further incursion into the liberty of the subject of a most serious nature. We should remember the experiences in other countries, including countries which are regarded as part of the free world. As an example of how far one can go in these matters, I am reminded of the story told to me by a friend of mine who was a year or two ago a lecturer for a time at Princeton University and who had the astonishing experience of discovering there that in their security procedure they had found it desirable to incorporate into the University of Princeton members of the F.B.I. with the object of observing the behaviour of the students of that University. Further than that, he told me that they had reached the stage where the distinction of being awarded a Fulbright scholarship was no longer achieved on the basis purely of academic distinction. It had become very important to pass the security checks with the attached F.B.I. before being awarded that scholarship. I am sure that hon. Members in all parts of the House would consider features of that kind to be undesirable in Great Britain. Much of what I am going to say has been said in an admirable manner, which I could not possibly emulate, in the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Redhead) who, I think, put the case perfectly. I wanted to remind the House of what has happened in the past to people on the lower levels of the Civil Service under the procedure that has been employed by successive Governments. If the House is going to approve this document, we might as well realise clearly what we are approving, and I should like just briefly to give three examples of what has 1284 happened to individuals who have been proceeded against under this security procedure.

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The first is the case of a Post Office engineer in the city of Manchester who, so far as I could discover, was certainly not engaged in work that could be regarded as highly secret. Nevertheless, he was suspended from his job and hailed before the "three wise men" to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Redhead) has referred. Incidentally, I said a little earlier that I was rather disappointed that my right hon. Friends had subscribed to this present document, but I may say that I am particularly surprised that the document envisages no change in the rights of any individual brought before the tribunal to be represented by an advocate or by a trade union representative. We have all had experience of people who have had to appear before a judicial or a quasi-judicial tribunal of any kind. They may be brilliant men in their own sphere but have no ability adequately to express themselves when appearing before a tribunal such as this, although the consequences to their future may be immensely serious if their case is not properly deployed and properly heard. I hope that even now my right hon. and hon. Friends will pursue this so that while we are reconsidering the procedure we might at the very least see that a man brought before the tribunal has the right to representation. The man from the Post Office to whom I refer took the line, rightly or wrongly. that his political views were a matter for himself alone. When he got to the tribunal he asked in what way he was supposed to have failed in his duties, and what were the charges against him. The tribunal, which is bound by certain terms of reference, was obliged to tell him that all it could put to him, and all that he was called upon to answer, was the question, "Are you or are you not a Communist?" He refused to reply. In short, he took rather the same kind of line that Paul Robeson is taking in the United States at the present time. Mr. Robeson's passport is being withheld by the United States authorities. He could have it if he made a declaration of his political beliefs, but he refuses to do so. So did this young man in the city of Manchester. He may have been 1285 unwise to do so, but the fact is that he refused to answer as to his political beliefs. He said that it was not a matter for anyone but himself and again asked what the charges were against him as to his work. However, the tribunal is not there to go into such matters, and nothing further could be done. He was told that the tribunal found him not fit to occupy the position he held, and he was relegated to an inferior position, with consequent loss of earnings. The second case concerns a man who for a period of six months in 1953 was employed as a temporary assistant in-formation officer in the Air Ministry. He writes: I realise of course that there is a need for security measures in a Service Ministry, and I could have no objection to inquiries into my loyalty if they did not violate my right to live a private life. It would therefore seem to me entirely reasonable that, in the interval between my interview and my appointment, my reliability should be questioned, and I would not expect to be appointed if there were any doubt of it. After he was appointed, however, along to his lodgings came an officer from Scotland Yard who inquired of his landlady about his personal habits and asked whether she knew anything about his politics. It went further than that. This man hailed from the Midlands. The police of the Midland county from which he came also inquired in his town of tradesmen, of friends and of members of the familyall in a manner calculated to raise in the minds of people who knew him suspicions of the wildest kind. The man had no opportunity at all of hearing about it or knowing about itin fact, he discovered only by accident that these enquiries were being made. Surely such a procedure is quite deplorable, and I suspect that, although I have chosen to refer briefly this afternoon to three cases which happened to come to my notice, this has gone on in a very large number of cases

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concerning quite humble peoplenot people in what my hon. Friend referred to as the highest crust of the Civil Service. The third case is one to which I have previously referred in the House and concerns the new procedure adopted by the Conservative Government in 1952. Of course, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, West has said, this is the third development in security procedure since the war. One procedure 1286 was laid down in 1948 by the Labour Government, and about that I had serious misgivings at the time. But let it be clearly understood that the procedure embarked on in 1952 went much further than that of 1948, while the present White Paper envisages a very much more serious extension of the procedure than was the case in the other two. Let hon. Members consider the kind of questions that people have to answer in these matters. This case concerns a man employed in the Risley atomic energy undertaking. He had to fill in a questionnaire and was asked by the security officer questions of the following kind. There were the elementary questions about date and place of birth; all addresses since birth, with dates of removal; all schools and colleges attended, full-time and part-time, since the age of four; all occupations, employers and their addresses and departments in which employed since leaving school at age of 15; and addresses of all societies of which a memberincluding such things as his allotment association. Indeed, he was questioned as to where the plot on the allotment was. He had to say what church he attended and give full details of his interests and activities there. He had to give full information regarding the great amount of general work he had organised and taken part in with others in the church. He was asked about the function of the church. He was also Questioned persistently as to whether I had any political affiliations, whether a Communist, Fascist or belonging to any such society. He was asked when he was married and how long he was likely to remain at his present address; height, colour of hair and eyes, verification of signature, etc. He was then asked similar questions concerning his father and mother, each brother and sister, half-brother and half-sister; about his wife, his wife's parents, brothers, sisters and so on. Mr. W. R. Williams (Manchester, Openshaw) One would need an encyclopaedic knowledge to answer all that. Mr. Griffiths Further, he was asked the name of the head of his department; asked to give his frank opinion of the head of his department, how he got on with him; what politics were discussed 1287 in the office by members of the staff. He was asked about the general political viewpoint of the office, and whether any of the office staff held extreme views politically. I have referred to that case before in the House, I know, but all these are matters of extreme seriousness, and I hope that we are to hear from the Home Secretaryand from any other spokesman on the Front Bench on this sidea little more than we have heard so far in support of this document, in order to justify this extension of the powers of the Executive into the affairs of the individual. 5.20 p.m. Dame Irene Ward (Tynemouth) I should like to make one brief observation about the very pungent speech we heard from the hon. Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Redhead). He was a little pessimistic about the Civil Service and its reaction to the White Paper. I happen to represent a very large number of civil servants. I do not mean to say that they are my voters. They are my constituents. No doubt a great many of them voted against me. A great many civil servants also reside in the constituency of my right hon. and gallant Friend the Home Secretary.

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These civil servants are a very hardworking, happy and courageous body. I do not think they will be unduly disturbed by the introduction of this White Paper with its outline of the further security measures which the Government have in mind. I have such an admiration, as most hon. Members have, for the Civil Service and the Foreign Service that I think those Services will be just as anxious as we are to protect the security of the State. It gave a wrong impression for the hon. Member for Walthamstow, West to assume, however charmingly he put it, that the whole Civil Service would be unduly disturbed by the measures proposed by the Government. I want to re-emphasise one of the points made by the hon. and gallant Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux) which has not been sufficiently emphasised. At the end of the war, because Russia had been our ally for a number of years and then subsequently became a potential enemy, all Departments of the 1288 national administrative machine contained a large number of Communist sympathisers. It was a very difficult task for the Socialist Government, having regard to the views held in this country about the liberty of the subject, to ensure that those who were our friends during the war and who in peace became our enemies, were not retained in positions in which secret information became available which, if used improperly, might endanger the State. The then Socialist Prime Minister, now the noble Earl Attlee, appointed three advisers to help him over some of those difficulties with which the Labour Government found themselves faced at the time. If I remember rightly, he asserted, what I am sure would be whole-heartedly supported by the House, that he was certainly not going to tolerate a Third International in this country. I know very little about the work of the security machinery, but it must have caused grave concern when Burgess, whose Communist leanings and sympathies were very well known in London, became an established member of the Foreign Service in 1947. I have no doubt that it was a very difficult decision for the Socialist Government to take to appoint those advisers, but the "three advisers" machinery arose out of the very real danger with which the security of the nation was faced after the change-over to a potential enemy of our friendly ally, Russia. I rather regret that that point has not been sufficiently emphasised in the country. There is no doubt that people were and still are seriously perturbed about what was known as the Burgess-Maclean incident; the more we clear it up, the better will people be pleased. That is why I welcomed the all-party Conference of Privy Councillors and the decisions that it has come to. Indeed, though I take full advantage of the liberty-of-the-subject ideal, in my view it is very wise to tilt one's security in favour of the State, because, if the State is infiltrated and penetrated, that is the end of the individual liberty of the subject. I have only one other point to make and this is my only opportunity for making it. It is a difficult point, but I want it put on the record. I am sorry that it will have to be replied to by the Home Secretary because it is not exactly his responsibility. 1289 I refer to paragraphs 10, 11 and 12 of the White Paper, which I fully support. I think the country will be wholeheartedly behind the Government in the implications of these three paragraphs. If I try, in all humility, to interpret the views of the country, I think I can say that people were more shocked by the behaviour of Maclean while he was in Cairo than they were to know that we had a traitor inside the Foreign Service. The country has a great appreciation of the dignity of the Foreign Service and a great pride in it. People found it absolutely inexplicable that a man who behaved as Maclean didthis was outlined in very great detail on the last debate by the right hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens)should have been retained in the Foreign Service and in such an important post.

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The Government have never satisfactorily cleared up this matter. Believe me, it is most important in the future interests of the Foreign Service, for which we all have such an admiration, that the matter should be cleared up. That is why I want to put it on record today. This matter is linked up with the three paragraphs of the White Paper. What has never been cleared up is whether it was the responsibility of the Ambassador, the chief establishment officer, or of the Foreign Secretary of the day, that Maclean, after a period of rehabilitation, was re-employed by the Foreign Service. I tried to elicit the information about the Ambassador in a Question the other day addressed to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, from whom I got a very dusty answer. The answer was that, in fact, all that the Ambassador had done was to report on the condition of Maclean's breakdown. If that is so, I assume that the Ambassador did not suggest that after rehabilitation Maclean should be re-employed. It narrows down to the other two, the Establishment Department and the chief establishment officer or at political level. I have met and admired during my experience many of the chief establishment officers in our Foreign Service. Was it the decision of the Establishment Department and of the chief establishment officer of the day? If it was his decision, and if it was not taken at any other level at all, I want to know whether there had been an alteration in the Establishment Department. Has whoever was 1290 responsible been removed from his position of responsibility? I do not think that it is in the interests of a sound and secure Foreign Service to recommend the retention of a man of the character of Maclean. I hope that my right hon. and gallant Friend appreciates that the Government, by not giving an answer, have implicated everyone. That is most unfair to the Foreign Service and to those who are not culpable. If it was not the Establishment Department at the Foreign Office, was it political interference? I put the question directly. I appreciate that when we are discussing these great matters of security it is in the national interest that both sides of the House should be agreed, but speaking as a mere woman, I must say that sometimes this "old boy" business gets me down, and I want to know who took the decision about Maclean. If it were a political decision, is it not fair that that should be stated? I do not want to know the name of the Minister; I am not interested in that. I want to be sure that in dealing with such matters, which affect character and reliability, no political interference or influence can be exercised from one side of the House or the other to retain people in posts for which they are not suited. I say to my right hon. and gallant Friend, with all the emphasis which I can command, that the Government have left a very nasty taste in the mouths of the people of this country by not telling them how and why Maclean was retained in his post. Reference has been made to the lower ranks, and I remember asking the Postmaster-General about a young girl who had gone, full of life, into the Post Office, and had not declared that in one of her previous jobs she had been in trouble over some cash. That was a child of seventeen. Did the Postmaster-General exercise discretion on her behalf? Not a bit of it. Out of the service of the Post Office she had to go. If we are to show mercy and justice over the very grave and appalling behaviour of MacleanI myself see no reason for thatthen other Departments ought to exercise mercy and justice, too. People always put this point to me: they do not understand how Maclean could have been retained in our distinguished and admirable Foreign Service. We admire the men and women 1291 of impeccable character who serve in the Foreign Service all over the world, and, apart from this one instance, I do not think one of them would subscribe to a suggestion that Maclean should have been retained. It is not only a question of his being given a second chance. Imagine his meeting, in Washington, the former first secretary

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of the French Embassy in Cairo after such an incident had occurred? I know enough about the Foreign Service to realise what a bad impression that would make. I hope that before these events are brought to a conclusion we shall be told who was culpable and whether the individual was moved by the votes of the people or by the process of the Government working on sound security principles. I support the White Paper. Everybody is happier that we have got our new arrangements and that we can emerge from a bad dream and work forward in our own traditions for the security and protection of the State as a whole. 5.35 p.m. Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland) Like many other hon. Members, I have looked with a certain distaste at the White Paper and at some of the processes it recommends, but we must recognise that an extremely serious problem exists and that serious cases of traitorous behaviour to the country have happened. It is essential that we should try to segregate what is really serious and try to deal with it, and that we should not allow our suspicions to wander over a general field, spreading unnecessary alarm and bringing unnecessary injustice to all sorts of people who may prove to be entirely innocent. I agree very much with the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward); it seems to me that at least in the Burgess and Maclean case the main fault was not the security, but in the ordinary handling of the people involved. It certainly surprised me that Maclean, as I understand it, was almost pressed to return to work in the Foreign Office after the incidents in Cairo. I am surprised, therefore, at the wording of paragraph 10 of the White Paper, which seems to imply that the serious 1292 thing about such failings as drunkenness or addiction to drugs, or loose living generally, is that they lay a man open to blackmail. Surely these are serious things in themselvesthings which a superior officer or the establishments Department in the Government service ought to know about, quite apart from any question of blackmail. The hon. Lady has asked a number of questions of the Government. She asked who was responsible for allowing Burgess and Maclean to continue in the Foreign Office. That is a question for the Government to answer, but I would hazard a suggestion that it is probably difficult to pin responsibility on any one individual. When we are dealing with people in the higher grades like this, there are probably a great many people, including the man's political superiors, who have a say in the matter. Surely the lesson to be learned is that the management of the public service is extremely important, and in this case at least it broke down. However important security may be in other respects, that is an important matter quite apart from security. It is important that we should try to keep the procedure which the Conference of Privy Councillors has recommended down to the minimum numbers of cases and grades. We should restrict it to people who are liable to come in contact with secret documents and other secret information which, if they were to leak out, would be severely damaging to the country. Like other hon. Members, I do not feel at all happy about some of the things which have happened to lower grade personnel in the service. I can hardly believe that some of the instances about which I and others have heard, such as the treatment of people in the Post Office, have been necessary on security grounds. Nor am I happy about the appeal procedure in these cases. The more I look at the matter the more convinced I am that the British system of law and the course of justice is extremely good, and once we get away from that and into rather vague realms of suspicion, of allegations which are not proved and of evidence which is not produced, we inevitably get into difficulties. I do not deny

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that we must face these difficulties or that the problem exists; of course it 1293 does. But I suggest that we should keep the procedure down to the minimum and to the really important cases. I go further and say that such cases ought to be dealt with drastically especially in the upper, higher grades of the public service. But I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Hove (Mr. Marlowe) in thinking that in some cases even in the higher gradesnot in all cases, but in somethe evidence could be made more generally available. I think the procedure, without being legalistic, could be fairer to those involved. Inevitably, people who come under this sort of suspicion suffer a great deal though they may not be guilty. It is extremely difficult to safeguard them against injustice. I have had inquiries addressed to me, as no doubt have other hon. Members as to whether a certain man has had any Communist affiliations. If one feels that he has had Communist affiliations at one time or another, or has taken an interest in Marxism or perhaps joined a Communist club, does one say, "Yes; he has had affiliations with Communism"? One knows full well that it may be magnified into something much more serious than was in fact the case. It is difficult for the people supplying the information as well as for those about whom it is supplied. The more there is a regular and understood procedure, and the more that it is brought into the open, where it can be understood, the better. Furthermore, there is the effect on a man's family and relations. Even though they are quite innocent, they are almost bound to suffer through inquiries of this kind, for news gets about. If a man loses promotion or is moved in his work, everybody knows about it and, apart from the effect on his character, the whole family is bound to suffer also. If we are to get drastic enough action in the serious cases, let us be sure that we catch only the guilty. As the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) said, what really matters is how the procedure outlined in the White Paper is to be applied. Would it be possible for the House to be given a report as to the procedure and practice which grows up in the Civil Service when the recommendations of the Conference of Privy Councillors come to be 1294 applied? We ought to now how the procedure is being handled, and I should have thought that it would be possible from time to time to get that type of information. I sympathise very much with the Conference which investigated these matters. But it has, perhaps, been rather too impressed by the dangers of Communism as such. After all, Communism is not illegal in this country; it is not a crime to be a Communist in opinion. What is a crime is to give information away to a foreign Power. I am not sure that this point comes out sufficiently clearly in the White Paper. Communism may possibly lead a man in that direction, but it is not in itself an offence. It is important that this should be clearly stated in the House. I should like to feel more certain than I do now that when investigations take place we are kept informed as to how the procedure is working and whether as much justice as possible is given to the people concerned. 5.43 p.m. Mr. Raymond Gower (Barry) I am sure that hon. Members on both sides would tend to agree with the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) that this procedure should be kept as narrow as possible and in a very limited sphere. I would certainly agree with the hon. Member also that the conduct of Maclean in particular was scandalous, but I think the hon. Member would agree that it might perhaps be even more dangerous to make this a kind of court of morals. This is an unfortunate procedure even as far as it goes in dealing with matters

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of public security, but if we were to introduce the extra element of morality it would be extended even more dangerously. Mr. Grimond I agree entirely. What I was trying to say was that a lot of the Maclean trouble should have been solved in the ordinary processes of the Department as a matter of personnel handling. Mr. Gower I certainly would not disagree with that. Last week-end, a friend of mine remarked with reference to these matters that he was surprised at the concern which had been expressed. He said that public servants are in a far stronger position than one of his own employees, whom he could dismiss even if he did not 1295 like the look of his face or simply if he thought the man was a Communist. Our feeling is that the State should be the best of all employers and should set a particularly high example of employment. Furthermore, public servants usually enjoy stability of employment. It is the kind of employment which goes through their whole career. For these reasons we have taken a particular view of the problem, and that is why we need to examine very closely such a procedure as this. The wording in paragraph 15 of the White Paper is the kind of thing I have in mind. It is the sort of wording we do not want to see often in this country when it says: to continue the practice of tilting the balance in favour of offering greater protection to the security of the State rather than in the direction of safeguarding the rights of the individual. We reject that doctrine generally. It is one that we can suffer only in extraordinary circumstances. I disagree with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux). I think it is our duty to place far more emphasis on the right of the individual than on the safety of the State, except when that safety is obviously a primary consideration. That may have been the case after the war, and perhaps still is, but both sides of this House surely hope that those conditions will not always obtain. If there is at present an emphasis upon the danger from Communism, there are patent reasons for it. It is feasible that at other times other groups would represent a similar danger. Examples of the doctrine to which I have referred"tilting the balance" and paying more attention to the security of the State than to the individualhave happened before, and generally speaking those have not been the happiest periods in our history. The happiest times have been when the balance has been tilted the other way. When we recall the great efforts that were made in the supreme emergency of the last war, particularly to preserve the freedom of the individual, even when it was a difficult thing to do, we can recognise the dangers of pressing this doctrine too far today. It is a pity that we are not considering tonight a Bill which is subject to amendment. My right hon. and gallant Friend 1296 has, I am sure, already satisfied himself that it would be extremely difficult to get a Bill through in this form. There should be room for reconsideration. In this tribunal, why should there not be a limited right of representation by solicitor or counsel? There is precedent for this, even where secrets of State are concerned. It should be by no means impossible to allow a person or civil servant who is questioned as to his integrity to have the right to be represented by an advocate. I hope that the need for this kind of thing will be limited in time. I hope too that if any slight amendment of the kind I have mentioned is possible, full attention will be given to it. 5.47 p.m. Mr. Wedgwood Benn (Bristol, South-East)

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Like some of my hon. Friends, I watched the Home Secretary dealing last night with questions sent him by people all over the country. In the questions I shall put to him tonight, I hope he will be able to answer as charmingly and attractively as he did then. I welcome the spirit in which the House has approached this problem. It is a great tribute to the good sense and wisdom of hon. Members that we should be able to debate this matter without any sense of excitement, quite coolly and calmly and with due regard to the rights of individuals. I am also grateful that security in this country has never become a matter of party dispute. One of the gravest difficulties in the United Statesit arose from the long period in opposition of the Republican Party, looking desperately for an issuewas that it did become a matter of party dispute and was thus inflated and inflamed until clear thinking on security matters was made very difficult. I want briefly to deal with the three main issues which seem to arise from the White Paper. The first is the objective of security. In most defence White Papers there is some kind of reference to what the defence policy is designed to defend. It is very unfortunate that the Government's White Paper completely lacks any recognition of the dilemma which is inevitable when a free society tries to protect itself from subversion. That dilemma has been dealt with by every hon. Member who has spoken in the debate. We are all aware of it; the natural liberal instincts of us all set against the necessities of protection. 1297 Yet there is no mention of that in the White Paper. I fear that a civil servant seeking to defend himself before "the three wise men" of the tribunal would find very little in this, the only published document to which he could refer, which would support him in his claim that he was only pursuing a normal independence of thought. I regret that is the case, because of course the real security of a free society lies in its freedom. Many hon. Members who thought in the past that we could get greater security by tightening up the machinery ought to look at the Soviet Union, which, in my sincere submission, with all its security measures, is far less secure than we are in this country. Our security in the long run rests on the consent of the governed to be governed. If we were ever to try to substitute enforced uniformity of thought that would do the greatest possible damage to our free interests. I therefore start by noting the lack of any reference to this matter in the White Paper. Now we come to the second subject, not the objective we are trying to achieve, but the nature of the danger that is feared. The White Paper lists three dangers. It lists, first, the man with a character defect. Secondly, it lists the man who is a Communist and, thirdly, the man who is a Communist sympathiser. I want to say straight away that I absolutely agree with hon. Members who this afternoon have said that character defects should really find no place in a White Paper on security. I want to ask the right hon. and gallant Gentleman a perfectly straight question on this subject. He may not be able to answer now, but I hope he will not think it an improper question. Is there any known case of a spy who has been a spy solely because of blackmail which was made possible by his own character defects? There is an extremely interesting report on this matter which was published in the United States and quoted by Dean Acheson in his book which really deserves great and serious study. He quotes Mr. Seth Richardson, the Assistant Attorney-General in the Hoover Administration and chairman of the Loyalty Review Board, who said: Not one single case or evidence directed towards a case of espionage has been disclosed in that record. 1298 I believe it is a very common illusion to suppose that many spies become spies because of blackmail. I should like to know whether there are any examples at all in the knowledge of the Government due to that cause.

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The second question one comes to is that of the Communist Party member. I think that any Government considering security would be bound to regard a Communist Party member as a person, in the present state of the world, unfit for obvious reasons to be entrusted with security information which was essential to the State. But the much wider issue, and the one in which I think there is most criticism of the Government, is the question of Communist sympathisers. There is a very great difference between regarding a man as unreliable because of what he thinks and regarding him as unreliable because of what he has done. My view is that, far from increasing the security of the State, if we had a lot of police inquiries, a lot of dossiers and files designed to show what men in the Civil Service have thought in the past or think now, we would be likely to encourage such great caution on the part of those civil servants that their capacity for free thought and independent inquiry would be seriously harmed and, as a result, the State would lose some of the benefit of their services. To take an exaggerated example, far from dismissing any member of the Foreign Office who had read Karl Marx, my inclination would be to dismiss anyone who had not read Karl Marx. Mr. Ede (South Shields) Sack the lot. Mr. Benn As my right hon. Friend says, that would be a very drastic step to take. Then we come up against the question of character defect and the ma's living with somebody who is supposed to be a Communist sympathiser. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend forgets that if a civil servant whose wife was a Communist sympathiser left his wife he might be in trouble on the ground of character defect. I think the answer to the extremists on security is ridicule. I hope that the sense of humour which is supposed to be one of our British characteristics will always prevent us from becoming too absurd in our inquiries into the views of civil servants. Mr. Silverman Not on the basis of this White Paper. 1299 Mr. Benn My hon. Friend quite rightly says that the White Paper shows little trace of humour and, one may think, in some ways even less wisdom. We come to the third part of the problem. The safeguarding of the free society was the first, and the second was the dangers to which we are exposed. Now we come to the methods to be employed by the Government in searching out security risks. It has already been pointed out, and I think it is worth re-emphasising, that the loyalty boards are not designed in order to catch spies, but it is purely preventive work Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings in its true sense is what the security board is designed to do. Therefore, we are only undertaking all these inquiries to expose certain people who might be dangerous to us. What happens, so far as one can make out from hon. Members who have spoken, and we all have experience of this, is that the police make inquiries to find out all about a man, all that is good, bad and indifferent. That all goes down higgledy-piggledy into the record, depending on the judgment of the man who compiles the record. It is made available to the board which decides whether the man is suitable to be employed further or not. Then we come to the stage when the man is informed of the decision, and he has an opportunity of appealing to "the three wise men." Here I think there are very grave defects in the machinery provided by the White Paper. It is argued that one cannot have an accused person interrogating witnesses because they might be doing secret work for the security forces. That might be true if a Communist is

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confronted with non-Communist police spies. At such a hearing the value of the police agents would at once disappear. But if they cannot be cross-examined by the accused himself, is that any bar to their being cross-examined by someone acting for the accused? We come back to the question of the right of advocacy on behalf of someone who is brought before the board. Secondly, it is said that we cannot have a public trial and, in most cases, men are not charged but are brought up on suspicion. Is there any reason why a private trial should not be made more effective and more in accord with judicial procedures which we have in this country? 1300 I put these points most sincerely to the Government because I believe that, when the immediate pressures of the Communist world relax, sooner or later all these practices will have to be replaced by our traditional practices. I finish with a quotation from a man who was jointly responsible for security measures in the United States with President Truman, Dean Acheson, a very distinguished American and, I believe, a very great American Secretary of State. He referred to the three Presidential executive orders made in the years 1947, 1950 and 1953 which were adopted to deal with exactly this problem, and he devotes a great chapter to the problem in which he finishes with these words: I was an officer of that Administration and share with it the responsibility for what I am now convinced was a grave mistake and a failure to foresee consequences which were inevitable. That responsibility canont be escaped or obscured. With such an authority to support me, I ask the Government to look again at the White Paper before it becomes the established practice of this country. 5.59 p.m. Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies (Isle of Thanet) I should like to take the opportunity of touching on a few of the points which have been made in the debate, particularly about the procedure which has been laid down. I do not wholly agree with the arguments which have been addressed to the House that the Government have not provided adequate measures in this White Paper. Before I do that, however I want to deal with a matter which, I believe, is also of very great importance and which has not been referred to so far. The terms of reference provided for the Conference of Privy Councillors were: To examine the security procedures now applied in the public services and to consider whether any further precautions are called for and should be taken. I am most deeply concerned about the personnel employed in our secret services at present. I believe that if they are not very careful the Government will lose now, or very soon, some of the best intelligence men, foreigners and Englishmen, employed in those services; and for this reason. Quite rightly, as a general principle, the Civil Service works not so much on suitability but upon the standard of service which has been sot over 1301 years and by the precedents which thereby are retained in its traditions. It so happens that the men who are employed upon security work may be temporary civil servants, not permanent civil servants. This work may be the only work they do, and they may come from any country in the world. There is real danger at the moment that in the quite proper comb out of the Civil Service in order to try to get rid of a certain number in each Department for economy reasons we may so purge ourselves as to lose some of the most useful men. In one of our intelligence services there are several men who are under notice to go within the next few months. One of these is one of the greatest coding experts in the world. I need not say more than that a man with remarkable knowledge of cipher and coding work, whose entire adult life has been devoted to intelligence work, and who has been working for the past ten years in the service of this country, is a man who is

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irreplaceable. When I tell the House that he is a temporary civil servant with a salary of only 550 a year the House can see how easy it is to lose somebody really valuable. I turn to the question of the further precautions which, I believe, should be taken. There are in this country and in the Middle East a number of men with life-long experience, aliens and Englishmen, who can be of the greatest assistance to us at present in strengthening our security services in the Middle East. I know none of those services, but I know that there are people, certainly the Turks, and people of other nations, who are highly critical of the extent and scope of our security measures in that part of the world in the light of the upheavals that have recently taken place and are taking place there. I hope, therefore, that in considering these questions of security we shall apply this principle, that for this work suitability shall be the sole and supreme test, and realise that we cannot take into account questions of precedence and promotion which apply to the normal grades of the Civil Service; and that we shall see that we do secure and retain suitable men in our security services, thus protecting our interests and ensuring the maintenance of the great reputation our intelligence services in the past have won. 1302 I wish now to say why I support the White Paper, even paragraphs 15 and 16, which have been so severely criticised. I think it is well known that I have myself been associated with a wide range of recommendations in the rule of law, on reforms in administrative law and in tribunals, and in many other matters associated with the liberty of the subject. Why is it, then, that, broadly speaking, I think it is right to say that the security of the State may mean that one jeopardises some of the most precious assets of the liberty of the subject? It is for this reason. In the Secret Service, in espionage and in security work, it is well known that, as distinct from a person who has mere access to certain documents, a man employed takes, and understands that he takes, what may be described as the trade risk that he will never in a court of law or before an adequate tribunal be able to explain his dismissal or have it explained. He realises that. It is a risk of his occupation. In ordinary circumstances of employment, an employer, if he dismisses a man, has not to assign reasons for the dismissal: none whatsoever. One can employ an office boy or a domestic servant or a factory worker and may dismiss him and give no reason. There is no obligation as such upon the Civil Service to state reasons for dismissal. I think it is an admirable precedent that it has so developed that, in fact, it does give reasons. It is admirable that there is a tribunal to which dismissed civil servants can go, and before which the reasons, such as they are, can be stated. I agree with the argument made that if we set up a tribunal we should by all means make it effective. We must, therefore, give a right of representation by solicitor and counsel. I must agree with that. However, in security I am by no means sure there ought to have been any such tribunal or any right given of representation or of reasons to be stated, for this is really a question of the policy of the Minister. If one is deciding between one spy and another, or upon the employment of one person or another on a task of secret diplomacy, it is not really a question of whether he has given so many years of service or not; it is a question of whether he is the most suitable person for the job. If a man wants to take up 1303 employment of that sort he must accept all the dangers associated with it, including the possible loss of employment. I think it is important that that view should be expressed in the House, even although it is one I express with great misgivings because of my own very strong feelings about the principle of the liberty of the individual and of fair treatment. All I am really saying is that it is a question of an understood and accepted risk, and that it is a matter within the determination of the Minister in charge.

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This White Paper, of course, touches only the fringe of the subject. I hope Ministers gave deep and anxious thought to the whole scope of our security services. I hope they bore in mind the importance of seeing that the finest men and women, not only English subjects but subjects of other countries who are friendly disposed to us, are able to be employed and to continue to be employed satisfactorily, and judged not by the yardstick of the Civil Service, on the basis of the length of their employment, but entirely by their suitability individually for the work which we wish them to do for the security and benefit of our country. 6.8 p.m. Mr. Douglas Houghton (Sowerby) The close interest which has been taken on both sides of the House in this White Paper, and also the anxieties expressed on both sides of the House, lead me to make a suggestion to the Home Secretary about future action. This is one of the concluding chapters in the affair of Burgess and Maclean. I did not seek to intervene in the earlier debates on them for two reasons. One was that I had a representative post on the Civil Service National Whitley Council, and the second was that I worked in close association with Burgess for three years. I have always found it very difficult to believe a great deal of what was said about him. I certainly wish to associate myself with the comments made by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), that the trouble about Burgess was not the failure of our security arrangements but the failure of his superior officers to judge him courageously and objectively on his behaviour. 1304 I worked with Burgess for long enough to know his habits. Anyone who had close contact with him could have realised not only his brilliant intellect but the defects of his conduct and behaviour and could have judged how unreliable he might become in certain circumstances. Therefore, I say that there was a failure of the normal operation of judging people on the part of superior officers. A weakness in public administration is the failure of members of one class to judge objectively and courageously members of the same class. I should not be at all surprised if that was not the real explanation of what happened in this case. The truth is that most of this trouble comes from university graduates. It is not the humdrum civil servant with the bowler hat and umbrella, who catches the 5.20 from Victoria, who is the unreliable civil servant. He is not the one for whom this White Paper is published. It seems that life in universities encourages riotous living and love of social life and parties, and these people come into the Civil Service infected with their experiences as undergraduates. I hope that that is neither preaching a class war nor being unfair to university-trained civil servants, but the belief in the Civil Service is that all these people hang together, that they do not let each other down, and that they all gather round and shield their own class from the critical gaze of those who might expect better of them. There is no doubt that a lower-grade civil servant stands much greater risk of being bundled out for unsuitability or undesirable behaviour than does a member of the administrative class. There is not the slightest doubt about that, and I speak from long experience in connection with the public service. Defects in conduct and character are, of course, important, not only in relation to security risk but to suitability to be retained in the public service. Certain standards are required in the public service and should be insisted upon, but we have to be careful not to make the cure worse than the disease. Another weakness of administration is the speed with which general conclusions are drawn from particular oases. I could give many examples of how elaborate precautions have been taken in public administration to close gaps or guard against weaknesses or

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difficulties which 1305 have appeared only rarely or even, in some oases, only once. In the White Paper there is scarcely a generalisation for which a plausible defence cannot be found. One might say, "Look at all of them. Yes, that seems reasonable. The country must not be put in jeopardy. The public service must be like Caesar's wife," and so on. But when we come to apply these things we run into difficulties. The Civil Service is now being asked to accept new conditions which will expose civil servants and their personal lives and associations to closer observation and scrutiny. It may not be so difficult to impose new conditions when recruiting new people to the public service. After all, those who apply to enter the public service, can expect to satisfy all reasonable requirements and tests of their suitability and reliability, but these new principles will be applied to serving civil servants. We can all imagine what we should feel like if we had been in an occupation, trusted servants in a responsible sphere of the public administration, if, in applying the new conditions laid down in the White Paper, offensive tests and interrogations were to follow. We should ask ourselves how paragraph 15 of the White Paper is to be applied. Does it mean knocking at the door and asking to see our wives when we are not at home and an interrogating officer saying, "I have come to find out whether you are a Communist sympathiser. I know you will not want to discuss this on the doorstep, so please may I come in"? Is the House going to stand for that? Throughout the White Paper we shall see difficulties of application. I suggest to the Home Secretary that when the procedure mentioned in paragraph 17 of the White Paper has been completed, the result of it should be published in another White Paper for the information of hon. Members. The difficulty about White Papers and documents of this kind is that the House parts with them, having expressed doubts and anxieties and approval and satisfaction and varying opinions about them, and then leaves it to the National Whitley Council to work out the rules and regulations which will give effect to what are then judged to be the decisions of the House. 1306 One can understand that the representatives of the staffs of the Civil Service feel themselves at a great disadvantage in trying to reach agreement with the Official Side of the National Whitley Council on difficult matters of this kind upon which it can be said, "The House has decided, Parliament has approved the White Paper, and this is the framework within which our discussions and hope of agreement must take place." Criticism has been made of the existing procedure regarding the "three wise men" and the ban on trade union or legal representation on behalf of an accused officer. Reasons were given for it at the time, but probably the House would wish to examine it afresh and wish to see all the new rules and regulations when they have gone through the machinery of the National Whitley Council to discover whether the House can then recognise the application of the principles embodied in the White Paper of which we shall shortly be asked to approve. Mr. S. Silverman We are having a general discussion of the White Paper on the Third Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill. The House is being given no opportunity at all, as far as I understand it, to express approval or disapproval of the White Paper, except individually. Mr. Houghton I accept that that is the technical position, but certain conclusions will be drawn from the fact that the debate has taken place. I agree that we must not get those conclusions wrong. I am trying to impress upon the House that the next step is the discussion of the new rules mentioned in paragraph 17 of the White Paper, which states: The measures

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necessary to carry out these recommendations will involve alterations in existing procedures. These alterations will be notified to the staff associations concerned and an opportunity given for representation to be made before the alterations are promulgated in full. I am asking that the Home Secretary should assure the House that when the time comes for the promulgation of the new and more comprehensive regulations, they shall be published in a further White Paper so that the House may see them and, if it sees fit, provide a further short period of parliamentary time to 1307 discuss them. At the moment, the Civil Service is in no position to offset the general conditions which may be laid down by the Governmentwith some tacit consent, and no more, of the Houseas a basis for negotiation and discussion on these new regulations. I hope sincerely that this will prove possible, because it would be a reassurance to the public service. I conclude by saying that I am sure that no one in this House, and I hope no one outside, will think that he sees in this White Paper a portrait of the Civil Service or a portrait of any but the rarest misfits and undesirables who have passed all the tests and all the conditions for entering the public service. As my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Redhead) said, in his remarkable eloquent maiden speech, the House will wish, notwithstanding the attention it is having to give to the White Paper, to renew its confidence in the public service generally. The House will wish to assure the service that nothing will be done which will give undue offence to the public service in carrying out the recommendations of the Conference on the further measures to be taken on security grounds. 6.21 p.m. The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Major Gwilym Lloyd-George) We have had an interesting debate and some valuable speeches. I wish particularly to add my congratulations to those offered to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Redhead) on what everyone will agree was a thoughtful and informative maiden speech. I echo the view of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Marlowe) that we shall look forward to his interventions in future if they are of the standard which he offered today. I could not help thinking, as the hon. Gentleman was speaking, that the original statement about security was made by his predecessor in this House, the present Earl Attlee. One thing which has impressed itself upon me during the debate has been that it is a sequel to the one held on 7th November and that the White Paper is a sequel to the one which the then Foreign Secretary presented on the 1308 disappearance of the two former Foreign Office officials. It is obvious from many of the speeches today that many hon. Members are of the opinion that there is to be a big departure from the policy followed by successive Governments. I assure the House as sincerely as possible that there is no departure from the policy which successive Governments have laid down. The impression conveyed to me by most of the speeches during the debate on 7th November was that what really disturbed hon. Members was a real anxiety that there was a defect in our security system which was having serious effects. In other words, that the menace threatening this country was what I call the ideological traitor. I do not think I am misinterpreting the impression which that debate gave. Indeed, it was because of the general feeling then that this inquiry was held. It was urged upon us by hon. Members in all parts of the House that something was radically wrong. That suggestion was made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), and also by my hon. Friend the Member for

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Hexham (Mr. Speir) and by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney). The impression made upon me at the time was that the anxiety about security was uppermost in the mind of hon. Members and not the fear that we were riding roughshod over the liberties of the people. To put it another way, not that we were doing too much but that we were doing too little. The real worry was that we were being too liberal in our approach to the problem. This was why we had the inquiry. The Conference included two of my right hon. Friends as well as myself, a former Home Secretary and my noble Friend, who is peculiarly concerned with certain aspects of security. I hope I can say, whilst preserving due modesty, that the composition of the Conference was such that we might expect it to inspire some confidence in this House. It was greatly strengthened by the addition of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South, who is not only a former Home Secretary but a former Foreign Secretary, as well. In addition, we had the benefit of the noble Lord, 1309 Earl Jowitt, and of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) who, in his former capacity, as Minister of Supply, had such a wide experience of the problems with which the Conference had to deal. It is obvious that we could not publish the full Report. As my right hon. Friend said in answer to a question, we have published in the White Paper as much as it is proper to do. I admit that it is extremely difficult to produce a White Paper of this kind since it is undesirable to disclose so much of the material, but I hope it will give satisfaction to those who, on 7th November, expressed doubts as to the security services. It is true that the Conference recommended certain changes which were designed to strengthen our security system. As the White Paper states, the Conference was satisfied on the general issue that there was nothing organically wrong with our security services, and I hope that this will allay the anxiety of those who have the impression that there is something fundamentally unsound with the system. On the suggestion that we are taking much wider powers, may I point out that several speakers in the debate last Friday suggested that we should take far wider powers for detaining suspects than we have at present. On that issue the Conference gave a definite and authoritative answer. It recommended strongly that there should be no amendment of the law in that respect, and with this I am sure that the whole House will agree. There is little doubt in any quarter of the House about the menace which we are seeking to combat. However it may be well to remind hon. Members of what the Conference said. It upheld the view, first publicly stated by Lord Attlee, in 1948, that one of the main dangers to security is presented by the Communist whose faith overrides his normal loyalties to his country, and induces the belief that it is justifiable to hand over secret information to the party or to a Communist foreign Power. As I said just now, no departure at all has been made from that. I hope, therefore, that it is common ground that the Government are right in pursuing the policy adopted by successive Governments in recent years of making it one of their main objects to ensure that 1310 Communists and, I would emphasise, those associated with themparagraph 15 has come in for some criticism, but I would emphasise "those associated with them"are not employed in the Civil Service where they are in a position to get hold of secret information. Another important point to be remembered is "where they are in a position to get hold of secret information." That is a view which, I think, is accepted not only in this House but by most people outside. I remember an article in the Daily Worker which followed the publication of the White Paper. The White Paper brought down the wrath of the Daily Worker. What brought down that wrath was not the threat to the rights of private citizens, or the incursion into the private lives of individuals. It was that, for convenience and brevity, we explained in

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paragraph 5 that the term "Communism" was used throughout the White Paper to cover Communism and Fascism alike. That is what really annoyed the Daily Worker, but we were, of course, right to use that term for brevity. I have thought it right to remind the House of these two findings of the Conference because, on the face of it, they are a complete answer to most of the points made in the debate last November. They have established that the policy followed by successive Governments during the last eight years has been right and that the procedures to give effect to that policy are sound. There has been more emphasis today on a rather different point. Previously, the House was far more concerned as to whether we had got the security which we ought to have for the safety of the country. Today, there has been far greater emphasisI am not complaining about it; I am merely stating the facton the fact that we are apparently paying too little attention to the rights of the private individual. Doubts have been expressed today about the justification for the recommendations in the White Paper designed to strengthen the present security system. It is a very understandable reaction to question the need for measures, some of which are certainly alien to our liberal traditions, and for that reason adopted with considerable reluctance. However, I should like to make three points in reply to those who may still feel that such 1311 measures are unnecessary. First, however distasteful were the measures which successive Governments over the last few years have had to take, we cannot sit back and do nothing while our security is imperilled by a menace, the existence of which is accepted on all sides. Secondly, while some of our countermeasures, it is true, are alien to our liberal traditions, so is the menace which they set out to circumvent. That is a point that we must never forget. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in the November debate, Communism has set progress back three centuries. We are now, thanks to Communist activities, back in the age when a man who holds this new creed thinks it loyal to be disloyal and has no scruple about betraying his own country. We are, therefore, driven into adopting steps which we take only because of protecting the liberal traditions that we in this country hold dear. Thirdly, while I do not for a moment under-rate the hardship of those who, because they are adjudged to be the dupes of the Communist creed, are moved to other work or, if it is impossible to find non-secret work for them, lose their appointments in the Civil Service, I should like to make one comment on that. Hard as their lot is, we can all make a shrewd guess as to what their lot would have been had they been employed in the Civil Service of a Communist Power, and it had been discovered that they belonged to or sympathised with a movement holding views about Communism analogous to those which Communists hold about democratic government. I do not propose to discuss the recommendations of the Conference in detailit would take a very long time to do sobut I think the House would wish me to deal with one general point. The White Paper says, on the one hand, that it is sometimes necessary to refuse to employ a man on secret duties because, after the fullest investigation, doubts about his reliability remain, and, on the other, that in deciding borderline cases i: is right to continue the practiceI say "to continue the practice" deliberatelyof tilting the balance in favour of offering greater protection to the security of the State rather than in the direction of safeguarding the rights of the individual. 1312 The Conference had no intention of suggesting that anything short of the fullest possible investigation should be made in an endeavour to resolve doubts or of denying to a civil servant the right and opportunity to state his case. It is frequently very difficult to decide whether the State is justified in trusting a man with its secrets. I can assure the

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HouseI say this with knowledgethat the very greatest care is taken at all stages to make a fair and honest appraisal of the facts. The problem is sometimes to judge the state of a man's mind now, or to judge how he would react to a particular situation in the future. Nor can we afford to neglect the danger of a man who, himself completely innocent, constitutes a risk to security because, for example, he has relatives behind the Iron Curtain. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Vauxhall drew attention to that kind of risk during the debate on atomic energy in April, 1954. I am sure he was right and that we must treat persons of that character as security risks. I am equally certain that the Conference of Privy Councillors was right in enjoining us to watch the risk to security which may be caused by the man under the influence of a close relative who is a Communist. In any such case, of course, we shall do our best to see that the man who has to be taken off secret work gets employment in some other branch of the Civil Service. The second general point that I would make is that it must never be supposed that when we are dealing with cases of this kind, any more than when we are dealing with the other case to which the Conference referredthe civil servant with a serious character defectwe shall work to set rules. The suggestions in the White Paper are purely examples of the sort of defects which might be looked at, and, of course, it is vitally important that that should be known. The hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) asked me whether I had ever known of a spy who had become one because of character defects. Mr. Benn No, because of blackmail. Major Lloyd-George I am sorry; I have not got an example of one of those, but I could tell the hon. Member of quite a number who came to serious trouble because of very serious defects, 1313 though I have not got a case of blackmail in mind at the moment. I could not give an example of blackmail without some research, but for people coming to what I might call a "sticky end" because of character defects, I could give a number of examples. It is a well-known fact that many of the finest spies were chosen because they were the type of person who might encourage character defects, if I may put it that way. Therefore, character defects of one form or another are of tremendous importance. I am not saying that spying and blackmail necessarily go together; there can be the blackmailing of a person who was not exactly a spy. In any case, it is a danger, though only one of the many dangers which are obvious weaknesses, I should have thought, in any system of security. Furthermore, I am certain that still the best protection we can give to the individual is to continue to rely upon the resolve of Ministers to consider these cases on their merits and to reach in each case the best judgment which it is possible for a human being to reach. Questions have been asked of me today about the terms of reference mentioned in paragraph 16 of the White Paper. It is important to remember that in this particular case, as in so many, the staff side would be involved and consultation will have to take place with them. As soon as this has been done, the House will be informed. I do want to make this perfectly clear: it is not altogether against the interests of the individual involved when the powers and terms of reference are extended, because it may enable far more information about a particular person to be obtained which could well be to his advantage. It does not necessarily work one way. In any case, it will be the subject of discussions with the staff side, and then the House will be informed.

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Thirdly, I would like to emphasise that the greatest care is taken in investigating all cases of suspects. I assure the House that an adverse decision is not reached except after the most careful evaluation of all considerations telling in favourthis is very importanttelling in favour of as well as against the suspected person. Speaking with knowledge, may I say that I have the greatest confidence in the skill and experience of our security services. 1314 May I say, further, that there is no danger in this country of witch-hunting for the sake of witch-hunting. It is obvious, of course, that there is a great deal of information which cannot in any circumstances be disclosed; every hon. Gentleman in every part of the House appreciates that. Most of the attack on our security services has not been that they were too severe, but that they were not severe enough. The effect of the debate on 7th November was not to criticise the security services because of the ghastly methods they used, but to suggest they were not really strong enough. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) asked for some figures about purging. I have the figures for the last five years. The total of those purged was 62. Of those, nine were in the higher executive or higher ranks, and 53 were in the lower ranks. That is a total of 62 out of a non-industrial figure of 650,000 and an industrial figure of 400,000. I do not think that those results bear out any attack on the Civil Service. I am very happy, as we all are, to endorse what has been said today about the Civil Service, and I feel that those figures give some indication of the position. On the whole, there is no laxness in the security services, but it could not possibly be held against them that the security services were making life intolerable for many people. I think those figures prove that. The White Paper, has, in my submission, established three propositions: first, that our policy of regarding the Communist and Communist sympathiser as a menace to our security is the right policy for any Government to follow; secondly, that our existing procedures are fundamentally sound; thirdly, that in following our policy and in applying our procedures it is right that the Government should continue, as they mean to do, within the limits imposed by this new menace to our national way of life, to pay due regard to the position of the individual. I submit that with these propositions established, on the findings of this very responsible body, and with the assurance that the Government intend to do all that they can to prevent their policies and procedures impinging unfairly on human rights, the House can rest content with the findings of the inquiry. ********************************************************************** THE CASE OF COMMANDER CRABB HC Deb 14 May 1956 vol 552 cc1751-87 1751 8.18 p.m. Mr. Hugh Gaitskell (Leeds, South) On 29th April, the Admiralty announced that Commander Lionel Crabb, R.N.V.R., was presumed dead after failing to return from an underwater trial. The statement went on to say that he did not return from a test dive which took place in connection with the trials of certain underwater apparatus in Stokes Bay, in the Portsmouth area, about a week before. Commander Crabb is the central figure in this strange episode which we are discussing in this very short debate this evening. Therefore, I think it will be appropriate, since I suppose we must accept the conclusion of the Admiralty, if, at the start, on behalf of all of us, I were to pay a tribute to a very gallant officer. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] He was, of course, awarded the George Medal in 1944 for gallantry and undaunted devotion to duty. Whatever may be

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the circumstances in which he met his death, all of us will agree that this country would be the poorer if it were not for men like Commander Crabb. In opening this debate, there are certain things I want to make clear about the attitude of the Opposition. First, we recognise the unfortunate necessity, in present conditions, for secret services. Every great Power has such services and, obviously, as with other defences, we cannot do without these. Also, we fully appreciate that details of the activities of these services cannot be disclosed as are the activities of other Government Departments, because to do so would 1752 make nonsense of their work. However, I must add this: Parliament accepts that situation, and refrains from pressing these matters, and, of course, Ministers, exercising their undoubted rights, refuse to give information on what I think may be regarded as certain generally accepted assumptions. These assumptions are: first, that the operations of these services are ultimately and effectively controlled by Ministers or by a Minister; secondly, that their operations are secret; thirdly, that what they do does not embarrass us in our international relations. And perhaps one might add, fourthly, that what they do appears, as far as we can make out, to be reasonably successful[Laughter.]in this sense, that if there were a widespread feeling that the secret services were extremely incompetent and inept, then it would be the duty of hon. Members to raise the matter. It is an unfortunate fact that, in the episode which we are discussing, none of these four conditions appears to have been fulfilled. The statement of the Prime Minister makes it plainat any rate, it gives me the impressionthat in this instance Ministers were not ultimately and effectively in control. Secondly, nobody could say that the operations were especially secret. Thirdly, it is a regrettable fact that there has been some embarrassment to international relations. There may be some doubt about success, but I will leave that on one side. This is one reason why we on the Opposition benches could not be content with the statement made by the Prime Minister last week. Because, cryptic though it was, it revealed through the disclaimer of direct responsibility and through the reference to disciplinary steps, that some wrong action had been taken by a Government servant without the authority and, indeed, apparently contrary to the desires of Ministers. Now may I say a word about Ministerial responsibility in this matter. It is the custom for Ministers to cover up any decision by a civil servant; that is to say, normally the Minister not merely takes responsibility but appears to have taken that decision himself, whether, in fact, he did so or not. Even when this is not done and, of course, there are quite a number of occasions when it would be pedantic to insist that it should 1753 be done; when, in fact, a Minister comes to the House, and says, "One of my officials made a mistake", thereby implying that he, the Minister, was not directly responsible for that mistake, nevertheless it is a sound and vital constitutional principle that the Minister takes responsibility for what has happened. That is a principle which I venture to say is fundamental to our democracy, because if we were to depart from it, it would imply that the Civil Service in some way or other was independent and not answerable to this House. Of course, the extent to which we condemn a Minister for an act of one of his officers, or a failure by one of his officers, obviously depends on the circumstances. There are minor occasions when a Minister admits that something has gone wrong and the House accepts it and the matter is left. Another reason why we felt that we had to discuss this matter further was that other Departments apart from the Secret Service are apparently involved. There is no doubt that the Admiralty was heavily involved. Indeed, one newspaper goes so far as to say today that the Naval Intelligence Department was probably at the centre of the whole thing, and it may be that the Home Office also was involved

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The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Major Gwylim Lloyd-George) indicated dissent. Mr. Gaitskell I see the Home Secretary shaking his head, but I would draw his attention to one incident where police officers were involved. Finally, may I explain that we are discussing this matter on this Motion with particular reference to the salary of the Prime Minister because, first, the right hon. Gentleman himself decided, in answering the Question last Wednesday, to take responsibility for this matter and, therefore, if we wanted to discuss it, that was the correct thing to do; and, secondly, if we had discussed it on the Admiralty Vote alone that would have narrowed the scope of the debate unduly. Whatever we may feel about this incident, or series of incidents, none of us would ask that the Prime Minister should disclose what ought not to be disclosed, either because it might endanger our agentsone may as well use the word 1754 for the people in our Secret Serviceor because it would involve giving information away to a foreign Power, information which, in the opinion of the Government, should be kept from a foreign Power. Subject to this, I venture to say that it is the duty of any Opposition in this democracy of ours to probe any weakness or what appear to be blunders or mistakes in Government administration. I feel confident that if hon. Members on the other side of the Committee had been in opposition, and a similar episode had occurred, they would, in pursuance of their duty, certainly have raised the matter in the House of Commons. Subject to the qualification, an important one, which I made about security, I very much hope that the Prime Minister will tonight say all he possibly can to clear up the matter and allay the remaining anxieties. Whether or not we divide the Committee on this issue turns, frankly, entirely on what he can say to us this evening. I now turn the case itself. We have very little time and I certainly do not propose to go through the facts, or the apparent facts, in great detail, but the following seems reasonably clear. On 18th April, Commander Crabb went to Portsmouth and stayed at the Sallyport Hotel with another gentleman who registered in the name of Mr. Smith. The next day both of them left the hotel, Mr. Smith returning later to pay the bill and collect the luggage. From then onwards, Commander Crabb disappears. Two days later, the Portsmouth police appear at the hotel and tear out four pages of the hotel register, which of course, included the names of Commander Crabb and his companion. Ten days later the Admiralty issued the statement part of which I read to the Committee at the beginning of my remarks. On 3rd Mayfour days afterwardsthe Soviet Government sent a Note of protest to the British Government, and in this they made it plain that a protest had been made much earlier by the commanding officer of the Soviet ships in conversation with the chief of staff of the Portsmouth naval base. On that occasion, according to the Soviet Note, the Chief of Staff, who is Rear-Admiral Burnett, categorically rejected the possibility of the appearance of a frogman alongside the Soviet ships and stated that 1755 at the time indicated there were no operations in the port involving the use of frogmen. The comment that I feel bound to make at this point is that this was clearly completely contrary to what the Admiralty itself was to say on 30th April. The British Government in a Note which, according to Moscow, was delivered on 9th May, and presumably, therefore, was sent before the Prime Minister made his statement to us, expressed regret for the incident, a matter which, curiously enough, the Prime Minister did not mention in his statement to us the other day. Finally, we have the Prime

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Minister's statement to us, which is in the recollection of all of us and to which, therefore, I need not refer in detail. That is all I propose to say about the story of these events. I wish now to make a few comments. I do not propose to go into great detail, as the newspapers have done. I do not propose to ask every conceivable question, such as, for instance, "Where did Commander Crabb get his diving gear?", "Why was not a younger man sent down if somebody had to go?", and, "What was it that Commander Crabb was trying to find out?" All these questions, and many others, have been asked in the newspapers. I repeat that I am not concerned with anything more than the central features of this business. Nor do I propose to say much about the international aspect of the matter. As the Prime Minister has made clear to the Soviet Union, it is a very regrettable episode, but for my part I fully accept, as I am sure we all do, the Prime Minister's disclaimer of Ministerial knowledge or approval. I should like to say that I am sure that that should be accepted as complete evidence of absolute good faith by the Soviet Government as well. Nor do I feel, though others may differ from me on this, that this episode, serious as it is in certain aspects, and, indeed, deplorable as it was when one first heard about it, is likely to do permanent damage to our relations with the Soviet Government. We all know that the Russians are realists in these matters. There is not very much doubt that they, like other Governments, have their agents, and there have been various stories in the newspapers of similar 1756 occasions to which I will make no further reference. I am concerned more with what appears to be the situation in the secret service and the forces which work with them because it seems to me that what has been suggested, at any rate by the Prime Minister's statement, and by what we know, reveals a very grave lack of control at home and, indeed, a most unsatisfactory state of affairs within this service. It seems to me that a great deal turns upon the question of the level at which the decisions were taken. There was an idea at one time when the great bout of speculation was taking place in the Press that possibly the whole thing had been a private effort, that Commander Crabb, financed by a mysterious private organisation, had gone on this investigation and, indeed, that the Government had had nothing to do with it whatever. UnfortunatelyI say, "unfortunately" the Prime Minister's statement shows, I think, conclusively that that cannot have been so. At least, if it were so, I can only say that it is a great pity that the Prime Minister did not make it clear earlier. I think that we must conclude from his statementhe will correct me if I am wrongthat presumably the Secret Service or a secret service and the Admiralty must have been mixed up in the plan from the start. Again, I ask at what sort of level was the decision taken, if a decision were taken, to make this kind of investigation. In particular, I think that the Prime Minister might be able to tell us how far this was a matter in which the Admiralty took the initiative. Having said that, I would wish to pose, if I may, a few central questions which, I repeat, I hope that the Prime Minister will be able to answer within the limits that security permits. We all of us recall that when Mr. Bulganin and Mr. Khrushchev were coming here, a very great deal of attention was concentrated upon the security precautions in connection with their visit and Questions were asked in the House about the number of guards they were to have, and so on. One presumes that in taking these precautions, which we did not criticise and which we accepted, it must have been, must it not, the duty of the Admiralty to guard the Soviet vessels? 1757 That is one of the extraordinary features of the whole business, because if it were the Admiralty's responsibility to guard these vessels, how was it that Commander

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Crabb, if it was he, was able to approach these vessels? One is bound to ask the question: Was the security guard very, very inadequate or was the guard in the secret of Commander Crabb's exploit? Again, I come back to the question of the level. It is very difficult to understand how, that being the background, this kind of exploit could have been permitted unless it had been known to some fairly high-ranking officers. I put that as a supposition, and as the honest conclusion to which at the moment, I think, we are drawn by the facts. The second question I would like to ask is, first, what steps were taken, if I may repeat it, to guard these ships? The second question is, who authorised the Admiralty statement on 29th April, which is now seen to have been at variance with the statement of the Chief of Staff at Portsmouth to the Russian admiral, and which, incidentally, was also very much at odds with the Prime Minister's later statement? The third question that I want to put to the Prime Minister is about the strange business of the Portsmouth police descending upon the Sallyport Hotel and tearing out four pages of the register. Can the Prime Minister tell us under what authority these officers acted? I have made some inquiry into the legal position, with the help of one or two of my hon. Friends, and, as I understand, this is the position. Under the Aliens Order, it is an obligation on any hotel keeper to keep a register of all persons over 16 years old staying at the premises. It is also an obligation on any person of this kind to enter his name, nationality and date of arrival, and the keeper of the hotel has to require him to do so. Furthermore, the keeper of the hotel has to preserve the register for a year after the last entry in it, and it is, of course, open to inspection by any police officer or person authorised by the Home Secretary. The Portsmouth police came inin fact, they seized part of this register, although, under the Aliens Order, it was the property of the hotel keeper who is under a statutory duty to preserve it. It is indeed very hard, therefore, to see what 1758 right the police officers had to make the hotel keeper break the law in this way. There is, of course, the additional piece of informationif it is correctthat the police officers warned the hotel keeper that if he resisted and refused to give up the register they would proceed against him the Official Secrets Act. In exactly what way would the Official Secrets Act come into this? There is, of course, provision under the Official Secrets Act under which it is an offence for a person to retain certain documents when the person having such a document in his possession or control retains it when he has no right to retain it or when it is contrary to his duty to retain it or fails to comply with any directions issued by lawful authority with regard to the return or disposal thereof". I think we ought to take that as referring to Civil Service documents and documents of that kind. I am bound to say that it is very difficult to see how a hotel register can come within that particular Section. I would ask, if I may, because this is an important point, what explanation the Prime Minister can give us. I repeat that we realise the need for a Secret Service. We realise that the members of that Service have to go about their work in queer ways, but it is a matter of enormous importance that they should not be above the law. What, then, was the law under which they operated? The next point I wish to ask relates to the Prime Minister's statement about disciplinary steps. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us against whom and in what manner those steps have been taken? Were any steps taken, for instance, against Service personnel? Finally, there is a question which I feel I must put out of regard for the relatives of Commander Crabb. Can the Prime Minister say whether the commanderon the assumption, of course, that he was the person involvedbelieved that the action which he took was fully approved, or did he realise that it was, as it were, purely a private

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enterprise undertaking? Did he know that there would be this very serious consequence if, in fact, it were discovered? I will refer here against, if I may, to the statement of the British Government. or rather the letter of the British Govern- 1759 ment, to the Russian Government which seems to implyas I say, I think out of fairness to Commander Crabb's relatives this is something that should be cleared upthat he swam to the Russian vessels without permission. The Note says: The frogman, who, as reported in the Soviet Note, was discovered from the Soviet ships swimming between the Soviet destroyers, was to all appearances Commander Crabb. His presence in the vicinity of the destroyers occurred without any permission whatever, and Her Majesty's Government express their regret for this incident. If that were true and if, in fact, he had gone to Portsmouth simply on genuine trials not connected in any way with the Soviet vessels and had, on his own initiative, swum off to them, that, I think, is something which the Government ought to make plain. If it is not so, then, of course, it is a different matter. To draw the conclusions, such as they are, which one can from this business, it is impossible for us on the hard information available to pass any final judgment. I do not seek to do so. I would still hope, frankly, that a fuller and more reassuring explanation were forthcoming from the Prime Minister, but I must tell him that so far, by what has been published in the Press, by what he has said and by what is in the exchange of Notes with the Soviet Government, an impression has been created, first, of the most deplorable lack of co-ordination and control between the Foreign Office, the Secret Service and the Admiralty; and, secondly, that an impression of unusual technical incompetence has also been created. The business of the hotel register, which was bound to attract public attention to the whole matter, the way in which, apparently, before Commander Crabb went to Portsmouth there was a great deal of free talk by all sorts of people, the questioning at a later stage of Commander Crabb's friends, which is reported in some of the Pressnone of this, I must say, gives one much confidence in the technical efficiency of the Service. Thirdly, I think that it gives an impression of a degree of political unawareness which is almost frightening I repeat that a lot depends on at what level these decisions were taken, but particularly in regard to the political aspects if, in fact, the decisions were taken at a 1760 high level. Then it shows, as The Times said in a very penetrating leader: irresponsibility just where irresponsibility should not exist. If, on the other hand, it was at a lower level, it suggests that the people there, the officers there, have got altogether out of hand. I must say this to the Prime Minister, and I know he will accept it: it is his burden and responsibility to look after the Secret Service. These matters of which I have spoken and the reflections on the efficiency of Service co-ordination, and so on, which I have mentioned are essentially matters for the Prime Minister. I would ask him, is he satisfied in the light of what has happened with the staffing of the security services? What steps is he taking, or has he taken, to prevent this sort of thing happening again? Is he satisfiedI am sure he will not take offence at this at allthat he, the Prime Minister of the day, who has these enormous responsibilities over the whole field of government, is really in a position to be the only Minister to keep an adequate control on the Secret Service? Can he, in fact, do this job as it should be done directly himself? Those are the questions we should like the Prime Minister to answer bearing in mind, I repeat, the security aspect, which cannot be overlooked. I have tried to put our case and our anxieties on this in as responsible a manner as I can. I realise to the full the delicate nature of the subject we are discussing very briefly this evening, but, while we must be careful and while we must be cautious, democracy also must be made to work. We, as

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the Parliament in a democracy, have the right to have our fears allayed, our anxieties extinguished; or at any rate we have the right to be satisfied that the Government are taking steps to put matters right. 8.49 p.m. The Prime Minister(Sir Anthony Eden) The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell) has reminded usand rightly reminded us, if I may say sothat it is a very rare proceeding to refuse to disclose public events or events which have become talked about merely on the ground that in the Government's judgment it is not in the public interest to do so. 1761 Of course, we live, as we all know, in an age of publicity, and in some quarters it seems to be thought that there is nothing which should be withheld from public examination, discussion and debate. That was not, I was glad to note, the right hon. Gentleman's position tonight. Nonetheless, Parliament has preserved the longestablished convention that a responsible Minister may decline to give information, if, in his judgment, it is not in the public interest to do so. We are dealing tonight, I must say frankly to the House, with circumstances in which no Government here or in any other country, I believe, would say more than I am prepared to say to the House tonight; nor is there anything contrary to our practice, as the House knows, in taking this action. It is often done in defence. A classic example was the atomic bomb, where the whole expenditure100 millionwas concealed in the Estimates for a number of years. Similarly in international affairslet me say this, because the right hon. Gentleman asked a questionit is often contrary to the public interest to disclose the details of correspondence with a foreign Government or to reveal the course of negotiations with a foreign Government leading up to treaties or other agreements, and it is in any event the immemorial custom not to publish the receipt of a Note until the reply has been returned and received by the Power which sent the Note. I shall have something more to say about that in a moment. Again, to take our domestic affairs, there are many things which my right hon. and gallant Friend the Home Secretary, for instance, is not obliged to state publicity. He has not to disclose the grounds on which he has decided to deport an alien or those on which he grants or refuses a certificate of naturalisation. I say this to show that I agree with the right hon. Gentleman; I think we are in agreement that there can be no dispute about the general principle that there are certain things which it is against the national interest to disclose. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken very freely about the secret services and speculated about their control, their organisation, and their efficiency. I am 1762 sorry to have to say that I am not prepared to discuss those matters in the House. It is easy and I am not complainingfor the right hon. Gentleman to suggest or imply that all is not well. I could not answer him, because I could not answer him either generally or in detail without disclosing matters which, as he must recognise, must remain secret. That is why it is not the practice and it never has been the practice to discuss these matters openly in the House, and I am not prepared to break that precedent. I think it must be clear that it must be left to the discretion of Ministers to decide these matters. Only the Minister can judge; his discretion in this particular respect is absolute. It should be clear from this practice that the Minister cannot disclose the reasons for his decision. Obviously, if he were to disclose his reasons, it would be disclosing what he judged to be contrary itself to the public interest. That is certainly the position in this instance, and therefore on this particular aspect of the matter I must tell the House now that I have not one word more to say than I

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announced on Wednesday. But I should like to comment on the second part of the statement which I made in the House last week and to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. I then took the exceptional course of making it plain that what was done was done without the authority of Her Majesty's Ministers. That, of course, includes all Her Majesty's Ministers and all aspects of this affair. We all know, in fact, that many actions are taken by servants of the Crown for which the authority of Ministers is not asked and, of course, that must always be so in any complex society such as ours today. The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly correct in saying that on these occasions it is nonetheless accepted that Ministers of the Government, collectively, are responsible to Parliament for the actions of officials. I pondered long before I departed from that axiom in this case, and I think that the Committee is, perhapsif I may say so, entitled to know more of this topic in the light of what the right hon. Gentleman said. In this instance there were special circumstances which, I judged, compelled me to state that what happened, or was thought to have happened, had been done without the authority of Ministers. 1763 At that time my colleagues and I had been conducting important discussions with the Soviet leaders. We were completely unaware of any episode of this kind. Had I not made that clear publicly, doubt would inevitably have been thrown on the sincerity of our position during those discussions. That is a very serious and a very exceptional situation, but it explains to the House why, on that account, I thought it right to take the very unusual course I did of making that statement. That brings me to the third part of the statement which I made last week and to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred. Having made it clear that what was done without the authority of Ministers I also found it necessary to let it be known that disciplinary steps were being taken. That in itself is, in part, an answer to what the right hon. Gentleman has just said. It shows that the Government are determined that the proper measures of control and authority should be exercised by Ministers in all matters of this kind. It has been suggestedand this was another point which the right hon. Gentleman made and it has been made very much of, too, in the Pressthat by not informing the House on Wednesday last of our receipt of the Russian Note and of our reply thereto I was in some way holding back information of which the House ought to have been made aware. Of course, that was not so. The Soviet Note was delivered to the Foreign Office by messenger on Friday night, 4th May. The Foreign Secretary being away ill, I myself approved the answer to the Soviet Government on Wednesday morning. Of course, I was aware when I spoke to the House on Wednesday that the Soviet Government could not by then have received our reply. It would have been discourteous, to say the least, to have disclosed diplomatic correspondence in such circumstances, and I did not do so. So far as I know that has been the absolutely normal practice followed by all civilised Governments from the beginning of time. At the same time, as the Committee will see, there is nothing in the least inconsistent between the reply we have given to the Soviet Government and my statement to the House. I carefully compared the two myself. The only difference 1764 and it is a differenceis that the reply to the Soviet Note deals with the actual queries raised in the Soviet communciation, whereas my reply to the House was couched as a Parliamentary Answer. Now, as to the later publication of the Note, I realised, of course, that the Soviet Government might publish both communications. Of course, I understood that. But even so, I submit to the Committee that it would not have been possible for me to

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communicate either the facts or the texts of the Notes in advance of the receipt of our reply by the Soviet Government. But in this business I do not rest only on the national interest. The national interest is of first importance to us in the House of Commons, but there is also in this business a very important international interest, and I confess that all I care for is that the outcome of our discussions with the Soviet leaders should in truth prove to be, as I have said, the beginning of a beginning. I intend to safeguard that possibility at all costs. I believe that that is also in the minds of the Soviet leaders, and it is for that reason that I deplore this debate and will say no more. 9.2 p.m. Mr. F. J. Bellenger (Bassetlaw) May I say this by way of preface? The Soviet Government is the last Government on earth to make an incident out of this affair. But, listening to the Prime Minister this evening, I would personally have been quite content if he had stopped short at the first part of his statement last week. If he had said that this was a matter of public security, I do not think anybody could have questioned him on his judgment. The Prime Minister, however, went on to open all sorts of speculative fields, as he has done in the Press. Incidentally, it seems a paradox that only the public Press can discuss this matter more fully than Parliament. The Prime Minister can apparently get up and say, as he said tonight, "I have nothing to say," and Parliament is gagged at once. But the public Press is allowed to chase all sorts of hares and to question all sorts of people. Where, possibly, the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister has made a mistake is in saying that he was going to take disciplinary action and not telling the 1765 House what that action was to be. We may be stopped from questioning the Prime Minister, I understand, because of public security considerations, but surely Parliament has a right to ask the Prime Minister whether he is acting rightly in taking disciplinary action against some person or persons unknown. After all, Parliament is the protector of the individual, and, for all we know, the Prime Minister may be making a mistake, as the Government have done before, notably in the Burgess and Maclean case, which to a certain extent disclosed similar errors of judgment on the part of officials, and Parliament has no method of redress. All that can happen is that a committee of Privy Councillors is set up, some whitewashing statement is made, and Parliament has to accept it I do not want to question the Prime Minister any more than my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell) did about the public security issue. What I say to the Prime Minister is this. Having been in charge of a Service Department myself, I should like to know whether he is quite sure that Ministers, and Service Ministers particularly, have complete control over their Secret Service, their Intelligence, as he led us to believe in what he said tonight. I should not be at all surprised if Service Ministers, in particular, do not know what their Intelligence does. Yet they are asked to take complete responsibility, even to signing for the expenditure of these secret service sections of their Departments, without knowing one iota of what is happening. If we are to have a Secret Service, surely it should be secret. In this case, it has been nothing of the sort; the newspapers have been allowed to speculate. The Prime Minister may say we would surely not ask him to exercise any control over the public Press. He asks Parliament to be discreet; why does he not ask the newspapers to act in the same way? Every morning, as the Prime Minister knows, there is a conference at the Foreign Office which journalists are able to attend and question the official spokesmen. Why, therefore, can the Prime Minister, or somebody else, not make sure that not only is Parliament stopped from pursuing these matters fully, but, also, that some restraint is

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exercised 1766 by the public Press, especially the popular Press, which may do a great deal of damage to international and national security? Obviously, we cannot pursue this matter further by asking the Prime Minister to divulge what actually did happen; but, in spite of what he said, the public are disturbed at something happening which ought not to have happened, and the public is further of the opinionas, I think, are many hon. Members of this Committeethat neither the Prime Minister nor his Departmental Ministers have over the Secret Service that control which Parliament voting the money would expect. I would, therefore, ask the Prime Minister whether he can take some action to ensure that bureaucrats and public officials do not cut right across the policy of the Government of the day and cause international tension, as might have been possible in this case, which has enabled the Soviet Government to hold this country and Her Majesty's Government up to ridicule. 9.7 p.m. Sir Patrick Specs (Kensington, South) I want to say a few words tonight on the constitutional aspect of this debate. I am old enough, and I have been long enough a Member of the House, to have been present on many an occasion when the House desired to get information from Ministers of the Crown and the Ministers claimed they were quite unable to answer on the ground of public security. Time after time, when that has happened, that has been an end of the matter. This is the first time in my experience that a responsible Opposition has, through a most responsible leader, in a most responsible speech, none the less done what I consider to be a most irresponsible thing. It has followed the line which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) condemns in the Press. It has tried to get information on a matter of public security by baiting the Prime Minister by a series of questions. I very nearly rose on a point of order when the debate began, because I believe that this debate is contrary to all our precedents. I do not believe that ever before, when a solemn answer has been given on one day of the week that to give information to the House will be 1767 against public policy and against the public interest, has the matter been carried furtherstill less, by a planned debate of this nature. Mr. Percy Collick (Birkenhead) Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman think this Chamber is the Reichstag? Sir P. Spens Once the responsible Minister of the Crown, accepting full responsibility upon himself, has said it is impossible to give the public information because public security is involved, it behoves no other responsible citizen, be he inside or outside this Committee, to attempt to carry the matter further in this way. It is the responsibility of Ministers, and always has been, to give such a considered answer when the occasion arises. Until this debate was opened tonight, that practice had never been challenged in the way in which it is being challenged tonight. Mr. Donald Chapman (Birmingham, Northfield) rose Sir P. Spens Let me finish. Responsibility lies with Ministers of the Crown for the safety of the country. It does not matter who the Ministers are. When they are in office and they make a statement that it is impossible to give information because to do so would be against public security, it is hopeless for the House, by a series of questions, by digging at the Minister concerned, to try to get him to go against his considered opinion. There was not one single question

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which was asked of the Prime Minister tonight, by either of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite, which had it been answered would not have resulted in my right hon. Friend disclosing the very thing that he has said he will not disclose. Mr. Chapman What about the police? Sir P. Spens The police are just as much a matter of public security as anything else. There is nobody who has lived as long as I have, and who has had as much to do with the law as I have, who does not know that time after time the police have to take action in1 the interests of public security. Mr. Chapman They are above the law. 1768 Sir P. Spens Of course, they are not above the lawthey are right within the law. They are acting on their orders, but the orders which are given to them have been given them and cannot be disclosed for reasons of public security. This goes to the very root of democracy. We have a General Election and we elect a Government, and we put into the seat of Government men whom the country chooses and trusts. They are responsible for the safety and security of the country. When they give their considered view that the details of something cannot be disclosed because it is a question of public security, then I say that every responsible citizen, inside the House and outside, must accept that, and accept it willingly, as the very basis of public security. 9.13 p.m. Mr. John Dugdale (West Bromwich) The Prime Minister's statement that it was deplorable that there should be a debate has been answered by the very responsible manner in which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition raised the debate. Had we not raised this subject, we as an Opposition would have been guilty of a grave dereliction of duty in not probing a little further into this affair. The Prime Minister says that he cannot answer certain questionsof course, he cannot. We agree there are many questions he cannot answer. Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne) But there are some questions which he can answer. Mr. Dugdale Yes, there are some questions which he can answer. Some of the questions which my right hon. Friend asked him he could answer. The thing we are concerned with is what appears to be the great lack of coordination between different Departments. What was the aim of this operation? Its aim, apparently, was to get information for the Navy, and yet the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth did not want the operation to take place. Surely he must have had some say. Surely somebody pays attention to what he says. When it was known, as it was knownit must have been knownby the Admiralty that this operation was to take place, surely the information should have been conveyed to the First Lord of the Admiralty. 1769 The Prime Minister says that the First Lord of the Admiralty did not know. Naturally, I accept the Prime Minister's word for it. but that is a deplorable state of affairs when it is the First Lord of the Admiralty who has to make political decisions, if he has to do anything at all in the Admiralty. Surely he should be the person to make the decision.

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How do we know that the naval officers at Portsmouth did know about it? Commander Crabb asked to borrow equipment from H. M. S. "Vernon" and he was refused. It was said there, "We shall not lend you the equipment". Obviously, he wanted to get accommodation of the most convenient character, and, naturally, he would have stayed in an Admiralty establishment, or else in a private house belonging to an officer of the Admiralty, if he could, but the Admiralty did not want him to do so, and the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, did not want him to. So he had to resort to this extraordinary business of staying in an hotel, and signing the register, while his companion signed it with the wrong name. If the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, had really wanted this to take place, surely he would have given some help to Commander Crabb. Apparently, no help was given. If he did not want it to take place he would have conveyed his disapproval to the Admiralty. It seems very strange that one of the high rank of the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, should not be able somehow or another to reach a member of the Board of Admiralty. I cannot understand where the stoppage took place en route, but, apparently, there was a stoppage somewhere, and, apparently, the information never reached the Board of Admiralty. These are some of the things for which we condemn the Government. I do not say we want to know about them. We shall not ask any questions about them. [HON. MEMBER: "Oh, no"] We will not. However, we do ask the Prime Minister to see that the Admiralty and the Secret Service are reorganised in such a way that these things do not occur again. Plainly, there has been a stoppage in the flow of information which should have flowed to the top, where decision lies, and it is the responsibility of the Prime Minister to see that this sort of thing does not happen again. 1770 The right hon. Gentleman says that he is not responsible for the details of Secret Service work. Of course he is not, and we do not want to ask him questions about them, but we do say he has the responsibility for choosing the people who should be at the top of the Secret Service, and we want to know that he has confidence in their judgment. We want to know, in particular, that when he says that disciplinary action has been taken it has been taken not against junior people but against those at the top for failing to control those below them. Perhaps these things have been done. I do not know. However, it seems to me likely that they may not have been done. A few years ago there was a case which was called the Crichel Down case. It was a very different type of case, but as in this case a Minister was apparently misled by his officials and got into a great deal of difficulty. He had the courage to accept responsibility, and he resigned. His action was very creditable indeed, and we on this side of the Committee respect him for it, as, I think, many hon. Friends of his opposite do. I think that the Prime Minister should have given us a very much clearer explanation, and that he must reassure us, if we are to rest content with what he says, that steps are being taken so to reorganise both the Secret Service and the Admiralty that this sort of thing can never happen again. 9.19 p.m. Lieut.-Colonel J. K. Cordeaux (Nottingham, Central) The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) was deploring the publicity that this unfortunate episode has obtained in the Press. I am sure we all agree with him about that. However, I am sure we should not all agree with him when he suggests that it might have been obviated by a hint from Ministers. I think that would have been deplored by most people. The fault for that publicity lies mainly, I am sorry to say, with the members of the various secret services concerned.

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In former times it was the first rule for all members of those services that the nature of their work must never be disclosed to another man or woman. In fact, it was their duty to carry the secrets of their adventures and triumphs with them to the grave. Unfortunately, lately 1771 there have been some people who have not been living up to that tradition, but have been cashing in on their knowledge of secret work in the form of film rights, newspaper articles and books. Of course, if they do that, they cannot complain too much when equal publicity is given to their blunders and failures It was only last November that we were debating in the House another episode which concerned one of our secret services, in that case our security service. We were debating the failure in the Burgess and Maclean case, a failure which seemed all the worse when taken in conjunction with the previous cases of Dr. Nunn May, Dr. Fuchs, and Professor Pontecorvo, which led us, in conjunction, to feel that we were engaged in dealing with a new type of enemy agent the man who works, not for the old reason of personal gain, but because he puts loyalty to a political ideology before loyalty to his own country. I believe that it would be wrong for us to lose faith in the services that are at present in the dockthat is to say, our positive espionage workbecause, after all, this particular case, unlike the case of Burgess and Maclean, is, I suggestthere is certainly nothing to suggest otherwisean isolated case. I do not think that on the strength of that we have any right to condemn our positive espionage services, whatever they may be, as inefficient Indeed, in answer to the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell), who did criticise them for inefficiency, I should like to condense what I wanted to say by quoting to him some remarks which were made about them by one of the very best known counter-espionage officers in Germany. He was the head of the German counterespionage forces in Holland during the last wara man who was himself responsible for one of the greatest disasters that ever befell our own underground forces. His name was Giske, and what he had to say about them was this: I was now facing my own problem. to peer westwards and discover what secret enemy activity was taking place beneath those stars. on those dark waters, and in the air above themactivity of an enemy famous for his long experience and unexcelled in his skill at the conduct of underground warfare. We had a whole series of instructive lessons the previous year in France, Norway and Greece, 1772 which had shown me clearly what it might mean to face the experienced toughness of the British Secret Service in combination with an lite of Dutch volunteers willing to risk their lives From that, I do not mean that I am trying to excuse the conduct of the operation which we have under discussion tonight. It would be impossible to do so. It seems to me that it was approved mistakenly and rashly and was ineptly carried out. Indeed, one feels alarmed for the higher direction of whatever service might be concerned when we consider that, after all, although initiative is one of the greatest qualities required in any such service, it seems incredible that such an operation could have been sanctioned except by the head of whatever organisation it was. It is strange and unfortunate that it was done even by such a person without informing someone of still more importance. To the non-technical critic it seems that the positive information that might be obtained would in no way be commensurate with the seriousness of the act and the natural embarrassment to international relations which would follow. Lower down the scale in the planning and conduct of the operation, Commander Crabb was of an age where he should hardly have been chosen for an operation so hazardous and difficult. The entry in the hotel register and the clumsy attempt at deletion suggest a quality in trade craft to which it is best not to refer.

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I referred just now to the embarrassment to international relations which such a failure might cause. I am certain that no stronger phrase would be here applicable. After all, the duty of every intelligence service is to obtain information about the war potential of other countries and it is the duty of secret intelligence services to obtain such information secretly. Every major Power, ourselves, the United States, Russia and all the rest, as the right hon. Member for Leeds, South said, employs such services and such services have been employed since the beginning of history. Other weapons have come and gone. In the course of a few hundred years we have seen the bow and arrow give way to the cannon ball and gunpowder, and from that we have gone to high explosive, aircraft, tanks, poison gas and guided missiles, to the final horror of the hydrogen bomb; but espionage has remained constant and an essential branch 1773 of war. The spythe secret agent it is better to call himhas remained and has always been the oldest of all weapons, indeed, dating from 3,400 years ago, as we can read in Joshua, Chapter 2: Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy secretly. For that reason, I am absolutely convinced that the Russians will attach very little importance to this episode. The right hon. Member for Leeds, South said so in so many words. I think that the Russians will be very little irritated by it, just as they will not expect us to be particularly irritated by the episode of Burgess and Maclean. The two episodes were the same in that they were a normal I think I can use the word "normal"use of espionage. They differed in that the Russian employment of Burgess and Maclean was brilliantly successful, whereas our effort to inspect the hull of the Russian cruiser was not. They differed in another respect, namely, that the Russian Government did know of the employment of Burgess and Maclean, whereas my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did not know of the employment of Commander Crabb. It is perfectly obvious that the Russians have neither the right, nor are they likely, to objectI do not think that that is putting it too higheven in their hearts to what has happened. This unfortunate episode is, therefore, not in the least likely in any way to impair the value of the Russian visit to this country, nor in any way to detract from the magnificent job which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has done, not merely in organising that visit, but in the brilliant manner in which he conducted the negotiations here. Finally, I want to add my tribute to the central figure of this operation. Whoever may have employed Commander Crabb, he obeyed his orders, he was a patriot and he was a brave man. In paying my tribute to him I would like to think that I am also paying it to all the thousands of other men of his profession, the other agents who have served and died for this country. The secret agent in war, though not always in peace, is the bravest man of all. The ordinary soldier, sailor and airman face danger willingly, but they 1774 face it in comradeship. The secret agent faces it alone. The soldier, the sailor and the airman face death willingly, but death is the worst thing they face. To the secret agent who is captured death is probably not to him the ultimate sacrifice which he hopes to avoid, but the merciful relief for which he prays. So I hope very much that though this unfortunate episode, the last in Commander Crabb's life, may be forgotten as soon as possible, he and his former record will never be forgotten. 9.32 p.m. Mr. George Wigg (Dudley) If the obituary notice in The Times is to be believed, Commander Crabb rejoined the Royal Navy over a year ago. So I join with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell) in paying a tribute to the memory of a very gallant officer.

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When I listened to the concluding words of the Prime Minister, I felt that this was a masterly exposition by a great Parliamentarian. The right hon. Gentleman had control of the House and was saying to us that the national interest must be paramount but, over and above that, the one thing he wanted is to get agreement with the Russians. That is the recipe of the Prime Minister tonight, his excuse for trying to rescue his party from a difficult position[An HON. MEMBER: "Try to rescue yourself."] I shall come to that in a moment, with no holds barred. Those noble words were not the words of the hand-out issued by the Conservative Party Central Office of his Perth speech last week. There the right hon. Gentleman could not resist a cheap party jibe. The Prime Minister said: To be strong you do not need to be mute; to be firm, you do not need to be rude. There, of course, the Prime Minister was not talking about Anglo-Soviet relations as something that transcended even the national interest; the right hon. Gentleman was seeking to make party capital at the lowest possible level. I do not complain of that but, of course, if the right hon. Gentleman says that at Perth and then makes the peroration that he does tonight, perhaps I shall be forgiven if the thought passes through my mindhe is an able Parliamentarian but he is also a complete humbug. 1775 What the hon. and gallant Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux) said spelled out for the right hon. Gentleman that neither the First Lord nor the First Sea Lord should be holding their present offices; because, without pressing the Government on any point of secrecy, it is undeniable that on the night of 29th April a senior member of the Board of Admiralty, either political or naval, must have authorised the statement that Commander Crabb had met his death. If, therefore, a Service Department has to disclose to the country and to the world that operations have been undertaken at a delicate stage of international negotiations without the knowledge or consent of either the political or the Service chiefs, then either or both, without waiting for any prompting from Conservative back benchers, should tender their resignations to the Prime Minister. The central point of this story is not what Commander Crabb was up to or who instructed him, but the communiqu of the night of 29th April, because there the Admiralty, without being pressed and without any Press prompting, volunteered the information that it was responsible for what happened to Commander Crabb. There is one other very serious matter which I ask the Prime Minister to believe that I feel about as sincerely as he does. I am desperately concerned about the state of the defences of this country. I believe our defences to be deplorably weak in all aspects, despite the fact that very large sums of public money have been spent. It is my belief, as I watch the continuous stream of propaganda that is being poured out, that the Admiralty is fighting a rearguard action to justify an annual expenditure of 350 million. What did Commander Crabb and those who instructed him hope to find out? Surely it was in the hope of trying to justify the Admiralty view that is being put across to the public that the Russian fleet is a menace, which justifies the maintaining of our expensive naval forces. I believe that such an undertaking places the public interest in jeopardy, for decisions as to how defence expenditure is to be made are a matter for calm and deliberate choice. Therefore, from every point of view this opera- 1776 tion and the Government's attitude must be condemned. Turning to the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens), I must say that I really was shocked. He is a learned and highly respected Member of this House. I am very loath indeed to say this, but the arguments that he used were the kind of arguments that a lickspittle in the Nazi Party would have used if he had wanted to curry favour with Hitler.

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9.37 p.m. Sir James Hutchison (Glasgow, Scotstoun) The main burden of the speech of the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) rested on his criticism that the lack of further information from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister prevented hon. Members from being able to do what the Press is able to do. namely, to probe and speculate. I think that criticism has been very completely answered by the speeches which have been delivered from both sides of the Committee, in which speculation has run riot. I should like to make an appeal. This is a period of restraint and of appeals for restraint, and I think that nothing but good could come if we followed that example after the debate is concluded. I would go further and ask that the whole theme be muted down. We have paid our tributes to a gallant man, and I think that thereafter the whole story should be allowed to lapse into the shadows which are its proper background. My reasons for asking that are as follows. First, let us be realists. I think that most hon. Members who have spoken tonight have recognised that we are not by any means the only nation with a secret service. All nations have secret services, and the job of these services is to get secret information. Believe me, the Russians are no amateurs in this. Can that be why they are so little worried by the whole incident? I was greatly puzzled to discover from the speech by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux) whether he felt that this was a matter of great irritation internationally or that it would count for nothing at all. At the beginning of his speech he said the first thing, and at the end he said the second. 1777 It seems to me that the Russian leaders have treated the incident in its proper proportion. It is true that a protest was made and an apology was sent, but they appear to be much more prepared to allow the matter to fade into the background where it belongs than are our Press and the Opposition tonight. The longer this matter goes on the more chance is there of friction being developedinternational friction which, I believe, both sides of the House are anxious to dispel. There is no doubt that the visit of the two Russian leaders did good. In this matter protocol has been followed properly in the relationship and the messages which have passed between the two countries. Is it for this reason that one of the newspapers was able to write that Marshal Bulganin and Mr. Khrushchev were too pleased with the London visit to make an issue out of this curious and unexpected lapse? That is the answer. I think, to the right hon. Gentleman who was so worried, in the speech to which we listened this evening, as to whether in fact international friction had been created. Mr. Chapman Did not the Prime Minister end by saying that what he cared for most was that this matter should not disturb international relations and, therefore, on that account, refused to talk about the matter any further? Sir J. Hutchison I am saying that that is the proper way to treat it. The more we argue about a thing like this the more we tend to upset international relations. The other reason why I think that this matter should be treated with restraint and, indeed, with oblivion is that this thirst for unusual and rather obscure knowledge does nothing but harm to the Secret Service itself. Either we have a Secret Service or we do not. If we are going to have one, do not let us go on trying to persuade it to do a sort of striptease act and cast aside one veil after another. The methods and organisation of the Secret Service are very important matters, and the more we discuss and probe them, the more we tend to reveal, as would have happened if my right hon. Friend had been led on a little further, and that does nothing but damage to the service. We are making the task

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of those who are serving and those engaged 1778 on a delicate and sometimes dangerous task all the more difficult. Discussion and limelight can do nothing but harm, and limelight is the very last thing that anyone employed in this sort of work could possibly want to have. What good, then, is this debate going to do? If it were a question of showing up gaucherieand there has been gaucheriethat has been noted and will be put right. If it was disciplinary action that was wanted, that has already been announced, and surely the right hon. Gentleman will accept that if disciplinary action is used it will be used on the person on whom it should fall and not on someone else. [An HON. MEMBER: "Which one?"] There can be no purpose in using disciplinary action in any other way. If, on the other hand, the purpose is to diminish the stature of the Prime Minister, the debate has failed, or if hon. Gentlemen opposite are seeking for another Minister's head on a charger, then the debate will equally have failed. There can be no good purpose in deepening this probe any further, and I hope that the matter will be allowed to fade into oblivion. 9.44 p.m. Mr. R. H. S. Crossman (Coventry, East) I think that the best answer given to the hon. Member for Scotstoun (Sir J. Hutchison) was given by his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux). I think that my right hon. and hon. Friends will agree with me when I say that it is no disparagement of them to say that no speech was more full of intimate, expert knowledge. Here was someone who knew what he was talking about, someone very close to Intelligence who could be spendidly frank, splendidly indiscreet and really tell the Prime Minister what was wrong. We need only to read that speech in HANSARD tomorrow to see the very serious problems which we raised, and they are not to do, as the hon. and gallant Member rightly says, with the Secret Service. I want to concentrate on the part played by the Admiralty in this affair. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) partly raised this point, and I want to go on from where he left off. With regard to the communiqu of 29th April, is it really said that the First Lord of the Admiralty or the gentlemen down 1779 here did not know about it? Is it said that they had absolutely no knowledge of it, and that it is the sort of thing for which, if one has no knowledge of it, one refuses responsibility? I can appreciate refusing responsibility for an act of the Secret Service, but I cannot understand shelving the responsibility for issuing a public communiqu which has been proved to be a lie, a deceit, issued by the Admiralty in grave contradiction to what had been stated to the Russian visiting admiral. This is not a question of the Secret Service, but either of the incompetence or lies of Ministers. Either they did not know that the communiqu was being issued and the services trusted them so little that even at that late hour they did not inform the Minister of the disasters going on, ostensibly under their responsibility, or they knew and they were not telling the whole truth. I must say that the more I heard in this unctious debate about national and international safety, the more I gravely suspected that there were some party interests being defended. I began to suspect that when the Prime Minister took over the matter. It was a very convenient way to prevent questions being put to representatives of the Admiralty who might have defended themselves very much worse than the Prime Minister who, whatever his other defects, is a brilliant Parliamentarian. His was a magnificent performance. He thought only of international interests. The right hon. Gentleman never dreamed of considering the problem of the First Sea Lord, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Civil Lord or the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty. Nothing to do with them. The right hon. Gentleman was thinking solely

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in terms of international interests. He was not thinking about the unfortunate Home Secretary. What has it got to do with Anglo-Russian interests to discover that those four pages were torn out of the register? Nothing whatever. Have we heard why the police went to the hotel? No, this is all in the realm of international interest. But it is not at all. I support one other thing said by the hon. Gentleman opposite. I think it is very hard lines on people who work in secret departments. When something goes wrong they are blamed. If this 1780 business had gone right, would there have been all this talk of disciplinary action? Supposing that Commander Crabb had come back safely from the mission, should we then have had the Prime Minister outraged by what he had done? What odious hypocrisy. There would have been medals for success. But when there is a slip-up, and Ministers are in trouble, then we have all the security and all the hocuspocus about "I cannot tell you." Because somebody who is a politician and also an official is in trouble, the cover-up starts. I think that the people of this country have a perfect right, when they suspect something as dirty as that, to express their anxieties. Of course, we cannot ultimately know the truth, but is it really the Opposition's fault that this matter has come to light? There has been a deluge of publicity on the Secret Service from the Admiralty. The Admiralty did that and the Prime Minister then contradicted the Admiralty and made matters worse confounded by giving his own peculiar version of his own self-sacrifice. He said that if any Minister had known, if any responsible civil servant had known, they would never have dreamt of allowing this to happen. I wonder. We have lived for a long period in the cold war. Speeches have been made in this House describing the Russians as the enemy, and saying that there is no possibility of negotiating with them. Speeches were made by the Prime Minister, a short time ago, describing as appeasement what he is now doing. For years we have lived in an atmosphere in which the idea of treating the Russians not as an enemy to be spied on was positively disloyal. I cannot find it surprising that some members of the Secret Service have not caught up with the change of front of the Government, which, suddenly, is all enamoured of negotiation. I can remember the time when the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) first suggested a high-level conference and his Tory colleagues howled him down and tried to sabotage the conference. They succeeded in preventing us having a conference for years. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] I suspect that some members of the Secret Service, and possibly some high officials in the Admiralty, are just a bit old-fashioned. They are still living in the 1781 cold war and taking seriously the directive of the Tory Government when they came to power. Even some of my colleagues have constantly told me that the Russians must be regarded simply and solely as enemies of civilisation who understand nothing but the language of strength, and with whom it is hopeless to believe that the word "peace" is possible. If that is true, what is wrong with sending frogmen under their cruisers? If it is not true, some hon. Members opposite will have to withdraw thousands of words they have been speaking in the last ten years. Mr. Cyril Osborne (Louth) Surely the hon. Member will agree that in the last three years there has been a change of Government in Russia and a different policy there. Mr. Crossman The hon. Member and I are in surprising agreement on this subject. We probably agree with the right hon. Member for Woodford who tells us that the Russians ought to join in the spirit of N.A.T.O. The hon. Member and I agree at the moment, but other hon. Members opposite will only agree two years later. That is the point I am making. He and I have gone far on this subject, but the Prime Minister was not one of the advance

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guard, nor were the other right hon. and hon. Members on the Front Bench. They were by no means in the advance guard, and it ill becomes them to rebuke members of the Civil Service who just do not understand the new world of international co-operation in which the Prime Minister so fervently believes. If the Prime Minister believes that it was outrageous to send that frogman, then there are one or two other outrageous things which he might polish up at the same time. We seem to be still scared stiff of the Russians disarming for fear they might be tricking us into something. If it is really a crime to send a frogman underneath their ships 1782 and the Prime Minister has dismissed those who are responsible, I begin to see other changes which might be made in our foreign policy. If they are now our friends, I hope there will be full support for the speech of the right hon. Member for Woodford at Aachen, but I have not heard a word of support from the Prime Minister for that. The Prime Minister says that we must treat the Russians as allies in the noble venture of resisting aggression all round. If that is the Prime Minister's new spirit, I see great beginnings in this debatebut, of course, I do not believe a word of it. I know that this is a cover-up. I know perfectly well that if it had been successful and the whole affair had not leaked out, no disciplinary action would have been taken whatever. I know that this is merely the blundering of a politician in the Admiralty. [HON. MEMBERS: "And the First Lord ".I We will not mention the First Lord. That is the whole problem; that is why we have all these solicitudes for international relations in order to cover up one of the biggest bungles ever committed by a Service Department. Mr. Gaitskell To mark our disapproval of what the hon. and gallant Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux) so well described as "this ill-conceived and unhappy operation," and in protest against the Prime Minister's complete refusal to answer any of our questions, many of which, in our opinion at least, could well have been answered without endangering public security at all, we shall be obliged to divide the Committee. I beg to move, That Class 1, Vote 4, Treasury and Subordinate Departments, and Navy Estimates, Vote 12, Admiralty Office, be reduced by 5. Question put, That a further sum, not exceeding 15, be granted for the said Services: The Committee divided: Ayes 229, Noes 316. ********************************************************************** DISMISSAL OF MR. LANG HL Deb 21 June 1956 vol 197 cc1226-80 1226 4.35 p.m. LORD CHORLEY rose to call attention to the disregard of civil liberty involved in the action of the Minister of Supply when he compelled Imperial Chemical Industries to dismiss their Assistant Solicitor, Mr. J. H. Lang, on alleged grounds of security; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I make no apology for bringing this matter of Mr. Lang to the attention of your Lordships' House. It seems to me to involve fundamental questions of principle. I am only sorry that apparently the majority of the Members of your Lordships' House do not seem to agree with me; otherwise there would be a better attendance. It also gives us the opportunity of discussing the recent White Paper on the Conference of Privy Counsellors referring to security methods, which is certainly a document of importance. I should perhaps explain at the outset that I have a certain personal interest in the Lang case, in that many years ago Mr. Lang was a pupil of mineand, incidentally, one of

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the best pupils that I ever had, a man of outstanding ability, whose subsequent career entirely justified the view which we all formed of him. Apart from two rather casual encounters with Mr. Lang since this business started, however, I have not be able to see him, and as some of your Lordships will know, I think largely as a result of this terrible business, he has had a severe operation and is now in a nursing home. That has made it quite impossible for me to check some of the facts with him, as I should have liked to do. I have, however, just had the opportunity of a talk with Mrs. Lang, though very late in the day, because a letter which I sent to her on Tuesday morning from London, although it had to get only as far as Dorking, did not reach her until the midday post yesterday. And that, she tells me, is typical of what has been happening to her correspondence, Mr. Lang's correspondence, over the last two or three weeks, since this business arose. The obvious inference is that the correspondence is being interfered with. It always used to come by the first post, and letters addressed to her father, who lives in the same house, 1227 are still arriving by the first post. I should like an assurance from the Government that some security officials are not taking advantage of this situation to tamper with the post. If that is in fact being done, I suggest that it is a really outrageous business. I do not want to trouble your Lordships too much with the background of this case, but I shall have to go over the facts a little. Many of them have appeared, of course, in the newspapers, and except in so far as they have been kept back from the public by the Government itself, I imagine that they are fairly well known. Mr. Lang, as I have explained, is a very able lawyer who, after some ten years in the service of Imperial Chemical Industries, was promoted to an important position as, I think, second legal adviser. In that position confidential documents passed through his hands, including, among others, secret papers relating to work which Imperial Chemical Industries was carrying through for the Ministry of Supply. Some years after entering the employment of Mr. Lang married a lady who had formerly been a member of the Communist Party, from which, according to her own statement (which I think has not been challenged at any stage in the history of this case), she had resigned some time before the marriage. She had then severed all connections with it, and has had no business whatever with that Party since. Soon after the marriage, in 1951, Mr. Lang, who had been promised promotion at I.C.I., was informed by his chief, the head of the legal department, that the Security Services were taking objection to his seeing confidential Government documents on the ground that his wife was a Communist. They declared that she was a Communist. Apparently, at that time Mr. Lang was able to satisfy his chief that his wife had severed her connection with the Communist Party, though he never denied that she had at one time been a Communist. In due course, he received his promotion, and apparently the Government representatives were satisfied because, from 1951 right down to January, 1956, he continued in that position, with confidential Government documents passing through his hands, although I understand they 1228 were only a very small fraction of the total amount of papers on which he was working. It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Lang is not a scientist, and the information came to him only as a lawyer. Most of it would be quite unintelligible to him, and only on the basis that he was thoroughly dishonest and prepared to have photographic copies made in order to pass on to the enemy, or something of that sort, could he possibly have made use of this information against the interests of this country. So for five years Mr. Lang continued happily at his work. And then, suddenly, out of the blue, so to speak, he was told by one of the deputy chairmen of I.C.I., only in January of this year, that the Government were putting "extreme pressure" (I am quoting the words used) on the company, and threatening to withdraw contracts unless Mr. Lang was prevented from

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having any access whatever to secret information. And this, of course, made his job quite impossible, and gave I.C.I. no alternative but to get rid of him. I must say that I.C.I. have behaved with great generosity to him. He has no complaint to make of the way they have treated him. His complaint is about the way the Government brought pressure to bear upon I.C.I. to act in the way they did. This, naturally, was a very great blow to Mr. Lang. He struggled to be allowed to make his case to the Ministry, and, after a great deal of difficulty, was given an interview with Sir Cyril Musgrave, who I understand was Deputy Secretary at the Ministry. Mrs. Lang and two old friends of Mr. Lang who were both solicitors of standing, were also interviewed. Each one was interviewed separately. The four came away from the interviews with the distinct impression that Mrs. Lang's ex-association with the Communist Party was the only substantial matter which the Ministry had against Mr. Lang. Indeed, his two friends say that no other point was put to them in the questions raised on the occasion of their interviews with Sir Cyril Musgrave. Mrs. Lang, clearly, was in the same position. It is true that the Minister himself, in answering a Question put to him in another place last week, said that Mrs. Lang's association with the Communist Party was only one of the matters which were taken into consideration in her husband's case. 1229 What the others were he steadfastly refused to divulge, either to Parliament or to Mr. Langor so far as I know, to anyone else. One of the most evil features of the present security inquisition, I think, is that its victims are not allowed to know the case which is being made against them, what the charges are. They are not told; they are given no opportunity to answer. Can anyone imagine a more terrible fate for a sensitive, honourable and patriotic man than to have his honour and patriotism traduced in this way? Here is a man who knows that he is being unjustly charged, unjustly impugned, and yet he is not allowed the elementary right of defending himself. I am quite sure that the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack, the most eminent representative of a profession which down the centuries has struggled for the preservation of this right, must feel very sensitive about it. And I hope that members of the Government on the Front Bench opposite feel sensitive about it too, because it really is a very terrible thing that a man like Mr. Lang should be charged in this way, without being given the opportunity of knowing what is the offence which he is alleged to have committed. No wonder his health has given way under it, and that he has has to undergo an operation. It is true that during the course of his interview with Sir Cyril Musgrave, two further points besides Mrs. Lang's former political associations were referred to. So far as I can make out, they were raised by Mr. Lang himself, who, like an honourable man, wished to put on the table every matter which he thought could 'possibly be relevant to the position. He stated that he had in years past been a member of two societiesthe British-Soviet Friendship Society and the Haldane Society, to which objection might be taken by the Security Services. He had not been a member of them for a long time past; and, in fact, he left both of them because they became, in his view, Communistinfiltrated. I shall be glad to hear from the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor that these matters were not held against Mr. Lang in the decision that was taken. The British-Soviet Friendship Society was, of course, a very flourishing institution at the time when we were comrades in arms with the Russians in the 1230 war. It has no doubt fallen under Communist domination, but membership of that Society at the time when Mr. Lang was a member, when friendship with Russia was still in no kind of way regarded as reprehensible, can hardly be regarded as any sort of offence. As to the Haldane Society, of which I myself have been a member almost since

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the time when it was founded in memory of the late Lord Haldane, a most distinguished predecessor of the noble and learned Viscount who now sits on the Woolsack, that Society has never been Communist controlled or dominated, though it is true that it has a number of Communists amongst its members. And thank goodness it is still possible for people to meet their fellow human beings who happen to believe in the political faith of Communism! Mr. Lang evidently failed to convince Sir Cyril Musgrave that he was not a security risk, and the position was eventually reached, as I have told your Lordships, when decided that they would have to dismiss him. Mr. Lang then took what I must say I regard as a very courageous and public-spirited attitude. He decided not to take it lying down but to fight it in public. From the point of view of his own career, the less he called attention to this position the better it would have been for his success as a solicitor. Obviously he has made it very difficult for himself to get a job, but he felt that it was the first case of any importance of somebody outside the public service being treated in this way. His conscience was 100 per cent, clear, and he felt that the matter ought to be brought before his fellow citizens, so that they might be given an opportunity to judge of him. He must have realised from the start that he had not much chance of success in his fight with the Government, because in this type of case the Government, however wrong they may be proved, never admit their mistake, and it is obvious that they are not going to admit that they have made a mistake here. As I said, Mr. Lang was undisturbed from 1951 to 1956, and the next matter I should like to ask the noble and learned Viscount to explain is why, after being left to work among secret papers for a whole period of five years, this decision to hound him out of his employment 1231 with Imperial Chemical Industries was come to suddenly. Is there anything new which has transpired between 1951 and 1956 which makes it necessary for this extreme step to be taken, or was it just the excitement about the disclosures about Burgess and Maclean and the mounting hysteria in the cheap Press which made officials of the Ministry of Supply fear that they might get into difficulties with the Daily Mail and the Daily Express if they did not take a line of this kind? It was that case which led to the Conference of Privy Counsellors upon security. In his reply to questions in another place the Minister of Defence sheltered himself behind the findings of the Conference of which a summarised version has been published in the White Paper to which I referred at the beginning of my speech. It seems obvious that the Lang case resulted from what I submit is a completely unimaginative and ham-handled application of the findings in this important document, and I should like to take a few minutes of your Lordships' time by commenting upon them. The Report which was given by the Privy Counsellors was concerned with security arrangements to be applied in the public service and which are being applied there. The summary of the Report deals almost entirely with the public service. I find myself in general agreement with what the Privy Counsellors say, though there are a few points upon which I should like to join issue with them. My argument is not against the White Paper, but against the way in which it has beenor has not beenapplied, because if the Minister had applied the recommendations in the White Paper in the way in which they were given and with complete honesty of purpose, in my view he could not have reached the decision which he did reach. At a time like that through which we are living now, a time of cold war, when ideological loyalties are apt to be in conflict with national loyalties, it is not to be expected that those who do not fix their loyalties to the nation should be entrusted with secret material which is vital to the security of the nation, and I entirely agree, and I think everybody here will agree, that that matter, which is put first in the White Paper, is

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entitled to its precedence. In times of danger, salus populi suprema lex. This is one of the oldest 1232 and most important of all political principles: I suppose that nowadays we should call it a slogan. It is also one of the most dangerous, and that is something one must realise about this maxim. It has been used throughout the ages by fanatical patriots as a cloak for attacks upon liberty. It can be a menace to liberty. In the hands of timid, frightened and hysterical people, it can be an even greater danger. And if it is used unscrupulously, as it often has been, and often by quite honest men, then the threat to liberty is multiplied fivefold. Therefore, except when the enemy is actually at the gates, my submission is that the sail's populi policy must always be subjected to a certain amount of reasonable control and checks. Unfortunately the Privy Counsellorsat any rate in the White Paperdo not go very far in the direction of dealing with checks that ought to be set up for the purpose of seeing that this matter is not allowed to run away. They suggest some improvements in the procedure relating to the appeal tribunal to which these cases may be referred, sometimes called the "Three Wise Men". I think that this was the only novel point in the recommendations, at any rate in so far as they appear in the White Paper. The application of the security arrangements used in connection with the public service to people outside that service who are handling secret governmental contracts and other confidential Government information is referred to only in the last paragraph, in which the question is raised of whether the procedure of the "Three Wise Men" should be used in connection with this type of case. No answer is given. The application of security procedure outside the public service obviously gives rise to a number of difficulties which are different from those which arise inside the public service and it does not appear to me that these problems fully occupied the attention of the Privy Counsellors. At any rate they did not deal with them. There are all sorts of ways in which a commercial concern is different from a Government Department. For example, there are large Government Departments in which a man who is suspected can be put on equally important work in some department where there is no security risk, but that is not the position in most branches of in- 1233 dustry. Obviously it is going to be difficult for a firm, even a big concern like Imperial Chemical Industries, Limited, to dispose of Mr. Lang. Indeed, they could not do so without upsetting their arrangements in their legal department. The result was that he had to be dismissed. It is my submission that if this Lang procedure is extensively used, industrial and commercial concerns will be deprived of some of their most valuable servants and the economic efficiency of this country, al a time when it has never been more important that it should be maintained at the highest possible level, will be seriously jeopardised. The Communist faith makes a strong appeal to intelligent and rather ingenuous young men, and many of our most promising young men have been through periods of it, which sometimes have lasted quite a long time. Are all these men ever after to be regarded as security risks, and are industrial concerns engaging staff to be forbidden by the security service to employ them, or forbidden to employ them in some part of a concern where Government contracts or specifications must be handled? Because if that is so, the result will be that they will not be employed at all, and obviously the industrial efficiency of those concerns will be interfered with. Or will they be given the "All clear," provided that it can be shown that they no longer maintain any sort of contact with people who were personal friends when they were members of the Communist Party? If that is so, I suggest that the situation is just as bad, because no man of decent, generous instincts will consent to have his friendships disrupted in that way at the behest of some Government Department or a member of M.I.5. What a society we are coming to if that is to be the sort of way in which we are expected to behave!

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One of the most important points of the Lang case, in my submission, is that it is the first case in which this sort of problem has been raised. I submit that the matters involved are of the highest public concern. Mr. Lang has never been a Communist, and Mrs. Lang 'has long severed her connection with that Party. Therefore, they do not really come within the categories which are described in the White Paper. That is why I say that the Minister has not honestly or reasonably applied this White 1234 Paper to the Lang case. The most important passages in the White Paper, from this point of view, are at the top of page 4, where it says: The Conference is of the opinion that in deciding these difficult and often borderline cases, it is right to continue the practice of tilting the balance in favour of offering greater protection to the security of the State rather than in the direction of safeguarding the rights of the individual. In this case, I suggest, it has not been a question of tilting the balance but of putting all the weights into one scale so that it would go down with a bang against Mr. Lang. The paragraph goes on to recommend that an individual who is living with a wife or husband who is a Communist, or a Communist sympathiser, should not, for that reason alone, he given any more secret work. This case does not fall within that passagewhich is the furthest that any passage contained in this document goes with regard to association because Mrs. Lang had ceased to be a member of the Common is t Partyindeed, she had ceased all sort of connection with Communist work as from that time. Therefore, both Mrs. Lang's case and Mr. Lang's case are outside the terms of the White Paper, and I suggest that the Minister has not, in Fact, complied with the terms which the Privy Counsellors laid down. The Minister of Supply, in another place, claimed to have reached this decision himself. He did so, one presumes, on the evidence which Sir Cyril Musgrave laid before him. But since he was judging a case which had already been decided against Mr. Lang by his own officials, in his own Department, I cannot regard his decision as being an impartial one. The Department is, in fact, the prosecutor in cases of this kind, and the head of the Department, in giving judgment, is giving judgment in a case in which he himself is concerned That is an infraction of one of the most elementary principles of natural justice, and one to which I am sure the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor has frequently drawn attention, and in which he must believe to the bottom of his soul. It may be said that the tribunal of the three advisers provides a safeguard in respect of this particular danger. There might be some truth in that assertion if the Minister had, in fact, made use of the tribunal of the three advisers in this 1235 case; but he has flatly refused to do so. However, I do not myself regard the three advisers as being a satisfactory tribunal in this sort of case. Eminent ex-civil servants are not usually skilled in the sifting of evidenceit is not a civil servant's job to spend his life dealing with problems of evidenceand the sort of material which is brought forward by the Security Service is more in need of expert handling by people accustomed to dealing with evidence than any other material with which I am acquainted. I saw a great deal of the work of M.I.5 (as it is usually called) during, my years of service in the Home Office and in the Ministry of Home Security. The quality of the report is extraordinarily uneven in characterand if one thinks about the circumstances in which it is put together, that is bound to be so. That is no criticism of the people who are making the report, but is a warning to the people who are making use of it. The people who are employed are of a diverse quality and are very different in their antecedentsthey are a very heterogeneous group of people. Moreover, those very people often become emotionally involved, in a quite extraordinary way, in the cases on which they are reporting: they begin to regard it as a personal affront if anybody

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disagrees with them. I was astonished to find how often this sort of thing crept in. It makes the estimate which the security officer forms of a man's reliability very unreliable. So that an administrator who has to take action on the basis of an M.1.5 report may be misled both by the quality of the evidence put before him in the report and also by the bias of the reporter. I regard this as a most important matter. During the late war there were a number of cases of imprisonment under Defence Regulation 18Bthey will be familiar to the recollection of many of your Lordships. Sir Norman Birkett (now, of course, a Lord Justice) and later on Sir John Morris (now also a Lord Justice) were chairmen of committees which dealt with doubtful cases of people who had been detained under that Defence Regulation. Both of them were lawyers with tremendous experience and great forensic ability; indeed, their wide forensic ability was brought to bear on 1236 evidence which had satisfied administrators that men ought to be shut up. In quite a number of cases it led to the release of unhappy men who had been shut up as security risks during one of the worst wars in which this country was ever engaged, whose loyalty had been impugned in that way. A well-known case which comes to my mind is that of a man who was accused of having made some sort of concrete pit in his garden for the purpose of flashing signals to enemy aircraft. When Sir Norman Birkett went into the case he found that there was a perfectly simple explanation: it was just a gardening operation which the man had been conducting. It was quite easy to prove that that was so, and t1K-, man, who had been detained for a number of months, was released. That, of course, was a bad case, but there were a number of other cases in which similar releases took place. The trouble about that man was that he had never had the allegation explained to him. If the charge had been made against him he could, at the time when he was taken up, have provided the explanation which eventually secured his release. That, as I say, is the most serious charge that one makes against the whole of this security procedure. I should feel much happier if the rule had been laid down by the Privy Counsellors that one of the three adviserspreferably the chairmanshould be a Common Law Judge, or at any rate a Queen's Counsel, with wide experience in the handling of evidence and that sort of thing. I should like to know why the Privy Counsellors did not insist on this. Why was the procedure, which on the whole had worked well and given satisfaction during the war years, at a time of much more acute danger, thrown overboard and this procedure by retired civil servants substituted for it? Perhaps the noble and learned Viscount, who was a member of the Conference, could tell us about that. The Privy Counsellors refer to cases where nothing may have been proved which would be accepted in a court of law. I should like to know whether the suggestion is there being made that a lawyer chairman of the tribunal would be so much influenced by the standards of the Common Law that he would be likely to take a different decision from the 1237 administrators in Whitehallthe standards of the Common Law under which the liberties of England have been secured. Were not Sir Norman Birkett and Sir John Morris eminently satisfactory chairmen of these Committees during the war? I have yet to hear of any case where they released a man from detention who was afterwards proved to have assisted the enemy. On one important point I am quite sure that a legal chairman would insist, and that is that the actual charges which are made against the victims of these security allegations should be made known to them. I am sorry to keep on coming back to this point, but it is fundamental to the whole position. This is undoubtedly, as I have said, the worst feature of the present system. Mr. Lang, for example, has never known what charges were made against him, except in regard to this one matter of his wife. And when Mrs.

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Lang saw Sir Cyril Musgrave, she said to him, "I do not want to ruin my husband's career, as this is going to do. I will go away, leave him and live in a different part of the country altogether, so that he may go on with his career at I.C.I." Sir Cyril said to her, "It is no good your offering to do that, because it would not make a pennyworth of difference." Now that must mean that there were other charges which, if Mrs. Lang were completely out of the picture, would still mean that Mr. Lang was a security risk. If that is so, he is entitled to know what those charges are so that he can deal with them. From 1951, when I.C.I. appeared to have satisfied the Minister of Supply, until January, 1956, no hint reached him that anything was wrong, and then it was only through his employers. The points were never put to Mr. Lang himself: it was put through his employers that he was regarded as a risk. Then the only charge which was actually made against him was with regard to this matter of his wife. When he saw Sir Cyril Musgrave it was just the same, and when his friends saw Sir Cyril it was just the same the wife was the centre of the discussion. So again I ask: if there are other charges against him, what are they? The case is always made that these charges cannot be brought to the knowledge of the victim without revealing the evidence, and that to reveal the evidence 1238 would reveal the source, and that to reveal the source would, of course, destroy the effectiveness of the security service. Now the Privy Counsellors deal with this point, which is obviously one of sonic substance, and it is important to notice that they do so in very guarded terms. What they actually say is that, in order not to imperil sources of information, decisions have sometimes to be taken without revealing full details of the supporting evidence. Now that is, I submit, a very guarded statement. It is also important to notice that the Privy Counsellors do not give the weight of their authority to the view that the charges themselves need not be brought to the attention of the accused. They refer only to the full details of the supporting evidence. It is significant that the American Federal Courts, which have been able to play a great part in protecting the American people from the worst ravages of hysteria of McCarthyism, have always insisted that the charges must he made known to the accused, which is perhaps the most elementary of all the rules of justice. Civil liberies, of course, are written into the American Constitution, and that gives the American courts jurisdiction to hear many cases which no English court could entertain. This is perhaps the one great advantage which the written American Constitution has over our own more flexible one. But until the present unhappy age, I venture to assert, and assert with complete confidence, that no English lawyer would have believed it possible that a man could be convicted of disloyalty without being told, and told in detail, of the charges that were being, made against him, on which his conviction was based, and given the opportunity of dealing with them. I could say a great deal on the subject of the security hysteria which swept over America, involving some honourable and distinguished men, such as Professor Oppenheimer and Professor Lattemore. I do not propose to do so. I think it shows signs of dying away, and the reason why it is is largely because of the stand taken by the American courts and by eminent: American lawyers, such as the Dean of the Harvard Law School, whose influence has been thrown into the scales on the side of liberty, and who has succeeded in large measure in staying this hysteria of McCarthy ism. I suppose there is no subject in the world upon which men form 1239 more divergent views than on the subject of liberty. Yesterday we had a Question addressed to the Government in the name of libertythe liberty to use a farm in such a way as to make it, in effect, cease to be an effective agricultural unit. To-day, another aspect of liberty is before the House. The older liberties on which the political life of this country has been built up

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were confirmed in battles too numerous to mention, in courts, on the hustings, and in Parliament. The sort of liberty which is involved in the Lang case, which is not to have one's employment terminated except for good reason, is a sort of liberty which has only come to the fore, I suppose, in recent years. But whether we are dealing with old-fashioned liberties or modern ones, they are all of fundamental importance to us. Liberty has been the most fundamental of all our political conceptions and the greatest inspirer of our national development. Are we reaching a point when we are no longer sensitive to obvious infractions of liberty? It is because I feel that this matter ought to be dealt with in your Lordships' House that I bring this Motion about Mr. Lang's case before your Lordships this afternoon. I beg to move for Papers. 5.18 p.m. VISCOUNT STANSGATE My Lords. I feel that after the masterly and moving speech made by my noble friend Lord Chorley, there is hardly anything to say. I should like to congratulate him on that fine exposition of the case which appeals to us. I think this is a matter on which we shall find a great measure of agreement in this House. Fortunately, the issue of personal liberty is not an issue which divides Parties. The charge that either one is for or one is against does not arise here, or has not arisen here, in the same way as it has arisen in other parts of the world. I myself would say that most of us would agree with the declaration made by the then Prime Minister in 1948, and with its application. The then Prime Minister, when this matter first arose in 1948 and when there were a great many false estimates of the intentions of the Russians, directing our policy said: The first thing to be done is to see that the civil servant " 1240 we were not dealing at that moment with the outside employee concerned should be informed. He should not be merely informed that he is suspected, but should be given, as far as possible, chapter and verse, saying, 'You are a member of this organisation; you did this or that; can you explain it?' He ought to have the case put before him clearly. That is the statement which we all cordially support. So far as I am concerned, I am perfectly satisfied with the declaration made by the Labour Party itself only a few days ago which, speaking now of the other sidethat is to say, the non-Government employeessaid workers in private employment on secret defence contracts are also involved. It said: There should be an advisory board for private industry similar to that provided in the Civil Service. Any civil servant or industrial worker brought before this board should be confronted with a precise charge unless the Minister personally has decided otherwise. Nobody likes prying into these matters. We are all agreed that spies and saboteurs are a danger, and that we should wish to destroy them. Nobody on any side would wilfully sacrifice those ideals of liberty to which my noble friend has referred. On all this we are agreed. But I should like now to speak briefly on one or two points of rather wider import, though no subject can be wider than that of liberty. The first point I wish to emphasise is the question put by my noble friend to the Lord Chancellor. Mr. Lang's career was known. He is bound by many disciplines. He is a solicitor he is accustomed to respecting the confidence of his clients. The man was an intelligence officer, having been first an N.C.O. and then receiving a commission in the Intelligence Corps. That is a pretty rigid training. He has never given any dissatisfactionon the contrary, he is received with applause and given a position of importance in I.C.I. He is a man who, by everything that we know of him, is deserving of public applause. M.I. 5, a Department which is becoming (I am going to mention for a moment this dangerous aspect) a sort of parallel Government, say to I.C.I., in 1951: "You must 'sack' Mr. Lang." I.C.I. sayand this is the story as I heard it; I think it is true" He is a valuable servant; we cannot '

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sack ' Mr. Lang." Mr. Duncan Sandys, who is the Minister of Supply, is satisfied to leave it at that. Year by year, 1241 pressure is applied to get rid of Mr. Lang, but because of his value to the firm, I.C.I. say: "We will not get rid of Mr. Lang." And Mr. Selwyn Lloyd did not insist. We come then to the present day, and Mr. Lang is again declared a security risk. This time, I.C.I. say to him: "We are very sorry; we cannot find any other work for you. You are dismissed and discharged. You are discharged for association of some kind with the Communist Party "a charge which is utterly untrue. That is the situation. It is really necessary for the Lord Chancellor in his reply to tell us the answer to this question: Has something new come to the knowledge of the security authorities, or is it merely that they are taking old cases of people who were "acquitted" and, so to speak, re-trying and re-charging them on some new standard? I believe that the real anxiety to-day about this matter is not that the standards that were laid down by the Government of my noble friend, Lord Attlee, are being enforced; the real danger is that a new standard is being introduced either of greater rigidity or involving more considerations of another kind. It is this point on which I wish to say a few words. There is a class of mind which objects to unorthodoxy in opinion. Anyone like me who has been in the junior ranks in two wars, knows perfectly well that no one will advance an intelligent Socialist argument in the mess because the Colonel says: "We do not want any of that damned nonsense here." SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear! VISCOUNT STANSGATE The colonel continued: "We have no politics here; we are all Conservatives." But the major question we have to consider is the public weal. Is this a good thing from the point of view of the public? Mr. Lang was a member of the Haldane Society. I knew Lord Haldane, in those old times. He would certainly have been shocked to know that to be associated with a society called after him was a reason for discharge from public service. I believe that Mr. Lang belonged to the Left Book Club. I believe that he also belonged to the Anglo-Soviet Society, which existed to promote the interchange of friendly visits between ourselves and the Russians. It seems queer to charge Mr. Lang with this gross offence when every plane and 1242 ship departing Eastwards from our country is carrying guests to the Soviet Union. Mr. Sandys himself has visited the country and said something friendly about their achievements. Is it right to curtail or forbid this kind of thing? I want to add this about Lord Attlee's Administration. In Lord Attlee's Administration, the principles he laid down were accepted. A Question was asked the other day in another place as to how many people had suffered under these rules, enforced in the interest of security. The figures are most surprising. Out of 10,000 people5,000 administrative officers and 3,000 to 4,000 higher executive officersfrom 1951 to 1955 the figure of those dismissed was nil. There were transferred four in 1951, two in 1954 and one in 1955. One resigned. That is a most comforting figure. I have confidence in the people who will exercise a discretion (a rather irksome and unwelcome discretion), but who will exercise it with that amount of judgment. I felt that we had solved a difficult problem in a satisfactory way, but now we find that someone who has been "acquitted" comes up again and is "condemned." Why? The Lord Chancellor must answer that question. I am sure he will. It is awkward that he should be speaking at the end of the debate. It would he better to be in Committee, when we could really cross-examine the chief witness. We all realise that the Secret Service collect information. They can collect informationanyone can cardindexbut we say that the Secret Service must not evaluate the information. There must be some Minister

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who will come to this House or to another place and say: "I myself have investigated this case and although, for reasons of public security and safety, and the stability of the Secret Service, I cannot tell you more about it, I am convinced that it is not safe to employ this man." If we could have that, if the Lord Chancellor would say thatthere is another difficulty that I should like to put laterit would be something to help us. I asked someone who had been under investigation. I said "What happened?" He said: "I was sent for by the head of the department or the personnel chief." I said "What did he say to you? Did he give you any information? Did he say I am sorry to say that it is reported 1243 that you have joined the Junior Imperial League and are suspected of Fascist tendencies'?". "Not at all. He did nothing of the kind. What he said was: 'Now, come, come! What did you think of Mr. Bulganin's visit? He is an old rogue, is he not? They are twisters.'" This conversation went on and that was the end of the whole thing. Then, a few weeks later, he is told: "On account of some unknown reasons, you will be discharged." That is why I am so grateful and happy that my noble friend has brought this matter forward to-day. The one safeguard against encroachment by this empire is Parliamentary debate, and this House itself can perform a most valuable function, because I believe that fundamentally we are all at one in our desire to preserve human liberty. Here is a suggestion that I have to make. The danger is public passion. We have read of the days of Titus Oates. Such things are not impossible to-day. At least one Member of your Lordships' House lost his head over Titus Oates. The Press can set up a wave of suspicion, of public rage. It is extraordinary that several noble gentlemen have been given Peerages because of their position in the Pressthere is Lord Kemsley. What is the name of the Daily Mail man? NOBLE LORDS: Lord Rothermere. VISCOUNT STANSGATE Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook. These gentlemen have been directed to attend at this place and perform their duty, and they have failed to do so in accordance with their Writ of Summons. It would be far better that these people should come here. Then they could put forward all their doubts, all their ideas for the protection of the State, and we could ask them questions: we could find out what is at the back of it all and could do a great deal towards safeguarding our country. But instead of that, they, too, believe in anonymity, and somebody else writes on their behalf. But I think it is high time that you, my Lord Chancellor, should use the power which Lord Chancellors have used in the past, to tell these gentlemen to come here and attend to their duty. Then we might see whether we could not get something done to puncture these inflated public passions. 1244 Now, my Lords, I am going to produce one or two pieces of evidence from one witness of a most authoritative nature, from, I think you will agree, a quite surprising quarter. In America, the campaign against spies has been a political affair. It has been going on for a long time, and there has been a great wave of passion which has resulted in there being set up in Congress a sort of parallel court of inquiry to the courts. (Here we adopt what one may call the Russian method: we do not tell the accused anything: he is just disposed of.) The man who knew more about this in America than anybody, the man who was Secretary of State to Mr. Truman, Mr. Dean Acheson has written a book entitled An American Vista. I will read only a few short passages, if your Lordships will allow me. It cheers our heart and will do more to restore our old friendship and admiration for America than anything that I have read for a long time. This is what Mr. Acheson says, in full confession, at the beginning: The (Security) practices had their root in the President's executive orders" and he gives the official numbers I was an officer of that Administration and shared with it the responsibility

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for what I am now convinced was a grave mistake and a failure to foresee consequences that were inevitable. Then Mr. Acheson gives one or two illustrations. This is the point which really appeals to me more than anything else. I have not the legal knowledge of my noble friend, but it is a terrible thing if the mind of this country is going to be moulded into something, whether it is a Communist model, a Tory model, or anything else. We must be free if our country is to be strong. We must be free in mind. That is the lesson. Let me read one or two passages and, first of all, this one: Finally, in our summation of what is wrong, there is one comprehensive evilthe sum of all the others: it is compulsion towards conformity. That is what Mr. Dean Acheson himself said. Now I will read one other passage: 'The greatest dangers to liberty,' said Mr. Justice Brandeis, 'lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning, but without understanding.' I have travelled a great deal and I have been a grateful guest in many Legations 1245 and Embassies, but what I have: noticed often is the difference in the ideas in the Legation or Embassy from the common talk in the country itself. I have been to Moscow, and I will tell your Lordships that you will not get a better assessment of the situation than if you go, for example, to the Indonesian Embassy or to the Indian Embassy, where you will find someone who is detached and who has been free from this horrible "mould" which we were talking about the other day. We were told that anybody who wanted to go into the Diplomatic Service had his past raked over; that people would go down to his professor and say, "Did you know young Jones when he was learning the differential calculus? "whatever that may be. "Did he say anything that seemed extreme?" In that way you are apt to produce a wonderful regiment of young gentlemen with bowler hats and rolled un umbrellas, who say "Good morning to you" and "I couldn't care less," and give other proof of possessing the higher culture, but who have not got the courage to think intelligently, about the problems that confront us. On the matter of the scientists I cannot speak, because I am not a scientist, but it is perfectly obvious that if the scientist is to do his best work in his laboratory you must not have somebody looking over his shoulder or somebody making a note of what he says to somebody else. If you do that, how can he do his work? If your Lordships will allow me, I will read just one further passage from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, of April, 1955: Discovery of scientific truth is too unpredictable to allow anybody to say exactly what has been lost to American science through the unnecessary restriction of communication and the distraction and harassment generated, by a security system made more extreme than realism requires from an obsession with loyalty. It says that both scientists and generals of great practical experience have asserted that if the post-war security provisions had obtained during the war, it would not have been possible to achieve anything approaching the great success achieved in war time in scientific research. So that it is on the ground of the efficiency of our country that I plead for liberty. Really, it is on the ground of old-time sentiment. In those days we read Rupert Brooke or Tom Kettle or 1246 Shelley. All that has got nothing to do with the modern world. But, after all, one has these dangerous, seditious instincts which are eradicable when one gets on in life. There is one other thing I want to say. The real danger of this Secret Service empire lies in its strength. These security peopledo not think that they are humble fellows who put a helmet under their arm and say: "From information received I asked the prisoner what was his name, and he said 'George', or words to that effect." That is not at all the type of man you have; you have a man who is determined to maintain his power. I should like to remind the Lord Chancellor of a very happy occasion for me, when I first made his acquaintance at the Official Secrets Committee, 1939. What we were

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dealing with was this. Mr. Duncan Sandys had been trying to expose the shocking state of anti-aircraft defence. He was right, absolutely right, and somebody in the War Office got the bright idea that in collecting his information he had offended against the Official Secrets Act. 'The result was that Mr. Sandys was ordered to attend a court-martial in his own regiment. Mr. Sandys has relatives, and he has relatives who have a sense of the instincts and traditions of this country, and Mr. Sandys, like Mr. Lang, said, "I will fight." That occasioned the Sandys Committee. We all agreed, presented a unanimous report, and told the War Office "where they get off"; and the result was we heard no more about it. That was one instanceone of the first I remember. But let me take anotherthat of Crabb, which is a recent one. I know nothing about Crabb. The sensational 'thing about the Crabb case is not this ingenious manwhether he is living or dead, nobody knows; the sensational thing is that an operation so inept and so dangerous could be carried through without the knowledge of the Government and without the consent of the Government. If that is not a warning against the Secret Service, I do not know what is. Finally I will take the case of Casement. I remember Casement; I knew Casement. I met him at the house of Mr. Charles Roberts, and I am pleased to think that that old gentleman is still alive. Casement and Mr. Charles 1247 Roberts had done one of the finest jobs in the world, cleaning up the horrors of the business of rubber tapping in Brazil. Casement was a brave man, and from his point of view a good man. He was an Irish patriot. But he was a traitor and he was executed. We had to do it. There he was, and we were at war, and we had to do what was done. The worst of it followed. I was a young man that was about 1919. In the Lobbies people whispered "You know, of course, do you not?", and it was circulated that he was a pervert. This was put about by the Intelligence Department, the Secret Service. We all said. "Isn't that awful?". Now, forty years since that occurred, this same Department refuses to permit the publication of the papers which might re-establish or destroy-I do not knowthe reputation of this famous Irishman. They say, "What does it matter?". It matters in the interests of integrity and it also matters in our relations with the Irish people. But what it proves is the might of the Secret Service. My Lords, I hope I have not done anything to ruffle the sunny calm which normally prevails on both sides of this House, but I do want to ask the Lord Chancellor this question: will he assure me, first of all, that in this Lang case he has personal knowledge either of an offence or of some reason why a man who was acquitted should now be "condemned;" and secondly, whether there is some machinery which would provide for private employees the protection to which they are entitled. LORD STRANG My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships more than a few moments, but after the learned exposition you have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, and what I might call the fireworks from the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, including I think a totally unrecognisable caricature of the British Foreign Service, I propose to present to your Lordships only one or two simple and obvious considerations. Indeed, they are quite platitudinous. In this question of security there are two propositions. The first proposition is this: that there are State secrets which, in the interests of security, it is the duty of the Government to safeguard, whether those secrets are in the hands of public servants or whether they are in the hands 1248 of employees of private firms. The second proposition is that there is unfortunately a continuous attempt by certain foreign Powers to acquire these secrets by every means at their disposal.

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Broadly speaking there are two ways of protecting State secrets. There are two types of security. There is what one might call mechanical security and what one might call personal security. By mechanical security one means the rules and regulations for the custody of papers, the use of safes, locks and keys, the proper construction of those means of security, the need to watch over the security of cyphers, and that kind of thing. But that mechanical security is not sufficient, and the thought that haunts the minds of those who are responsible for securityand I can speak from experiencehowever perfect their rules and regulations may be and however modern and up-to-date their equipment may be, is that there is always the possibility that there is somewhere some person with access to secrets hidden away in some part of the machine who may be disclosing those secrets to unauthorised persons. That is the real problem that faces the security authorities. The methods by which certain foreign Powers organise espionage in foreign countries are, or ought to be, well enough known. This has been the subject of two exhaustive and extensive studies by Royal Commissions, one in Canada and one in Australia. In Canada the matter was studied after the affair of Gouzenco, the employee of the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa. In Australia the Royal Commission met after the affair of Petrov. The reports of these two Royal Commissions are included in two large volumes, and if I may I would commend those volumes to your Lordships' attention, because they are fascinating and frightening productions. There is no reason whatever to think that the methods employed, in Canada with a great deal of success and in Australia with a good deal less success, are not being employed in other places, including this country. There are two things which emerge from the Reports of those two Royal Commissions. The first is the thoroughness with which personal contacts with likely agents are exploited by the foreign spy network, and that is done as often 1249 as not through seemingly innocent cultural and suchlike international organisations. That is the first point. The second point is that the danger comes not so much from open members of the Communist Party as from secret members of the Communist Party, people who either entirely conceal their Communist affiliations or who pretend to have renounced them. That point is made again and again in these Reports. I am not competent, nor would it be proper for me to speak of the methods employed by the security authorities in carrying out their very difficult and responsible duty for the protection of State secrets. But it is clear enough that in reaching the conclusion that this or that person is unreliable from the point of view of security they sometimes have to rely (this has been said already) on evidence which cannot, for security reasons, be disclosed; and sometimes they have to rest on a suspicion which, however substantial it may be, cannot amount to certainty. If it were a question of a prosecution for an offence under the Official Secrets Acts that suspicion would not be sufficient. But what is in question in this kind of case is not an alleged breach of the law or a prosecution; what is in question is a decision by Ministers that such and such a person is not one to whom it would be safe or prudent to confide important State secrets. That is the only quest on at issue. That seems to me, my Lords, to be the kind of decision which responsible Ministers have a right to take, and, indeed, it is a decision which they have a duty to take in all proper cases in the national interest. And before coming to that decision, before coming to that conclusion, they also have a duty which is no less important, and that is to satisfy themselves, in all honour and conscience, that, on the evidence submitted to them by the authorities, the suspicion is substantial enough to justify the executive or administrative decision they take. At the same time, when responsible Ministers assert that they have satisfied them-selves, in all honour and conscience, as to this, they are entitled to expect

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that their word should be treated with every respect. Finally. I would just add this. I, myself, think that in the case of employees of private firms there should 1250 be safeguards matatis mutandis, should be analogous to those which are afforded in the case of civil servants. Those safeguards for civil servants are very considerable, aid my view is that they should be extended to employees of private firms. 5.51 p.m. LORD BURDEN My Lords, I can assure you that you will not have from me "the fireworks," as they have been described, of my noble friend Lord Stansgate. And I cannot of course, attempt to vie with my noble friend Lord Chorley so far as his learned speech is concerned. But I think one can say that it is generally recognised that espionage work goes on, in peace and in war, on behalf of most Governments. Our own Government, so far as our own nationals are concerned, have their own machine. The Home Office, for example, has had its spies and informers ever since those notorious instances of the early part of the last century, particularly in regard to those persons who hold Left Wing views. I happen to know that one of the first things Miss Susan Lawrence did when she went to the Home Office in 1929 was to send for her own dossier. And as everyone knows, Miss Susan Lawrence was an ultra-respectable and, in some ways, conservative person. To-day, now that Communism has risen to world power, and avowedly aims at world domination, we are living in perilous times, and the first duty of the State is to protect us and safeguard our security. We must never forget that Communism demands from its adherents loyalty to an alien Power overriding the duty to the Communist's own State and Government. It follows, therefore, that we must have trustworthy people in positions of responsibility, and especially those engaged in secret work. I have not the slightest doubt that the Minister reached his decision in regard to Mr. Lang in good faith on the evidence placed before him. And before I go further, may I say that I do not know either Mr. or Mrs. Lana; nor have I had any contact with them in any way. The first point I want to make is that the manner in which information, true or otherwise, is obtained is almost completely ignored in the Government's White Paper. And yet if one reflects for a moment, one will see that this is the most 1251 vital part in the decision subsequently reached by the Minister. To-day, various Departments are employing retired police officers who, on instructions, check up and report on suspected persons. No one can deny the importance of collecting information and keeping it secret. But to accept that information without corroborationinformation often, in the nature of things, from hearsay, tittle-tattle or gossipis to assume that a retired police officer can never make a mistake, that he is quite impartial and fully capable of skilfully testing and weighing, with strict fairness, statements that may be made to him. I ask: is it right, is it proper, is it just, to use information gathered in that way to ruin a man's career and brand him as a quasi-traitor, without confronting him with those who have borne witness against him? Is it not the very cornerstone of civilised government that every man is entitled to a fair and impartial trial? Legal textbooks assure us that in England every man is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty. His guilt has to be proved. That principle is affirmed by Dr. Glanville Williams in the Hamlyn Lectures, delivered last year, although he went on to say: This golden thread, as Lord Sankey expressed it, runs through the web of English criminal law. Dr. Glanville Williams added: Unhappily, Parliament regards the principle with indifference, one might almost say with contempt. It is because it appears on the evidence so far available, that Mr. Lang has not had a fair or impartial trial that the "golden thread" (to use Lord Sankey's words) has apparently been treated with indifference, if not with contempt. My noble

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friend Lord Chorley, in my humble opinion, has rendered a public service in bringing Mr. Lane's case to the attention of your Lordships this afternoon. 5.58 p.m. LORD CONESFORD My Lords, when I came to the House this afternoon I had no intention of intervening in this debate. The reason I have decided to do so is probably, I think, the reason that also operated in the mind of my noble friend Lord Strang: the fear that, if we did not intervene, that fact might be misunderstood as indicating some lack of belief 1252 in the bona fides of the Government in this case. I have known the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, now for over forty years, since we first met when we were undergraduates at Oxford. Neither then nor at any subsequent stage in his career, or in my career, have I doubted for one moment that his heart was in the right place. I have known the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, not quite so long, but very nearly. In passing, I must say that never dreamed that the noble Viscount had suffered so much as he indicated by a compulsion to conformity. That thought had not hitherto occurred to me, but I am certain that the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack, when he comes to reply, will not complain that the two noble Lords should have brought this important subject before the House. If I have no doubt that the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, is in the right place, I think it is only fair to add that neither have I any doubt that the hearts of the Privy Counsellors who held this inquiry were also in their right places. I do not think for one moment that Lord Chorley would himself claim that he has more liberal and civilised views in this matter than, we will say, the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, or Mr. Herbert Morrison, both of whom sat among the Privy Counsellors, who came to a unanimous conclusion. I am going to deal, in the course of my remarks, with many points made by the noble Lord, and I will not fail to yield to him later if he wishes me to do so, but I think he would like to hear first what I wish to say in this matter. When I saw the terms of the Motion on the Order Paper I noticed the mention of "disregard of civil liberty". If, as the noble Lord, Lord Burden, assumed, it were true that this man had been convicted of any criminal offence without a trial, that would be a monstrous denial of liberty; but of course nothing of the sort has happened. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, referred again and again to such things as, "What are the charges?", "these serious offences", and "the prosecution for gross offences", and so forth; but none of that has any truth at all. He has not been found guilty of any criminal offence whatsoever, and if anybody were to say outside this House such things as some noble Lords have 1253 said this afternoon, that he has been convicted of disloyalty and that he is a quasi-traitor, they would certainly find themselves liable to a serious action for libel. What has happened here is not that Mr. Lang has been convicted of any offence, but that the Government do not consider that he is a suitable person to see confidential information. I am completely in agreement with noble Lords who say, truly, that such a decision may have serious personal consequences for the man himself. That is one of the problems that was so carefully considered by this Conference of Privy Counsellors of all Parties. Of course, the man may suffer what we should all consider grave disadvantages; but when we are considering such words as "civil liberty" surely we ought to draw a distinction between convicting a man of a criminal offence without a trial and finding that he must not continue in a particular job. I am sure that noble Lords in all quarters would agree that there is the greatest distinction between these things. I do not think that any noble Lord who has spoken doubts for one moment the bona fides of the Ministers concerned in believing that this man is a security risk in the sense that have described.

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They say that the Government are acting not on proof, but on suspicion; but are a Government never to act on suspicion in a matter of this kind? I remember the first time I ever spoke on a matter of this sortit was, I suppose, nearly twenty years ago in another place when the question arose of the dismissal of certain dockyard employees who were suspected of tampering with the machinery in submarines. I defended the Government's right, and, indeed, their duty to act on suspicion where the safety of the lives of their sailors was involved. I gave an example. Suppose you had young children in your house and a servant looking after them, and there had been two or three mysterious fires unaccounted for in the nursery; would anyone say that the prudent parent would not he right in getting rid of that servant on suspicion, even if nothing whatsoever could be proved against her? Of course that would be the action taken. This is a matter which was dealt with specifically by the Privy Counsellors in the passage which has been quoted. I 1254 should like to quote one passage from paragraph 14 before coming to paragraph 15: The Conference also makes a series of recommendations which turn on the risk presented by those in regard to whom there is no evidence that they are themselves members of the Communist Party, but evidence exists of Communist sympathies or of close association with members of the Communist Party. Then in paragraph 15: The Conference is also of the opinion that in deciding these difficult and often borderline cases, it is right to continue the practice of tilting the balance in favour of offering greater protection to the security of the State rather than in the direction of safeguarding the rights of the individual. No one is so heartless as to suppose that that will not sometimes cause hardship to the individual, but I do not think that many people would doubt that the Conference of Privy Counsellors from all Parties were right in the statements which I have quoted. In his criticism of the security organisations the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, referred to war-time experience of Regulation 18B. All of us who remember that time were very conscious of the risk under Regulation 18B, and I think that we very much approved of the setting up of the tribunals or committees to which the noble Lord referred and which were presided over by members of the legal profession, some of whom later became Lords Justices. I remember one over which for a time my right honourable and learned friend the present Minister of Defence presided. I agree with the noble Lord in what he says as to the advantages of a lawyer in such a position. But what is he saying? He said that they came to the conclusion that, in certain circumstances, those men ought not to be kept behind bars under Defence Regulation 18B. But the committee never decided that they should be thereafter placed in receipt of confidential information on secret matters. In that event their decision might have been entirely different. The noble Lord, Lord Strang, made a speech with which I agree so completely that it is only the fact that he made it from the Cross-Benches that makes it desirable for somebody to support it and say the same thing from the Government Benches. Let me amplify, in order to confirm, one important point that the noble Lord, Lord Strang, made. He referred to the 1255 Report of the Canadian Royal Commission. At one time it was my duty to preside at an inquiry by my Party into the dangers of Communism and Fascism in this country. I studied with some care this Report of the Canadian Royal Commission, which came out shortly before. It exactly bore out what the noble Lord, Lord Strang, said. I would refer to one particular passage in it. I have not brought the Report with me, so I cannot quote verbatim, but in the Blue Book there is set out a telegram or message from the chief of this espionage system in Moscow to his principal agent in Canada. It says: "Mr. So and So, whom you propose as an agent, is useless for our purpose, for he is already well-known as a Red." I beg noble Lords in every quarter

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to realise the significance of that. The greatest danger is not from those who are openly members of the Communist Party; very much more dangerous may be those who claim either never to have been members of the Communist Party or to have severed all connection with it. I was puzzled at one or two points in the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. I could not be sure whether he was saying to us that Communists are not a danger, or that he was satisfied that this man was not a Communist and had no connection with them. If he meant the former, I do not think anybody will agree with him. If he meant the latterwhich I assume he didhe is entitled to give his view. But he and I know nothing of the particular facts of this case. Why should we assume that all those who approached this case and who were in a position to make decisions approached it with different ideas of liberty from those we ourselves entertain? I am certainly not prepared to make any such assumption. I see that some people outside have taken the point that it is a terrible thing if a man should lose his job on security grounds, on the ground that his wife is reasonably suspected of Communist sympathies. It seems to me that anybody who takes that line shows himself to be completely ignorant both of Communism and of marriage. I wonder whether anyone to-day really thinks that the error that the Government have made in the past is that of being too suspicious. Do they really think that that is the lesson of 1256 the case of Pontecorvo, of the case of Fuchs, or the case that we debated more recently, of Burgess and Maclean? VISCOUNT STANSGATE If I may interrupt the noble Lord, I would point out that it is interesting that he should mention those cases, when not one of them was caught up in this new net. LORD CONESFORD That is why I am rejoicing that the present Government at this present time are taking greater care. I did not rejoice in the the case of Burgess and Macleanand I gave my views upon that clearly in an earlier debate. I cannot think that the fact that the Government have occasionally been caught napping, as they have (it was not this Government, but the Government of the day) is a ground for wishing them to be caught napping in the future. LORD BURDEN I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but would he not agree, on reflection, that it is a terrible thing to mention the names of Pontecorvo and these other people and to relate it to the present case that we are considering? LORD CONESFORD I am much obliged to (if I may so call him) my old friend from another place for making it possible for me to deny any such implication. Let me say at once that in my viewand I made it clear at the beginning of my speechit would be utterly wrong to suggest that this man, Mr. Lang, is guilty of any offence whatsoever; nor is it necessary for the Government to say that he is. The question is the bona fides of the Government in believing that there are grounds for thinking him to be a security risk. The reason why I mentioned these other cases was to show that Governments had no tendency whatsoever to tilt the balance unreasonably against the suspect. As I say, I am grateful to the noble Lord for guarding me against any implication that I am accusing Mr. Lang of anything whatsoever. VISCOUNT STANSGATE There seems to be some confusion, and it is probably in my own mind. The cases of Fuchs, Pontecorvo and Burgess and Maclean all failed to be discovered by this new machine. Why is the noble Lord advocating the use of a machine which failed to protect us in those three cases?

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1257 LORD CONESFORD I very much hope that the machine is being continuously improved. I am not saying for one momentand I am sure that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor will not saythat the machine is now perfect. But surely that is not a reason for disregarding the machine altogether and constantly taking risks against the security of the State. That is my proposition. I am sorry to have detained your Lordships for so long, but I believe that, though the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, and those who have followed him, were entirely right and justified in bringing this important master before this Housebecause there are features in these cases which inevitably trouble usit would be entirely wrong to suggest that there is any prima facie evidence whatsoever that the Government have acted wrongly in this case. Nobody has challenged their bona fide belief that this was a security risk; and I say that, if it was a security risk, the Government were not only entitled but under a duty to act as they did. 6.19 p.m. Loan SILKIN My Lords, like the noble Lord who has just spoken, I had no intention of speaking in this debate, but my noble friend Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, who had intended to speak, has unfortunately been called away. I am sure that the whole House will be grateful to my noble friend Lord Chorley for having introduced this Motion. The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, ha; said that my noble friend's heart is in the right place, and I am sure that we all recognise that. But I think, also, that his sympathies are in the right place. Ever since I have known himnot quite so long as the noble Lordhe has been a champion of freedom and civil liberty. It is right that when any question or any suspicion of art infringement of civil liberty should be raised, there should be a discussion in this House. I was going to say that we were grateful to the noble Lord if for no other reason than that it produced what the noble Lord described I am sorry he did describe it in that wayas the "fireworks" of my noble friend. I hope we shall frequently hear speeches of that kind from another champion of freedom and liberty. Some of us are a little disturbed about this case because we feel that there may 1258 be an element of intolerance in the matter. We want to be quite satisfied that there is no question of action having been taken because of dislike of certain political views. I think the criterion which the noble Lord, Lord Strang, and the noble Lord. Lord Conesford, have placed before us, that the security of the State must be paramount, would be accepted by everybody. I, for one, would be prepared to go further, and say that, in a matter of this kind, it is no good waiting until disloyal action has actually been carried out. It is in the nature of this kind of caseand I say this to my noble friend that the State has to take action before the danger has arisen, and inevitably it has to take action on suspicion. I accept that. But, having said that, we must he absolutely certain that this is a genuine suspicion based on solid grounds, and not merely on some such grounds as we have been informed of in the present case. The difficulty of most of us is that we do not know what are the grounds of suspicion against Mr. Lang. What we do knowand this is the only thing that has been publicly disclosedis that he has a wife who, up to a year before he was married, was a member of the Communist Party, and that he himself has been associated with certain organisations which I must confess in themselves do not necessary strike me as being very dangerous. That is all we know, and inevitably the suspicion must be aroused in our minds that there may be something in the nature of intolerance of political views involved in this.

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Now I do not know, and I do not want to go beyond this. I echo the words of my noble friend Lord Stansgate. If we could he assured that, in this case and in every other case, the Minister concerned, having investigated the case of suspicion himself, then takes personal responsibility, one would feel to a considerable degree reconciled to the situation. If, coupled with that, the person who is under suspicion has the opportunity of hearing what were the grounds of suspicion and of answering them before a tribunal in whom we could all feel confidence, then I think the reconciliation between public safety and the freedom of the individual would be as well met as one can hope to have it met in these difficult circumstances. I should he grateful if the noble and learned Viscount who is to reply could give us that general 1259 assurance: first, that every case of this kind is personally investigated by the Minister who takes full responsibility for the decision, and, secondly, that there is the opportunity for the person who is under suspicion I do not use the word "charged," because I agree with the noble Lord that he has not been charged of meeting any of the grounds that have been put and alleged against him. That does not quite dispose of the matter, because in this case there is in fact no tribunal before whom Mr. Lang could have appeared. It is true that the Report of the Privy Counsellors contemplates some such tribunal, but so far as I know there is nobody before whom he could appear at the present time. Therefore, so far as we know, he has had no opportunity of rebutting the suspicions which have been raised against him. Secondly, I think there is a case for further examination of the kind of body which has the responsibility of examining the allegations. I recognise that the White Paper is not this afternoon under considerationwe are discussing the case of Lang. But it may well be that the proper course, in the case of a person who is not a civil servant, is not necessarily to submit him to the same kind of tribunal as in the case of a civil servant. I do not think that this is the kind of case which necessarily lends itself to examination and cross-examination in the way in which it would take place if he were being charged. But I do feel that there should be an element of legal experience in the tribunal, so that even where suspicion is involved the inquiry should be carried out by people who are accustomed to weighing evidence, who would look at this question objectively and satisfy themselves that there are reasonable and proper grounds in the public interest for the suspicions, which will have, as is recognised, serious consequences for the person who is involved, even if it should turn out that those suspicions are ill-founded. I should like to make it clear that while we on this side have some apprehensions about the matter and we should like to feel reassured, we are in no doubt at all that it is the duty of the Government to take action in a case where the safety of the State is involved and where important secrets are in danger of being divulged. We do not necessarily criticise the 1260 Government for having taken that action, but we should like to have the reassurances for which my noble friends and I have asked. 6.29 p.m. THE LORD CHANCELLOR My Lords, when anyone has had, as I have had, the honour of addressing your Lordships rather more than fifty times in an afternoon, I do not know whether it is proper to ask for consideration from your Lordships or for your Lordships. But, with that difficulty, I should like to approach this matter in two compartments: first, to deal with the general aspect of the matter, and in the course of that give the answer to one of the matters with which the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, asked me to dealnamely, the question of what I should call, for want of a better word, the appellate procedure outside the Serviceand then to deal with the facts of the Lang case and try to answer questions that have been put to me.

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It is important that one should say something of the Government's attitude towards security, because that attitude, in the case of contractors' employees, as indeed of employees of the State itself, is governed by two considerations. The first and foremost consideration is the safeguarding of the national security; and the second, which is dependent on the satisfaction of the first, is to ensure that the democratic rights of individuals are impaired to the least extent possible. In that regard, I want to emphasise what my noble friend. Lord Conesford, has said already, that this is not a question of guilt or innocence of a particular charge which can be proved or disproved in a court of law. A person is denied access to secret defence information because in the careful and considered opinion of reasonable men there is doubt as to his reliability. This is a matter of judgment which must be made in the light of the available evidence. Again, it must be realised that some of this evidence comes from highly secret sources which have been built up over a long period and which must not be jeopardised. It follows, therefore, that all the reasons for the doubts about a person's reliability cannot normally be conveyed to him. It is important that this matter should be seen in its proper perspective. The Government have a responsibility to see 1261 that no injustice is done to an individual, but they also have the overriding responsibility to ensure that the national security is not endangered. No man has a right to know his country's secrets; and in pursuance of their responsibility for the nation's safety, the Government are within their rights in requiring him to be denied access to them. It would be undignified and undesirable if, in a debate of this sort, we were to indulge in a competition about our love for liberty; but, as I am answering the debate, it is only fair that your Lordships should remember that I was one of the main movers in the Convention of Human Rights to which fifteen European States acceded. I do not yield to anyone in my love for that subject, but what I do say is that civil liberty does not involve a right of access to secret Government information; and, in some cases, such denial of access may leave a firm with no alternative but to dismiss a man because he cannot be offered other suitable work. The Government recognise that this involves hardship, but the number of cases where dismissal has resulted has, so far, been very small and it is hoped that they will continue to be rare. If I may respectfully say soand I mean these wordsthe general position has never beer better described than by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on March 15, 1948, when he made his statement in dealing with this matter inside the Government service. The noble Earl said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 448, 1703]: I desire to make a statement in regard to certain matters of employment in the Civil Service. In answers to Questions on the subject of the transfer or dismissal of certain Government servants, I have said that there are certain duties of such secrecy that the State is not justified in employing in connection with them anyone" I ask the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, to note these following words whose reliability is in doubt. I agree with the noble Earl. This is not a question of proving an offence. This is a case where one says, "If there is any doubt about you, then no Government worthy of the name can allow you to have access to its secret information". That is the way the doubt lies. That is the difficulty. That is why this is a difficult subject. That is why anyone who has had to consider it is sore in heart after having to consider it. 1262 The noble Lord knows me well enough to know that I am not trying to make a false point. This is one of the difficulties of modern government. It arises only, as has been said again and again, in situations and times when we have this conflict between ideology and natural national patriotism and feeling. Fortunately, it does not occur often, but, when it doesand the noble Lord, with his knowledge of history, will accept

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this viewit presents one of the most difficult problems of government that can be presented to any Government or to the most liberal mind. I am sorry I interrupted my reading of the noble Earl's speech, but it was the point about "whose reliability is in doubt" that I wanted the noble Lord to have in mind. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, went on: Experience, both in this country and elsewhere, has shown that membership of, and other forms of continuing association with, the Communist Party may involve the acceptance by the individual of a loyalty, which in certain circumstances can be inimical to the State. It is not suggested that in matters affecting the security of the State all those who adhere to the Communist Party would allow themselves thus to forget their primary loyalty to the State. But there is no way of distinguishing such people from those who, if opportunity offered, would be prepared to endanger the security of the State in the interests of another Power. The Government have, therefore, reached the conclusion that the only prudent course to adopt is to ensure that no one is known to be a member of the Communist Party, or to he associated with it in such a way as to raise legitimate doubts about his or her reliability, is employed in connection with work, the nature of which is vital to the security of the State. The same rule will govern the employment of those who are known to be actively associated with Fascist organisations. I should emphasise that this action is being taken solely on security grounds. The State is not concerned with the political views, as such, of its servants, and as far as possible alternative employment on the wide range of non-secret Government work will be found for those who are deemed for the reason indicated to be unsuitable for secret work. It may, however, happen that it is impossible to find suitable employment elsewhere in the Civil Service for individuals with specialist qualifications and in such cases there may be no alternative to refusal of employment or dismissal, I say that I respectfully agree and I think the premises on which the noble Earl made that statement would be accepted, on reflection, by everyone in your Lordships' House. I do not want to make any debating point against the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, who argued his case before your Lordships so frankly; but 1263 it was after that statement that the machinery of the three advisers came into operation, and if Dod is right the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, was a member of the Government of the noble Earl from 1946 to 1950, so for two years the procedure of the three advisers was operating during his ministerial time. LORD CHORLEY The three advisers have not passed on this case at all; it has not been submitted to them. THE LORD CHANCELLOR That is not the point I am on. The point I am on is that the noble Lord asked, why did the Committee of Privy Counsellors, of which I had the honour to be chairman, accept the machinery of the three advisers and not find a better one? It is only a partial answer, but it is a fair answer, that it was a machinery which was set up by a Government of which the noble Lord was a member, and accepted by him for two years during his membership of the Government. That gives the machinery the support of the Government and of the noble Lord. I do not claim too much for it; it has a certain imprimatur: we were taking an accepted machinery, and one that had been tried out. Indeed, I think the noble Viscount. Lord Stansgate, answered his noble friend, because he produced figures which were the result of that machinery and which he said were most satisfactory figures. This is not one of the major points, but the point the noble Lord put to me to-day, not only as the one who was to reply to this debate but as chairman of the Conference of Privy Counsellors, was why we had not invented a new machinery. With great respect, I do not think that the

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noble Lord has made out any case against the existing machinery and, as I say, I crave in aid the figures that Lord Stansgate quoted in that regard. VISCOUNT STANSGATE May I intervene? What has been said has no reference to the case of Mr. Lang. He was not employed by the Government. THE LORD CHANCELLOR The noble Viscount is a very old controversialist. When I begin by saying that I am going to deal first with the general position and then deal with Mr. Lang, I do not think he need be at all afraid that I shall not deal with him. 1264 VISCOUNT STANSGATE I apologise. THE LORD CHANCELLOR I am sorry; I say no more. I want to say only one word to the noble Lord, Lord Burden, who obviously feels strongly about this matter. I think he was in the difficulty that he was confusing (I do not use the word in any offensive fashion) the commission of an offence with the need to keep Government secrets within a circle that is sacrosanct. I should like him to consider the matter. I do not know whether he has the White Paper summarising the Privy Counsellors' suggestions and the statement and the findings. At the beginning of paragraph 16, which I think has already been referred to, it does put the difficulty again. It says: The Conference recognise that some of the measures which the State is driven to take to protect its security are in some respects alien to our traditional practices. Thus, in order not to imperil sources of information, decisions have sometimes to be taken without revealing full details of the supporting evidence. Again, it is sometimes necessary to refuse to employ a man on secret duties, or in those cases where no alternative work can be found for him in the public service, to refuse to employ him at all, because after the fullest investigation doubts about his reliability remain, even although nothing may have been proved against him on standards which would be accepted in a Court of Law. The Conference agree regretfully that these countermeasures, although they are distasteful in some respects, are essential if the security of the State is to be ensured. That is a summary of the views of two of my colleagues, the Leader of the House and the Home Secretary, in addition to myself, and three members of the Party on the Benches oppositethe noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, Mr. Herbert Morrison and Mr. George Strauss. It is not for me to praise a body which includes myself, but I consider that Conference to have been a fair cross-section of opinion in this country. They set out the difficulty which I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Burden, sufficiently realiseddoes the noble Lord wish me to give way? LORD BURDEN May I thank the noble and learned Viscount? I noted that and I was aware of it, but what I was trying to do, perhaps not so happily as it might have been done, was to challenge the methods of getting the informationwhether the right people were employed. Everyone knows how a 1265 slant can be given to even the most innocent things in this world, and that is the vital point I want to get back to. I do not wish to pursue it any more if the noble and learned Lord Chancellor would undertake to look at it. THE LORD CHANCELLOR I am grateful to the noble Lord for his explanation. I wanted first of all to deal with the postulates in which one has to work in this field. I think that that half-paragraph sets them out fairly. With regard to the personnel and the ability of those who work, in our Government (and I think I can speak for the Government of which the noble Viscount was a member, and any Government of which I am a member) we are constantly trying

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to take every possible step to improve the standard of these conditions. I personally have no reason to think that the standard is a low one. My Lords, I have put the general position, and I want now to come to the point of security procedure in relation to industrial firma engaged on secret Government contracts. The general policy is the same as that applied to public servants namely, to prevent persons adjudged to be security risks from having access to secret matters. Government interest in the employment of Communists or Communist sympathisers in defence industry is confined to the question of access to secrets. I wanted to say that, because it is known that numbers of Communists are, in fact, employed in the aircraft and other defence industriesfor example, on production lines; but so long as these men are employed on work that does not give them access to secrets we, the Government, are not concerned. Formally, the policy is implemented by imposing a special contractual condition which enables the secret matters of a secret contract to be defined, and which gives to the responsible Minister (I emphasise the words "responsible Minister" because noble Lords have been doubful whether it really came to the Minister; it does.) the power to call for a list of employees who, it is proposed, shall be given access to secret material and to direct the contractor that particular named persons should not be given access. I do not think I need trouble your Lordships with the whole of the terms of the contract which contain that provision; I have tried to summarise it 1266 fairly. What I do say is that a Government would be lunatic that did not put a provision of this kind into its secret defence contracts; it would not deserve to survive a day longer. These are essential protections to any Government that is contracting. Before the Lang case, I may add, the formal remedy had been applied in only nine cases. So that we are not dealing with the sort of thing where it has been recklessly usedonly nine cases. Now I come to the first point that the noble Viscount put to me. So far, there has been no right of appeal by the employee concerned. His only remedy has been to take up the flutter through political channels, whereas his opposite number in the Civil Service has had the opportunity of stating his case to the three advisers. I shall in a moment announce what the Government suggest in that regard, but first I want to make this point clear: the three advisers advise the Minister as to the extent or degree of Communist association, but the action to be taken is a matter for the Minister which the Minister takes himself. VISCOUNT STANSGATE Does the Minister have access to the information in detail that has been before the three advisers? THF LORD CHANCELLOR I think it would be perfectly possible for him, if he had any doubts, to get it, or certainly ask the three advisers to come and tell him on what they made the, assessment. VISCOUNT STANSGATE The noble Viscount said he leaves the decision to the three advisers. THE LORD CHANCELLOR No; I was making it clear that it is the Minister's decision. The three advisers only advise him as to their view of the correctness of the assessment of associationI am trying to put it shortly. Take the case of a civil servant. It has been decided that he is a security risk. He controverts thatin some cases he does not; but assuming he does, he appeals to the three advisers. The Minister then has put before him the three advisers assessment of the rightness or wrongness of the degree of, association alleged against the man. And. I suppose that if he had any doubts about the matter, he could ask the three advisers.

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1267 VISCOUNT STANSGATE This is very important indeed. The noble and learned Viscount said "it has been decided" that the man is a security risk; decided by whom? THE LORD CHANCELLOR It has been decided by the Minister. VISCOUNT STANSGATE Has the evidence come before the Minister first and has he assessed it and said, "I think this man is a security risk"? And can the man then appeal to the advisers? Is that the position? THE LORD CHANCELLOR That is the position. There are many cases where he does not appeal to the advisers: he accepts the decision that he is a security risk, and either goes or accepts transfer. But if he does not do that he can appeal to the advisers. The advisers then have not only the original evidence on which the original decision was reached, but also his evidence and the evidence of anyone he cares to call. The advisers then make their assessment and transmit that to the Minister. So the Minister is not judging the same thing again; he is judging on everything put before the advisers. I will only say this to the noble Viscount: I hope he will not press me too far, because one loses the thread. VISCOUNT STANSGATE If the Minister in this particular case has seen the evidence, then we shall be entitled to ask the Minister or his spokesman, the Lord Chancellor, whether new evidence has been adduced between the time Mr. Lang was "acquitted" and the time he was dismissed. THE LORD CHANCELLOR He was never acquitted and I will deal with that when I come to the Lang part. I will not miss it. I do ask the noble Viscount to interrupt me if he thinks I am missing it, because it is not my intention. I was dealing with the general position, because it is right that that should be put out. I was saying that in industrial cases the Government's part is confined to directing which persons shall not have access to Government secrets, a right and a duty which they must fulfil. The actions taken by the firm to conform with this direction remain its responsibility; it is for the firm to decide whether a man 1268 can he employed on other work or must be dismissed. This principle was stated by the Minister of Supply in the House of Commons on June 11, when he said: Ministers have a solemn responsibility to safeguard State secrets and, in the course of that responsibility, not only have the right but the duty to exclude from access to those secrets people whom they do not think suitable. My Lords, the White Paper to which I have referred, summarising the findings of the Report of the Privy Counsellors Conference on Security, was mostly concerned, as I think was stated by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, with Civil Service matters. As he said, paragraph 21 deals with these questions of the provision of appeal machinery for contractors' employees. And it is implicit that the same criteria for judging security risks should apply to contractors' employees as to public servants. Thus evidence of Communist sympathies or close association with Party members (noted in paragraph 14 of the White Paper), living with a Communist or Communist sympathiser (which is mentioned in paragraph 15), and character defects (mentioned in paragraph 10), will be factors to be taken into account in industrial cases as in the Civil Service. Similarly, the practice of (and I am quoting paragraph 15 of the White Paper) tilting the balance in favour of offering greater protection to the security of the State rather than in the direction of safeguarding the rights of the individual should apply in industry as in the Civil Service. In borderline cases we must throw in some grains of common sense to

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bring down the scales on the side of public security. Paragraph 21 reported the Conference's view that they favoured an appeal machinery in certain types of cases, and their recommendation that discussions should take place on this aspect with the National Joint Advisory Council. Here, if I may have the attention of the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, for a moment, I am coming to the specific answer to the first point he put to me. These discussions with the National Joint Council have taken place, and I am in a position to state that, in the light of them, the Government have decided to give effect to this particular recommendation of the Conference of Privy Counsellorsnamely that contractors' employees who, 1269 as a result of a directive by a Minister, are dismissed, or in his opinion are liable to suffer financial loss, should have the same rights. So the "Three Wise Men" procedure will be applied to contractors' employees VISCOUNT STANSGATE The new machinery will not be available to Mr. Lang. THE LORD CHANCELLOR No, for reasons which I will give to your Lordships in a moment. The noble Viscount asked me whether that procedure was going to be applied to contractors' employees. The answer is that it is, because the decision, as I have said, will still remain with Ministers. The employees will have the right of going to the tribunal of advisers. Now I come to Mr. Lang's case. I must make the same statement as ray right honourable friend the Minister of Supply made. That is (OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 554 (No. 167), col. 19): I am not prepared, for reasons the House will appreciate, to make public the information available to Her Majesty's Government. But I can say that Her Majesty's Government have followed the recommendations of the Conference of Privy Counsellors on security. Mrs. Lang's political associations were one of a number of matters taken into consideration. VISCOUNT STANSGATE This is the crux of the whole thing. THE LORD CHANCELLOR Perhaps the noble Viscount will wait for just one moment. These are the limits which Government security always imposes. I cannot, arty more than can my right honourable friend the Minister, make public information which might have the effect which the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, mentionedthat is, of disclosing sources, and therefore making that security machinery less effective. The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, always likes an historical allusion, and I will now give him one which I have always thought very important and illuminating on this matter. As he may remember, when the great Duke of Wellington was very hard-pressed in the Peninsular War, his chief intelligence officer, Major Colquhoun Grant, was captured by the French: and the Duke said at that time, when he was very short of men, "I would rather lose a brigade than 1270 Colquhoun Grant." I put it to the noble Viscounthe has been the head of a Service Ministry and has himself served with the greatest distinction in the Forces that no Government can give information which would make more difficult, or undermine, the work of their Security Services. Now I want to come to the point which was specifically put to me by Lord ChorleyI think I am putting it fairly: I ask him to correct me if I am not. He asked why, if Mr. Lang was adjudged a security risk, was action not taken earlier before he had access to secrets. Therefore, it is necessary to go into some detail as to the time factor. This case first arose when I.C.I. asked the Government in May, 1951, for a security clearance for Mr. Lang. In July, 1951, they were told that a clearance could not be given. It was subsequently hoped, on the basis of assurance from the company, that Mr. Lang could,

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consistently with his employment, he denied access to Government secrets. There was some foundation for this hope, since steps are normally taken to ensure that contract documents themselves do not reveal the really secret information which is conveyed to nominated and cleared technical officers. But: it eventually became clear to the company that it was impossible for a man in Mr. Lang's position to be kept completely away from Government secrets. It was not until November of last year that I.C.I. finally reported their inability to deny him access; and it was on the basis of this report that the Government decided to take action. Thus, both the Government and the company were concerned to try to reconcile the avoidance of security risks with Mr. Lang's continued employment. It was only when it became clear that they could not be reconciled that drastic action was taken. It may therefore be argued that risks were run in this case over a period of years, but this can be regarded as the price paid to avoid too hasty a decision that might interfere with an individual's career. But I do put this point and I am sure noble Lords will agree with me: that to give a man clearance for all secret informal on is an equally great responsibility to that involved in refusing such clearance. That is a fact of government which again I state without fear of contradiction. 1271 Let me now go on with the facts. After consideration, a letter was sent to the company by the Treasury Solicitor on January 4, 1956. LORD CHORLEY Before the noble and learned Viscount passes from this question of the space of time between 1951 and 1955, may I say that I take it that what he said comes to this: that there was nothing new against Mr. Lang in the interval. I am not sure that the noble and learned Viscount made that clear. THE LORD CHANCELLOR He was a security risk in 1951. Between 1951 and 1955, it was hoped that he would be kept away from Government secrets that was what came to be understood as a probability. At the end of 1955, I.C.I. found that it was impossible to keep him from Government secrets. Therefore, the present situation arose; that was, as I have said, in November, 1955. It is a fair point that both the Government and I.C.I. had tried, by seeing that this man was, so far as they could see, not in touch with Government defence secrets, to keep the position, and to let him keep his job. When it was found that he could not be kept from defence secrets, then the position arose with which I am just going to deal. That was in November, 1955. As I was saying, after consideration, a letter was sent to the company by the Treasury Solicitor on January 4, 1956. That is not much delay: from November, 1955, to January 4, 1956. This letter criticised the firm's handling of the situation, indicating that since there was no chance of Mr. Lang's acquiring any further secret information in connection with current contracts, which were nearing completion, no practical purpose would be served by issuing a formal notice in respect of these contracts requiring that secret matters should not be disclosed to Mr. Lang. That was with regard to current contracts. The letter went on to say: On the other hand, to wait until further secret contracts have been negotiated and signed when, as you point out in your letter, the process of negotiation may well result in secret information coming into the hand of the individual concerned, would be to take an unjustifiable risk. In these circumstances, I have been instructed to inform you that the responsible Ministers regard it as an essential condition to the placing of further secret 1272 contracts with your company that you should be able to undertake that this individual will not have access to secret information disclosed in connection with such contracts. That was the position. I have read the relevant part of the letter, and the Treasury Solicitor made it perfectly clear

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what the position was with regard to the future, and that Mr. Lang was not to be brought into touch with any future contracts. LORD BURDEN My Lords, the noble and learned Viscount is now on a most vital point. Can he assure us that the action taken in November, 1955, was on the evidence which had been accumulated (I will not say whether rightly or wrongly) in 1951, or had any further evidence against Mr. Lang accumulated between 1951 and 1955? THE LORD CHANCELLOR My Lords, I am not going to go into the amount of evidence, or when it accumulated or what happened, for the reasons I have given. But I say that there is no question, as the noble Viscount put it, of this man having been "acquitted" in 1951. This man was a security risk in 1951, and it was hoped that he would be kept from vital defence information. It was only in November, 1955, that the I.C.I. made it clear that they had failed to keep him from vital information. When that was made clear, the Treasury Solicitor wrote to I.C.I. and said that that was a position which could not be tolerated. When Mr. Lang was informed by the I.C.I. of the Government decision, he submitted written representations and requested an interview. He was seen by Sir Cyril Musgrave, the Second Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Supply, and, at his request, Mrs. Lang and three of his friends were also interviewed by Sir Cyril. I have been asked why Mr. Lang's case was not considered by the three advisers. At the time of the original decision on Mr. Lang's case, the White Paper published after the Report of the Conference of Privy Counsellors had not been published; but when Mr. Lang asked for the opportunity to state his case Sir Cyril Musgrave wrote to him drawing his attention to paragraph 51 of the White Paper and asking him whether he would prefer to wait until it was known whether machinery for cases like his to be put to the three advisers would be put into 1273 effect, which might be some time (that was put fairly to him in writing), or whether he would prefer an interview with Sir Cyril Musgrave as representative of the Ministers. Mr. Lang elected to see Sir Cyril Musgrave. After the interview he wrote to say, Whatever the outcome, I feel that at least I have had a lair opportunity of stating my case. VISCOUNT STANSGATE My Lords, I suppose that a dossier exists on Sir Cyril Musgrave, as well as about every other employee, and that he himself has to have regard to his reputation for security and safety. THE LORD CHANCELLOR Of course, that applies to every senior civil servant. VISCOUNT STANSGATE It is impossible for them to give an unbiased judgment. THE LORD CHANCELLOR I have known the noble Viscount for a long time and I do not think that I could get annoyed with hint; but if anything was calculated to make me annoyed with him that is the sort of remark which would do so. Of course, he does not think about it: he commits himself to this language over cases with the minimum of thought. I have known him to do it time and time again. VISCOUNT STANSGATE Would the noble and learned Viscount come back to the point. THE LORD CHANCELLOR I am coming back to the point. The noble Viscount's remark applies to every senior member of the Civil Service, because every single one, from the Under-Secretary upwards, comes into contact with confidential documents, and is to that extent subject

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to security. For the noble Viscount to say, even in that irresponsible way, that all the senior ranks of the Civil Service find it impossible to give an unbiased judgment is to suggest utter nonsense, which I think he will regret saying. VISCOUNT STANSGATE My Lords, the noble and learned Viscount has given us a pleasant character sketch, but I will leave that for a moment and ask a plain question. Here is a man condemned to lose his job. The noble and learned Viscount knows why but will not tell us. 1274 The second thing is that this man has never been before any authority who is not himself susceptible to security control. THE LORD CHANCELLOR But there is also the point, which the noble Viscount left out of his speech, that after Mr. Lang had been before Sir Cyril Musgrave he wrote, Whatever the outcome, I feel that at least I have had a fair opportunity of stating my case. VISCOUNT STANSGATE That means nothing at all. THE LORD CHANCELLOR If it means nothing at all to the noble Viscount, it means a lot to the ordinary reasonable men on whom this country depends. That was the situation. Let me read a report in The Times of June 7, of what Mr. Lang said: Asked whether he had been given the opportunity of putting his case before the tribunal of three advisers mentioned in the statement on the findings of the conference of Privy Counsellors on security Mr. Lang said he had not. Sir Cyril Musgrave had asked him what he thought of the tribunal and had said that the last paragraph of the statement which suggested that access to the same tribunal should be extended to persons outside Government employment' really referred to his case. I said quite candidly I considered the tribunal was nothing more than a `blind' he said. It had no degree of justice or substance at all. As a member of the public, he did not think it applicable to him. Therefore, the answer to the question is that Mr. Lang was given an opportunity though at the expense of some delay, which I have already admittedof using appeal machinery then in contemplation. But lie choseand the noble Viscount really ought to remember this before he begins making attacks on people with such complete irresponsibilityto conduct his case by personal interview with Sir Cyril Musgrave, rather than wait. Since then he has expressed the view that the tribunal is only "a blind". Yet today the noble Viscount complains that he had not been before the tribunal which the noble Viscount described. VISCOUNT STANSGATE I did not complain. I inquired. THE LORD CHANCELLOR I apologise to the noble Viscount if I am wrong: but I am not going to argue on that point. The inquiries made by Sir Cyril Musgrave followed the same course as those of the three advisers. He con- 1275 ducted his inquiries on the same lines as do the three advisers. He then tendered his advice to Ministers, who took their decisions. The Ministers therefore had before them all the facts and considerations necessary to reach a fair judgment. His report was carefully considered by the two Ministers involved. A reference now to the three advisers could only cover the same ground and would serve no useful purpose. Therefore, if I may sum up, Mr. Lang's case is one that would be covered by the new machinery, but since he preferred to adopt the alternative course, there would be no point in putting his case to the three advisers. I only want to repeat what I think I have already said, quoting my right honourable friend the Minister. In considering this matter, Mrs. Lang's past political associations

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were one of a number of factors taken into account, and, as I have said, the evidence cannot be disclosed. As I have indicated, I am afraid more than once, this is not a question of conviction; it is a question of whether a person should be refused access to Government papers. I would add this, in conclusion. The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and I do not pull our punches when we argue, and I hope he will take anything I have said in the way that I always have, and always will, take what he says. However, I just want to put this point to him. As I said before, the conflict between national security and the rights of the individual is a perennial one. I think that we were right, and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, was right, in saying that it has a special difficulty when there are these extreme ideological waves which come over natural, national instincts. In these circumstances a balance must be struck, and we shall always argue as to where the balance should be struck. But I believe that it must be struck by a Minister who is responsible to Parliament; whose decision it is; who can be questioned in Parliament; and who, together with the Governmentwith all the reservations that have to be madeif Parliament is not satisfied is there to be shot at. I know the desire of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, for putting the matter to a judicial body. But I put against thatand it is a serious matter, because he is raising great issues, as he knowsthat in this field it is better, 1276 rather than to push it on to a judicial or quasi judicial body, for responsibility to rest fairly and squarely on the Minister. The other point that I would put to the noble Lordand I put it with great diffidence is that, deeply sensible as I am, and as I claim I have a right to be, to the call and need of liberty, there is the other side. There is the security of the State, and there is this lap of ideological blemishes on the ordinary morality of mankind. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, and the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, to remember that in some things, however unpalatable this may be, moderation is an end in itself. I know, just as well as the noble Lord does, that Westminster is white with the bones of the political reputations of the few people who have ever sought moderation as an end in itself. But sometimes responsible people, considering the problems of the Government of their country, must accept moderation as an end in itself. That is what I ask noble Lords to do here. I have given one further advance in the direction that noble Lords want by saying that the Government accept this application of the three advisers to industrial cases. I do not think anyone could say that the White Paper is unconscious of the difficulties of the matter. But I do ask noble Lords to remember the other side of it, and on that not to do anything which will destroy a balance on which national security may well depend. 7.27 p.m. LORD CHORLEY My Lords, it is very late, and I should like to bring this debate to a conclusion without saying anything more; but a number of important speeches have been made and I do not feel it would be fair either to Mr. Lang or to the cause which I have been attempting to espouse this afternoon if I were to go away without saying something further. I appreciate, and I entirely agree with, a great deal of what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Strang, the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and others of your Lordships who have spoken against my Motion this afternoon. I imagine that in a way it is a question of balance: the noble Lords, Lord Strang and Lord Conesford, feel that you need 100 per cent. securitythat is really what it comes toand I think that you can purchase security at too high a price. 1277 Professor Toynbee, in his great work A Study of History, has shown hew those States which put too high a premium on security go down before those States which are prepared to live rather more adventurously. I feel that if 100 per cent. security of the State is to be purchased by the dismissal of citizens of the greatest value, as Mr. Lang is,

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we shall go the way of those other nations about which Professor Toynbee has written. If our foreign policy is honest, decent and forward looking, the treason which is committed by your Burgesses and Macleans cannot, in the long march of history, have any really evil effect. It is quite clear that the betrayals of Nunn May and Fuchs and these other people did not really assist the Russians to explode a hydrogen bomb, and certainly did not assist them to explode is more than a week or two before they would have done, because they were well on with the job. Their technologists, we are now told by everybody who goes to Russia, are just as well advanced as ours. All this apparatus of security is being built up and is really becoming a danger to the community, because we take the whole thing altogether too seriously. I agree that the Minister in this case has brought the best of his knowledge and ability to bear on the case and given a bona fide decision. I should not for a moment say otherwise, and I did not for one moment suggest otherwise. All that I am saying is that a Minister like that is not capable of handling the sort of material which is provided for him by M.I.5 in the way that a competent, experienced judge is, and as judges did during the war. It is quite true that the procedure of the "Three Wise Men" was laid down by the Labour Government under the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. Up to a point, especially inside the Civil Service, I think it is reasonably good procedure. All that I said was that I should prefer that one of the "Three Wise Men" should be a judge or lawyer with the sort of experience that I have described. My noble friend Lord Burden painted out the sort of material which comes in through the security services. Everybody who has had anything to do with it knows that what he is saying is absolutely true. It does not mean that the men who are bringing it in are not giving their evidence 1278 to the best of their ability. The noble and learned Viscount, when he was practising, at the Bar, has seen an hone policeman go into the witness box and he has himself broken him clown by cross-examination so that the value of that man's evidence W as nil. The Minister, in this case, and the other Ministers who pass on cases of this sort, are just accepting the proofs of these witnesses. They are laid before them on paper, just as counsel who is opening a case, say, for the prosecution, has the proof before him. When the cross-examination is overcross-examination conducted by a man of ability like the noble and learned Viscount when he WAS practising at the Barthe evidence is completely disintegrated. The case against this type of procedure is that that security is not provided for. I may have used the word "charges". I am not using the word in any technical sense, and I appreciate perfectly well that we are not here concerned with cases of criminal charges against Mr. Lang and these other people. But the charges made against them are, in the eyes of their fellow citizens, a great deal more heinous than many criminal charges. I would myself much sooner be convicted of half the offences in Archbold's Criminal Pleading and Practice than of the sort of accusation which is brought against Mr. Lang's honour and loyalty by the accusations which are made against him by the Ministry of Defence, in the way that we have heard this afternoon. I am distressed that the noble and learned Viscount should say that it is not possible, without an infringement of the security of the country, to tell the wretched man what the charges against him are. The charges are not the same as the evidence, and I think that point appears perfectly clearly in the White Paper itself. I was sorry that the noble and learned Viscount (lid not deal with it. I hope that I was sufficiently clear in my opening statement when I said that in general I am in entire agreement with the White Paper. My complaint is that the Minister has not followed the White Paper effectively. Here and there there may be parts of the White Paper which are open to objection, but, generally speaking, I agree with it, and I agree

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with the statement which the noble and 1279 learned Viscount read from the statement of Mr. Attlee, as he then was, on the matter. But Mr. Attlee was dealing with people who were either Communists or associated with Communists. Mr. Lang has never been a Communist and has never associated with Communistshis wife had ceased to be a member of the Communist Party and had entirely severed her connection with the whole thing before he married her. Is there any doubtbecause it seems to me that this is what we are coming tohonestly held by the Minister such as to justify bringing pressure to bear on the man's employers in order to get him dismissed? I really cannot accept that as being a position which is either honourable or reasonable. Obviously, it must be a decision of the Minister. I accept that. The decision of the Home Secretary on these cases during the war had to be referred to the Birkett Committee or the Morris Committee. They reported back to the Home Secretary, and he had to take the final decision. But the Home Secretary took the final decision knowing that men who had spent their lives in sifting evidence had brought their experience and intelligence to bear on this point. It was not a question of Mr. Justice Birkett ordering that the 18B men should be released. All he did was to report on the evidence which had satisfied some administrators at an earlier stage that the man should be locked up, when, on effective scrutiny, that evidence disintegrated just in the manner the policeman's evidence disintegrated in the way I described earlier. In those circumstances, Mr. Justice Birkett would advise the Home Secretary to order the release of the man. That same sort of procedure might well be followed here, and I am sorry that the noble and learned Viscount could not accept it. There is one further point on which I feel that the Government are behaving with a complete absence of magnanimity. I do not know whether Mr. Lang wants his case brought before the "Three Wise Men" or not. But if the noble and learned Viscount had himself been confronted with the same sort of situation 1280 in January or February of this year, and had been told that there was a possibility, sometime later in the year, of this policy being adopted, and had then suddenly found the charge revived against him, after hearing nothing whatever about it for five months, would he not have said, "I know in my own mind that I am innocent of this business. I can satisfy the man at the Ministry of Defence if only I can see him. If he is a decent man he will tell me what he has against me, and I can satisfy him"? Surely, it was the most reasonable thing in the world that Mr. Lang should say, "I should like to come and see you, hear what is against me, and satisfy you." He failed to satisfy Sir Cyril Musgrave. He failed because the only point made against him when he was there was in respect of his wife. He has never had the opportunity of dealing with these other points to which the noble and learned Viscount referred. I suggest that a man of magnanimity would say, "Look here, if you wish to have your case looked at by the 'Three Wise Men,' you shall have it." I am quite sure that the late Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchillin whom I think magnanimity was the greatest of all his qualities, qualities of courage, perseverance and the other things to which the country owes so much; in a sense dwarfed by this great quality of magnanimitywould say, "Let the man have the chance of his case being considered by these people." I do not know whether Mr. Lang wants it or not, but I am distressed to feel that the noble and learned Viscount, who I know is a lover of liberty and has a passion for the Common Law,. should not feel it in his heart, on behalf of the Government which he represents so ably, to say that this man shall have the opportunity of clearing himself of these charges. It would be absurd for me to ask your Lordships to divide on this question this evening. There are very few of your Lordships left here, and the vote

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would have little meaning one way or another. In those circumstances, I ask your Lordships' permission to withdraw my Motion. Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn. ********************************************************************** BRITISH INFORMATION SERVICES HC Deb 14 December 1956 vol 562 cc795-876 795 11.7 a.m. Mr. G. B. Drayson (Skipton) I beg to move. That this House, conscious of the need to strengthen and improve British information services overseas, urges that the resources of the Central Office of Information should be used to their maximum in this field I gave notice on 28th November that I should raise this subject today. I was encouraged to do so because, only a few minutes earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) had put a Question to the Lord Privy Seal on the subject of the Central Office of Information. At the time I do not think that we considered that the reply of my right hon. Friend was entirely satisfactory, although it showed that the Government regarded the matter with some seriousness. Two days after I had given notice that I should move this Motion we were all delighted at the announcement by the Government that the Postmaster-General was to assume responsibility for coordinating the Government information services. But while we welcomed that announcement, let me say straight away that I consider that this is not a job which can be combined with other Ministerial responsibilities, but that it should be made a full-time appointment. The fact that it has not yet been made a full-time appointment causes some doubt about the sincerity and determination of the Government in this matter. I hope that it is being seriously considered and that perhaps in the New Year, when some new appointments may be made, we shall find that the Postmaster-General has received further promotion; that he has a seat in the Cabinet and will then be in a much better position to know what is going on, and be able to see that our views and our policy are put over throughout the world. I believe that the Postmaster-General has a major operation to perform in overhauling and purging the public relations departments of the various Ministries and the Central Office of Information. I agree that a doctor is needed in the House. I hope that we shall soon have one at No. 10 Downing Streetin the Cabinet, not as his official residence to do this major operation, to keep his 796 finger on the pulse of the nation and his ear to the heart of the problem. We have all been appalled at the way in which our case has gone by default in recent months, especially in the Middle East and in the United States of America. We have failed to make any impression on those who are hostile to us and we have also failed to put over our case with our friends across the Atlantic. Today, we are engaged in the cold war. This is a war fought with words and not with weapons, and I believe that the Government are just waking up to this fact. In the Middle East, Colonel Nasser has just suffered a severe defeat, but his instruments of propaganda have convinced the people in that area that this was, in fact, an outstanding victory. All the Arab nations think so. That is, of course, preposterous, but, nevertheless, they think so. Colonel Nasser stirred up all the trouble in the Middle East by his actions, yet he has convinced half the world that he has been the victim of unprovoked aggression. It is said that his propaganda machine is the most efficient since that operated by Goebbels and that the amount of money that he is spending on it is

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about 25 million per annum, whereas I believe that the B.B.C. spends only 3 million per annum on its overseas services. I am glad that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is to reply to the debate, because I think that money is one of the chief ingredients in this problem. I have no hesitation in asking him to use his influence with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to see that more money is made available for this important work. Many of us recently had the opportunity to hear about our information services in the Middle East from General Sir John Glubb. He told us that, some time ago, it would have been possible, for a few thousand pounds, to have bought an Arab newspaper which circulates in an important part of the Arab world. The Treasury could not see advantage in advancing a few thousand pounds to make the purchase. I am sure that we realise today that, had that money been spent then, and had Britain's case been put over and had misinformation been corrected by the use of this journal, a great deal of unnecessary expense later on would have been saved. 797 When we turn to the United States and our information services there, it is understandable that we have some difficulties when we think, for example, that some time ago Guy Burgess himself was selected to put over our case in the United States at the time of the Korean War. In fact, he said then that he was appalled by the ignorance and incompetence of some of his colleagues. If he was appalled, what can the general standard of the information branch have been at that time? I like to think that the Postmaster-General will soon be striding through the Foreign Office and our embassies abroad, examining the information services, because this is his job and this is what we expect him to do. We do not expect him to be mealymouthed about it, but to get on with the job and to see where the people responsible for putting over our case ********************************************************************** SECURITY SERVICES (UNIVERSITIES) HC Deb 07 June 1957 vol 571 cc1572-86 1572 11.20 a.m. Mr. H. A. Marquand (Middlesbrough, East) Already this morning, the House has shown its traditional great concern for the liberty of the subject. I am conscious that I must try to curtail some of my remarks upon another aspect of this important subject. I shall do my best, but, nevertheless, I hope that hon. Members will realise that I also propose to raise a matter concerning the liberty of the subject, and that it must be discussed thoroughly if the discussion is to be of any value. Considerable uneasiness has been aroused recently by reports in the Press of increased activity by agents of security services in seeking information from teachers in universities. It has raised in the public mind two questions; how far, if at all, it is right and proper that activities of the security services should endanger the relations between the university teacher and his pupil, and how farindeed, I doubt whether anyone can rightly say it ought to be at allany activities by the security services can conceivably justify endangering the relations between university teachers themselves, one university teacher with another. The Joint Under-Secretary of State and the Home Secretary are both graduates of the University of Cambridge. I am sure they would agree with me that, if it should be proved true that fellows of Cambridge colleges had been asked to report upon one another by security agents, surely the cry would go up, Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee; Milton was a graduate of Cambridge University, like the hon. and learned Gentleman, and that university has a magnificent tradition of

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defence of liberty of thought and liberty of speech. It is not the only university, but I am addressing myself particularly to the Joint Under-Secretary of State who comes from that university. It is a university with a tradition in this respect which is second to none. Milton wrote his Areopagitica at a time of social strife, war and revolution, when 1573 the security of the State was daily threatened, and he did it to proclaim the right to speak and to write as one pleased without fear of persecution if authority was offended. It is to defend those same rights that we are opposed to Fascism and Communism, and none more strongly than I. It is the totalitarian nature of those creeds that we chiefly detest, but it would be a tragedy indeed if, in defending ourselves from Fascism or Communism, we were to lose the most precious thing we possess, our liberty to think, speak, discuss, argue, read and write as we please. An eminent man, as it happened a Cambridge man, expressed these views on the radio some days ago. Mr. David Thompson, Master-elect of Sidney Sussex College, said: The university is the last place in which free play of ideas and arguments should be inhibited. There should be in any and every university complete liberty to pursue any idea wherever it may lead and to challenge fearlessly any belief. I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will say that he approves every one of those words; that he feels, as we do, that there is something especially important and sacred in the relationship between the tutor and the taught, and between the tutors themselves within their colleges, which is peculiarly precious, and we should ensure that it be not destroyed. I am not in the slightest degree attempting to underrate the importance of freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of activity in other spheres. I am speaking particularly of the universities this morning, because this question has been raised lately in connection with the universities. I need hardly say that my references to Cambridge are not meant to suggest that this is exclusively a problem of the older universities very far from it. I have gained all my experience in the newer universities and in universities in the United States of America. I realise that this problem affects them quite as vitally aspossibly, since in some cases they are not so old and their traditions may not be so deeply rooted, even more thanit does the older universities. There is, of course, another side to the question, and I recognise that we should not, through our zeal for freedom, permit the enemies of democracy to destroy it. I accept that. I have not heard any com- 1574 ment on this matter by anyone at all who does not accept the necessity to take all reasonable precautions to ensure that only reliable persons shall be employed in posts where access to secret information is possible. It is obvious that persons with defects of character may sell secrets or betray them under the threat of blackmail. Experience during and since the war has shown that Fascists and Communists will betray secrets to other Governments in the interests of what they conceive to be a higher loyalty. Because that is so, we are bound to ensure that such persons do not have access to the secrets of defence and foreign policy. University teachers are accustomed to being asked by prospective employers to give their confidential opinion on the suitability of their former pupils for employment by that employer. They do not object to that. They are accustomed to it. I have done it myself scores of times. They do not object to being asked a similar question in this connection, "Do you think that Mr. So-and-so is a person who, in your judgment, is suitable to be employed on work of a highly confidential or secret nature?" That is not an unreasonable question to ask. It is a question which, I believe, university teachers are quite prepared to answer. Mr. Thomson went so far as to say: I believe it is a don's duty to help to keep any potential traitor out of what you might call security risk jobs. I have no doubt that

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opinion would be agreed by most university teachers. But he went on to say: I do not think he should be asked to divulge to security officers or to anybody else the knowledge or considerations that have led him to this verdict. Nothing should be done to extract from him details about his pupil's beliefs and opinions, political or any other. That, I think, expresses very succinctly and fairly the line which should be drawn. It is right, reasonable and proper to ask teachers for their confidential opinion, which they can give freely; but there is no reason to go further and to ask what they know about the activities and the opinions of the young men in their charge. They are in a far better position to judge the extent to which one should give weight, in youth, to political activities and expressions of opinion and the extent to which these things can be discounted and disregarded as due to immaturity and the like. If university 1575 teachers are treated in this way, as responsible individuals, they will respond as responsible individuals, and they should be so approached. As Mr. Thomson put it: it would be more to the point to ask teachers whether a man is discreet or not than whether he is a Communist or not. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will say that he realises the force of this argument. We are not dealing with ignorant people, with no ability to distinguish the chaff from the wheat, the essential from the inessential. We are dealing with people who spend their whole lives doing precisely that, people whose advice can be of much more value to the Home Secretary if it can be given in confidence, and freely, than if attempts are made to ask a whole list of questions which the conscience of the teacher will make him refuse to answer. As Mr. Thomson says: A don can teach successfully only through a personal relationship based on confidence. If we destroy that personal relationship based upon confidence, we attack university life at its roots, and we deprive it of its ability to do the very thing which it is supposed to do. It may be said. "Well what are you talking about? We agree with all this. Everybody can subscribe to what you have said. We are not lost to the danger." I am convinced that there is a danger. Mr. Thomson himself referred to these absurdities and these pernicious distrusts will grow unless security officers are forbidden to ask in universities the detailed political questions they have sometimes been asking. He knew before he said that that questions had been put of a detailed nature of that kind which are objectionable. The Council of the Association of University Teachers, meeting recently in Cardiff, made it quite clear, in the discussion on this question, which was reported at fair length in the Press, that there had been an extension of the inquiries recently and that they were going altogether beyond the bounds of what is tolerable and reasonable in the interests, indeed, of the Government themselves. The Home Secretary said in the House yesterday: I can say that no significant changes or extensions have been made in the last twelve months."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th June, 1957; Vol. 571. c. 1465.] 1576 He said that in reply to Questions asking what changes or what new inquiries had been made to ascertain the political views and activities of university students. Of course, I accept that when the right hon. Gentleman said that he could say that no significant changes or extensions had been made in the last twelve months he was saying what he thought, from his experience, to be true. I want the Under-Secretary to ask his right hon. Friend, when he reports to him on this topic, whether he will inquire further into the matter and satisfy himself whether, in fact, there have been no changes and no extensions recently. I suggest that it is possible for security services, full of zeal to do their job, as all good civil servants are, to go further than their instructions really warrant in their anxiety to be sure that they are fully seized of all the information they ought to have and that the information they have is reliable.

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They carry their investigations and inquiries beyond the bounds that the Home Secretary himself would approve. I ask the Home Secretary to take the profession more closely into his confidence than the Government seem to have done so far. The profession to which I belong, or to which I belonged until I became a Member of Parliament, no more wants our free institutions destroyed than does the right hon. Gentleman or the Under-Secretary; but the profession has its professional honour to safeguard, and the relations-hip between the university teacher and his pupil, though it may be somewhat different, is not very greatly different in character from the relation between the doctor and his patient or the priest and the penitent. Their exchanges of views and confidence ought not to be interfered with to any greater degree than those other confidences are interfered with. They have as much right to safeguard their special relationship as the profession of medicine or the profession of religion. They may have to consider drawing up a code of conduct, as other professions have done, but I am sure that before they do that they would welcome the opportunity to talk to the right hon. Gentleman and the Under-Secretary. I pass from the question of relations between staff and students to the other question of whether or not university 1577 teachers have been invited to watch one another and to report the actions, behaviour and opinions of other university teachers to the security authorities. I believe that this is what may have happened. The security authorities or agents, having asked a university don for an opinion upon one or more of his students, may then have said to themselves, or perhaps some other wing of the security organisation may have said, "This opinion is all very well, but what do we know of the person who gave it?", and they may then have started a check upon the person from whom they asked the opinion. That kind of thing can go on and on and never end. Espionage leads to counterespionage and to counter-counter-espionage until a whole tangle of people can be involved in this sort of inquiry and nobody can know whether liberty is being preserved or not. The high probability of it is that at the end of the day false information is given to the Government. Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne) Who investigates the policeman? Mr. Marquand I believe quite seriously that, in the desire to check upon those who have given opinions, the security authorities have asked teachers in universities to give opinions on their fellow teachers. That is a serious statement to make. I think it is true. I do not believe that that could have been done with the personal authority of the Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman told us earlier today that something had been done by his predecessor which he would now not regard as a precedent. We were very glad indeed to hear that. Possibly, in this case, something of that kind may have occurred. If so, I hope we shall get the same answerthat what may have been done in the past was due either to an action for which the Home Secretary was not personally responsible or was due to excess of zeal on the part of agents of the Crown and that it will not be regarded as a precedent, and will be stopped. I have taken steps to check the accuracy of the story that at least one university teacher has been asked to report on the activities of his fellow 1578 teachers in his university institution. I have prima facie evidence that the story is true. I will say no more. I have no intention of mentioning names. The name, I shall, of course, give freely to the right

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hon. Gentleman and to the hon. and learned Gentleman; indeed, the person who gave me the information has asked me to do so. All I ask is that the hon. and learned Gentleman shall investigate that evidence. Then we shall know that he appreciates the gravity of a charge of this nature. I do not believe that the hon. and learned Gentleman could deny the truth and the high value of what Professor Montrose said at the last meeting of the A.U.T. Conference, which was: We ought to make it clear that this Association is quite convinced that no person can with honour remain a university teacher and, at the same time, agree to be a secret agent for the Government in this work. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman accept that this is a proper professional view to take? Would he disagree with what Mr. Thompson also said, which was: To entice or expect dons to reveal the views of their colleagues in the common room or at the high table must always be pernicious and impermissible. Is it impermissible? If it takes place, and if the hon. and learned Gentleman, after looking at the evidence which this person is prepared to give him, will accept that it is true, will he ensure that it is in future impermissible? I would also ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to request the Home Secretary to go further than the individual case to which I will give him access. If there were reason to believe that an approach of this kind had been made to one university teacher, alarm would spread throughout the university world, and the relationship between teacher and taught would be in jeopardy throughout our land. Therefore, it should be necessary to go further than merely to investigate the one case, and to set on foot some kind of inquiry into how far the security services really carry out the wishes of Ministers. Have they gone beyond the bounds of reason? Have they been engaging in something which the Government did not wish to happen and would not approve of, and can Parliament be informed that 1579 the requisite measures have been taken to stop it? The right hon. Gentleman might perhaps approach the Conference of the Privy Councillors which looked into this matter a short time ago. It then reported that it was satisfied that reasonable precautions were being taken which did not go unnecessarily far in restricting the liberty of the subject. The right hon. Gentleman might ask it to look at it again and report to him, so that its report can, in part, be published to satisfy Parliament and the country whether or not there has been any extension of this practice, since it last reported, and whether the right hon. Gentleman is satisfied. I am asking the hon. and learned Gentleman three questions today to which I would like an answer. The first is whether he will consult the profession. By that I mean not merely consult the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principalsthough I certainly agree and think that it ought to be consulted. Knowing so many of the Committee as I do as personal friends, I am sure that it would take the same kind of view as I have taken this morning. But the Association of University Teacherswill they be consulted about this matter and taken, to some permissible degree, into the confidence of the Government and their views expressed? Secondly, will the hon. and learned Gentleman considerI am sure that he must say "Yes" to thisthe evidence that university teachers have been asked to report on their fellows? Thirdly, will he invite a group of Privy Councillors to look into the matter? If the hon. and learned Gentleman does not think that is appropriate, would he invite an eminent person whose impartiality and high standing will give confidence to the public to do so? This was done in wartime, when Sir Norman Birkett was invited to report on the 18B procedure. Would he ask such a person, who would be as anxious to protect the liberties of the public as to protect the due interests of the State, to make some inquiry into this matter, if it is inappropriate to refer the matter to Privy Councillors?

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I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will be able to answer all three questions in the affirmative. 1580 11.46 a.m. The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. J. E. S. Simon) I am sure that the whole House will be grateful for the way in which the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Marquand) has raised this important issue, not only for the spirit in which he has approached it, but I hope it will not be thought an impertinence if I say thisfor the very impressive way in which he phrased the case that he made. The right hon. Gentleman is, of course, a Privy Councillor himself, and he is entitled to be heard with particular authority on this matter in that his own academic record both as student and as teacher was one of singular brilliance. The question that the right hon. Gentleman has raised today is one of very grave importance. It is an aspect of the age-long relationship between security and freedom. Without security there can be no freedom. The problem on the one hand, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested, is to prevent freedom from being used to destroy freedom; but equally, on the other hand, we must take care that the measures we take for the preservation of freedom do not themselves result in its impairment. The problem first arose in its modern form in the 1930s, when the menace was primarily a Fascist one. A strongly organised Fascist Party abused such simple, traditional liberties as to dress as we please, to parade in procession and to criticise other classes of the community. It abused such freedoms in such a way, we believed, as to threaten to destroy the very liberty on which such freedoms depended. Therefore, it was felt necessary, reluctantly and distastefully, to limit to some degree the freedoms which the community generally had enjoyed so that the greater freedom should be retained. Today, it is another alien, extremist and subversive movement which generally threatens our liberty. The cold war may vary in temperature and may even flare up, as in Hungary and Korea, into armed conflict, but the aim of the subjugation of the free world to Communism remains constant. It would be as great a mistake to exaggerate the menace so far as it relates to the internal security of this country as to pretend that it does not exist. The Canadian spy ring, Nunn 1581 May, Fuchs, Burgess and Maclean, are too recent in our memory. ********************************************************************** MR. GUY BURGESS HC Deb 09 March 1959 vol 601 cc853-4 853 4. Mr. H. Morrison asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what application he has received from Mr. Guy Burgess for the renewal of his passport; and what decision he has taken in the matter. 854 The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. D. Ormsby-Gore) Burgess sent a message to our delegation in Moscow saying that he wished to visit the United Kingdom but feared that the British authorities would seize his passport and prevent him from returning to the Soviet Union: he therefore asked the Prime Minister for an undertaking that he would be free to return to Moscow. No reply was sent to this message as Her Majesty's Government have, of course, no power to give Burgess the undertaking for which he asked, nor are they prepared to give him any travel facilities. Mr. Morrison Is the right hon. Member aware that that reply will be received with satisfaction? Would he agree that the only reason for allowing Mr. Burgess here would be if there were

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enough evidence to warrant his prosecution in this country? May I express the hope that this person, who deserted from his post in this country, will otherwise be allowed to stay where he is? Mr. Ormsby-Gore I accept what the right hon. Gentleman has said. Mr. Shinwell Is there any indication that the Russians are anxious to get rid of Mr. Burgess? Mr. Younger May I ask the Minister a question on his final phrase about travel facilities? Does it imply that, irrespective of whether a criminal charge might lie against Mr. Burgess, about which I know nothing, the Government have already taken the decision that no passport would be issued to him? Would not that be rather exceptional procedure? Is it not the case that in peacetime travel passports are normally available to almost anybody, except for some very special reasons, such as conviction for treason? Mr. Ormsby-Gore The right hon. Gentleman is right. That is the normal procedure, but passports have been withheld in certain cases, among them Sir Oswald Mosley and Dr. Alan Nunn May. There are exceptions. ********************************************************************** MACLEAN AND BURGESS (PASSPORTS) HC Deb 04 June 1959 vol 606 cc48-9W 48W Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what instructions he has given to Her Majesty's diplomatic and consular officers in foreign countries with regard to the issuing of new British passports to Messrs. Maclean and Burgess. Mr. Ormsby-Gore No general instructions have been given to Her Majesty's diplomatic and consular officers in foreign countries with regard to the issuing of new passports to Messrs. Maclean and Burgess and, in the circumstances in which these two men left the country, I am satisfied that none were necessary. Captain Kerby asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on what dates the British passports upon which Messrs. 49W Maclean and Burgess finally left the United Kingdom were originally issued to them; on what date their total period of validity will expire; and on what dates they have been renewed by any of Her Majesty's competent authorities overseas. Mr. Ormsby-Gore The passports in the possession of Messrs. Maclean and Burgess at the time they finally left the United Kingdom were issued on 30th July, 1949, and 20th July, 1950, respectively. As neither passport has been renewed for the further five years permissible under the standing regulations, the validity of the two passports expired respectively on 29th July, 1954, and 19th July, 1955. ********************************************************************** Maclean and Burgess (Passports) HC Deb 05 June 1959 vol 606 c56W 56W Captain Kerby asked the Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations what instructions he has given to United Kingdom High Commissioners in Commonwealth countries with regard to the issuing of new British passports to Messrs. Maclean and Burgess.

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Mr. Alport As regards the issue of instructions to United Kingdom High Commissioners I have nothing to add to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs on 4th June, 1959, to a similar Question relating to foreign countries. ********************************************************************** Mr. A. M. Wraight HC Deb 27 January 1960 vol 616 cc139-41 139 5. Mr. de Freitas asked the Secretary of State for Air whether he will make a statement on the case of Flying Officer Anthony Maynard Wraight who recently returned from Russia. 6 and 7. Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux asked the Secretary of State for Air (1) why Mr. Anthony Maynard Wraight was discharged from the Royal Air Force for misconduct, thus rendering him immune from the serious charges under the Air Force Act to which his actions rendered him liable; (2) what action was taken to prevent Mr. Anthony Maynard Wraight deserting from the Royal Air Force and seeking political asylum in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics within a week of receiving a warning from Royal Air Force security officers that he would probably be charged with an offence under the Air Force Act resulting from his contacts with the Soviet authorities in Great Britain. 13. Mr. Mason asked the Secretary of State for Air the result of the recent official interrogations of Flying Officer Wraight; why he was given permission to leave his Royal Air Force station, thus eluding security officers and escaping to Russia; and if he will make a statement. Mr. Ward On 6th December, 1956, Flying Officer Wraight was reported 140 absent without leave. Inquiries showed that he had flown to Berlin on 3rd December. He had previously been questioned about being in contact with a representative of the Soviet Film Agency attached to the Russian Embassy in London, but there was no evidence of any offence that would have justified restricting his movements. In January, 1959, Wraight was removed from the Royal Air Force for misconduct, with effect from 3rd December, 1956. This was in accordance with long-standing practice, which I have since altered. He returned to the United Kingdom on 15th December, 1959, and was interviewed by the civil authorities. Officers of my Department were present part of the time, but since Wraight is no longer a member of the Royal Air Force the result of the interviews is not a matter for me. Mr. de Freitas Many Members are puzzled by this case. Why was this man able to go and why, when he comes back, does nothing more happen than that he publishes his memoirs in the Sunday papers? Surely, there is something else to be said. Mr. Ward In December, 1956, we could not have prevented his leaving the station except by putting him under arrest. There was no evidence at that time that he had committed any offence grave enough to justify such action. Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux Will not my right hon. Friend agree that it is an astounding statement to say that there was no reason for stopping this man leaving the country? Is it not a fact that when he was interviewed on 1st December by the security officers of the Royal Air Force, he was informed that charges would be brought against him? That was the statement he

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made in the newspapers. Does my right hon. Friend also recall that this disgraceful affair happened nearly a year after the very similar episode of Burgess and Maclean, which suggests that those responsible for our security policy learnt absolutely nothing in the intervening time? Mr. Ward No, Sir. Wraight was never at any time told that he would even probably be charged with an offence under the Air Force Act. 141 Mr. Mason Does the Secretary of State agree that the Air Ministry have made absolute fools of themselves in this matter? A flying officer, a person of no mean rank, has ten meetings with the Soviet Consulate, is interviewed by Air Ministry security officers, escapes freely and goes to Russia for three years. Then, the cheek of it all is that the British taxpayer has to pay for his return to this country and then, after interrogation, we let him off quite easily. What has been the object of the exercise in bringing him back to this country? Mr. Ward His original explanation of having talks with the film unit attached to the Russian Embassy was that he had always been extremely interested in films. In fact, he had written a thesis on the subject when he was still at Cranwell. It looked as though he would have to leave the Service anyway for medical reasons and there was no reason to disbelieve his story that his interest in film-making had led him to have these talks with the Russians. Mr. Mason His interest in the screen has obviously blinded the Air Ministry. This is a lame and poor statement. It is not surprising that the British public at least expresses concern that we allow these people to escape to Russia and then we ourselves foot the bill to bring them back and then allow them to go free. Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas Are we footing the bill? Mr. Ward The Air Ministry certainly is not. Mr. de Freitas How much pay did the flying officer receive for his time in Russia? Mr. Ward He was removed from the Royal Air Force with effect from the day he left this country and he received no pay. Mr. Mason In view of the very unsatisfactory nature of the Minister's replies. I give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible opportunity. ********************************************************************** ADMIRALTY UNDERWATER WEAPONS ESTABLISHMENT, PORTLAND (ESPIONAGE) HC Deb 23 March 1961 vol 637 cc739-75 739 11.0 p.m. Mr. George Wigg (Dudley) In seeking to raise at this late hour some of the points which arise in connection with the espionage trial concluded yesterday, I want to make it clear to the House that, first of all, I gave notice to the First Lord of the Admiralty because, of course, he is directly responsible inasmuch as the Underwater Weapons Establishment at Portland is borne on

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his Vote, and, secondly, I gave notice to the Minister of Defence, because the other fighting Services are involved, and, through his private office, to the Prime Minister who, of course, is responsible for the Secret Service. I realise very well that, although the trial is concluded, and even though I may be within the rules of the House, one has a direct responsibility here to remember that further proceedings might arise. I have consulted Erskine May, and I find on page 457, under the heading "Matters pending Judicial Decision", that the situation is governed by a Ruling given by Mr. Speaker Clifton Brown, recorded in HANSARD, Vol. 420, column 303, when he said that a matter decided by a court but open to appeal is not sub judice unless notice of appeal has been given. Anxious to comply not only with the letter of that Ruling but also with the spirit, I got in touch with the Registrar of Appeals at the Court of Criminal Appeal this morning, and he informed me that up to that time no notice of appeal had been given. As I told the House in a supplementary question I put this afternoon, I wished to be absolutely fair on the point. To be quite certain what the facts were, at 4.30 p.m., the normal hour for the closing of the office of the Registrar, I telephoned again and I was informed that no notice of appeal had been given. I am thus in order in referring to matters which took place during the trial, but, of course, it is clear that it is more than likely that there will be an appeal, and I ought, therefore, to be very mindful of the possibility that further proceedings may come before the courts. I have done 740 my best, and I thought it right to tell the House of what I had done in this connection. Before the Prime Minister's statement, it was my intention to deal not so much with matters connected with the trial itself, though I shall have one or two observations to make about that, but to ask the Government to set up an inquiry. As I say, my first notice was to the First Lord of the Admiralty because he is concerned with what has happened, but I am quite certain that Portland is now a proscribed area for the Russian intelligence service. It is extremely unlikely that any more Russian agents will be caught in that area, at least for some time to come. Nevertheless, it seems to me that whatever had gone wrong thereand something had gone wrongmay well be going wrong in other places. On my visits to the Old Bailey, as I listened to the story there unfolded[Laughter.] Yes, I went to listen. I thought it important to go and acquaint myself with what had happened. What struck me was the tremendous resources which scientists and technicians are applying now to the business of gathering information. The old "cloak and dagger" stories which are fed to the public by the B.B.C. or the more lurid forms of writing are all out of date. Vast sums are devoted to the gathering and passing of information. Whilst I should like to congratulate the police and the intelligence services on doing something that the Americans have failed to dowe caught a couple of their spies, two who got through their netI certainly do not believe that the antiquarian book-selling business carried on at Ruislip was carried on merely to cover the activities of two humble and not very intelligent people like Mr. Houghton and Miss Gee. I think there is a lot more going on than that. It was never my intention to probe this case too far or to seek in any way to hamper the activities of the authorities. I am mindful of what was wisely written in paragraph 28 of Command 9577, the "Report concerning the disappearance of two former Foreign Office Officials." The last half of that paragraph states: Counter-espionage equally depends for its success upon the maximum secrecy of its methods. Nor is it desirable at any moment to let the other side know how much has been discovered or guess at what means have been 741 used to discover it. Nor should they be allowed to know all the

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steps that have been taken to improve security. These considerations still apply and must be the basic criterion for judging what should or should not he published. Those are words of wisdom, and it is no part of what I am saying tonight to do anything to hamper the Government or those responsible in putting matters right. On the many occasions when I have wearied the House with my views on defence, there has been one constant theme. I have always thought that this subject transcends political considerations. I have always held that view. I have advocated it even when I have bored people to distraction. That has been the theme, and I adhere to it tonight. One must recognise that this is a sad story. The Lord Chief Justice described it as a disgraceful one. In some ways, it is humiliating. Having said that, however, we might be conscious of something on the credit side. The first item I have already mentioned. Two American spies who had got away have been caught here. One wishes that they had been caught sooner, but there it is. Another factor to be conscious aboutI was conscious of it at the Old Baileywas the atmosphere of absolute justice and impartiality. Although I thought that Mr. Lonsdale was a Russian intelligence officer, I thought in some ways that perhaps he had served in the armed forces. Perhaps I may weary the House and explain why I thought so. Right at the last moment, Mr. Lonsdale asked to make a statement. He got up and said that he took full responsibility for anything that had happened. Those were the words of a Regular officer, not a politician. I thought that the traditions of the British Army had in some way entered into the training of Russian intelligence officers. It is certainly to our national credit that the trial should have been conducted with the utmost fairness and every opportunity given to the accused to make their case. I hope that the British Press, when freed from the inhibitions of contempt of court, will continue to do its best, but I am not absolutely sure because of this morning's edition of the Daily Mail. This brings me to the first point to which I want the Civil Lord to reply. There are statements in that newspaper ascribed to 742 a Captain George Symonds, a naval officer who, I understand, is on the Active List. He made comments upon how much information the Russians may have obtained and other comments. I cannot believe that a serving officer ever made that statement. If Captain Symonds did make it, I suggest that it should be considered whether he has not laid himself open to disciplinary remedies. If he did not say it, I hope that the Civil Lord will take the earliest possible opportunity of denying it. Other statements are ascribed to other officers, one of whom, a naval attache, may or may not be on the Active List, and the other of whom is the security officer at Portland. Because of the nature of all of these statements, I doubt whether they were ever made. I hope very much that we shall hear from the Civil Lord something about this. It would also seem, if the Daily Mail report is correct, that the security in the First Lord's private office needs to be looked at, because there are statements there concerning ViceAdmiral Sir Geoffrey Thistleton-Smith. I should like to hear the Civil Lord's comments on them. I have said what I had intended to do in raising this matter, but this afternoon we had a statement from the Prime Minister which, needless to say, caused me to reflect on what I had to say. I must say that I thought that it was one of the smartest operations I have listened to for a long time. I am always lost in admiration of the Prime Minister. He is the smartest political operator I have ever listened to. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It is all right as long as one does not check what he said on a previous occasion, but I have had the opportunity. We listened to the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon and he absolutely spell-bound both sides of the House.

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The right hon. Gentleman said three things. First, he was going to institute an inquiry probably under a civil judge of great distinction, who would see whether the procedures advocated by the Privy Councillors had been applied. Then he saidhe hoped with the support of the Oppositionthat if it was found there were weaknesses about it he would remedy them. Then that was not quite enough. He appealed to the ghost of Edmund Burke. He had to bring 743 in civil liberties and the like. But when one added the three things, what did one notice? One looked behind the Speaker's Chair and saw the Prime Minister saying "Ta-ta" because he was off to the Bahamas. He was away and Out of it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh"]. If hon. Members think that I am unfair, let us see what the Prime Minister said on 7th November, 1955. The right hon. Gentleman then said: When what is known as the Maclean and Burgess case was entering its final phase, with the findings of the Australian Royal Commission and the publication of the White Paper, I made it clear that full ministerial responsibility must be taken by those Ministers, past and present, who presided over or were connected with the Foreign Office during all this period. This was not a mere act of quixotism or chivalry; it is a plain constitutional truth. It will be a sorry day when we try to elevate something called the Foreign Office or the Treasury or any other Department of State into a separate entity enjoying a kind of life, responsibility and power of its own, not controlled by Ministers and not subject to full Parliamentary authority. Ministers, and Ministers alone, must bear the responsibility for what goes wrong. After all, they are not slow to take credit for anything that goes right."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th November, 1955; Vol. 545, c. 1484.] Having said that, I should have thought that this afternoon the Prime Minister would have taken the full responsibility, because he is the head of the Civil Service. But that did not happen. The right hon. Gentleman talked about setting up an inquiry. He puts, as it were, by implication, the blame in part at least on any weaknesses that may be found in the recommendations of the Committee of Privy Councillors. When one looks at the "Statement on the Findings of the Conference of Privy Councillors on Security" one does not need to go far to see what the weaknesses are. Paragraph 4 of that White Paper states: The Conference point out that, whereas once the main risk to be guarded against was espionage by foreign Powers carried out by professional agents, today the chief risks are presented by Communists and then it goes on to talk about the dangers of political espionage undertaken for political reasons. One of the interesting features about this recent case is that when one listens to it the only question of a political allegiance that came out was in respect of Miss Gee, who said that she had no strong political views but if she had 744 voted, she would vote for the Liberal Party. [Interruption.] I am sorry; I was looking round for the Liberal Party. It seems, for the time being at least, to have lost a supporter. What needs to be pointed out is that the mood of 1955 is shown to be completely out of joint with what happened in 1961. Therefore, if for no other reason, the Prime Minister, if he had looked at what he had said in 1955 and looked at what that Report said, would have reached the conclusion that he did not need an inquiry, which he announced to the public, to bear some of the responsibility, for he would, in fact, take the decisions himself. The third point of the Prime Minister's alibi was the question of the liberty of the subject. Here again, I found it of extreme interest to look at the latter part of an excellent speech that he made on 7th November, 1955, on the question of positive and negative vetting, which he would have the House believe is a matter of very great concern and must be regarded very carefully because of its infringement on the liberty of the subject.

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I would remind the House of what the Prime Minister said on that subject. He told the House that positive vetting was introduced in 1952 in the Foreign Office. He went on to say: The positive vetting procedure is not confined to the Foreign Service. It is now operated in all Government Departments having access to classified material. " [OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th November, 1955; Vol. 545, c. 14991500.] What I would think, in all charity, is that the Prime Minister has been so busy getting ready for his West Indian trip that he had not the time, with the care that he usually takes, to acquaint himself with what had been said on previous occasions. I think the wisest approach to this problem is that taken by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition in the Crabb debate in May, 1956, in column 1758 of the OFFICIAL REPORT. He laid down four conditions which needed to be satisfied. He said first, that the operations of these serviceshe was talking about the Secret Serviceare ultimately and effectively controlled by Ministers or by a Minister; secondly, that their operations are 745 secret; thirdly, that they are carried out in such a way as not to embarrass our international relations; and, fourthly, he was concerned with making the obvious point that they should be concerned with efficiency. He argued that in the Crabb case none of these conditions are satisfied. I think that some of them certainly were not satisfied at Portland. I think that, here again, there is something that has gone seriously wrong. Perhaps I might suggest one of the reasons as it struck me. Listening to the evidence, it seems to me that one of what I regard as the habits of the upper middle class in this country has spread to the security services; that is to say, they are wedded to the long week-end or the five-day week. What went wrong here was that Miss Gee and Mr. Houghton became aware that they could take documents away on Friday and bring them up to London to be photographed or shown to Mr. Lonsdale, and then as long as they were back again on Monday morning, it was all right. Nobody ever thought of having a check over the weekend, presumably because it would involve the breaking of longestablished habits or the payment of overtime. In all this we ought to remember our own responsibility. If, indeed, Ministers are responsible, if one makes the point that the Prime Minister is head of the Secret Service, I would remind the House that 60 million has been voted over the last ten years under that heading alone. There are also fairly substantial additional sums which are hidden away in the Service Estimates. It is altogether a fairly considerable sum of money. I readily agree that the nature of this work must be secret, and we certainly cannot ask the Prime Minister or any other Minister to come here and give an account of what takes place, but we have a right to be assured that these procedures are constantly under review and that the Government do not wait for a calamitous case like this before being brought face to face with the facts. I want from the Civil Lord an assurance that the security of all branches of the Armed Forces will be reviewed, not with a view to shutting the stable doors when all the horses are at Aintree, but 746 with a consciousness of the enormous development of espionage techniques. It is no use having a Committee of Privy Councillors in 1955 and praying that Committee in one's defence six years later, because techniques may have altered to such an enormous extent that the procedures adopted even six months ago may be hopelessly out of date. I want now to move to another aspect, in which every Member of this House bears a responsibility. When the House debated the Crabb case there was a Division, and it is interesting to noteI do not say this in a carping spiritin view of the Labour Party's recent controversies, that that Division took place on a Service Estimate. In that debate, Sir Anthony Eden made another important point which would have appealed to my hon.

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Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) had he been here tonight. Sir Anthony said: A classic example was the atomic bomb, where the whole expenditure100 millionwas concealed in the Estimates for a number of years." {OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th May, 1956; Vol. 552, c. 1761.] Although a number of my hon. Friends will not agree with this, because they are conditioned in their thinking about the Estimates by what happened before the war, it is clear that the Estimates as presented can contain things they never contained before the war. While I think that we should lay the responsibility for what happened where it belongsfairly and squarely on the shoulders of the Prime Minister and the Service MinistersI recognise that I have a responsibility, as a Member of this House, to attend Estimates debates and to scrutinise the Estimates. The procedures this year were very nearly disgraceful. Let us take, for instance, the Naval Estimates. I was naturally aware that the trial was going on, but there was the difficulty of remaining in order in raising the subject, in view of the Ruling I have referred to. But right at the end, came Vote 11, which covered "Miscellaneous Services". We had a major contribution from our Front Bench, and it is my submission that every single word of it was out of order. I realise that that is a reflection on the Chair, and that I must be careful, but that speech concerned the vital matter of the flying of 747 the White Ensign by members of the Royal Yacht Club. I said afterwards: I am very interested in the point raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). I ask the Government to bear in mind what I am going to say, for consideration in future years. I do not know how the recent discussion has been in order, but it obviously has been in order, otherwise the Chair would not have permitted it. It is odd that we can have an erudite and sophisticated discussion on the Royal Yacht Squadron, but cannot have any discussion on Naval Intelligence and the expenditure of money on it. Naval Intelligence is very important. We can spend ten minutes or a quarter of an hour discussing the flag flown by the Royal Yacht Squadron, but cannot devote a moment of time to discuss an important subject affecting the security of the country." [OFFICIAL REPORT. 14th March, 1961; Vol. 636, c. 1301.] That episode illustrated the extent to which our values have been out of focus, for we were not allowed to discuss Naval Intelligence, which was in Vote 12. We did not do so because the Government did not put it down, and the Opposition did not choose to ask for it. I advocate, as I have advocated beforeand I am sure that hon. Members in all parts of the House will support me in thisthat, with due regard for the public weal and security, the Government have to find some method whereby these Estimates can be scrutinised by those who are interested in them. In Committee on the Estimatesagain I use the word "disgraceful"there were times when there were not half-a-dozen people in the Chamber, and yet we were discussing the expenditure of thousands of pounds of public money. Over the past few years, in any branch of defencethe supply of aircraft at Suez, the supply of tank-landing ships at Suez, the supply of anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns at Suez, aircraft going into the Lebanon, transport aircraft today, the supply of equipment in Germanywhen the curtain is lifted we find deficiencies and weaknesses. It is all very well to blame that on the Executive, but the Service Ministries become ever more complicated and even the most energetic Minister cannot be at it all the time. It is the job of the House of Commons and the Estimates Committee to direct attention to the weaknesses and to help Ministers to do the job for which they are appointedthat of looking after the defences of the country. 748 That is why I have raised this matter tonight. I do not want to make any difficulties for the Prime Minister in his tackling of a painful and difficult task, but it has got to be

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tackled and tackled with vigour and with integrity, and Ministers must not run away from their responsibilities. I was "larking" with the Prime Minister, but that is a temptation, because he is a smart operator and he cut off and thought that he had got away with it and that his public relations officers would see that he was all right with the House and the country. Sir Lionel Heald (Chertsey) Very poor stuff. Mr. Wigg I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Gentleman thinks that it is poor stuff. He is expressing a party point of view and I am expressing my own point of view. This afternoon the Prime Minister did not face his responsibilities. I do not know whether he did not have time or not, but I urge Ministers to face their responsibilities and not to order inquiries by legal gentlemen, however distinguished. He should remember that the Armed Forces of the Crown respond to discipline and that it is discipline that makes them tick and that to introduce outside inquiries into them is to weaken that discipline. The right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) may think that that is poor stuff, but I probably know as much about the Armed Forces as he knows about the law. I am talking about a matter with which I am seriously concerned. It may not be politically convenient to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but it is very important. A state of affairs has been revealed with which it is our duty to concern ourselves. I want to strengthen the hands of the Prime Minister as head of the Secret Service. I am not asking him, and I do not expect him, to come to the House of Commons and say what he has discovered and what he has done about it, but I expect him to take steps to see that what has been revealed in the last fortnight will not happen again. 11.29 p.m. Mr. F. M. Bennett (Torquay) The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) began by apologising in advance in case he bored those listening to him. I can 749 assure him that for most of us the degree of sincerity with which he always speaks on these matters outweighs any extra degree of loquacity which he may possess even if in one respect, which prompted an intervention just before he sat down, he departed from his usual high standard. It is obvious from what the Prime Minister said that he is as deeply disturbed as anyone by what has been revealed in the last few days and weeks. This is a real quandary about which none of us should make up his mind without considerable time for reflectionhow far we can proceed with interference with individual liberties, which we have respected for a long time, to proceed yet further with degrees of security against new forms of espionage which, quite frankly, seem to be an increasing development of modern times. When the Prime Minister asked this afternoon for time for reflection on this. I for one was willing to concede it, and I say that speaking as one who is just as upset by the revelations about the apparent lack of security as anyone on either side of the House. However, I did not rise to follow the hon. Member for Dudley, though I agreed with much of what he had to say to us. My purpose is for a couple of minutes to draw a contrast. We have had evidence of a wide and dangerous and deep-seated spy ring in this country, going to the very depths of our secrets of State. Remember the indignation which prevailed in certain quarters of this country and certain quarters of this House when our American allies were caught out over the U2 incident. Remember clearly how at that time Mr. Khrushchev used that incident as an excuse to break off what might have been some of the most important negotiations of this decade, how he thundered out

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his protestations about invasions of sovereignty, about trespass, about espionage unprecedented between peace-loving nations, etcetera, etcetera. How many people there were in this countryI exempt forthwith the hon. Member for Dudleywho joined in this chorus about how our American allies, and presumably ourselves, by implication, had threatened world peace because of the espionage incident. I remember particularly a speech by Mr. Khrushchev afterwards in which, with his hand 750 on his heart, he said how deeply he deplored espionage between peaceloving nations, and that the Soviet Union repudiated this form of activity and had no intention whatsoever to operate it. Why is it that today, when we have had an example surely of calculated infringement of sovereignty, of trespass, of espionage, of blatant breach of any form of understanding, a contradiction of peaceful negotiations between nations not at war, there should be so little protest, that in this House all our protests should be directed towards whether our intelligence services are sufficiently good or not sufficiently good? What of hon. Members who sit opposite below the Gangway, who were so vociferous at that time in criticising our allies and ourselves for indulging in this form of activity? Where are they tonight? We do not hear tonight about a grave crisis, about all those threats to peace between East and West which were raised at that time. Yet is it not just about as severe a form of infringement of sovereignty, just as severe a form of trespass, when people are sent to our country with forged passports, when officers of the intelligence services of a foreign Power come here to our country, set up radio stations, set up espionage services, and bribe and seduce the servants of the Crown? Is that less serious than flying an aeroplane 50,000 ft. over a foreign country? All that I have spoken for is that one voice at least shall go out from this House tonight expressing the hope that, if and when we or our allies engage in any form of defensive precautions for our own security, we shall not afterwards be heralded by a sycophantic and hypocritical chorus of protest from certain quarters in this country who seem to think it a threat to peace when our side does something but that the less said about it the better when it is done by the Communist East. 11.35 p.m. Mr. George Brown (Belper) I am surprised at the intervention of the hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett). If there exists an hon. Member who still does not know the difference between this kind of espionage and sending an aeroplane thousands of miles over the territory of another nation, with the risk of triggering the kind of explosion which 751 that may trigger, then he ought to do a little more thinking on the subject. On one point I agreed with the hon. Memberthat when the Prime Minister made his statement this afternoon a number of us, although not bewildered by what the right hon. Gentleman had said, felt that we needed to think about what he had said, what he had offered to do and what he had asked, before we made up our minds on the need for an immediate debate. That feeling was in our minds, and we took some time to consider whether this was something on which we ought to make a speech at the moment or whether, in the light of what the Prime Minister had said, it was better to leave it. I intervene now because, for a variety of reasons, which I will explain, it seems to us that something needs to be said now, solemnly and deliberately, on a very grave issue which cannot be left, partly because the Prime Minister is going away tomorrow and things ought to be said to him and about him before he goes. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), I gave his office and that of the Minister of Defence warning of my intervention and the lines which I should take. Moreover, if we leave these matters, then the problems which any possible notification of appeal raise for a

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subsequent debate could well mean that it would be a longish time before we could effectively say what I feel needs to be said. The Civil Lord will understand that there is nothing personal in this for him when I say that he is not an adequate Minister to reply to these comments. That is not to say that he would not reply with competence and charm, as he has done in all that he has had to do, but the job is not his and the criticism needs to be addressed to another quarter. This is a very grave matter and the very size of the catastrophe which has happened in our counter-espionage and secret agencies is of an order which does not seem to have been matched before. I have no wish to exaggerate what has happened, but I cannot acquiesce in whitewash being applied which may well lead, as my hon. Friend said, to our not seeking out what is the matter and putting it right. The fact that in the last twelve months there has been an 752 impressive degree of work and efficiency in getting hold of these people must not blind us to what happened in the previous ten years. The terrifying thought is not that our Services, once their suspicions are aroused, do not move fast and effectively and impressively, but that for ten years no suspicions seem to have been aroused at all. This is not primarily a naval matter, as the Prime Minister said in his statement, although the Navy is involved, of course; there are naval issues to be looked at which I will deal with in a moment. But in the Prime Minister's opening remarksand it is much more clear when one reads them than it was when one listened to themhe said: I will now make a statement about the recent case of espionage in the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment at Portland. This gives the impression that it is the espionage at Portland that matters, but that is not the case. The case that we are dealing with is not, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley pointed out, the case of two relatively low-grade people, called Houghton and Gee; the espionage case involves the very much higher-grade people, known variously as Kroger or Cohen, and Lansdale, whoever he is, and it involves all the other Lonsdales and Krogers who, pretty evidently, judging from the evidence, have not been caught in the net but of whose operations there appears to be a good deal of evidence. What the Prime Minister did this afternoonand what putting the Civil Lord up to answer tonight is continuing to dowas to try to treat this matter as though it was a problem of the security services of the Navy when in fact it is a spy ring operating on a vast scale, which all our other agencies failed to deal with. A professional spy ring of a very high order moved into this country some years ago. We know those who came here around 1954 or 1955; we have got them in this case. We do not know those who came here before that, but it looks from the evidence of Houghton as though there was a ring with whom he was in touch before 1954 and 1955. But these people moved in here with the greatest of ease; they made themselves thoroughly at home; they have 753 operated on a fantastically complete basisif one is to go by the evidence given in courtfor five years, and none of our secret agencies knew about them at any stage. They moved in and out of the country at will, and with the greatest of ease, and the next time I am held up at London Airport by that succession of gentlemen who insist upon examining my passport, page by page, to make sure that I am the chap to whom it applies, I will think of the Krogers and the Lonsdales moving in and out with the greatest easeas they did. They were well enough informed to know in just what kind of area to put their transmitter so that the abnormal radioactivity in the area would cover its operations, and to this day we do not know with whom they were in contact. It is no use the hon. and gallant Member for Wells (Lieut.-Commander Maydon) laughing. This is a grave matter.

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Lieut.-Commander S. L. C. Maydon (Wells) rose Mr. Brown Let me finish. To this day we do not know with whom they were in contact, or what secrets they got away with, or what papers they passed. Lieut.-Commander Maydon I was just wondering which newspaper the right hon. Gentleman had been reading to gather all this extraordinary information which he is giving us. Mr. Brown One can get a good deal of this from the newspapers, and one has one's own sources [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes. If hon. Members think that the Ministers are no more worried than they are saying at the moment they missed the emotion in the Prime Minister this afternoon. To my belief a good deal of this is true, and I think that the Ministers also believe a good deal of it to be true. I, who have not the responsibility of a Minister, feel that it should be brought out, whereas a Minister feels that he cannot do so. I assure hon. Members that they will make an awful mistake if they treat this as lightly as that. I fear that today the Prime Minister ignored, or tried to ignore, or tried to get us to ignore, all those much wider and serious issues affecting the general 754 operation of the spy ring, by concentrating it so narrowly on the Admiralty security services Commander J. S. Kerans (The Hartlepools) He did not. Mr. Brown I think he did. Looking at the statement one sees that all the way throughI commend the hon. and gallant Gentleman to get itfrom the very beginning it deals with the Navy. It goes on to deal with Admiralty establishments and, apart from some assurances at the end about what has not gone, with which I will deal in a moment, in no place does it even mention the problems raised by the existence of this outside spy ring. Quite obviously the Admiralty security services need some overhauling. That is very clear. It may be that some disciplinary action may be called for against some naval officers. I do not know about that. But, for the major breakdownand this is really why I am speaking tonightwe cannot find a scape-goat among some naval officers. For the major breakdown there is only one place where responsibility can be laid, and where it must be accepted, and that is on the Prime Minister himself Commander Kerans Ridiculous. Mr. Brown Yes, indeed. There has to be Ministerial responsibility somewhere. Ministerial responsibility for these counter-espionage agencies rests on him and he must accept the consequence. I believe that today he gave every sign of seeking to escape from it Commander Kerans Will the right hon. Gentleman give way? Mr. Brown Let me make my case Mr. Allan Green (Preston, South) rose Mr. Brown Let me Mr. Green I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman wants to be fair.

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Mr. Brown I do not Hon. Members Oh. Mr. Brown I do not want to be fair to the hon. Gentleman who is doing what he did the other night, and what he does every time late at nighthe comes into the Chamber, and when one 755 starts to speak, he keeps up a lot of "guffing" from the back all the way through. I do not think that is a good basis for asking me to be fair. Let me get on with my speech. Commander Kerans Surely the right hon. Gentleman must appreciate that each Armed Service is responsible for its own security, with liaison with outside agencies. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will accept that from me. Mr. Brown That is not the point. If the hon. and gallant Member would listen and not be so anxious to interrupt, he would get the point. The Services and their security is one thing, but the operation of counter-espionage agencies is not for any one Service. It is not even for the Minister of Defence. It is carried by the Prime Minister. My point is that it is the breakdown of counter-espionage which constitutes the worry over this. Therefore, it is the responsibilty of the Prime Minister. That is the primary matter. To concentrate this, as he did, on the Navy and the possibility of some disciplinary action being taken against some security officer in the Navy, seemed to me to miss the seriousness of the whole thing; and I think it was a bit unfair. I think that the security services in the Navy show up badly and, like my hon. Friend, I am as worried by the ease with which serving officers have been willing to talk to the newspapers since as I am about the gaps in the Service before. I think that there is a lot to be looked into there. But I do not believe that is the serious issue in this casethe really vital issuealthough of course it is a serious one. The other thing the Prime Minister did was to try to smother this with a lot of reference to liberty. He rather implied that one of the things we had to consider in doing anything about this was the erosion of the liberty of the individual. [HON. MEMBERS: "Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree?"]I say that, in relation to what has happened, that is pretty near to complete eyewash. I shall show why. Sir L. Heald Now we know. Mr. Brown The right hon. and learned Member is behaving in a ridiculous way. 756 The erosion of the liberty of the individual does not arise in the major part of this case. On the relatively minor issue of whether Houghton and Gee should have been positively vetted and positively cleared or merely negatively dealt withon that relatively minor issue there would, of course, be something in this point; but that is a very minor issue. On the general issue of why the counter-espionage agencies did not in fact work with each other, did not in fact pass the information, some of them, to each other, did not take action when they were told what was going onon these things there is no question of the liberty of the individual. This is a sheer, complete administrative failure, and it is on that that I say that introducing liberty of the individual, while it has relevance in that relatively minor case of the procedures by which Houghton and Gee should have been covered, has no relevance anywhere else. The effectiveness of our agencies, the cohesion of our agencies, the liaison between themselves and their liaison with our alliesthose are the

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big issues involved, and on not one of those can we say that this case shows other than a complete breakdown. I shall get the naval part of the case out of the way quickly. The problems here can easily be shown. There was the really big failure in Warsaw to see that when this man was returned the proper entry was made and information was passed. This is in part a naval failure, but not wholly a naval failure as the Prime Minister said today. The Prime Minister said that because this man was on the naval attach's staff in Warsaw the failure was wholly naval, but that is not true. Both of them were attached to the ambassador in Warsaw and the ambassador had a duty here. Although the naval officer concerneda very gallant officer I gather, very well thought of by his contemporariessays he cannot now remember what he did ten years ago, he was also pretty clear that either the ambassador, or the counsellor, or the Admiralty in London was in fact told. When a breakdown like this happens and the man comes back and is then fantastically appointed to an institution like the A.U.W.E. and it fails to get through that he was sent back from Warsaw as a security risk, 757 one is bound to say that this is a serious issue of much more than merely naval relevance. Commander Kerans rose Mr. Brown Will the hon. and gallant Member allow me to finish? Then he can make his point. I am sure that it will be easier that way. I can only say what I believe and if it should turn out that I am wrong, I shall accept it, but I am saying what I think happened. That is the first breakdown and it involves the Navy and the Foreign Office. The second is the failure to have decided properly which jobs involving which access at Portland ought to carry positive screening Obviously, if one can go in and out of the strong room and lift such files as one wants, I should have thought positive screening was called for and that negative screening was not nearly enough. The third matter is the general sloppiness about the files and papers as disclosed by the evidence. Here I am bound to say, having read the evidence, that I am not prepared to accept that this is peculiarly a naval matter. The reasons given for not being tighter at Portlandthe size of the staff, the degree of work, and all thatcould easily apply at other Service stations as well, and could easily apply at other civil stations as well. Another reason for thinking that it cannot be dealt with only by the Navy is that one wants to know that someone has looked into the attitude to papers and files in all our agencies, and not just in the Navy. The fifth is the peculiar five-day week, to which my hon. Friend has referred, for security, with the free week-ends allowed for borrowing plansabout which I shall say no more because he has already made the point. The next is the, to me, quite incredible business of the security officer saying, "Yes, I was told in 1956 or 1957 that this man had secret papers at home. Yes, I was told that there was reason to think that he was using them for espionage purposes, but I did not do anything about it." That is a statement made by the security officerwho is still the security officer. And the reason given for not doing anything about it was that the information came from the man's wife, and he was known to be on not 758 very good terms with her. The result is that from 1956 to 1960 this has gone on, because at that stage nobody was prepared to check on that kind of information. Bless my soul, if we are to be told, and then use a sort of code of conduct of our own to decide whether or not it is information we can use, it is clear that we shall have no counter-espionage service at all and might as well give it up. This certainly needs going

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into. It is certainly naval, in that it happened at Portland, but I want to know what the general instructions are. In the White Paper published after the Report of the Privy CouncillorsCmd. 9715in which the Government announced their attitude to the findings, there were three paragraphs9, 10 and 11in which they went into some considerable detail about what should be done if anything was known about the character, or the associations or the actions of individuals in a position to do this sort of thing. Every one of those paragraphs was breached here. How do we know they are not being breached in all the other Services? What is the use merely of putting it right at Portland? What is the use even of merely putting it right in the Navy? Someone has to find out whether, in fact, all our agencies are making their own interpretation in the same way. I want to emphasise another point made by my hon. Friendand this, again, is not purely Navy. I refer to the rating, grading, status, prestige of the people given security jobs. Only the other night a naval officer used the phrase to me, "We regard it as a job for four rings, failed." He said that in terms of pay, in terms of the attitude of others, it is not a job that is included in the tours of duty that a likely, up-and-coming man would do. It is, in fact, a job that goes to the man who has reached fourring level but who realises he has failed. That is probably true in the other Services as well. It is probably true in the outside agencies as well. It is almost certainly true in the case of many factories doing the most highly-important sub-contract work. That needs to be looked into. It cannot be done by a naval inquiry alone, or for the Navy alone. It must be done for the whole field, and can only be done by a much 759 broader inquiry than is proposed in this case. Having said that, I come back to where I started. It still leaves us with the general problem. The general problem which has to be faced is that, even though we have put these five people out of harm's way now, none of our special agencies got on to the affair. It is not due to any of them that matters have ended as they have. They neither got on to the Portland end nor on to the central spy ring. It is no use the Prime Minister using the comforting words he used at the end of his statement this afternoon when he tried to assure us that there is no evidence to suggest that the information related to more than a relatively limited sector and there is no ground to suppose that other information went. The fact is that he cannot know. I have studied very closely the Attorney-General's presentation of his own case in the court, and I will tell him why I say that the Prime Minister cannot know. He cannot know because we do not yet know when the activities started. There is good reason to assume that something was going on as early as 1956 when Houghton's wife made her allegations, but there is some evidence now, looking back, that he was living high before then. All we can know is that the business started at some time within the last ten years, and probably a good deal more than five years ago. That puts a very great limitation on how much we can know about what information went. Secondly, we do not knowsince the Attorney-General challenged me about this, I will put the point to himand the Attorney-General made it quite clear that we cannot know, what papers went. We cannot possibly know what files Miss Gee, when she was acting after Houghton was transferred, or Houghton himself before that, were taking out during the free weekends. The papers were taken out and put back before anyone knew they were missing, except on one occasion, for which Miss Gee appears to have been very quickly and easily forgiven. If the papers were taken out, photographed or otherwise used, and then put back, and we do not know what happened, how can we know how much information has gone? How can we know what it covered?

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760 A very distinguished, senior person engaged in the case was heard the other day to say that the terrifying question is this: can one put one's hand on one's heart and swear that we have had any naval secrets at Portland during the last ten years? This is the problem. Can anyone say that? The present Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations concentrated all the secret underwater work there in 1958, bringing the whole lot together, and we have no way of knowing whether any of that remained intact thereafter, because between then and 1960 there is a complete blank as to what, in fact, was going on and how widespread the activities were. I have no doubt that we are trying very hard now to find out what has been happening, and, no doubt, we shall find out a good deal. No doubt, people will talk and we shall learn a good deal more than we know at this moment. I, personally, hope that that will be so. I do not believe that the trial disclosed all that happened. I do not believe that we shall ever make up for the ten years during which there were no suspicions. I believe sincerely, speaking as deliberately as I canthis is the reason why we have decided that an intervention should be made tonight on the subject, despite the late hourthat a very grave and terrible business has been disclosed. I say that not with any pleasure, not to make a party pointif it be necessary to say thatnot to spread alarm which one would rather not spread. I say it because we are convinced, after having studied what the Prime Minister said today, that if in fact we leave this matter to be dealt with in as limited a way as he proposed, then we shall not have learned the lessons which we must learn if we are not to lay ourselves wide open continually to our secrets being broken. The radio transmitter continued working after we removed the Krogers. Messages continued to come through. We appear to have broken the code all right, but I understand The Attorney-General (Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller) I do not know where the right hon. Gentleman gets that from. He obviously has not read the report of the evidence at the trial. The report of the evidence was that we listened in on the frequencies shown at the time stated on the signal plan and 761 heard the call sign. There was no evidence about anything else. The right hon. Gentleman ought not to make that kind of statement. Hon. Members Withdraw. Mr. Brown Of course, I withdraw. I do not consider it as important as all that, but I certainly withdraw. Sir L. Heald The right hon. Gentleman does not know anything about it. Mr. Brown The right hon. and learned Gentleman is as rude as he is unworthy. I certainly withdraw that. I deduced it wrongly, as it turns out, from The Times report of the passage to which the Attorney-General referred. But I do not think that it is all that important whether we broke the code or not. If we did not break it, it is all the more serious. What we did deduce, I gather, is that these messages were intended for other agents than the Krogers. What we did not deduce was, since these messages came at a time when, we thought, Moscow must know what action we had taken, that other agents must have been using that channel of communication and that these probably were signals to them to pack up for a bit. Mr. Wigg

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I remember the passage in court. Perhaps my right hon. Friend will allow me to say what my conclusion was. I thought that the Russian intelligence service was as inefficient as our own. Mr. Brown I still cannot see any point in treating this in that way. The messages certainly continued to come. They did not appear to be for the Krogers, as far as we could tell. They were on a number of different wavelengths. The Attorney-General May I correct the right hon. Gentleman? One signal which was overheard was according to the signal plan found in the Kroger's possession. On the other signal plan which was listened in to, monitoring was done in accordance with the signal plan found in Lonsdale's flat. The inference was that the signals emitted from the Moscow region were for reception either by Lonsdale or the Krogers. In 762 the course of his summing up, however, the Lord Chief Justice threw out the possibility, on which there was no evidence, that they might be listened in to deliberately and intended for other people in addition to the Krogers. Mr. Brown The Lord Chief Justice would obviously be treated as flippantly as I was by an hon. Member below the Gangway. There is clearly room to suspect that others are here. There is room for suspicion. It is in the right hon. and learned Gentleman's mind, as well as in mine and, I believe, in the minds of a number of other people who have read the evidence, that other signals were intended for other people. It is, therefore, too wide open, too uncertain and too worrying to leave it as the Prime Minister wished us to leave it today. Ministerial responsibility is the Prime Minister's. He talked quite easily about the disciplinary action which the First Lord might have to take against those he found guilty. What does the Prime Minister do in a case like this, where he is responsible for such a breakdown? I can only conclude that a much wider inquiry than the one which the Prime Minister proposes to set up should be undertaken. Even the Prime Minister, in the course of questioning from this side today, undertook to widen the inquiry from what he originally said it would be. A much wider inquiry than that needs to be undertaken. Let the Navy deal with its problems, but a wide inquiry into the operation of our agencies and into the very worrying fears, suspicions and doubts, even if they are no more than that, that this affair throws up is needed. I hope that the Leader of the House, who has been good enough to attend this debate, will find it possible to intervene during our discussion tonight on the general issue and tell us how he feels about it. I am bound to say for the Opposition that, unless we get some evidence of much bigger and more effective Government action than the Prime Minister promised this afternoon, we shall certainly want to return to this subject at a much better time of day to go into the whole matter again. 763 12.10 a.m. Sir Arthur Vere Harvey (Macclesfield) Of the two Opposition speeches that we have heard tonight I much preferred that of the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg). It always surprises me how the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) seems to know far more about what is going on in the Services than any of us who, after all, have had experience of Service matters and have friends in the Services. The right hon. Gentleman is well-informed about weapons both here and in America. It is regrettable that a Privy Councillor should have made a

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speech of the kind that the right hon. Gentleman made tonight from the Opposition Front Bench. Mr. Gordon Walker (Smethwick) I presume that the hon. Member would always want to cover everything up. Hon. Members Withdraw. Sir A. V. Harvey I would not waste time in trying to cover anything up. I am speaking as a private Member. The right hon. Gentleman is in better form than he was on Wednesday night when he had his little argument. How could the Prime Minister have been expected to say more this afternoon than he did? My right hon. Friend bears tremendous responsibility in this matter as head of the Secret Service. We are all shaken and disturbed by what has happened, but at any rate the spies have been caught, which is more than could be said for Dr. Fuchs. He got away with it when the Opposition were in power in 1950. Mr. Hugh Gaitskell (Leeds, South) He was caught. Sir A. V. Harvey I only wish that he had been given twenty-five years at that time. He is now back with the enemy. It is difficult to assess the damage done by one spy as opposed to another, but it seems to me that the damage done by Fuchs could not be calculated, particularly with our ally the United States. Confidence deteriorated from that moment. It is interesting to recall what Lord Attlee, when he was Prime Minister, had to say about it. The Prime Minister has been attacked about what he said to- 764 day about the liberty of the subject. This is what Lord Attlee said on 6th March, 1950: I am satisfied that, unless we had here the kind of secret police they have in totalitarian countries, and employed their methods, which are reprobated rightly by everyone in this country, there was no means by which we could have found out about this man." [OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th March, 1950; Vol. 472, c. 71.] I did not notice the indignation of hon. and right hon. Members opposite at the time of the Fuchs affair. When the trial was over they did not complain to the Government. It seems extraordinary that the right hon. Member for Belper should do so now. It is the case with hon. and right hon. Members opposite that, if they can do anything with which they can unite themselves for twenty-four hours, they will do it. 12.11 a.m. Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely) I should like to say to the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) that, as I understand the position, we have been told by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that first he will look into the question whether or not the arrangements agreed by the Privy Councillors some years have been obeyed in this case. Having established whether or not they have been obeyed, the second part of the inquiry will be to find out whether those powers are adequate in the light of modern times. On the question whether individual liberty should be a consideration at all, I was astonished to hear what the right hon. Member for Belper had to say tonight. Surely it is inevitably an issue of the greatest importance. Has there ever been anyone in this country who condemned McCarthyism more than hon. Members opposite? I agree that they should have condemned it, but ought we not to be sure that we do not have McCarthyism setting in in this country? Is it not essential that we should look at this very thing?

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Like the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), I, too, spent a morning down at the Old Bailey during the course of this trial. I came away with an impression in addition to that with which the hon. Member for Dudley did. I agree with him entirely about the immense impression of fairness about the whole proceedings But there was 765 something else with which I came away, and that was a very great sense of pridepride in the fact that, despite the enormous number of opportunities which must exist for the sort of practices which Houghton and Gee indulged in, despite the enormous temptations which are often put in the way of the weaker of our brethren, nevertheless the vast majority of our Civil Service and of the ordinary citizens outside the Civil Service do not succumb to such temptations. We ought to be very proud that we can rely upon the basic loyalty of our people in the way we can, and ought also to be very proud about the way the Special Branch and all those responsible for investigating the case went into it, unearthed it and made sure there was proof. The right hon. Member for Belper seems to suggest that every case ought to be known the moment a spy enters this country. Mr. G. Brown I did not say that. Sir H. Legge-Bourke That was the implication of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks Has there ever been a party in this House which has been more outspoken on the subject of allowing aliens to come into the country without any let or hindrance than the Labour Party has been? If we are to have free entry into this country Mr. Gordon Walker We have never said that. Sir H. Legge-Bourke and give asylum to as many people as we feel deserve asylum, is it not inevitable that now and again someone will slip in who should not do so? The right hon. Gentleman really cannot dodge this issue. We have to consider the individual liberty of men in this issue. The right hon. Gentleman cannot escape this. To blame the Prime Minister for bringing it in this afternoon astounded me. It seems to me that this individual liberty is one of the very things, surely, on which we pride ourselves. If there has been a slip-up of a very major orderI agree with thatinside the Admiralty on this occasion, and if there has also been[Interruption.]if the right hon. Gentleman could possibly contain himself for one minute and listen to me as I listened to him, I should be 766 very gratefulif there has been a slip-up as between the United States security authorities and ours, as there obviously has been in the case of Lonsdale and Krogerparticularly Krogerdoes that necessarily mean that we have got to bring about a system which does not have regard to the liberty of the individual? That is the implication of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks. Mr. Brown The hon. Gentleman has now repeated that several times. Really, I do not think anything I said bears that interpretation at all. What I said was that since the major slip-up was an administrative slip-up by the agencies, the argument about individual liberty was irrelevant to that issue and was relevant only to the question of what screening Houghton or Gee should have had. As to what should be done to make the agencies themselves cohesive, to make them work efficiently with effective liaison, I said that the issue of individual liberty was not relevant. Sir H. Legge-Bourke The right hon. Gentleman has stated his case again. All I can say is that I think that he must be a good deal more careful than he is apparently prepared to be.

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I have felt for some years that we may have to reconsider the whole question of the status of civil servants whom we put into our Defence and Service Departments. In 1944 we had a separation of the Foreign Service from the home Civil Service. When the Labour Government were in power I probed this matter a little because it seemed to me that there might be a caseI think there was then, and I think it is stronger nowfor having a separate Civil Service in the Defence Departments and that in creating such a Service it might become necessary for us to make more stringent rules about admission into it than we have in respect of the general Civil Service. This is obviously a matter which will require very great thought, and I am not beginning to suggest that a decision should be taken tonight. But if it be true, as I am sure it is, that the whole machinery and equipment and technology of espionage has advanced far beyond what we were able to keep within reasonable check in former days, then there may be a case for saying that we have to move with the times in our 767 requirements of those who enter the Defence Departments. Many of them have an immense responsibility, and in a way it might be a safeguard to the individuals who work in those Departments to know that all who enter have to go through a more stringent examination than those who serve in ordinary Departments. In security, it is not only the contents of documents that should be kept secret, but the existence of the documents themselves. Sometimes in this House we are in danger of throwing stones through a greenhouse roof. We cannot boast that there is the kind of security that we would like to see in our own party proceedings. I wonder sometimes if those who try to look after the security of this country think that some of our remarks are a little ludicrous. 12.22 a.m. The Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. C. Ian Orr-Ewing) I apologise to any of my hon. Friends who may wish to speak, but it might be useful for me to intervene at this stage. I think that everything said so far in the debate endorses the wisdom of the action which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced today. It is equally true to say that we have approached this small aftermath of a debate in the true spirit of the House of Commons. Everyone is clearly anxious to see the security services as firm and sound as they possibly can be. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) for the statesmanlike way in which he began the debate, and the very reasonable terms in which he made his speech. I feel somewhat inhibited. As you, Mr. Speaker, said today, we have to be careful in what we say, even though the rules of order allow us to raise matters in debate when an appeal is outstanding. The Lord Chief Justice himself issued a stern warning on this subject last night, and I do not think that any Minister would wish to stand here and in any way jeopardise appeal proceedings by anything that he might say about the five accused in this case. We pride ourselves on the integrity of our judicial system and more than one Member has spoken eloquently about the excellence of the proceedings at the Old Bailey. 768 I want to correct one or two remarks which have been incorrect. The hon. Member for Dudley and the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) talked about two statements which have been attributed to a serving officer, Captain Symonds, in one of our national newspapers. I want to explain how this came about. This officer had already been subjected, as had other witnesses, to a number of telephone calls. During this trial he had been two hours in the witness box. When he came out of the court he was asked for clarification, just as hon. Members are often asked for clarification by HANSARD or by Lobby correspondents as they leave the

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Chamber, and he said nothing which went outside what he had stated in the witness box. Knowing these facts, and the circumstances in which he was approached by the Press, we can well understand his position. The Lord Chief Justice himself made this commentand I hope that the House will recognise itwhen he said about this officer: He was as good a witness as we are likely to hear. Mr. Gordon Walker In fairness to this man, will the Civil Lord say whether he is now saying that the interview published in the Daily Mail was untrue? Mr. Orr-Ewing It is a question of what is meant by the word "interview". If, as we leave the Chamber after making a speech, we are interviewed or intercepted by a Lobby correspondent who asks us for clarification about a sentence which we have used, and we restate the facts in the same words, or as nearly as we can remember them, and that is called an interview, the newspaper is right; but most of us would say that it was given for clarification and for greater certainty. I hope that the House will understand that state of affairs. The other statements by other officers, who have been naval attachs, or who have now retired from the Service, will definitely be within the terms of reference of the committee of inquiry which we are to set up. Hon. Members asked whether the committee of inquiry should include a naval officer and there were certain comments about that. We are most grateful for the suggestions which have been made from both sides of the House on this issue and they will 769 certainly be taken into account by my noble Friend when the Committee is set up. On the speculation about Admiral Thistleton-Smith, my right hon. Friend made it clear that the Committee of Inquiry would be headed by an independent person of high standing, so the "intelligent guess" by that particular newspaper about the Admiral was not quite as intelligent as some of the other things which it has said. The right hon. Member for Belper asked about the status of our security officers. I take that point as being perfectly valid and I will draw it to the attention of my noble Friend and he will certainly look at the matter. I do not think that it comes within the terms of reference of the Committee, but it is on the borders. I reiterate that papers were takenand it is important that this should go out from the Houseonly concerning matters from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment. There were no papers there concerning nuclear matters. It would be quite wrong if, inadvertently, we gave the impression, particularly to our friends and allies in America, that nuclear information was in any way compromised. The right hon. Member for Belper was also quick to quoteand I hope that he will not mind me reminding him of this factwitnesses who are at present possibly contemplating appeal. When he said that the strongroom was in a high state of disorganisation, he was quoting Miss Gee, and I think that he will agree that that is not an absolutely reliable source. He was also anxious to discuss the business of the transmitter. I think that I am the only licensed amateur transmitter in the House and I should be delighted to have a discussion with the right hon. Gentleman on this issue, but, while the matter is possibly pending appeal, it would be wrong in that case, too, if I started a discussion. All these matterspoints about security officers, naval attachs, reports back from Warsaw and the witness who came back from there, and who was the clerk of the Naval Attach there, that was Houghtonand other similar matters will be investigated by the Committee of Inquiry. I hope that it will 770 be a quick moving and fairly small Committee. I know that the House would not expect me, at this stage and at this hour, to go very much further into the subject.

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Perhaps the right hon. Member for Belper did not do justice to the burning question which the Prime Minister underlined so clearly this afternoonthe erosion of liberty. I cannot do better than restate something which the Lord Chief Justice said on this matter. He first paid credit to the security services, as the right hon. Gentleman did, and he said: I would like to draw attention to the excellent work done by naval security officers and police in this case. It must have involved endless and careful work. This is the point: Ultimately, security depends and must depend on the honesty of those in a position of trust. If a person of the highest credentials suddenly and for gain becomes dishonest, no security measures can prevent it and its detection becomes a matter of great difficulty. This is exactly that point which my right hon. Friend dealt with. I think that many of my hon. Friends on this side have spoken most eloquently about this erosion of liberty and the need to move most carefully and with considerable forethought in a wider inquiry. There can be no question that this is the opinion in the Admiralty. We have set up a Committee of Inquiry to inquire where the responsibility lies. Surely that is of first importancethat we take action wherever the fault is shown to exist. That is why we have set up the Committee of Inquiry. That is why we hope to have the help and support of the whole House, so that Committee may get on with its work and so that we can in due course take action on the results of its work. 12.30 a.m. Mr. Gordon Walker (Smethwick) We are grateful to the Civil Lord for the care he has taken in replying to the debate, but listening to his speech I thought that it only reinforced my view that we must go further and higher on the points which are at issue. His speech dealt only with naval matters, and it showed that naval matters do not exhaust the problems involved. The highest duty of the State, for which the Prime Minister is personally responsible, is the real issue here. 771 What we are saying is that there is a great deal of prima facie evidence justifying a much wider inquiry. It is not necessary that the naval inquiry, which, I agree, should be got on with at once, must be done first. Two things can go on together. There is a problem of naval intelligence which has to be looked at, but there are these other problems to which my right hon. Friend referred and which seem to indicate that there may have been a considerable breakdown in the wider range of our security measures, in cohesion, in technical efficiency. Of course, all of us are concerned with the issue of liberty, and of course there is the problem of security which involves this. If we were to take everybody's passport away we should have much greater security, but nobody wants that. The points which my right hon. Friend raised do not impinge on liberty. He showed that there is great doubt now whether there are not technical inefficiencies in more than the naval intelligence wider than thatwhich can be remedied without in any way eroding liberty. I should like to putperhaps to the Attorney-Generalone question. This is a most important case and it is necessary that we should study it with the utmost care and detail. Therefore, I wonder whether we could have the transcript of the entire proceedings available to us in the Library. It is impossible, reading in the newspapers even the fullest reports of the evidence, to discover everything which happened. I do not think there is any other way in which we can do this duty unless we have the transcript available to us. My last point is that we still think that there should be a further major debate in which the Prime Minister can take part and in which this case can be raised at greater length and at a rather more comfortable hour of the day. 12.34 a.m.

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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler) As one or two points have been put to me, and as it is obviously difficult for the Prime Minister to be here tonight, and although I do not want to delay the House very long, I think I should say a word on his behalf. 772 First of all, we were grateful, as my hon. Friend said, to the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) for the spirit in which he raised the matter, and when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) says that this is a grave and terrible business he is only repeating what the Prime Minister said this afternoon. I have his words here: I can assure the House these events have come as terrible blow. When I add to that his answers to questions this afternoon and his undertaking that he wished, as indeed he does always as Prime Minister, to consult the Opposition and carry them with him in handling this matter, we shall see that, though certain hard things have been said on either side, there is a genuine desire on the part of the Prime Minister and of the Administration as a whole to handle this matter with responsibility. What the Opposition are seeking is to ensure that this inquiry is satisfactory. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Belper does not want to feel that this is only an investigation into the security of the Navy. He wants to see that it is properly conceived and carried out. A second point raised by the opposition, both by the right hon. Member for Belper and by the right hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) was about the possibility of a further debate. I am glad that both right hon. Gentlemen came to the House this evening and raised the matter, albeit that the hour is late, because that indicates a sense of responsibility which we all feel. I am also glad that they did not leave it until later, because, if I may be allowed to leave the House shortly, I can see the Prime Minister before he leaves. I will convey to him the arguments which have been used tonight. If I fail to catch him tonight I shall see him early tomorrow. I will undertake to do that. When the decisions are announced about the inquiry, account will be taken of the depositions made by the Opposition on this occasion and of the reservations made by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. LeggeBourke) on the point of personal liberty, to which the Prime Minister attached so much importance. That is the useful task which I can perform on this occasion. I wanted to be present at this debate. On three 773 occasions after Question Time the Prime Minister said that he would like a little more time. The fact that he is going on tour to the West Indies and America does not mean that he will be out of touch with the Government. Our arrangements will be as usual, and, while I shall presumably have to take certain responsibilities in his absence, I shall be able to communicate with him, and before he leaves I shall be able to convey to him the feelings of the House. If he takes a little more time it does not mean that we wish unduly to delay the setting up of what I call the inquiry in the first placebecause the Prime Minister made it clear that he wanted an inquiry and then he wanted time to consider the wider issue. If the Opposition accept that as being the position, it is not necessary for me to underline what the Prime Minister said no fewer than three times after Question Time. For example, answering the hon. Member for Dudley, he said: I am sure that the right course is to find out what went wrong by the special inquiry and then, with all those who understand it, see whether we need some different system, whether the system of the precise relations between the counter-espionage people and the Department is the right one, and so forth. I prefer to do it in that order. Perhaps I may underline what the Prime Minister said by explaining the order in which we want to do it. We do not wish to burke any issues. I will undertake to consult the Prime Minister before he leaves and I

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will undertake to carry out what he saidthat as soon as possible we shall announce the inquiry. I will undertake to see that the inquiry is as broadly based as possible, because that is what is wanted. If the inquiry does not cover the subject, I will undertake that there will be a further opportunity, and I will undertake that in the time available consultations shall take place, if necessary, between the two sides of the House and with any of my hon. Friends who wish to make representations to the Government. In that way we can be quite sure that this matter is cleared up to the satisfaction of the House. There has been some criticism all round, but one degree of criticism I personally cannot standand that is the criticism of some of our own security 774 services in the work which they did, at any rate in the latter part of all this exercise. Mr. G. Brown Nobody has said that. Mr. Butler No, but on my own knowledge of these affairs I am convinced that we should be grateful to them. But that does not mean to say that I am trying to conceal anything from the House, or trying to detract in any way from the undertakings given by the Prime Minister. I undertake to speak to the Prime Minister and put to him the points that have been raised. Mr. Gaitskell We are grateful to the Leader of the House for taking part in the debate, and also for what he has said. He has gone some way to meet the genuine anxieties felt on this side of the House about the sort of inquiries that are to be made. Will a transcript of the evidence of the trial be made available very soon? Perhaps I should address that question to the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General There are about eight large volumes of evidence. Steps will be taken to place them in the Library within a short time. I am not sure whether it is for my right hon. Friend or for me to put them there, but steps will be taken to do so. Dame Irene Ward (Tynemouth) My right hon. Friend said that the inquiry would be broad-based. Having regard to the fact that the Prime Minister said that the chairman of the inquiry would be independent, I want to know whether it is his intention to have more than one independent member sitting on the inquiry. From my point of view it would be more satisfactory if, when the first investigation was taking place, there were more than one independent member than merely the chairman. When my right hon. Friend said that the inquiry would be broadbased, I was not sure whether he was referring to the personnel to be appointed or to the inquiry itself. Perhaps he would give us a little more information on that point. It would help all those who are extremely worried about this matter if there were people on the inquiry who were not just concerned with the Admiralty. We might get better information, and perhaps learn more, if there were more people of independent views sitting on 775 the inquiry. Lastly, when does my right hon. Friend think that he will be in a position to announce who will carry out the inquiry? Mr. Butler I shall take note of what my hon. Friend has said, which I think represents the general sentiment. As regards the timing, I will consult my right hon. Friend again this evening, before he leaves, and in due course the Government will make a further statement. Mr. Gaitskell I suppose we may take it that the announcement will be made before the Easter Recess? Mr. Butler

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It is entirely a question of getting the matter established on a proper basis, but I have noted the sense of urgency. ********************************************************************** SECURITY PROCEDURES AND PRACTICES (COMMITTEE) HC Deb 11 May 1961 vol 640 cc650-5 650 The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan) With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will now make a statement. In accordance with what I told the House on Thursday, 4th May, I have been reviewing what further measures should be taken to protect the security of the realm. I made it clear then that I did not rule out the possibility of a further inquiry into our security system. I have now had an opportunity of considering the whole matter in some detail and I have discussed it with the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and some of his colleagues. I have also taken account of the public anxiety which has been aroused by the case of George Blake and by other recent convictions under the Official Secrets Acts. 651 The Government have decided that a fresh review should be made of the security procedures and practices currently in force throughout the public service. I propose that this review should be undertaken by a body of independent persons of standing, who will, between them, be able to bring to bear on this problem a judgment based on wide and varied experience. The names of the Chairman and other members will be announced as soon as possible. The terms of reference will be as follows: In the light of recent convictions for offences under the Official Secrets Acts, to review the security procedures and practices currently followed in the public service; and to consider what, if any, changes are required. The House will recall that the Committee under the chairmanship of Sir Charles Romer which is already inquiring into the circumstances connected with the earlier case of espionage at an Admiralty establishment at Portland was required by its terms of reference to draw attention to any failure in existing security procedures which may come to their notice in the course of its inquiry. The findings of the Romer Committee will, of course, be made available to the new Committee, which will be able to take them into account in the wider inquiry which it is to undertake. The new Committee will report to me as Prime Minister. Until I receive the Report I cannot say whether it will be possible to publish it in whole or in part. While the responsibility for any action lies with the Government, it is a longstanding tradition of this House that in these matters there should be consultation between the Government and the Opposition. I shall, therefore, consult the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition when I have the Report. Mr. Gaitskell Is the Prime Minister aware that there will, I think, be much satisfaction with his statement that he has decided to appoint a Committee of the character he has described? Would he confirm that he will consult the members of the Opposition, with whom he has contact, on the membership of the Committee? The Prime Minister We have had some discussion of it. I hope that we wall be able to get a membership that will be generally agreeable. 652 Dame Irene Ward I welcome the decision to have an independent Committee of inquiry, but will my right hon. Friend agree to put on that Committee one or two people who have had some experience of these matters; and that the Committee should not be composed entirely of

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people who are really on the Olympian heights? Would not my right hon. Friend agree that the country would prefer some down-to-earth people as well, who know something about what goes on in this direction? The Prime Minister Of course, I will bear that in mind, but my hon. Friend will know that some persons who may be called eventually to reach Olympian heights have gone up the steep road through the ravines, and some of those may be very valuable to us. Mr. Grimond Can the right hon. Gentleman say what sort of person he is looking for as chairman of this Committee? We have had one inquiry into these procedures and, obviously, it has been ineffective. The Committee of Privy Councillors reported in 1956, and it was obviously ineffective in the Blake case. Is the Prime Minister looking for a mind with traditional experience, or one of experience in the foreign service, or the public service? The Prime Minister I will try to find for the Committee the people whom I think will do the work best, but I am bound to say that it is one thing to try to get people, and another to get them to serve on what will be a rather long and arduous undertaking. I hope that we shall be able, and I feel sure that we shall be able, to obtain a Committee that will command the general confidence of the House and the country. Sir B. Craddock Will my right hon. Friend consider whether it is possible or, indeed, desirable to extend the terms of reference so that this Committee may consider whether the penalties for treasonable acts are as strict as they ought to be? The Prime Minister That is a point, but these are very wide terms of reference, and I think that they cover everything that needs to be investigated. The Committee will, of course, have to deal with whether, in the present situation, these procedures are adequate, or 653 whether they will have to be altered. The Romer Committee is only inquiring whether the existing procedures were followed, but what this inquiry will be is something wider: to see whether new procedures will be required. Mr. Fletcher Will the Prime Minister consider whether, in addition to this very desirable inquiry into security procedures, the staff engaged in security work is of the highest calibre required for this purpose? Is he aware that there has been some criticism in this respect, and will he bear in mind that modern conditions really require the very highest type of brain to deal with these security problems? Will he either consider himself, or ask the Committee to consider, whether the terms of remuneration and the general grading of security staff, both at top level and in all departments, is adequate for the work involved? The Prime Minister Yes, Sir. I think that that would be relevant. I will certainly bear it in mind. Mr. W. Yates Following a report on this matter in my local newspaper, the Wolverhampton Express and Star, may I ask the Prime Minister three straight questions? Is he aware that French and American newspapers reported that George Blake had, in fact, acted in our services, and definitely paralysed the organisation for a number of years? Secondly, may I ask him whether, during that time, the former Prime Minister and himself were solely responsible, and whether anybody, or a friendly Power, at any time approached him or his predecessor and suggested that, according to their information, this man was suspect? If so, what action was taken?

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Thirdly, the reports in the Wolverhampton Express and Star say that the effect of casting a cloak of secrecy over the affair in Britain would be to protect those who have been proved incompetent. May the country, therefore, and the Commonwealth and our allies, know whether we can expect a resignation and, if so, when we shall have such an announcement? The Prime Minister None of those questions would it be right, I think, to answer, but all of those questions would be relevant for the Committee to consider. 654 Mr. C. Pannell Will the Prime Minister ask his Committee, as a matter of broad public policy, to consider the fairly well-founded suspicion, particularly among industrial workers who may have even a rather tenuous association with the Communist Party, that if they are suspect at all they are quietly got out through the gate, usually on a stratagem, and that this is usually considered in contradistinction to the closing up that takes place in a case in other walks of the Civil Service? In my unionand I have to deal with many such oases as thatwe feel that there is a great deal of abruptness in the way they treat the suspicion of people on the factory floor compared with the protection afforded to people like Burgess and Maclean? The Prime Minister I am not aware of that. Of course, I understand what the hon. Gentleman has in mind. This is, as the House knows, a very serious matter. I do not know what will be the outcome of this Committee. Last time, I think that the Privy Councillors broadly felt that the procedures, if applied, were adequate to the situation. We have an inquiry as to whether they have been properly applied in a particular case. When we had the debate on Burgess and Maclean, I remember very well that we were all torn between the natural liberalism of our traditions and our desire not to treat men unfairly, and the demands of security in this new kind of battle we have come to. Whether that applies right through our society, I do not know. If it does, it must be tightened up, but I think that it may well be that in all walks of life men who have anything to do with the public service or the secrets affected have a greater degree of responsibility, and that greaterwhat shall I call it?curtailment of their thought and statements will have to be made. Sir John Maitland While it is natural and proper to wish to dispel the great anxiety that has existed over what has happened, is it not also necessary to pay a tribute to the excellent work which has been done in bringing this man, and these people, to justice? The Prime Minister This is one of the strengths of the society which we are trying to protect. If these things 655 happen in other societies one does not hear about them. In those societies there are no trials, or Questions in the House of Commons. Men of this kind, if they are found, are quietly "bumped off"and that is the end of it. This is one of our strengths. We have this freedom which we are determined to defend and we have to see whether, in its defence, we shall have to make greater sacrifices of traditional concepts. Mr. Wigg The Prime Minister has told the House that this inquiry will be a long and arduous business. Can he further tell hon. Members what will happen in the meantime, because it is clear that there has been a breakdown in the vetting arrangements? Are we to take it that nothing is to be done in the meantime? Will the Prime Minister give an assurance that he will look into these mistakes once again?

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The Prime Minister Although I used the phrase "long and arduous", perhaps I ought not necessarily to have said "long", but "arduous". The people I want to get are busy people who will have to give up a great deal of time. I appreciate that the quicker the job is done, probably the harder will be the work involved for the gentlemen who are asked to undertake it. It is not at all impossible that one could have some intervening reports, making suggestions which may be put into effect. I do not rule that out. Several Hon. Members rose Mr. Speaker Order. We cannot pursue this matter any further without any Question before the House ********************************************************************** GUY BURGESS AND DONALD MACLEAN (WARRANTS) HC Deb 19 April 1962 vol 658 cc695-9 695 Mr. G. Brown (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will make a statement about the announcement by Scotland Yard that warrants have been applied for and issued for the arrest of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. The Attorney-General (Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller) I have been asked to reply, as my right hon. Friend has no responsibility for the announcement. 696 An application for warrants for the arrest of these two men was made by police officers acting on advice given, with my approval, by the Director of Public Prosecutions. It is not in the public interest to disclose the information which led to the application being made. In the particular circumstances of this case I thought it desirable that a statement should be issued explaining why the application was made at this juncture and, in accordance with the normal practice, the announcement was made by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Mr. Brown Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the general behaviour yesterday seems to be well in accord with what has happened throughout this remarkable affair over the last ten or eleven years? The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he took responsibility for issuing the statement. May I ask what was the purpose of the statement? Is it now normal practice, When we are hoping to arrest people against whom we have charges, to take the utmost public steps to let them know and to arrange that the wildest messages shall reach them before they can possibly, by accident, land in their plane, and then to issue a further statement, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman did yesterday, qualifying the original one by briefing the men fully on the limits under which the warrants would operate? What was the purpose of this operation? Did the right hon. and learned Gentleman want them to be made aware of the issue of the warrants in order to arrest them, or was the whole operation undertaken in order to warn them off so that we should not have to arrest them? The Attorney-General Experience has shown that it is almost normal for information to leak out about the issue of warrants. That has been a sad experience in the past. I thought that it would be better, as the information was almost certain to leak out, to make this announcement so as to reduce the area of speculation if possible. The right hon. Gentleman has asked whether this step was taken to reduce the risk of these men coming here. I 697 appreciate quite well that if the issuing of warrants for the

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arrest of persons outside the jurisdiction becomes known in one way or another it may operate to deter them from coming. On the other hand, I say that having issued the warrants the chances of their being apprehended if they come here in transit are materially increased. Mr. Brown Is it an accurate summing up of that involved statement to say that the AttorneyGeneral, being unable to control leaks from his Department or from the Home Office, decided to exaggerate them and to announce them himself? Would it not be more in keeping with the normal practice in this country if the right hon. and learned Gentleman took steps to stop up leaks in his Department? This muddle is deliberately brought about by the right hon. and learned Gentleman, for which he accepts responsibility. The Attorney-General There has been no muddle and no leaks so far as I am aware from either the Home Office or from my Department in relation to the issue of warrants or any other matters. That allegation is quite unfounded. Mr. Manuel The hon. and learned Gentleman said it. The Attorney-General I did not say from the Home Office and I did not say from my Department, but I did say, and I repeat it, that experience has shown that the Press in some way does get information of these matters. Mr. Grimond Is it the principle that if the Government suspect that the Press may get information about anything, they are going to forestall it? Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman throw any light upon where these gentlemen now are? Are they on their way to this country, or did they stay in Russia? The Attorney-General I said that it was not in the public interest to disclose the information on which the application was made. Mr. Donnelly Will the Attorney-General give us an assurance that if these men are arrested he himself will not appear for their defence? Mr. S. Silverman Is it not perfectly clear that if the Government or Scotland 698 Yard desired to prevent it being publicly known that these warrants had been asked for and granted, it was well within their resources to have secured that object, and that, therefore, everyone will infer that the publicity given to the application for these warrants was welcome to the Government? Does it not therefore follow that all over the world it will now be inferred that the Government are more afraid of an investigation into these matters under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act than the alleged criminals can possibly be? The Attorney-General The answer to that is, "No, Sir". The object of issuing warrants is to increase the chances of securing their arrest should they come to an airport in this country or to where we have jurisdiction in transit, or should they land in transit. If they are arrested, they certainly will be prosecuted. Mr. Gaitskell May I ask two questions? Can the Attorney-General say whether the fact that Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean did not arrive is because the information he received, and upon which he approved an application for the warrant, was wrong; or whether he frightened them off by what he did, by announcing that the application had been made?

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Secondly, in connection with the right hon. and learned Gentleman's astonishing assertion that an application for the issue of a warrant always leaked, is not this a very serious matter? Does not it really undermine the effectiveness of the police in dealing with criminals? Can he say how these leaks occur and what he is doing to stop them? The Attorney-General A great many people have to be informed at all the ports and airports when a warrant is issued if any effective action is to be taken. All I was saying was that experience in the past has shown that these leaks do occur and that it is very difficult to detect who is responsible. If we could find who was responsible, action would immediately be taken. But that being so, it was thought best to take this particular step in these particular circumstances. On the question whether this deterred them from coming here, I think I can say that this application was not based 699 on any information or belief that they were in the course of flight at this moment, or a day or two ago, towards this country. ********************************************************************** QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS HC Deb 03 May 1962 vol 658 cc1208-9 1208 Mr. Donnelly On a point of order. May I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker, on a point on which I apologise that I have not given you notice? Just before Easter the Attorney-General, as you will recall, make a statement in the House about Messrs. Burgess and Maclean, in rather exceptional circumstances, 1209 in response to a Private Notice Question. Since then it has come to my knowledge that the Government are paying sums of money to Burgess and Maclean in Moscow to dwell there. Could the Chancellor of the Exchequer have permission to answer Questions Nos. 40 and 41? Mr. Speaker I have had no such request. Mr. Donnelly Further to that point of order, Sir. Do I understand that the Chancellor has made no such request? Mr. Speaker I said that I had received no such request which, in the context, disposes of the matter for today. Mr. Nabarro It was not a point of order, anyway. ********************************************************************** BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE HC Deb 03 May 1962 vol 658 cc1209-16 1209 Mr. Gaitskell May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business of the House for next week? The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod) Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows: MONDAY, 7TH MAYConsideration of private Members' Motions until Seven o'clock. Report and Third Reading of the Health Visitors and Social Workers Training Bill. TUESDAY, 8TH MAYDebate on Central Africa, which will arise on a Government Motion. WEDNESDAY, 9TH MAYSecond Reading of the Pipe-lines Bill [Lords], and Committee stage of the Money Resolution.

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Motion on the Motor Vehicles (International Circulation) (Amendment) Order. THURSDAY, 10TH MAYSupply [15th Allotted Day]: Committee. There will be a debate on Home Office Affairs, which will arise on the appropriate Votes. FRIDAY, 11TH MAYPrivate Members' Motions. 1210 MONDAY, 14TH MAYThe proposed business will be: Supply [16th Allotted Day]: Committee. A debate will take place on Nurses Pay, on the appropriate Votes. Mr. Gaitskell In view of the great importance of the Pipe-lines Bill, which raises all sorts of issues of major principle, may I ask whether the Government are proposing that the Committee stage should be taken on the Floor of the House? Mr. Macleod No, Sir. We shall follow the ordinary procedure. Mr. Gaitskell Would the right hon. Gentleman look again at this matter? This is a Bill which, of course, has been considered very thoroughly in another place and it is quite obvious from the debates there that it raises issues of the highest importance. Will the right hon. Gentleman look again at this, so that the House as a whole can have a chance of taking part in the Committee stage? Mr. Macleod I will, of course, look at it again in response to the right hon. Gentleman's request, but what he says about the importance of the Bill does not alone bring it within the doctrines previously laid down on these matters. Dame Irene Ward In view of the fact that in the last debate on nurses' pay I was profoundly dissatisfied with the speeches made by both the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland, may I ask whether, now that this is a matter of Government policy and right outside the jurisdiction of the Minister of Health, we can expect the Chancellor of the Exchequer to intervene and give us an opportunity of widening the whole debate so that we can really understand where we are? Mr. Macleod I will take note of what my hon. Friend says. The main speech will be made by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health and we will take into account what is being said in considering the final speech in reply from this side of the House. Mr. M. Foot In view of the difficulty, which was further revealed by the questions to the Prime Minister a few minutes ago, of eliciting answers about the supremely important matter of H-bomb tests and neutralist proposals 1211 and the real effect of these tests, and of the fact that these matters cannot be dealt with by question and answer, may I ask whether the Leader of the House will not rearrange the business for next week so that we can have a full debate on these matters before any more of these tests go ahead with Her Majesty's Government's approval? Is it not absolutely monstrous that the biggest round of tests supported by the West should take place without any debate whatsoever in the House of Commons? Will the right hon. Gentleman take into account that even if he may not have received representations on this matter through official channels there are large numbers of hon. Members who want a debate and who think that it is a scandal that there has not been one?

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Mr. Macleod With respect, the business I have announced for six days includes no fewer than four and a half days for debates and Motions and only one and a half days for ordinary legislation, and included in the four and a half days are two days on which the Opposition have the choice of discussion. [HON. MEMBER: "Which Opposition?] The debate to take place on Tuesday on Central Africa is in Government time. I think that we are having an admirable ration of discussion on most important matters. Sir H. Legge-Bourke Could my right hon. Friend say whether in the debate on Thursday, on Home Office affairs, the Votes selected for that day include reference to civil defence? Mr. Macleod Yes, Sir. I understand that at the request of the Opposition we will be putting down all the Home Office Votes. Therefore, any matter covered by them could be discussed. Mr. Driberg Surely it is the Government's responsibility to find time for debates on the tests for which the Government have assented to the use of Christmas Island. Is not this particularly the case in view of the new announcement about high-altitude tests which is causing grave concern among scientists, including people like Sir Bernard Lovell? Mr. Macleod The position is that the Government have consented to these 1212 tests, and if the House wishes to criticise the Government for doing that there are ways in which it can be done. But we do not feel that it is necessary for us to seek the support of the House. We are confident that we have it on this issue. Mr. Nabarro Has my right hon. Friend perceived the great anxiety felt by my hon. Friends and myself about the threatened dock strike? As time is now running out, may I ask whether he could persuade the Minister of Labour to make a statement to the House very early next week, preferably on Monday or Tuesday, about the exact position? Mr. Macleod My right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour is in the closest touch with the parties concerned. I think that it is always wisest in these matters, if one can, to leave it to the Minister, but if it is appropriate I will consult him as to whether he will make a statement. Mr. Short Has the right hon. Gentleman seen an all-party Motion on the Order Paper about the local government Boundary Commission? [That this House would welcome a declaration by Her Majesty's Government on the intended procedure to be adopted for dealing in Parliament with the recommendations of the Boundary Commission on local government reorganisation, and objections thereto, and considers that an undertaking should be given by Her Majesty's Government that no final decisions will be taken until this House has had an opportunity fully to consider the recommendations.] Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the Government will not make up their mind about any Boundary Commission Report or any number of Reports before the House has had an opportunity of debate? Will the right hon. Gentleman take note of the second part of the Motion, which asks the Government now to declare the procedure which they intend to follow on these Reports? Mr. Macleod The procedure is extremely lengthy and complicated and, of course, brings the House into the matter. It is extremely unlikely that the Orders in which the hon. Member is

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particularly interested will come before 1213 the House this Session. If I have reason to think that that is wrong, I will let the House know at an early date. Any changes, after public inquiry and all the rest of it, have to be embodied in Orders which come before Parliament. Major alterations are subject to affirmative Resolutions and others can be prayed against. The House, therefore, has plenty of opportunities in these matters. Mr. Peyton Has my right hon. Friend had time to look at the admirable and almost uniquely intelligible little Bill which I introduced to amend the Road Traffic Act, 1960, and to repel the mechanisms of bumbledom? Will he see that his right hon. and hon. Friends in the Government do not object to this Bill tomorrow when it comes hopefully forward for Second Reading? Mr. Macleod No, Sir. I can give no undertaking about that, nor that other hon. Members will not object. If a Bill comes forward after the ordinary time for debate, all hon. Members have the right to object to its Second Reading. Sir L. Plummer Can the right hon. Gentleman say when he proposes to hold a debate on the Radcliffe Report, thus giving us an opportunity of hearing the Government's proposals arising from it? Mr. Macleod No, Sir, but I will take note of the hon. Member's request. It does not come into the business I have announced. Mrs. Castle Has not the right hon. Gentleman seen the very grave warning issued by Sir Bernard Lovell about the possible consequences of the American high-level tests and the dangers which may carry in their wake not merely fall-out, but permanent interference with the magnetic field of the earth? [Laughter.] Mr. Driberg They think it funny. They are illiterate fools. Mr. Speaker Order. It is in the interests of everybody that business questions should be confined to the business announced for next week. The more we get into epithets and speeches, the less progress we can make. Mrs. Castle I am trying to point out to the Leader of the House, Mr. Speaker, that here is an urgent matter in which 1214 the Government have grave responsibility. If a man of the scientific stature of Sir Bernard Lovell can solemnly warn us that the scientists know not what they do when these tests are conducted, have not the Government the duty to this House, the country and the world, to hold an immediate and urgent debate on this matter so that we can probe these dangers? Mr. Macleod Of course, this is an enormously important subject, but I have answered the point put by the hon. Lady. In the business for next week, there is one day of Government time which we are devoting to a debate on Central Africa, which the House very much wants to have before my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary goes out there. Two other days are available and I must make the point that these are days on which the Opposition pick the subjects for debate. If the Opposition wish to have a debate on this, or to censure us for what we have done, that can be arranged, but I do not think that, having taken this decision, it is necessary for the Government to provide time to debate it. Mr. F. M. Bennett

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Can my right hon. Friend recall whether there was a similar approach from certain quarters below the Gangway opposite for a similar debate during the Russian tests? Mr. S. Silverman Yes, there was. Mr. Rankin Can the Leader of the House say whether the Government propose to bring in at an early date a Pipe-lines Bill with particular reference to Scotland in order to release the many jobs so badly needed to fill the gaps in Scottish industry? Mr. Emrys Hughes Is the Leader of the House aware that, if there is no debate on nuclear tests, a large section of public opinion will believe that Parliamentary government and democracy have become a fraud and a farce? Is he aware that there is very great interest in this matter? [HON. MEMBER: "No."] Have a debate and try it. Is not the right hon. Gentleman following the precedent set in the case of the Polaris base, which was never endorsed by this House? Is he not sidetracking the right of the people of this country to express a point of view which is widely felt? 1215 Mr. Macleod The hon. Gentleman is not being accurate. I am following the ordinary procedure which any Leader of the House follows by saying that on certain days the Opposition have the initiative for debate while the Government have the initiative on other days. I have answered the question in that sense. Mr. Donnelly I wish to return to the matter of the two gentlemen in Moscow. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Burgess is reported to be saying that certain members of the Government have been helping him, out of friendship, to obtain funds in Moscow? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the seriousness of this and will he arrange for a Government statement to be made next week to clear this matter up once and for all? Mr. Macleod I cannot believe that that has any relevance to the business I have announced. Mr. S. Silverman Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the answer he gave to my hon. Friends the Members for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot) and Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) was entirely inadequate? Will he not reconsider the matter? Will he not bear in mind that what is involved here is not only the series of tests, with all the implications which my hon. Friends have explained, but that those tests are being carried out, without the authority of Parliament, largely on British territory? Does not the right hon. Gentleman consider that it is the Government's duty, and not the duty of the Opposition, to afford some opportunity for the House to endorse or reject the permission which the Government have given, without authority, for the use of British territory for this purpose? That there are many hon. Members in the House, 1216 including this side, who do not want a debate has got nothing to do with the fact that those who do want a debate are surely entitled to have one in a matter of this kind, and that the responsibility for providing the time must rest fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the Government and cannot be shifted and evaded in the way in which the right hon. Gentleman has done. Mr. Macleod I have no intention of trying to shift or to evade my responsibilities. I have gone into this matter in response to a number of similar questions. I do not think it appropriate,

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nor do I intend, to provide Government time at present to debate the matter which the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends have raised. Mr. Driberg Shame. Mr. Short May I refer back to my previous question to the right hon. Gentleman? I think that he misunderstood my point. When we reach the stage of a provisional Order on a boundary, we reach the point of no return. Will he give an assurance that, in the case of the North-East and other areas, the House will have an opportunity to debate the Commission's proposals before the Government decide what to put in the Orders? Mr. Macleod No, Sir. I do not think that I can give an assurance in those terms, because the procedure has already been laid down and enacted by this House. I cannot alter it by exchanges across the Floor. But, through detailed talks over many months and the opportunity for objections, representations and public inquiries, there is the fullest opportunity both for local and for Parliamentary opinion to make itself heard. ********************************************************************** Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean HC Deb 03 May 1962 vol 658 c157W 157W 40 and 41. Mr. Donnelly asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) whether, in view of the issue of warrants for their arrest, Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean are still granted emigrant status for the purposes of the Exchange Control Act, 1947; (2) when Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean were granted emigrant status; upon what grounds this was done; and, as a result, what funds have been made available to them by the Bank of England. Mr. Barber I presume that "emigrant status" refers to becoming permanently non-resident for the purposes of Exchange Control. These people were designated as non-resident in November, 1957, and September, 1958, respectively, on the grounds that they were residing permanently abroad, and the issue of warrants does not affect the position. It would not be in accordance with practice to give details of funds held or transferred by individuals. ********************************************************************** TRANSFER OF GUY BURGESS'S INCOME HL Deb 10 May 1962 vol 240 cc335-6 335 3.5 p.m. VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. [The Question was as follows: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the report in the Sunday Express of April 29, that the Treasury are allowing Mr. Guy Burgess to move his private income from London to Moscow by classing him as an emigrant, is correct.] THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD MILLS) Yes, my Lords. I understand that the person in question is treated for exchange control purposes as permanently resident abroad. The payments which may be made from the United Kingdom to such a non-resident include the transfer of his current income. VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD

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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his Answer, but am I to understand that in future Her Majesty's Government are to class suspected traitors as emigrants, because, if so, it is surely an extraordinary state of affairs? LORD MILLS My Lords, the action and behaviour of this man may arouse distaste. Anyone is entitled to a private opinion about him. But the fact is that he has not been convicted of any offence and the behaviour of the Government, even in cases of difficulty, ought to follow the principle that, however black the circumstances, a man is not treated as guilty until he has been found guilty. This man has been judged a non-resident 336 and is therefore entitled to the conditions applying to non-residents. LORD HENDERSON My Lords, am I right in understanding that the decision was taken to arrest the two men if they returned to this country? LORD MILLS My Lords, I suggest that that is an entirely different question from the one upon the Order Paper. LORD OGMORE My Lords, is it not a fact that during the war an annuity payment was made to Marshal Ptain, and was not this generally regarded as a very civilised thing to be done by this country? LORD MILLS I should need notice of that question, my Lords. VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD Has the noble Lord also heard that Mr. Burgess is reported as having boasted that he has friends in high places? LORD MILLS My Lords I have heard that report. I have no means of checking it, but I should very much doubt the veracity of the statement. VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH My Lords, am I to understand from the noble Lord that none of the members of the Cabinet knows whether or not an order for arrest was prepared in case this man landed here? THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM) My Lords, I do not think the noble Viscount has any right to make that supposition. My noble friend said, perfectly rightly, that this was not the question he had been asked. VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBORUGH That is true. LORD LINDGREN But may we take it, my Lords, that the decision of the Government is really a bribe to stay away? VISCOUNT HAILSHAM I am afraid, my Lords, I do not know to whom that question was addressed. It certainly is entirely untrue and is not authorised by anything that was said by my noble friend. ********************************************************************** GUY BURGESS AND DONALD MACLEAN HC Deb 15 May 1962 vol 659 cc1145-6 1145 Q4. Mr. Donnelly

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asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the security issues involved, he will set up a committee of privy councillors to inquire into the circumstances whereby Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean were designated in 1957 and 1958, respectively, as non-resident British subjects. The Prime Minister No, Sir. Mr. Donnelly Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, notwithstanding the principle that everybody is innocent until he is proved guilty, common sense must be applied on certain occasions? It may be that the Government have not got common sense. But against the background of the extraordinary performance of the Attorney-General and the strange answers given from the Treasury Bench, how is the right hon. Gentleman, without this kind of inquiry, going to convince public opinion that in some strange way these two gentlemen are not being protected by the right hon. Gentleman's party? The Prime Minister The hon. Member may make whatever innuendoes he likes; the fact is that these two men are undoubtedly non-residents. That is a matter of fact; it is not a privilege given by the Treasury. The only questionand I admit that it is a question 1146 of judgmentis whether machinery which is intended to maintain the strength of sterling, and which nowadays is used loosely though carefully, should be used for another purpose, namely, to punish men of whom we do not approve. It is a matter of judgment. I do not think that it is right to use for this purpose machinery devised for another purpose. Mr. S. Silverman Will the right hon. Gentleman apply his principle of factual non-residence to every fugitive offender from this country? Does he realise that the effect of allowing these moneys to be paid in these circumstances is exactly in line with the effect of the Attorney-General's belated application for warrants the other daynamely, to keep them non-resident? The Prime Minister I quite see that a matter of judgment and perhaps a matter of feeling is involved as to what is the right course to adopt. It would be easy to act the other way. But knowing the hon. Member's general attitude towards these matters I should have thought that, on the whole, he would have been in favour of not using these regulations in a penal way in respect of people who have not been tried. Mr. Donnelly On a point of order. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the Prime Minister's Answer, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment. ********************************************************************** THE VASSALL CASE AND NAVAL SECURITY HL Deb 31 October 1962 vol 244 cc29-36 29 2.35 p.m. VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH My Lords, I must apologise for being apparently about a minute late; your Lordships' Prayers must have been quite expeditious. May I ask a Question of which I have given Private Noticenamely, to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a statement with regard to the Vassall spying case. THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (LORD CARRINGTON) Lords, the facts of the Vassall case history are now fairly familiar, but it might be convenient if I repeated the salient points. He joined the Admiralty, at the age of seventeen, as a temporary clerk in 1941. Two years later, he was called up to the R.A.F.

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and demobilised in 1947. After a short interval he applied to be reemployed by the Admiralty, and returned. He was appointed as clerk to the Naval Attach, Moscow, in March, 1954, and returned to the Admiralty headquarters in July, 1956. Vassall's subsequent service was in three departments; first in the Naval Intelligence Division from July, 1956, to May, 1957; then as clerk in the Civil Lord's office until October, 1959, and finally in the Military Branch from October, 1959, to his arrest on September 12, 1962. Throughout his career, Vassall was given all the security clearances appropriate to his work. There is no doubt at all that from the time he was suborned in Moscow to the time of Hougihton's arrest in January, 1961, and again for a short period this year, he removed, photographed and disclosed certain classified documents which passed through his hands in the course of his duties. It is worth while recalling that in the Civil Lord's office 30 as it was constituted at that time the principal official business dealt with was the Admiralty works programme; although as a junior Minister and a member of the Board of Admiralty, the Civil Lord would deal with a certain amount of secret material, the volume of this coming into his office in the ordinary way was relatively small. Vassall himself has said that he conducted no espionage from the date of Houghton's arrest in January, 1961, until May, 1962. He was arrested four months later. I now turn to the question of the working of the security system in the Admiralty, and in particular to my ministerial responsibility for the Department. No blame can be attached to anybody for the existence in my Department of an individual who was willing to become a spy. Nor is it blameworthy to have caught the spy. The real issue of Warne, if there is to be blame, is whether he should have been caught sooner; that is to say, were there or were there not faults in the application of the Government security system in the Admiralty? These are precisely the matters which the Committee appointed by the Prime Minister are investigating. In the first instance, their task will consist of gathering all the relevant facts, many of which of course are not confined to the Admiralty. The report of this Committee will not itself toe published, but as has already been announced, a statement on their findings will he made in due course. It has been said that a committee of officials will not have the necessary authority when it comes to dealing with the matter of ministerial responsibility for the actions of a Department The argument seems to me fallacious. I do not imagine that anyone could question the competence of these senior officials to sift the facts thoroughly and to form a completely objective judgment on the part played by the Admiralty in this case. What is more, the Committee are expressly charged to have regard to the recommendations of the Radcliffe Report, which dealt very fully with the question of how we ought to run our security. If the Committee should find that there was culpable negligence in the application of the Government's security system within my Department during my period of office as First Lord, 31 and particularly since the Romer and Radcliffe Committees reported, then I shall naturally accept full ministerial responsibility. VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH Lords, I am quite sure the First Lord of the Admiralty is right in taking this opportunity of making the Statement he has made this afternoon. It was a very serious case, from the point of view of our nation, and public opinion was rather upset about it; and I think the actual results in the Court were such as to lend a good deal of support to the idea that it was a veny serious matter. Therefore, there has continued to be public interest in the matter My Leader in the other place yesterday put certain points. To start with, I would

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congratulate the First Lord upon the fact that he ended his statement as he did. It is the proper thing to do, and I congratulate him upon having done it. What perhaps is more particularly in the minds of members of my Party, who are not without experience in these matters on the other side of the fence, and who also have experience of the reactions which come from the Conservative Opposition in such matters when we are in office, is that the particular Committee set up hardly seems to be adequate to meet the situation. Here we have, as was said yesterday, the Reports of both the Radcliffe Committee and the Romer Committee. It is quite possible, in the circumstances, that even this civil-servants committee might find some reason to consider ministerial responsibility, and we do not consider that that is their job. In that case, I think it would be better to have a committee nearer the constitution of either the Romer Committee or the Radcliffe Committee, or even to bring one or other of those Committees back to consider the matter. I will say no more on that at present. LORD CARRINGTON Lords, I am grateful to the noble Viscount for what he has said. On the question of the composition of the Committee, there have on the matter of security been a number of committees in recent years. There was the Committee of Privy Counsellors as the result of the Burgess 32 and Maclean case; there was the Romer Committee, as a result of the Houghton and Gee case; and the Radcliffe Committee, as a result of both the Houghton and Gee case and the Black case. I think that what the Prime Minister feels is that the whole question of what it is possible to do in Government security has been investigated very fully and what is needed in this case is an inquiry as to whether or not the recommendations of the Radcliffe and Romer Committees were carried out, and whether or not any breach was found in the security arrangements in the Admiralty. As I have already said, the ministerial responsibility for what goes on in the Admiralty is mine, and when the facts are established I shall naturally accept that responsibility. LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH My Lords, I agree entirely with what my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition has said. I think the House would be wise to take this matter very seriously, as I am sure the First Lord himself does. I must say that I am not happy about the situation. This is at least the second case affecting the Admiralty, and they are both very serious cases. What I should like to ask the First Lord is whether he really thinks that a committee of high civil servants is the appropriate body to investigate what is undoubtedly a very serious matter. If they come to the conclusion that the civil servants in the Admiralty, or high-ranking Naval officers, are to blame, it is a little difficult for them to be as clearcut in censure as they might otherwise be, particularly as regards civil servants. It is not easy because it will be a public document which they will produce. I have no doubt that the head of the Civil Service can be critical of Departments behind the scenes, but it is a little difficult for him to be critical above the scenes. If it turns out that things happen from which the Minister cannot absolve himself of responsibilityand, of course, a Minister cannot absolve himself of responsibility for anything that happens in the Departmentthen the civil servants are in a still greater position of difficulty. May I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that I personally am very worried about the position of the former Civil Lord, who seemed to me to have 33 social relationships with a minor official of the Admiralty which were quite inappropriate? Therefore, we take the view that the Civil Service Committee, estimable as these gentlemen are, was a wrong channel of investigation. We think that there may well be questions arising for Ministers themselves in their own positions, and I agree with my noble friend that it is to the good that the First Lord has recognised that situation. The security matters are important. They are not only important for the security of our own country; they are

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important for our relations with other Powers with whom we have confidential relationships and from whom, from time to time, we receive confidential information. Therefore, I hope that nobody will underestimate the gravity of this, at least the second trouble which has affected my Lords of the Admiralty. LORD REA My Lords, before the noble Lord replies, may I say that while I agree that nobody will underrate the gravity of this matter, there are some of us on this side of the House who are not quite so convinced that this is a suitable time to pursue the matter much further. The matter is more or less sub judice, and I think it might have been left to develop itself, were it not for some quite unjustified attacks on the First Lord personally, attacks with which I am sure none of us would agree. I should like to thank him for his very full and frank statement to-day. THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM) My Lords, may I intervene to say this? I agree with what has fallen from the noble Lord who sits on the Liberal Benches. I think we must distinguish between the very serious issues of security which are being investigated, and for which my noble friend has accepted full ministerial responsibility, and any criticisms, which I myself hold to be quite unjustified, about the personal conduct of a junior Minister, which we are perfectly prepared to debate at the proper time. I deplore these criticisms, and I think they should be separated from the issues of security, which are quite distinct. VISCOUNT ASTOR My Lords, may I ask whether the routine security checks 34 include submission to a lie detector test, and, if not, whether the noble Lord will consider it and investigate it very carefully? LORD CARRINGTON My Lords, I think this is the sort of question I ought not to answer before this inquiry takes place, but I will note what my noble friend has said. LORD LINDGREN My Lords, in his statement the First Lord said that this man was subject to the security tests appropriate to his work. But from one who has seen Civil Service work from the inside I would say that it would appear that the work being performed was outside the grade in which the man was. He was a clerical officer. Will that come within the scope of the Committee of Inquiry? LORD CARRINGTON My Lords, the work this man was doing was within his sphere, and that is why he got all the security clearances necessary for the work he was doing. He was doing nothing outside the scope of what he was supposed to do. LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH My Lords, may I ask whether the investigation by the Committee will include the Moscow Embassy and particularly the Department of the Naval Attach, because clearly there is a great responsibility there for What happened. This man went astray, apparently without their knowledge, for quite a long time. LORD CARRINGTON Yes, my Lords, it will. VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH My Lords, may I say that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rea, that we do not want to continue this discussion too long to-day. All I am anxious about is that perhaps the Leader of the House in another place will take note of what has been said here to-day.

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There is to be a full debate there on Friday, and I ask that the matters raised here should be still further considered. VISCOUNT HAILSHAM My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Viscount. If I may say so, he has been very considerate about this matter. I will certainly take note of What he has said, and I am sure that my right honourable friend in another place also will take notice of it. 35 LORD SILKIN My Lords, I should be interested to have a reply to the point made by my noble friend on the nature of the inquirythat is, whether the body of civil servants is, in fact, the most appropriate body to carry out an inquiry of this sort. A reply was not given to that, and I should be grateful to have one. LORD CARRINGTON My Lords, with great respect I thought I had replied to it twice. The point is this. We have had inquiries about the whole of our security set-up. What went wrong in this caseif anything went wrongwas whether or not the security procedures were properly carried out. This is what this Committee is going to inquire into. That is the whole purpose of the Committee. As I have said, as the Minister in charge in Parliament I am naturally responsible for what goes on in my Department. LORD SILKIN I did understand that quite fully, but the point was that, even as an inquiry into what went wrong, is the Committee of civil servants the most appropriate body? LORD CARRINGTON I beg the noble Lord's pardon: I misunderstood him. I think the answer is, yes; we thought that the right sort of people to inquire into this were civil servants, with their very great experience of administration and a great knowledge of security, as all permanent heads of department must have. I think that these were three excellent people to inquire into it. LORD SHEPHERD My Lords, as there is some disquiet about the composition of this Committee of Inquiry, if it is the Government's view that civil servants are perhaps the right people to inquire, could the Minister meet our disquiet by the appointment of an independent chairman? LORD CARRINGTON My Lords, I really thought that I had answered this question before. As regards the latter part, this Committee has been set up by the Prime Minister, not by me; but I will certainly bring to his attention the question raised by the noble Lord. ********************************************************************** TRIBUNALS OF INQUIRY (EVIDENCE) ACT, 1921 HC Deb 14 November 1962 vol 667 cc385-523 385 3.50 p.m. Mr. Speaker I call the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), because I know that he wishes to raise a point of order at this stage. Mr. George Wigg (Dudley) Yes, Sir. As the House is aware, the Motion on the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, 1921, put on the Order Paper by the Government, reached the Order Paper only this morning and therefore the opportunities to move an Amendment have been extremely limited.

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Mr. Speaker, I have given you and the Table notice in the normal way of Amendments standing in the name of myself, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Easing-ton (Mr. Shinwell). The first Amendment is in line 1, after "tribunal" to add: composed of Members of the House of Commons". For the benefit of those Members who have difficulty in following it, the opening line would read: That it is expedient that a tribunal composed of Members of the House of Commons. . My second Amendment is in line 5, to insert: to establish the responsibility and duty of the Prime Minister for security matters and to report on the extent to which there has been any failure to discharge this responsibility and duty". The Motion, if amended as I desire, would read thus: TRIBUNALS OF INQUIRY (EVIDENCE) ACT. 1921: That it is expedient that a tribunal composed of Members of the House of Commons be established for enquiring into a definite matter of urgent public importance, viz., the circumstances in which offences under the Official Secrets Acts were committed by William John Christopher Vassal!, and in particular: (1) to establish the responsibility and duty of the Prime Minister for security matters and to report on the extent to which there has been any failure to discharge this responsibility and duty. Before you give your Ruling, there is a further matter. Looking back at the precedents that we are asked to follow, it is evident that the basis is somewhat insecure. From case to case the circum- 386 stances alter, and the precedents seem to alter, and I submit that it is highly desirable that the House should know that if these Amendments, or any other Amendments submitted by any other hon. Members are called, it will be open to any hon. Member, if called by you, to speak first on the Government Motion and subsequently to speak on the Amendments. I would be obliged if you would give a Ruling on these matters. Mr. Speaker I am greatly obliged to the hon. Member for his courtesy in giving me time to consider these Amendments in the light of the authorities. For that reason I regret that I feel obliged to say, with regard to the first Amendment, that I do not think it right to select it, and that, with regard to his second proposed Amendment. it is out of order. Mr. Wigg I have no doubt that you have consulted the precedents, Sir. On page 421 of Erskine May it is quite clearly laid down that an Amendment relating to the constitution of a tribunal has been allowed. On a previous occasion it was competent for an hon. Member in a previous House to move an Amendment to the Motion in terms of the constitution of a tribunal. I ask you whether you have given consideration to that matter, Mr. Speaker. On the second point, if it is ruled out of order, it does then, in my submission, seem to make a mockery of the whole proceeding, for what is here involved is this, that the Prime Minister, who is head of the Civil Service, head of the Armed Forces, and head of security, is then competent to come to the House of Commons and set up a tribunal, the membership of which he will select, on terms which he has decided, to receive a report which he will then subsequently decide whether or not to publish. Mr. Speaker With respect, the hon. Member is departing from matters of order in saying that. I do not have any doubt that his proposed second Amendment is out of order, and I so rule. I know that there is a precedent for an Amendment like the first one, but that does not mean that there is an obligation on the Chair to select it if it does not think it right to do so. Mr. E. Shinwell (Easington)

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On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, you will 387 have noted that in the Motion to be moved by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister no reference at all is made, not to the form of the tribunal because that is explicitly stated, but to who is to preside over it, or who are to be the members. Surely it is within the prerogative of the House of Commons, in a matter of this sort, which apparently concerns, or may concern, the honour of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] That is implicit in the Motion, or, at any rate, that is my interpretation of it, and apparently that is the Prime Minister's view about it. But whether that is so or not, surely it is the right of hon. Members to express an opinion in the form of an Amendment to this Motion as to who should preside over a tribunal of this character. If it is proposed in an Amendment that a Select Committee of the House is an appropriate tribunal for this purpose, surely that is in order. Mr. Speaker I have not said that it is out of order. I said that I did not think it right to select it. I think that I would be wrong if I started giving reasons for not selecting it. What I have been sayingand the right hon. Gentleman knows all thishas no bearing on the propriety of urging in debate what should be the right kind of constitution of the tribunal. Mr. Shinwell This is an important point, Sir. Unless the matter is dealt with by means of an Amendment, the question of the appropriate form of tribunal, that is to say, the person who is to preside over it, cannot be decided by the House. This can be done only through the medium of an Amendment. If you do not select the Amendment, will you be good enough to say how the matter can be raised? Mr. Speaker If the right hon. Gentleman persuades the House to reject the Motion, no doubt something else may happen. I am sorry, but I cannot argue about selection. Mr. Sydney Silvennan (Nelson and Colne) On a point of order. I did give notice to the Table of a different Amendment which I desire to have leave to move as a manuscript Amendment, there having been no earlier opportunity of putting it on the Order Paper. My Amend- 388 ment proposes that the Motion should end with the word "Vassall", in the fourth line, so that the four matters to which the tribunal's attention would otherwise be drawn, in particular, would be left out of the Motion. It would be quite wrong to indicate any reasons for that Amendment now, but I suggest that it is well within the scope of such Amendments as are possible on an occasion like this. Mr. Speaker I am obliged to the hon. Member for giving me written notice of this matter, but I must answer that I do not think it right to select the Amendment, either. Mr. Michael Foot (Ebbw Vale) On a point of order. Has not the House been put in very great difficulty over this matter? Is it not the normal custom, when a Motion placed on the Order Paper by the Government proposes to set up a tribunal of this nature, that the House should have been given some time to consider it and to see whether it was desirable to put down Amendmentsand, with full respect to you, Mr. Speaker, to provide further time for you to consider whether such Amendments should be accepted? Has it not been the case, on previous occasions when resort has been made to a tribunal, that the Opposition Front Bench has wished to move an Amendment, or to modify the proposal made by the Government? Would not it have been much more courteous to the House, and would it not have made this business much more appropriately done, if the Government had given adequate time for Amendments to be considered? Although you

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have said that you would not select any of the Amendments proposed, presumably it might have been the case that if the Amendments were put in different terms you would have selected them. Therefore, I suggest that the House has been put in great difficulty. May I urge, even now, that because of the great difficulty in which the House has been placed you should reconsider at any rate the two Amendments which you have decided not to accept? Mr. Speaker I must tell the hon. Gentleman and the House, without intending any discourtesy, that I have had adequate time to make up my mind about the Amendments, which are the 389 only ones on which I rule. I cannot argue about selection. It would be a very bad precedent to start doing that. Mr. Shinwell May I direct your attention to a precedent, Mr. Speaker? In 1936, when a similar matter came before the House in connection with a tribunal of inquiry based on the Act of 1921, my late colleague, Sir Stafford Cripps, moved an Amendment to a Government Motion, which was accepted by the then Mr. Speaker. The Amendment added the words: and it is expedient that the Director of Public Prosecutions should forthwith make all inquiries and investigations for the purpose of laying all material evidence before the said tribunal and it was accepted by Mr. Speaker. In view of that precedent, is there any reason why you should refuse to select the Amendment of my hon. Friend? Mr. Speaker Ruling only upon the Amendments offered to me at this time, if they are not in order I cannot accept them, and if they are in order it rests upon me whether or not I should select them, and I do not select them. Mr. F. J. Bellenger (Bassetlaw) Following that last remark of yours, Mr. Speaker, are we to take it that after the Prime Minister has moved the Motion it will not be too late for an Amendment to be considered by you and, if necessary, accepted by you, even though it has not been put down by the Front Bench? Mr. Speaker Whether or not it is put down by the Front Benchwhatever that meansmakes no difference. It is the merits of the Amendment which matter in that context. Mr. S. Silverman May I respectfully draw your attention, Sir, to the fact that my Amendment, if carried, would remove from the Motion certain additions to its main purpose which have the effect of extending the inquirywhich many people think an undesirable form of inquiryinto wider fields than are necessary for the principal object of the Motion? Perhaps I might pick out two. Sub-paragraphs (2) and (4) seem to me to be very widely drawnmore widely drawn than the circumstances require. Would it not be suitable that the House should 390 have an opportunity of considering whether or not that is so before being called upon to vote for or against the whole Motion as it appears on the Order Paper? Mr. Speaker I did not take the view that it was right to select the hon. Member's Amendment. I beg to assure him and the House that when I reached that conclusion it was not on the basis of failing to understand what its effect would be. One of the matters in my mind is that in the debate the hon. Member, and other hon. Members who take his view, can urge every single point which can be urged on the Amendment. That would be in order. I hope that the House will soon feel ready to get on with the business.

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Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West) On a point of order. In view of your refusal to accept my hon. Friend's Amendment, Mr. Speaker, may I ask whether it will be possible to put the Question separately on each of the four sub-paragraphs? Otherwise, we are being reduced to the position where a Motion of great importance is being treated in exactly the same way as a Statutory Instrument. Mr. Speaker I will consider that question before we reach the point, without giving the hon. Member any encouragement. 3.59 p.m. The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan) I beg to move, That it is expedient that a tribunal be established for inquiring into a definite matter of urgent public importance, viz., the circumstances in which offences under the Official Secrets Acts were commited by William John Christopher Vassall, and in particular: 1. (1) the allegations made that the presence of another spy inside the Admiralty was known to the First Lord and his Service chiefs after the Portland case eighteen months ago; 2. (2) any other allegations which have been or may be brought to their attention, reflecting similarly on the honour and integrity of persons who, as Ministers, naval officers and civil servants, were concerned in the case; 3. (3) any breaches of security arrangements which took place; and 4. (4) any neglect of duty by persons directly or indirectly responsible for Vassall's employment and conduct, and for his being treated as suitable for employment on secret work. 391 I should like to explain to the House the motives which have led the Government to place this Motion on the Order Paper today, and the reasons why I ask the House to support it. About two months ago the First Lord of the Admiralty came to see me and told me that another spy had been discovered, and that the man involved was employed in the Admiralty. Committal for trial and an early conviction were likely to follow a charge before the magistrate. The Security Services had no doubt of the strength of the case which they would be able to present, and explained to me in general terms the circumstances in which it had arisen. I must tell the House that my feelings were torn between resentment that yet another man could be found so degraded in character as to be ready to sell his country for money, and a certain satisfaction that, after a period when he had tried to lie low and then resumed his treacherous activities, he had been rapidly caught and would be brought to justice. In this perpetual conflict between espionage and counter-espionage it is, of course, never possible to present a complete account to the public. Yet, as the net closes and the formidable penalties are exacted, one may hope that those who operate for money will be deterred and that we will be left only with the more difficult problem of those who work for the enemy under a strangely perverted sense of duty. At the same time, I feel it right to warn the House that hostile intrigue and espionage are being relentlessly maintained on a large scale. Massive efforts are being made by every possible method to undermine our security. We are doing all we can to meet this evergrowing threat; and the new procedures introduced as a result of the Romer and Radclyffe inquiries are yielding good results. But it would not be possible for me to promise that there will be no more spies or traitors. What I can say is that as the security arrangements improve so we shall be better placed to catch them by the heels.

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As soon as I received this information from the First Lord I gave anxious thought as to the best course to pursue. It seemed to me that this was not a case 392 where it would be necessary or right to set up an inquiry such as that undertaken by Sir Charles Romer, and certainly not to call into play the machinery of the Committee under Lord Radcliffe, which was mainly concerned with considering the whole structure of security and laying down rules and regulations for Departments to observe. I thought that the quickest and most practical way of investigating the machinery and learning and applying the lessons of this particular case would be the appointment of a small committee of distinguished civil servants. My reasons for preferring this form of inquiry are shown in their terms of reference. From the practical point of view of trying to draw the net tighter all the time, what we had to find out was the answer to these questions: would the spy have been caught earlier had the Romer and Radcliffe regulations been in force throughout Vassall's career as a spy? Or ought he to have been caught earlier under the regulations now in force? Was there a slip-up at any point in the observing of the regulations? Or was the lesson to be learned that an even more stringent system ought to be imposed than that which the Radcliffe Commission recommended? In other words, my purpose in proposing this Committeewhich I still think was the right procedure for the end I had in mind and in the light of the position as it then existedwas to reach early and useful conclusions in order to enable us either to improve the present security system, if that should prove necessary, or to enforce it more stringently if there had been any laxity. It can, of course, be objected that it was improper for civil servants to inquire into the operation of the security system within a Department since this must necessarily involve the responsibility of Ministers. Before I go further, I should like to say something on this question. "Ministerial responsibility", as the phrase is commonly used, is generally well understood. It means that a Minister is responsible to this House, and to Parliament, for maintaining in his Department an administrative machine which is efficient and economic. If anything goes wrong with that machine, the Minister is answerable for it. But the degree to which he will feel himself personally involved will, of course, depend 393 upon the circumstances. If it is an error which does not really reflect on the general efficiency of the Department, the chief duty of the Minister is to take steps to put things right. But if the efficiency of the Department is seriously called in question, then the Minister's own personal position may, of course, be involved. It was that conception of Ministerial responsibility which I had in mind when I appointed the Committee of civil servants to investigate the Vassall case, and I have made it clear that the Committee was intended to ascertain the facts of the case, and to discover what it was that had gone wrongif anything had gone wrong[HON. MEMBERS: "It had.") Well, not necessarily; he may have got through the regulations as they now stand. But anyway, the Committee had to find out what had gone wrong as an essential first step in decidingand the decision would rest between the Minister concerned and myselfhow serious any breach or neglect of duty had been, and, therefore, how far the Minister involved must accept personal responsibility. I have also made it quite clear that this was something I reserved to myself to judge, and I am still convinced that had it not been for other developments, which I will mention in a moment, it would have been both proper and sufficient to require a body of civil servants to establish the facts of the case. On this basis I could judge, in my responsibility as Prime Minister, whether any measure should be taken, either of a disciplinary nature or, even mare important, to secure improvements in our methods for the future, and I could reach my own decision on the degree of Ministerial responsibility involved.

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But now we are dealing with Ministerial responsibility in a very different sense. What is now being challenged is a Minister's personal integrity and character. This, I agree, is a field in which civil servants should not be asked to advise and report. In this respect, since the Committee of civil servants started their work I have had to face a changed situation. Soon after the opening of the Session, during the debate on the Address, I became aware that there was building up, both in the Press and in the House, and to some 394 extent in various places where men meet and talk or gossip about public affairs, a dark cloud of suspicion and innuendo. Some words which were used by the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown), in winding up the debate on the Address, were drawn to my attention. The right hon. Gentleman said that there were letters which indicate a degree of Ministerial responsibility which goes far beyond the ordinary business of a Minister in charge being responsible for everything which goes on in his Department." [OFFICIAL REPORT. 5th November, 1962; Vol. 666, c. 714.] These words were very obscure and seemed to me, frankly, at the time not to have any particular meaning. However, that is not unusual with the right hon. Gentleman. Even though I read them as carefully as I could, I did not feel unduly anxious. I had not then realised that this was part of a general build-up of oblique suggestion which made imputations of a far more sinister kind and on a very different plane to those to which Ministers are ordinarily subjected. I had not at first understood exactly what it was that these letters were supposed to convey in terms of the degree of Ministerial responsibility which goes far beyond the ordinary business of a Minister. All of us know that it is part of the hazards of political life that we must be subjected to heavy criticism. This comes from political opponents, and sometimes from friends, both inside and outside the House, and in the Press. We are, of course, all of us, accustomed to being called incompetent, lax, unimaginative and the rest. But this is part of the general conditions in which we live and we try not to be too thin-skinned about it. However, I began to realise in the middle of last week that the accusations being made against Ministers, or building up against Ministers, were of a very different order and when certain rumours reached me about the letters written to Vassall by the former Civil Lord, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith)rumours hinted in the Press and magnified by gossipI felt that this was a different kind of attack from the normal attack on Ministers' efficiency and, in this particular case, was directed against the character of my hon. Friend. 395 Indeed, looking back I now see what right hon. Gentlemen had in mind when they started this whispering campaign about these letters which had passed[HON. MEMBERS: "Who is 'they'?"] This is common knowledge and I am coming to that between the former Civil Lord and Vassall. The dark hints that were going about on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week were not connected with the hon. Member's efficiency. They were directed against his moral character. These letters, of course, had been communicated to the right hon. Member for Belper. He said that he had seen the copies; how, I do not know. It is true that part of the Press had built up the Vassall case, not into an ordinary spy case, but with suggestions of a great public scandal. It has been for many years the practice, although I do not think it is a very laudable one, of some of the popular newspapers to attempt to purchase for large sums the autobiographies of well-known criminals. These life stories of murderers and others, whether written by themselves or by the "ghosts" in the publishing office, are a rather squalid form of journalism. They pander to a certain demand for horror and terror which is understandable, if not particularly praiseworthy.

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So, when I read that the Vassall memoirsif one can give such a name to such a compilationhad been purchased by one of the popular newspapers, I assumed that it was to meet a demand of the same kind. However, I now understand that this decision was taken not from any purpose of satisfying the appetite of their readers, but from a deep sense of public duty. At any rate, in one form or another rumours were circulating around these letters which I felt must be dealt with immediately. Therefore, on Wednesday, 7th November, I decided that the only possible course in fairness to my hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead was that they should be immediately published. This was done at my direction as an appendix to an interim Report from the Committee of civil servants. The publication of these letters must have been a deep disappointment to those who thought that a great moral scandal was likely to be revealed. It is 396 no good pretending, it is no good beating about the bush. What was being gossiped and spread about was that the hon. Member had been guilty of perverted and immoral association with Vassall. I took, therefore, the only course I could take, with the consent of my hon. Friend, to protect him and I think that the publication of the letters had that immediate effect. Nevertheless, because of a criticism which he recognised might be made, not of his character but of his judgment, my hon. Friend thought it right to resign his office. As I told him at the time, I was sure that in the long run this decision would redound to his credit and enable him, as I firmly believe, to continue his career with only a temporary check. It was, therefore, my intention, however regrettable the circumstances which led to the resignation of my hon. Friend, to continue in the path that I had set myself. On Thursday, therefore, after the statement I made in the House of Commons, this was my purpose. I urged the civil servants to complete their recommendations and report to me as rapidly as possible so that I could take the action of which I had already told the House. I was ready to show the report to the Leader of the Opposition and those of his colleagues whom he should nominate for the purpose. This I did in the case of the Romer Report and also in the case of the Report of the Radcliffe Committee. I also intended, as I informed the House, to ask Lord Radcliffe, who has unique knowledge of the security position, to advise me especially on two points: first, whether there was some failure of the present regulations even if properly enforced, or some weakness revealed; secondly, whether there were any, and, if so, what, new procedures which we might have to adopt, however harshly they might operate upon ordinary private liberty. This, then, was the situation on Thursday. I must now tell the House what are the reasons which have led me to put forward a Motion which calls, not for an inquiry on the lines of the Romer Inquiry or for an inquiry on the lines of the Radcliffe Inquiry, but a tribunal set up under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act. As the House knows, there is a very great distinction between the 397 two methods. The first is one in which men and women of good will are asked to give evidence in order to help the State, and out of loyalty and good citizenship. There is no power of subpoena, no power to commit to prison for contempt, evidence is not given on oath, it is not privileged, nothing can be done about perjury and there is no examination or cross-examination. It is a committee of people willing to help, and not a judicial body. The Motion that I now present is to set up a body of the second and more formidable character. On Friday last a situation developed of which I hesitate to tell the House, but I must tell the House. There came to me an authenticated story which I shall describe as simply as I can. An hon. Member of this House was dining on Thursday night with one of the editorial staff of a national newspaper. In the course of the dinner, this gentleman said

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that one of the staff of the paper had been told by a member either of the police or of the security servicehe was not sure whichthat, had Vassall not been arrested on 12th September, it had been his intention to join my hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead in Italy and that Vassall then intended, in the words of the reporter of this story, to "do a Pontecorvo", with the clear implication that my hon. Friend also intended to defect to Russia or to assist Vassall to do so. It was also said that my hon. Friend was believed to have spent holidays abroad with Vassall before. This story, which, if it were true, would amount to something akin to treason, was told to a Member of Parliament by a leading member of the Press. I must confess that when I was told it early on Friday morning I hesitated as to what I should do. If I did nothing it would enable the man to say that he had given this information to a Member of Parliament who told him, and rightly told him, that he proposed to inform someone in authority and that it could be passed to the Prime Minister, and to this course of passing it on this gentleman gave his consent. Of course, having given his information, he was free from any other obligation and he might then attack me for negligence if I took no action upon it. If, on the other hand, I waved it aside as altogether absurd, as, naturally, my 398 own instinct was, I could, in the atmosphere of suspicion which had been created, have been accused of a dereliction of my duty. I heard, moreover, that a similar story was being put about on Friday. This caused me great anxiety, as I am sure it would any Member of the House in my position. However preposterous, however wicked and however vile such a suggestion, it is one of a most serious character and I came to the conclusion that I could not let the matter rest. So much for that. Later in the morning my attention was called to a report in the Press in which it was alleged that the presence of another spy inside the Admiralty was known to my noble Friend the First Lord and his Service chiefs after the Portland case, eighteen months ago. It is true that this report referred to an article which had appeared on the previous day which, because of pressure of work from holding a Cabinet and other things, I had not read, but the restatement of the allegation was in a much more serious form. I will read to the House the relevant passage: The First Lord's position is now very delicate. Yesterday on a sudden summons he hurried across to Admiralty House to see Mr. Macmillan. The reason: the revelation by Percy Hoskins in yesterday's Daily Express that the presence of another spy inside the Admiralty was known to the First Lord and his Service chiefs when the Portland ring was exposed eighteen months ago. Mr. Macmillan wanted to know from Lord Carrington why he had not been warned of this startling fact. What does this really say? It says that my noble Friend the First Lord, aided and abetted by what are called "the Service chiefs", which I suppose means the Board of Admiraltythe First Sea Lord, Sir Caspar John; the Second Sea Lord, Sir Royston Wright; the Third Sea Lord, Vice-Admiral Le Fanu; the Fourth Sea Lord, Sir Michael Villiers; and, no doubt, the Permanent Secretary to the Admiralty, Sir Clifford Jarretthave been guilty of culpable negligence during the eighteen months since the Portland case when, it is alleged, they knew of the existence of another spy in the Admiralty. On referring to the Thursday article, I see that this charge is based upon a statement (that a document was found in the house of Mr. Kroeger, which 399 somehow connected the Vassall case with the Portland case. Upon this foundation has been built the allegation that my noble Friend the First Lord and the Board of Admiralty and perhaps other senior civil servants have been negligent to a degree which amounts to a

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betrayal of the Service over which they preside. I need say nothing of the incidental disloyalty of the First Lord, if this were true, to the head of the Government. Now, this may be true. It may be that my noble Friend, after devoted service as an infantry officer in the war, after a very distinguished career as High Commissioner in Australia, after service in the Government as First Lord for three years, has, in effect, betrayed his trust. It may be true. And if it is true it should be known. But if it is not true, then it is right that its untruth should be clearly and fairly established after a thorough investigation. These accusations have now left the area of vague insinuations and general charges which can never be easily pinpointed. They have been levelled, one by an individual disclosure, another in a publication which goes to millions of readers, against individual people on specific grounds. There may be other charges and insinuations. For these reasons, therefore, I decided, with the approval of my colleagues, to Wing forward this Motion. I feel sure that, with a view to finding any faults, filling up any crevices, tightening any loose joints in our security system, the Committee of civil servants would have served us well. Nor, for the reasons which I have already explained, do I think that the purely formal question raised by the Leader of the Opposition about civil servants having to comment on Ministers in the ordinary work of responsibility as head of their Department would have caused any embarrassment or difficulty. I feel sure that after the Romer Committee and the Radcliffe Committee the need was not to go over the whole ground again, but rather to pinpoint any faults or weaknesses in order to get rid of them. Should this Motion be adopted by both Houses of Parliament and the Tribunal be established, it will be the duty of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to make a formal announcement, but I 400 am glad to say that Lord Radcliffe has agreed to be chairman and Mr. Justice Barry and Sir Milner Holland are also willing to serve. I am happy to add that Lord Radcliffe has agreed that on the completion of the Tribunal's work and separately from it he would be ready to bring to my attention any weaknesses in existing security arrangements which come to his notice. This Tribunal, composed of eminent men, and with a chairman with a very great knowledge of this whole problem, will investigate the charges which have now been made. They must be found to be true or to be untrue. The public confidence must be restored, either by the exposure of guilt or by public proof that those who pose as the protectors of the public have themselves been guilty of trying to destroy private reputations from motives either of spite or gain. This is not a question for a Romer Committee or a Radcliffe Committee or any other voluntary committee. It is a question which can be tried only by a tribunal, and a tribunal armed with the power of subpoena, armed with the power to put witnesses on oath, armed with the power to pursue them for perjury if they tell untruths, armed with the power to examine and cross-examine, and where witnesses will be protected by privilege, irrespective of the evidence they give. I repeat that none of us who has had any long experience of the ordinary thrusts, however wounding, of political life pays much attention to them. We try to control our temper and take as easily as we can the ups and downs. If one were to answer every falsehood that is put about, one would spend one's whole time in repudiation. Many things are best put aside and many criticisms find their own level. I remember that over the Bank Rate case there was a long period of vague innuendo which could not be pinned down to any precise point. I then decided to ignore it, but when a specific accusation was made against Lord PooleI think that it was by the

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right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson)the very next afternoon, five years ago to this day, I asked the House to set up a tribunal. If the result of the Tribunal's investigations shows that the accusations were 401 wholly without foundation, the House may think it right in due course to consider what action, if any, should be taken in relation to those responsible for their preferment. I have a feeling that the time has come for men of propriety and decency not to tolerate the growth of what I can only call the spirit of Titus Oates and Senator McCarthy. At any rate, let the judgment he made. If these men are guilty of what it is said they are guilty of, in the old days their heads would have fallen on Tower Hill and today they would never dare lift up their heads among their comrades again. If those who accuse them have done so falsely out of wantonness or malice, let them receive, in due course, not only those who come in the front line, but those who stand behind them, the reprobation which they will have deserved. I ask the House to pass this Motion, which is the only machinery open to us for the defence of innocent men, if they be innocent, but for their condemnation if they be guilty, for the trial of the truth. 4.29 p.m. Mr. Hugh Gaitskell (Leeds, South) As I said yesterday, we welcome the appointment, belated as it is, of an independent committee of inquiry into the Vassall case. This we have pressed for from the beginning. We also welcome the appointment of a Tribunal under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act; this, also, we pressed for. My right hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) made that perfectly clear in his speech in this House on Friday, 2nd November. For some reason or other, the Prime Minister yesterday sought to give the impression that the Opposition were not in favour of a committee of inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act. He suggested that we had wanted an independent inquiry under a judge. In fact, what we asked for was an independent inquiry. but, in so far as we specified its character, we asked for it under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act. I will quote what my right hon. Friend saidthe words are important: We want a committee with the sort of powers that a committee would have under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd November, 1962; Vol 666, c. 478.] In view of that, I cannot understand why the Prime Minister sought to give a 402 totally different impression yesterday. If he did not read the debate, he certainly should have done so and, if he did read it and nevertheless preferred to give the House of Commons a different impression, he was deliberately misleading us The Prime Minister Suggestions were made at several stages of a committee of the Romer kind, but I would point out that the words quoted have no meaning. There is no committee with the sort of powers under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act except a committee under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act. Mr. Gaitskell That is the most feeble explanation I have ever heard in a matter of this kind. We know, of course, why the right hon. Gentleman said what he said yesterday. He did not want to appear to be conceding too much to the Opposition, but a matter of this kind ought not to be approached on that sort of basis. The Prime Minister has discussed at some length the question of what sort of committee should be appointed, and he has urged that he was quite right to appoint a committee of civil servants. We do not take that view, we never took that view, and I want to explain

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why we believe that in matters of this kind a civil servants committee is wholly inappropriate. The truth is that when it comes to matters of national security, Parliament cannot do its job properly if there is a major scandal. In ordinary matters, if the Government appear to have committed a very grave blunder, that can be thrashed out in the House of Commons in Question and Answer and in debate. Ministers are called upon to tell the House what happened, and it is the job of the Oppositionany Oppositionto probe and to criticise and to do everything they can to bring out the truth. That is how our democracy works and, in my opinion, in the normal way it works exceedingly well. But when it comes to espionage cases, this kind of procedure simply cannot take place because, clearly, the Government of the day cannot tellI have never made any bones about thisthe whole truth. To do so would involve, or certainly might involve, giving away to 403 the enemy even more secrets than they may already have obtained. There is, therefore, a problem here for all of us, and I believe that there is only one way of solving this problem. It is not the ideal way, but I think that it is the best way of handling the matter. First of all, there must in such cases be an independent inquiry. The Prime Minister's argument that he wanted civil servants to look into this is all very well from the point of view of the Government. "Of course", he says, "I want to know what's wrong. I want to be sure what mistakes were made. I want to see how the loopholes can be stopped." That is perfectly intelligible, but the right hon. Gentleman misses one point, he forgets one thingsuch an inquiry may satisfy him, but it cannot satisfy the country. This is the whole point. The very fact that the Prime Minister considered this procedure adequate shows how entirely neglectful he was of public opinion and of the House of Commons in this matter, for, of course, an inquiry conducted by civil servants may reveal things to the Prime Minister, but we cannot get away from the fact that the civil servants are the servants of the Government. They exist to serve whatever may be the Government in power. They are not there to criticise the Government. It is quite inappropriateand it is no use airily brushing this asidefor civil servants to be put in a position where they may be expected to criticise their Ministerial masters. That is what is fundamentally wrong in the Prime Minister's approach. That is why there must be an independent inquirynot to satisfy the Government, but to satisfy the House of Commons and the country as a whole. And, in conducting that inquiry, the members of the inquiry must feel themselves not responsible to the Prime Minister, or even to the Government as a whole, but to the country as a whole. That is why I am answering the Prime Minister's arguments for a Committee of civil servants. That is why, irrespective of the particular arguments he alleged today, it would have been right all along to have had an independent inquiry and wrong all along to have a civil servants inquiry. 404 The second method to be used in dealing with these difficult cases is, somehow or other, to share the problem with the Opposition. Believe me, an Opposition usually do not like thisit hampers their activities in the House of Commonsbut there are occasions when, in my viewand I say again, whoever may be in Opposition at the timeit is right that they should be brought into the picture so that they can, by their presence, give an additional assurance to the country as a whole. That is why my right hon. Friends and I accepted the Prime Minister's proposals in connection with the Blake case. To some extent, this kind of arrangement had already begun with the Romer Committee, with the Portland case, but it was developed further in the case of Blake because at that time the Prime Minister was good enough to consult

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me from the very start about the nature of the inquiry, and about the personnel of the inquiry. My right hon. Friends and I, and the Prime Minister and his colleagues, discussed all this. When the Report came out, we were shown the full document. We agreed together what should be left out and What should be published. This, in my view, is the way to handle cases of this kind. I deeply regret that on this occasion no such procedure was followed. There was, in fact, no consultation between the Prime Minister and myself when the Vassall case came to court, or afterwards. We were simply informed from the Press that a Committee of civil servants had been appointed. So we went to see the Prime Minister. We were seeing him about Cuba as well, but we took the opportunity of raising this matter with him. I hoped that even after he had appointed this Committee of civil servants he would listen to what we said, in the way he had done in the previous casesbut not a bit of it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Belper, (Mr. G. Brown) was not exaggerating, and the Prime Minister knows this to be the truth, when he described our treatment at his hands as a "brush-off." That is what happened. The Prime Minister may have been very tired, and one can well understand that that could possibly account for it, but it was very unfortunate. We warned the right hon. 405 Gentleman at the time that in view of this we would have no option in fulfilling our duties as an Opposition but to raise the matter in the House of Commons. That we proceeded to do. Had we not done so, we would not have been doing our duty. After that, of course, there was a series of steps backwards. I was glad to hear of them. The Minister of Defence, in his speech on that Friday morning, announced that the Prime Minister would be ready to discuss the report with me, although he did not know whether or not I would be shown it. Then it was announced that Lord Radcliffe was to be brought into the picture, and I certainly would have supported that action had it been put to me. Now, at last, we are to have a Tribunal, but what a pity it is that that Tribunal was not appointed at the very start. It is all very well to talk about rumours, and the startling stories we have heard of this afternoon, but the truth is that had a Tribunal of Inquiry been appointed at the beginning there would have been no such rumours. I must refer to some of the things which the Prime Minister said in the course of his remarks this afternoon about these rumours and insinuations. He particularly attacked my right hon. Friend the Member for Be1per because of the references which my right hon. Friend made in the House to these letters. [An HON. MEMBER: "He should not have referred to them."] I cannot agree with that. I think that my right hon. Friend was perfectly entitled to refer to something which had already appeared in a newspaper article which spoke of letters being in existence. [HON. MEMBERS: "He said that he had seen them."] It is true that he said that he had seen them. Do hon. Members suppose that the Opposition of the day, whichever Opposition they may be, are not given information by the Press from time to time? Are right hon. Gentlemen saying that when they were in Opposition they were not told anything by the Press? They had better think of something better than that if they want to attack the Opposition. The truth is that when, very unfortunately, it appears that there was moderately extensive correspondence be- 406 tween a junior Minister and a man who has been convicted as a spy, it is no use pretending that it is not a matter of very considerable public interest. We cannot do the limited job available to us in matters of this kind if we are debarred from referring to this. Personally, I am glad that the Prime Minister published the letters. I agree with him, as I think everybody does, that these letters may show a rather closer relationshipmay I put it that way?between a junior clerk and a

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Minister than is perhaps normal, but that there is nothing in their content. I can only go on my own experience as a Minister, and I would think it unusual, but I would put it no higher than that. I entirely agree that the content of the letters is perfectly harmless. I must, however, ask the Prime Minister a question. After all, he was at great pains, quite rightly from his point of view, to emphasise this. If he took the view that there was not the slightestI will not say indiscretionsuggestion that there was anything in the least unusual in these letters, how does he explain that he accepted the resignation of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hill-head (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith)? Sir Spencer Summers (Aylesbury) Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us why, if these letters, in his judgment, were completely harmless, the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) need have alluded to them at all? Mr. Gaitskell In point of fact, my right hon. Friend had seen, I think, five out of the 24; that was all. The existence of these letters had been referred to in the newspapers. I must remind hon. Members that the Opposition have a job to do in the House of Commons, and they intend to do it. The other matters to which the Prime Minister referred are completely new to me. Mr. S. Silverman Does not my right hon. Friend agree that the fact that the Prime Minister, after reading the report and the letters, came to the conclusion that his hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith) was completely exonerated by that report from anything which had been said against him, and yet accepted 407 his resignation, was itself the principal foundation upon which a new stream of rumours was founded? Mr. Gaitskell I have no doubt that that may emerge in the course of the proceedings of the Tribunal. But I was coming to these other rumours, and I was saying that as far as I am concerned, I had not heard any of these before except the story, referred to by the Prime Minister, in the Daily Express. Clearly, if the story about the hon. Member for Hillhead and Vassall going to Italy had appeared in public, it would have been a matter for criminal libel. There can be no question about that. We all feel anxiety at the spate of rumours, and I emphasise that I certainly have no desire to condone any of this sort of thing at all. I detest it. But in all of this we must remember that hon. Members, like other citizens, are protected by the laws of libel in this country, and that is at least some safeguard for us. I come to the Tribunal itself, for I have a number of questions to put which, I hope, will be answered. I am not quite sure who is to reply for the Government and whether the Prime Minister will speak again today, but they are matters on which I think an answer is required. I should like first, to ask this question: is the Tribunal meeting in public and is its report to be published, or are its proceedings to be secret and is its report to be secret? Personally, I should like to see as much as possible of the proceedings take place in public, but if it turns out that for reasons of security a great deal must be taken in secret and a great deal of the report not published, then it is of the highest importance that the public should not be misled by the partial nature of what happens to be published. If we get a quarter of the story in public and three-quarters of it is secret, it will give a very wrong impression indeed, and I therefore hope that those who are responsibleI take it that it will be the Tribunal itselffor making these decisions will bear this problem in mind.

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I should also like to ask the Prime Minister, if it is the case that some of the proceedings of the Tribunal and 408 some of its report is secret, is it his intention to allow the representatives of the Oppositionthe Privy Councillors, for instance, whom he was good enough to consult in the case of the Radcliffe Reportto have access to the proceedings which are secret and to the parts of the report which are secret? Naturally, this would give some assurance, again, as to the nature of the report as a whole. The third question is rather different. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what part has been played by the police, the special branch and the security services in preparing the grounds for this inquiry? The reason I ask is that in the Lynskey Tribunal the Metropolitan Police carried out quite an extensive series of investigations beforehand which was obviously of considerable importance to the Tribunal. I am not quite clear where we stand on this. Have the police or the security services been assisting the Committee of civil servants? The Prime Minister told us that in any case all that the Committee had so far done would be handed over to the Tribunal. This was the case in the Lynskey Tribunal, but not in the Parker Tribunal. My view is that the police should be used for this purpose in so far as it falls within their normal sphere of operations, and, since this is espionage, that particular branch of the police which is concerned with espionage should, I think, be closely concerned with this Tribunal. My next question concerns the Daily Express article, for I take it that No. 1 of the four particular matters into which the Tribunal is to inquirethe allegations made that the presence of another spy inside the Admiralty was known to the First Lord and the Service chiefs after the Portland case eighteen months agowas inspired by the Daily Express article. Maybe there were other things, but, if so, I do not know. But that is exactly what the article of Mr. Percy Hoskins, chief crime reporter of the Daily Express, was about. Its title was Don't forget they knew for 18 months there was a spy around. This confronts us and the Tribunal with a problem. It is this. Is Mr. Hoskins to be asked what his sources of information were? Anyone who has read that article will agree that it is 409 unlikely that he invented it. It is extremely detailed. Somebody must have talked to him. Somebody must have given him some information. If he is asked that question then, as a journalist, it is only too likely that he will refuse to reveal his source. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I am saying that it is only too likely that he will do this, for that is, whether we like it or not, the ethics of the newspaper profession; and if hon. Members opposite have any doubts about it, they need only ask the Ministers on their Front Bench. I suggest that they ask them whether they would like it if journalists always revealed the sources of what they hear. However, events will unfold this and we shall see what happens, but I think it right to draw the attention of the House to this relationship which exists between individuals and the Pressand Ministers and other hon. Members of the House are involveda relationship which we should be unwilling to destroy. Nevertheless, if the journalist in question is asked and refuses, what happens? Will he be locked up? Is he to be punished for contempt of court for standing by the ethics of his profession? Several Hon. Members rose Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin) I think that the journalist in question could not have any doubt on this point, because there is a book which anyone can buy, and which is called "The Secret War", published by Andre Deutsch, in which many of these things are discussed, including the facts in the Lonsdale case and events following it. Mr. Gaitskell

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That may well be, but I do not think that it deals with the point I am discussing, which is the question of what is the journalist to do and how do we judge him if he refuses to answer. Sir Cyril Osborne (Louth) I remember that in the Garry Allighan case the editor of a London newspaper had to stand at the Bar of the House and, although he did not like to do it, was compelled to reveal the source of his information. Since that was done within the recollection of many hon. Members, why could it not be done in this case? Mr. Gaitskell It was a matter of Privilege. I recall the events about 410 which the hon. Member speaks. If Mr. Hoskins discloses the source of his information this problem does not arise. I am merely warning the House that both he and a number of other journalists may feel great difficulty in doing so. Mr. Wigg I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way, for I would like to help Mr. Hoskinsand we have not to go very far back in time. I am referring to the events following the Lonsdale case, on the night of 23rd March. My right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) and I crossed swords on this point and my right hon. Friend will remember that it was established in evidence at the Old Baileyand I heard the evidence myselfthat after the Kroegers were arrested the signals were still coming from Moscow. I said that if anyone thought that this couple of sluts were the basis of this operation he came from cloud-cuckoo-land. The antiquarian bookshop was part of an organisation and there was clearly someone else at work. Mr. Gaitskell Let me ask, too, if journalists who have written reports which are unfavourable to the Governmentas Mr. Hoskins didare to be asked to disclose the sources of their information, are those journalists who also write reports which are favourable to the Government to be asked to disclose their sources? For instance, there was such a report, presumably in reply to this one, in the Daily Telegraph on Monday, 12th November. I commend it to hon. Members. It is headed: Reply to spy critics by the Admiralty. I hope that we shall hear how that information was obtained as well and I dare say that there are many other examples. The purpose of the inquiry is set out in the four particular points, as well as the more general sentences at the beginning. I was astonished that the Prime Minister spent virtually the whole of his speech on the first and second of the particular inquiries, namely, rumours and allegationsand practically none on what is really the basis of this inquiry: the fact that Vassall was spying in the Admiralty and conveying important information to the enemy after the Romer Committee had reported, right up to September, and no one up to that time had detected him. This is really the basic thing that matters. 411 I repeat that although the rumours are extremely distasteful, and it is quite right that they should be investigated, they would never have taken place if our advice had been accepted and a Committee of inquiry under the Tribunals Act had been set up from the very beginning. These rumours to which the Prime Minister refers would not only have been ruled out of court, they would have been made impossible by the Tribunal of Inquiry because the whole matter would have been sub judice. May I also say this? I do not believe that there would have been nearly so many rumours had it not been for the frivolous and flippant speech of the Minister of Defence, in replying to the debate on the Friday.

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The inquiry will now proceed and I will conclude by saying that I hope it succeeds in revealing the whole truth about this case. I hope that it shows who was responsible for Vassall's activities, how they were allowed to continue, what the loopholes are and how they are to be stopped. I hope that it also reveals what the sources of the rumours are and that they will be stopped as well. But let us be clear about this. The purpose of the inquiry is not to save the reputation of the Government, but to protect the security of the nation. 4.57 p.m. Mr. Nigel Birch (Flint, West) The right bon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition said that the Opposition had a job to do. I do not think that he went about his business today with very much gusto. He seemed a little cautious. I remember that towards the end of the war my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) said that he detected in the German propaganda "the dull, low, whining note of fear". I am not sure whether I thought I detected that in the right hon. Gentleman's speech. The line that the right hon. Gentleman takes about journalists and disclosures seems a little odd to me. What this journalist wrote was a venomous libel. Can any journalist get off simply by saying, "I will not disclose the source of my information"? If he does, he would be committed for contempt. That certainly would happen. Those who organised this inside or outside the House have won a scalp. 412 They have won the scalp of one decent, honourable junior Minister. Mr. Denis Howell (Birmingham, Small Heath) Who cut it off? Mr. Birch Now they are out for the scalp of the First Lord of the Admiralty, one of the most honourable of men. Anyone who knows him, or who has taken the trouble to find out, realises that he has the reputation of being the best First Lord since my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford. It may well be that he gets hounded out of office. Many Ministers have been hounded out of office, but I am not really so much concerned with that aspect. I believeI feel it in the innermost core of my beingthat there are great things at stake. It is not simply a matter of the security services and their officials. There is more at stake than the conduct of Admiralty staff, admirals or civil servants. There is more at stake than the conduct of a junior or senior Minister. There is more at stake than the life of the Government. What is at stake is the decency of public life in our country. I do not believe that anything less than that is at stake. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was right to set up a Tribunal. When a trickle of filth becomes a torrent it is the only thing one can do. One must do it. The only thing that worries me is whether the terms of reference are wide enough. I say this because of a ruling given by Lord Parker during the Bank Rate Tribunal, and I should like to give the background briefly. At the time that Lord Parker gave this ruling, Mr. Frederick Ellis, the then City Editor of the Daily Express, was in the box and he, as the House knows, had taken a very active part in spreading rumours about all these matters. He had written article after article about them. In one of his articles he had said that top City stockbrokers were talking ceaselessly about "inspired selling". Naturally, he was asked about this. He was asked who were these top City stock-brokers. He said, with I think perfect truth, that he did not know who they were. There was a good deal of prevarication about that. After that he was 413 asked, "What are they saying, anyway?" and then he said, and again with perfect truth, I think, that Perhaps that was a bit of journalistic licence. Then he lost his

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nerve and got Mr. Gerald Gardiner to get up and ask if he could be represented by counsel. The Tribunal and the counsel conducting the examination, Mr. Winn, now Mr. Justice Winn, were getting a bit bored with this prevarication and getting cross and Mr. Frederick Ellis lost his nerve. Here Lord Parker made what I think was a most important ruling, when he said: At the moment, speaking for myself and I think for my colleagues, we are of opinion that 'a person appearing to them to be interested' within the meaning of the Act, is somebody against whom some allegation or suggestion has been made. I do not think, whatever we may think of Mr. Ellis, that any allegations have been made against him into which we are inquiring. Therefore, nothing about him or the allegations and where they came from, was examined. On the other hand, as the House will remember, the examination of those "who appeared to be interested" was very severe indeed. All their financial transactions were gone into. Their letters were read. Their telephone calls were discussed. Their conversations, in and out of the City, were inquired into. Their diaries were examined and even their lady friends were cross-examined as to what they had said at dinner. Everything possible was done to bring things out. Then it stopped. It went no further and there was no examination at all of those who made the allegations. If we are to preserve decency in our public life these matters must be inquired into. There was no examination into the slimy dishonour of those who fabricated allegations against Lord Poole, all of which proved utterly baseless. Mr. Wigg The right hon. Gentleman must realise that a change has come over the procedure. At the time of the Tribunal inquiring into the Budget leak the then Attorney-General gave an assurance that the investigation would be carried out by the judge and he would be in charge of the proceedings. At the Lynskey Tribunal and again at the Bank 414 Rate Tribunalthe right hon. Gentleman knows that I attended most of the timeit was clear that the Attorney-General had taken on the rle of prosecutor and was carrying on a prosecution-in-chief which was fully reported in the Press and which I thought terribly damaging and which has caused me to have had the gravest disquiet about this kind of tribunal. Mr. Birch I do not think that that has any bearing on the point I am making. The point I make, which is of great importance, is that, if we are to stop this rot in our national life and if public decency is to return, both sides of the case must be examined. It is the business of the tribunal to discover the truth and nothing but the truth. But there is a third clause "the whole truth" and, as the Prime Minister said, I very much hope that all those in Parliament and out of Parliament who spread these stories will be most rigorously examined. There are lots of things which we should like to know. I should like to know about this keen competition between newspapers to provide for Vassall's old age. I think that many people would like more explanation from the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown). Mr. George Brown (Belper) What about? Mr. Birch The right hon. Gentleman will have a chance of answering the Tribunal. Mr. Brown What was it the right hon. Gentleman said he wanted more evidence about from me? Mr. Birch

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About the right hon. Member's dealings over the letters. Hon. Members Innuendo. Mr. Brown I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would be willing to be quite plain. What does he mean by that? May I refresh his memory? The passage from my speech referred to by the Prime Minister said, after having commented upon the speech of the Minister of Defence as being inadequate: We cannot leave the Vassall case where it is. There are letters in existence, copies of which I and, no doubt, others have seen, the originals of which are in the hands of 415 what are called the authorities', which indicate a degree of Ministerial responsibility "[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th November, 1962; Vol. 666, c. 714.] I then used the rest of the words which the Prime Minister has used and I went on to ask for a tribunal to be set up to inquire into the whole of this, including a determination of what the letters meant. What is thought to be wrong with that as conduct in the House, and to what is the right hon. Gentleman referring? Mr. Birch I wanted to know how the right hon. Gentleman acquired the letters and I have no doubt that that will be inquired into. Mr. Gordon Walker (Smethwick) rose Hon. Members Give way. Mr. Birch I should like to see Hon. Members Smear. Mr. Birch I should like to see all the innuendoes inquired into and where they started. I also entirely agree with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when he said that it would be interesting to know what the views were of those who control the newspapers and what directions they gave by telephone or in writing or by dictaphone on these matters. Unless these matters are brought out into the open we never shall get things right. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister referred to Titus Oates. He was the most venomous perjurer ever known in history. I have not had time to check my references but it will be recalled that he was flogged from Newgate to Tyburn. When the matter was raised later whether his punishment should not be reversed, a most respected Member of the House said that if it was reversed it should be only in the sense that he should be flogged from Tyburn to Newgate. We live in a less barbarous age and there is no question of anyone being punished in that way. What must come out is the truth if we are to have a decent public life. That is what I hope will come out, and that is what I will fight for. 5.10 p.m. Mr. F. J. Bellenger (Bassetlaw) As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has said, we on the Opposition benches are quite satisfied with the 416 form of inquiry which is now about to take place. From long experience in these matters, I doubt whether we shall get the full truth for which the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) has asked. I rise to protest about the way in which the Prime Minister introduced this Motion. I have the impressionand I do not know whether it is the impression of other hon. Membersthat what the Prime Minister is seeking to do is not only to get at the whole truth about security in Government Departments but, if possible, to turn some of his

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guns against my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) who was attempting to do his duty. It may be that my right hon. Friend has access to sources of information in Fleet Street which many of us do not possess. But I remember, and I expect you do, too, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that during the war there was the famous case of Mr. Edgar Granville, when an inquiry took place into what he was alleged to have said at a private meeting. I was struck forcibly by the words of the Prime Minister when he talked very airily about what had induced him to change his mind about the nature of the inquiry. He said that he was impressed Very much by a report that came to him, I think on Friday, that at a private dinner, something had been said which reflected on the honour of a Member of this House and a Minister of this House until he resigned. Something similar happened during the war. We were never given the whole truth, although I feel bound to say to the Government that all hon. Members were given the report of that inquiry. I believe, if my memory does not play me false, that it was a secret report inasmuch as the report was given to hon. Members. each copy was numbered and we had to return the copies of that report to the Government source after we had read it. I support my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition in this respect, that if in this report anything emerges which affects not only the efficiency of Government Departments but also the honour of any Member of this Housenever mind whether it is the hon. Gentleman who has been forced to resign, but 417 the innuendo which it seems to me was made by the Prime Minister against my right hon. Friend the Member for Belperall hon. Members of this House should know it. It should not be disclosed merely to a few of the senior members of the Opposition. Every hon. Member of this House should know the circumstances in which possibly some reflection is made on an hon. Member of this House. Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West) On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. On the point that my right hon. Friend is now makingI put this to the Leader of the House to communicate to the Prime Minister if anything comes out of that report that reflects on any Member of this House, surely as a matter of privilege any Member can insist on it being discussed hereafter. I take it that before the Tribunal anyone could plead privilege. If a Member were to plead privilege and gave evidence he must be protected subsequently in this House. Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir W. Anstruther-Gray) I do not follow that as being a point of order for the Chair to deal with. I think that paint can be made in the course of the debate. Mr. Bellenger There may be something in what my hon. Friend says. I am suggesting that not necessarily all hon. Members would know what had arisen from the evidence. They certainly would not be able to judge it adequately unless they were able to see all the evidence that was placed before the inquiry. Therefore, I have considerable sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) in his suggested Amendment, which the Chair would not accept, that the investigation should be made by a Committee of this House. After all, is a Tribunal with three legal minds any better than this House for assessing the value of the evidence which is given? No doubt, in view of the terms of reference, these legal gentlemen can say what is evidence and what is not evidence, but I suggest that where any allegation is made against any right hon. or hon. Memberand that, I thought, was implicit in the Prime Minister's reference to my right hon. Friend the Member for Belperthat is a matter for the whole House. 418 Mr. Wigg

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I am obliged to my right hon. Friend for his support, but I must be honest and tell him that it is not an original idea of mine. My proposed Amendment was based on the principle adopted by the Labour Party, under the leadership of Lord Attlee, supported in a brilliant speech by Sir Stafford Cripps, that once the honour of a Member of the House of Commons is involved it becomes a political matter. Sir Stafford Cripps attacked with some violence the suggestion that lawyers had some peculiar lien on impartiality. He said that he knew all the leaders of the Bar and if anyone would tell him which members of the Bar were to be on the tribunal he could say in which direction their political bias lay. Mr. Bellenger Whatever reasons my hon. Friend now brings forward for wanting his Amendment debated, it is for him to say if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. What I am putting to the House is this, which I think runs on parallel lines to what my hon. Friend was saying a little while ago. All hon. Members, and particularly Ministers and exMinisters, know the relations between Members of this House and the Press. Some of them are more intimate than others. I am bound to say that I agree with the Prime Minister about the hon. Member who has resigned his office, judging from what I have read in the letters; but I have the impression that it was not entirely the Prime Minister's concern in getting at the truth which led him to accept the resignation of his hon. Friend, but that he was also trying to implicate in some way or another my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper for the speech that he made in this House, and was suggesting that my right hon. Friend had done something improper merely because he may be connected with the Press. I think it is wrong of the Prime Minister to do that. I accept entirely everything he said which went to show that he wanted to keep everything above board, not only the honour and the propriety of Members of this House but also what goes on in Government Departments. But I thought it was probably lowering the purport of what he was previously saying to introduce those remarks about my right hon Friend the Member for Belper. 419 I believe that this Tribunalfor which, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition stated, we asked right from the startwill produce more evidence, some of it perhaps incriminating evidence against somebody, or some people, or organs of the PressI do not know, because my right hon. Friend has referred to something which he said may even be held to be criminal libel if a court action were to take placebut, at any rate, we shall get something that we have searched for with all propriety right from the start. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, and I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper, too, showed clearly this afternoon that we did not on this side of the House accept a lot of the smearsand they were smearswhich were made against the hon. Gentleman the former Minister. It may be that we shall have a lot to say about his conduct as a Minister, but not in the connection to which the Press has given full play. I would say only this, and it is apropos of what the Prime Minister said about some gossip that he heard at a private dinner. He referred to clubs. Who are the members of those clubs? Who are the biggest gossips? We had this sort of thing during the war in the case of Mr, Edgar Granville. They are mostly hon. Members opposite who belong to these clubs. Very few on this side of the House can afford to belong to them Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin) On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. May I have your Ruling. Do you think that such an innuendo is fair? Mr. C. Pannell

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That is not a point of order. Mr. Deputy-Speaker I did not regard anything that the right hon. Gentleman said as necessitating my intervention. Mr. Birch The right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) will remember that Mr. Edgar Granville was a Liberal and then turned Labour Mr. Bellenger I am not going to be deflected from what hon. Members opposite know to be the truth. There are many on both sides of the House who have connections with the Press. They must accept full responsibility for what 420 they say to the Press, but I wish I could have the same confidence in some of the members of those fashionable clubs to which the Prime Minister referred and which, I say, are mostly peopled by hon. Members opposite, who are the biggest gossips going. If that is true, then small wonder that the Tory Party feels shame about the dismissal of one of their own Ministers, because I think that it was the gossip in some of those clubs which contributed to that end, and to which the Prime Minister has referred this afternoon. 5.21 p.m. Mr. Humphry Berkeley (Lancaster) The Leader of the Opposition in the course of his speech said that the rle of the Opposition was to probe, criticise and to bring out the truth. To that extent I had a good deal of sympathy with what he had to say and, indeed, in some measure I had sympathy with the efforts of the Opposition in recent weeks to get what they thought was a more satisfactory form of inquiry. I personally had considerable respect and admiration for the way in which the right hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) deployed his case in the debate on the Address. Where, however, it seems to me that this rle of probing, criticising and bringing out the truth utterly broke down was in the behaviour of the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) in the debate on Monday, 5th November. I informed the right hon. Gentleman earlier that I intended to refer to him in my speech, and he explained to me why it would be necessary for him to leave the Chamberhe had to go to another engagementbut I should like to say that I have been very deeply shocked at what I believe to have been a deliberate and squalid attempt at character assassination. Mr. Shinwell By whom? Mr. Berkeley By the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Belper. Mr. Shinwell On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. We have just heard an hon. Member opposite accusing my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) of having indulged in what he described as "character assassination". He also used 421 the word "squalid". What are we debating? Are we debating the conduct of my right hon. Friend or the Motion of the Prime Minister to set up a Tribunal to discuss the Vassall case? Mr. Deputy-Speaker The right hon. Gentleman is quite correct. We are in fact debating the Motion on the Paper. but in the course of the debate various hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House have become implicated. The only pity is that the right hon. Member for Belper is unable personally to be here at this moment, but that has been explained. Mr. Gaitskell

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Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I do not think that you have replied to my right hon. Friend's question as to whether the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley) is entitled to use the language that he did about my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown). The question of whether my right hon. Friend is present or not is surely quite irrelevant. Several Hon. Members rose Mr. Deputy-Speaker May I reply to the Leader of the Opposition? The word "squalid" was used[HON. MEMBERS: "And character assassination."]I am obliged to hon. Members for that reminder, because all extreme expressions are undesirable in debate. I do not think that either of those two words will be found in Erskine May. I deplorethe Chair has always deploredthe use of extreme expressions, but I am reluctant to say in this connection that they were definitely out of order. Mr. Wigg Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I understand your difficulty up to a point. May I remind you, Sir, with respect, that the House is debating a Motion which once it is passed renders this matter sub judice, and one of the persons who will apparently be arraigned, judging by the implications made by the right hon. Gentleman, is my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown). In those circumstances, to have an indictment, framed by the Prime Minister, backed by his hon. Friendsa story fed to every paper in the countrymay be inside the rules of order, but are we not forgetting something like British justice. Further, if it is in order for 422 the hon. Gentleman to say that of my right hon. Friend, would it be in order for me to say the same thing about the Prime Minister? Mr. Deputy-Speaker I certainly do not propose to be hypothetical, but I think that, occupying the Chair, I had better confine myself to ruling on what I believe to be in order strictly or out of order. That is what I have done. Mr. S. Silverman Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. May I point out that the Motion is drawn in very wide terms? May I draw your attention to paragraph (2) of the Motion on the Order Paper? If the Motion is passed, we are to refer to a Tribunal under this Act: any other allegations which have been or may be brought to their attention. What we are proposing to refer to the Tribunal will be the truth or falsity of any allegations made of any kind, made by anyone imaginable at any time which may have anything to do with any matter concerned in the inquiry. Would it not be better for the House of Commons in considering the Motion not to express any view about the truth or falsity of any such allegation? Mr. Deputy-Speaker I do not think that I am prepared to rule that the House should be debarred from expressing its opinion on these things. In discussing and debating this Motion, I have no power to rule that hon. Members shall restrict their speeches beyond keeping within the rules of order. That is all that I am endeavouring to rule on, and, up to this stage, I believe that the debate has been within the rules of order. Mr. Berkeley As I have not been ruled specifically out of order, I shall not withdraw the phrase that I used, which was in fact a very carefully considered one and is, I think, wholly justified by what occurred. Mr. Shinwell The hon. Gentleman has not the decency to withdraw it.

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Mr. Berkeley What I propose to do is to justify this by drawing attention to certain statements which the right hon. Gentleman made. First of all, he drew attention in this section of his speech of 5th November to the letters which were in existence. He explained that he had 423 seen them and he went on to say that they indicated a degree of Ministerial responsibility which goes far beyond the ordinary business of a Minister. He then went on to say that the Lynskey Tribunal was set up to deal with a junior Minister for far less than is involved in this. Do not let us forget that the junior Minister concerned in the Lynskey Tribunal was in fact found guilty of impropriety. Hon. Members No. Mr. C. Pannell On a point of order Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The junior Minister responsible was not found guilty in that way. Another thing that I would say is that the word "assassinations" is out of order and therefore I should have thought that the phrase "character assassination" is out of order. Mr. Deputy-Speaker I do not accept the first point of the hon. Member as being a point of order. On the question of assassination, to call an hon. Member an assassin would, in my judgment, be out of order, but the words as I heard themthe House will inform me if I am wrongwere "character assassination". Mr. Pannell And the word "squalid." Mr. Deputy-Speaker I see a difference between those words and the accusation of being an assassin. Mr. Berkeley The right hon. Member for Belper went on to say: Standards of Ministerial conduct and responsibility today seem to be about as low as they have ever been in all the years that I have been here".[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th November, 1962; Vol. 666, c. 714] I venture to suggest that those four statements taken together and linked with the production of the letters, which the right hon. Gentleman said he had read, were a deliberate attempt to increase the innuendo and rumour already circulating about my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith). In my judgment, this totally vitiates the argument of the Leader of the Opposition that the sole reason for the existence of the gossip was the refusal of the Prime Minister to grant the type of inquiry which would meet 424 the Opposition's wishes. On the contrary; the rumours and innuendoes were given a new lease of life by the totally unjustified observations made by the right hon. Member for Belper in the debate on the evening of 5th November. One could understand the right hon. Gentleman's attitude if he had not seen the letters. If he had not seen them but had merely been told about them, one could understand his anxiety that the truth should be revealed. However, he had seen them, or seen five of them. I have read them all, as, I imagine, most hon. Members have. Since there is not in those letters one single act of impropriety, indiscretion or ill judgment Mr. R. H. S. Crossman (Coventry, East) Why was he sacked? Mr. Berkeley I shall come to that. Since all that the letters did reveal about my hon. Friend was that he is a decent, kindly and honourable man dealing in a considerate way with a minor member of his staff who was plainly a pushful, tedious bore, I can only say that the right

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hon. Member for Belper sank below the standard we normally expect of him in his intervention in that debate. Mr. Gordon Walker Did not the Prime Minister, by accepting the hon. Gentleman's resignation, sink below the proper standard just as much, or, indeed, more? Mr. Berkeley If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me, I have two further things to say. Mr. Gordon Walker Answer. Mr. Berkeley I shall answer that. First, I was about to say that I very much regretted that my hon. Friend thought it necessary to offer his resignation. Further, I was astonished that the Prime Minister accepted it. Mr. Shinwell On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I am getting a little tired of this. May I ask you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, whether you detect in the Motion any reference to my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown)? Is there anything in the Motion about him at all? If not, why are you allowing the hon. Member opposite to indulge in all this talk? 425 Mr. Deputy-Speaker During the debate, references have been made fairly freely across the Floor to one or other protagonist from one or other party. That is not out of order in this debate. Mr. Berkeley I hope that the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shin-well) will not continue to interrupt me because I have one or two other things to say, and it might be desirable Mr. Shinwell The hon. Member will not stop me interrupting. Mr. S. Silverman On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Would it not be highly undesirable and out of accord with a long and honourable tradition of the House for the hon. Member to be allowed to persist in prejudging one of the most important issues into which the Tribunal will have to inquire and make it the subject of heated personal party political debate before any evidence is ever heard? Mr. Deputy-Speaker I think that the hon. Gentleman's arguments are concerned with whether or not the Tribunal should be set up. What he says further to that is in order. Mr. Berkeley I was in the middle of answering the right hon. Member for Smethwick. I had not quite finished. I said that I was astonished that the Prime Minister had accepted my hon. Friend's resignation. However, I utterly refute any suggestion that the Prime Minister behaved with any lack of decency. My right hon. Friend went out of his way not only in personal correspondence but on the Floor of the House to upholdunlike the right hon. Member for Belperthe honour of my hon. Friend. Mr. Crossman Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that it is a mark of decency first to say that a man is entirely innocent and then to throw him to the wolves? Is that really the mark of an honourable man? Mr. Berkeley

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I do not think that my hon. Friend was thrown to the wolves. Mr. Crossman Then what was it? Mr. Berkeley The Prime Minister went out of his way to establish his belief in my hon. Friend's honour. 426 The right hon. Member for Belper, as I have already said, remarked that standards of Ministerial conduct and responsibility were as low today as they had ever been in all the years he had been here. I am bound to say that, when the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, himself a Privy Councillor, behaves like a poor man's Senator McCarthy, the conduct of the Opposition today leaves much to be desired. 5.36 p.m. Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland) I hope that the House will forgive me, first, if I do not follow the hon, Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley), and, second, if I am unable to be here at the end of the debate. The Prime Minister has told us that the reason why he felt it necessary to set up an independent Tribunal, a decision which I wholly welcome, was that the character of Ministers was called in question. If I may say so, the character of Ministers was called in question long before the weekend. The character of a Minister was called in question last week, very wrongly, I consider, but that does not alter the fact that, if the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) had his character assasinated, it was done not by the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown), but by a campaign of innuendo in the country, and this happened at the beginning of last week. I think that the Prime Minister ought to have explained how, if his reason for changing the nature of the Tribunal was valid yesterday, it was not valid last Wednesday. He has said that specific accusations were made on Friday. Of course, every Member of the House rejects those specific accusations. But the question has been raised already and I should be grateful if the Law Officers of the Crown would advise us. Is it intended to bring an action for criminal libel? Surely, an action for libel, for slander or for criminal libel must lie from what we have heard. There may be reasons against it, but I think we are entitled to know from the Law Officers what legal action it is intended to take against people who bring entirely unfounded slanderous accusations against Ministers of the Crown. It seems to me that the Motion deals with two matters. Though related, they 427 are, in fact, separate matters. The first is the affair of Vassall, who was convicted of spying. He was not only in the service of the Admiralty; he was also, as we know, at the embassy in Moscow. I take it that under the Motion it will be possible to inquire into what went on in Moscow, how he came to be there and how he first came into contact with the Russians. I think that paragraph (4) of the Motion is wide enough for that. Secondly, we should not lose sight of the most important fact that all this arose from the activities of Vassall, who was a spy in contact with the Russians. We are doubly concerned here, in view of what has gone on before, about the state of security not only in the Admiralty but, possibly, in some of our foreign embassies as well. We have been assured by the Prime Minister that he is responsible for security. He has said that himself. I believe that questions arise from this. Is he to give evidence before the Tribunal? Is he to appear before it? He is ultimately responsible. on his own affirmation, for security. The other side of the Motion is concerned with allegations, admittedly arising out of espionage, against the First Lord, the Service chiefs, the Civil Service and other people. I am not sure how wide this inquiry will go or how suitable the Tribunal will be for such

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an inquiry. Is it, so to speak, to put the people who started these allegations in the dock? Is it to have the widest power to compel members of the Press and other people to appear before it, as has been suggested? We know from past experience not only some of the difficulties which the Leader of the Opposition has already mentioned, but that often the effect of these tribunals is to make it extremely difficult to take criminal proceedings; and there may be a case for criminal proceedings against certain people who may be called to appear before this Tribunal. I wish to say a few words about the position of the hon. Member for Hillhead. He has already been tried by a process unknown to anything resembling justice. Mr. S. Silverman Tried, acquitted and sentenced. 428 Mr. Grimond We find from the hon. Gentleman's letters that it is absurd to accuse him either of the personal aberrations which have been mentioned, or of having anything to do with espionage. The most that has been even suggested is that he should or might have known that Vassall was a spy. If that is suggested, then it might be said of many other people. If it is seriously advanced that the hon. Gentleman should have known this, Vassall has been in the Government's employment for a long time and many other people also had good reason to know whether he was a spy. I think that this whole incident is one of the more unsavoury incidents in our public life, and I must express my profound regret that the hon. Member's resignation was accepted. I feel that regret even more now that the form of the Tribunal is to be altered. I take it and I hope that this will be confirmedthat the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to appear before this new, independent Tribunal and to reinstate his reputation. My last point concerns the whole procedure of tribunals. I have raised this matter before. In 1959, I asked the then Home Secretary if he would set up a committee to examine this whole procedure and would allow a debate in the House on it. That was refused. What happens at these tribunals? Things come to light which are unprotected by any of the normal processes of British justice. Let any hon. Member, or any of the people in the Press who are so sure that the hon. Member for Hillhead was a foolish man, reflect on the letters which they have written and think how they would look in a White Paper, or if they were produced before a tribunal. Consider the people concerned in the last two or three tribunals whose reputations have been besmirched for ever. Consider an ex-Member of the House who committed offences of the most trivial sort, if he committed any offences at all, and who has never recovered from them. If this matter were brought before the courts of law there would be all sorts of protection. One would not be allowed to fish out documents from here and there or to make allegations against people right, left and centre. But we 429 have this extraordinary procedure which, apparently, has not a very happy history and which was born at a not very happy time. I do not suggest that we can go into all this now, but I beg the House not only to look at this procedure and the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, but to consider what happened when these three very eminent civil servants attempted to hold an inquiry. The whole inquiry was discussed in the Press right, left and centre. There was apparently no privilege and no question of contempt. If this is the way in which this country is to carry on its public affairs, its very justifiable pride in its traditions of fairness to individuals and incorruptibility of public inquiry will be called into grave question.

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I have doubts about the form of the Motion, because it confuses two separate things. I hope that it will not be the means of losing sight of the main theme, which is the security of the country. But the other question also important, namely, the protection of our standard of public life, and, after this matter, the case for a full inquiry into that is also very well made out. 5.45 p.m. Mr. G. R. Howard (St. Ives) I do not wish to detain the House long, but I should like to follow the remarks of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) on the question of criminal proceedings. They were, I thought, very relevant. It seems to me that those sections of the Press which are wholly and completely irresponsible are able to get away with things in respect of which they should be brought to justice. If, as has been said, these grave slanders on the First Lord are proved baseless, I hope, like the right hon. Member, that nothing which happens in this inquiry will stop people guilty of such slander being brought to justice. We in this House perhaps realise that these things do not matter much, but many people outside have a little more faith in what they read in the newspapers. A national newspaper, last Saturday, printed a long article by its political correspondent the theme of which was, "Tory anger grows". First, it dealt with the speech of my right hon. 430 Friend the Minister of Defence on the Vassall case, which was termed "frivolous". I sat through the whole debatenot many of us did soand I listened to every word that my right hon. Friend said. This was not a frivolous speech. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I am only expressing my own point of view. This, to my mind, was not a frivolous speech. People are entitled to say what they like, but I wish to bring out the second point which this newspaper made. Mr. C. Pannell The hon. Gentleman keeps on speaking about innuendo, but he has not mentioned the name of the newspaper. Mr. Howard The Daily Mail. The article went on to say, "The Minister of Defence addressed a defence committee on Wednesday night. Tories are very annoyed that he talked to them without warning them of the bombshell"I am paraphrasing this, but hon. Members can find it in the Library Mr. Richard Marsh (Greenwich) This is not very important. Mr. Howard It is"the bombshell of the letters that were going to be produced next day". The only trouble was that the meeting took place on Thursday afternoon, after those letters had been published. If that is not misrepresentation, I just do not know what is. The public are given what appears to me to be a deliberately false impression of what Members of Parliament are thinking about a matter of this sort. I do not propose to go into the question of innuendoes against Members of the House. I am merely trying to draw attention to the kind of Press statements which are put out and which are deliberate, or appear to be deliberate, misstatements in a case as serious as this. I hope that cases of this sort will be brought before the Tribunal. Mr. Wigg

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Will the hon. Gentleman consider the alternative? When the debate is finished, will he go to the Library and read today's national Press, starting with The Times in which its political correspondent writes a story, which is perfectly clear, every word of which was inspired by the Government's public relations office. This is the 431 choice: either we are spoonfed and inspired statements are given by Ministers, or journalists are forced to speculate. I prefer the speculation which involves falsities rather than hand-outs. If the hon. Gentleman hopes that the Daily Mail will be brought before the Tribunal, I hope that The Times and all the other newspapers which printed the Prime Minister's story this morning will also go before the Tribunal. Mr. Howard I am trying to point out that in this report the Minister of Defence was supposed to have addressed a committee meeting on the Wednesday night when, in fact, he addressed it on the Thursday afternoon after the letters were published. Mr. Wigg The hon. Member is quite right. The story was absolutely false. The poor man had got on the wrong trail. The stories in The Times this morning, however, are accurate, because the Prime Minister's representative gave it to them. I prefer the Daily Mail to The Times. Mr. Howard I am trying to point out that a great many statements of this sort which are put out have no foundation. In a matter as serious as this, what everybody in the House wishes to find out is the facts. We are worried about security. Do not let us get drawn away by these "red herrings", by people running here, there and everywhere and trying to destroy this or that reputation. Let us get at the facts and let the country realise that a lot of what people read in some of the newspapers has no foundation in fact. Several Hon. Members rose Mr. Deputy-Speaker Mr. CrossmanMr. Woodburn. [HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."] I apologise to the House. I failed to see the right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn), who rose. Mr. C. Pannell On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The Select Committee on Procedure recommended, and Mr. Speaker accepted, that priority should not necessarily be given to right hon. Members. Consequently, if you have given, as I am sure you have done, in good faith, the idea that you missed my right hon. Friend the Member for 432 Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn), who has not been here all the time, I am sure that that is a slip on your part which you would not wish to repair. Mr. A. R. Wise (Rugby) Further to that point of order. Could it be stated from this side of the House, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that we like listening to the right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn)? Mr. Deputy-Speaker The second point is quite irrelevant. What the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) has said in his point of order is quite true. It is not obligatory upon the Chair to call a Privy Councillor, but it has been a fairly general custom and I would be reluctant at this time to depart from it. In error, I did so. I corrected myself and I hope that the House will allow me to correct what I did mistakenly. Mr. Crossman

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I thought I heard you call my name, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I have been sitting here patiently. If you called me, can you really say that you did not call me when, in fact, you did? Mr. Deputy-Speaker I fully accept that. By a slip of the tongue, I called the hon. Member, but I invite him to allow me to correct myself. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I invite the hon. Member to allow me to correct myself. Mr. Crossman With respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that puts an hon. Member in a difficult position. To invite me to let you correct a mistake when you called me seems to me to be, frankly, a lot to ask of me. We have had three successive Privy Councillors. I cannot see why there is a mistake to correct. Mr. A. Woodburn (Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire) I would be the last to wish to embarrass you in this matter, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but, contrary to what has been said, I have been sitting here all the time. I have not been out. Therefore, there is no question of my having just come in, as has been suggested. If, however, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) insists that he must speak first, I am quite willing that he should. I have a special reason for wanting to speak on this matter because of the 433 hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), who has been involved, and to justify the honour of this side by making a few remarks on the matter. Mr. Deputy-Speaker I very much regret what has happened. I am entirely responsible. Through a slip of the tongue. I have thrown the House into uncertainty. The calling of right hon. or hon. Members must rest with the Chair. What I should like the House to allow me to do is to correct an error which I made accidentally. I should like the House to allow me to call the right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire. Mr. S. Silverman On a point of order. I am sorry, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that I cannot be as accommodating as I would normally like to be to the Chair and the House, but to do what you suggest we should allow you to do would create a precedent in the history of the House. If it is admitted, as I understand it to be, that whether by inadvertence or not you called my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman),he bas possession of the Floor and so long as he keeps in order in his speech, neither the Chair nor anyone else is entitled to deprive him of the privilege of addressing the House, which you called him to do. Mr. Crossman I accept my hon. Friend's argument. You have invited me to give way, however, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and as I do not want to waste any more time, I give way. 5.56 p.m. Mr. A. Woodburn (Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire) I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member far Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), because I recognise, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that you have been placed in an embarrassing position. If, however, my hon. Friend had insisted upon speaking now, I would have given way. A great deal has been made about what has been said by this side of the House concerning the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith). I am sorry that what happened in regard to the exchange between my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) and the Prime Minister led to this matter having been brought to the Floor of the House because the Prime 434 Minister would not listen to discussions

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privately. Therefore, the Prime Minister must bear a certain amount of responsibility for this incident in the House. I As one who has known the hon. Member for Hiltheadand I think I speak on behalf of his Scottish colleagues, who have known him for many yearsI want to say that not one of them has the slightest doubt about his integrity and his character. I am sure that all of us were greatly shocked that the Prime Minister accepted the hon. Member's resignation. Today, the Prime Minister made a great deal about the additional rumours that have been started. The night hon. Gentleman must accept a great deal of responsibility for this, because had he accepted the innocence of the letters and stood by his hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead the public would have accepted that the Prime Minister believed in the hon. Member. In accepting the resignation, however, the Prime Minister created the impression throughout the country that there must be something behind this matter which has not come out in the wash. When the Prime Minister proceeded to appoint the Tribunal another rumour went through the Housethat he was appointing it for two reasons: to wash the Government whiter than white, and to bring discredit upon my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper. A good deal that has happened today has borne out that intention. We have had sneers from the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch), who spoke from his side of the House following the Prime Minister. A great deal of what has been brought out shows that part of the reason for the Tribunal is to make an attack upon my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper and is a diversionary movement to draw attention away from the real purpose of the debate. We welcome the appointment of the Tribunal because it seems to be the only instrument capable of doing the job. I agree, however, with the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), the Leader of the Liberal Party, that our past experience of the tribunal procedure has been most disagreeable and unfortunate. It has allowed widespread slanders and attacks on 435 character to be made with no defence from the people concerned. The Lynskey Tribunal put people in their graves. It not only assassinated their characters, but actually brought about their premature death, because these men's characters were destroyed for no reason at all because they were smeared by that Tribunal. One of the dangers of this Tribunal is that the truth is not necessarily going to come out, unless somebody is responsible for producing it. Mr. Hale I was engaged in the Lynskey Tribunal, and I have previously expressed precisely the view that my right hon. Friend is expressing now, but how is the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) to be defended against the allegation, which the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister has made today, that somebody, who, no doubt, can be identified, has said that rumours are floating about in Fleet Street, in respect of which he is likely to say that he cannot remember who told him, that it was perhaps Mr. Jones who got it from Mr. Brown who got it from Mr. Smith? I ask: how can the hon. Member for Hillhead be defended without briefing counsel and appearing before the Tribunal to answer that allegation against him by going into the box and saying, "This is absolutely false"? The only other man he could call is Vassall. How does he answer it? This is what always happens when a man is charged with crime, but if he is charged with a rumour against himwhose character can be defended against that? Mr. Woodburn

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That, I agree, is just the dangerthat people have their characters assassinated, and there is no way in which they can possibly clear themselves, because the public, unfortunately, like dirt, and if dirt is spread they will swallow it. They do not look for washing whiter than white, and this is one of the dangers of a tribunal of this kind. I should have thought that the Prime Minister would have been on much surer ground if he had appointed a Select Committee of this House, or a Joint Select Committee of both Houses, since the First Lord of the Admiralty is involved, because that would have con436 ducted this investigation as privilege is conducted in this House, with a sense of responsibility and a great control of the kinds of things which are brought out. Mr. Dudley Williams (Exeter) Surely one of the objections to the Select Committee procedure is that the Committee cannot take evidence on oath and cannot subpoena people? Mr. Woodburn I thought that a Select Committee had great powers and could do almost everything. Anyway, this House can give powers of any kind, which override anything in this country, to any Committee. This is the High Court of Parliament and it has the right to give powers to a Committee, and I think that perhaps there could have been devised a new Committee of a kind suitable for this. But in any case the Tribunal is being appointed and we have got to accept it as it is. I think that the discussion has shown that there is great risk of this Tribunal being led up the garden by looking into all these rumours and trifles which have nothing to do with the security of this country. The question is: are they important? Suppose that all this about the hon. Member for Hillhead were right. This is not our business. It is not our business to prosecute and persecute the hon. Member for Hillhead, even if he were guilty, but we believe he is innocent, and everybody who has any decency, and who knows him, believes that he is innocent. The problem is that in discovering the person who circulated the rumours we may not get on the right track of who it was who betrayed the country. In the old days spies were paid, OT bribed, or seduced. Now we have a new brand of people who, as has been said, believe they have got a mission in life, a religion in life, who believe in a cause above that of their own country. We have found in the past scientists who painted out that they believed they were serving an international cause, and that that cause was above loyalty to their own country. This is the great danger and it is almost impossible to defend against it. Who are to be the spies? Obviously, a spy will not put a label on himself, "I am a member of the Communist 437 Party", "I was a member of the Communist Party", "I am connected with all the Left-wing organisations". In that case he will not make a good spy. A good spy will be a staunch Conservative, a member of the Church, a member of the best clubs in London. He will be above suspicion. He wild have the old school tie. Rather like Vassall, he will be a vicar, or a vicar's sonso that he will be accepted as one of the old boys and nobody will ever suspect him on any count at all. That is the successful spy, a man who will provide himself with a cover which nobody will ever penetrate. It is not a question of running McCarthyism. People who think that are not recognising the facts of history at all. Obviously, the last person we are to have as a spy is a person Who associates himself with that line. Unfortunately, this man Vassall has disclosed another weakness. He has disclosed the fact that certain people are liable to be blackmailed. He says he was blackmailed. There may be no evidence of that. That may be a story. On the other hand, there are rumours going about about Vassall that we have not heard so much of. There are rumours that he was a kind of male Mata Hari, who was seducing lots of people in high places because

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they were his customers. It is actually said that he had a bigger income from them than he had from the Russians. This is another secret thing which should be worked out throughout the public service. There are a great many things to investigate. For instance, may not one of his contacts have been Maclean, in Moscow, and Burgess? Had Maclean any responsibility for Vassall going to Moscow and later being compromised and blackmailed? Obviously they worked in the same group. Maclean could possibly have been subjected to blackmail. I can remember a case in this House when it was reported by a Member now dead, a doctor, that a person had consulted him because he was being blackmailed by the Communist Party and he wanted to know how he could be cured of a weakness. Actually, he went abroad. Everybody knows that this goes on. There are great investigations 438 to be carried out and they may go to very high places, but we cannot rule out people because they have the right school tie, or because their fathers were vicars. We cannot just look at people who come from secondary and working-class schools as though they were spies. Maclean did not. This is a matter we want to get to the bottom of, and we should completely disregard who a person is and what he is. We should get to his background, and we should find out who is liable to be blackmailed, who is liable to succumb to pressure of this kind, and investigate him. It is a very difficult business, and there is no possibility at all of discovering all the spies, of course, but, obviously, they mostly arise from weakness or cupidity, or, as I say, from this new factor of devotion to an entirely new religion. I hope, therefore, that the Prime Minister and his colleagues will drop all this nonsense about trying to whitewash themselves in order to blacken my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper and to whitewash the Government. This is not the purpose of this Tribunal. If it carries out this purpose then it will destroy any credit and any belief in such tribunals in the future. I agree with my hon. Friend that if this Tribunal betrays the trust being placed in it by sidetracking into all these whitewashing activities then this House will have to take steps to find some other method of getting at the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 6.9 p.m. Mr. A. R. Wise (Rugby) The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) has, I think, been a little inconsistent in some of his remarks. He deplored the campaign of innuendo which drove my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. T. D. G. Galbraith) out of office. But from where did the innuendo come? Did it not come from his own party? Mr. Woodburn The Press. Mr. Wise Who was it made rumours about letters which I have seen Mr. Woodburn It was in the Press. 439 Mr. Wise letters I have seen in this House, letters which were, of course, completely innocuous when they were published? But that is where the innuendo started. The less said from the Opposition benches about innuendo in this case, the better for everyone concerned.

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The right hon. Gentleman was totally inconsistent on another point. He said the Prime Minister had set up this Tribunal as a great whitewashing institution. He then said he welcomed its setting up. Does he want the Government whitewashed? We on this side of the House do not. We want the truth. The reason why we welcome the Tribunal is that we feel we shall get the truth. Any attempt to equate this with the Lynskey Tribunal is not comparing like with like. The Lynskey Tribunal was set up to investigate charges of direct corruption, not espionage. It was an honest Tribunal. I was out of the country at the time, but I read its reports, and I believe that it came to an honest result. In my view, it did not go quite as far as it ought to have done because it merely punished someone who was not really a guilty man. Mr. Hale It also punished many people whom it found to be completely innocent and whose motives were admirable, including an hon. Member of this House, a man of deep religious views, who tried to exercise a moderating influence. Because his name was mentioned, he never came back to this House and has never been adopted again. He is described as the man whose name was mentioned in the Lynskey Tribunal. We have been told today that everybody has forgotten what the Lynskey Tribunal said, because it has been said that this man was found guilty, but he was not. Mr. Wise If that is the caseand I am prepared to accept it from the hon. Gentlemanthe fault surely lies not with either the Lynskey Tribunal or this House, but with the Labour Party's selection committee. Mr. C. Pannell Do not be silly. The hon. Member knows nothing about it. Mr. Wise That must be the case. I turn to one reason for the setting up of the Tribunal. We are dealing 440 with a very serious question of espionage. I would ask hon. Members opposite in particular, but also hon. Members on this side of the House, how guilty we ail are of impeding the work of the security services. I have had fourteen years' experience of counter-espionage in one form and another, and I can tell hon. Members that it is a very difficult and arduous task. Whenever the security services try to do a check on loyalty, say, of the Civil Service, do at any rate some hon. Members opposite raise the shadow of Senator McCarthy, or do they not? Does it help the security services, or does it not? Even on this side of the HouseI include us all in this patternI think that there is a certain amount of guilt for the leakages which take place. Mr. W. Griffiths (Manchester, Exchange) From time to time through the years I have raised cases in this House relating to the operations of the security services, and there have been instances when I thought that the operation of those services had resulted not in greater security for this country but in the perpetration of an act of injustice against an individual. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that hon. Members should not always have regard to that and the defence of the security of the State? Mr. Wise I am saying nothing of the sort. I am merely saying that hon. Members should sometimes think of these things. Of course there may be cases of injustice, but the hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that so-called cases of injustice are raised in this House, on both sides, with far less justification than he and I would think reasonable. I repeat that some of the guilt for these leakages may well lie with us.

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To turn to another aspect, we know perfectly well that the pervert is peculiarly susceptible to pressure from outside organisations to bring him in as a servant of the enemies of the country. We all know that. But suppose we suggested the dismissal of suspected perverts, or even known perverts, from the Government service. What would be the reaction of the House? On the whole, we should find denunciation of our interference with the liberty of men to live their own lives. But they are not living their own lives when they are in Government service. 441 This is the life of the nation, and we cannot afford to take any risk in these matters. There is no question that we have a right and, in my view, a duty to ensure that any persons susceptible to blackmail are not employed in any form of office where they can get hold of secret information. [An HON. MEMBER: "It would mean going wide."] As an hon. Member opposite says, we should have to go fairly wide. At the time that I was in the intelligence service in Germany under a previous Secretary of State for War, we should have had to go not only fairly wide but also fairly high. But the fact remains that we should have gone there. If we want security, these are things that both sides of the House must make up their minds to do. We must forget some of our strong feelingsrightly strong feelings about the liberty of the subject, the right of the individual to live his own life, and so on. We have to remember that the only thing that matters in these things is the security of the realm, and even if injustice is done, it is worth doing if the security of the realm is going to be maintained. That is all I have to say on that matter. Mr. Eric Lubbock (Orpington) I must confess that I find the argument which the hon. Gentleman is putting forward a most horrifying one. It seems to meI should like to know whether he agrees with thisthat he is advocating that we should use the very methods that the Communists use in order to combat espionage. Mr. Wise The hon. Member is, of course, talking the kind of drivel that one expects from the Liberal Party. Of course we are not using the tactics of the Communists. But I would ask the hon. Member to remember that leakages from the security systems of the Communist States are far less frequent than they are from ours. Mr. Lubbock Exactly. That is what I said. Mr. Wise Leakages from our States are just as dangerous as leakages from the Communist States. We have all accepted the fact that there is a cold war, and to fight this cold war we must have the necessary determination to ensure our own safety and security. It is no good trying to have a happy nineteenth century outlook on these matters. 442 I know that the Liberal Party is trying to live down the nineteenth century because in the course of those hundred years it had much to apologise for. The fact is that we cannot allow this sort of thing to happen. The leakages are getting worse and not better. One of the greatest difficulties with which the security services have to compete is unjustified attacks from time to time in this House. I am merely pleading that we should use a little caution in attacking our security services when they try to examine the backgrounds, habits and so on of persons who might give away information of value to an enemy. I know perfectly well than one can say that we have not got an enemy; but, of course, we have an enemy, and we all know that we have, and we must deny that enemy information. 6.20 p.m. Mr. R. H. S. Crossman (Coventry, East)

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I am very glad to be following the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Wise), because I too, like him, spent some time in the security service, and I should like to tell him that, though it was, perhaps, a little before himduring the last warI do not think that the view he has put forward would be agreed to by all who work in the security service. What the hon. Gentleman said was that we have to forget about freedom and think of the safety of the realm as all that matters. That is the kind of exaggeration that leads to catastrophe. One of the jobs of this House is precisely to make sure that the secret Departments are not permitted, because of their secrecy, to get away with practices which are dangerous to the realm. One of our great problems with the top-secret security organisationsand the hon. Gentleman knows it as well as I dois that they are not above lying and the suppression of vital facts in order to further themselves against other security organisations. Security is a horrible job. Unless we have a liberalminded House of Commons, it is a nightmare. Of course, all this has nothing to Jo with the debate. Let me come back to the debate. This debate is on the question of an inquiry. I want to make it quite clear that I am and have be-en for years passionately in favour of adequate inquiry. I was in favour of it 443 before last Friday when the Prime Minister decided that we should have an inquiry to get to the bottom of what is wrong with our security service. I tried to put down my Amendment, because I felt sure that this kind of inquiry, set up under this Act, is the wrong kind of inquiry. I am afraid that it will not be usedand I have every kind of support for this from the speeches that we have heardjudicially. It will not be launched in terms of investigating security. One of the most striking facts is that we are having a political debate. I have never heard a more political speech than that of the Prime Minister. It was not the speech of a man concerned with a judicial inquiry who felt that, whatever we do, we must put party behind us and try to get this matter sorted out. It was the speech of an agile politician who had been caught on the hop, who was having to change his mind and climb down to the demands of the Opposition and the Press outside, and who was trying, to avoid admitting that he was doing so. So he adopted the oldest trick in the world, which is to attack the other side and use precisely the poison which one says one is concerned to obliterate. We heard the Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) and the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley) saying that we must have decency in our public life and prevent character assassination. But there has only been one object in all these speeches we have heard, and that is character assassination across the Table. That is what hon. Members opposite are concerned aboutto switch it all and try to assassinate a leading member of the Opposition who committed the crime of raising this issue, and who mentionedwhat was known outsidethat a junior Minister in the Admiralty had been in intimate communication by letter with a spy. We now know that the letters were absolutely valueless and unimportant, but it was a little ridiculous of the Government to suggest that it was not an interesting item to the security services or to the House Mr. J. A. Leavey (Heywood and Royton) rose 444 Mr. Crossman I cannot give way in the middle of a sentenceto suggest that it was not a relevant fact to discover that a junior Minister had been for some time in communication and on friendly terms with a traitor. Unfortunately, it was not the first time, by the way, that a junior Minister had done this, as I shall show later, though on the previous occasion it was somebody from our side

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who was in trouble. There have been cases in which not only civil servants, but politicians, have been mixed up with spies. Mr. Leavey I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He has referred to these letters as valueless. Can he say whether it is the case that they were purchased for several thousands of pounds, because, if it appears that they were, they could hardly be termed valueless? Mr. Crossman That is silly. I am discussing seriously the pros and cons of this inquiry. I am pointing out the perverse exaggeration of the Prime Minister's statement that the Tribunal must be set up suddenly because the situation had changed, and because a new situation required new methods. That is absolute nonsense. The case for the inquiry has existed now for ten yearssince Burgess and Maclean. The Prime Minister was then Foreign Secretary, and he made a fine speech about a charter of British liberty. I will quote what he said: It will be a sorry day when we try to elevate something called the Foreign Office or the Treasury or any other Department of State into a separate entity enjoying a kind of life, responsibility and power of its own, not controlled by Ministers and not subject to full Parliamentary authority. Ministers, and Ministers alone, must bear the responsibility for what goes wrong. After all, they are not slow to take credit for anything that goes right. This does not mean that they have to accept responsibility for wrongful acts on the part of their officials of which they have no prior knowledge. But in discussing this case" that is, the Burgess and Maclean case It is quite wrong to assert that the Foreign Office, if by that is meant ' officials', made decisions of their own. Ministers are responsible and, in fact, took all the important decisions. Moreover, they took those decisions in full knowledge of all the relevant facts so far as they were known at the time."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th November, 1955; Vol. 545, c. 1484.] 445 I thought that that was an excellent speech. I and many other hon. Members spoke and we had an excellent debate, and I remember putting to the right hon. Gentleman same observations sayingI was quite certain about itthat the White Paper was a cover-up, just a method to avoid facing the fact that high officials in the Foreign Office knew the weaknesses of both Burgess and Maclean. We have not yet got to the bottom of how it was possible for the Foreign Office to keep these men in its employment. I gave the warning that McCarthyism arises in countries when people outside have a suspicion that the security arrangements required of the small fry, such as aircraft workers, are not maintained so severely at the very top, that there are people at the top of a Ministry, civil servants and politicians, who permit themselves a licence to disregard security which would have involved expulsion from their jobs if practised by anybody lower down. That was my view. What was wrong was that we did not have a proper investigation to tackle the Burgess and Maclean case in the Foreign Office, because there were higher officials, who, if the truth had come out, would have had to go. It was quite clear that they had been covered up. Now, exactly the same thing seems to be happening in the Admiralty. Despite the fact that the Promotions Committee has not recommended his promotion, a spy is given jobs far above his level. This can only be done if the people at the top are in his favour. We need an inquiry which will really inquire into that factor and which really goes into the Foreign Office and the Admiralty and finds out about the people at the very top and that includes both the First Lord and the unfortunate hon. Member who resigned. The sacking of the former Civil Lord was outrageous. I say this not because I know

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whether or not he is innocent, but because I believe it to be outrageous to sack a man even before a committee has reported. He should have had justice. The Prime Minister should have listened to the facts and not have dropped him before he had heard and had judged them. I do not want to see either the hon. Member 446 or the First Lord judged before we hear what the investigations reveal. The atmosphere of this debate gives me no indication that such an investigation will take place. The whole tenor of the Prime Minister's speech was to protect the First Lord. He was careful to say that, technically speaking, "We all know that certain people are suggesting that there is something wrong at the top. We will have them." I began to think, as I listened to the Prime Minister, that I was in the Bundestag while Der Spiegel was being discussed. We were all condemning Dr. Adenauer last week for using a security matter to try to muzzle the Press. I have heard today some speeches uncommonly like this. They said, in effect, "We cannot have the Press saying this", I do not like innuendo, either. But newspapers have to do their job and in doing so say things which Ministers may not like. The newspapers may get things wrong, but I would rather have investigation by a Press which is sometimes wrong than a dumb Press intimidated by a Tribunal of this kind and daring to do nothing. After all, the British Press is not noted for its bravery. This morning, every single newspaper carried a Press release from the Prime Minister's office. Let us take one example of the popular Press, the Daily Mail. It said: The decision to have a tribunal inquiry sprang chiefly from a fear that if speculation, rumour mongering and political in-fighting went on much longer no one's reputation would be left safe. That was the way in which it was put by the popular Press. Let us turn now to the others. The Times, for instance, distilling, the same truth, said: he may be confidently expected to show that he and the Cabinet are determined to have an investigation armed with powers strong enough to bring to an end the irresponsible bandying about of imputations. This is to save the reputations of Ministers. There is nothing that a Minister dislikes more than something which gets near his reputation. The Press release goes on: the flow of rumour has long passed the point of tolerance That was the tone used by Dr. Adenauer: "Stop it. Stop talking. Stop 447 attacking. Stop embarrassing us." I myself want to stop dirty innuendo, but I warn the right hon. and hon. Members opposite that they must be careful that in the course of stopping innuendo and imputation they do not destroy the necessary atmosphere of free criticism in which, if a proper investigation takes place, the Minister in charge of counterespionagethe Prime Ministerwill be the chief man in the dock. One has to interrogate the Prime Minister because, as Prime Minister, he has chosen to take on himself the sole personal responsibility for counterespionage. He has said that anyone who takes credit for success must also take the blame for failure. But I did not get the impression today that he was prepared to resign if his secret organisation was found to be at fault. The suggestion, on the contrary, is that this Tribunal should be used to smash people who are uttering criticisms and that it is the kind of committee which might possibly do the job. At first sight one might say that a Tribunal with legal luminaries should have a degree of skill in investigation and the impartiality to do the job. I have a great respect for legal luminariesI was born into a legal family and I liked itbut I agree, rather, with Sir Stafford Cripps on this point. In 1936, when speaking on the proposal to report the Budget leakages to a similar Tribunalalthough the case was different it is relevant to this issueSir Stafford said: It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to say what a marvellous thing it is to get this complete impartiality from a judge and two members of the legal profession. I have had many discussions with many eminent members of the

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legal profession at the bench of my inn on many political matters and I have never found that they are less political than I am. I do not know which of these paragons of impartiality is to be chosen. Then he goes on, as a House of Commons man: it seems to me to be very unfortunate that the House of Commons should be regarded by the Government as a body which is incompetent and unsuitable to carry through the inquiry into this matter. Everyone knows that Members of the House of Commons are just as much human beings as judges, or eminent lawyers, or anyone else; they all have their biases and their predilections but I should have thought that a Select Committee of this House would be just the type of jury that should try this case".[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 5th May, 1936; Vol. 311, c, 15712.] 448 That is a powerful argument, coming from a leading lawyer. This case, too, has nothing to do with law. This is a discussion in which questions of common sense and the understanding of human nature are uppermost, together with some knowledge of security and Communism. A law committee is the last thing we need to deal with spying. What is needed is to get men with the courage to investigate at the top level and to put the Prime Minister through investigation. We know what briefing the Prime Minister has given the men he has selected. We know that his instructions are that they are to concentrate on rumours and imputations. We know that he wants them to look on the security aspect in such a way that will help the Prime Minister in his political battle to assassinate my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown). That is the Tribunal's main joband the members will not be appointed to another tribunal if they do not help. I now turn to another person who spoke in the discussion in 1936 in support of an Amendment similar to the one I and my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) would have liked to have moved today, with the effect of changing the character of the Tribunal. It is extraordinary how Earl Attlee managed to predict the process and the questions which need to be asked today. I will read the passage without changing a word. He said: what is to be the method of procedure by this tribunal. The essential method of procedure by a tribunal is where there is a judge, where a case is investigated, and that case is put before him by counsel. A little later, he said: Will the AttorneyGeneral be conducting this case? It might be extremely awkward if so, and there was some lapse due to one of his colleagues. As a matter of fact, there was some lapse due to one of the then Attorney-General's colleagues. That was a premonition by Earl Attlee. He went on: I do not think that the Government seem to appreciate that the Government are in the dock in this matter. It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to say, ' We cannot have an inquiry by the House of Commons because there is partiality. . A person brought before a court might say they will not be quite impartial between me and the Crown.' It is all nonsense, This House is concerned for the honour of this House and I consider that the right hon. Gentleman would 449 have done far better to have proposed an Inquiry by this House."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th May, 1936; Vol. 311. c, 1556.] I must say that I find Lord Attlee's argument difficult to confute. I find it difficult to meet on two grounds. First, he said that if there were a Tribunal in which the Attorney-General played a part, as Lord Shawcross did in the Lynskey Tribunal, dominating the cross-examining rle, no one could say that it was done by somebody impartial, for he would be as deeply prejudiced and partial as any other Member of the House of Commons, or any other member of the Government. Therefore, if anyone says that we cannot do these things ourselves because we are partial, we must remember the partiality of lawyers. Secondly, we have a certain common sense in our investigations which fails in the legal profession I would have

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thought that there was everything to be said for the House undertaking this inquiry on those two grounds. The Tribunal procedure as we have seen it operating in half-a-dozen cases is a procedure in which the Government completely control the investigation and investigate on their own behalf to discomfort their opponents. Indeed, the Prime Minister made that quite clear today. He said that the Tribunal was to attack the imputations. We are having a Tribunal to clear Ministers or friends of the Prime Minister, and that is the Government's view of the function of a Tribunal. I suggest to hon. Members opposite who say that they care about security that they must know as well as I do that this kind of Tribunal will not put the Prime Minister in the dock unless the House of Commons this evening expressly desires and insists that that should be done. Of course it is possible, if the whole tone of the debate from now on is in that sense and if hon. Members opposite say that they agree that the Prime Minister should go into the dock and be cross-examined openly and fairly, and that he shall not be criticised any less partially than my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper and that all politicians and all civil servants concerned should be brought to the dock and crossexamined impartially. 450 Then there is some chance that Lord Radcliffe will be able to do a decent job. My own view is that even then it would be an extremely difficult job to do, but there is some chance of it being done if the House of Commons can forget party warfare and demand that the investigation must succeed, and if we can genuinely not try to score off each other. Mr. Wise rose Mr. Crossman I am trying to make a speech about the investigation. Do hon. Members opposite regard it as partisan for the Opposition to be praying for an investigation which really investigates what has gone wrong in the Burgess-Maclean case, the Blake case, and the Admiralty, where the most primitive laws of security have been violated with consent at the topmost level? If that has to be investigated, then I pray that hon. Members opposite will join me in insisting that we get an assurance from the Attorney-General this evening that if this kind of Tribunal comes, there will be a cross-examination of all the relevant Ministers. That must be our first requirement. The second must be that it must not be conducted by the Attorney-General, who knows his dependence on the Prime Minister and who is one of the Prime Minister's agents. Surely he should hand over that job to the Public Prosecutor, or someone else who could do the job impartially and be known to be impartial? That would stop this mockery and hypocrisyand it is mockery and hypocrisy after the experience of the Lynskey Tribunalof having the Attorney-General come forward and say, "I shall be able to be impartial as between the right hon. Member for Belper and the Prime Minister when we go to the court of the Tribunal". The Attorney-General (Sir John Hobson) I would have thought that the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) knew perfectly well that when the Attorney-General appears in tribunals of this sort, he appears on behalf of the tribunal only. He operates under the instructions of the tribunal. He is instructed by the Treasury Solicitor and he appears on behalf of the tribunal. Lord Shawcross, as he now is, made it 451 perfectly plain in the Lynskey Tribunal that his interest as a Law Officer was to endeavour to discover the truth, without political or personal motives and whatever the consequences. I hope that the hon. Member will accept from me that I intend to endeavour to follow the traditions of my predecessors in

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cross-examining members of the Government and all other witnesses whom the Tribunal consider necessary to be called, whoever they may be and whatever the consequences may be. Mr. Crossman Of course I accept that the right hon. and learned Member will follow the traditions of this Tribunal procedure, which I have been showing to be absolutely hopeless for carrying out an impartial investigation. I have no doubt that he will do as well as Lord Shawcross did against his own side. [HON. MEMBERS: "He did a good job."] It may be that he had a directive to. All I know is that the ordinary people whose suspicions, I am told, hon. Members opposite are concerned to allay, so as to stop the rise of McCarthyism, will not take this kind of Tribunal seriously, because they will know that the Tribunal was organised so that the Government could get advantage from it, and on all previous occasions it has worked out that way. It worked out that way in the Bank Rate Tribunal and it seems certain that it will work out that way this time, because the people concerned have been warned that it should. My job is to put it on the record that there are people in the House who for the first time are insisting that this Tribunal should be unlike its predecessors and that the AttorneyGeneral should not do what his predecessors did, but should be afraid of no person and a respecter of no person in his insistence on discovering the truth. If we could achieve that by this debate, I would be relieved. In my view, on balance it would be better for the House of Commons to have enough self-respect to say that, because frightful political issues are involved. Heaven knows, we have enough politics mixed up with this case. That is Why it would be better to have a Select Committee of the House of 'Commons to do the job for ourselves and lo have majority and minority reports, 452 because at least there would then be obvious politics instead of the cryptopolitics which would be found in the kind of Tribunal which we are likely to have as a result of this Motion. 6.47 p.m. Sir Cyril Osborne (Louth) The hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Cross-man) seems to have done less than justice to this case, for at the beginning of his speechand I carefully took down his wordsthe said that the Tribunal would not be used judicially. I should like to know how he knows. The whole of his speech Mr. Crossman rose Sir C. Osborne Perhaps the hon. Member will let me finish my sentence as he finished histhe whole of his speech was almost a smear of Lord Radcliffe, who is to conduct this inquiry. Mr. Crossman rose Sir C. Osborne You are obviously not listening. You like to talk, but not to listen. Mr. Speaker We must keep the rule that observations are addressed to the Chair, and I was listening very hard. Sir C. Osborne I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member spoiled his case by exaggeration and by implying that Lord Radcliffe would not do an honest and straight job, and he would not accept the specific assurance of my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General who, in answer to his challenge, said that he would direct his questions to all sorts of people, high and low,

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important and unimportant. It was rather below the hon. Member's usual standard that he should refuse to accept that assurance. May I direct the hon. Gentleman's attention to one other thing? He questioned whether the Tribunal could get at the truth or not, or whether we should be smearing people's reputations. I think that everyone in the House feels deeply sorry far my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), who has to listen to all this. I feel deeply sorry for him. Nobody in the House feels that he is anything but innocent of the terrible things that have been said behind his back. The 453 third and fourth paragraphs of the Motion give the Tribunal all the power that it needs to get to the truth, and the absolute truth, and what hon. Members on both sides of the House want is the truth of the position. What are the facts? No matter who is implicated, or whose reputation may be tarnished in the meantime, we want to get at the truth, for this important reason. Outside this House those who send us here regard us as honourable people doing our best for our country. If we start to doubt the honour of each other and the honour of our motives, we destroy the function of this very ancient and honourable House. I deeply regretted some of the earlier speeches from both sides of the House during which innuendoes were being thrown across the Floor. It does not help us at all, and I should have thought that the hon. Member for Coventry, East would have been the last person to throw innuendoes at the distinguished gentlemen who are to conduct the inquiry. I have three points to make. I cannot understand the impassioned plea of the hon. Member for Coventry, East against the acceptance of this Tribunal, bearing in mind that a week ago his right hon. Friend pleaded for this type of inquiry. Mr. Crossman I disagreed with my hon. Friends. Sir C. Osborne The hon. Gentleman said that this Tribunal would not be used judicially. Mr. Wigg I sought to move an Amendment in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) The hon. Member for Louth (Sir C. Osborne) could not have been in the House. The purpose of the Amendment was to alter the Committee, because we have never agreed with the request for this independent Tribunal. We have always held that the prime responsibility rests on the Prime Minister's shoulders. Sir C. Osborne I was in the House, and I heard the hon. Gentleman seek to move the Amendment. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman because I thought that he moved it in his name only. I missed the fact that the Amendment was 454 also in the name of his hon. Friend. I apologise to both hon. Gentlemen. The right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown), who speaks officially for the party opposite, demanded this type of Tribunal. I do not understand how the bulk of the party opposite can vote against the Motion. Further, the right hon. Gentleman having pleaded for this type of Tribunal, the Leader of the Opposition rather took credit for having secured it. Mr. Wigg My right hon. Friend has a right to claim credit for it, but we happen to think that he is wrong. Sir C. Osborne The hon. Members above the Gangway who support the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition would, I think, find it difficult to vote against the Motion.

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I regret the accusations and smears which have been made from both sides of the House. We like to call each other, as we do, honourable Members. This is one of the saving graces of the House of which we are all very proud. It is a pity that such smears and accusations crept into speeches both from behind me and from the other side of the House. I make the plea that, if possible, we should refrain from doing this in future. The Leader of the Opposition, and I am sorry that he is not here, said that it would be difficult to get from newspaper editors the source of their information because they had a code to keep and would not disclose the source from which they got it. I interjected to remind him about what had happened on a previous occasion. I apologise to the House, because it was not the Allighan case but the Walkden case. Those who were in the 1945 Parliament will remember that it was a very impressive sight. The editor of the newspaper had to stand at the Bar of the House and answer questions from Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker asked: First, did you refuse to answer the Committee of Privileges when they asked you to, disclose the name of the Member of this House from whom you obtained information? The answer was, "Yes, Sir", Mr. Speaker asked: Are you now prepared to answer the question which you previously refused to answer? 455 This is in reply to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. The editor said, "Yes, Mr. Speaker". Mr. Speaker then asked: Was Evelyn Walkden the name of the Member which you previously refused co disclose? The reply was, "Yes, Mr. Speaker". Mr. Speaker then said. I direct you now to withdraw".[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 12th August, 1947; Vol. 441, c. 2276.] The Leader of the Opposition doubted whether this Tribunal could get from the editors of newspapers the sources of their information. The powers of this Tribunal wild be as strong as were those possessed by the Select Committee which investigated the Walkden case. Mr. Hale I have not looked at the facts of the case, but I remember them. I knew Walkden well at the time. My impression is that the Editor of the Evening News refused, on the ground of journalistic privilege, to answer any questions until the information had come from some other source, and I think that it was only after Evelyn Walkden's own admission was finally extracted that he was the guilty party that the editor agreed to answer questions. The hon. Member referred to the question in which Mr. Speaker used the name of Evelyn Walkden and put to him, "Is this the guilty man?". In other words, the facts were known before the editor of the Evening News agreed to confirm them. The same thing happened about the late John Carvel. Mr. Dalton was bitterly attacked from that side of the House, and there was talk of the use of the Official Secrets Act. My hon. Friend and I were on the Select Committee. It was only after a full admission had been made that John Carvel answered questions, because there was nothing left in dispute then. Sir C. Osborne I am trying to get from the Attorney-General whether or not the Tribunal will have powers to extract from newspaper editors the source of their information, because it is very important that they should have those powers. Sir Lionel Heald (Chertsey) Surely there is a complete distinction between 456 the two cases, because the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) and my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Sir C. Osborne) have been speaking of a case before a Committee of the House, whereas in this case the Motion gives the Tribunal power and authority to commit for contempt, and, therefore, impliedly, power to dead with all such questions. It was unfortunate that the Leader of the Opposition suggested that we should become involved in that at all,

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because that would be a clash between the judiciary and the House. It must be a matter for the Tribunal to decide, and we cannot dictate to it. Sir C. Osborne I am obliged to my right hon. and learned Friend. All that I, as a non-lawyer, am hoping is that it will be made clear whether this Tribunal will have power to get to the source of the information, because what we need is not more mud-slinging but the real truth, and no matter how highly placed a person is, if he is implicated he should come before the Tribunal. People outside will then have it clearly in their minds that everything has been brought out in public and there has been no whitewashing. In the end not only will my hon. Friend be vindicated, but all hon. Members will as well, because the smear has come on us all. If it is not out of order, I make the plea that the speakers who follow me should not try to do the work of the Tribunal, and that we should be as charitable as possible to one another. 7.0 p.m. Mr. George Wigg (Dudley) I find myself in considerable agreement with the hon. Member for Louth (Sir C. Osborne) in his plea that we should approach this subject in as reasonable a way as we can, remembering that we have a common task. What is that task? It is, I think, clearly tied up with making sure that the security services of the country do their job, for if they do not, the peril is shared by all. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) that an inquiry into the security forces of this country has been overdue for about ten years. I am concerned for, as the House knows, I am interested in defence, and security is a part of defence. The theme which I have constantly advocated in my 457 defence speeches is that we should try to elevate defence above party, so I was pleased indeed today to listen to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition when he argued in favour of an all-party approach because the breakdown in the present case had occurred because the Prime Minister had departed from his previous all-party attitude. Perhaps, therefore, some good will come out of the debate if from now on the Prime Minister realises that he would be serving his own interests, and those of his party and of the country, if he approached defence problems on a non-party basis and from the angle of securing the best return which can be got from the limited funds available. That can best be secured not by emphasising the differences but by recognising the points on which he can get the major area of agreement. Let us turn for a moment to the Lonsdale case and the inquiry which subsequently took place. The trial ended on 22nd March, and on 23rd March the Prime Minister came to the House and described some of the things which had happened as "a bitter blow". That evening I forced a debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill, and the theme which I then enunciated was the responsibility of the Prime Minister. I relied, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East today, on a speech by the Prime Minister on 7th November, 1955, which I thought was the speech of a wise man and of a statesman, for he laid it down quite clearly that it was not a question of chivalry but a question of constitutional practice that the responsibility rested with Ministers. I spent a number of days at the Old Bailey. I listened to the proceedings, read them, studied them and thought about them. There in the dock was a man and woman, not very intelligent, who were engaged in what I think were some pretty low-level activities. They were accompanied in the box by two professionals, the Kroegers and then there was Mr. Lonsdale, to give him the name which he uses, a Russian officer, a

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man of great courage, a professional, a man who was serving his country's interest and who no doubt holds high rank in the Soviet Army. But to ask me to believe that the transmitting apparatus in the house at Ruislip was operating in order to send 458 out the junk which was collected by Mr. Houghton and Miss Gee is asking too much. Some of the things which we had to listen to were fantasticfor example, Fleet orders dealing with precautions against venereal disease. Those no doubt were all very interesting to the medical department of the Soviet Union, but the idea that men risked their liberty and that vast amounts are spent in operations for that purpose seems to me most difficult to believe. What were Houghton and Gee doing? At the week-end they were taking out of the underwater establishment at Portland not an odd paper or two; they were taking out suitcases of papers. Apparently, the whole central registry was moved at the week-end from the under-water establishment at Portland to the Soviet Embassy, and on Monday morning it was taken back again. On 29th March we had a statement in the House. In the meantime the Prime Minister had gone to the Bahamas. The right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) came to the House and announced the setting up of the Romer Committee. The Romer Committee reported. We had no report at all on the circumstances which had enabled these people to operate in the way they didno comment at all. Evidence was given at the Old Bailey that the transmitting station in Moscow was still sending the call sign out to these boys. We had no examination of what I regard as a fatal factnothing of the way in which the warrant office at Bow Street organised leaks to the Press when Lonsdale and company were arrested which enabled a number of birds to fly. There was no examination of the fact that there were obvious leaks from the First Lord's office which enabled the Daily Mail to report that Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Thistleton-Smith was going on the Romer Committee. There was no examination at all of the basic security facts involved, except, of course, by the Romer Committee, which in turn followed the Radcliffe Committee, which followed the committee of Privy Councillors. These committees breed like rabbits. In my judgment every one of them was formed with the sole purpose not of getting down Ito the fundamental facts, not of dealing with the 459 truth, not of trying to establish what had gone wrong, but in order to deal with the particular political difficulties which happened to arise at the moment. What then happened has been repeated in the Vassall case. This is an operation which the Prime Minister told us was forced upon him last week-end following the events of the previous few days. I share the detestation expressed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition of the innuendoes and slanders which have caused pain and anxiety to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) and his family. We ought not to forget that. I detest It and I hate it. I hope very much that, as an act of simple restitution, the Attorney-General and the Government will consider that if this young man has to defend his reputation before this Tribunal, at least they should have the decency to pay the legal expenses involved. That is a gesture which could be made, because everyone in the House feels a great deal of sympathy with him and regrets the circumstances in which he finds himself. But what does the Prime Minister do? Once again, we have another committee. I want for a moment to examine the history of the kind of tribunal which is being set up. First of all, it must be remembered that it had a rather unfortunate birth. It was called into being at the time of a major scandal of the 1921 Coalition Government, who found themselves in great difficulties, because suggestions were being made about the way in

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which the Munitions Ministry was being run. The late Mr. Bonar Law came to the House and promised an inquiry. He was in political difficulties, too. But he was promising an inquiry into a particular case. Hon. Members found themselves late at night faced with a Bill of general application to deal with a particular case. I read the report of the Second Reading late last night, and I found that there was at least one hon. Member at the time who looked into the future, for he warned the House that forty years hencethis was in 1921 and we are now in 1962the House of Commons would find that it had landed itself with a version of the Star Chamber. How has this operated? I went to the Lynskey Tribunal and I was perhaps the only hon. Member who was 460 regular in his attendance at the Bank Rate Tribunal. I used to be staggered to come from Church House back to the House and to talk to my hon. Friends about the Tribunal, for they were reading the reports of the Bank Rate Tribunal in the Evening Standard, the Evening News and the old Star, and they were getting a totally different picture from that which I was getting. I wondered how this was happening, and I referred in an intervention this afternoon to the point where the leakage occurred. If one looks at the proceedings in the House which led to the setting up of the Tribunal to deal with the Budget leaks in 1936 one finds that Mr. Attlee and Sir Stafford Cripps, in their wisdom, were concerned about how the investigation was to take place. They were given an assurance by the Attorney-General thenan honourable and able man, as honourable and able as is the present Attorney-Generalin an answer which he believed to be true he said that this investigation would be kept in the hands of the judge who had been appointed. He believed that to be true, but it did not operate in the Lynskey Tribunal. It certainly did not operate in the Bank Rate Tribunal. Sir Hartley Shawcross and the present Lord Dilhorne, for whom I have great respect for the judicial way in which he discharged his duties during that Tribunal, were relentless in their cross-examinations. There was no case before the Tribunal. No individuals were there facing a specific charge. Reputations were shattered, people were smeared and harm was done, without any right of representation, without any charges being made and without any idea of what evidence could be given. I share with some of my hon. Friends their respect for members of the legal profession. I remember that when I first entered the House I used to listen with astounded wonder to some of them laying down the law. But as the years passed I discovered to my horror that some of them were appointed, by some means or other, as recorders and as I got to know them a bit better I wondered how they could possibly be put in a position to deprive others of their liberty. I remember how I tried to translate what I thought about them in military terms. That is a habit of mine. 461 I remember how I said that while some of them might be recorders, as far as I was concerned I would not have them as unpaid lance-corporals in an unarmed company of the Pioneer Corps. I recall saying that many of them were without the necessary virtues of common sense, objectivity and impartiality which they required to discharge their duties. In my opinion we must be sure that we have the best people we can get, not just lawyers, for we are up against an organisation which is backed with great resources and which so far seems to be having a singularly successful time, because we now get these cases quite regularly at half-yearly intervals. The House should remind itself that regarding the Tribunal of 1921 it was never laid down that it should be comprised exclusively of members of the legal profession. It was never even laid down that the chairman should be a member of that profession. One of the complaints of the hon. learned Member for Epsom (Sir P. Rawlinson) on Second Reading was that the Tribunal might be composed of lay members who need not have any experience at all and that such people were to be given vast powers.

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I regret that, as in many other defence matters, I am at variance with my Front Bench. Fortunately, I am in company with some old friends, my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East. We are at variance, I think, because we start off on the good Army principle of trying to appreciate the facts first and then endeavouring to make an assessment of that appreciation before we commit ourselves to a plan of operation. My hon. Friends on the Front Bench do not always do that and, if I may say so, they constantly get into difficulties about defence because they fail to appreciate the facts of a given situation. I say that by way of explanation because they tend to dash in and demand an inquiry without really finding out what is involved. The way this matter should have been dealt with is on the lines of a court of inquiry on Service principles where one, behind closed doors, ascertains the fact to give guidance to the man who is responsible. I do not care how many inquiries the Prime Minister has. He can have one every day of the week if he likesand two on Sundays if it helps 462 him. I believe, in my innermost beingto borrow a phrase used by the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch)that the Prime Minister and the country cannot get away from the fact that the responsibility for this matter rests fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the Prime Minister. Sir C. Osborne The hon. Gentleman is now suggesting that there should be a military type of inquiry behind closed doors. Does not that smack of the very Star Chamber about which he was speaking? Mr. Wigg The hon. Member for Louth (Sir C. Osborne) has had his ways cast differently from mine so I suppose that 1 should not talk in shorthand. I said that in these sort of cases, involving Service mattersand the Admiralty is a disciplined Servicethe problem should be approached from the point of view of the Naval Discipline Act in the same way that a similar matter affecting the Army should be approached from the point of view of the Army Act so that the facts can all be ascertained. However, that is only the first stage. If, subsequently, as a result of statements made by the Prime Minister, he cares to ask the House of Commons to set up a Select Committee, then that is his business. Mr. Wise I rather sympathise with the idea of the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) that the Tribunal should consist of people like himself and myself. We would probably do the job very well, although I doubt whether the idea would be acceptable to the country. Regarding the 1936 Tribunal, about which he speaks at such length, and about which I was not permitted to intervene when one of his hon. Friends was speaking, does he not consider that it was, under Mr. Justice Parker, an adequate and complete inquiry? It certainly bad no political bias and it ended in the destruction of one Minister of the Crown and an hon. Member of the Government party. Mr. Wigg For what my opinion is worth regarding the Bank Rate Tribunal, I do not think that it was a satisfactory way of tackling the matter. 463 Mr. Wise What about the 1936 Tribunal? Mr. Wigg I was not active in politics at that time, so I prefer not to go into that. I prefer to speak only about those matters of which I have knowledge. Perhaps the hon. Member for

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Rugby (Mr. Wise) will apply the same rule in future and will not make remarks about he and I discharging our duty as part of a court of inquiry. Neither of us is subject to the Naval Discipline Act or the Army Act. I am suggesting that when anything goes wrong in a Service Department the sort of procedure I have described should automatically be applied. In this matter the Prime Minister has chosen to fall back on an antiquated procedure which, by common consent, has an unsound basis. Its origins are steeped in expediency and it is clear that each tribunal, has tended to adopt different methods of procedure and certainly when the accused, as it were, although not in the dock, emerges he has no right to defend himself. It became perfectly clear in the 1936 Tribunaland I say this only as a result of reading the proceedings involvedthat the Attorney-General had to consider legal proceedings against Mr. Thomas and told the House of Commons that he could not undertake the prosecution because of the "continental nature" of the inquiry. I should have thought that this is alien to the British way and is less than justice. I say this because, I hope, I am a fair-minded man. I am more concerned with the final conclusions, though I have nothing against the Prime Minister. I am one of his greatest admirers. He is the perfect polician, but he is often extremely slick in his performances. If he is too slick he is the one to suffer and not me. But in matters of security the simple fact is that he has run away from his responsibilities. I do not say that in an unkindly way, but to point out that he has never stopped for sufficiently long to see just what the consequences of his actions in the long run will be. He has not stopped to realise that he, and he alone has the ultimate responsibility. He has not stopped to ascertain the facts but has acted in a way that has led us to the proliferation of a 464 variety of committees, none of which has any real responsibility or capacity for effective action. I can give two examples of this and hon. Members can judge the facts for themselves in the Privy Councillors' reports. Their great wisdom led them to the conclusion that in the modern world Communists, not professional agents, are the great security risks. Any one who went to the Lonsdale trial quickly realised how untrue their statements was shown to be. Houghton was not a Communist but a drunk who got caught up by the Russian secret service. Miss Gee was the only person with any political affiliations, and she admitted that once she had voted Liberal. Those who sat on the Committee of Privy Councillors, as it were, enunciated what they thought to be a proved fact but, in the event, exactly the reverse is true. Another piece of nonsense has also been trotted out. The last time things went wrong we were told, "We must have positive vetting." If we are to have positive vetting we would need a whole Department to do the job. The tendency is, in our sort of class society, that if a man is found to be an Etonian or the relative of a high person in the legal profession, or if he has an uncle who is a bishop, a tick is placed against his name and no one worries about him afterwards. When one considers the implications of positive vetting one must remember that changes are taking place all the time, including changes in the Russian secret serviceand they are no slugs at this business. The changes go on and there can be more changes tomorrow. So we must be flexible in our approach. One must have somebody who has his eye on the ball all the time, and it is to that extent that the Prime Minister's responsibility does not emerge only in the House, when something goes wrong. He is responsible all the time, for 365 days a year. He is not Prime Minister because we like the look in his eye, but because he has won the eternal party battle. This responsibility lies on the shoulders of the man who has the honour of being the Prime Minister of a country which up to twelve years ago was known as Great Britainfor in the last twelve years we have got rid of the "Great".

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465 But what does the Prime Minister do? After the Lonsdale case he makes a statement in the afternoon, says, "Cheerio", and goes to the Bahamas and we have the Romer Committee and that Committee does not even begin to deal with what was wrong, let alone take precautions against its happening again. Now we have a Tribunal of inquiry for which the Prime Minister selects the judges, lays down the terms of reference, appoints the prosecutor, receives the report, and only then will it be decided whether or not it will be published. In those circumstances what possible chance do hon. Members opposite, even if they regard their leader as a superman, think there is of facts seeing the light of day which are critical of the Prime Minister? Only to pose the problem is to answer it. I hope that something good will come out of all this. I am sure that the AttorneyGeneral will discharge his responsibility. Here I part a little from my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East. The Attorney-General, of course, will do his best to serve the Tribunal and will try here to establish the truth. I am quite sure that the Tribunal, with its terms of reference, will try to establish the facts, but I do not think that this is an impartial Tribunal. This is a political body, in the same way as the Bank Rate Tribunal and the Lynskey Tribunal were political bodies. It is a body called upon to pass judgment on Members of this House and it is not competent to do it. This is a deplorable fact, and I should have thought that the hon. Member for Louth, and many hon. Members opposite who are just as interested and know just as muchand many of them far moreabout defence, than I do, would join with me in trying once again to get defence, of which security is a part, on to an all-party level, and trying to elevate it above the party struggle. If we must have our differences, let it be only after we have tried here to obtain the maximum measure of agreement. If that could happen and that approach could be made, it would be most satisfactory. It seems to me that the hour is very late to get it, because we have to accept that the Soviet Union in this field is on the march. I think that what the Prime Minister said is 466 absolutely right. This is a very formidable Challenge, and unless we are prepared to meet that challenge, with courage and with the desire to do the best we can with very limited resources, it seems to me quite inevitable that we must lose the fight. If we lose that fight, irrespective of whether we are Conservatives or sit on these benches, we shall be all in it together. I certainly shall not vote against having this Tribunal, although I think it is wrong. I hope that in this, as on some other defence matters, I am proved wrong and that the Tribunal is successful in establishing the truth. If we can deal with this unfortunate series of accidents, remembering our duty here towards this present victim, and perhaps discharging it in the way I have suggested, then in future we might have a firmer basis on which to conduct our defence discussions. 7.25 p.m. I agree, but the hon. Member is still deluding himself if he thinks that a majority of the House, on a political matter, will bring in a vote of censure on the Prime Minister. He deludes himself and nobody else. A Select Committee is formed with a Government majority and an Opposition minority, and on that basis two reports on a contentious situation like this are produced. If the hon. Member had read the book on the Marconi case he would haw found that its conclusion was that such a Select Committee was useless for the future. Mr. S. Silverman

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I remember an occasion when a Chancellor of the Exchequer of my own party was accused of having committed a breach of what was incumbent upon him. The Conservative Opposition of that day asked for a Select Committee to inquire into it. We appointed a Select Committee, of which I had the honour to be a member. We had no difficulty whatever in producing a unanimous Report which was accepted unanimously by the House. OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th June, 1936; Vol. 313, c. 4156.] I think that he was the victim of a grave injustice. I think that anyone, whatever offence he may have committed, and who is not given a proper trial, is a victim of grave injustice. What we are proposing to vote for is a procedure which may repeat the grave injustice in that case. It is all very well for hon. Members to say that there is no question of damage to innocent people. The damage looks a bit different from one end or the other. We are inflicting the damage. I hope that the political career of no one in this House will be broken by this Tribunal. But it could happen. There was another speaker in that debate. It may be that hon. Members may dismiss Sir Alfred Butt and may have a suspicion which was never proved that he was guilty. No one has ever proved it. The Prime Minister of the day, Stanley Baldwin, gave this verdict on this kind of Tribunal which the hon. Gentleman called impartial: There is one other thing, and I think, perhaps, the older I grow the mom conscious I am of it; when I see a man put before a Tribunal of that nature, to answer questions on episodes in his past life where anything may be brought up. I ask myself: 'Which of us would escape?'."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th June, 1936; Vol. 313, c. 420.] That is exactly the same procedure which the Attorney-General defends and 475 hopes to defend again later in the House, a procedure described by Stanley Baldwin where "anything may be brought up". That is a very clear definition of the procedure under these kind of Tribunals"Anything may be brought up". As Stanley Baldwin said, if anything may be brought up, which of us may escape? Some of us might have written letters which some would regard as foolish, such as those writen by the hon. Member for Hillhead. We might have done something else. But whatever we have done, whether Ministers, Members of Parliament or citizens of this country, we have a right to be tried by a court of justice, and not by a Star Chamber and pillory. That is what we are voting for tonight, that certain people may be tried by a form of pillory. Can any hon. Member say that that will not happen? It happened, as it appears to me, in the case of Sir Alfred Butt and in the case of John Belcher. Mr. Wise I was in the House at the time. What the 1936 Tribunal found was not that any of the persons concerned had been guilty of any crime, but that they had been guilty of conduct which was not expected of Members of the House. To impugn the impartiality of Lord Porter is something which nobody who knew him could possibly countenance. Mr. Foot I am not impugning Lord Porter's impartiality. He was doing what he was instructed by the House to do, as, I have no doubt, Lord Radcliffe will do. The hon. Gentleman must try to comprehend the point which we have made over and over again from this side of the House. This procedure inevitably leads to injustice. Of course it does. Why have the courts, over the years, established rules of evidence and arrangements whereby people in danger of suffering at their hands may have an opportunity to defend themselves? No one can say that people who have been before these tribunals do not suffer. Sir Alfred Butt suffered; he was driven out of public life. He suffered a much more severe penalty than would have been inflicted if he had been charged with some of the allegations in court. It is no good the hon. Member saying that the decision of the

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court was a fair one. One 476 must have regard to the penalties inflicted on the victim. I say that in the case of Sir Alfred Butt a grave injustice was done. That is one of the reasons why I am against continuing this procedure. These things have happened time and again. Take the Belcher case. Some of us on this side of the Housemy hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) and I and some othersprotested bitterly at the time of the Belcher case because, we said, a grave injustice had been done to Mr. Belcher and, indeed, to many others involved in the same inquiry. If Belcher had known what was the charge against him, he would have had a better chance of defending himself and calling witnesses. A person tried before one of these Tribunals does not have a chance to call witnesses even in his own defence. We said in the House at the time that the result of the Belcher Tribunal was grossly unfair. We pleaded with the Government then to examine the whole of this procedure to ensure that no other person would ever go through the misery, agony and injustice suffered by people in that case. Each time we have one of these Tribunals set up, the same pleas are made but nobody takes any notice. The flippancy with which the Prime Minister has resorted to this extreme course horrifies me all the more. He started off by saying that he must have the most restricted kind of inquiry to deal with this particular matter of security. Now, he goes in for the most wide-ranging kind of inquiry. The excuse has nothing whatever to do with security. He made that quite clear today. The Prime Minister's excuse is that he must deal with these innuendoes, vile accusations and prejudiced statements. But nothing could possibly multiply innuendoes, vile accusations and prejudiced statements more than a Tribunal of this nature. Do hon. Members understand what will happen when the Tribunal sits? It may go on for weeks. The papers will be full of it. Vassall has only to get up in court and name a few people, and they may be finished for life. That is what hon. Members will be voting for 477 tonight, voting for it to happen again after all the innumerable examples we have had of how this procedure has led to grave injustice in the past without ever, as far as I know, assisting the security of the State. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) has said, the provision of proper inquiries for dealing with the security of the State is a quite different operation from invoking this kind of Tribunal procedure. There have been references to the question of what journalists are to do when they are hauled before the Tribunal. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition referred to this, and referred to it very well, I think. I do not know what I should do. I am a journalist. It is not easy to say what one would do in the circumstances if one were called before the Tribunal, but I must say that it would be my very strong inclination to make my mind absolutely resolute before ever I went to the court. I should not dream of telling any such Tribunal where I had been given information. Of course not. No court in the country, nor, indeed, the House of Commons, has the right to instruct a man to do something dishonourable. The hon. Member for Rugby may think that it has, but I do not think so. What would a journalist do? The brave right hon. Member for Flint, West, who is so eager to raise the standards of decency in our public life, referred to the Bank Rate Tribunal, in which he himself happened to be implicated. He did not refer to that fact in his speech, but he took the occasion to attack a journalist who had appeared before that Tribunal. I think that the right hon. Gentleman was more pursuing an old vendetta of his own than contributing to the wisdom of the House. The right hon. Gentleman referred to an answer given by an eminent City journalist when the journalist had appeared to stutter and stammer and not be able to give a very

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clear indication of where he had obtained information. Of course, it is easy enough to guess what happened. The journalist was confronted with this dilemma. If he gave the name of his source, he would be doing something dishonourable and he would be implicating people very high up. If he refused to give the name, he would be 478 had up for contempt of court, would he not? So what did he do? He thought that the best thing he could do to save his informant and to prevent himself from being had up for contempt of court was to invent another innocuous story about where he got the information. [HON. MEMBERS: "Dishonourable."] Hon. Members may say that that was dishonourable. I do not know what the hon. Member for Rugby would have done in the circumstances. Perhaps he would have gone gaily to the court and said, "I was given this information by the civil servant or City informant I have spoken to for years and who always gives me that kind of information". Mr. Wise I certainly think that it would be dishonourable to get information in that way. Mr. Foot The hon. Gentleman may say that. The members of the Government will not say it. The Leader of the House would not say it. The Minister of Health, for instance., sitting there, talks to journalists. Indeed, as my hon. Friends the Member for Dudley and the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Grossman) have pointed out, the papers this morning are stuffed with information given to the Press, most interested and prejudiced information, information designed to assist the purposes of the Government and to influence this debate. Does the hon. Member for Rugby carry his purity so far as to say that Prime Ministers should not even have public relations departments? Mr. Wise No. What I do say is that there would be very little hesitation on the part of anyone confronted with those things in disclosing the source of his information. Mr. Gordon Walker If there had been a Lobby conference, the great concern of the people concerned would be not to disclose that sort of thing. Mr. Foot Of course. If the members of the Lobby here were to disclose exactly how they are given information, they would be breaking their oath. Perhaps The Times was given a special brief; we know that that goes on, also. However, if the other Lobby correspondents were to say which Minister had talked to them, or which Minister they had had tea withif that is what they 479 drinkand if matters of that kind were to be disclosed, they would be breaking their oath. The members of the Lobby are under an absolutely binding obligation. When they become members of the Lobby, each one says that he will not reveal the source of his information; and I do not believe that they would. In that sense, they show a higher standard of honour than the hon. Member for Rugby. Mr. S. Silverman Although I know that he does not need it, will my hon. Friend allow me to assist him? In the case of the Dalton inquiry, where what happened was that Lord Dalton had made a communication to a Lobby correspondent who had promptly telephoned it to a newspaper which printed it too early, it was said by so experienced a Member of the House as the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) that if, during the war, there could not have been confidential relationships of this kind, inviolate between Ministers and Lobby correspondents, it would have been very difficult to carry on the war at all. Mr. Foot

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What my hon. Friend says is quite true. It happens in a variety of ways. It happens at a Press conference which is arranged and where it is understood that journalists are not to say who is the Minister concerned. It happens in a more intimate fashion in other ways. Much vital information in the Press about matters of the greatest public interest appears only because there are relationships between journalists and people in the Government service. It is no use denying the fact. It would be very bad for the country if this were not so. I am the first to agree that in many respects some journalists degrade the great profession, but I am equally convinced that we cannot sustain a free Press in this country without the journalists abiding by their oath not to reveal their sources of information. This Tribunal, as the Prime Minister made clear, will have nothing to do with security. This is to be the grandest trial of the newspapers that we have had for years. That is what the Prime Minister is after. What will happen? There will be a trial of the newspapers in which it will not be possible to obtain most of the facts. 480 Perhaps some journalists will say, "Under pressure, with the pistol at our heads, or under threat of transfer to the Tower of London, we will reveal the names." But it would be wrong for them to do so. It would be better for them to go en masse to the Tribunal and say, "We want all of you in this Tribunal to know that we refuse to reveal the sources of our information." If they all said that they would make this Tribunal the mockery that in fact it is, and they would be doing what I fear the House has not the courage and intelligence to do tonight, namely, to say, "Let us kill these Tribunals. Let us examine the whole contraption before we use it again." As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley said, they have a very shady origin. No one need think that there is all the majesty of the British law behind the institution that we are bringing into operation today. It has been said that this is a very blunt instrument. Why should we vote for blunt instruments? Why should not we have sharp weapons? We have urged the Government time and again to consider this matter. They have never done so. They like to have this kind of procedure up their sleeve. The Prime Minister, with matchless insolence, talked of McCarthy, but he is the man who is asking the House to institute the McCarthy procedure. He is the most brazen McCarthy of the lot. The Prime Minister's capacity for hypocrisy staggers even me. He is prepared to talk of McCarthy in the same breath that he asks the House to take action which on the evidence of past experience, on the evidence that I have tried to cite and on the evidence of the right hon. Member who spoke last is almost certain to do severe and possibly deadly injury to the reputations of innocent people. That is disgraceful, particularly when we have had so many tears rightly shed about the hon. Member for Hillhead. Since every hon. Member says how disgraceful it is that the hon. Member for Hillhead should have been so badly treated, it is wrong that we should vote for doing a similar injustice to unknown people. I therefore ask the House to reject the Motion. Of course it would have been better if it could have been amended. My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson 481 and Colne tabled an Amendment. Why it was not accepted it is difficult for me to say. The effect of his Amendment would have been to confine the inquiry to the security aspect. I think that it would have been better still if the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley for bringing in the chief criminal, the Prime Minister himself, had been adopted. But, if this House is concerned with security, then it should have been prepared to adopt the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne, because it confines the inquiry precisely to security. Why the Speaker, in his wisdom, decided that an Amendment of that nature could not be called I find very difficult to understand,

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particularlyand this only adds to the offencesince, as I have said, it is possible that innocent people will suffer as a result of what we do today. The House should have a little more time to consider these matters. I do not think it good enough for the Government to change their mind on the nature of the inquiry and to table a Motion at eleven or twelve o'clock at night so that hon. Members have not time to consider what Amendments to it they wish to table. These are very serious questions. It would do great credit to the House of Commons, would save some innocent people, and would secure a better procedure if we threw out the Government's proposal. But that will not happen. We will have the procedure and for three or four weeks we shall have far bigger headlines in the Press than the ones we have had so far. If anyone wants headlines used to injure people, as Vassall goes into courtI do not know how long he will be in courtany names associated with him will suffer. All this will be done in the name of justice. Perhaps the First Lord will be vindicated. I hope that he is. Perhaps other people will be vindicated. But in the process other people will suffer. Then we shall have a debate in which a few hon. Members on this side will say, For heaven's sake let us change this procedure. Let us try to devise something that is just. Let us refuse to accept the Prime Minister's idea of turning a tribunal into a trial in the newspapers". Then it will all be for- 482 gotten again until some other innocent person Mr. Wigg Until the next spy is caught. Mr. Foot Perhaps when the next spy is caught it will come up again. The House should realise what it is doing. The responsibility for any suffering inflicted on innocent people that there may be rests on this House and on those who approve and support this measure. It will rest particularly on the Prime Minister Who, to cover up his own political activities in this matter, thought that it would be suitable for him to have a great trial of the newspapers in which he would emerge as the hero, whereas what we should have is a proper inquiry to examine and to discover his own delinquency as the man chiefly responsible for the security of this country. 8.8 p.m. Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin) I followed with interest the speech of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot). I think that he may have exaggerated the dangers of this particular inquiry, but I agree with him that when one casts one's mind back to Mr. Sidney Stanley and to all the accusations that he made about innocent people he had brought before that Tribunal one has doubts about this one. I therefore hope that at the end of the debate the Minister will try to enlighten us about how much of this inquiry will be held in public and how much of it will be held in camera. If ever there was an opportunity for an enemy of this country like Vassall to injure people connected with our Armed Forces, the Admiralty and the security services, surely this is an absolutely splendid opportunity for him to do so, because, if he makes accusations against people just as he feels inclined, I do not know what the position of the Tribunal will be. I presume that the Tribunal will have to call the person whom he accuses in order to ascertain whether Vassall's accusations are right or wrong. I am a little distressed to think that, although this Tribunal means to do extremely well and to get at the truth, a considerable amount of damage may be done to the 483 reputations of senior people in this country, to Service officers and to many other people who are absolutely and completely innocent.

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Another thing which disturbs me is this. This Tribunal will be set up because of the courage of our Press. I do not think that anyone in this country has any doubt that the Press as a whole is grossly dissatisfied with the state of our national security, and there is wide support for that. I believe that they have every right, speaking in the name of Britain, to force the issue of national security as far as they think fit, because it far transcends the battle of party politics. The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) mentioned the matter in correct perspective. It is essential that matters of security and defence are taken outside the party battles in this House. I will be one of those who have to vote in favour of the Tribunal. I have grave doubts about what will happen if Mr. Vassall starts making accusations against all sorts of people. I can see irreparable damage being done and I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General will give us guidance about whether when this man gives evidence he will be allowed to have other people brought before the court and questioned and cross-examined. Although we are adopting this system, I feel that our national Press has done a great and valuable service. I shall vote for the Tribunal and will rely upon what my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General tells us concerning, first, secrecy, and, secondly, whether this man will be allowed to call all sorts of people before the court to be examined and cross-examined. I wish that the House had devised another system to deal with a delicate security matter of this nature. All I can do is to support the Motion, but only provided that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General can give me assurances on the matters I have raised. 8.12 p.m. Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West) I do not know what assurances the Attorney-General can give to his hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. W. Yates). The hon. Member is asking the wrong questions at the wrong time 484 and in the wrong place. One has only to consider the context of the matter. The Attorney-General is anxious to get to his feet. He made an intervention in which he assured my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Cross-man) how he would conduct himself before a Tribunal. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he would be in the hands of the Tribunal; he was the servant of the Tribunal and would do as his predecessor, now Lord Shaw-cross, had done. The Attorney-General cannot give that sort of assurance here at this time of the evening. It will be for the court to direct when the time comes. Mr. W. Yates I only hope that on matters raised by the Leader of the Opposition concerning proceedings in camera and secrecy, the Attorney-General will be allowed to make a statement. If certain proceedings are held in private, some security witnesses will certainly be protected. Mr. Pannell The hon. Member is asking rhetorical questions. The Attorney-General is not in a position to give any of those assurances, because he will not know which way the court will direct. To give another example, and it is this more than anything else which brings me to my feet, I deplore the attacks made on my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown), who is more than conventionally a friend as far as I am concerned. What is the indictment concerning my right hon. Friend? Nobody has yet mentioned that when the leaders of my partythe Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) and the right hon. Member for Belperwent to discuss the Cuban situation privately with the Prime Minister, as they wished to do, the Prime Minister

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said that he did not want to talk about it. In so far as we have been brushed aside, it is not for the Prime Minister now to complain that my party deputes its deputy leader to raise the matter in public. Having read every word which has been said, I do not consider that anything which my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper has said bears the impression which has been put upon it. My right hon. Friend is a fairly forthright sort of person, but in the main it 485 is not the forthright sort of persons, it is not the people who practise frontal diplomacy, who make snide remarks. It is the deviationists, the oblique sort of people, the nice fellows in life, whom I always fear. I was reminded very much of that when the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Sir H. d'AvigdorGoldsmid) spoke about the Marconi scandal. I reflected upon the courage of the then Prime Minister and the character of the present Prime Minister. In some ways, they match. I want also to say this with regard to secrecy and the Press. I served on the Select Committee when we considered the accommodation of the Press in this place. The late Dick Stokes was Chairman and I heard the representations of the Press. The thing that went round the all-party Committee was the name of the journalist who had betrayed his trust to the late Lord Dalton. It was enough to shut up the whole Committee. There are precedents in this place of Mr. Speaker withdrawing the Lobby pass from a journalist who is considered to be in breach of an agreement with a Member. That happened in the 1930s, too. It seems to me odd that this sort of thing is being raised in this way today. I am very worried in case Vassall, in open court, is asked questions and, with nothing to lose, with all the years before him and with no responsibility to anybody, even obliquely refers to certain names. What protection will we have from that? This is not a dedicated spy, as some people have been, serving an international ideology. This is one who, the judge said, spied for gain. This is an unscrupulous man. I very much hoped that we might get another sort of Tribunal. I dislike this one intensely. If anybody wants to know the sort of people except Belcher who were ruined by the earlier Tribunal, Mrs. Belcher's health was completely ruined. That is no small thing. Most of us know what our wives have to suffer for us in the line of duty. It is bad enough when this sort of thing is dragged on here. Reading the Belcher case now in cold print, one's opinion is that he was found guilty of very little. There are Members who occupy leading positions in the country, whose names I do not mention for obvious reasons, who have been before a Select Committee, who have 486 done far worse and have got away with far more. This is known on the other side of the House. We know that this sort of thing has happened. Therefore, we have to choose between the Tribunal, with its hit-or-miss methods and all sorts of hearsay being brought in, and, presumably, a Select Committee. Having recently read, because I reviewed it, the book on the Marconi scandal, I cannot say that a Select Committee commends itself to me. People who talk glibly about Select Committees had better read Mrs. Donaldson's book. In effect, what was it but a complete ganging up on both sides to protect and counter-protect people on both sides? Most of the drive in the Marconi scandal was completely anti-Semitic. But that does not entirely explain it. After all, what was at stake was the Government, in a great degree the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, after all, was spared to be a great leader in the First World War, the Attorney-General of the time, whoI thought of this so much the other dayif he was guilty showed a degree of naivety far exceeding that ofthe hon. Gentleman the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), if he will read the Marconi case, and yet emerged as Viceroy of India and Ambassador to the United States.

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Nobody can read the Report of the Select Committee on the Marconi scandalI spent several days over itand suggest that that is the instrument with which we want to deal with this. The Prime Minister's speech about my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper would stop any objective consideration by it. It could never proceed after hearing a speech such as that, in which, of course, the Prime Minister, who has made every bloomer in this case, attempted to slap it in the lap of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Mr. William Ross (Kilmarnock) He has been wrong from start to finish. Mr. Pannell Of course he has been wrong from start to finish. He not only refused this, but he brushed my right hon. Friend off when he attempted to deal with it privately, he set up a Committee of civil servants who were themselves to consider the question of Minis487 terial responsibility, and the civil servants acquitted the hon. Member for Hillhead Mr. Ross After a direction. Mr. Pannell after the Prime Minister had directed them. The Patronage Secretary probably told the hon. Member to get out. The next day the Prime Minister accepted his resignation. I happen to believe that the hon. Member for Hillhead was right to offer his resignation and that the Prime Minister was absolutely wrong to accept it. We want friends: not friends to stand with us when the tide is flowing; we want friends who will fight in the teeth of the wind. I should not have thought that the Prime Minister was a friend. What he did a few weeks ago with regard to those Ministers shows what a cut-andthrust opportunist he is. He is an unscrupulous as could be. Then, of course, we have this sort of thing trotted out against my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, and after the Prime Minister has made that speech, of course, there is no hope of the case being tried except on a political basis. When they speak about these sorts of things, as though these leaks in the Press were something new, let them read the biography of Lord Randolph Churchill, and they will see that he rang up the editor of The Times every night to tell him what happened in the Cabinet. These things are part of history, and they have been done and repeatedly done in the past. We know full well that during the recent Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference on the Common Market the complaint of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers was that there were deliberate leaks from Whitehall to the disadvantage of Commonwealth Prime Ministers. Everybody knows that that sort of thing happens. I see that the right hon. Gentleman himself, the Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch), is back in his place, the apostle of decency in public life. He slung out his usual snide remarks against my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper. I do not think they came very well from him. After all, he is never very particular about how he chooses 488 his weapons or how he thrusts out insults. I can remember how, soon after I came to the House, he kept bobbing up and down all afternoon and the Speaker did not call him, and I can remember that Sir Stafford Cripps said that what was the matter with the right hon. Gentleman was that he had not been able to make one of his vulgar interventions in the debate. I remember that. We do not take this from him as an apostle of decency in public life. It is a great pity he did not hear the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot). But as to the Prime Minister's attitude, he not only dismissed the matter as irrelevant but he sent down the Minister of Defence to make an absolutely flippant speech. There was

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not a paper in the country which did not refer to how flippant the speech was of the Minister of Defence. Actually, the Prime Minister thought he was just going to ride away with ail this sort of business. But he did not. It came back on him, and the thing has hotted up and hotted up all the time, and these terrible charges have come out and now the Prime Minister is bound to do something. I do not think that we really have to choose between a Select Committee, with all its bluntness, and this sort of thing. I should have thought that we had had enough experience since 1921 to know that this is not quite the sort of weapon we want, and that we ought, after this is over, to have another sort of inquiry which could deal with all the objections that have been raised here, and the cruelties which we know are inherent in this. Take the question of J. H. Thomas. There was a great deal of hatred of him over what was considered to be gross betrayal in 1931. I have no doubt that on this side of the House that was a hang-over until 1937. I can mention someone who commands great honour in this Housethe right hon. George Isaacs, who was Mr. J. H. Thomas's P.P.S. in the thirties. I remember George Isaacs telling me about him and saying he was convinced in his own mind that J. H. Thomas did not betray his trust as a Cabinet Minister. Speaking as one who knew George Isaacs, though not J. H. Thomas, I can say that I would take the view of George 489 Isaacsand so would a great many more of usbefore we took that of the Tribunal on the hypothetical uncertainties that it dealt with at that time. This has occurred time and time again. We then had the Lynskey Tribunal. This sort of thing gets completely out of hand when one starts it. I venture to say that when we have finished with this Tribunal, whoever goes down in this House and whoever goes down in the country, on the morrow of its verdict we shall regret that we ever set it up. 8.26 p.m. Mr. Elwyn Jones (West Ham, South) There is one aspect of this debate which I confess fills me with some concern, and that is that the Attorney-General is to conclude it. I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not regard any observations that I make about his part in any other spirit than that of the utmost friendliness, but I would ask him to consider both the desirability and the propriety of his taking part tonight as the Government's final spokesman and advocate in what has been a highly charged political debate. If the Government's Motion is carried, it will fall to the right hon. and learned Gentleman to be, as he put it in his earlier interventionand I do not quarrel with ita servant of the Tribunal. His function will be to be the amicus curiae. His taskI have no doubt that he will fulfil it faithfullywill be to pursue every allegation and every accusation against whomsoever it may be directed. In that capacity he will not be actingI am sure that he will accept this view of what the Attorney-General's duties ought to beas the spokesman of the Government. Tonight, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is the spokesman of the Government, and I cannot help thinking that he will confuse and embarrass his position intolerably if he takes part in that rle in a debate which was begun by the Prime Minister with as much prejudging of issues which are to be sent to a Tribunal as I have ever had the misfortune to hear. How can the Attorney-General be other than embarrassed if tonight he has to stand as the spokesman of the Government in this situation? I have taken the trouble to look into what happened in other debates that have taken place on the setting up of 490 Tribunals. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I say this in no way to embarrass him, and I am sure that he does not need that assurance from me. But when the Motion to set up the Bank Rate leak Tribunal was discussed, the

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debate was opened by the Prime Minister, in rather more measured tones than he used today, and the only intervention by the then Attorney-General was in answer to a direct invitation from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), who asked him whether he would regard himself at the Tribunal proceedings as an agent and spokesman for the Government or as one who had the function of pursuing every matter that called for investigation. The Attorney-General then intervened and said: If I appear before that tribunal it will be to give the tribunal every possible assistance in the discharge of its duty by bringing before it all relevant information, from whatever source it may come."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th November, 1957 Vol. 557, c. 1169.] The closing speech for the Government was made by the Lord Privy Seal. I invite the learned Attorney to consider that precedent. When the earlier inquiry took placethe Belcher inquiry, as it has come to be known on that occasion also, the Attorney-General made no speech in the debate. I have also read the speech of my right hon. Friend the then Prime MinisterMr. Attlee, as he then wasin that debate, and the contrast between that and the kind of partisan tirade which we had from the Prime Minister today suggests that there is on this side of the House a greater regard for propriety in a debate which is to culminate in a judicial inquiry, and that we have a greater respect for these proprieties, than those who ought to know better. I invite the Attorney-GeneralI know that it is late to make this suggestion, but that is not for the lack of trying since half-past foureven now to consider the desirability of being called upon by the Government to intervene in a matter wherein, in perhaps a fortnight's time, he will have a difficult enough task in appearing as an impartial servant of the Tribunal uninfluenced by any political or Government considerations. It is hard enough for anybody, lawyer or anyone else, to accomplish that degree of objectivity in that 491 task. Let not this task be made intolerable by requiring him to have to take part in this debate. The Leader of the House is here and he has great influence in Government circles. I ask him to intervene to protect the learned Attorney-General from an intolerable situation. 8.33 p.m. Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne) I do not desire to keep the House for more than a few minutes, but I should not like to give a silent vote at the end of this debate. Yesterday, I think I was the only Member who raised doubts, when the Prime Minister made his statement about the necessity of an independent and serious inquiry into the security situation, which is obviously long overdue, as to the form of the Tribunal which he had selected. I asked the right hon. Gentleman why he had selected this kind of inquiry. I did not get an answer. I have not sought to take part in today's debatenot, at least, after the point when Mr. Speaker indicated that he did not propose to select the manuscript Amendment which I had submitted to himalthough I have sat here throughout the debate from the beginning until now. I have not heard any explanation from anybody as to why this particular form of inquiry has been selected, and I am puzzled to know why. This kind of Tribunal has not a friend in the House. I happen to have been here long enough to have been a Member of the House of Commons when every one of these earlier investigations by this kind of Tribunal took place. I think that those who were here with me at the timethose who were here to hear the debate which followed the report on each occasionwill agree with me that there was in everybody's mouth a nasty taste as the result of it.

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Many may have thought that an awkward situation had been dealt with and got rid of and could be forgotten, but I think that everybody felt a little ashamed as to how it had been got rid of and how it would be forgotten. I have never met an hon. Member, whatever he may have thought before a Tribunal was set up, or possibly even during its hearing in some cases, who, 492 when it was over, was not glad to see the end of it and who did not hope that there would not be another. It is a hopeless form of inquiry. It cannot do justice. There is no point in setting it up unless the matters to be investigated are serious matters. But how can one justly investigate serious matters on the basis that there are no charges, no accused, no convictions, no acquittals, no right to know beforehand what, if anything, is alleged against one, or to hear the evidence concerning it, and no right to call witnesses on one's own behalfunless one can persuade the Tribunal or whoever assists the Tribunal, as the Attorney-General does, to do so for one? And even if one does persuade him to do that for one, he conducts the examination by means of crossexamination designed to establish, if he can, that the witness is not telling the truth. It may be that there are occasions when really this is the only thing one can do. I have tried to conceive of some occasion when this would be the only thing to do, and I cannot think of one. Look at the width of this present inquiry. I say nothing about the opening paragraph, which is the substance of the whole matter, but after that, what? the allegations made that the presence of another spy inside the Admiralty was known to the First Lord and his Service chiefs after the Portland case eighteen months ago; That is part of the inquiry anyhow. One does not have to set that out. Then, paragraph (2) says: any other allegations" note the word "any" which have been or may be brought" that means not merely the allegations made already but any that anybody may think up in the course of the proceedings to their attention, reflecting similarly on the honour and integrity of persons" What is meant by "similarly"? Similar to what? As a matter of grammar, "similarly" must refer to paragraph (1). But what is charged in paragraph (1), or what the Tribunal is to inquire into under paragraph (1), is not anybody's honour and integrity but his conduct in his office, his responsibility for breaches of security. His 493 honour and integrity are not involved. What does "similarly" mean? If one leaves out "similarly" as being meaningless, one has the instruction to the kind of Tribunal I have described, which is to inquire into any other allegations which have been or may be brought to their attention, reflecting on the honour and integrity" of whom? of persons who, as Ministers, naval officers and civil servants, were concerned in the case; What could possibly be wider without any necessity to formulate any charges? Paragraph (3) says: any breaches of security arrangements which took place; But that is part of the inquiry anyhow. Then paragraph (4) says: any neglect of duty by persons directly or indirectly responsible" for what? for Vassall's employment" but it does not stop there, for it adds and conduct Who were the persons, not limited to Ministers, naval officers or civil servants, who were responsible for Vassall's conduct not just his conduct in his office but his general conduct? Who are the people who could be held indirectly responsible for that? It is quite unlimited. TI. Motion concludes with the words: for this being treated as being suitable for employment on secret work. What good will this Tribunal do? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), the Leader of the Liberal Party, was perfectly right when he said that two utterly different things were involved in this inquiry. There may be some connection between them, but in their nature they are utterly different. One is the state of security in the Admiralty. Does anybody think that he will get out of the Tribunal anything which will help him about security in the Admiralty or anywhere else?

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I should like to say in passing, without dilating upon it, that anyone who imagines that by any kind of inquiry or any kind of precaution it is possible to build up some sort of system which is absolutely proof against espionage is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. No such thing can be done. I wonder whether we are more successful 494 in preventing our spies from being discovered than they are in preventing their spies from being discovered. Or is it that we pretend that we do not have any? If so, why are we spending so many millions on building up espionage and counter-espionage services of our own? It is a vain endeavour and an illusion to think that that can be done by stopping every possible source or leakage, supposing that were possible and supposing that they could be found by such a Tribunal as this. A security system cannot be built out of a public inquiry with virtually no terms of reference, no rules of evidence and nothing specific to inquire into. The sort of committees which was presided over by Lord Radcliffe or Lord Romer or a Select Committee of the House could go into many things and might be able to stop flaws and improve security systems and security arrangements. Because they cannot be prevented altogether, that does not mean that they cannot be prevented at all. Of course they can if the proper course is taken, but a public inquiry of this kind will not help to do it. The other matter involved here is the honour, reputation and future of an unspecified but large number of public and private individuals in a kind of general fishing inquiry, which is what it will have to amount to in the end. Does the Prime Minister imagine that this is the way to stop rumours and protect reputations and stop people talking and stop newspapers speculating and people saying, "If you had only known the real truth! Look how much came out! But do not think that everything came out". When the Prime Minister made his fatal blunderand I should have thought the almost criminal blunderof accepting the resignation of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) after himself saying that the hon. Member had been completely exonerated from anything which had ever been alleged or imagined against him, what did he think would result? Did he believe that it would stop the rumours against the hon. Member? Would not everybody have said, without feeling that he was doing anything very sinister, that if the Prime Minister had accepted that he had been exonerated from anything 495 said against him so far and then accepted his resignation, it was because he knew of something else, some dark secret, some rumour, some allegation; that the Prime Minister had to accept his resignation, that he had done his best to put a good face on it and say how he had been exonerated and that all the allegations had been refuted. Having now accepted his resignation, does not the Prime Minister believe that the public will undoubtedly say that he has something up his sleeve, something he had not told? Is not that the inevitable result of this kind of thing and more and more the inevitable result of this kind of inquiry? Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies (Isle of Thanet) This is an interesting line of argument, but surely it is an argument against what the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) is suggesting? Is it not the position that the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act is the only public way of determining questions of fact? Secondly, is it not the case that each of these is a question of fact and that the only way to end a vilification campaign is by this procedure, as no other procedure can stop a vilification campaign as wide as that which has been recently canvassed through the Press? Surely the hon. Member cannot suggest any other way of stopping a vilification campaign of this kind except by an inquiry of this nature. Mr. Silverman

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Suppose for a moment that the hon. Gentleman is right. It is not a bad way of testing a proposition. If he is right, what is the consequence? That we must keep these wretched Tribunals for ever? That we must give up the attempt of trying to find an instrument less blunt, an instrument less unjust? Mr. Rees-Davies There is no other now. Mr. Silverman The hon. Gentleman says that there is no other now, but if there is no other it is not beyond the ingenuity and invention of this honourable House of Commons to find a way. I think that if the hon. Gentleman were properly briefed he could produce one tomorrow morning. I could. I am not going to keep the House speculating as to what it would be, but 496 if someone finds that a thing is wrong he does not go on using it merely because he can find nothing else. What I am saying is that even if the hon. Gentleman is rightand I think that he is wrongin saying that only in this way can we establish the facts, we are not dealing in this part of the argument with facts. We are dealing with people's reputations, with their honour, with their integrity, over a wide undefined field and in circumstances where they are pretty impotent to defend themselves. In spite of the insults which have been thrown at lawyers during the debate, I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should commit himself to the proposition put forward by him, and I am sure that he would not have done so if he had thought it over first. I do not want to keep the House longer. I maintain that on grounds of security, or on grounds of clearing people's reputations, this is the worst way of trying to do it. If we have to find a better way, let us do so, but the procedure proposed here is unjust, unsuitable, and inappropriate in every way and in the end will turn out to be completely futile. I do not know whether other hon. Members will vote against this Motion. I shall vote against it. It is difficult to do so because it is so easy to be misunderstood in voting, misunderstood on the basis that one is represented as voting against an inquiry into security when there have been so many breaches of it. I wish that it were possible for the Amendment that I sought to move to be called and voted on. I think that we might have got all that was needed. It would still have been unsatisfactory on my argument, but it would have been less unsatisfactory than it is as it stands if we could have cut out all these directions to the Tribunal and left it to investigate, if it could investigate anything, the question of security and nothing else. 8.48 p.m. Mr. Ede (South Shields) I find it very difficult to vote for this Motion. I know that when this Tribunal has completed its task and sends its report to the House it will have the same reception as the last three reports have had, that 497 is to say, regret on the part of responsible people who took part in the debate that this instrument is so blunt that in the end no clear-cut decision is possible. A good deal has been said about what is to happen to Mr. Vassall if he is called as a witness, and, of course, he can be. I hope that hon. Members will pardon me if I tell them what happened to me during the course of the Lynskey Tribunal. I was sitting opposite the Despatch Box one night, at a time when the country was being wellgoverned, and the Attorney-General of the day sat down beside me and asked, "Did you ever go to one of these Stanley dinners?" I replied, "Certainly not". He said, "Do not be so unnecessarily indignant. In Mr. Belcher's diary there is a note". I will give the effect of that note. I do nut pretend at this length of time that I can recite to the House exactly

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what it said, but it was to this effectthat on a certain date, which the Attorney-General did not give me, at Grosvenor House Mr. Hale Hear, hear. I was there. Mr. Ede "It was, "Grosvenor House, Dinner by Stanley. Guest of honour J. Chuter Ede". I said, "I cannot recollect anything which corresponds with that". Mr. Hale It was Mr. Arthur Greenwood. I was there. Mr. Ede I went to my private secretary the next morning and said, "Have you any recollection of my ever going to Grosvenor House at the invitation of Mr. Stanley? He replied, "Sir, you do not think that we should let you accept such an invitation, do you?" I hope that that man, who is now of considerable eminence in the Department, will not get into trouble for having so wisely vindicated the honour of the Department to his Departmental chief. Mr. Hale I was there. I had been invited by Mr. Morgan Phillips at short notice to attend a dinner in honour of Mr. Arthur Greenwood, who had just retired. Mr. Ede That may not be the one I am talking about. Mr. Hale It may not be, but it is a fair example. We were asked whether we would subscribe a small sum as a tribute 498 to Arthur Greenwood, whom we all loved. It is the only time I have been to Grosvenor House in about ten years. That is why I remember it. I signed a note to say that I would subscribe. Mr. Stanley was shuffling it among other things at the Lynskey Tribunal when I was there acting as solicitor for John Belcher. Mr. Ede It is clear that my hon. Friend attends Grosvenor House more often than I do. I go there only when Surrey celebrate winning the cricket championship. I recollect that Stuart Surridge said, "I cannot see where you are sitting. I have forgotten where we have put you". I replied, "I can see it. I shall sit exactly opposite that large jug of orange squash. That is always put in front of me when I go to the Grosvenor". To continue what I was trying to relate to the House, for a fortnight tried to think of anything which might correspond with my alleged presence at one of Mr. Stanley's dinners. In the end, after a fortnight in which I had had very little sleep, and in which this suggestion was never out of my mindI never had such a fortnight in the whole of my lifeI said to my private secretary, "Do you think that the Attorney-General's private secretary would tell you what the date was?" He replied, "I am sure that he will". I said, "I wish that you would ask him". The next day, when I went into the office, my private secretary said, "Sir, we have settled all that matter about Grosvenor House. We got the date. You were invited by the Jewish secondary schools movement to make a plea at a dinner there, presided over by one of the house of Rothschild, for the erection of further Jewish secondary schools under the Education Act, 1944. We have ascertained from the promoters that Mr. Stanley did have a table there on that occasion and that Mr. Belcher was one of his guests." That was a mere note in a diary which had been seized among other documents that were to be investigated. I have no doubt that there were other names in that diary under certain dates and that Mr. Stanley might well have said, had he been questioned on his

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relationship with the law of the land, "I dined with the Home Secretary the other night". I realise that these inquiries must be very exact. 499 In saying this to the Attorney-General, I hope that he will believe that I speak to him in as friendly a fashion as did my hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South (Mr. Elwyn Jones). I ask him, when carrying out this fishing inquiry, to remember that he may be inflicting intolerable anxieties on a number of people who have no guilty association with anything that may have gone wrong. I have no doubt that there will be names, dates and places in the papers which will have been collected from Mr. Vassall and which will appear to have as much connection with this inquiry as the Attorney-General of that day no doubt thought this entry in Mr. Belcher's diary had with the inquiry he was conducting. I am certain that when this inquiry is over there will be the same complaints about the way in which smears are being spread. The mere calling of a person as a witness will be held as some indication that if he had not been up to something he would never have been called, just as on previous occasions. I would have thought that it was the duty of the House and the Government to try to see if they could not find another way, some other tribunal, Which could be established to do the necessary work that must be done when these accusations on great matters of State are made so that the kind of inquiry we are to embark upon can be avoided in the future. I hope that at some time during the proceedings the right hon. and learned Gentleman will try to think of himself as going down in history as being the Attorney-General who managed to find a better way of conducting future inquiries, better than anything we have been able to attain up to the present. 8.58 p.m. Mr. Gordon Walker (Smethwick) I am sorry, although I understand the reason, that the Prime Minister is not in his place. He explained to me that he had a very important engagement and I have had to explain to him that I will have some sharp things to say about him in his absence. The Prime Minister made a characteristic speech this afternoon. It was adroit, deliberately calculated and very political. It was much too political for a speech 500 introducing a Motion which will lead to judicial proceedings. It was indeed far too political. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South (Mr. Elwyn Jones) said, it compares unfavourably with the speech Lord Attlee made when Prime Minister in introducing a corresponding Motion setting up the Lynskey Tribunal. The Prime Minister today was critical of everyone else's faults, but he came out of this story badly, very badly indeed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) said, his speech has made it harder for justice to be done. It may be that this Tribunal is not the best system but, granted that we have it, justice will be harder to do since that speech than it would have been had it not been made. This is a very grave charge to level against the Chief Minister of the Queen. I do level it. I felt it deeply when he said it. I have thought a great deal about it since he made his speech and I think that it was a speech unworthy of the Prime Minister of this country. But of course I can understand why he made it. The Prime Minister has played a very ambiguous rle in many ways as the whole story has developed. He had to explain today why he changed his mind since Thursday, because up to Thursday and, indeed, up to yesterday, he was saying that a Committee of three civil servants was the right thing and he was going to stick to it through thick and thin. But most of the evidence, or a good deal of the evidence, he gave us referred to things that had happened before Thursday and some of them long before Thursday. He went out of his way to quote part of a speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) as

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long ago as 5th Novembernine days ago. This was part of the reason why since Thursday the Prime Minister has changed his mind. I shall have to read the Prime Minister's speech very carefully tomorrow. One goes by one's memory at this point, but it seemed to me that the Prime Minister came perilously near alleging or hinting with innuendo that my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper had been deliberately at the bottom of a sort of rolling-up of rumour. 501 This is what the Prime Minister implied. He talked a lot about innuendoes by somebody else, but this was an appalling innuendo made out of a little speech made in the hearing of all of us. Out of this was built this appalling innuendo that my right hon. Friend had been at the bottom of this. "When I look back upon it I realise its significance," the right hon. Gentleman said. This is something which ought to be investigated by the Tribunal. If any innuendo and character assassination is to be investigated by the Tribunal, this attempt by the Prime Minister to assassinate character by innuendo should be investigated by it. The Prime Minister gave us a good example of the things which he was denouncing, the things he said were so grave that a Tribunal had to be set up to inquire into them. The Prime Minister gave a good example of that kind of behaviour. I hope that he will go before the Tribunal and will justify or withdraw these innuendoes made against my right hon. Friend. On reading the speech I think that there will be no doubt in anybody's mind that they were intended. I hope that he will go before the Tribunal, where he will be questioned and cross-examined, because he is guilty of political innuendo arising out of the Vassall caseand this has all arisen out of the Vassall case. The Prime Minister, in effect, suggested that the Tribunal should go into the exact balance of meaning of parts of a speech made by a right hon. Gentleman, that is, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper, in this House. This is a curious thing to suggest that the Tribunal should do, because things said in this House really are privileged. It is very essential that they should be privileged. The Prime Minister was inviting the Tribunal, and presumably the Attorney-General who was sitting beside him at the time and heard the invitation, to go into the exact balance of meaning of words said in this Chamber. This is an improper suggestion for any Member, be he Prime Minister or anything else, to make about the speech of any other hon. or right hon. Gentleman in the House. Mr. Rees-Davies Surely that knocks skittles through the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion that the Prime Minister 502 should be examined, because if the Prime Minister made any such innuendo this afternoon he also would be privileged. Mr. Gordon Walker I would not have said this if the Prime Minister had not made this suggestion about my right hon. Friend and, of course, I knew what I was going to say as the second point of my speech whereas the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) would not know. I said what I said earlier about the Prime Minister because I knew what I was going to say about his innuendo about my right hon. Friend, and I would not have done it if the Prime Minister had not made the innuendo. The Prime Minister is playing an ambiguous rle in another respect. He has drawn up extraordinary terms of reference for the Tribunal. They consist of two sets of terms which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) said, do not really ride together at all. These are two separate sets of terms of reference and it is very hard to build them into a single whole. It was significent that the Prime Minister spent nearly the whole of his speech on the first two terms which deal with things that I

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shall be coming toinquiries into innuendo and so onand said practically nothing about the security aspect of this case. This is the first time the Prime Minister has spoken to us since the Vassall case on the Vassall case. The Prime Minister is responsible for security in this country. He bears the highest responsibility. There has been a tremendous breach of security which has worried and disturbed the minds of hon. Members and of the public, and the man responsible for these matters comes to make his first speech in this case and hardly refers to this aspect for which he is responsible. He tries to divert attention by talking about all these other things. He does not talk about the security aspects. He spends the whole of his time talking about these other things which are to be put before this Tribunal which has now got to try to make sense out of two completely different sets of terms of reference. The Prime Minister made his speech, which of course will get immense 503 publicity, immediately before the matter becomes sub judice. He makes a prosecuting speech for this Tribunalfor that is what it wasjust before the whole case becomes sub judice, when it is very much more difficult for the rest of us to counter it. He will get all the Press and radio. The Prime Minister, who is a very shrewd and adroit politician, knows this. What he said in effect was: "I invite the Tribunal to clear Ministers of implications against their integrity and I hope the Tribunal will manage to blacken in some way the reputation of right hon. Gentlemen, or some of them, on the other side of the House." Mr. Rees-Davies And the irresponsible Press. Mr. Gordon Walker I am coming to that. This is part of the evidence as to why he changed his mind since Thursday. There have been few speeches on the issue of security. Very few Members have said that the security of the country may be in grave danger. All the speeches have been about the Press, about allegations and innuendoes and other matters which I shall not dodge, but all this has had the effect of diverting attention from the security aspect, which is of vital importance, to these other aspects. It is perfectly clear that this is what the right hon. Gentleman intended to do. I hope that the Tribunal will keep a much better balance than the Prime Minister. It will have the job of inquiring into great security matters. This is certainly among its terms of reference, and I therefore hope that it will keep a much better balance than the Prime Minister did. But it cannot have escaped any of our minds, and certainly not the Prime Minister's, that it may well be the case that that part of the evidence which will be headline-catching and which does not deal with security will be heard in public. That part of the evidence which may well be embarrassing to Ministers will be heard in camera. This is an almost inevitable conclusion of putting the terms of reference together in the way that they have been put together, and hon. Members cannot possibly not have known this. The Attorney-General, with all his legal knowledge of these matters, cannot possibly have ignored 504 the fact that this may very likely be the consequence. The headline-catching and the attention-diverting part of the evidence will be in public and the part that may embarrass Ministers will almost certainly be in camera because it will be dealing with security matters. It seems to me that the Prime Minister by taking such a political stand today has put the Attorney-General in an extremely embarrassing position, and I agree with everything that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South said. The AttorneyGeneral sat today as a Minister, sitting beside the Prime Minister, who was making a deliberately political speech about a Motion which was going to lead to judicial

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procedure. He intervened, and we accept it without question when he said that he would endeavour to be impartial to the best of his abilityhe will prosecute, and all the rest but I do not think that even he will disagree that the Prime Minister today has made it much more difficult, because he has to appear to be doing all this as well as actually doing it. I do not know, but it seems to me that whatever he may have thought as a Minister this afternoon, and as a political person sitting by the Prime Minister, he must in his judicial capacity greatly regret that the Prime Minister made the speech that he did. It must be greatly embarrassing to him. I agree with what my hon. Friend said about the odd fact that he will be speaking tonight on behalf of the Government as a Minister and will be appearing shortly before the Tribunal, as a result of this Motion, as the AttorneyGeneral. I think that the Prime Ministerand this has been the cause of nearly all the trouble has made two immense errors in the course of this whole case. Of course, it has been a difficult thing to get right, I concede that. He has been under great strain for this and other reasons, Cuba and so forth, and that may be one good explanation why these errors have been made, but two great errors have in fact been made when- we look at the whole sequence of the facts. The first was the Prime Minister's stubborn, prolonged refusal to have an inquiry of any kind right up to yesterday. That was the first great error that he made. The second great error that he made was in accepting the resignation of the hon. 505 Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith). Nearly all the evilsand there are evils in thishave flowed from these two great errors. If this Tribunal had been set up or, indeed, if any independent tribunal had been set up at once, none of the rumours would have started, everything would have been sub judice, and everyone would have been happy from that time. It is because the Prime Minister insisted upon this particular kind of inquiry, which I will come to in a moment, that so many of the rumours originally started, because there was very widespread doubt, reflected in the most respectable newspapers, that this Committee of three civil servants was of a kind that would create the impression that something might be covered up. I do not say that it would be, but this was the impression that was created. Many of the most respectable newspapers and other commentators said this. Also people were very worried and it helped to set rumours going because of the evident intention of the Government to play things down, including the too-flippant-by-half speech of the Minister of Defence. This was all part of playing down something which the public instinctively felt was very important. The public felt that if it was being played down there was some reason for it that ought to be probed. Rumours started for that reason. This Committee of three was set up within one hour of the end of the trial. The Prime Minister had in fact decided to set it up before the trial started. He must have done. One cannot set up a Committee of three civil servants at the end of a one-day trial unless one has gat it all fixed up before. Then there came this breakneck-speed publication of the letters. The Patronage Secretary spent an hourphotographs were publishedwith the hon. Member far Hillhead the evening before. I hope that the Patronage Secretary will be willing to go before the Tribunal to say what happened then. It has a good deal of bearing on this matter. If it was the intention of the Patronage Secretary then to persuade the hon. Gentleman to resign, he was guilty with the Prime Minister of this great error. He was the instrument of it 506 because, of course, the Prime Minister could not accept the resignation unless it was offered. If it was the visit of the Patronage Secretary which brought about the offer of resignation which led to the great error of the Prime Minister

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in accepting it, then the Patronage Secretary has a great deal a blame to bear in this matter, blame of the sort which ought to be inquired into by the Tribunal. On the whole subject of the resignation of the hon. Member for Hillhead. I want to say that, in my view, it does him very great credit, much more credit than it does the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister seems to come out of this part of the whole business with no credit at all. His acceptance of the hon. Gentleman's resignation started rumours going again. People asked the simple question, "Why?" Here were letters which showed that the hon. Member for Hillhead was completely exonerated from the implication of any stories which might have been going round or improperly put in the Press, yet the Prime Minister accepted his resignation. Inevitably, this set a whole lot of rumours going. The Prime Minister is himself responsible in part for the fact that rumours started. If one creates this kind of atmosphere and acts in that way, one cannot expect rumours not to start. I come now to the things which the Prime Minister said made him change his mind since last Thursday. Presumably, the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper cannot conceivably have done that because that was made nearly ten days before he changed his mind. There were two things which the Prime Minister told us about very dramatically and at immense length today. We all listened spellbound to him. What are they? The first of the two things which made him change his mind was the Daily Express story that there was a document found in the Kroeger house which could not be explained as having come from Houghton and Gee and, therefore, came from a different part of the Admiralty, this being eighteen months before Vassall was caught. It is certainly important to find out whether this story was true or not. But this was not the first time the allegation was made in the Press. It was said almost immediately after the trial in a number of newspapers. I have here the 507 Daily Mirror of Tuesday, 23rd October, which says the same thing. I agree that the Daily Express said it in rather larger headlines, but it was the same story weeks before. If what the Daily Express said was near treason and all that, so was this other story. If the Government are so worried about what the newspapers say, presumably they read them. They must have known that this story had appeared in other newspapers long before it appeared in the Daily Express, with all the implications and other considerations about which the Prime Minister told us. Then there was the dinner last Thursday at which, as I understood the Prime Minister, an editor or some person high up in a newspaper had a meal with an hon. Member of the House. The story, as the Prime Minister told it to us today, is, of course, a very grave and horrible story. It made the Prime Minister change his mind. But, of course, it is all hearsay so far. It is a one-sided story of a conversation at a dinner party. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will tell us whether the Prime Minister has checked the story. Has he talked with the editor or whoever it was and heard whether or not he accepts this version of the story? Otherwise, it is hearsay evidence. It may or may not be true. It is a very grave thing which must be looked into, but it is not such a very strong basis on which to build the enormous construction which the Prime Minister has put before us. Like, probably, the Daily Express story, this is something which should be gone into. Incidentally, if this hon. Member is playing so big a part in this, the biggest part played so far in the whole Vassall case, because it is he who made the Prime Minister change his mind, then we should know his name. He must appear before the Radcliffe Tribunal. We have been given a one-sided hearsay story without being told the name of the person telling that story. I do not say that he is not telling the absolute truth. I do not

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know who he is. A person tells things as he remembers them, but when he makes an allegation about things said to him by somebody else it is simple justice to check with the person who it is alleged has been saying those things. Perhaps the Prime Minister did 508 that, but he did not say whether he did or not. I think that if either or both of these charges are true they should be prosecuted in the courts. These are two grave charges, one very nearly criminal libel and the other very near to the corresponding offence to treason because it is not possible to have a charge of treason in peace time. These are tremendously grave matters. They should be prosecuted and heard in a court where charges can be formulated, and then we could separate them from the other great issue of security and not mix them up, as is being deliberately done by the Prime Minister. I say to the Attorney-General that if the Prime Minister or the Government attempt to make this into a political trialit sounded like this when the Prime Minister was speakingin an attempt to arraign right hon. or hon. Members on this side, then the Attorney-General cannot possibly appear as a political Minister unless we too are given corresponding rights. He cannot alone decide which witnesses shall be called. He cannot alone do the examining. It would be intolerable if an attempt were madeand it sounded very much like this when the Prime Minister was speakingto turn this into a political trial. That would not be the normal use of this kind of tribunal before which the Attorney-General appears on behalf of the Crown and State. This would not be the same thing because it would be impossible for him to separate his judicial rle from his political rle. Sir C. Osborne That is a reflection on Lord Radcliffe. Mr. Gordon Walker It is not a reflection on Lord Radcliffe. If the hon. Gentleman knew anything about this he would know that the man who determines who shall be called as witnesses is not Lord Radcliffe but the Attorney-General. The man who examines is not Lord Radcliffe The Attorney-General The usual procedure is that all the evidence which is available is submitted to the Tribunal. The Tribunal asks for proofs to be taken from witnesses. It inquires what evidence is available and it knows what is available. The Attorney-General calls the 509 evidence, but he is subject to the Tribunal's direction as to what should be called. Mr. Hale In the course of the Lynskey Tribunal, Sir Hartley Shaw-cross suddenly summoned Mrs. Belcher to the witness box in spite of the fact that she had been told that she would not be called. She was dragged from her home in north London to the witness box at the behest of the Attorney-General. Mr. Gordon Walker That bears out what I am saying. Who presents the evidence to the Tribunal? Who selects it? Who does the examining in the first place? The answer to these questions is, the Attorney-General. Many hon. Members today jumped in to follow the Prime Minister's lead and there was a great deal of discussion about the decency of public life, particularly by the right hon. Member for Flint. West (Mr. Birch) and the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley). Both of them made a rather negative contribution to the decencies of public life. The right hon. Member for Flint, West simply set out in a brief speech to smear my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper. All that it came down to was, how did my right hon. Friend get hold of the letters? I will tell the right hon. Gentleman the answer. There

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is no secret about this. My right hon. Friend got hold of the letters because they were offered to him by the Sunday Pictorial. They were offered to him by the Sunday Pictorial after it had given the letters to the Government and after the fact had appeared in print in the Press that such letters were found in Vassall's flat. What is an Opposition to do? Here was a grave breach of security. One is told that there are letters which have a bearing on it which, I imagine, were originally in the possession of the police. When told that letters are available, what would be said of an Opposition which decided not to look at them? It must look at them. Otherwise, it would not be doing its duty. When the late Lord Dalton's trouble occurred, it was because the Evening Standard tipped off a Conservative Member that he should look at one of the 510 very small number of copies of an edition of the Star. Obviously, the Conservatives did not worry then about being given information by a newspaper, and that was not quite as clear, honourable and good a case as ours is now. The right hon. Member for Flint, West asked why my right hon. Friend, having seen the five letters, which were innocent enoughthey are among those which have appearedsaid what he did. These are not the only letters. It is clear from the Report of the three civil servants that there are other letters which have a bearing on other aspects of the case, because it states: These are the only letters in Vassall's possession at the time of his arrest which have so far been identified as having any bearing on this aspect of the case. That means that there are other letters which have a bearing on other aspects of the case. Sir Kenneth Pickthorn (Carlton) Not necessarily. Mr. Gordon Walker In the circumstances, it is clear that if my right hon. Friend had not said what he did, nobody would have heard of these letters. If they had been 100 per cent. in the possession of the Government, does anyone think that they would ever have been spoken of? Will the rest of the letters be published? Will they be put before the Tribunal, and in the public part of it, or published separately in another White Paper? We have had 22 or 23 of them. We do not know how many there are, but we know that there are others. Why cannot the whole thing he published? The Committee of three has finished its job. Why should not these letters which it has looked at now be published? Mr. R. H. Turton (Thirsk and Malton) One point worries me. In what capacity did the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) receive the lettersas a Member of the Opposition or as a paid adviser of the group of newspapers including the Sunday Pictorial? Mr. Gordon Walker That is an extremely unworthy thing to say. My right hon. Friend is Deputy-Leader of the Opposition. He happened to be telephoned. It might have been me or one of a number of other people on this side of the House. It happened to be my 511 right hon. Friend as Deputy-Leader. There was no wish to bother the Leader of the party, who was busy and may not even have been able to be reached. What was wrong with that? My right hon. Friend is Deputy-Leader of the Opposition. He was given this information Mr. Turton As Deputy-Leader? Mr. Gordon Walker

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Of courseto be made available to responsible people in the Opposition. That is the position. That, I suppose, is how the Evening Standard acted at the time of Lord Dalton's trouble, to somebody or other on the opposite side of the House. There are two issues before the Tribunal. One concerns security. These are grave and great matters which should be looked at alone and separately. Any responsible Government would have seen to this and would not have tried to divert attention from these matters by bringing in these other admittedly grave charges, but charges of a wholly different nature, and putting them in the same terms of reference before the same Tribunal. It may be that the first two terms of reference are properly submitted to the Tribunal. If that is so, the security issue should have been separately examined, although I would sooner have seen the whole thing done in court in an open, decent way with charges made known and people properly defended. I do not like this tribunal system very much. [An HON. MEMBER: "Then why ask for it?"] I asked for it because it is the only thing that we have under the Statute. I do not like it very much and would sooner have another one. On the other hand, I agree with the Government's Motion, because this is the only Tribunal we have. I do not agree with the whole way it has been done, on the terms of reference and all that, but I agree that we wanted an independent inquiry. It has been set up. We are glad of that. We are confident that the Tribunal will be far better than would have been expected from the Prime Minister's speech, that it will not mix up great issues of security, of extreme importance, with these other, wholly different things of the red herring kind, though they are very important. I am sure that this 512 Tribunal which is set up will keep a balance, which the Prime Minister failed to keep altogether, and that at the end of the day we will probe the thing I want to see probed above all, which is the security of this land of ours. This is the important issue. We should not allow it to be put away in a sort of smokescreen. as it was this afternoon by the Prime Minister. 9.31 p.m. The Attorney-General (Sir John Hobson) The Prime Minister has asked me to inform the House that he very much regrets that an important official engagement which he has this evening prevents him from being here now, and he knows that, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) was good enough to say, it will be understood that there is no discourtesy either to him or to any Member of the House by the absence of the Prime Minister. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for West Ham, South (Mr. Elwyn Jones) did point out that there is perhaps some embarrassment for me in replying to this debate if I am to take part in the Tribunal which may or may not be set up. I take the point. The difficulty is this, that, of course, it was impossible to see, when this debate began, how far ranging it would be, or what were the issues which would arise. The issues which did arise have been of a highly charged and political nature; and others have been of a highly technical nature. Anyone who had to reply would have had to try to deal with one or the other and might have found himself in great difficulty in not dealing with the one in which he was most skilled. I think that it is right for meand I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for West Ham, Southto try only to deal at this stage with the legal aspects of the Tribunal, how it will work, and whether it is desirable that a Tribunal of this nature should be set up in the circumstances of this particular case; and if, therefore, I do not endeavour to embark on much of the political argument that has gone on during the course of the afternoon I am sure that hon. Gentlemen on both 513 sides of the House will understand that I am inhibited from engaging in arguments of that sort.

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I think that it hashas it not?throughout the day been almost universally agreed that there is a necessity for independent and powerful inquiry. There has been no dispute as to that from first to last. The only real note of dissent that there has been on the issue as to the type of inquiry has been as to whether it should be a Tribunal under the 1921 Act or whether it should be a Select Committee of this House. That seems to have been, to a certain extent, a dispute between hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House, but it is the fact, nevertheless, that the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Liberal Party have both themselves welcomed the fact that a Tribunal under the 1921 Act is being set up. There have been criticisms from hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side below the Gangway of the way in which such a tribunal has worked in the past, and, of course, all those who have experience Or knowledge of the history of these tribunals must be aware that there are difficulties in these tribunals, and I will try to deal with them in the course of my speech. If, then, we are all agreed that there should be an independent and powerful inquiry, and the only dispute is as to its nature, the questions which have been much debated, as to who first thought of it and first suggested it, and whether it ought to have been set up at one stage or another, and ought to have been this sort of inquiry or another, become a matter of important record but are not material to the actual decision which we have to take this evening, which is a Motion to set up a tribunal in accordance with the 1921 Act. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition put a number of questions to me Which I think are proper and reasonable for me to answer, speaking from the purely legal and technical point of view about such a Tribunal. His first question was: will it sit in public? This matter has been raised by many other hon. Members, and is, of course, of considerable importance. The most I can do is to say that this is entirely a matter for the Tribunal itself. It will have to make up its own mind about the extent 514 to which and the occasions upon which and the purposes for which it will sit in public. I am bound to tell the Houseit must be fairly obvious because of the very nature of the inquiry and the matters that are being inquired into, particularly on the all-important security sidethat there must be a number of occasions upon which the Tribunal will necessarily have to sit in private. Mr. Gordon Walker Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that this would refer almost wholly and exclusively to the third and fourth terms of reference and not the first and second? The Attorney-General No; I do not think so necessarily. That is a point which I was just about to make. The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked whether this would not be of advantage to Ministers in one sense, because matters which were critical of them would be excluded and in private. I do not think that that is so, and certainly the Tribunal itself will have no such position in mind. It will judge of itself only as to whether it is proper at a particular part of the evidence, whoever it affects, whatever it affects and whatever the issues to which it is directed, whether such evidence can be given in public or ought to be given in private. Therefore, the whole of that is under the control of the Tribunal. I hope that the House will think that the Tribunal can be trusted and will believe that a Tribunal of this stature would never decide to sit in public or in private out of consideration for either helping the Government or helping the Opposition, or doing the exact reverse. Mr. Bellenger Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman say whether any representation on that point would be possible and permitted for him before the Tribunal?

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The Attorney-General Representations to me? Mr. Bellenger I mean a representation by the Attorney-General that evidence should be in private. The Attorney-General It is plain that at some stage there will have to be a discussion about which part of the 515 evidence, when it is known what evidence there is to be, can or cannot be taken in private. That is correct. I advise the Tribunal as counsel to the Tribunal. One right hon. Gentleman opposite was asking whether the Attorney-General selects the witnesses. Another right hon. Gentleman is saying that the Attorney-General discusses or submits whether evidence should be in public or in private. If I were acting in my capacity as an agent for the Government, this would, of course, be wholly improper. What is misunderstood, and what I hope the House will understand, is that when appear at the Tribunal shall be appearing solely in my semi-quasi-judicial capacity to see to the administration of the law and purely as the adviser of the Tribunal. I have already given an undertaking to the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Cross-man) that I will not allow, and I certainly would not allow, questions of this sort to be decided or my advice to be directed towards' the question of whether it does or does not help the Government. All I am concerned with in discussing with or advising the Tribunal on this matter is whether Section 2 of the Act applies. It is provided by Section 2 of the 1921 Act: A tribunal to which this Act is applied shall not refuse to allow the public or any portion of the public to be present at any of the proceedings of the tribunal unless in the opinion of the tribunal it is in the public interest expedient so to do for reasons connected with the subject matter of the inquiry or the nature of the evidence to be given". Mr. Wigg Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give the House an assurance that the parts which are heard in public will be included in the report, or do we take it that at some stage the Tribunal will be able to decide what should be published and what should not be published to this House? The Attorney-General That is the next question which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition asked me, and I am coming to it. First, then, there will be a question for the decision of the tribunal on the extent to which it should sit in public or in private. Secondly, its report is made, not 516 to the Prime Minister, who, actually, does not appoint the Tribunal, but to the Home Secretary. The latter appoints the Tribunal, and its report is made to him. One of the difficulties at this stage is that nobody knows in what form the report will be, what will be contained in it, and to what extent security matters will or will not be intermingled with the first and second headings of the terms of inquiry. It will, therefore, be necessary at a later stage for the Government to consider very carefully indeed what ought to be done about those parts that are secret and what ought to be done about those parts which can be published; that is, first, the report, and, secondly, the transcript of the evidence which has been taken in camera. I can assure the House that the most careful consideration will be given as to how this shall be dealt with, and as to how the rights of the Opposition, the Leader of the Opposition, and of Privy Councillors to see the report may conveniently be dealt with. Mr. Hale

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The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that I have a profound respect for him. I have not the slightest doubt that he will bring to this task the high quality of integrity and a desire to be absolutely honest about it. But the question he will be called upon to examine is whether the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland was influenced by a personal friendship, and the question which the public will have to judge is whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself, in the exercise of his duties as AttorneyGeneral, is affected by the fact that one of the accused is the Prime Minister, who has the appointment of the Lord Chancellor. Surely these are questions on which the public are entitled to be clear. The Attorney-General Certainly. I do not think, though, that the hon. Gentleman's little tribute to me, for which I am grateful to him, was quite in conformity with the latter part of his sentence, but I will leave that where it is. Mr. Woodburn The right hon. and learned Gentleman has jumped from the composition of the Tribunal to its report. Could he give us his ideas about this question of the evidence that is to be 517 placed before the Tribunal. I gather from what he said that it has available scraps of evidence now, which this high-powered Tribunal is to be set up to examine. Will it have any power to investigate what it thinks is necessary to produce the truth about the other aspects, which seem to be much more important than some of the trivialities that have been discussed in public? The Attorney-General That was the next question which the Leader of the Opposition asked me, and I was about to answer it. Perhaps right hon. and hot,. Gentlemen opposite will let me get on with answering these questions, and then we may get on quicker. The position is this. The Tribunal is assisted by the Treasury Solicitor, who, in these matters, always acts as the agent of the Tribunal, under its direction. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that this is intended, in a way, as an inquisitorial form of inquiry, and that is why some hon. Gentlemen object to it. They cannot have it both ways. It is either inquisitorial, or it is not. I can assure the right hon. Member for Clackmannan an and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) that the Tribunal itself is charged with the duty of investigating these matters within its terms of reference, and can, and I have no doubt will, indicate whether it thinks some line of inquiry ought to be followed, and can say that it wants particular witnesses called before it and all the available evidence and documents brought before it. If it does, the Treasury Solicitor will be the person who will do it. He will have at his disposaland this also answers the Leader of the Oppositionthe police and its Special Branch, if it is suitable and appropriate that it should be brought in for that particular inquiry, and will also have 'available and at his disposal the security service and any persons, if they are suitable persons, for making any inquiry. I will of courseand this is in answer to the right hon. Member for Smethwicktake some part in deciding what inquiries should be made and what witnesses should be called, although I am always subject to the directions of the Tribunal. I will always he acting, not as the mere agent of the Government, but in the discharge of my duties to the 518 Tribunal. It is in this way that it is hoped to assemble all the evidence which will be available. The Committee of three civil servants has already collected a good deal of evidence and was aware of a number of relevant witnesses who were about to give evidence before it. All this will be made available, together with what those witnesses can say which is relevant and proper, to the Tribunal. This is the way in which it will work.

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The final question which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition asked was what would be the position of Mr. Hoskins if he were called before the Tribunal and asked for his sources. The Tribunal has exactly the same powers and is in exactly the same position as the High Court of Justice. It can ask precisely the same questions as if a relevant question were asked of a witness in court. Under Section 1 (3) of the Act, it is provided that A witness before any such tribunal shall be entitled to the same immunities and privileges as if he were a witness before the High Court or the Court of Session. How he is dealt with, what questions are asked, what are the consequences of refusal to answer and whether that is reasonable in the circumstances, are within the discretion of the Tribunal, which will have to deal with each case as it arises. We all know that priests of the Church of England and any other Church have no right to refuse to answer questions in the High Court, but these questions do not always arise, and clashes do not occur. But whether such circumstances will or will not arise in this case cannot be foretold now, and if they do it will be entirely a matter for the Tribunal. The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) asked about costs of those who appear before the Tribunal and who may have to be representedin particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), who is to be very much concerned. There is no provision in the Act for payment of costs to anybody, but I will certainly draw the point to the attention of those who are responsible, and I will consider it myself and see what can be done and what would be proper to be done. I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising this point, which is of some importance. 519 The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) asked why the Law Officers did not proceed by laying an information for a criminal libel in respect of some of these matters. I would like to know what the position would be in this House if the Government started to protect themselves by the methods of Castlereagh and Lord Liverpool. It is a long time since it has been suggested that the proper way of protecting Ministers against whom allegations of this sort are made is to bring proceedings for criminal libel. I also think that the absence of knowledge as to whether allegations are true or not makes it wrong to launch prosecutions of that nature. It is better to proceed by an inquiry which can discover the facts, if any, upon which allegations are based, particularly as those facts will be subject to investigation. As for civil libel, that is not under the control of the Law Officers. Every citizen has a right of action in civil libel, whether he desires to bring one or not. The Government have no concern with actions of civil libel. I would not have thought that anyone would suggest that it was appropriate in the present circumstances to revive what is perhaps a rather ancient remedy for the protection of Ministers. The Attorney-General was always known in the old days as the "bloodhound of Ministers "because he brought actions for criminal libel, and I am glad to say that I am not in that position now. Mr. M. Foot Is not the right hon. and learned Gentleman saying something worse? He suggests that those who have had alleged criminal or civil libels committed against them cannot protect themselves in the courts, but he is now invoking for the protection of Ministers a quite ruthless and different procedure. The Attorney-General That is to look at only half of the procedure. First, whatever happens we have to look into whether there has been any negligence or breach of duty. That is the first question and that is the one which is being investigated and upon that will depend also the truth of the allegations against Ministers. The two are inextricably linked, and that is why it is right to proceed by joining them in one inquiry.

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520 As I have said, it is frequently a matter of complaint that tribunals of this nature can cause great hardship and suffering to some persons whose names are introduced, but that is inevitable if one is to have an inquisitorial inquiry. One cannot have it both ways. Either one has to find out the truth and do so ruthlessly and without regard to personalities, or politics, or Governments, or Oppositions, or anybody else; or one has got to play it down and not discover the truth, and then perhaps one will save some people suffering. It is necessary in the circumstances of this case and in the grave breaches of security, which everybody regards as vital to the future interests of the country, that one should have a powerful and it may be a ruthless instrument which can divine and get to the bottom of whether Ministers have properly taken the necessary steps for the security of their office and whether allegations that they have not done so are well founded. The necessity for security must surely be over-riding and for security reasons, as the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) suggested, one must have an inquiry which can really get to the bottom of some of these questions. Mr. Wigg The Attorney-General, who is one of the principal Law Officers of the Crown, has now laid down a new principlethat the truth can be established in our democracy only by the use of inquisitorial methods. Is that so? The Attorney-General I did not say anything of the sort. I said that, in the particular circumstances of this case, everybody was agreed that some form of inquiry, which must by its nature be inquisitorial, should be set up. No hon. Member who has spoken today has disputed the view that there ought to be an inquiry into the breaches of security, which obviously took place because Vassall has pleaded guilty to serious charges under the Official Secrets Act. Therefore, if one is to have an inquiry, the only question which remains is whether one should have this or some other form of inquiry. Those who oppose this form of inquiry have made no suggestion other than a Select Committee of the House of Commons. I am bound to say that if it is agreed that there has to be an inquiry, then one must 521 accept this form, because there is no other instrument except a Select Committee. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Sir H. d'AvigdorGoldsmid) that when one reads the account of the Marconi Inquiry one sees that such an inquiry by a Select Committee would almost inevitably divide upon political grounds. Not only that, I do not think that the public generally would feel the same confidence, or the same satisfaction, that true inquiry had been properly and independently made if we were to rely on the findings of a Select Committee, which might have a minority report. It surprises me very much that the conclusion of the hon. Member for Dudley on the view that the Tribunal which is to be set up is a political body is to suggest as an alternative that we should have a Select Committee on the basis that it is not a political body. I was shockedand I hope that it is not really what they intended to saywhen the hon. Member for Dudley and the hon. Member for Coventry, East suggested that this Tribunal was in any way a political body. I am sure that that is wrong. The hon. Member for Coventry, East said that the Tribunal would be used for political purposes. I think that anybody who knows Lord Radcliffe, Mr. Justice Barry and Sir Edward Milner Holland knows perfectly well that they would never allow their actions or the discharge of their duty under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act to be influenced in any respect by political considerations. Mr. E. L. Mallalieu (Brigg)

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I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. Does not he realise that while one makes no aspersions whatever against the learned judges and others who are members of these Tribunals it is still possible to regard the outcome of a Tribunal such as this as completely political in effect by reason of the fact, amongst many others, that the Attorney-General of the day is the man who takes the witnesses in private without any representation and schools them and then decides whether or not to call them? Is not that in itself sufficient to vitiate this type of inquiry? 522 The Attorney-General I deeply resent the suggestion that I school any witnesses at all. I certainly would not school witnesses, and I should have thought that the hon. and learned Gentleman knows that. I have tried to explain to the House what is the position of the Attorney-General. It was set out very cleanly indeed by the then Attorney-General at the Lynskey Tribunal, Lord Shawcross. He said: As the Tribunal, of course, knows very well, but as perhaps is not always understood elsewhere, although the Attorney-General is a member of the Government he has certain duties which he cannot abdicate in connection with the administration of the law, especially of the Criminal Law, and more particularly that branch of it which is concerned with the prevention of corruption. There, of course, he was concerned with corruption. We are here concerned with official secrets, and I am responsible for myfiat before any prosecution can be brought under that Act. Lord Shawcross went on to say: These duties are sometimes said to be of a quasijudicial nature. The Attorney-General has to decide them with complete independence of the Government, and, I must add with complete indifference as to their political or personal results. He further said that it was his duty to concern himself, and to concern himself only, with the representation and protection of the public interest, and that is the standard which I hope to set myself and which I shall endeavour to follow as the representative of the public. The Tribunal is being set up for the safety of the State, for the discovery of truth, and for the protection of the public, and I shall appear before it in the discharge of my duties to the public and not as an agent of the Government. Mr. E. L. Mallalieu rose The Attorney-General In conclusion, I say that the terms of reference do, first, deal with the circumstances of Vassall's offences. This is the principal, subject of inquiry, and the other four items are all subsidiary to, and appended to it. Breaches of security and neglect of duty by Ministers are matters of high importance for which I am sure, and I hope the House will agree, a Tribunal of this power, this force and this independence was needed. When they have been determined, one can see whether allegations 523 about the conduct and responsibility of Ministers are true or not. These two hang together, and I hope that the House will accept that this is the proper procedure for dealing with all these important and difficult questions. Mr. Speaker While the clock and the Standing Order permit, I should like, as a courtesy to the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale), to say that I have satisfied myself that I cannot as a matter of order put the Question save in the manner in which I am now about to put it. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That it is expedient that a tribunal be established for inquiring into a definite matter of urgent public importance, viz., the circumstances in which offences

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under the Official Secrets Acts were committed by William John Christopher Vassal!, and in particular: 1. (1) the allegations made that the presence of a nother spy inside the Admiralty was known to the First Lord and his Service chiefs after the Portland case eighteen months ago; 2. (2) any other allegations which have been or may be brought to their attention, reflecting similarly on the honour and integrity of persons who, as Ministers, naval officers and civil servants, were concerned in the case; 3. (3) any breaches of security arrangements which took place; and 4. (4) any neglect of duty by persons directly responsible for Vassall's employment and conduct, and for his being treated as suitable for employment on secret work. ********************************************************************** VASSALL CASE (TRIBUNAL'S REPORT) HC Deb 07 May 1963 vol 677 cc240-372 240 3.40 p.m. The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan) I beg to move, That this House takes note of the Report of the Tribunal appointed under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921, to inquire into the Vassall Case and Related Matters, presented on 24th April, and of the operation of the Act, The House will, no doubt, recall the circumstances in which, about six months ago, it approved without a Division a Motion to appoint a Tribunal to inquire into the Vassall case and related matters. It was with some reluctance that I decided to ask the House to take this action. When this affair was first brought to my attention, I thought that the quickest and most practical way of investigating the security machinery and learning the lessons of this particular case would be by a small committee of experienced civil servants. We already had the advantage of the massive Report of Lord Radcliffe's Committee of 1962, and in their investigations Lord Radcliffe and his colleagues were themselves assisted by the findings of Sir Charles Romer following the Portland case. As I told the House last autumn, I thought that, from the practical point of view of trying all the time to draw the net tighter, we had to find the answer to certain specific questions. Would the spy have been caught earlier if the Romer and Radcliffe recommendations had been in force from the outset of his career of espionage? Was there a slip-up in observing the regulations as they then were? In other words, the problem to which my mind was chiefly directed when the Vassall case was first reported to me was to ensure that the new system which we had recently brought in was being effectively operated and that, if there were new lessons to be learned, we should discover them and apply them rapidly and effectively. I observe that in certain quarters the view has recently been expressed that it was a pity that I was not able to sustain this approach. However, it became increasingly clear to me, as the allegations against Ministers, officers and civil servants grew in seriousness and intensity, that there could be no course by which 241 public confidence could be restored and justice done to the men who had been attacked other than the full procedure of an inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, 1921. It is difficult, after this lapse of time, to recall the atmosphere of hysteria which prevailed during those weeks. Every now and then, of course, a wave of this kind of emotion sweeps over a large number of people, and, while it is in full flood, it is almost irresistible. Happily, however, if firm measures are taken, the tide soon begins to flow the other way and people begin to look back with amazement and shame on what has happened.

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I referred in November to the wide-spread determination not to tolerate the growth of what I could only call the spirit of Titus Oates, or of Senator McCarthy. Now that comparative calm has been restored by the Report to which we are addressing ourselves today, I think that many people will feel that it was right to call a halt. However, there is now beginning to develop a further reaction. Many hon. Members are wondering whether the Tribunal procedure is not altogether too heavy an instrument to be employed in this kind of case. I will come later to some proposals which I have to make in this regard, but I say at once that I do not think that the terrible accusations which were eventually made against Ministers and others concerned could have been rebutted in any way except by this procedure. These were not accusations of administrative laxity. They were charges either of treachery to the State or of moral turpitude. The Tribunal was asked to report on four matters in particular. The first two were allegations against my noble Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty and his Service chiefs and allegations reflecting upon the honour and integrity of any other Ministers, naval officers or civil servants. This, of course, included the whole range of gossip and innuendo and accusation against my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith). On these, the graver charges, the verdict is clear beyond all doubt. Not only were they proved to be false, or based upon no evidence whatever, but they collapsed miserably, like a pack of cards. They were either withdrawn at the Tribunal, or were not pressed by those who had first 242 given them currency. They were admitted to be at the best based upon gossip and tittle-tattle[...] at the worst on pure invention. Indeed, in the calmer waters in which we find ourselves it seems incredible that they should have been put forward at all. On all of this the Tribunal's findings are clear and if we are not surprised we neverthelessI think all of us in every part of the House and throughout the countryrejoice at the clear verdict. I would only add that in the debate last November there were criticisms of the efficiency of my noble Friend in the administration of his Department as opposed to accusations of dishonour. But the Report makes it clear that no blame attaches to the Ministers, and as regards my noble Friend not one of the specific errors of judgment referred to in this Report, or, for that matter, in the Report on the Portland case, occurred while he was in charge of this Department. Here, I should explain why the Government have put down this Motion in its present form. It was thought that by using the words "take note" it would he possible for the debate to cover a wider ground than if we had been confined merely to the text of the Report itself. I think that that was done with the general wish of the House. I would, however, be very ungracious if I did not take this opportunity of expressing our debt of gratitude to Lord Radcliffe, Mr. Justice Barry and Sir Edward Milner Holland, who devoted so many hours to the tough task entrusted to them and who have clearly covered with meticulous scrutiny every single point that could have the slightest relevance to what they were invited to do. We are indeed fortunate that men of this quality can be found when the need arises to give their services so readily. I have referred to the specific matters on which the Tribunal was asked to report and to the general satisfaction as to the nature of the Report. I think that it would not be right to pass on without expressing a word of sympathy for those who have been the victims. However conscious of innocence a man may be, it is very disagreeable to be under an accusation of this kind for so long a time. The two Ministers concerned have long commanded respect and affection and I am sure that they 243 have taken comfort from the universal sympathy which has been felt for them.

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Now I turn to the more general question. I am satisfiedalthough perhaps that is the wrong word, for one is never satisfiedat least I am convinced that the recent improvements in security following the great 1962 Report have done a great deal to improve and tighten up the security measures in all the public services. As the Tribunal itself says, there will always be a danger of a break down because of the human factor, however carefully the regulations are made and however scrupulous our efforts to enforce them. But apart from these two major points on the grave charges rebutted and disproved, there are particular findings I should like to mention. I think that both in the House and outside there is a widespread feeling of sympathy with individual officers, mentioned by name in the report, to whom have been attributed certain errors of judgment. Mr. F. J. Bellenger (Bassetlaw) Mr. Pennells? The Prime Minister If the right hon. Gentleman will be patient he will hear my reference to Mr. Pennells. The House will recallperhaps the right hon. Gentleman was not herethat last Thursday I tried to put the criticism of Mr. Pennells in perspective and in the context of his long record of efficient and conscientious service. His daughter has sent me a careful memorandum and today my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary saw her at her request. It is not for me to palliate or rebut the conclusions of the Tribunal on this matter after a most careful and thorough inquiry, but I think that I may be allowed to say this, or to remind the House of it: the Tribunal expressly said that it did not censure the officers it had named. It recorded only errors of judgment. There is not one of us in this House who can claim, whether our careers have been long or short, in public or private affairs, not to have committed errors of judgment. It is the misfortune of these officers that their slip, or error of judgmentwhich might have had no 244 evil consequences and may not, indeed, have contributed decisively to what occurredshould have got them mixed up in this affair. The Tribunal went on to make certain criticisms of the physical and documentary security in the Admiralty. These, of course, have been remedied. Indeed, the greater past of the work had already been done before Vassall came under suspicion. It would not be revealing secrets to say that the final improvements were delayed in order to assist those concerned in tracking the spy. There are additional precautions which suggest themselves, some of which I have had the opportunity of discussing with Lord Radcliffe in broad terms, as I told the House I would do. One of the major problems which confronts us all the time in security matters springs from the need to maintain embassies and Service representatives attached to them in countries behind the Iron Curtain. It might well be thought by some readers of the Report that it is unwise to employ local staff for domestic purposes, but, on the other hand, there should be the advantage that such staff can be recruited only through official sources and must be regarded automatically as suspect. It is true that it may be difficult to keep guard perpetually because of the ordinary humanity with which life has to be maintained. Nevertheless, it should be understood, and is understood, that locally recruited staff are normally agents. or potential agents. Some people have thought that we should send out staff from this country, or have a corps specially organised for this sort of work. Those who have the most experience of thisand I must trust their judgmentdoubt whether this would solve the problem. It is the conditions of life which make any person vulnerable. The smallest diversion from

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correctitude, perhaps a trivial operation on the black market in buying something not supposed to be in supply, perhaps a breach of minor regulationsall these can make a man or woman vulnerable to attempted subversion, and I doubt whether it would be practicable or safer to try to recruit a large staff of this kind from home for all the various domestic and other tasks. We have decided that it would be wiser that all subordinate staff of the Service 245 attachs should be subject to Service discipline and be recruited from the Services. This has the advantage that it makes it much easier to post them on their return and enables them to complete their normal Service careers in non-vulnerable positions. The procedure for reporting from embassies abroad has been reviewed so that embassy staffs will be on the alert for any development affecting security, and any information will be notified to the security service promptly. Broadly speaking, I think that the regulations now in force are scrupulously adhered to, and if they are we should be able to reduce risks from these foreign posts to the minimum. As the House knows, one of the most important protections has always been and must continue to be that tours of duty should be fairly short, for the strain on our people is undoubtedly severe. I now turn from general security abroad to this country. With the exception of the few points with which I have already dealt, I do not think that there are any new measures that could be introduced beyond the action taken following the Radcliffe and Romer Reports of a year ago, unless, of course, we were to go over to a quite different system of life and one which would introduce a form of security police running not only through the Government Departments, but through the many industrial establishments which deal with matters of interest to a foreign country. To be effective, this would have to extend wider and wider I would only pose to the House the question whether we might not be in danger of abandoning our way of life in a desperate effort to protect it if we took that course. Of course, however effective the regulations, and however strenuous the efforts to apply them rigorously, there will always be human errors which may or may not lead to difficulties. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of these errors will not lead to difficulty. One may leave a document open, or fail to keep the rules about locking up the right things. This sort of thing is bound to happen from time to time, but it can be, and is, corrected as far as possible by constant supervision. I have seen some comment on one other aspect I want to refer to. Why, it is asked, do men and women who work 246 with someone whose character seems a little out of the ordinary not take upon themselves the duty of reporting their doubts? This is, of course, a duty in Departments of this kind, whether Governmental or industrial. But it is a duty which I think we all realise is very distasteful and very difficult to enforce. What is important is that when such a report is made it should be seriously considered. However, eccentricity or oddity is not necessarily a weakness which leads to treachery, nor can ordinary life be carried on by comrades in an office in day to day work in an atmosphere of perpetual gossip and suspicion. Here again, we Lave to try to find a reasonable balance. I said that I would have something to say about possible methods of dealing with future cases of this kind as they may arise. I must warn the House that I think that they will arise. I think that more spies will be caught. It may well be that, with all this tightening up over recent years, we shall bring to justice traitors who have so far escaped. As the whole system improves, we may be able to catch people who have, for the time being, escaped, and, at the same time, we should be able to make it more difficult to recruit new agents.

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I think that more cases there will certainly be. I am bound to tell the House of the strange paradox which confronts me from time to time. Naturally, the security services are very pleased when they tell me that they have been able to lay hands on a suspect. But, as the House will well understand, I feel inclined to greet these things, which reflect full credit on the security services, with somewhat less enthusiasm. The knowledge that there had been a spy causes more condemnation than the success in catching him brings approbation. Nevertheless, I think it right to say that the work of the security forces, very difficult to carry on in the conditions of a free society, is done with increasing skill and certainly with the greatest devotion. This was the conclusion reached by Lord Radcliffe and his colleagues in their large-scale inquiry of 1962; it has been confirmed by the work done since. However, if there are cases of this kind, and, more especially, if they create the kind of public excitement that has been built round the Vassall case, what 247 are we to do? How are we to investigate the circumstances after the spy has been dealt with by trial? The only way to obtain the full powers of compelling witnesses, and all the rest, is under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act. We have, of course, had a committee of a judicial character, but not armed with this full authorityfor example, the Romer inquiryand we sometimes have had just ordinary disciplinary inquiries within the service. I must tell the House that I find myself in agreement, or certainly in sympathy, with those hon. Members who feel that the present position is rather unsatisfactory. I think that in the case which has been the cause of this Report the allegations were so serious that an inquiry under the 1921 Act was not only justified, but absolutely necessary, but there may be cases where none of this atmosphere of scurilous rumour has been created, but where it is still felt that full inquiry should be made into all the circumstances, partly with a view to disciplinary action, if that is necessary, and partly with a view to learning and applying any lessons for improvement. I therefore put forward for the House's consideration a plan that I have discussed with some of my advisers, and on which I have already spoken to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. It might well be advantageous to set up a small standing bodya permanent bodyto act as a Security Commission. This might consist of a judicial chairman, assisted and supported by two other members. Those who have had experience of the problems of maintaining security in the public services might well have a valuable contribution to make in this. In addition, we might have a small standing committee of Privy Councillors from both sides of the House. It would then be possible for the Government to decide, after consultation with the Privy Councillors, whether in any particular case an inquiry by the Security Commission was called for. The responsibility for the decision whether to invite the Security Commission to conduct an inquiry must, naturally, rest with the Government of the day, but they would be fortified and assisted in their decision by consultation with the Privy Councillors. 248 The question of powers would then remain. There might be cases in which the full powers conferred by the 1921 Act were necessary, but here, perhaps, the initiative might rest with the Security Commission itself. If, at the outsetor, indeed, at any stage of its investigationthe Security Commission felt that its inquiries could not be effective without powers to compel evidence, it would so inform the Government. Parliament would then be asked to pass a Resolution conferring on the Commission, for that particular inquiry, the powers under the Act of 1921. But there might be many cases in

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which the Commission did not think that that was necessary, so that this rather formidable engine would not be brought automatically into play. Of course, after the inquiry was held, the Security Commission would report to the Government, and the Prime Minister of the day would consult the standing committee of Privy Councillors when the report had been received Mr. George Wigg (Dudley) Would the Prime Minister be good enough to consider that one of the first subjects his proposed new tribunal might deal with is the circumstance in which full details of it appeared in yesterday's Daily Mail? Would he also consider that a second subject for this Security Commission to consider might be the fact that, when the Romer Committee was set up, the appointment of Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Thistleton-Smith was also leaked by a Department, so that it appeared on the front page of the Daily Mail before it was announced to the House? The Prime Minister I very much regret leaks of information, but I do not think that great harm has been done to the nation, or great information conveyed to the enemy. It is just one of those things. It has been discussed quite freely by a number of hon. Members. What I want to make clear is that this proposal that I am seriously makingand I think that the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) would also like to take it seriouslyhas the merit of retaining the responsibility for executive decisions where it ought constitutionally to belong but, at the same time, it would take account of the fact that the security of the State transcends the varying policies of successive Governments and is 249 the concern of all Members of Parliament, and is a matter in which, I think, the Privy Councillors, by the nature of their oath, may have a special part to play. We have not reached conclusions. We throw out the suggestion for discussion, and I think that it might lead to a structure that will be generally acceptable. I come now to some observations that I feel it right to make about the Press. Lord Radcliffe and his colleagues did not think it part of their task to offer judgment on the Press, and gave their reasons very clearly in paragraphs 13 and 14 of their Report. They only refer to the Press in, I think, about 50 of the Report's 276 paragraphs, where it was necessary to do so in order to carry out their task that is, to sift the truth. It is true that there are certain criticisms, but they appear in the framework of the main narrative and in no case constitute a general criticism or attack upon the Press. However, this affair has, naturally, stimulated much discussion about the functions of the Press and its relation to public matters. Before I pass to some general observations, the House will, perhaps, expect me to make a reference to the two newspapermen committed to prison far contempt of court. This is a much narrower issue and, of course, arises from the duties and powers given to the Tribunal under the 1921 Act. If, in these instances alone out of several others, the Tribunal felt that the questions to which it required a reply were essential links in the chain of events that it was its duty to examine, that is a case for the courts, and it was so treated. But, apart from that question, much wider issues have been raised upon which I would, rather hesitatingly, make some comment. Newspapers, in their task of finding out the truth and publishing it, may have a feeling that in some cases Governments or their officials tend to push out the frontiers of what is called "secrets" too far, and there may be substance in this. I feel sure that none of us would wish the caution of security to be used to conceal incompetence. In war, there is a very careful and strong censorship of the Press, and that has always been preserved. In peace, in the past, this has normally not been necessary, but I am afraid we must face the 250 fact that in this unhappy twilight world in which we live in a state of truce

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neither war nor peaceit is not always easy for the Government and their officers, or the Press, to know exactly where the line should be drawn, and that the system can only work on the basis of mutual confidence. Apart from these security matters, the Press has a rightand, I think it would say, a dutyto find out the truth, to publish it and comment on it as it thinks fit. That is its right, and I think that we all feel that the advantages of a free Press far outweigh any of its disadvantages. Naturally, like any right, this has a corresponding obligation. As for n en in public lifeand here we are all in the same boatI do not think that they must be too sensitive. They must expect, whether by the reporter's words or the cartoonist's pencil, to suffer some wounding blows. This is part of what we assume when we voluntarily enter upon public affairs. At the same time, we have the right to expect that while the Press should be informative, and may even be inquisitive, its curiosity should no: amount to something like persecution. We may be wounded, but we should not be hounded. Similarly, we on our side should recognise the circumstances in which the journalists and the Press labourthe editions that have to be brought out by night and clay, the difficulties of avoiding all mistakes. So we must not ourselves be too sensitive. But what I think we have the right to complain of, and this matter has now been dealt with, is if statements are made as fact when they are only inference and have no foundation, and then, from them, deductions are drawn which I feel certain are realised, within a day or two of their bring printed, by those responsible for them to have been fantastic. Who could really believe, for instance, except when suffering from a fever of suspicion, that my noble Friend acted in the way he was supposed to have acted, that is, falsely and teacherously to his own office, to the Government of which he was a member, and to the Crown, or that his senior officials and officers were guilty of the charges made against them? And who, indeed, could have supposed the story about my hon. Friend the Mem- 251 ber for Hillheadproperly repeated by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. Tapsell) to the Chief Whipto be anything but pure melodrama? Yet, once made, such allegations must be inquired into and demolished. I can only say that from all this there are lessons to be drawn by both sides. I believe that they will be, and I leave it there. Let me try to sum up. I feel sure that it was right, in the circumstances, to set up a Tribunal, although I regret the reasons that made that procedure necessary. I have tried to indicate that in arming ourselves as well as we can we must try to strengthen security by every legitimate means and see that it does not break down through inefficiency, incompetence or forgetfulness. We must equally avoid the dangers of making conditions in our public service, as well as in many of our industrial establishments, almost intolerable. I have expressed what I know to be the view of the Houseour pleasure at the unqualified vindication of the Ministers concerned. I have indicated the lines of a possible machinery which must, of course, wait until we have given it further consideration. Meanwhile, I think that we are doing all that can be done to strengthen our security. Given the necessary limitations within which we have to work both at home and overseas, I feel that all the time progress is being made and that the main thing now is to apply conscientiously and efficiently the procedures that have been laid down. This has been a sad incident from which nobody draws great satisfaction, but at least we have thisit has been one in which it has been shown that the truth has prevailed. 4.14 p.m. Mr. Harold Wilson (Huyton)

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There were two parts to the Prime Minister's speech, and they were in very different tones. I think that it is clear that he was more interested in the part relating to the Press. We all remember the very angry, bitter, rattled tones and demeanour of his speech on 14th November. There were moments when he returned to that this afternoon, though at the end of his speech his view rather was that the Press had learned its lesson, that we have all learned our lesson, and that it will be good to let bygones be bygones. 252 The right hon. Gentleman put forward some interesting philosophical comments about relationswe all agree that they are extremely difficultbetween those in public life and those in the Press. But it was obvious that he was approaching this side of his speech with more interest and enthusiasm than he had that part of the speech in which he dealt with the problems of national security. When the right hon. Gentleman was dealing with national security I could not help feeling that his approach was remarkably complacent. He made very little attempt to analyse the Report and the weaknesses and defects in the security machinery. Indeed, one could say that the whole tone of this part of his speech could be summed up by the words which he used when he was interrupted by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg)"Just one of those things". I think that the most serious thing on which the public will have seized in his speech is that the Government feel that this is becoming so much a part of what we must expect, that there will be so many incidents, that this is now so regular, that we have to have special machinery to deal with the problems of inquiries arising out of espionage. I will come to the various points made by the Prime Minister, but it is important to emphasise that what this Report is about, first and foremost, is national security. We can argue about defence, as we do in the Houseand there are differences between the two sides of the House on defence questions. But how can the Government talk about defence policy when on security, the very centre of a nation's defence policy, without which a defence policy can never be credible or viable, the British Government and a British defence Department are presented to the world by this Report in the appearance of a leaky vessel? When he was talking about the establishment of the Tribunal, the right hon. Gentleman referred to the need to restore confidence. If that were the object, may I tell him that it has not been achieved? Confidence has not been restored. Apart from its reference to a man who is dead, and who is unable to defend himself, and apart from a few mild rebukes to the Embassy in Moscow, the whole of the Report is that no one is wholly to blame. 253 But the reaction of the man in the street will be, "There damned well ought to be somebody to blame". What we have here is an account of a man of pretty limited intelligence, not a master spy, just a small-time traitor, who, for seven years, was able to remain undetected and to abstract secret top secretdocuments almost at will. I do not think that the House will be under any illusion about the kind of document which may have gone out of the Admiralty as a result of this. There is probably no record of what they were. I doubt whether the Government know what they were. But he had access to atomic material, as we are told in the Report, British and allied. In Moscow, he must have had access to a very wide variety of documents of a very special degree of security. In the Military Branch to which he was posted after his return he had access to all the most secret materials of our senior defence Department, affecting British plans, weapons and dispositions, and similar material relating to the plans, weapons and dispositions of our allies.

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I must confess that I am rather worried by the tone of the document itself on some aspects of this. For example, we read in paragraph 198 that the security arrangements in Military Branch were such that, if he had been a more adventurous spy, he could readily have gained access to a great deal of secret material. In the next paragraph we read: We have not found any reason to think that Vassal] exploited this situation, or that it contributed in any way to his espionage activities. otherwise we should consider those responsible deserving of censure. That is a pretty remarkable argument. What they are saying is, "If we had had to face a really dedicated and trained spy, not an overgrown wolf-cub who had gone wrong, then the system would have been wide open in respect of security." The whole point is that not too much harm was done because Vassall did not bother to take advantage of his opportunity and because at certain key periods Vassall's Russian masters told him to lay off. But if Vassall had been moreto quote the Report "adventurous", then those responsible would have been "deserving of censure". Even so, the Tribunal strongly criticises the security system. I draw attention to the whole of paragraph 198, 254 which refers to the common keys in the security cupboards. It reads: Staff used whichever cupboards were available to them in their rooms for storing all their materials, regardless of its classification, and regardless of the type of cupboards. Key control was also less than adequate. There is much here which would give cause for concern, and in these paragraphs which I have quoted, to take only a very small part of the Report, we ought to have had enough to shake the Government's complacency on this question. I think it right to say that we should not even have had this information available to us if the Prime Minister had not been forced. very much against his will, to set up this inquiry. There was a Long delay between Vassall's conviction and the appointment of the working party of officials, and an inquiry with full powers was not set up until the Prime Minister was forced, by admittedly wild speculation, as he has very fairly said, to set up an inquiry which he had repeatedly and brusquely refused when this was requested by Hugh Gaitskell and other members of the Opposition Front Bench. The pity is that he did not announce the inquiry first, for that would have had some tempering effect in preventing some of the wild speculations. When the right hon. Gentleman set it up not only the whole tone of his speech, but the order of priorities in which he drafted the terms of reference, showed where his interests lay. It was not security as much as a desire to put the Press on the spot and to get an answer to these charges which loomed first in the list of priorities. Today, we have the feeling from his speech, "Everything is improving." He said that a lot of improvement has been made as a result of the Romer Report and the Radcliffe Report. How do we know? We have been reassured many times before on these quesitions. Now we are told that the counter-espionage services are catching quite a bag of spies. I join the right hon. Gentleman in commending them for their efficiency. But I wish that he did not sometimes approach this job as if it were a matter of shooting pheasants. The important thing is not how many spies we catch, but how many there are to catch. I think that I am right in telling him that his reaction is not the reaction of the 255 country. I think that he was perhaps relieved at the tone of the Report, but in the country the Report came as rather a shock to very many people. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to observe the immediate reaction of the Press on the publication of the Report and I am not referring to the Opposition Press. The day after publication we had a very deep chorus of real national concern. For example, the The Times leading articleand The Times had in no way been involved in the Reportsaid: So far as security is concerned, the Report of the Radcliffe Tribunal on

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the Vassall case is clearly the beginning not the end of the affair. It referred to the inquiry as carrying a disturbing hint of complacency. It said: There appears a certain incompatibility between the apparently casual security procedures which emerge from the body of the report and the conclusion that hardly anyone is deserving of serious censure. It is hard to resist the impression that the matter is being treated as one of those accidents that bedevil the affairs of even the best-regulated families. That was rather what I felt about the right hon. Gentleman's speech this afternoon. The leading article continued: although the honour and integrity of the Ministers, naval officers and civil servants in the case have mostly been vindicated, Britain's security arrangements have not. Similarly, the Daily Telegraph was very critical of the state of the security services. The Sunday Times leading article was a blistering analysis of the whole Moscow story. In a leading article under the heading "Big Black Blot" the Daily Mail said: If the past history of this country had produced anything nearly as shocking as the Report of the Radcliffe Tribunal on the spy Vassall. the British story would have been very different. That is why I think that the Prime Minister should have taken time this afternoon to tell us more about the security aspects of the problem. There is concern, deep concern, and ground for deep concern, about the state of our security, and this afternoon we have had no reassurance about it. Since the right hon. Gentleman became Prime Minister we have spent 256 in six years 37,472,000 in annual Votes on security services, plus probably another 25 million on miscellaneous security services within individual defence Departments. Shall we say that we have spent 60 million on security during his period as Prime Minister? This Report begins to evaluate what we are getting for that expenditure, and still more does his frank admission that we shall need special machinery for handling this situation. Before I come to the Report and the lessons to be drawn from it, I ask the Prime Minister one question on which he has, in fact, given us some information. Perhaps the Leader of the House, who is to wind up the debatewill tell us a little more. On 14th November, the Prime Minister said in the House: I am happy to add that Lord Radcliffe has agreed that on the completion of the Tribunal's work and separately from it he would be ready to bring to my attention any weaknesses in existing security arrangements which come to his notice."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th November, 1962; Vol. 667, c. 400.] I gathered from the Prime Minister that there has been preliminary discussion between the Prime Minister and Lord Radcliffe. May we be told whether he intends to present a full report on the lessons of the Tribunal in respect of the working of the security services? What has the Prime Minister in mind about bringing this Report, or such part of it as can be made public, to the House? I turn to the Report itselfand the House will forgive me if I concentrate on one or two aspects of it because I am sure that other hon. Members will want to deal with many other aspects of this very long and very important document. There is the whole question of the breakdown within the Moscow Embassy. No one is to blame, of course, but the whole story of Captain Bennett's anxieties, the failure to take action, the divided responsibility between the Foreign Office and the Admiralty, are enough to cause some of us deep disquiet. Captain Bennett suspected that Vassall was a homosexual. In his first report he said that Vassall had an "effeminate personality". He told the ambassador about it. Memories seem very hazy about what was said and what was done. In fact, I am bound to say that memories seem very hazy about everything except 257 those issues which seem to point to the guilt or responsibility of Mr. Pennells. On that, memories seem to have developed crystal clarity. That is the one man who cannot defend himself. But on what happened

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in the Moscow Embassy there seems very grave doubt, even to the point at which documents seem to have been lost, which is most unlike the Foreign Office. Captain Bennett went on to withdraw his allegation in the next report, but he repeated it to his successor in words which I will not quote to the House. When Vassall was arrested Captain Bennett told security officers that Vassall was an undoubted homosexual. The Admiralty was told. The first report was on the record for the positive vetting which presumably came when Vassall was put on secret work. This first report was available at that time. The big question which arises is this how was it that in six or seven years the Admiralty never got on to a weakness which was so obvious that the Russians were on to it in six or seven months, or possibly in a lesser period than that? There is also the question of Mikhailski's appointment. Hon. Members will want to query the whole system of locally recruited staff. The right hon. Gentleman dealt with that problem this afternoon. I want to ask him to tell us whether the Soviet Embassy in Kensington has any substantial locally recruited staff; and can he tell usI do not know the answer whether the American Embassy in Moscow relies similarly on Russian staff? Perhaps the Government will give us the answer to those questions. I cannot entirely rid myself of the suspicion that Mikhailski was put in that job with a purposeand not so much an espionage purpose. His speciality was compromising homosexuals. There were other cases of his operations in the Report. It is possibleI only askthat someone knew something about Vassall from the outset? We cannot check this. We do not know when Mikhailski was appointed. Why do we not know? Surely there must be Foreign Office records on this matter? After all, Mikhailski was on the strength of the Foreign Office. He had to be paid. If there were records, have the files been lost, because the Report suggests that it was impossible for the committee, from 258 any records or evidence given, to say when Mikhailski was taken on to the strength of the British Embassy in Moscow. Surely the Foreign Office must report home about new recruits, particularly new locally recruited members of its staff, so that the security services can know, check and record? Were there no previous experiences in regard to his other employments? It is strange that we know all the records of certain peoplefor example, those relating to Mr. Pennellsbut we do not even know the date when Mikhailski was appointed to the Embassy in Moscow. I come to a more serious problem, that of positive vetting, and I must say that this seems to have been a most amateurish job. Having read the whole story of the positive vetting of Vassall in this case, I am bound to conclude that a hire-purchase firm would have made more searching inquiries over a washing machine account. Let me give this example. Captain Bennett, who had been Vassall's superior in Moscow, was not approached. Even if he had been in the Far East, as the Admiralty thoughtin fact, he was in Portsmouthhe should have been communicated with. Captain Bennett's successor, Captain Northey, was not asked for his view. He was in Moscow. I find it inconceivable to think that either of them would have presented favourable reports had they been asked about the suitability of Vassall for top-secret work. It is one thing to pm a few lines for an annual routine report for a clerical officer, but quite another for a report on a man's suitability to do secret work. Many of us have experience of this in various branches of Government service. I was once the head of a Civil Service branch with about 350 clerical and executive officers I was doing annual reports and I confess that they were comparatively routine matters for inclusion in their personal files. But had I been asked at that time about the suitability of Mr. X for a job involving the regular handling of classified material, I think that I

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should have had to apply very different criteria. One would, therefore, have given a very different answer. A number of hon. Members hi.ve to do this frequently when they are asked for testimonials and references by people they know. In one's 259 reply one obviously asks oneself what kind of qualities are required in the job before one signs the reference or supplies the testimonial. I cannot believe that Captain Bennett or Captain Northey, if asked to report on Vassall's suitability for top-secret workin the light of the views that both of them had expressed about his personal defects would not have put in a report of such a kind as to set the red lights flashing in the Admiralty. However, they were not asked to give a report. Instead, two elderly ladiesestimable no doubtwere asked to assess Vassall's character; but from a security angle. To judge from the reports of the positive vetting, there was one failure. Vassall had been for four years in the Royal Air Force. Nevertheless, when this positive vetting was being undertaken no one thought of asking Vassall's R.A.F. superiors or colleagues what they thought on the subject. I would have thought that those who served alongside and over him for four years would have had a much clearer idea of his suitability for handling Service secret material than two elderly ladies who knew him only socially. In any case, I should have thought that four years of Service life would have revealed his personal defects with more success than most inquiries. I must point out that under the American system of positive vettingand we had better get used to it, because under Article XIV(2) of the Polaris Agreement we have to apply it to all those involved both in the Services and in industrythere is a full probing of past records. One is asked every address at which one has lived, every job one has held, the names of one's employers, and the whole of one's Service career. These are checked and this is all on the American positive vetting form. I have seen it. There is nothing like that on the British positive vetting form. On the British one there is a whole batch of questions about past Communist associations, on the naive assumption that a Communist who is being vetted will tell all about his associations. I suppose that the idea is that one is more likely to get the truth if one asks eight questions rather than one. However, on the American form there is only one question on Communist association. 260 So I ask the Government why past Service records are not included in this positive vetting system, for I believe that the whole tragedy of the Vassall case could have been avoided? I must also ask this. Is it the case that in these questions our authorities were too easily reassured by the school to which the man went, the fact that he came of a good family and that his uncle was a housemaster at Repton? Has it anything to do with the fact that he was a personable young man with a good accent and manner, a member of the Conservative and Bath Clubs, as Vassall was? I wonder if the positive vetting of Vassal] would have been so casual had he been a boilermaker's son who had gone to an elementary school? I think that too much was taken for granted simply because he seemed a decent sort of chap. I cannot escape the conclusion, upon reading the Report, that on this whole question of securityof the remorseless day by day struggle between their espionage and our counterespionage, on which the security of our country dependsit is the old contest of gentlemen versus players. We are up against a ruthless, highly professional serviceand when one fights professionalism in the gentlemanly posture of the Establishment, one is beaten before one starts. Before I leave the Report, there is one question about which i am not fully convinced and which seems a little inconclusive in the Report; it is the view of the Radcliffe Tribunal that the Vassall case and the Portland case were not connected. Can we be sure

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about this? There is at least a suggestion that the same controller or spy-master operated in both cases. Paragraph 54 of the Report tells us that when Lonsdale was arrested Vassall was told to suspend his activities. There is one other fact not referred to in the Radcliffe Reportand my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley mentioned it on 24th March, 1961, in the House and has never had a reply. What happened when Lonsdale was arrested was this. There was a shocking leak from Bow Street about his arrest. I do not know from whom, but it informed the world and immediately alerted the Russians about his arrest. It enabled 261 them to apply security procedures at once. I know that the then Attorney-General was livid when he heard about it and nearly went into orbit, because it is possible that if the Russians had not been alerted at that time the continued system of communications on to which the security services had been put by the arrest of Lonsdale might have enabled them to have got on to Vassall and the question of the documents being abstracted from the Admiralty. I do not know for certain, and the Tribunal may be right that there was no connection between the Lansdale case and the Vassall one. However, we accept the Tribunal's view that the Admiralty authorities did not know that another spy was in the Admiralty. The Admiralty is acquitted of the charge that it knew that a spy was there, but is it not an equally serious matter that the Admiralty did not know that a spy was present there? I turn to some of the lessons that should be drawn from this Report. Hugh Gaitskell, in a previous debate on security, once laid down that the security services should fulfil four conditions. He stated in May, 1956when we were debating the Commander Crabbe casewhat they were. He said: These assumptions are: first, that the operations of these services are ultimately and effectively controlled by Ministers or by a Minister; secondly, that their operations are secret; thirdly, that what they do does not embarrass us in our international relations. And perhaps one might add, fourthly, that what they do appears, as far as we can make out, to be reasonably successful," At which point HANSARD records some laughter and Hugh Gaitskell added: in this sense, that if there were a wide-spread feeling that the secret services were extremely incompetent and inept then it would be the duty of hon. Members to raise the matter."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th May, 1956; Vol. 552, c. 1752.] Can one honestly say that these conditions are fulfilled? If they are not fulfilled, then, as Hugh Gaitskell said, we as a House have a right and a duty in this matter. What, therefore, is wrong? I think that the first thing that comes out of the Report is that security is being subordinated to economy. I am not saying necessarily that the House should be asked to vote more money, because I do 262 not know how the money already voted is spent, nor does anyone else in the House, except the Prime Minister. We do not know whether some of the money is wasted. It is not accounted for. It is the only part of the Appropriation Account which the Public Accounts Committee does not examine, But, certainly, on the key points high-lighted by the Report, we were short of money and short of staff. Mr. Penuellsand, here again, this action contradicts the rather over-facile criticism of himqueried the system of sending unmarried officers to places like Moscow. This does not mean an obsession with the homosexual side. An unmarried manor womanof perfectly normal tendencies can be compromised by the ruthless service they have in Moscow. Again, the positive vetting procedure, as stated in the Report, was years behind schedule, presumably because of shortage of money and shortage of trained personnel. Again, we are told that we could not afford at that time a security officer in Moscow. I

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think that there is good reason to feel that this shortage of resources for dealing with these jobs is partly explained perhaps by spreading the security services too wide. It is probably true that they are too busy on things of secondary importance. This brings me to the second lessonthe need to declassify. We have far too many documents classified as secret, so that our security service is spread far too thinly in trying to protect them. The greater the secrecy the less the security. We should classify less and protect the documents we do classify with real vigour and vigilance. I cannot help feeling that a great deal of our security work is devoted not to protecting our military strength, but to concealing our political weakness. The whole R.S.G. story suggests that it was political embarrassment rather than security weakness on which our services were deployed. We should not be afraid to tell the people more, and those things which, on security grounds, cannot be told we should guard with all our strength. This is the trouble with D notices. Not only on R.S.G.s, D notices are being used not to keep information from a potential enemy but to protect the Government from ridicule in the Press or in the political field. 263 The third question, and I am glad that the Prime Minister dealt with this, is the problem of the re-employment of staff returning to Service Departments from countries where they may have been under pressure. It was not only VassallHoughton, involved in another case, had been compromised first when he was in Poland. I am glad that the Prime Minister now makes it plain that junior members of Service attach staffs in these embassies will be recruited from the Regular members of the Force concerned. What I could not understand in the Report was why it was said that while we do not return a Service attach to a particular department which deals with intelligence or the affairs of the country where he has just been, for some reason a clerical officer, a much more junior official, has developed such expertise that it is an advantage to the community and the Government to put him in that sort of work. I should have thought that he was highly vulnerable by reason of having been in the country and that it would be a service to this country to put such people in the victualling department or in a department dealing with naval law or something like that, a long way from somewhere where they would be likely to get security material of the kind to which Vassal] had access. My next point refers to Ministerial responsibility. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, comes out, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, in a white sheet. He did not know that there was a spy in the Admiralty, and it was wrong to suggest that he did. While there is no reflection at all on his personal integrity, it may be a reflection on his administrative ability that he did not know. We are in danger of evolving a new and strange doctrine of Ministerial responsibility. I tend to take a more old-fashioned view. I agree with the way this was formulated years ago, in this very context of security, and I commend these words to the House: I want to say a few words on the subject on Ministerial responsibility. When what is known as the Maclean and Burgess case was entering its final phase, with the findings of the Australian Royal Commission and the publication of the White Paper, I made it clear that full Ministerial responsibility must be taken by those Ministers, past and present, who presided over or were connected with the Foreign Office during all this period. This was not a mere act of quixotism or chivalry; 264 it is a plain constitutional truth. It will be a sorry day when we try to elevate something called the Foreign Office or the Treasury or any other Department of State into a separate entity enjoying a kind of life, responsibility and power of its own, not controlled by Ministers and not subject to full Parliamentary authority. Ministers, and Ministers alone, must bear the responsibility for what goes wrong. After all, they are not slow to take credit for anything that goes

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right."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th November, 1955; Vol. 545, c. 1484.] These were the words, wise and impeccable, of the then Foreign Secretary, the present Prime Minister, on 7th November, 1955. I agree with him. They are tough and honest words and I agree with them. Therefore, if the First Lord is not to take the responsibility for what went wrong in his Department, only one Minister canthe head of our security services, the Prime Minister. I wonder whether, in the present circumstances, with the full blast of espionage activities we now have to deal with, as this Report and the right hon. Gentleman's speech have made clear, it is possible for him to do this job. Like him, I abhor the idea of a police State, or the creation of new and fearsome posts, or anything approaching the idea of a security police, but in the anxiety which recent events have aroused there may be a case for the temporary appointment of a Minister, perhaps a Minister of State, responsible to the House and working direct to the Prime Minister, to survey our security services. Last year the Prime Minister appointed a member of the Cabinet to be in charge of P.R.O. and propaganda services. We have never discovered what he does. There is a far stronger case for appointing a manand there are many such men in all parties in the Housewho would carry the confidence of the House in this matter. I have referred to Lord Carrington. Let me say now, with reference to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), that the whole House, of course, will accept the conclusions of the Report on the hon. Gentleman, and that all of us welcome his announced reinstatement in the Government. So, Mr. Speaker, we have this Report. Nobody is guilty, except the dead, nobody is being punished except the two journalists who refused to disclose their sources; and before I conclude, I must follow the right hon. Gentleman in referring to the question of the Tribunal procedure and 265 the position of the Press. The Tribunal refused to obey the instruction of the Prime Minister that this inquiry should be turned into an inquisition on the conduct of the Press. The Tribunal dealt with security principally and the Press very much in passing, but great damage has been done. As the Sunday Times put it: By the evening of the Radcliffe Tribunal's first open day (it not, indeed, from the moment when a very angry Mr. Macmillan announced its setting up) it was evident that the deepest wounds were going to be felt in Fleet Street, not in Whitehall; and so it has proved. These are scars which will take a long time to heal. I think that that is true. Certainly, some of the wilder Press accusations and inventions have been exposed by the Tribunal as fiction, and most of these would have been avoided if the Prime Minister had proceeded to set up an inquiry as soon as the case for it became clear. This is not the occasion for us to debate the Press. We are still waiting for the Government to find time to debate the Report of the Royal Commission, including the need for a really effective Press Council with an independent chairman and lay members. I would feel, however, arising out of the Report, that there is one code of conduct which should be rapidly applied, either voluntarily or in some other way and that the Press should be bound to stop this odious practice of buying for large sums the memoirs of convicted criminals. It has long been the practice in the procedure of this country that no one can make a profit out of a proven crime. This ought to be stopped, along with the undignified scramble in court, if a man is found guilty, as journalists jostle one another in their efforts to buy his memoirs. What about the question of the disclosure of sources? If these journalists had had the same loss of memory that afflicted certain of the other witnesses they would not have been sent to gaol. Although one has completed his sentence and has been released today, I think that it would be right for the right lion, Gentleman to advise an act of

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clemency in the other case. He has made his point, for what it is worth. I repeat, on.the general principle, what I have said in the House before: no one, cer- 266 tainly not the Press, claims absolute privilege for the security of his sources. No Press man in a capital murder case would allow an innocent man to be hanged by refusing to tell the truth and disclose his course of information. No one claims that his privilege, whatever it is, is absolute. Nor, when the public interest is involved, can we argue that the code of journalistic ethics should override the public interest. What I am not happy about under the present Tribunal procedure is the way in which the public interest is decided. As far as I can understand, this question has never arisen in the 700 years' history of the courts. The Attorney-General once told us that. But it does come up, and it is liable to do so again, in tribunals. In my viewand I know that some of my hon. and learned Friends, and right hon. and learned Friends, will disagree where there is a clash between the journalistic code of ethics, which involves the public interest, on the one hand, ant the public interest and security, on the other, the decision should be made by Parliament. Parliament is responsible for the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act. We have not repealed it, or amended it. We are responsible for the decision to establish a Tribunal in a certain place. We are responsible for the terms of referencein this case, as in all the others. If, then, a Tribunal appointed by this House is frustrated in its work by a refusal to disclose sources, it should report back to us, exactly as a Select Committee reports back if it is unable to get on with its work because of a refusal of information. There may be a case where a Tribunal cannot do its job at all, and cannot get at the truth. In those circumstances, I suggest that it should report back to Parliament, which created it and gave it its job. I cannot think that Parliament would fail to act in such a case. But there may be a caseas in the case of this Tribunalwhere a Tribunal was not stopped in its tracks, and was not prevented from doing its job, but which ran into difficulties on certain points. This Report was not prevented from corning out by the failure of Mr. Mulholland and Mr. Foster to disclose their sources. In such a case the Tribunal should get on with its work, make its 267 report, and draw the attention of Parliament to the fact that the public interest was affronted by the refusal to disclose sources. It would then be for Parliament to decide how germane these questions were to the whole Report, and to decide whether proceedings should be instituted. I know that many hon. Members will disagree, and I put this forward purely as a personal point for consideration by the House. Some right hon. and learned Members will say that a Tribunal, once appointed and charged with the discovery of the truth, should be furnished with all the necessary powers, without reference back to this House. Against that, it could be argued that the Tribunal is not dealing with a legal matter or with the interpretation of the law, and that, when appointing it, the House could not realise in every case what is involved, or be able to foresee the clash between the public interest and the considerations affecting the freedom of the Press that might arise. That is why I stress that this is a personal view. Such a conflict of interest should be decided by the House and not by the courts. Finally, we have the proposal of the Prime Minister for dealing with future cases. As I understood what he said, the security services are having some degree of success. It is possible to understand the divided feelings that the right hon. Gentleman has when these matters are reported to him, and that when so many of these may be coming along to him it will be necessary to set up some permanent machinery. I can appreciate the argument. After all, if we appoint ad hoc inquiries into each case the people who carry them out will not obtain the necessary expertise and knowledge of the

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security srvices. So the Prime Minister wants us to have a special commission on spies, which would develop the necessary expertise, rather as the old Railway Rates Tribunal developed a certain familiarity with the problems in that field. If so many of these cases are expected to arise we shall have to be prepared, as a House, to consider the appointment of this spies commission. But I am bound to ask what the public reaction will be? What will be the reaction of our friends and allies when they realise that the problem has now grown to such dimensions that, 268 for the first time in our history, we have to set up a permanent court to deal with this problema commission for spies? The House will want to consider this question. I was glad that in putting it forward the Prime Minister linked it with the suggestion that there might be a committee of Privy Councillors. But we shall have to go further. If I understood him correctly, he said that we shall probably want to keep the Tribunal machinery in beingand he is probably rightfor the very special cases for which it would be the right machinery. But there is a good deal of disquiet on the part of hon. Members on both sides of the House about the working of the Tribunal machinery. The Prime Minister seemed to suggest that he was a little worried about it. I therefore suggest that the Government should consider appointing a Select Committee to consider the whole working of the 1921 Act, including some of the other questions that have arisen, such as costs, Press secrecy and the disclosure of sources, so that the House, in due course, may be advised and guided on the question whether any amendments are needed to the 1921 Act. The Select Committee co Procedure has already dealt with one aspect of the impact of these Tribunals on the House, but a full-dress Select Committee is needed. The fact that the right hon. Gentleman has felt it necessary to announce this new machinery will be taken by the House as an indication of the gravity of the situation that we face. If that situation is as grave as the right hon. Gentleman seemed to indicate, I am bound to point out that other parts of his speech were a little complacent and inadequate. The House will not be able to leave this question of security where it is. We have been dealing with one Report, and the lessons to be derived from it. but it will not be long before the House will have to insist on a further and fuller debate on the whole question of our national security. 4.57 p.m. Mr. Ian Gilmour (Norfolk, Central) In attempting to address the House for the first time I ask for the indulgence which hon. Members are accustomed to grant to a Member finding himself in this highly nerveracking situation. During the by-election campaign in 269 Central Norfolk, which resulted in my becoming the representative of an extremely pleasant and varied constituency, the V assail agitation was at its height, although nobody seemed very interested in it. I am not competent to deal with matters of security, but as a journalist and a lawyer I should like to try to say something about the confrontation which took place between Government, the Law and the Press. Complaints have been made against the procedure of the Tribunal, on the ground that it was inquisitorial. But such a Tribunal surely has to be inquisitorial, because it is engaged upon an inquiry. These Tribunals are set up to try to discover the truth about something, and they succeed very well. If we have an inquiry into something we necessarily have an inquisitorial procedure. No inquisitorial procedureno inquiry. The normal British trial is not designed to find out the whole truth about something it is designed to produce a decision on the evidence, after a contest carried on between two sides according to certain narrow, fixed rulesa very different thing from an inquisitorial Tribun al.

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In a previous debate it was suggested that a Select Committee would be a more appropriate investigating body, but I doubt whether that view could easily survive a study of the Committees set up to investigate the Jameson Raid and the Marconi scandal. It was only because of the glaring defects of those Committees that we started having Tribunals. What went on in the Marconi Committee was described at the time by F. E. Smith as "a grotesque travesty of judicial procedure". And I should have thought that the alternative proposal put forwardthat Tribunals should refer matters for decision to the House of Commonswould be liable to produce a similar travesty. To have these matters decided according to the political advantage of the party in power, while using the protective colouring of judicial procedure, would be a reversion, it seems to me, to the more vexatious constitutional habits of the Stuarts. If it is accepted that every now and then it is in the interests of the nation that the truth or falsity of something should be established as conclusively as may be, and that, therefore, an investi- 270 gating body should be set up, it follows that that investigating body must have the means of ensuring that it is able to do its job. It has been widely assumed that the issue of whether people should be punished for refusing to answer questions is one between liberty and authority. That is not so. It is not true that all the libertarian arguments are on one side. I think that the McCarthy episode illustrates that because McCarthy's victims were not the only people who refused to divulge their sources or their friends. The most conspicuous offender in that respect wasp the late Senator himself. In his speech which began McCarthyism, to the Republican Women of Wheeling, West Virginia, on 9th February, 1950, he said: I have here in my hand a list of 205 Communists in the State Department. A diligent researcher, I think, eventually established that when he said that he did not have anything in his hand at all. In any event, he never gave any source or authority for his allegations, for the reason that he did not have one. McCarthy juggled the figures a bit and went on to the next false and unsupported allegation and, in the process, he demoralised American public life, he destroyed many people's careers, and he damaged American liberties, including freedom of the Press and freedom of opinion. Neither the American Press nor the American Senate was ever able to pin McCarthy down and conclusively establish that he had no sources at all. As a result, he was able to create havoc and despair for four years. If the United States had possessed a tribunal of inquiry machinery, the whole McCarthyite plague might have been stamped out almost before it had begun. So I think that we ought to be rather careful about describing the persistent probing of people's sources as necessarily an abridgement of liberty. In the campaign against the imprisonment of the two journalistsI hope that the House will think this a fair summary broadly two arguments have been used. The first is that of conscience. We can all respect the consciences of Mr. Foster and Mr. Mulholland and, no doubt, in certain circumstances everybody would refuse to answer questions. But there is no ground whatever, I think, 271 for believing that the consciences of journalists are more tender than those of other people, or that they should be treated as such. Parliament certainly did not think so in 1948, when it ordered the journalists concerned in the Allighan and Walkden affair to reveal their informants; nor did the Press itself in 1958, when at the Bank Rate Tribunal the journalists who were asked to do so revealed theirs. It is a little odd that what was accepted in 1958 should have become a desperate threat to the freedom of the Press in 1963. Much of the alarm about the imprisonment of the two journalists, it seems to me, springs largely from two misconceptions. The first is to confuse Lobby correspondents

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with gossip columnists and general reporters. What is applicable to a Lobby correspondent is not applicable to everybody else. What I regard as the greater misconception goes deeper. From much of the Fleet Street comment on what has happened one would get the impression that before the Tribunal there was day after day a torrent of secret and accurate political information poured into the ears of journalists, who were all the time relentlessly ferreting out reams of news, as a result of which the public was kept closely and reliably informed of everything that was going on; and that now, as a result of the Tribunal, this marvellously beneficent process of popular education had been jeopardised. This picture of the Press, before the Tribunal, is mere fantasy. Over the years, there has probably been less political news published in England than in any other free country. William Randolph Hearst described news as what someone did not want published; everything else was advertising. In that sense there has long been a scarcity of political news in this country. A great deal of political speculation is published, some of it well on the mark and some of it miles from the truth. And in the Hearstian sense a good deal of political advertising is published. Journalists are assiduously briefed and earnest background discussions are held, as a result of which the newspapers normally print what they are told, or give their space over to money, sex and crime. 272 This situation is very far indeed from being entirely the fault of the Press. The position of the Press has been undermined, as we know, by Gladstone's Treasury memorandum forbidding civil servants to give information to the newspapers, which has shielded the workings of the Executive from the intimate scrutiny of the Press; later by the Official Secrets Act and the capricious working of it; by the bid of the Press barons for personal power in the 1920s; and, more recently, by the increasing domination of the managerial over the editorial side of newspapers; and of course, by the ever-shrinking number of ownerships. For the Press to have accepted all these disasters meekly and then turn round and make a tremendous hullabaloo about journalists being treated like other people and having to answer questions sems to me irrational; and for it to try to make up for these deepseated disabilities by demanding for journalists a sort of confessional privilege is as futile as trying to cure a bad rash by scratching the spots. Aside from the actual imprisonment of the journalists, the Press should surely have welcomed the events of the last few months. Relations between Press and Government should not be too intimate or cosy. It is no bad thing that there should be friction between the Press and politicians, and it is surprising that it is the Press which resents it. Yet the Press has behaved like a rejected suitor. It has fallen in love with its chains. The institutionalised confidential relationships which it values so highly have helped to emasculate it for years, and it has not even noticed. The father of the right hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) used to say that the newspapers were the watchdogs of society. The trouble is that rather like seventeenth century judges, they have become watchdogs under the Throne. We see the consequences of this Press impotence or abdication in the events leading up to the Bank Rate and Vassall Tribunals. Drugged by their normal diet of non-news stories and non-events, the newspapers tend to lose their heads when they are faced with what may really be a news story. Unsuitable people are put on Ito the story. When one watchdog barks, all the others bark too, 273 although they have seen or heard nothing. Editors notoriously find it easier to believe what they read in other newspapers than in their own, and so their story has to be made as exciting as those elsewhere. Few journalists can withstand the tyranny of the deadline and the tyranny of the rival papers;

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and so rumours, fictions and inventions multiply. The watchdogs all give each other hydrophobia, and, eventually the only cure is a Tribunal. During the last few months Fleet Street has shown none of the irreverence to itself which it takes pride in showing to everybody else. It should be concerned less, I would think, about its relations with the Government and more about its relations with its readers. Its problem is not whether journalists should answer questions. The problem which faces it is to see that journalists get better sources, so that newspapers can once again become the watchdogs of the nation. 5.12 p.m. Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland) It is a very great pleasure and honour to follow the hon. Member for Norfolk, Central (Mr. Ian Gilmour) on his maiden speech, and, on behalf of the whole House, to welcome and congratulate him most sincerely on a notable contribution. I know that it is not customary for a maiden speaker to be controversial. I am not quite sure whether he who follows to congratulate him can he a little controversial about his speech. if I am, I hope that he will take it as a compliment. I should like to say that I have known the hon. Member a long time and I have even, on occasion, been asked to contribute to his paper, not so frequently of recent years, but still our relationship is good. I should also like to say that one of the things that endears him to me is that, in the past at any rate, he has not been afraid, in a most liberal and humane way, to differ occasionally from the line of the Conservative Party, and I hope that he will continue to do so. I found the hon. Member's observations on the Press extremely interesting. The first thing that I should like to congratulate him on is that as a Press owner he is prepared to stand up and speak. I think that one of the difficulties in dealing with the Press is the hysterical terror shown by the owners of 274 the Press of any form of criticism, and their total reluctance to come out in public and explain what they are trying to do and what are their motives. They claim, I think rightly, to be an important element in our affairs. They claim to be an estate of the realm and they must obviously be open to the same examination to which they subject politicians, businessmen and many other people. What I found also interesting in the hon. Member's speech was that, in fact, so far from defending the Press, he was, on balance, extremely critical of it. If anything should happen to him in his future political career, I hope that he will be elevated to another place where he may debate these matters with his fellow owners who, no doubt, will be able to meet his criticisms. However, I did not entirely agree with all that the hon. Member said. To begin with, I think that politicians tend to be hypocritical about the Press. In fact, we are all extremely anxious to appear in the Press, favourably if possible, but somehow at all costs. A lot of this arises from an undesirable desire for personal advertisement, but a lot of it is absolutely essential to democratic progress. If Parliament ceases to be reported, Parliament will cease, even more than ever, to be an important factor in the government of this country. The attention paid by the Pressif only in its headlinesto the proceedings of the House of Commons is one of the things that gives me confidence in the future democracy of this country. I do not want to get involved now about television of the House of Commons, but those who say that we should not go on television because we like our consultations to be private, we like to speak only to each other, are really not being strictly honest. Certainly, no one can possibly defend the personal abuse which fills much of the Press. No one can defend the presentation of fiction as fact, but, on the other hand, it is always

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unfair to generalise about the Press as a whole. It covers an enormous number of extremely conscientious journalists who take infinite trouble to find out the facts, and it also cover a great many editors whose opinions are widely respected and highly responsible. It covers papers from the highest form of technical paper, through 275 the weeklies, and down to papers that are, in fact, not papers at all, but entertainment. One of the difficulties in dealing with the case of a few journalists is that one cannot apply the same standards right throughout journalism, because same of it is not journalism at all in the sense that Milton spoke about journalism. I doubt whether the hon. Member for Norfolk, Central would like to be linked in all respects with some of his contemporary rivals. There are certain differences even between the Spectator and the New Statesman and there is a much greater difference, of course, throughout the whole of the Press. The hon. Member made a good point when he said that to ask people to reveal their sources of information is not always an infringement of liberty, and he quoted the case of Senator McCarthy. What I found alarming about that incident was that there appeared at times to be the claim that the State has an absolute right to demand that anyone shall expose the source of his information, whether he is a journalist or not. It may be that the State will inevitably make that claim, but it is extremely important that it should be resisted. It may be that, in the upshot, people have to go to prison, but I do not accept the view, nor, I think, does the hon. Member, that in every case the State has the absolute right to demand the sources of information. I very much agree with the hon. Member that it is a good thing that relations in general between politicians and the Press should sometimes vary from the poor to the bad. I thought that the hon. Member was a little unfair, although I must say how difficult it is to be fair to the Prime Minister because I doubt whether the Prime Minister feels that the Press are lions under his throne. I have many criticisms of the Press, because I think that it accepts hand-outs too easily, but, on the whole, I do not think that it can be said that the Press is the paid lackey of the Government, and I am thankful that it is not. As long as the Press reports the major aspects of politicsand I must put on record on this point that this is done in the cheapest forms of the Press which is the most widely readit plays an impor- 276 tant part in our affairs. I personally hope that there will be a stronger Press Council and that it will have a lay chairman. I hope that the Press will be more self-critical and that when criticism is made it will be directed to those who are responsible, the owners. Are not journalists, for the most part, merely carrying out their orders? May I once again congratulate the hon. Member on behalf Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies (Isle of Thanet) The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) levels these criticisms which affect the position of the Press and says that it is the newspaper barons and not the journalists who are to blame. Would not he go as far as saying that the professional standards which are applied by the General Medical Council or the Bar Council to their professions could reasonably be applied also in relation to those in a professional capacity within the Press? Mr. Grimond I should have no objection to agreeing with that. It is one reason why I think that the Press Council ought to be strengthened so that it could establish those standards. But I cannot help suspecting that if the Press owners let it be known that they disapproved of the kind of things said lately about Ministers and civil servants, these things would disappear from the Press. The Prime Minister opened this debate on a much more subdued note than he used in his speech when announcing the setting up of the Tribunal. The right hon. Gentleman

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made one positive suggestion with which I should like to deal. I am one who favours the creation of special committees of Parliament to look after specialist subjects, so I am not at all adverse to the idea which he put forward. But I think that there are grave difficulties. The idea is that there should be a committee of Privy Councillors. I recently joined the "trade union" of the Privy Council and, therefore, I cannot be accused of bias in this matter. But I am not certain why the committee should be confined to privy councillors, or that a two-tier system in Parliament is altogether good. But that is a minor point. I understand that this committee is to sit after there has been some breach of security and decide whether it is a 277 matter which should go to a standing tribunal. To my mind, a lot of the trouble which has arisen from this and other tribunals is because of insufficent care in pinpointing the matter into which the tribunal is to inquire and the failure in giving sufficient care to the drawing up of its terms of reference. To my mind, this tribunal procedure should be used sparingly. I am not at all clear that to have a standing tribunal would be a good thing. It would become a repository for far too many cases. I am not clear about what powers the Privy Councillors or the standing tribunal would have. Would it consider only particular cases or be able to consider, for instance, the positive vetting procedure? Would it be allowed to investigate arrangements for security within a Department? What is to be the effect on Parliament? Let us take the case of a spy who has been discovered. He is brought to trial and therefore at that stage the matter is sub judice. I suppose that then it is referred to the Privy Councillors and it will be still sub judice because it may go to the tribunal. If Parliament is not careful it will shut itself off from a discussion of the matter for a considerable period at a very vital moment, and I think that we ought to consider very carefully whether we want to do that. What is to be the effect on legal action? We know already that there has been difficulty in following up offences after they have been considered by a tribunal. Therefore, while I do not object to this, I feel that we ought to have from the Leader of the House considerably more detail of the proposals. The right hon. Gentleman should deal with the questions I have asked. Coming to the Report of the Vassall Tribunal, my first question is, were Lord Radcliffe and his colleagues supplied with all the information already made available to the Civil Service, both written information and a list of the witnesses? If not, what became of it? Who decided that the Tribunal should not get it? The Prime Minister skated rather easily over the genesis of this Tribunal. It was most peculiar. If hon. Members cast their minds back, they will remember that there was a serious breach of security by Vassall. The Prime Minister was pressed again and again to set up a high- 278 level tribunal to inquire into that breach but he steadfastly refused to do so. There were also allegations against the First Lord of the Admiralty, and on this ground also the right hon. Gentleman refused Ito do more than appoint three Civil servants. Then there came the dinner party described in the Report as a singular meeting". Allegations were made that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) had arranged to meet Vassall in Italy and that Vassall was to decamp to the Russians and the hon. Gentleman was in some way involved. I made it perfectly clear in the previous debate that I never believed a word of the allegations against the hon. Gentleman. But the curious thing is that this cock-and-bull storythe journalist concerned apparently said that he was absolutely satisfied that there was no word of truth in itwas the thing which induced the Prime Minister to set up this whole Tribunal. Very rarely can there

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have been a more eccentric reason to put into operation the whole paraphernalia of a judicial tribunal. Did the Prime Minister believe that there could be any truth in the allegations? I could never understand why he accepted the resignation from the Government of the hon. Member for Hillhead. It has indeed been said that the Prime Minister encouraged his resignation. This was the genesis of the Tribunal and, as I say, it is the most extraordinary reason that could ever have been given for setting up an inquiry of this sort. The security of the country had no effect so far as the Tribunal was concerned. But as the result of a dinner party at which these allegations were made we had this inquiry. This had one important effect from the very outset. It confused two separate issues. One, to my mind, was not suitable for consideration by a tribunal at allthe vague allegations mentioned in the terms of reference. But there was a matter of definite public importance to be inquired into and that was the breach of security by Vassall. That was a proper matter for inquiry. But if hon. Members read the rest of the terms of reference, they must surely conclude that they are intolerably wide. The Tribunal was to inquire into: any other allegations which have been or may be brought to their attention, reflecting 279 similarly on the honour and integrity of persons who, as Ministers, naval officers and civil servants, were concerned in the case. The Tribunal did an extraordinarily good job in not getting hopelessly lost in these terms of reference. As I said, I believe that this procedure should be used sparingly and terms of reference should be prepared very carefully. It must be used with reference to a definite matter of urgent public importance and should not be used to drag a net along the sea bottom, so to speak, to see who gets caught in it. People who were caught in the so-called leak tribunal had a very strong case for saying that their reputations were harmed for no reason. Regarding the security aspect, which to my mind is a proper subject for inquiry, no one is blamed too much except Mr. Pennells. I think that the Tribunal was right not to apportion blame. It learned the lesson of past tribunals. I do not think that is the business of the Tribunal but, as the Prime Minister has said, the business of the Government who are ultimately responsible for security and for taking action on the findings of a tribunal. I do not dissent from the Tribunal being sparing of blame. I do dissent from the Government showing any complacency about the facts found by the Tribunal or this House taking the attitude that everything is well. After all, Vassall was still going on photographing documents for a considerable time after the Lonsdale case, and I cannot get away from the feeling that security is given a low priority and even judging by certain reactions since the announcement of the findings of this Tribunalthat it is taken much too casually in some high places. The first need is to re-emphasise the point made about secret material. The committee on security which sat before under Lord Radcliffe strongly emphasised the importance of not classifying too many documents. In sections 27 and 28 of this Report it is pointed out that it is difficult to prevent people in the position of Vassall from handling secret documents. I am surprised at that. My recollection of the Army is that there were certain documents which were handled only by clerks of a certain rank and precautions were taken over 280 locking up these documents or moving them about. I am surprised that, unless far too many documents are classified, more cannot be done in this direction. Surely if clerks like Vassall are to be allowed to handle secret documents, they should be positively vetted. That point has been made at various inquiries. Vassall was not subjected to positive vetting for over a year after he was, in fact, in the pay of the Russians, and when his vetting was carried out, it did not discover very much.

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Again, it seems to me that positive vetting must be something more than the taking up of references supplied by the civil servant himself and that not only must other people be asked but his past record must be closely examined. Had it been in this case, it is inconceivable that something would not have been found out which would have made Vassall a doubtful security risk. This whole question of security risk has altered, as is known. The Report points out that up to quite recently what security primarily was concerned about was people who might be a danger because of subversion. Only when the Privy Councillors looked into this matter did the examination of people who might be subject to pressures because of personal feelings become important. What is important now is not only to trace breaches of security after they have happened but to ensure that people like Vassal' do not get into a position where they can happen. If it is said that that involves certain infringement of the rights of individuals, this too often has been made an excuse for what is simply incompetence. It is no infringement of the liberty of the individual to go through a procedure known to him in order to check his suitability for a certain post. It is no infringement on the rights of an individual to ensure that the system of security is effective. What I agree might be an infringement would be to take inappropriate action after checking his or her suitability or to carry out a general and secret examination of all the people in the public service unknown to them and whether it was necessary or not for the posts they hold. Then we get to Moscow. Had there been any complaints about security in the Moscow Embassy before? Had there been any demand that. Vassall's position 281 should be filled by a Service man? I am glad to hear from the Prime Minister that this is now to be the case, but had not this suggestion been made before? It seems lo me extraordinary that the Russians could find out so quickly and accurately the weakness of Vassall which was unknown to his superiors for seven years. I can hardly believe that there were not suspicions in Moscow that he was susceptible to certain pressures. This was eventually brought to the attention of the powers in the Embassy by Miss Wynne. What has happened to Miss Wynne? She appears to be a woman of perspicacity. I hope that she has been promoted and that other people like Miss Wynne are being ecouraged. I hope that she has not been neglected. I find it very odd that, Miss Wynne having drawn this matter to everyone's attention, no action should have been taken on it. This must arouse doubt about whether action has been taken on other recommendations. There is a very strong recommendation in Lord Radcliffe's previous Report that people who have been brainwashed should not be employed in posts involving security. May we have an assurance that this recommendation has been carried out? May we also have an assurance in rather more precise terms than the Prime Minister gave that the other recommendations of the previous Report are in operation? It must be remembered that this Report had been made before Vassall was discovered and tried, yet it does not appear that any great efforts were made in the Embassy with regard to it. We all feel extremely sorry for Mr. Pennells. It is said that he should have made representations. How do we know that he did not? He made a very sensible representation that married people should be sent to Moscow. This would seem to be a sensible and, indeed, elementary representation, yet it was turned down. Perhaps he had come to the conclusion that it was no good making representations because no notice was taken of them. Mr. Pennells was not responsible for the procedure which Lord Radcliffe, rightly, found inadequate. Quite why he should be picked out in this way when a good deal of responsibility rested on his seniors is not apparent. The Prime Minister explained that Mr. Pennells had given long service, and I suppose that, apart

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from expressions of regret in this 282 House, there is, unfortunately, little more that we car do about it. I wish to finish by returning to the question of the tribunal procedure. As I read the 1921 Act, it does not limit this House either in the form of the tribunal or in the terms of reference given to it. These are both points of great importance. While I think that a judge who is accustomed to dealing with evidence is the most suitable person to act as chairman, it is, as a general rule, probably wise to let him have assessors who are particularly experienced in the matter into which inquiries have to be made. While these tribunals have, through no fault of their own, dredged up unfortunate allegations against individuals, I wonder whether they get to the bottom of the particular flatters into which they are supposed to inquire. The House is rather too easily impressed with their efficiency and efficacy. They are ad hoc bodies set up to deal quickly with a difficult matter, and it would be surprising if they could elicit the full facts. What I am sure about is that this form of tribunal is not a suitable instrument for reinstating the characters of Ministers. When this Tribunal was set up, I inquired why the matter could not be dealt with by Ministers going through the ordinary process of law and issuing writs for libel. The Attorney-General pointed out that this might have bad consequences with regard to criminal libel. I accept that there are difficulties, but since then this is exactly the course which the Secretary of State for War has taken. When allegations were made about his behaviour he announced in the House that if they 'went on he would take proceedings for libel. I think that he was right. As far as I know, the allegations have stopped. It therefore cannot be said that this is not a procedure open to Ministers because one Minister has just exercised it. There was no suggestion that a tribunal should be set up to examine the allegations, such as they were, made about the Secretary of State. If it is to be said that the libel procedure is not, or should not be, open to Ministers, we should have had a tribunal on that case. It may be argued that the present law of libel needs reform. That is a different point. It may be a good one. But I do not accept either that Ministers need to 283 be placed in a particular category or that the ordinary process of law is not open to them. Neither do I accept, after what has happened in the case of the Secretary of State for War, that it is Government policy that this should not happen. I therefore believe that that aspect of tribunals can often be dealt with in that way. Otherwise they should be confined to matters of fact as far as possible and to definite matters of public importance. They should be appointed as quickly as possible, and I much regret that this Tribunal was not appointed as quickly as possible. A lot of trouble would have been saved if it had been appointed quicker. There is the difficulty to which the hon. Member for Norfolk, Central drew attention, that this is an inquisitorial procedure which is not the common method of British law; that there is no charge against anyone and that there is no presentation of both sides of the case. It is a dangerous procedure which should be used sparingly. If it is used, it should be used on a definite matter and should be used quickly, and the terms of reference, for which this House is and must remain responsible, should be most carefully drawn up. 5.38 p.m. Sir Charles Mott-Radclyffe (Windsor) As has been rightly pointed out already, the principal features of the Tribunal's Report concern security much more than any action of the Press. One has only to read it to realise that nearly three-quarters of the paragraphs in it are directed to that issue. There are two or three essential points which i think should be brought out. The first which should be brought out very clearly is the constant pressure which is exercised by

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the Communists against all members of the British Embassy in Moscow, and, for that matter against all members of Western diplomatic missions. It applies not only in Moscow but in every Iron Curtain country and pretty well everywhere else in the world. Every human weakness is exploited. The moment that a human weakness is shown the Communists are quickly on it. If it is an ideological weakness defection is very easy. Detection is much more difficult. If a man has a weakness for money he can easily be compromised by black 284 market activities. If he has homosexual weaknesses he can be easily blackmailed. If he has a weakness for a blonde or brunette he is subject to blackmail of a different kind. The point which is brought out is that all human weaknesses are watched for month in and month out by the Communists as a sustained effort to penetrate the whole of our security system, wherever it may be. This is their kind of peaceful co-existence in the field. To be honest, I admit that, to some extent, democracy is at a disadvantage because all along the line we are on the defensive. We are bound to be. The Prime Minister posed the question: what chinks are there in our existing armour and how can they be repaired? How can our security services be made more efficient within the framework of a free society? If all traditional civil liberties were abandoned, the matter would be a great deal easier of solution. If the passports of all civil servants working in what is called a sensitive branch handling secret documents were impounded so that before they could go for a ski-ing holiday in Switzerland or could take their children for a holiday in Brittany in the summer they had to get an exit permit from the Home Office, if anybody could be arrested without a warrant, and if telephone tapping and microphones were a matter of course, our security services would be much more efficient, but I think that somewhere along that path we should have to stop and look back and ask ourselves who was winning the cold war. Nor do I think that we can conceivably run a Foreign Service upon the basis that in every embassy abroad there is one man, a kind of equivalent of the N.K.V.D., known to be there for the sole purpose of spying on the private lives of all the other personnel in the embassy and on what they are doing out of office hours. We must not forget, as my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, Central (Mr. Ian Gilmour) said in his brilliant maiden speech, that McCarthyism came very close to breaking the morale of the American foreign service. It is plain that the Report focuses on certain obvious weaknesses in the system. I think that it is a bad principle that the Foreign Office does not apparently, or did not then, have any say in the matter of who should be appointed as the naval attach's clerk 285 in Moscow or to any other post. I realise that the Foreign Office could not be expected to know much about the personnel in the Admiralty or who the candidates were likely to be, but I should have thought that it was desirable that the same system of vetting, both negative and positive before the man went to Moscow and after he came back, should be applied to all clerks in Service attach's departments in exactly the same way as it would be applied to any member of the Foreign Service. The second weakness which is clearly brought out in the Report is that the senior members of the staff of the Embassy in Moscow were curiously unaware of the degree of ingratiation which Mikhailski had succeeded in achieving with the junior staff. They should have been more aware of that. To be fair, I realise that this is a good deal easier said than done. It is easy enough in a small post where everybody knows what everybody else is doing to check on that kind of thing. It is not easy in a bigger post unless everybody lives in a compoundand compound existence is, for many obvious reasons, very undesirable. But in big cities like Moscow, where staff are living all over

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the place in different blocks of flats miles apart, it is not as easy to check on this as appears at first sight. It is also true that more notice should have been taken inside the Embassy of the warnings given by the two members of the staff, Miss Wynne and another officer, against Mikhailski's activities. Here again, I can well imagine that the Ambassador must have been in an awful dilemma. No doubt this frequently occurs elsewhere. A careful course must be steered between being too lax, with the vast repercussions which flow therefrom, and perhaps breaking a man's career on gossip alone. It is not always a very easy decision to take. I come now to the other side of the Report. Two Ministers' careers might well have been broken by gossip alone, all of which has been found to be without foundation. Grave charges and insinuations were bandied about, concerning both public and private lives, in a most irresponsible way. The fact that these charges have been found to be completely baseless is not a matter 286 of surprise to any of us who know Lord Carrington and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), whose return to the Front Bench we all welcome. The whole of that smear campaign and the way it was built up leave a somewhat unpleasant taste in the mouth. I come next to the two imprisoned journalists. I should have thought that this was almost a kind of occupational hazard of their profession, and indeed of other professions. I do not subscribe to the theoryI do not think they are asking for itthat they should enjoy an immunity not enjoyed by any other section of the community. I suppose that once in every fifty years or so some doctor or some lawyer might find himself in a position where he felt unable to disclose something which had been said to him in confidence by a patient or by a client, and might well have to suffer the consequences. That would go for a profession of journalism as well. If some of the wilder requests had been acceded to and if there had been no sanction at all against a journalist who refused to disclose his source, we should surely get into the ridiculous position that any journalist could invent anything, however damaging, about anybody in public life, could attribute it to a non-existent source, and suffer no consequences. I do not think that is a situation which any of us in the House would like to see, and I believe that very few people outside would like to see it either. I want, lastly, to say something about Vassall himself. I was very glad that the Leader of the Opposition referred to the rather disgraceful practice by which criminals & time to time sell their reminiscences to newspapers for large sums. Vassall's letters were bought for a sum alleged to be between 6,000 and 7,000. While he is serving his sentence I suppose that money will be wisely invested by some friend of his and it will be a nice little nest egg when he comes out of prison. When he comes out, having served his sentence, he may well be able to sell the story of his life in prison to some other newspaper for a very large sum. Therefore, we have the paradox that at the end of the story Vassall will be infinitely better off than he would have been had he continued as a loyal and honourable 287 civil servant with whatever pension was due to him at the end of his service. If a muddy pool is dredged, the smell is quite unpleasant and all sorts of particles and bits and pieces come to the surface which will not go through the mesh of any sieve. However, when the operation is over it is at least possible to distinguish between the clear water and the polluted water. I think that the whole House ought to be grateful to Lord Radcliffe and to his colleagues for performing the dredging operation. 5.49 p.m. Mr. F. J. Bellenger (Bassetlaw)

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I wish to refer briefly to the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Norfolk, Central (Mr. Ian Gilmour) and to the speech of the Leader of the Liberal Party, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond). Every hon. Member who listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Norfolk, Central will agree that it was a witty but, as the Leader of the Liberal Party said, somewhat provocative speech, which is not usual in maiden speeches. I do not want to answer in the same terms, but I do not think that we ought to let the remarks the hon. Gentleman made pass without saying something. He said that journalists who are supposed to be the watchdogs have nothing very much to bite on and, therefore, imagine all sorts of things. Journalists are under a sense of frustration today as opposed to the days when they were famous reporters of what was going on. Today Foreign Office journalists, or those who make a speciality of foreign affairs, go to the Foreign Office every morning, I believe, and are given a Press briefing. In other words, it is useless for the hon. Gentleman to criticise the Press and reporters if they are not allowed freedom to get their news in every legal way that they possibly can. I do not think that the system of hand-outs and Press briefings which take place in Government Departments nowadays to most of our journalists is a good substitute for the days when journalists, particularly the foreign correspondent of The Times in Paris, was able to report all sorts of things that the public would never hear of under present conditions. I do not agree with the Leader of the Liberal Party that the law of libel is a sufficient safeguard by which a Minister 288 or a Member of the House or, indeed, many other people can establish or reestablish integrity and bona fides. Hon. Members may have seen some correspondence in The Times recently about the time it takes to get an action for libel brought before the courts and the initial expense that has to be incurred in order to bring the case on with all the witnesses. Following up what the hon. Member for Norfolk, Central said about Tribunals, I should have thought that in a case such as the one we have just had and which we are now debating a Select Committee of the House of Commons would have been a more appropriate body to investigate these various matters. After all, one of the Ministers the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith)is a Member of this House and his honour was impugned. What better body to sit in judgment on him than the House or a Select Committee of the House? Then there is the case of the First Lord of the Admiralty, about which I shall have something to say in a few moments. I have sent a note to the hon. Member for Hillhead telling him that I intend to refer to him. Long before the Tribunal had reported, hon. Members and a much wider circle than that had acquitted the hon. Member of any improper relations, as the Report makes clear. However, having said that, I am bound to say this. I look with a certain amount of alarm at the free and easy way in which Ministers of the Crown can deal with junior civil servants. As it turns out, the company that Mr. Vassall was keeping was quite different company from that which the Minister was accustomed to keep, and, unfortunately, a certain amount of mud stuck to the hon. Member for Hillhead, partly for that reason and partly, I am bound to saydo not let us be squeamish about thisbecause of the gossip which emanated not only outside in the Press, but inside this building. It is a strange coincidence, as the Leader of the Liberal Party said, that the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. Tapsell) could have that dinner party quite casually and discuss the matters which were discussed and which the journalist admitted he did not believe. If hon. Members lend themselves to that 289 sort of gossip, it is small wonder that even under the Lobby code of secrecy it spreads wider and, as in this case, spreads outside the House.

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Mr. Rees-Davies In the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. Tapsell), would it not be fair to say that until Boyd-Maunsell arrived at the dinner my hon. Friend did not know what the journalist was going to say and after the dinner he went straight to the Chief Whip and reported it? It is fair to say that, is it not? Mr. Bellenger I do not know whether it is quite so, but I accept it from the hon. Gentleman that the hon. Member for Nottingham, West knew nothing whatever about what the journalist was going to have dinner with him for. When I accept engagements to have dinner, either with journalists or others, I have a shrewd idea of what the occasion will be about. It could hardly have been a purely social engagement. However, the hon. Member has been in the House, listening to this debate, and perhaps he can explain to the House a little more about what did happen at that dinner party. We ate entiled to know, because arising out of that dinner party certain things followed. The most important thing, in my opinion, was the resignation which the hon. Member for Hillhead offered to the Prime Minister, which the Prime Minister accepted, whereas I should have thought that he would not have accepted it until after the Tribunal had reported and not before. Mr. Wigg Surely my right hon. Friend is wrong in his dates. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) had resigned before the dinner party. My right hon. Friend seems to have overlooked the fact that, when the Prime Minister was told that there was a possibility of the hon. Member for Hillhead "doing a Pontecorvo", what the Prime Minister then did was to act as if the situation was in doubt, but he took no precautions whatever to safeguard against the possibility of it being true. In other words, the hon. Member for Hillhead had resigned and the Prime Minister then Wed this irresponsible tittle-tattle as an excuse for setting up the Tribunal. Mr. Bellenger My recollection is not the same as my hon. Friend's about the 290 date of the resignation, but perhaps he is right. I see that the hon. Member for Nottingham, West has returned to the Chamber. My point is this. The Calle-tattleworse than that; the slanderous conversation, in my opinion which took place at that dinner party formed the basis for the Tribunal, but, in effect, it did a great injustice to the hon. Member for Hillhead. I cannot put all the blame on the Press. I put some of it on hon. Members. We know the gossip that goes on in the various precincts of the House. Much of it is harmless, but some of it, as on this occasion, is very dangerous indeed. So much for the Report as it affects the hon. Member for Hillhead. The fact that a Minister can say that one of his clerks has "a screw loose" and pass it off just like that and can associate with him on the very easy terms that he did is something that having had experience of Ministerial office, cannot understand. I come to the security aspect. Whatever the Report says in its conclusions, it stands out a mile not only that our Whitehall security arrangements were sketchy, to say the least butsomething far more dangerousin Moscow they were almost criminally negligent. I want to refer to three points which, I hope, other hon. Members will not gloss over. If they disagree, I hope that they will answer them. If they are of the same opinion as myself, I hope that they will say so. The three points which are as clear as daylight and which involve the then Ambassador. Sir William Hayter, are glossed over in a whitewashing summary at the end of the Report. I do not think that Parliament should accept this. I have an Amendment on the Order Paper which, I understand, will not be called, so that we shall not have an

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opportunity to express cur opinion by a vote, but what I do say is that the Ambassador, Sir William Hayter, who is whitewashed in the Report, was guilty of more than negligence. I take, for instance, what was said by his own naval attach, Captain Bennett. I have the references in the Report. if hon. Members want them, although I imagine that they have all read them. Here was Vassall's immediate superior who said, right at the start, 291 that he was a homosexual, or, at least, had a homosexual tendency. The Report says somewhere that, if this had been known or established, he would have been sent home. Apparently, in the eyes of the tribunal, homosexuals, at least behind the Iron Curtain, are not the best sort of people to put in positions of that kind where they may be handling secret documents. But we are told in the Report that the Ambassador, when he was told about it by the naval attach who went to see him, laughed it off; he thought that it was a joke. I wish to say nothing about the private relations of these abnormal gentlemen. I am at present concerned only with their public position. It seems that, too often, in high places these peculiarities or abnormalities, to call them such, are shrugged off or laughed off with a simper. In my view, when they affect the security and safety of our State, as we now know that they do, it is criminal, or criminally negligent, for an Ambassador to take no action, as Sir William Hayter took no action. Commander Anthony Courtney (Harrow, East) I wonder whether it will help the right hon. Gentleman's argument on that point if he knowsthis does not appear in the Reportthat the Ambassador was, for several years before his appointment to Moscow, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Chiefs of Staff and was, therefore, in the best position of any member of the Foreign Service, or, indeed, of all in this country to know the real extent of the menace facing him in Moscow. Mr. Bellenger I do not know about that. I am speaking purely as a man of the world, as a Member of Parliament, as we all are, used to all sorts of strange things happening in our constituencies and elsewhere. I do not gloss over, as the Report has done, the negligence of Sir William Hayter in doing nothing. There is the case of Miss Wynne, the typist, who raised the alarm quite soundly. It is said in the Report that two other people had been sent home. For what, we do not know. We cannot say whether it was for any similar occurrence. But here was somebody in the Embassy doing, in public-spirited 292 fashion, what she and all members of the staff had been told to do, that is, to report any strange occurrence. Miss Wynne did report, but nothing happened. I ask right hon. and hon. Members opposite to consider whether there is blame to be attached to the Ambassador at that time. I shall not say too much about this because, obviously, the matter has been hushed up. It has been hushed up in the Report. The Press dare not say too much, but we in Parliament can say just what we think and how this Report strikes us. The only real condemnation in the Report is of Mr. Pennells, a dead man, for whom no evidence whatever was given. If the Tribunal is to apportion any blame, it should apportion some to the living as well as to the dead. But this has not been done, and I submit to the House that the Report is not a satisfactory document. Indeed, it is more than one-sided. I make no comment about it being unfair, but it seems to me that the Tribunal, however eminent its members, was more concerned to judge the dead than the quick. What is to be done about the future? Obviously, in the mind of a good many right hon. and hon. Members there is real concern about the security issue. The Prime Minister's

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speech today was, in many respects, a somewhat complacent effort and he had in mind an objective rather different from that which many of us have. Perhaps the Prime Minister was right in his approach. He was certainly right in endeavouring to reestablish the bona fides of the hon. Member for Hillhead, although, as I have said, no hon. Member, long before the Tribunal reported, dreamt for a moment that there was any truth in the serious allegations about the hon. Gentleman. But we are concerned with security. We heard the Prime Minister say today that there will be quite a few more cases coming along. That is a serious statement to make. It seems to suggest that our security, even after this affair, after the Romer Report and the earlier Radcliffe Report, is not watertight. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said, the public generally are deeply concerned. There is a feeling outside, which has been expressed or hinted at one has only to read the article by Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge in this 293 morning's Daily Heraldthat these personal abnormalities seem to occur in high places. Vassall was suitable to dine at the Ambassador's table, but he was known as "Vera" to all the junior staff. What does this indicate to hon. Members who know how many beans make five in this very material world? All this sweet innocence at the Embassy was in marked contrast to the more practical approach of Mr. Mikhailski. Of course, he was planted there. I wonder how many homosexuals we plant in the Russian Embassy here? Have we an agency here to supply these most accommodating gentlemen? Of course not. Russian security is far tighter than British security. I say to the hon. Member for Windsor (Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe) that, when the battle is going on day in and day out between the Western nations and the enemy, no holds are barred to them, only to us, apparently, because we are too gentlemanly, or too ignorant to prescribe the right security methods. I put a specific point to the Government. It is quite evident that a new pattern is now emerging among spies. In earlier days, the spy was the glamorous Mata Hari sort of woman who used to get her man. Now, it seems that persons with weak tendencies, tendencies towards homosexuality, are easy prey to the Russians, who seem to specialise in this sort of trap. The Tribunal suggests somewhere that it took it for granted that, if Vassall's character had been detected and it had been known that he was a homosexual, he would have been whisked off home at once. I put this question to the Leader of the House who, I understand, is to reply to the debate. In the vetting procedures which are to apply in the future, will he ensure specifically that those with homosexual tendencies are kept away from our foreign embassies or, at least, from positions of importance in those embassies so that they cannot fall into a trap set by those who are already waiting for them? This is an important question. The House probably knows my views on the matter generally, and I do not wish to elaborate them now. Whatever may be said for toleration towards those who have these tendencies, the fact remains that they are security risks. What does the right hon. Gentleman intend to do? This is what the public 294 have at the back of their mind. They have heard too much about it. They are beginning to wonder whether there is an element in what they would call generically the "Establishment" which can get away with it while men in the workshops and industrial establishments who are dealing with secret weapons or processes are subject to much more rigid investigation and vetting if they happen to have Communist tendencies or associations. I say nothing about that. When we are dealing with the security of the State, we have to take every precaution we can and we must exclude people who are a danger to the State.

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When I first started work, I went to the General Post Office as a boy messenger. Although I was not very old at the time, I remember clearly to this day how I had to go to Bow Street and swear an oath and be subject to investigation into my antecedents before I was accepted for service n the Post Office in those days. I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that there has been considerable slackness in this matter and I ask him to give a specific answer to my question tonight. Now, the position of the First Lord of the Admiralty. It used to be a custom that, if things went wrong in a Department, the Minister took the blame. He did the honourable thing and resigned. The hon. Member for Hillhead resigned. The First Lord is still there. I do not say that he knew that there was a spy in the Admiralty, another spy. The Tribunal said that he did not, and I accept it. Houghton, who was said to be a liar whose word was not acceptable to the Tribunal or any court, knew that there was another one there and said so. This may be passed off with a shrug and the comment that he was such a liar that no one could believe him. But there have been certain suspicious happenings. There are one or two other incidents which have been investigated and hushed up. What about the Admiralty messenger who was trussed up and murdered? The murderer has never been found. All sorts of suggestions are being made, some of which, of course, the Tribunal dismissed. In view of what the Prime Minister said this afternoon, I am still wondering where the other eases are coming from. The First Lord should take the blame and resign. His Department has been at 295 fault not only on this occasion, but on previous occasions, and he should do the decent thing, like the hon. Member for Hillhead, and resign from his office. Because Ministers are responsible under their warrant to the Crown and to Parliament, we do not in this House criticise civil servants, although the Tribunal has exposed many weaknesses in our Civil Service and it was not afraid to say that one civil servant, now dead, was remiss and lacking in judgement. If this be true of civil servantswe cannot criticise themwhat about Ministers under whom they serve? In my view, the First Lord should resign his office, and I hope that there will be others who will say so as clearly as I have. I do not know at the moment what to think about the Prime Minister's suggestion. Obviously, we cannot openly debate the security issue in this House. There are many aspects of this case we shall never know. I shall be interested to see the minutes of evidence when published, since perhaps much more may be disclosed in the questions and answers of witnesses. But we shall not know how Vassall was detected. It would be interesting to know this because we could thereby perhaps see the associations of the trail laid between him and others, possibly still in the Admiralty. The Tribunal says that there speculation must and. But it will not end. This will be talked about fox a long time, and when the next spy turns up I will not be surprised if it is a matter of such importance that the Opposition puts down a Motion of censure on the Government. They have not done so today, and after the speech of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Oposition I wonder why not. It is not sufficient for the Prime Minister merely to talk to the Leader of the Opposition, as he did after this Report was published. There are ex-Ministers of the Crown here Privy Councillorswho have had a great deal to do with intelligence matters especially in the Service Departments. From time to time, some of them should be allowed access in some way or anotherwhether in ways suggested by the Prime Minister or not I do not knowto these matters, because then they might be able to put before the Prime Minister, who is pri- 296 marily responsible for security, certain points which he would not look at if put across the Floor of the House, as he would not today accept my right hon. Friend's suggestion of a Select Committee to consider security matters.

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I ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to give serious attention to some of these matters which cannot be discussed openly, but which are causing great apprehension and perturbation in the minds of those who have served as Ministers of the Crown and who know the possibilities of serious trouble. There, I must leave the matter for tonight. I am not satisfied with this Report. I think that it is a whitewashing Report. It is onesided inasmuch as it criticises a dead man and says nothing against those others who gave evidenceor did not give evidence because of their convenient covering up. For that reason, I put down my Amendment, which I regret is not being called. Nevertheless, I have expressed the motives behind my Amendment even if I am unable to get the House to vote on it. 6.18 p.m. Sir Richard Thompson (Croydon, South) The important thing about our consideration of the Report is to get the conclusions right which we draw from it and to act on them. First of all, before we come to the conclusions, we should consider the very wide terms of reference which were laid down in this case. In the four principal terms involved, it would be fair to say that the allegations referred to in the first and in the second are wholly disproved by the Report and I do not propose to say anything about them. The third one referred to any breaches of security arrangements which took place; The Report was, I would say, less reassuring on this than on the first and second terms. The fourth, any neglect of duty by persons directly responsible for Vassall's employment and conduct, and for his being treated as suitable far employment on secret work", is the one on which criticism in this House has been mainly focussed. It is the section of the Report dealing with this aspect which I think is of most material concern to us in considering the future. 297 Having read the Report twice, and having considered its implications very carefully, I would say that the general conclusion is that the Tribunal was broadly satisfied with what one might call the system. It did not say that the system worked perfectly, and it drew attention to a number of cases where it did not. But it drew the conclusion that the system was, on the whole, satisfactory and that when it failed, or just faltered this was attributable to human failure Mr. Niall MacDermot (Derby, North) Can the hon. Gentleman quote one sentence from the Report which indicates that the Tribunal thought that the security system in the Admiralty or in Moscow was adequate at that time? Sir R. Thompson No. I am talking about the Report as a whole. I readily concede that one can pick out particular sentences criticising particular people and particular actions. But on the whole it is fair to say that the criticism is directed more at errors of judgment and appreciation in particular cases by particular people than at the arrangements as a whole. I will have more to say later if the hon. and learned Gentleman will bear with me. Like practically every other hon. Member who has spoken today, I very much regret that the only person who has been singled out by name for blame in all this is a dead man. I make no apology for mentioning the matter again because his brother is a constituent of mine who came to see me, rightly distressed and concerned about this aspect of the Report. All of us in this House find it very distasteful to levy criticism against a man who cannot reply, especially when we consider the wealth of evidence which those who were called and were able to defend themselves were able to deploy. I hope that Mr. Pennells's relatives will feel that although he was the only one singled out by name at the Tribunal, many of us do not consider that he was solely at fault.

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Mr. Wigg Twice the hon. Gentleman has said that Mr. Pennells is the only one mentioned by name. He cannot have read the Report. It is not true that Mr. Pennells is the only person mentioned 298 by name. There are others, including some who are also dead. Sir R. Thompson I am basing myself on the conclusions at the end of the Report. The first of them refers to Mr. Pennells, and that is the one I have in mind. If the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) goes through those conclusions, he will not find anyone else mentioned by name in this critical manner. One of the things which is particularly distasteful is that Mr. Pennells has not been able to defend himself, while other people in much higher positions, where there has been a doubt, have received the benefit of it. often after they have been able to defend themselves in cross-examination. There may be no way round this, but I am bound to say that it is something which to many of us makes the conclusions of the Report distasteful. This is no reflection on the competence of the Tribunal. It heard sworn evidence from a great number of people. One day perhaps that evidence will be published and we shall he able to form our own judgment on it. Nevertheless, if, as the Tribunal says, Mr. Pennells was remiss and lacking in judgment can we really be sure that the same should not De said of senior embassy officials in Moscow? There are seventeen conclusions in the Summary of (Findings of the Report. Four of them offer some criticism of the existing arrangements or of the people who operated them. These are No. 1, No. 3, No. 7 and No. 11. No. 1 refers to Mr. Pennells and I shall not go over that again. No. 3 and No. 7, however, refer to certain procedures in the Moscow Embassy which were in force at the time Vassall was actually employed there. No. 11 refers to a failure in the positive vetting procedure, attributable to not making sufficient inquiry into the facts of Vassall's service while he was in Moscow. So, omitting No. 1, the remaining points of criticism all go back to what happened, and was not sufficiently appreciated, at the time when Vassall was serving in the Moscow Embassy. Taken together certain things were happening in the Embassy which seem almost incredible. After all, Moscow is the centre of the Communist world. It is the place from which all the subversion 299 of which we have heard during the debate emanates. It seems amazing that there should have been so many grounds for criticism of security procedures in the most sensitive place in the world, where one would have hoped that our drill was absolutely as perfect as it could be. I touch briefly on these failures which have been noted by the Report. There was failure to check on the associations between the staff and local people I realise how difficult that is, but, considering all we know of the systematic and determined and consistant efforts of the Russians to corrupt people who are suspected of character weakness in one way or another, it seems odd that exceptional care should not have been taken, especially in Moscow, where they were all living in dispersed quarters, to try to see that in particular junior and inexperienced and recently arrived staff were not subjected to this kind of pressure. It also seems astonishing to persist with the employment of Mikhailski. The Report says that this man was under some suspicion. That must have been generally known. One can see reasons for keeping him on. All staff had to be accepted through an official Russian agency and it might take months to get some one else if he were sacked. Indeed, one might never get someone else. Nevertheless, it cannot have been good for the security of the Embassy, or for the morale of the staff, to know that a man at any rate under some suspicion was still being kept on. Then there was the failure to follow

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up Miss Wynne's report. That really seems to have got completely lost in the long grass. Nobody really did nything about it. Another thing I find difficult to understand is the absence at the material time of a fulltime security officer based on Moscow in the Embassy. To be fair, I realise that this has now been remedied. But it seems extraordinary that at that time we were apparently relying on periodic visits from someone based on Warsaw and not permanently resident in the post. Then there were the obvious doubts which Captain Bennett had about Vassall. According to the Report, Captain Bennett seems to have changed his mind about this man on a number of occasions. It is easy to believe that he could not quite 300 make up his mind as to whether Vassall was a good security risk or not. He started by thinking him indolent, incompetent, and a bit of a nuisance. Then he formed a better impression. This was followed by third thoughts. One way or another, in reading this Report, one can find half a dozen occasions on which a contradictory view of Vassall was expressed. That can only add up to the fact that the doubt in Captain Bennett's mind was quite genuine. It seems most astonishing that when the security vetting arrangements took place on Vassall's return from Moscow, someone who could have spoken very frankly about the man, who could have said something really material about him, who could have explained why there were doubts about his loyalty or competence, was not consulted. That is why it is a little hard to understand why Mr. Pennells, an honest, hard-working Admiralty official with a jolly good recordto which, I am glad to say, the Report makes referenceshould incur criticism, while this less-defined but surely less defensible matter in the Embassy, with so many pointers ignored and so many steps not taken, should apparently be accepted as one of those things which, in the difficult life of the Moscow Embassy, must be accepted. In security matters like this, a suspected man such as Vassall should never get the benefit of the doubt. That may seem uncharitable, but when the country's security is at stake we should not hesitate. The Press did not come out at all well in this affair. It was not the subject of inquiry, but it was the inspiration of it, and it has come out of it very badly. Again and again, we find that reports put over as fact proved on examination to be based entirely on hearsay, gossip and, in some cases, imagination. It would come as a very great shock to members of the public if that section of the Report from paragraph 222 to the end could be generally circulated and made available. It would surprise them very much to realise what fantastic stories were put about at this time, on what flimsy evidence, and with what damaging consequences. This is not a light matter, but I sometimes think that those responsible far the conduct of the Tribunal did not go 301 after the right people. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) said he thought it the duty of the Press owners to speak up. I wish they had spoken up more in this case. I believe that those who ran the Tribunal should, instead of trying to get information out of the smaller frythe reporters, with a deadline to meet, a story to pursue, and the rest of ithave said to the proprietors and managing editors, "You are the people who, if you wish, can release Mr. " whatever his name was, "from any bond of secrecy under which he may feel himself to be held." I believe that we might have got a better Report if those concerned had gone after the big fish, and not the tiddlers in the pond. I was very interested in what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said about how the machinery might be made better for the future, and the Leader of the Opposition put forward some quite thoughtful addenda to what was originally said. I am sure that the House will wish to apply itself to this subject very seriously. The present arrangement is

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not satisfactory. The tribunal procedure, thank heavens, is not invoked very often, and we have not yet found a better method. But a better method I am sure we must find, and that is something to which Parliament as a whole should apply its mind. 6.34 p.m. Mr. George Wigg (Dudley) The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson) was not correct in saying that Mr. Pennells is the only person who is criticised in the Report. The security officers, Mr. Sherwood and Mr. James, are criticised for the way in which positive vetting was carried out. But perhaps the most wounding thing appears paragraph 185 of the Report, which deals with the case of Mr. Lewin. He is introduced into the Report for no obvious reason, but it is said of him that his relation with Vassal] was "a somewhat equivocal one". Then follow words that do not. I think, need have been used, except for a specific purpose. The paragraph adds that the relationship apparently did not involve any homosexual practices. The word "apparently" is about as condemnatory as it could be in relation to a civil servant who is still serving 302 The Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. C. Ian Orr-Ewing) The hon. Member said that those words referred to a civil servant who it still serving, but the man in question retired some years ago. Mr. Wigg Mr. Lewin's reputation in retirement is no less precious to him. Mr. Pennells is dead, Mr. Regan and Mr. James are dead. I have the greatest sympathy with the anxiety of Mr. Pennells' daughter to protect her father's honour when she thinks that it is attacked, but the time to have said these things is not the present. The voice of the hon. Member for Croydon, South might have had some effect if he had joined it with the voices of my hon. Friends the Members for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot) and for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) and myself when, on 14th November, we condemned this procedure for what it wasa shabby, charlatan, political trick by a Prime Minister who had been driven into a corner by gross errors of judgment. I supported the Prime Minister when he set up the Romer and Radcliffe Committees in 1961, and I still supported his action when he appointed the Cunningham Committee. If he is responsible for security he is right to inform himself on the facts, and he can do it in any way he chooses. As the matter arose in the Services, he could have set up a court of inquiry, but at the time of the Vassall trial he set up the Cunningham Committee. He did that on 23rd October, 1962, but there was suspicion in the Admiralty by the middle of 1962 that another spy was at work and I suggest that had Sir Charles Cunningham and his colleagues got to work as soon as that suspicion arose even the spies now in the pipeline might have been caught a little earlier. Let us go back still further to the committee set up after the Lonsdale case. Whatever may be true about the First Lord of the Admiralty on this issueand I am prepared to admit that the noble Lord's honour is completely untarnished, and that it was perfectly proper for him not to knowthat does not apply in the Lonsdale case. Mr. Houghton and Miss Gee did not take out just the odd document. At the weekend they moved out the whole central registry to the Soviet Embassythe lot. 303 What did the Prime Minister do? These people were arrested in January, 1961, but did the Prime Minister set a board of inquiry, or gather round him a group of civil servants immediately after the facts were known in order to establish the facts? No. He waited until the political heat was turned on, and then appointed the Romer Committee. But before the Romer Committee had reported, Blake was caught. The Prime Minister was then in a little difficultythese committees breed like rabbits. He therefore set up a

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more eminent committee, the Radcliffe Committee, before the Romer Committee had reported, and the Radcliffe Committee produced its Report in April, 1962. I want to remind the House of the background against which we are talking. This Conservative Government have been in power for twelve years, and they have spent, including this year's estimates, 18,400 million on defence. Security expenditure is about 8 million a year and, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said this afternoon, there is another 4 million per annum for what, I understand, is called the "slush fund", which is drawn from by various Departmentsthat is, about 12 million a year. Against the background of this expenditure, let us now ask why the Government have such a wide range of security classification. I have undergone the discipline of reading Mr. McNamara's report, presented to the House of Representatives on 30th January and covering United States defence expenditure of 51,000 million dollars over five years. Every Service and every weapon is examined. If any hon. Gentleman opposite wants to rouse the bosom of the Primrose League by referring to the mercenary attitude of the United States about Skybolt, well, Skybolt is examined in detail. He can get his facts right by reading Mr. McNamara. We have to compare that with the fiddling document produced by the Minister of Defence as an explanation of our defence policy at the present time. Thus, the reason for the wide range of security classification is that, at all costs, the House of Commons and the British people must not know the truth about our defenceswe are weak, we are powerless. If I use an expression that 304 I have used before it is because it is one with which I am familiar. Under a Conservative Administration we will spend 18,400 million on defenceand we could not knock the skin off a rice pudding. It is a basic truth. Thus, we have tight security classification to protect facts which have awkward political implications. The first thing to be done is to narrow the area of classification. That was one of the recommendations of the Radcliffe Report of April, 1962. Yet this afternoon the Prime Minister said not a word about security classification. The wider the security classification, the greater the risk of penetration. Thus, over the last decade we have had case after case of penetration of our vital secrets. Had the hon. Member for Croydon, South, read the Report with any care he would not only have dashed to the defence of Mr. Pennellsand I do not deprecate thatbut would have found the facts with which to defend him. When we read paragraph 159, which discusses the vital area of positive vetting, we find that the instructions that have to be obeyed are not Service or security instructions, but the instructions of the Treasury, and when Mr. Pennells was called upon in 1954 to examine the problem of six vacancies in naval attache's office he suggested that married men should be sent behind the Iron Curtain, not only because they would be more contented, but because the Foreign Office had said that the greatest risk of penetration came not only through black market operations, but from relations of men with women and women with men and from men with men. Mr. Pennell's suggestion was rejected for reasons of economy. For the same reason, there was no security officer at the Embassy in Moscow. For the same reason, when Mr. Vassall's turn came for positive vetting, he was not positively vetted until months later. Positive vetting is a very costly business. We never begrudge the money we vote for defence and we must see that it is spent wisely. But it is very short-sighted to economise falsely and without regard to the consequences. We cannot run away from these problems. One thing that we must ask is why we have got ourselves in this jam. Again, it is primarily not only because we have a Tory

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Administration, but be- 305 cause we think in Tory terms. Let us go back to the Burgess and Maclean incident. In 1955, the present Prime Minister, and I am one of his greatest admirersnot like hon. Members opposite, who admire him only in terms of what he can give them; I admire him when he is right and condemn him when he is wrong, and it is a matter of great regret to me that the causes of my congratulation daily grow less was impeccable. He said, "You cannot have the credit without taking the blame, and Ministers must be responsible". In the same speech, in 1955, he claimed that positive vetting had been introduced in all Departments where it was necessary and the Government then set up a Committee of Privy Councillors to define future security policy. Then, in 1956 came the report of the Privy Councillors' Committee. I warn hon. Members that whatever they do they must beware of Privy Councillors, especially when they have been out of office for any length of time. They become verbose and pompous, and they no longer believe in revolutionary ideas. If we want to see where the greatest harm has been done to our security service we shall see that it was in the findings of the Privy Councillors in March, 1956. They included two right hon. Gentlemen from this side of the House. It is difficult to find in the whole of the pages of the English language bigger nonsense than the recommendation contained in paragraph 4: The Conference point out that, whereas once the main risk to be guarded against was espionage by foreign Powers carried out by professional agents, today the chief risks are presented by Communists and by other persons who, for one reason or other, are subjected to Communist influence". That was clearly believed by the political innocents who place before their name "right honourable Gentleman". They believed this, and it was a doctrine which was acceptable to the thick heads on the Government side of the House. But what a recommendation to make! I have here a copy of the security questionnaire which a civil servant has to answer. I am willing to lend copies of it to hon. Members. It consists of four pages, but almost two are involved in filling up questions 14 and 15in filling up in exactly the same way whether one is a member of the Communist Party or the Fascist Party. It 306 is subdivided in each case into five subheads. It is expected that any member of the Communist or Fascist Party likely to engage in espionage will fill that in truthfully. This is the way in which we work. I have managed to get hold of a copy of the security investigation data for sensitive positions in the United States. When we come to this vital issue, one question is asked, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party or any Communist or Fascist organisation?" The man is asked for three references. We want two. We want information over a period of five years, and the person has to give his present address and character referees and to state his occupation. In the American document he is asked to give all the schools that he has attended right back over all his life. He is asked to give particulars about his mother, his father, his brother and his sister, and he is asked to give not only the occupations in which he has been employed but the names of the persons who have been responsible for his supervision. I am not arguing in favour one way or the other, but I remind the House that under paragraph XIV(2) of the Polaris sales agreementand it is astounding that we have found this out by a side windsimilar positive vetting complexes are required as take place in the United States. We were not told this at the time of the Polaris agreement. Trade unionists in the House who are not greatly interested in defence were not told it. It reads: The Government of the United Kingdom will undertake such security measures

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as are necessary to afford classified articles, services, documents or information substantially the same degree of protection afforded by the Government of the United States in order to prevent unauthorised disclosure or compromise. Clearly, if we are to have the Polaris agreement den, at some time or other, we must have a vetting complex here which is similar to that in the United States. I will leave that to sink in. Mr. Emrys Hughes (South Ayrshire) I have not overlooked that point. This is why I shall make a speech on the Adjournment about it tomorrow. Mr. Wigg I am delighted to hear that, and I hope to be present either to interrupt or to support the hon. Member. 307 I come back to Vassall. We read in the Report that Vassall was weak, and not intelligent. He was a snob, he was of good family, and he was a member of the Bath Club and had been a member of the Conservative Club. The last two facts were sufficient to get him through positive vetting. I will not go as far as my right hon. Friend, but I think that these were the decisive factors. They were brought out in the positive vetting section, where the officer was Mr. E. S. Sherwood. It was stated that he was a member of the Bath Club. We are told that Vassall was a practising homosexual from his youth and that he practised it while in Moscow. I am not thinking only of Soviet terms. He practised it among diplomatic circles in Moscow. This does not mean to say that it was in our Embassy. Mr. Rees-Davies There is no evidence whatever that any of the diplomatic colony were engaged in it. It was suggested that he engaged in this practice with those whom he met through the Russians. Mr. Wigg We have no evidence. We are told that he was a practising homosexual in his youth and that he probably practised it at the Admiralty and that he practised it in Moscow. These are facts. The only point I want to make is that he was certainly a homosexual since youth. if there had been a positive vetting in relation to the schools which he had attended, and if there had been an inquiry into his Service record, beyond a shadow of doubt some of the question marks here would have arisen. It is clear, if one reads between the lines, and particularly if one reads another section to which I do not want to refer again, that Vassall left Monmouth Grammar School rather suddenly in rather peculiar circumstances. When he came back to London he was employed as a temporary civil servant, and it is equally clear that he took up some old associations. There were many suggestions that these relations continued. I am saying that it is utterly inconceivable that if positive vetting had been carried out with efficiencyI will not make too much of the Bath ClubVassall would not have been discovered. I am not being wise after the event. 308 After the Lansdale case I returned to the House and made a speech on the subject the same night. It was clear that Houghton and Gee were not the people for whom the antiquarian bookshop was being run in Ruislip. It was clear that this was a professional organisation and that professionals were at work. One would have thought that the Admiralty would have been on its toes, particularly after the Ramer Report. If the doctrine of Ministerial responsibility had been accepted, the First Lord would have gone and someone else with a fresh mind would have endeavoured to put the matter right. We are facing a challenge. We can be told of this in rather extravagant terms, like the speeches of the Civil Lord, who, I am glad to say, is leaving the Government Front Bench and is returning to business, or it can be done in the more responsible way of the

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Prime Minister. The challenge affects us all, whether we are on the Liberal, Conservative or Labour benches, because if it goes wrong we all meet the consequences. For this reason my approach to defence has always been to try to find the largest area of agreement and to seek a common purpose, if possible. This was where the Prime Minister went wrong. In the case of the Romer Committee and the Radcliffe Committee the Prime Minister consulted Mr. Gaitskell, who told us about it in the debate on 14th November last. The Prime Minister consulted Mr. Gaitskell about the terms of reference and about who should be on the Committee. He showed him the Report. Then, for some reason, the Prime Minister suddenly took fright and altered his line. He belatedly set up the Cunningham Committee and then, without a word to Hugh Gaitskell, he appointed the Tribunal under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act as if he had not been asked to do so by the Labour Party Front Bench. I do not expect the Prime Minister to admit that he was wrong, but happily this is a great strength of the Prime Ministerit appears that we are now back to the preTribunal policy. He is consulting my right hon. Friend. Perhaps, in future, we may proceed on the basis of its being a national problem and not something which the Prime Minister should exploit for his personal advantage. 309 Let us look at the problem which must have presented itself to the Prime Minister at that dramatic moment when the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. Tapsell) broke in and told him of this little dinner party at which it had been suggested that a Minister of the Crown was about to "do a Pontecorvo." If the Prime Minister, for one split second, believed that the hon. Member was anything but a tittle-tattle and half-witted he would have said, "My heavens. Here is a Minister who, only a few days ago, was a Service Minister, and you tell me that he is about to 'do a Pontecorvo'". Surely his bounden duty would have been then to impound his passport, as should have been done in the case of Burgess and Maclean, and to obtain from him an assurance to report his movements, or put him under surveillance until such time as the issue had been decided. But, in fact, as my right hon. Friend and I have tried to point out, the Prime Minister decided to have a Tribunal to ascertain something the nature of which we are not very sure. The Prime Minister talked about charges. But there were no charges. One suggestion was that someone would "do a Pontecorvo." Clearly, the Prime Minister did not believe the nonsense of the hon. Member for Nottingham, Westnot a word of it. Nor should he have done. He took it for what it was and said, "If this is the game, now is the time for a counter-attack." The Tribunal was the counter-attack. Some of my hon. Friends were very cross with us because we wanted not an exchange of platitudes when the Tribunal was set up, but a debate on the consequences and a discussion of the issues involved. The Tribunal was conceived in political expediency. Most of the Tribunals which had been held, almost without exception, had done someone some injustice. I remember the brilliant and moving speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale, when he talked about what had happened to Sir Alfred Butt. Somebody always suffers as a result of this procedure. We therefore said, "This is a political issue. If you raise a political issue, send it to a Select Committee". The Prime Minister would not do that, and the Motion was put on the Order Paper in such a way that we could not even amend it except by a manuscript 310 Amendment. It was all done hurriedly, as an expedient which had to be forced through quickly in order to attack my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brawn), to discredit the Labour Partybecause the Prime Minister was in increasing difficulties with his own partyand to attack the Press. Not only am I interested in defence, but I undertook a discipline which, I think, was not undertaken by other hon. Members. I went to the Tribunal. What happened on the first

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day? On the first day of that Tribunal its character was altered completely by a brilliant speech and submission by Mr. Gerald Gardiner, who put it to the Tribunal that these were political terms of reference. Amongst the Tribunal's terms of reference were to inquire into any other allegations which have been or may be brought to their attention". In other words, the Tribunal was required to dignify into an investigation status every piece of gossip that anyone cared to bring to its attention. Any anonymous letter had to be examined. Mr. Gardiner pointed out that the Attorney-General had appeared in this situation as an actor on the political scene. He then turned up for the Tribunal and discharged his task honourably, leading the Tribunal; but how could he do the two jobs? Mr. Gerald Gardiner said that if it was to be a political Tribunal he would demand, on behalf of those he represented, to be heard. At this point I pay tribute to the wisdom of Lord Radcliffe, and I defend the Report. It was a job which reflects great credit on three brilliant lawyers. I am not really competent to say a great deal on this subject, because I know virtually nothing about the law. But they ascertained the facts and I think that Lord Radcliffe is a very wise man. On the night of 21st March I said exactly that, and I say it again now. Thus the Tribunal, although it was concerned for wrong reasons, has done a job. It is, indeed, the English way of dealing with such matters. It often happens and we should be proud of it. For here was something with a rather nasty overtone and then when it went to the Tribunal Lord Radcliffe immediately grasped the matter and saw the nonsense 311 in it. He refused Mr. Gerald Gardiner's application and from then on there was only one victim leftthe Press. But the Press has had it hot and strong and it should be realisedand I hope that Pressmen will note thisthat however bad it reads in print, it sounds far worse to hear it. When I buy a newspaper I do so in an endeavour to buy the opinions of the men who write in it and not what they have picked up from the earlier editions or the papers of the night before. But let us bear in mind that they are often forced into this situation by the actions of the Government. I mentioned earlier it was a slip of the tongue, because I referred to today's issuethe Daily Mail of yesterday. In it were details of the Prime Minister's proposals about a spy tribunal. How did it get there? Did it come as a result of the presence of a Daily Mail reporter in Admiralty House or did the Prime Minister or one of his acolytes tell him? Exactly the same thing happened when the Romer Tribunal was set up. It should be realised that this sort of thing puts an intolerable strain on other journalists who are not the recipients of leaks because they, too, have their living to earn and, tonight, I want to defend two journalistsMr. Hoskins and Mr. Waller. I am not their public relations officer, but I want to come to their assistance. I do not think that Mr. Hoskins's story was any revelation. He was merely writing what any intelligent observer would have spotted at the Lonsdale Tribunal. But he, like Mr. Wailer, did a useful service in focussing attention on the facts. I went to the Lonsdale trial and, as a result of my visit, forced a debate in the House. I was absolutely certain that there was someone else at work. I said to the Leader of my party when the Lonsdale case came up and when the Vassall case came up, "You can be certain that within six months there will be another one." Our security service lacks direction and at some points is an amateur organisation controlled to its vitals by the Treasury and run in terms of political expediency to meet the needs of the Government. There were the rumours which spread in connection with the Secretary of State 312 for War. I raised this matter in the House and I did it after much thought and consultation. But I take the responsibility for what I did. I did not ask anyone's permission. Nor did I

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make any allegations, but when one is the recipient of certain information one must consider what to do with it. If one goes to the Minister in question the chances are that one will be brushed off. So in my wisdomfor what it was worthI came to the House and asked the Front Bench opposite either to deny or to investigate the rumours. Obviously in these sort of matters we cannot know the whole truth because, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said, the first requirement of the security services is secrecy. In some cases it might be dangerous to say anything at all. But with these rumours it was important that they should be denied or investigated. What was it all about? The personal conduct of a Ministerany Minister in the personal sense is his responsibility which he shares with his colleagues. I have nothing to say about him, or about that. But when one deals with a case like this it is a different matter. I have in mind the case of Commander Ivanov, the Soviet Assistant Naval Attach, who came to this country and assiduously cultivated certain classes of the more diseased sections of our society, became a skilful bridge player within eighteen months and played bridge for money with some of the best players in London. I will not guarantee the amount, but it was costing him between 20 and 50 a week. He drove expensive cars, was expensively dressed and visited what are known as the "hot spots". I am relating what I have been told. Ivanov visited places where people game for high stakes. It someone asks me to believeand I take the trouble to verify my factsthat that officer is acting other than under instructions, I do not believe it. I did not believe it when I saw Mr. Lonsdale in the dock at the Old Bailey. He was the most English of characters. He behaved like an English officer. He had a high conception of duty and was "taking the rap". I believe that Ivanov was doing exactly the same thing. It must be obvious to everyone that stories of this kind spread far beyond 313 this country. They are carried in newspapers throughout the world and in many countries there is speculation on them. During the last Recess I went abroad and the first questions put to me upon leaving the plane were about these sort of stories. It is, therefore, in terms of the honour of this country as well as the security of Ministers and the Prime Minister, of course, bears the real responsibilitythat rumours and stories of this kind should be dealt with with alacrity. In the discharge of his public duty the Prime Minister must say, "I have gone into this and there is nothing in it" or, "There is something in it which clearly needs investigating." We have a right to expect this from the right hon. Gentleman and, in return, the Government have the right to expect from us our support in what, after all, must he an extremely difficult task. As I have said, these matters raise a vital issue, the consequences of which affect us all. We should look at this whole question not only in terms of tittle-tattle or human reputationsalthough, as human beings, we must, I suppose, do that. We must realise that we are dealing with a long-term, grim battle which involves not only the security of this country, but- the whole concept of the Western way of life. 7.8 p.m. Mr. Stephen Hastings (Mid-Bedfordshire) The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) was not the first to allude to what has been described as the "amateurish nature" of our security organisation. I am surprised that hon. Members have the effrontery to say that in the light of the history of this case and many cases that have gone before it. To catch a spy is a triumph. To be surrounded by the possibility in Government Departments of numbers of spies without knowing where they are is a failure from the point of view of the security services. The debate so far has smacked too much of

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wisdom after the event, so to speak. What were trivial incidents have been magnified and made to appear glaringly significant both in our Embassy in Moscow and in this country. It has emerged that however good our physical security may bethat is, the security of documents or the personal 314 security of the people who work with secret informationwe shall always be vulnerable to Russian attack. There is the possibilitythis has been alluded to; I think that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister referred to it in his opening remarksof having a security system analogous to that employed by the Russians, but it is well to consider what that would involve. The procedure is, I think, well known. It involves on the security side alone a vast apparatus functioning in all their missions and embassies abroad, and in their Departments of State in Moscow, by which every public servant is spied upon by his neighbour and in which nobody knows who is and who is not an informer. I should have thought that any hon. Member who has dealt with and met Russians officially abroad or in this country has at some time or another noticed the somewhat surly suspicion there is between them when there are several together. I do not believe that the Russians are an unfriendly race. I believe that this stems from nothing less than the functioning of the apparatus which I have tried to describe. Is this really the sort of system which we could ever contemplate having here? Of course it is not. Even there it fails. It is not so very long ago since the Petrov case and Khoklov who defected in Berlin, straight from the Soviet assasination school outside Moscow. Even if we employ these rigorous security controls, it does not in any way produce the final answer and is quite impossible to operate, and always has been, in a free State. The truth surely is that there is a strict limit to the level of security which we can apply in a free society, and to go beyond it is to place liberty itself in danger. This seems to me to be the proposition which lies behind this debate in so far as it concerns security. One more remark in that connection which I should like to make, as an ex-official abroad, is t hat the more rigorous security becomes the more it conflicts with efficiency. It makes everything slow up and everything more irritating and difficult. One must, of course, get over this. Security is paramount, but there is a point of balance here as well which we should bear in mind. To return to Lord Radcliffe's findings, one point which naturally has come up 315 on more than one occasion, and which I think the right hon. Member for Basset-law (Mr. Bellenger) in particular talked about, was that it should not have been the case that the only person on whom blame was clearly placed should be a dead man. I have read the Report several times and it seems to me that it is objective and sensible. There was reason in this reference to Mr. Pennells, and it was qualified, as the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw said, by remarks about the excellence of his career, aside from this misjudgment. The point that they were trying to make, surely, is that there have been a number of instructions to the Admiralty and comparable Service Departments to ensure that people going to these posts understand the dangers. The way in which the brief is put over is what matters. It is not enough to read it out or to treat it as a matter of routine. Surely what we must do is to try to understand the atmosphere of suspicion which surrounds those who serve us abroad in these embassies. It is not something which is immediately evident from the Report of the Tribunal or from newspapers. It is not anything that I can describe. It is an unpleasant thing to live with, and truly to brief and prepare somebody for a post of this nature is not a matter to be taken lightly. Leading on from that, there

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was surely ample reason for Captain Bennett or his successor, or anybody in the Moscow Embassy, to accept that the briefing had been done and the instructions carried out. A priori, therefore, there was every reason to think that Vassall was an acceptable person for a post of this kind. The question of Mikhailski, which is vital to the whole case, has been mentioned once or twice in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson) said that he could not understand how Mikhailski was retained for so long. It is important to understand this. Of course, Mikhailski seemed to be a suspicious character, but anybody in the position of being locally employed anywhere behind the Iron Curtain is a suspicious character. The question of how one comes to the point and says, "This is the man, he must go", is a different matter. The Report says that he was under suspicion but it does 316 not recount how many others there were on whom suspicion was laid. Also, there is the extraordinary difficulty of managing in a country where the language is difficult and known perhaps only to a few members of the staff, despite the best efforts. If the Russians want to make life difficult if not nearly impossible for our Embassy in Moscow they can do it. This is a factor in the situation concerning locally employed people which we should remember. As to the limitations of positive vetting, I think that the hon. Member for Dudley has a point. It is something which emerges from the Report. It is not glossed over at all. The Report says that, within the limitations, the Tribunal is satisfied that the procedure was followed, alhough there was an error of judgment and the procedure could have been taken further. I am inclined to agree. This is an occasion where the system of positive vetting might well be reviewed with a view to tightening it up. In referring to other points which emerge from the Report, I go back to the opening speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition who cited certain paragraphs from it as evidence of how loose the arrangements were in the matter of documental security. The right hon. Gentleman cited paragraph 198. If that paragraph is read out of context and alone, the situation appears to be as the right hon. Gentleman indicated, but if one goes on to read paragraph 199, which is not so very far, one finds this: Early in 1962, with the improved concentration on security questions that was being felt in the Admiralty, steps were taken in Military Branch to remedy the situation and considerable progress had been made by the time Vassall came under suspicion. Further improvements had then to be halted lest they should alarm but they have now been completed. This is one of several examples. I could quote others, such as the question of a security officer in Moscow. There was no such officer in Moscow when Vassall's spy career began. There is now, as a result, I think, of the Romer Report and earlier investigations. In the last paragraph of the Radcliffe Report there is a reference to the reaction of the First Lard with a view to tightening arrangements generally in the Admiralty. Right through the Report it 317 is quite plain that, as a result of what has gone on before, these arrangements have been and are being tightened. There are limits to doing this, but this process has been going on. Now another point which applies to what the hon. Member for Dudley was getting at. I think that the hon. Member is confused when he talks about security and the security service. The hon. Member was talking about the protection of secret documents. Incidentally, in my view there are few secrets that count. The hon. Member was also speaking of people who are not members of the security service but who simply, on instructions, try to protect these documents and prevent penetration by the enemy. This is one form of security, but it does not constitute the security service.

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There is one sentence in the Report, and one sentence only, on this subject which explains a great deal but the details of which, as the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw spotted, are not there and are never likely to come out, and it is quite right that they should not come out. On page 18 the Tribunal refers to a laborious and very capable piece of counterespionage and there the story ends. That is all that Ls said about the way in which Vassal] was caught, but it does not need any feat of imagination by the House to imagine the extraordinary amount of effort, persistence and, probably, brilliant analysis that lies behind that sentence. This is not security in the terms in which it has been discussed generally in the debate, and certainly not in the terms referred to by the hon. Member for Dudley. Mr. R. T. Paget (Northampton) I do not follow what the hon. Member is saying. Since at any time all that was necessary was to have a look in Vassall's flat, why did it require such great genius to discover that he was a spy? Mr. Hastings I do not set myself up as an expert in these matters, but if the hon. and learned Member thinks that we can bowl out spies as deeply embedded as Vassall simply by having a peep into his flat, he has a lot to learn. Mr. Paget He had a camera and all the other stuff in his flat. That is the extraordinary thing. 318 Mr. Hastings Perhaps he had had them there for some months after our security officers knew what he was doing. That is neither here nor there. The identification of the man is a separate matter, covered by one sentence in the Report. It is not the aspect of security that was discussed by the hon. Member for Dudley. Mr. Wigg When I was discussing declassification I was doing so as hurriedly as I could. I was talking about certain parts of the Radcliffe Report of April, 1956. That Report contained a whole section about the need for declassification, and it properly dealt with the difficulties involved. But Lord Radcliffe and those with him reached the conclusion that nothing could be done. If nothing could be done in a case where a man is a traitor, why not accept it? Mr. Hastings There is a great deal that we can do. We are on two different points here. There is perhaps something to be done about the other aspect. Much has been said about the journalistic aspectabout the plight of the journalists, and whether or not the Press has come well out of this investigation. I do not wish to add to that, beyond offering my sincere congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, Central (Mr. Ian Gilmour) on the best analysis I have yet heard of the Press angle. His speech was much enjoyed by the House. It was a delight to me and, I am sure, to all hon. Members on this side of the House when my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hill-head (Mr. Galbraith) and my noble Friend, the First Lord, were vindicated by the Report, and I do not wish to make a speech on the Tribunal, or upon the result of the case, without saying as much. I now [...]urn to what lies behind all this. What have we been doing? We have been discussing the merits or demerits of the way in which we handled the case of a single Russian spy. We have not yet considered the threat which for years has been presented to us by the Russians and the immense difficulty of coping with it. For instance, it is a

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matter worthy of comment thatif my figures are correctwhereas we have 106 people working in Moscow, counting all 319 British officials, in the Russian Embassy in London and in the Russian trade delegation, which is closely connected with it, there are no less than 218 Russians. Is it pertinent to ask what they are all doing? Are all these persons really necessary? If we study the figures of Russian employees throughout the continent of Africa we find some pretty strange facts as well. There may be nothing we can do about it, but we should be aware of it. Everybody who has read anything on this subject knows the long and evil category of organisations, bearing strange initials, which conduct these activities on behalf of the Soviet Unionthe O.G.P.U., the N.K.V.D., the M.V.D., the M.G.B., and now the ubiquitous K.G.B., to say nothing of the G.R.U., which spies on behalf of the Red Army. I hope that hon. Members will not ask me what these initials stand for; they are unpronounceable in any case. But they represent a pretty formidable category. We know that the Russian State has always been addicted to these forms of activity, and we also know only too well that subversion is part and parcel of the Communist doctrine and faith. Let it be said and remembered: it never alters. But behind this, and behind what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, when he expressed the opinion that we should see more of these casesas I have no doubt we shalllies the central calculation that the Russians have made. They now realise that because of the Western deterrent they will never gain their end by hot war, as it came to be called a year or two ago. This is no longer a practical possibility. So they have simply switched weapons. This makes all talk of defence a little difficult and confused today, as I am sure the hon. Member for Dudley will agree. Russia's main weapon today is probably subversion, and she is stepping it up. That fact makes this debate of great importance. I am sure that this calculation has been made. The methods of the Russians are ruthless. It might not be out of place to refer to the fact that the sympathies of many of us today may be with an unfortunate Englishman who is about to stand trialif we may call it thatin Moscow. This man has spent six months there without access 320 to anybody in the Embassy, and without a charge of any kind being made. I ask one question on this, without making any comment upon it. The first time that I knew that we were going to have this debate was when business was announced last Thursday. On the next day the announcement was made that this trial in Moscow was to go on at the same time. This unfortunate man has languished in gaol for six months, after having been abducted from another so-called independent country. He has been held for six months without any charge being made against him and then, on the day after it is announced that we are to have this debate, it is announced from Russia that he is to be tried. I leave the matter there. I think that we have been engaged in too much introspective thought, and that we have not had quite enough understanding of the size of the problemand certainly not enough appreciation of the incredible job that must have been done, and is doubtless still being done, by our security services, to have put so many clever men in the dock. They are not all small spies like Vassall. Comparisons have been made with the American system. If I were in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and looked at the British record in this connection, I would not feel too happy. It is ridiculously naive to imagine that this country and America are not riddled with red spy networks. The free world is open to this sort of thing. In a sense, the West is defenceless against it. In those circumstances, when we catch a spy we have something to be glad of, and something for which we should be grateful to our security services.

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In future those who have engaged in what might be described as muck-raking and much of this has come from the benches opposite, as well as from Fleet Streetmight usefully devote the same zeal to considering the threat and to thinking about our enemies, as they have to persecuting honourable men. 7.30 p.m. Mr. R. H. S. Crossman (Coventry, East) I am sorry about the last few minutes of the speech of the hon. Member for MidBedfordshire (Mr. Hastings). I thought that the beginning of his speech was interesting and I should like to com- 321 ment on it later. He posed two choices, as the Prime Minister had done previously. He said that we had our freedom and that we wanted to have security compatible with that freedom, and that the alternative to the present system would be to adopt the Russian system. That is the purest nonsense. It is quite a false dilemma and I can show that it is quite simply. No other Western country has a record of Russian espionage success equal to our own. If what the hon. Member said were true, if the only alternative to accepting the Government's lax attitude to security were to accept totalitarianism, it would be true that America and France and every other Western country would have had a sensational series of spy disasters. The fact is, and this is at least more hopeful, that only in this country in the last ten years has this particular susceptibility to Russian success been demonstrated. Sir Kenneth Pickthorn (Carlton) Has the hon. Member noticed Hon. Members Sit down. Mr. Crossman I shall sit down when I have concluded my sentence. I am sure that the hon. Member wants to make a pertinent observation. The point I was making is that there is evidence that the Russians have had five major successes here in the last six years, and I doubt whether there is any other Western country in which that evidence exists. Sir K. Piekthorn Has the hon. Member noticed that a few days ago Mr. Alan Dulles said that he remembered a score of Vassall cases? Mr. Crossman Of course I noticed that Mr. Alan Dulles said that. I am saying that since 1956, since the Burgess-Maclean case, we have had a series of these disasters, one in the Foreign Office and no fewer than four in the Admiralty. To say that the only alternative to accepting that is to accept totalitarianism is a defeatism which no one on this side of the House is prepared to accept without further evidence. I turn now to the major theme which I wish to discussthe Prime Minister's contribution to this debate. It was remarkable. It was in marked contrast with what he said last time. I remind the House of what the Prime Minister told us that the Tribunal was to do. This 322 was in the debate setting up the Tribunal, and he began by saying: I became aware that there was building up, both in the Press and the Housea dark cloud of suspicion and innuendoIndeed, looking back I now see what right hon. Gentlemen had in mind when they started this whispering campaign The attack was primarily on the Opposition who were accused of starting a whispering campaign. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say: The public confidence must be restored, either by the exposure of guilt or by public proof that those who pose as the protectors of the public have themselves been guilty of trying to destroy private reputations from motives either of spite or gain."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th November, 1962; Vol. 667. c.

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393400.] The Prime Minister was saying that the Tribunal's job was to prove that the Opposition were guilty of trying to destroy private reputations from motives either of spite or of gain, and that if it could not prove that the Opposition were guilty, it was to prove that the Press was guilty. Those were the two sets of people about whom these demonstrations were to take place. I need not waste time saying anything about what the Tribunal said about the Opposition. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) has explained how this was blown up and exploded on the first day of the Tribunal by Mr. Gardiner. I do not defend everything that the Press did. Indeed, I believe that it came out extremely badly, but consistent news suppression meant that unless there had been Press agitation, we would not have had the Vassall Tribunal. Evidently, without Press agitation, which unfortunately contained these allegations, the Government are not prepared to reveal the facts. It is clear that, without the attacks, which were made without Press agitation, the Government would not have taken action about security. If there had been a record on behalf of the Government to show that when they found a desperate security situation they manfully took us into their confidence, so far as they could, and then acted, there would not have been this Press agitation. Although I do not defend the Press, without the Press attacks, which were made without knowledge, we would not have got even the facts which we have been given. 323 I should now like to quote from the Tribunal's reply to the Prime Minister's demand that the Press should be pilloried. It said: We think it desirable to make plain that at no time have we regarded it as part of our function to express judgments as to whether this or that newspaper ought or ought not to have published any particular statement". The next statement is important: Newspapers have their own methods of operation and they cannot always be expected to proceed on the kind of factual basis that justifies an assertion before a court of law or a tribunal of inquiry. What the Tribunal was saying was that, faced with spy sensations and the Government's refusal to give information, the Press could not always make statements which could be justified before a court of law. It was extremely shrewd and sensible of the Tribunal to say to the Prime Minister, "We will not take part in your plan; we will report the facts and we will let the House of Commons decide whether the Opposition was guilty, and whether the Press was guilty". The Opposition have already been cleared, because nobody has dared to make the charges this time. Last time, we had speech after speech from hon. Members opposite denouncing the Opposition for whipping up agitation. What has been remarkable on this occasion has been the Prime Minister's attitude and his most emollient references to the Press. Indeed, his appeasement of the Press is a remarkable tribute to its political importance as an election approaches. The Prime Minister discovered that it was not popular with Tory Party headquarters to antagonise every newspaper in the country. I watched that wooing back of the mistress. It was delicately done, but it rather took the edge off the right hon. Gentleman's speech, for it showed either that he was not sincere last time, or that he was not very consistent. The stage was set for the debate, but the Prime Minister did not want this debate when he set up the Tribunal. The Prime Minister wanted a debate after Lord Radcliffe and his colleagues had shown how my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) had been wicked and how the Press had been 324 wicked, a debate in which the House of Commons would go on, as he thought, to take what measures were necessary against the criminals. But he had to have a debate instead in which he covered up security disasters which were revealed by the Report and he had to be extremely polite to the Press. We move with the times, and we know what the Prime Minister does. I turn to the problems revealed by the Report

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Mr. Rees-Davies Before the hon. Gentleman does that, he should deal with the statement by Lord Radcliffe about the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) on page 71, paragraph 236, where after the right hon. Gentleman had spoken of responsibility going far beyond the ordinary business of a Minister Lord Radcliffe said that the correspondence was wholly innocuous. He might then take the trouble to read paragraph 14 on page 4 where Lord Radcliffe said: it was our duty to make up our minds whetherwe agreed with the comment or would ourselves support the validity of the inference. in fourteen cases[Interruption.]Take your punishment. In fourteen cases of eight newspapers Mr. Crossman rose Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir William Anstruther-Gray) Mr. Crossman. Mr. Crossman Having allowed the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) to make his speech as an intervention in mine, I return to my own. I come to what the Tribunal has achieved. It did not achieve what the Prime Minister wanted. I was interested in the Prime Minister's account of what he wanted if for. I think that we would agree with me that this is not a very good way of investigating security. I do not think that members of such a Tribunal are terribly good about security. Judges are perhaps not the best of people to plunge into that kind of world. According to the Prime Minister, the main point of the Tribunal was to clear innocent Ministers. This the Tribunal did, but I must point out that when our tribunals clear one or two innocent people, they invariably damn others. 325 My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley mentioned the paragraph of the Report to which I am now referring. I must mention it again because it is important that we see what happens with tribunals of this sort, even when people like Lord Radcliffe claim to have taken the very greatest care. Paragraph 185 refers to the headmaster of Monmouth School, Mr. Lewin. The paragraph says: At that time Mr. Lewin's knowledge of Vassall, who was not a senior pupil, was slight; but Vassall sought him out at the War Office where he was serving and over the next five years there were occasional random meetings, almost wholly, we think, on Vassall's initiative. The relationship was a somewhat equivocal one, although it apparently did not involve any homosexual practices. For a report which was not to damage anyone, that is pretty hot. It would have been criminal libel if it had been said anywhere else. Every one of these con- founded tribunals destroys some perfectly innocent, decent pepole. I have to record it again because I do not want us to go away not seeing that we have to study the tribunal procedure. In the course of clearing the first Lord of the Admiralty and the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) it has simultaneously, if almost by chance, crushed one man. I know nothing about this man and for all I know he ought to be crushed, but let it be done where he has the possibility of defending himself. Nothing has been done for him at all, and a man's reputation has been killed in the course of clearing the reputation of others. We have to consider whether this is the best machinery. I was extremely glad of the remarks of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. If the suggestion of the Leader of the Opposition were adopted and we had a Select Committee, we could consider whether this was the right way of dealing with these matters. The Select Committee would report in due time how to improve our tribunal procedure,

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particularly when we are using tribunals in connection with the reputation of hon. Members. I quite see the need for inquiries of this kind. I put up the suggestion for a Select Committee at our last debate, but since then I have read the admirable book by Francis Donaldson on the 326 Marconi Committee. Anybody who has read that book and the book on the Jameson Raid will appreciate how difficult it, is for a Select Committee on a matter involving high political emotion to produce a good judicial account. I accept that we cannot go back to the Select Committee procedure, but we have to fins some form of semi-judicial procedure. It is impossible to suggest that what we now have is the best procedure that we can get. We ought not to be content with machinery which has never failed to do a major injustice on each of the fifteen occasions on which we have used it. I come now to the two journalists. I entirely agree with those who say that there is no principle of the freedom of the Press involved. It does not matter that they were journalists. It does not matter which of these witnesses refuse to answer a series of questions in an inquiry to defend the reputation of political persons. But when a witness in such a case is difficult, it should not be left to the High Court to gaol him for contempt of court. If a tribunal of investigation which we set up in our interestsand we set it up because some of us were affectedgets into difficulties with a witness, the inquiry should report back to the House and the House should decide what to do. We must take the responsibility for gaoling the witness and not leave it to the High Court. This would require a change of the law, of course, because it is quite clear that as the tribunal machinery is now operated, the court was quite correct, and the journalists were in contempt of court. There was no question but of the judicial correctness of the decision and we would therefore have to have a different kind of tribunal if we were to take the responsibility. Hon. Members will remember that the editor of the Spectator was one of the witnesses in the Marconi case and firmly refused to reveal his sources. That was before a Select Committee which then reported back to the House of Commons. The House of Commons at the time in its wisdom did not condemn and gaol him. It would not have dared to do so. I rather fancy that if the House had had to make its own decision about whether to gaol Foster and 327 Mulholland for six months, the decision would not have been taken so easily. It is our responsibility if it is our reputations which are being cleared and not that of the courts. First, we must not kill the reputations of other people and, secondly, we must not leave to the High Court the odium of imprisoning journalists or other witnesses who have been difficult, and in this case I do not believe that the final report would have been substantially different if the sources suppressed by these two men had been revealed. That is all I wanted to say about the form of the Tribunal. I shall spend the rest of my time on the security problem. Here I differ from other hon. Members because I do not think that this is a very competent Report. I shall frankly say why. I lived four years of my life under security conditions. These people were eminent judges. One of the troubles about judgesmy father was a judgeis that they have a respect for evidence. They say they cannot make up their minds until they have the evidence. But the essence of security is to make up one's mind without the evidence, because if one waits for the evidence it is too late. The point is that lawyers, because of their great regard for evidence, are not necessarily the right people to form opinions about spies and about the character of a spy.

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I will illustrate that again with the case of Mr. Lewin. Take a typical instance from this Report which appears in paragraph 185. This is typical of the judges. They came to the conclusion that there was evidence that the Press was lying in saying that Mr. Lewin sponsored Vassall. In strict legal terms they are correct. He was not actually sponsoring him. What are the facts? The facts are that first the headmaster, according to the Report, gave him an incredibly good recommendation to the Admiralty although he had left school five years before. That is myserious. The headmaster of 1943 who knew him as a junior member of the school was in the Admiralty at the same time and they decided together not to meet. We have to believe both of them that this is true, by the way. These judges are such nice men. I should like to point out one or two interesting passages on Lord Radcliffe's 328 view of Vassall. On page 12 of the Report Lord Radcliffe says: There is only one other point to notice in this general review of the Moscow period and that is to say what it was that Vassall did for the Russians in the way of providing information. Here we have to follow Vassall's own account as we have obtained it in examination of him, It is impossible to crosscheck it by outside evidence, but we have taken his account as trustworthy, both because he gave it to us in a convincing manner"' In what other way would an intrepid spy give such an account except in a convincing manner? I will read another passage in order to indicate the curious relationship with Vassall. On page 71 we have a nice passage: We received certain explanationsabout the occasions and circumstances of this correspondence. They left us with the general impression that Mr. Galbraith was a kindly and considerate head of his office who liked to encourage some personal relations with those who served him as his staff, and that " now listen to this Vassall not only was a somewhat insinuating young man who liked to develop any social contacts which came his way but had also formed a genuine admiration and attachment to Mr. Galbraith These words, "genuine admiration and attachment" are applied to a highly professional spy and indicate a very curious attitude. At this point I am slightly impressed by the views of someone who knows more about spies than I doMiss Rebecca West. She listened to the Tribunal and formed the opinion that it was quite wrong to think of Vassall as a weak and feeble little man. For seven years he had been doing something which was pretty tough to do, and he knew what he was doing. I am not at all convinced that these people appreciated the security situation. Though they revealed fascinating information their conclusion is not very sound. Everyone who has studied the matter impartially has come to the same conclusion, that the conclusion of the Tribunal bore no relation to the evidence in the Report, not because the Tribunal was dishonest but its members were too nice to see what they had revealed. And what they revealed in this Report is an almost desperately serious security situation. When we consider that in the year 1963, the vetting done now bears no relation to the vetting we did throughout 329 World War II. Those of us who worked in security organisations know what vetting took place. We did it ourselves. There was a serious effort made to find out then, and if I am told, "You cannot do this in peace time, it is impossible in peace time to have the kind of security we had in war time", I ask, quite seriously, "Why is it impossible that a very limited number of people should be required to deal with these things? Why should not they have imposed upon them rigorous security requirements whether in war or in peace time?" I wish to say two things about security. One has been said before but it needs to be said time after time. We cannot have security if we have confidential information classified as secret information and secret information classified as top secret, and so on. We must de-classify and have only genuine secrets kept secret. Secondly, the number of people

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required to deal with these things must be reduced to the minimum. I know that that means that some important people will have to take rather more trouble. They may even have to take a document and lock it up themselves instead of leaving it for someone elselike Mr. Vassallto do it for them. They may have to do menial things themselves in order to reduce risks. This is what we had to do in war time and we were cashiered or court-martialled if we did not do it. It is totally unrealistic to say that in peace time we cannot do thiswith the one proviso that we should cut down secret information to what is genuinely secret and cut to the absolute minimum the number of people who have access to it. Thirdly, we must impose security regulations on politicians. That is, perhaps, most important. In war time security regulations were imposed on politicians. They did not get the secrets if they were found to be insecure. I have no confidence that members of the Government have had security regulations imposed upon them at all, and I am certain that the security regulations on top civil servants are lax. There has been laxity in relation to the politicians and laxity in relation to the heads of the Civil Service. I am not being wise after the Admiralty event. In 1955 we had a debate on the Burgess and Maclean scandal. The Prime Minister was then Foreign Secretary and 330 he and I spoke in that debate. We had an excellent debate and some of us pointed out that the really serious fact was laxity at the top in the Foreign Office. It was not only on security grounds that Burgess and Maclean, or Blake or Vassall, should not have been employed. It was on the grounds that they were not worthy to be trusted by anybody at all, quite apart from security, except for their membership of clubsexcept for the "old school tie network." Both political parties were guilty in the case of Burgess and Maclean. We know that the decision to make Burgess a full member of the Foreign Service was taken under a Labour Government. There has been criticism about that and we know about it. It was an outrage to make Burgess a permanent member of the Foreign Service. Nobody who knew his character should have employed him in any responsible work. No one should have employed Maclean after his behaviour in Cairo. The case of Blake is rather different. He was a man who by all security rules was unemployable. Men who have been emotionally or personally tied up with a resistance movement, and are potentially open to pressures, cannot be put in charge of any sound organisation. These three men were all allowed in. Why?"Well, old boy, you know it is different with him, or with his wife" and in Britain this is the approach of the Government to security this nice social cosiness of the oligarchy. The oligarchy is civil, old-fashioned and weak Mr. Wigg No, it is not. Mr.Crossman Members of the oligarchy are let down time after time. I am glad that the Leader of the Opposition singled out one point in his attack on this issue. After the Burgess and Maclean incident it might have been dangerous for a back-bench Member to do that because there was only one incident. But since then we have had three other occasions, all of them of this curious type, where one can look at the man and say, after the event, "You could not possibly have given him a job". Yet he got it. The best security organisation in the world 331 Mr. Wigg What about the Lonsdale case? Mr. Crossman

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I am sorry. There were four occasions. I was leaving out Commander Crabbe. The trouble is that it does not matter what security regulations are made for documents if a Minister has the "old-boy" attitude. If exceptions are made for him and for him, the Russians will get through every time and so will any professional organisation. But, for heaven's sake, do let us get rid of the idea that the Russians have some kind of magic. So far as I can see, what the Russians have been doing is what the British have done regularly for the last hundred years at every opportunity. There is nothing original about it. Do not let us get the idea that the Russians are unique. It is not they who are uniquewe are unique. We are uniquely bad we are uniquely easy-going; we are uniquely open to corruption in these ways which in a modern world are extremely expensive. I think that this debate will have done some good if it has brought that home to the Government. What appalled me was the Prime Minister's oligarchic good humour. In effect, the right hon. Gentleman said "Wellwe must not go too farit is one of these things" That was shameful, and the Leader of the House knows it, and back-bench Members of Parliament who care about security know it. This is snot a party matter at all. This is something which we have to stamp on whatever party is in power. Therefore, I say that this debate could be useful only on one condition, and that is that it refutes the atmosphere and the attitude of the Prime Minister in his speech introducing the debate, that we get something more realistic from the Leader of the House, and that we face the fact that a ghastly series of errors has been committed. I am not asking that people be sacked, but I must comment on ministerial responsibility. We have two men, the First Lord and the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is in charge of security, counter-intelligence and the rest of it, and one is in charge of the Ministry. There have been five major spy scandals. The Prime Minister says, "I cannot sack poor old Carrington". I was told in the debate two years ago, when the first scandal 332 occurred, that he was "new to the job." Now he has got used to the job, and so he must be kept there in case there are more spies to be caught. Then, let us keep Carrington and let us get rid of the man in charge of security. If the Prime Minister shields the First Lord and then does nothing about it himself; if he takes the responsibility and he is in charge, and if he himself is shown totally incapable of facing the problem, this House must draw its own conclusions. 7.59 p.m. Commander Anthony Courtney (Harrow, East) I followed the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) with more than usual interest and attention because he said much better many things which I should have said had he not said them before me. This is to me a shameful and sad occasion, because we are investigating the shortcomings of two great Departments of State and, I hope, the Ministerial responsibility which lies at the head of them after a series of appalling security cases. I mention King, Burgess, Maclean, Houghton and Blake. I cannot help coming to the conclusion from the Vassal) Tribunal's Report that little creditin fact, may I be more positive and say discreditattaches to the great majority of men and women who handled these matters in the Admiralty, in the Foreign Office and, more particularly, in the Embassy in Moscow at every stage of this lamentable affair, with honourable exceptions. Miss Wynne, to whom reference has been made, may now be serving in a very hot climate far from this House, but she is deserving of promotion on the spot for what she did so public-spiritedly on that day in Moscow. Even more deserving of mention is, perhaps, the unnamed official in the Embassy in Moscow who watched and reported on

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Mikhailski for the whole of 1955 without having any practical notice taken of his public-spirited efforts. May I, without going out of order, mention the Chief Inspector of the Dorsetshire Constabulary, whose nous and common sense principally led to the investigations which culminated in the arrest of Houghton and Lonsdale. We have had an appalling case of treachery to the State resulting in grave damage to the country's security, so 333 grave that this House has no conception of the full extent of the information which has been passed to our enemies during all the years that Vassall was operating, even if the Admiralty and the Government realise it. I do not follow the hon. Member for Coventry, East in his polemics and party political points about the Press and its relations with this House. I wish to concentrate on what I believe to be the all-important nub of this debate, namely, the security aspect, principally in Moscow. I wish to concentrate on the responsibility of the two great Departments of State, the Admiralty and the Foreign Office. Naturally, as has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings), all of us in this House are very glad that individual Ministers who were smeared in the course of the earlier allegations have been completely cleared. All the cases to which I have referred were intimately concerned with the Foreign Service as a whole. Two of them onlyand here I venture to correct the hon. Member for Coventry, Eastwere specifically concerned with the Admiralty in the context which we are discussing. Why should the Admiralty be the target of Soviet intelligence? Why is it that at the only two exposed points where the Admiralty is represented abroad, Moscow and Warsaw, we have had in five years a traitor in each? Many timesI hope that I will not be out of order in bringing this upI have drawn the House's attention to the grave implications of the rise of Soviet sea power. Is it not natural and menacing that the great effort of the G.R.U. should be directed towards the maritime services of this country? The right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) was puzzled at a seeming connection between the Lonsdale and Vassall cases and wondered whether there was some link between them. Surely the explanation is that one of the two Russian intelligence services was concerned with both. I refer to the G.R.U., which is the Soviet Military Intelligence organisation. I think that the right hon. Member will appreciate that the case of Vassall, when he started in Moscow, would be the job of the K.G.B. I hesitate to go into technicalities, but I think that the House should be clear about 334 the difference between these two intelligence organisations and how they operate. The Admiralty collectively and the naval officers concerned individually must take the responsibility for the shortcomings in the Admiralty which are so clear to us from the evidence given before the Tribunal. I should like to refer specifically to Mr. Pannells. I knew him well. Two of my hon. and gallant Friends served with Mr. Pennells. I knew him as a hard-working friend, a first-rate civil servant and an honourable and quiet family man. Perhaps the House will permit me to read an opinion of him sent by a captain in the Royal Navy which has been received today. It states: his devotion to duty made him grossly over-worked even by Admiralty standards and this I feel sire contributed to his death at a comparatively early age. The hon. Member for Coventry, East struck what. I thought was a very good note in suggesting that the niceness of the judicial members of the Tribunal is responsible for the conflict of common sense between the conclusions and the evidence on which those conclusions were based. This has puzzled me and, I believe, many hon. Members. It lies in the niceness of civil servants like Mr. Pennells, who had never been nearer Soviet homosexuals and the K.G.B. than Purley, and it is surprising that he should be placed in this position of responsibility in the Admiralty, positively vetting young men whom he will send to a

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place of which he has no comprehension at all except that which he learns from a long memorandum circulated to him by the Foreign Office. The fault there lies in the system. That is reflected in the decision announced by my right hon. Friend today that Service personnel only should be seconded to embassies abroad in these particularly "tricky" countries for service with military and naval attachs. I am afraid that, departmentally speaking, I must agree with right hon. and hon. Members opposite that the responsibility for these shortcomings must lie with the Minister concerned, my noble Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty, for whom I have the greatest personal liking and respect. But responsibility must be accepted. I believe that it is accepted in the Admiralty and I believe that it always will be accepted. Directors 335 of Naval Intelligence accept responsibility for what goes on in their departments and the Board of Admiralty as a whole accepts responsibility for what goes on in the Naval Staff Divisions and in Admiralty Departments. That cannot be said, in my view, of the Foreign Office. I regret to have to say it, but the fact which emerges from the evidence given before the Vassal] Tribunal indicates to me at least a sad lack of taking responsibility by senior officials, particularly in the extraordinarily difficult conditions in Moscow. What was the threat in Moscow which had to be dealt with? The House knows that I have the greatest respect and liking for the Russian people and the Russian nation. I admire them and have spent a lot of time in their country, but I have never blinded myself or this House for the four years that I have been here to the existence of the dark side of the picture. The Russian secret service has forgotten more than we shall ever know about practical, efficient espionage, as we see from the evidence before us today. It is a tradition which has lasted for four centuries. I did not like the gibe of the hon. Member for Coventry, East that we have been doing the same thing for just as long, but are very inefficient. We never had an Ivan the Terrible. We never had the oprichniki, which was as much above the law and outside the State and was as capable of these horrible methods as the K.G.B. and the G.R.U. are today. All this applies in Moscow, where we have an atmosphere which is very difficult to convey to hon. Membersan atmosphere of overwhelming suspicion, a claustrophobic feeling of being inside a compound, or a ghetto as we sometimes call it in some Iron Curtain countries. I have experienced it. I know the feel of it. I am always very glad when I get out of it. We know today of the cynical use of arbitrary arrest and of the staging of a trial so that tomorrow's papers shall carry in one column this debate and the conclusions, if any, to which we come, and in another column the depositions and charges against Wynne, in Moscow, where the evidence will showwe can all forecast this with certaintythat we have been engaged with moderate success, in the face of the efficient Soviet security organisations, 336 in espionage in conjunction with the Americans, implicating members of our own Embassy in Moscow. We know of the harssing of embassy staff in Iron Curtain country countries. I believe that it is specific Russian policy to develop a psychological dominance over embassies, particularly that in Moscow, which I have studied from the inside in wartime and from the outside since. I am sorry to have to say it, but I consider that the Russians are remarkably successful in this and that this long catalogue of negligence, of "bettor not" and of the feeling that it will be "all right on the night" throughout these serious incidents can be traced fundamentally to that. Individuals who are not prepared to accept this psychological dominance are usually removed or "framed", or find it necessary to go. Life is made a little too difficult for them, for in multifarious ways the Russians can bring pressure to bear on the embassy staff.

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I know personally two naval attachs concerned in this case. It is my opinion that each of them, in his individual way, became part of this psychological dominance. Their successor, who, incidentally, was, in the words of authority, the best naval attach we have had since the war, was driven nearly crazy, but served out his full time and did magnificently. He is still fighting the civil servants for about 1,400 which he overspent in the course of his duties. There is the cynical Russian use, as alwaysor, should I say, misuseof diplomatic privilege and immunity as a counterpart to the harassing of our own Embassy staff in Moscow. Figures have been given by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire which are striking in themselves. We know from the evidence of other security trials that these facilities are misused for the purposes of the espionage in which the Russians are so efficient. The dice is very heavily loaded against us in this respect. I turn to the responsibility of the Foreign Office in Moscow. I mentioned in an intervention that we were lucky enough to have had as head of our mission in Moscow during the material time in the Vassall case a distinguished diplomat who had previously spent several years as chairman of the Joint 337 Intelligence Committee of the Chiefs of Staff. That Committee has a Foreign Office chairman, and it is rightly occupied inter-departmentally with all the major questions of espionage, security and intelligence generally with which the Government are concerned. It is no coincidence, surely, that a man with these attributes should be sent to this very difficult post in Moscow. It is to me significant that nowhere in the Report can I find acceptance by the Foreign Service, the Foreign Office or the Tribunal itself of the principle of the ultimate responsibility of the head of the mission in Moscow for what went on during his tenure of office. As a Service officer, I believe that the non-acceptance of this principle is false and wrong. It is power without responsibility, which, after all, is anathema to the British system of doing things, and lies at the root of many of the troubles which have come out in a vague way, pasted over as so many of them have been, in the course of this Report. I should like to quote extracts from a few paragraphs of the Report which bear on what I have just said. The Tribunal says this in paragraph 89: The responsibilities for security in Moscow reflected this duality" between the naval attach and the Ambassador himself. The Ambassador, as local chief, was ultimately responsible for all Embassy staff That is plainly stated. Paragraph 91 says this: It was not to be expected that the Ambassador could give more than a directing attention to questions of security. That is a question of opinion on which we can argue in the House. It is not a question of fact on which the contents of this Report should be sacrosanct. I cannot acceptI believe that there are many hon. Members on both sides of the House who will be with me in not acceptingthat the Ambassador could not, and could not be expected to give more than a general directing attention to questions of security" when he himself, of all men in or out of the United Kingdom, was immediately conversant with the seriousness of these problems through his chairmanship of the J.I.C. 338 Paragraph 123 says this: Sir William Hayter himself, while not denying that something was said, remembered it only in the vaguest way and thought that the allusion to Vassall was made half jokingly. In view of the atmosphere in Moscow, that rings very oddly to me. Paragraph 130 says that Sir William Hayter is only brought into the matter at all by the talk that Captain Bennett had with him some time in the autumn of 1954.' Paragraph 140 says this: The senior staffseemto have disliked and distrusted him" that is, Mikhailski from the firstHad the authorities realised it earlier, they would have

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taken action more rapidly and more decisively than they did. The authorities, not the Ambassador, are mentioned. Paragraph 143 says that the head of chancery seems not to have been easy to persuade that any further action" that is, about Mikhailski would be effective or necessary". Paragraph [...]44makes it plain that even after Mikhailski was officially under special suspicion it was decided with the approval of the Ambassador, to retain him " in the Embassy. Paragraph 149 says this: is not easy for us to account for the inaction over this minute. This is after Vassall had been reported on personally in conjunction with Mikhailski by the military attach. I agree with this statement in paragraph 94: We have no doubt at all that the Ambassadorand all his senior officials in the Embassy were well aware of and alive to danger of this kind It is to me almost incredible, first, that nothing serious was done about it, and, secondly, that the responsibility has not been laid by the Tribunal where it properly belongs. I should like to ask two questions about the attitude of the Tribunal. Five I was most impressed by a great deal of what was said by the hon. Member for Coventry, East, whose speech I shall read with great care in HANSARD tomorrow on this particular aspect. Why 339 was it not mentioned in evidence that the Ambassador and his successor had both been chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee? I should like a reply to this question. If it was put in the Report and omitted, why was this done? It is not secret. I would say that it is clearly not of small significance to anybody involved in these matters of any experience. It would indeed be the very opposite. Who requested the deletion, if that is so? I agree with the hon. Member for Coventry, East about this, which, I gather, was the tenor of that part of his remarks. It is unrealistic to expect these three distinguished and learned gentlemen, applying their judicial faculties to this very complicated case, to put it against the proper perspective of the atmosphere and background of Moscow. That again, may I repeat, is why it seems to me that the conclusions varied from the substance of the Report. There was an uncritical attitude throughout the Report towards Foreign Office efficiency. It is almost incredible to me that the Tribunal should say, in paragraph 152(2), that The general security system observed in the Embassy was sound and well maintained. The Tribunal says this in paragraph 128: we accept the view that personal inquiries in the Embassy were, in practice, virtually impossible owing to considerations of propriety and staff morale. Did Miss Wynne observe that? Did this unnamed official who acted so promptly and patriotically throughout 1955 observe that? They were the only people who observed anything. I certainly do not accept the opinion in this paragraph. Finally, paragraph 94 says thisthis really is rather a gem: the practical question is how far the warnings were communicated to and enforced upon the junior staff" of the Embassy a number of whom, not belonging to the Foreign Service, would not even have the background of its general discipline and expertise. I should like to conclude my remarks with some constructive suggestions. We have seen an utter failure, after a success-[...]ion of such failures in the face of a ruthless and efficient enemy. I believe that we can do much better than we are 340 doing now, even with the preservation of our democratic processes, a point which has been brought out on both sides in this debate. I consider that the great weakness in Moscow lies primarily in power without responsibility, in the lack of acceptance by heads of missions of

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responsibility for everything that goes on in their embassies, with proper account being pair when it goes wrong. I commend this point to the attention of the Government. The question of representation was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for MidBedfordshire. Two and a half years ago we had a virtual declaration of war ideological, economic and politicalby the representatives of 81 Communist parties. The so-called cold war is on. We have seen, during the course of today's debate, how near it is to hot war in this intelligence engagement which is always with us. We know of the harassing of our own diplomatic representatives in Iron Curtain countries. We are aware of the misuse of diplomatic immunities and privileges by inflated foreign embassy staffs in our own country. Is it not possible for the Government to consider the reduction mutually of missions between ourselves and Communist countries, perhaps to the status of chargs d'affaires, in circumstances where, as we see clearly in the Report, the basis of good faith and integrity, which, after all, underlie diplomatic usage in any country, is manifestly seen not to exist? I suggest that the use which is made of certain communication facilities, and certain bag facilities, could be limited mutually. I feel sure that in the circumstances the balance of advantage would be greatly in favour of this country. In China, we have a mission, headed by a charg d'affaires, which works admirably in conditions where it is not even officially recognised, except as negotiators for an exchange of embassies. This is a prototype of the small type of mission which I think might usefully be introduced. None of us can say how many more cases of this kind will come to light. The Prime Minister suggested that there might be a number. I am sure that the criticisms brought out by right hon. and hon. MembersI regret to have to say 341 thisprincipally on the other side of the House, are valid ones. There are great holes in our security organisation, to some of which I have drawn attention. In conclusion, I wonderI commend this thought to the Government, and my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench knows why I refer particularly to that pointjust how much more of this sort of thing the British public will stand. 8.26 p.m. Mr. Niall MacDermot (Derby, North) am sure that the whole House will wish to congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) on his remarkable and courageous speech. It is difficult to follow it or debate with the hon. and gallant Gentleman because, for my part, I agree with almost every word which he uttered. Like him, I wish to concentrate upon the security questions which are raised by this Report and, to some extent, the tenor of my remarks will run parallel with his. I spent over six years of my life, during and immediately after the war, in security, some of that time in the security service itself. I say this not to suggest that I have any special qualifications to comment on the Report except, perhaps, that I am aware more than most hon. Members of the difficulties involved in counterespionage. It is clear to me, from a reading of the Report, that the security services today have a far more formidable opponent to contend with than we had during the war. I think that, except, perhaps, in the last six months when Himmler got full control of the German intelligence service, we had the measure of the German intelligence service throughout the war. Today, we have to contend with a much more powerful organisation. Several criticisms have been made of the judgments and comments of the Tribunal on the facts which it found. To some extent, I agree with what has been said, but I think that we should remember what were the terms of reference of the Tribunal. It was not asked to investigate the efficacy of our security precautions or the security system in

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force at the time. All the Tribunal was asked to do was to inquire into allegations of negligence, corruption and incompetence on the part 342 of particular individuals working within the framework of that system. In this light, it can be seen that the Tribunal bent over backwards to be fair, exceedingly fair, towards the individuals involved. I agree with the general comment that it is unfortunate that there should have been singled out for particular criticism a gentleman who is now dead and who, it seems to me, should not have been asked to bear any greater responsibility for the inadequacy of the system than anyone else is asked to bear. This is all he was criticised forthat he did not realise that this was a thoroughly rotten system which needed changing and improving. That is the only real criticism levelled against Mr. Pennells, and it is a criticism which, it seems to me, can forcefully be applied to a great number of people who are mentioned in the Report. We are in the difficulty that we have not seen the evidence and, therefore, we have to base our comments upon the facts as found by the Tribunal. It seems to me that what the Report shows is a failure of security at three points. First, there was a failure in selecting far what was known to be a highly dangerous post, from the security point of view, a man who, in the various adjectives used by the Tribunal, was a weak, vain, effeminate young bachelor. Second, there was a failure to investigate properly the indications which were given in Moscow that he might be a security risk. Third, there was a failure to bring these matters to the attention of the security authorities when the time came far his positive vetting on his return to the Admiralty in this country. A recital of some of the facts found by the Tribunal is sufficient to establish these points. By April, 1953, the Foreign Office was well aware that there was a particular risk for people serving in our embassies behind the Iron Curtain of their being involved in compromising situations and then being blackmailed with a view to their recruitment in the Russian intelligence service. It was known that particularly vulnerable to this kind of approach were bachelors and young girls. The Service Departments were warned accordingly and asked to ensure that they selected only people who were suitable for these dangerous posts. 343 It seems to me that the Admiralty, in effect, did nothing about this warning. The result was that, for one of these dangerous posts, there was selected this young bachelor who was a weak, vain, effeminate, insinuating snob. I do not think that the Tribunal can be accused of overstating the matter when it says that this was a very bad choice. It seems most unfortunate that the Tribunal picked on Mr. Pennells alone as deserving censure for what was, obviously, a thoroughly defective system in the way in which Vassall was appointed to the job. For example, who was the official who overruled Mr. Pennells's representations that preference should not be given to applicants who were single? We are not told this in the Report, and it seems to me that this official is at least as deserving of censure as Mr. Pennells. It does not appear from the Report that the interviewing board had any real confidential character assessment before it at the time when Vassal] was appointed. The Tribunal, in exculpating people from blame throughout, stresses that no one knew or had reason to know that Vassall was a practising homosexual, but there was abundant evidence that he was an effeminate young man, and, surely, this called for the closest inquiry into his strength of character. I pause here to make, in parenthesis, a point which has not yet been made in the debate. Why it is that homosexuals are a particular security risk? It is not that they are less brave than other men. History does not show that. It is not that homosexuals are in their character or nature more vulnerable to corruption. It is not that homosexuals are more

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likely to be traitors. The point is that homosexuals in this country are peculiarly vulnerable to blackmail. It is because of our attitude of extremely prudish embarrassment towards the whole subject of homosexuality that a person who has been compromised in a homosexual situation is fair game for a foreign intelligence service. Let us look at the facts in this case. We know from the Tribunal's Report that there were people who had been caught in compromising situations by the Russian intelligence service. They all, as they had been advised and in- 344 structed to do, reported the matter to their superiors in the Embassy. The result was that they were returned at once to this country and, I hope, did not suffer for the peccadilloes which had led to their blackmail. But Vassall did not. The reason he did not is that he must have known that, if he had mentioned his homosexuality and the situation he was in, he would have been a condemned man for life in his service. It seems to me that we are paying the price as a country for our attitude to homosexuality, and that, from a security point of view, the sooner we give effect to the recommendations in Part I of the Wolfenden Report the better. Mr. Emrys Hughes Does my hon. and learned Friend think that our secret service would hesitate to employ homosexuals to put Russians in comprising situations if it wanted Russian military secrets? Mr. MacDermot I have no knowledge of its methods; I do not know whether that would be so or not. All I am pointing out is that our attitude towards homosexuality renders us as a country peculiarly vulnerable to this kind of attack by the Russian intelligence service. Mr. William Shepherd (Cheadle) Does not the hon. and learned Gentleman realise that homosexuals are dangerous from two points of view, first, their promiscuity, and, second, from the fact that they have a grievance against society and are prepared, therefore, if necessary, to go against society? Whatever might be done in the reform of the law will not alter the attitude of society. Mr. MacDermot The grievance results from the attitude of society to which I have referred, and I have seen no evidence that homosexuals are any more promiscuous than heterosexuals. Throughout the Report there is abundant evidence of Vassall's effeminacy and the fact that this was well known. The Report tells us that the general assessment of the majority of those who knew him in the Admiraltythis was before he went to Moscowwas that he was effeminate, not manly, a "bit of a miss", foppish. These were the terms used. On his arrival in Moscow, Captain Bennett thought that he was a possible latent homosexual. Captain Bennett was so worried about it that, in August, 1954, on 345 his return to this country, he mentioned the matter specifically to Mr. Pennells. This was before Vassall had yet been recruited by the Russian intelligence service. He referred again in his report at the end of 1954 to Vassall's irritating effeminate personality, and he mentioned the matter to the Ambassador who, whether because he was embarrassed or I know not what, assumed that Captain Bennett must be speaking half jokingly. I agree with the hon. and gallant Member for Harrow, East, that this was a curious assumption. Being unable, apparently, to produce tangible evidence to support his suspicions, Captain Bennett then, unfortunately--perhaps disastrouslyretracted and gave to Vassal! a character assessment which patently he never deserved. But Captain Bennett still remained of the same opinion, apparently, because, when he was approached in

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1962 by security officers who were then inquiring into Vassall's case, he volunteered the assessment that Vassall was an undoubted homosexual. The Tribunal, in exonerating Captain Bennett, seems to me to use a very dangerous argument. It says that he was entitled to assume that the proper process of screening and selection had been employed. 'This seems a specific instance of the kind of dangerous niceness referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman). Anyone who has experience in security intelligence will know that vetting at its best is a very haphazard affair and that it is highly dangerous for anyone to assume that, once a person has passed a positive vetting test, thereafter one can, as it were, stifle any form of suspicion one has about him because he has been cleared. If Captain Bennett had grounds for suspecting Vassall, as it is clear that he did, it would be quite disastrous if, by training, he had been led to the attitude that he should not really entertain such ungentlemanly suspicions about someone on his staff in a post of this kind. Then there is the further evidence. Captain Northey, who succeeded Captain Bennett, assessed Vassall as a "pansy little man". Most of his colleagues in the junior ranks called Vassall effeminate and "pansy" and nicknamed him "Vera". An American Press corre- 346 spondent, Mr. Johnson, and a fellow Press correspondent in Moscow, thought that Vassall was "queer". Finally, one of the elderly ladies Vassall gave as a reference for vetting made the pointed observation that he took very little interest in the opposite sex. It is remarkable indeed that none of these assessments of his character and personality led to his being withdrawn from his post in Moscow or were brought to the attention of the security officer who eventually had to undertake his positive vetting. This seems all the more extraordinary when one considers the circumstances of the employment of the services of Mikhailski. He was engaged by the British Embassy as an interpreter and general runabout for the convenience of the Embassy. He was supplied by a Russian agency in circumstances which the Tribunal notes were themselves suspicious. But the Tribunal excuses this on the ground that to refuse anyone offered by the agency resulted in months of delay before someone else was offered. It is clear that Mikhailski cultivated Vassal] at an early stage and that homosexual relations took place between them which is the answer to the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd)and that Mikhailski introduced Vassall to Russian agents who compromised and recruited him. By the end of 1955, as has been pointed out, an anonymous member of the Embassy staffwe are not told his name had become so suspicious of Mikhailski that he had prepared a memorandum, which was seen by the Ambassador. No action was taken except for a short circular sent round the staff referring to Mikhailski by name. We are told that after much discussion it was decided to retain him on the ground that if he was got rid of whoever would follow, after considerable delay, would be no less under Russian control. This was an astonishing decision, and clearly shows that they had accepted that Mikhailski was under Russian control. Immediately afterwards, there came the report from Miss Wynne giving positive evidence that Mikhailski was under Russian control and naming people who had been particular targets for his approaches, one of them being Vassall. No one approached Vassall about this and no action was taken on that minute. 347 Still less did anyone think of returning home this "pansy little man", as the naval attach thought him to be, although he was now known to be an object of the approaches of the Russian secret service. The Tribunal makes the extraordinary note

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that it is not easy for us to account for the inaction over this minute The Tribunal seems to think that it was part of its duty to account for the inaction. I do not know why. In September, 1956, an attempt by the Russian secret service to blackmail a wireless maintenance engineer through black market offences into which he had been led by Mikhailski was reported by him and he was returned to England. In consequence Mikhailski was dismissed but even then there was no follow-up of Miss Wynne's report. In April, 1957, an air attach's clerk, who again had been compromised through Mikhailski into a black market offence, reported that he had been approached by the Russian intelligence service and he was returned to this country. Still there was no follow-up of Miss Wynne's report. It is certainly somewhat extraordinary that this inaction should be thought to be less deserving of censure than the inaction of Mr. Pennells before Vassall had ever been recruited for Moscow. Perhaps most extraordinary of all is the part of the story contained in paragraph 35 of the general survey. It is not referred to in detail later and perhaps this is one of the parts excluded from the Report. Paragraph 35 says: it is known of Mikhailskithat he was a close friend of a diplomat in another Embassy, a friend of Vassall, who is reported to have been sent home from Moscow because of his homosexual leanings, and that he was concerned in yet another case of homosexual compromise affecting a third Embassy. I should be interested to hear more information about that paragraph. When was this known? By whom? What was done about it? Why is it not dealt with in the general body of the Report? I suggest that the conclusions to be drawn from this disturbing picture are that at that timewe do not know whether there still isthere was a great lack of awareness of the proper responsibility towards security on the part of senior staffs both in the Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and in the Moscow 348 Embassy, and that a far greater degree of education in security matters is required. What is to be done about it? What hon. Members may not know is that the Departments are responsible for their own internal security. The security service is a secret intelligence body concerned with counter-intelligence. It is not an executive body at all, and it has no executive powers. It cannot give orders to the Departments, it cannot give instructions to themunless matters have changed a great deal in the last twenty years. The only person who is in a position to ensure that there is proper control and coordination of security throughout the Department of State is the Prime Minister. It is to him that the security service is responsible, and it seems to me that what this Report shows is needed is a far greater degree of co-ordination and instruction of the individual Departments by the security service. We get a picture of divided responsibility and divided control throughout. I have every confidence in the security service. I am sure that it is highly efficient at spy catching, but spy catching is an entirely different matter from security. Security is the responsibility of Departments, and consists of controls designed to prevent people of weak character being appointed to positions where they are vulnerable from the security point of view, and controls designed to ensure that secret information is restricted in circulation to the absolute minimum number of people, and that physical difficulties are put in the way of any spy or agent getting such information, copying it or getting it out of the Department. Those are the sort of things that are dealt with by security. Security does not catch spiesit is intelligence that does that. As to that, I feel sure that we can be confident that we have a highly efficient body. But I certainly do not feel at all confident that our Government Departments are as yet anything like as security conscious as they should be, or have as efficient an organisation as they ought to have.

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I want to add my plea to the Home Secretary that he should now consider the release of the journalist, Mulholland. Mulholland may have cut, and did cut, a very sorry figure as a journalist when trying to defend the articles he had 349 written, but that has nothing to do with the reasons for which he is now in prison. Because a man may have acted dishonourably in one capacity is no reason for continuing to penalise him in another capacity in which, as I think we all would agree, he did act honourably according to his lights. So many people have received the benefit of the charitable spirit which has prevailed in all the inquiries into this matter that it seems to me that, Foster having been released, it is time that Mulholland also was released. The point of principle has been established, and it is mere vindictiveness to keep him in prison any longer. Once again, we have been disturbed to see the tribunal procedure operating in a way that exposes people who are not subject to any kind of charge and are not in a position to defend themselves, being pilloried in public, in the Press, and having their reputations destroyed. They do not even have the privilege enjoyed by anyone charged with any offence, Or against whom a civil action is brought, of refusing to give evidence. They can be compelled to give evidence. It seems questionable to apply the rigours of our system of examination and cross-examination to a kind of semi-judicial proceeding that has nothing whatever to do with our legal tradition at all. This inquiry is a form of inquisition and, if it is to be an inquisition, there is quite a case for saying that it should be left to the tribunal to do its own inquiring, that it should do the questioning, and that witnesses ought not to be subject to this process of examination and cross-examination. Whatever be the right answer to this problem, I am sure that the time has now come when we need to set up a committee, a Select Committee or a Departmental Committee, to inquire into the working of the procedure. 8.50 p.m. Mr. Philip Goodhart (Beckenham) I have listened to almost every word that has been spoken from the Opposition benches, and I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot) on being the first on his side to recognise that catching spies is a supremely difficult task, and that our intelligence service has done a pretty good job in this case. 350 I part company from him rather sharply, however, over his view that one of the reasons why Mr. Vassall was recruited so readily into the Russian secret service was that we had not implemented the first part of the Wolfenden Report. If the hon. and learned Gentleman looks at paragraph 31 of the Report we are now discussing, he will see that, in fact, Vassall had been surprised with a Russian officer and threatened with prosecution under the Russian law. It therefore seems that not only have we to implement Part I of Wolfenden, but we have to get the Russians themselves and the Communist world to implement it. Mr. MacDermot But if Vassall had come clean and had reported to the naval attach in Moscow what had occurred he would have been returned to this country at once and would not have been subject to any legal proceedings in Russia. Mr. Goodhart One does not know what happened precisely in that confrontation and the threats which were used to Vassall at that point. It must be a matter of conjecture. This is one of the unsatisfactory things about 'a debate of this sort; we are talking about secret matters and much, therefore, must be complete conjecture. It is difficult to talk about the successes of our intelligence services, and it is possible that at the moment we are debating quite the wrong subject and that the lapses over the

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Vassall case will pale into insignificance when compared with possible defects in our intelligence in the Far East with respect to the recent uprising in Brunei. The Report has been criticised as having been a fairly bland affair, and I join in some if those criticisms. There are some points of detail which I find it difficult to accept as showing a good state of affairs. Is a former deputy commissioner of the Nigerian police really a suitable person to carry out positive vetting? I have been involved in one or two positive vetting cases, and it has seemed to me that the questions asked of me were put from an old-fashioned point of view. I think that the Tribunal has dwelt over-much on the importance of the circulars about conditions behind the Iron Curtain which had 351 been sent to the Admiralty and elsewhere and the importance of briefing people about the fact that they were liable to meet subversion. I was in Moscow in 1954 and 1955. I visited the Embassy a number of times and met a number of diplomats and junior staff there. It seemed to me that there was no doubt on the part of everyone concerned that they were under siege and that every Russian or other national behind the Iron Curtain they met was a potential spy. I find it perplexing that more attention was not paid in the Embassy in Moscow to the very close contacts which Mr. Vassall had clearly had with Soviet nationals. One of the effects of such conditions is that the diplomatic community is pushed in on itself and that one's individual business becomes everyone's business. If one does not turn up at the Embassy ping-pong party on Thursday because one is having dinner with one's Russian's contacts, that sort of thing is noticed after a while, and I am surprised that this sort of information had not been filtered back. At the same time, I join those who have expressed the hope that some sort of recognition will be given to Miss Wynne for the report which she sent in. It is never pleasant to bear tales on anyone, and no doubt the report which she sent in was distasteful to her. It seems to me right that she might be considered for the M.B.E., with the Agatha Christie clasp. Looking back to 1954 and 1955, one has to remember the atmosphere which prevailed. At that time McCarthyism was riding high in the United States and it was a common topic of conversation in embassies and throughout much of the country that the McCarthyites and their persecution were doing immense damage to the American foreign service and the American Government. Occasionally some malefactor was discovered, but by and large the overall effect was of immense damage to the American system. I draw attention to a view clearly expressed in paragraph 209 of the Report when it said that spying on one's colleagues and the reporting of character defects, if it became part of our system, would be 352 not only injurious to the Civil Service but would be intolerable to our way of life. We have suffered in this one instance as a result of maintaining this attitude. If we tried to impose a totally alien security system on our Civil Service we would stand to lose far more than we would gain. McCarthyism was not just guilt by association. It also involved, as the hon. Member for Norfolk, Central (Mr. Ian Gilmour) pointed out in a brilliant maiden speech, the making of charges behind the cloak of privilege which were not than substantiated. From the moment that Senator McCarthy stood up in West Virginia, in February, 1950, and said that he had in his hand a list of Communists who were working in the State Department, those who were trying to combat it were desperately attempting to get him on to a stand where he could be asked questions by some sort of tribunal and be made to back up his charges. It was not for yearsuntil, finally, he came before a sub-committee of the Senatethat one was able to get Senator McCarthy into a position from which he could not wriggle out and by which it was proved that he had absolutely no basis for many of the wild accusations he was making.

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Our tribunal system has been much criticised today because of the unfairness it may do, in passing, to individual reputations; in this case those of Mr. Lewin and Mr. Pennells. Nevertheless, let us think back to the damage that Senator McCarthy did to the whole of the American State Department and to the American structure of government as such. If there had been a proper tribunal system in the United States I am convinced that McCarthyism could never have made the inroads on the other side of the Atlantic that it did. So, before we get too loud in our criticism of the tribunal system and before we show ourselves too ready to scrap it, I hope that we will realise that unsubstantiated charges can do just as much damage to liberty and reputation as anything else. 9.4 p.m. Sir Frank Soskice (Newport) During the seventeen years in which I have sat in this House I have always thought that the task of the hon. Member who is to wind up a debate is far from enviable. One sits in a state of acute anxiety 353 throughout the afternoon and listens to a flood of arguments washing like a deluge over all the points one has prepared so that, by the end of the debate, one rises to one's feet with a certain anxiety lest tautology may be the title appended to one's speech. It has, however, one very definite consolation, because it is by custom of the House the task of the hon. Member who winds up--indeed, my great pleasureto congratulate a new hon. Member on his maiden speech. That I do with a right good will. The hon. Member for Norfolk, Central (Mr. Ian Gilmour), I thought, made a most admirable, highly controversial speech. Comparisons are odious, and it is not customary for those congratulating a new Member to draw comparisons between his speech and other speeches by maiden speakers. If it were not contrary to custom, I would most certainly say, as I certainly think, that the speech which the hon. Member made is one of the best we have heard from maiden speakers for many years. I hope that we hear a lot more from him. If the speech thatthe hon. Member made this afternoon is, in his view, a non-controversial one, we shall be all the snore eager and excited to hear a speech which, in his estimation, is thoroughly controversial. Therefore, we have a lot to look forward to in the coming years and I am sure that the hon. Member will gratify our anticipation. Whilst I am on that note in the introductory part of my speech, I should like to say to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), who is sitting next to the hon. Member, that I am sure that we all feel intense pleasure in the reflection that his reputation is completely and authoritatively re-established. I feel that we would all wish to extend to him and his family our sympathy for the anguishing months through which they must have lived until this final pronouncement was made by the Tribunal. Having made those two introductory observations, I should like to try to summarise what, as far as I can see, are the main points of principle so far as the public interest is affected which emerged from the debate and from the contents of the Report. First and foremost, I suppose, is the security question as it emerges from the text of the Report. 354 Secondly, I suppose, is the question whether the procedure followed by the Tribunal under the terms of the 1921 Act ought to be reviewed on the basis that defects in its operation have been disclosed. Thirdly, there is the position of the Press as it has been affected by the proceedings of the Tribunal and of the Queen's Bench Division on the Tribunal's Report. May I address myself, first, to the security question? I certainly share the view of almost every hon. and right hon. Member who, with greater or less emphasis, with, if I may say so, the sole exception of the Prime Minister, has expressed some surprise at the somewhat lenient way in which the various figures who have paused across the stage

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have been treated as far as the discharge of their security duties was concerned. As for Mr. Pennells, I will say no more than that I would re-emphasise the comment which has been made that it was, after all, he who recommended that selection should not be limited to a single man or a single woman. I should have thought that that was a matter of considerable importance. It is not easy to conceive of a married man, with the solidity which family life generally brings with it, becoming involved in the sort of compromising situation in which Vassall became involved, or in which a single woman might also become involved. I suppose that black market operations might tempt married as well as single men, but that would obviously have been a major precaution to take. The unfortunate Mr. Pennells was discerning enough to point that out, although his recommendation in that respect was overruled by someone whose individuality is not known. Having said that, however, it seems to me that some of the conclusions of the Tribunal, as distinct from its findings of fact, are lenient. It is important to make clear to oneself exactly what the Tribunal was called upon to do. Basically, it was called upon to find factsto ascertain how it came about that various incidents took place, and whether there was any foundation of fact in a wide variety of rumours which had been disseminated. In the concluding passages of the Report, with the exception of Mr. Pennells and a few others, the Tribunal proceeds affirmatively to exoneratefrom 355 the point of view of security considerationspractically everybody whose name was mentioned, including those in the Moscow Embassy. Its references to the Moscow Embassy are perhaps the most surprising passages in the Report. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot) has already put to the House a series of points, in succession, which I had intended to put on that aspect of the case. To me, the Report is a terrifying document, because of the facts which it discloses. Turning to what seem to me the three central component partsthe wretched little creature Vassall, having been selected out of a short list of eight people by a process which can reasonably be regarded only as somewhat haphazard, was sent to the danger spot, Moscow. It was known when he got thereand it had been known for some timethat the Russian technique included the bringing about of compromising situations, upon which a process of blackmail was based. It was well known that that was a risk to which anybody going to that place would be continuously exposed. In this country, if Mr. X invited Mr. Y to dinner, I suppose that it would be somewhat unrealistic, in ordinary circumstances, for Mr. Y to say to himself, "Probably the purpose of this invitation is to compromise me", but in Moscow, if Mr. X invited Mr. Y to dinner, and Mr. X happened to be Mr. Mikhailski, the odds on the object of the invitation being to compromise Mr. Y would be about 99 to 1. It was in this situation that this little manthis somewhat vainglorious and pansy little creaturewas plunged into the maelstrom of Moscow diplomatic life. It is not as if he lived in the Embassy, under the eye of the Ambassador. He lived in Ulitsa Narodnaya about two miles from the Embassy. What happened to him when he completed his work at the Embassy and returned to the flat which he shared for some time at this address was known, to nobody So far as is known, nobody tried to find out. What he did, being invited out here and there, apparently seems to have been nobody's concern. When to that consideration is added the fact that he was obviously a person who had struck many people as a possible 356 homosexual, it is quite extraordinary that no steps were taken by anybody to prevent what ultimately took placeand, indeed, that everybody who might have taken steps was exonerated from any responsibility.

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My hon. and learned Friend has already retailed the circumstances. There was Miss Wynne, who says that it was obvious that the known suspect, Mikhailski, was deliberately directing his attentions to Vassall: there was Captain Bennett, who thought that Vassall was not a roaring homosexual, but a latent one, or a person with homosexual proclivities. The younger members of the Embassy referred to Vassall as "Vera". I should have thought that the Christian names more usually applied in that sort of situation were Gladys or Florence, but the name "Vera" contained a very obvious connotation and any respectable man who was addressed by the Christian name "Vera", in this country at any rate, would react extremely violently. If these facts are taken together and added to the situation of acute danger in which this man was living, the only way one can describe it is to say that it was a situation in which a pretty obvious homosexualhowever that term is defined and whether he was a practising homosexual or just the kind of person who has homosexual tendencies was let loose in Moscow in circumstances in which everybody who had anything to do with it knew that a man like that would be the obvious target for Russian secret service agents, and not only knew that he would be the obvious target, but was, in fact, the actual target for a person who at the Embassy was thought to be under Russian influence, the man Mikhailski. The result Which anybody might have expected took place. Of course, when he is compromised, the damage is done. Nobody knows about it and he goes about his espionage work and this little man goes on for seven years undetected. Then he comes back to London and he goes to N.I.D. and has access to top secret documents and in 1956 he is subjected to positive vetting. My right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) has already subjected the process which was applied to Vassall to an examination and com- 357 parison with the kind of vetting which would have been applied in the United States, for example. I agreed with the Prime Minister when he said that there was a limit to the degree of dragooning and personal investigation tolerable in this country. Fortunately, this country does not live according to Russian norms and it may well be the case, and no doubt is the fact, that we find it difficult to acquire the kind of security-mindedness which is habitual in many authoritarian countries. We lived through the Hitler period and the Second World War and we have since lived through the cold war, but in this country it still goes against the grain to accustom oneself to the idea that one must constantly, in any given situation, watch the man next door and see whether he ever displays any of those characteristics which we sometimes notice in people whom we know, but which we are polite enough to pretend not to notice, but which, if we wish to evaluate them, point to those persons as being security risks. But when all is said and done, to say that the system, at any rate, worked well, is incomprehensible. It may well be that on the facts which it investigated in its remarkably careful and thorough and comprehensive Report the Tribunal could properly come to the conclusion that it could not say positively on the evidence that it could be established that any individual was to blame. I myself would have had some difficulty in concluding that no one was to blame, certainly in the case of the British Ambassador, who had overall responsibility for security. But if that is the Tribunal's approach, the real tertium quid which should have been on trial, and perhaps was not, was the security system itself. One asks whether, on these facts, the security system should be regarded as wanting. I would have said that it was appallingly bad, and that is the view which has been expressed by almost every speaker who has addressed the House.

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Was this the right procedure? Personally, I take the view that the procedure under the 1921 Act is in itself extremely valuable when applied in the proper circumstances. If one is to scotch malignant rumour affecting a whole lot of people and attributing to them some kind of personal misbehaviour, personal dishonesty, or something of the sort, one of 358 those amorphous rumours which it is very difficult to pin down and about which it is difficult to know where it will go and from what it emanates, the Tribunal procedure is undoubtedly particularly valuable for use by the House of Commons. When this House sometimes runs into the situation in which personal aspersions are made against Members of this House or against Ministers, I would have thought that it was constitutionally of extreme value for the House to be able to say, "We divest ourselves of the inquiry. We put the inquiry into the seisin of independent judicial authorities, and we ask them, using the special procedure aplicable to the inquiry into that kind of rumour, to see exactly what happened, to ascertain the facts, to see whether the rumours had any foundation, and, if tley did not, authoritatively to give denials to what is said by way of aspersion." For that sort of situation, I would have thought that this kind of procedure was ideal. No doubt, the unfortunate individuals whose names are mentioned go through many months of extreme mental anguish until the final pronouncement is reached, but when it is reached, if they are innocent, and it exculpates them, I would have thought that they were in a far better position than they would be if any Select Committee procedure were adopted. The public have complete confidence in persons of the calibre of Lord Radcliffe, and if Lord Radcliffe and his colleagues come to the conclusion, after an exhaustive investigation of the evidence, that a charge or an imputation against an individual is unfounded, that, I would have thought, finally disposes of that charge. By contrast, while I would not wish to impugn the proceedings of any Select Committee of this House, I nevertheless think that it is the case, from the point of view of the public, if a Select Committee is investigating the conduct, say, of a Minister or Member of this House, its proceedings will not carry the same degree of public confidence. It will be said, "Well, after all, the Member or the Minister, as the case may be, is being tried by his colleagues. Some of the members of the Select Committee will be colleagues on the same side of the House as that on which the individual impugned sits." I would have 359 thought that by the very nature of things the same public confidence would not go with an inquiry of that sort and that the same degree of authority would not be vested in its findings as goes with the findings of a completely independent judicial tribunal. Therefore, I think that it would be a great pity if, by any change in the law, we in effect put an end to the procedure of this sort of Tribunal. Since the Act was passed in 1921, there have been about 15 cases in which its aid has been invoked, and while considerable suffering has been occasioned to the unfortunate victims of the imputations while it was sitting, nevertheless, it finally and for good scotches rumours. There is nothing so utterly pestilential as the malignant rumour that is allowed to continue to circulate. It may shed suspicion on the unfortunate victim which, if it is not finally scotched, may follow him for the rest of his public and, indeed, his private life. These are the first two issues which seem to me to arise out of this debate. I should like now to go to what I think is the third, the position of the Press. Great anxiety was expressed, certainly some time agoalthough I think that it has been to some extent allayedby the Press as a whole as to whether the requirement that journalists should disclose their sources could be said to inhibit the complete freedom of the Press. If I

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thought that that was a well-founded anxiety, I should myself at once accede to the view that we should change the law to prevent it. But I do not. How often is a journalist required to disclose his sources? It is very rare. According to Lord Denning, in the Court of Appeal, at the hearing of the Mulholland and Foster case, it happened on only three occasions his Lordship knew of; in the case of the Parnell Commission in 1889; in an Irish case in 1935; and in an Australian case in 1941. If any member of the profession of journalism is brought fair and square to face the problem, "Do you think that you should have a privilege which the law does not give to others?" I think that the answer he would give would be, "No". It would be "No" because 360 suppose a judicial proceeding was going on and an individual journalist had knowledge which could produce a fair result; if he were asked, should he disclose that knowledge, he undoubtedly would say, "Of course I should". Everybody would; any conscientious journalist would. If he were then asked the further question, "Who is to decide whether the information you possess may influence the result to prevent an injustice? Should it be you or the judge?", I am sure that any conscientious journalist would say, "Most clearly the judge, he is much better qualified than I am to form a view about that." I should have thought that that was the conclusive answer which anyone would accept, and which I think is now widely accepted, on the question of there being any special change in the law to give journalists a privilege which, after all, priests do not have, doctors do not have and which, broadly speaking, no one has, except legal advisers. A doctor to whom a patient may impart the confidential information that he suffers from a venereal disease is bound, should the occasion arise, to disclose that information in a court, although the disclosure may mean the break-up of a family. I do not think that any journalist would wish to be put in a more favourable position vis-vis the law of privilege than a doctor or a priest; a Roman Catholic priest, for example, who is bound to disclose information confidentially imparted to him in the confessional. It has been suggested that the right way to deal with the situation which arose in the case of this Tribunal was for the matter to be referred back to this House. I put it to the House that that really is not right. We in this House formulated the terms of reference to the Tribunal and must surely accept the result of those terms of reference. The Tribunal required a disclosure by journalists of sources of their information. If that was the wrong result, it is we who are responsible. If the matter is to be referred back to us; if the Tribunal is required by an alteration of the law, that sort of situation developing, to refer back to this House and say, "What are your directions now?", what would we be able to do? 361 We should have to alter our own terms of reference to the Tribunal[Horn. MEMBERS: "Why not."] Hon. Members say, "Why not?" We should not have got them wrong in the first place. Mr. Michael Foot (Ebbw Vale) We were not permitted to amend the terms of reference in the first place. If the Government had produced their proposition in proper terms, so that the House could have had the opportunity of amendment, we might have considered an amendment. Some of us protested against the original establishment of the Tribunal on those terms on the ground that we were not even permitted to amend the terms which we were asked to vote about. Sir F. Soskice The hon. Member is perfectly right. This House does decide by a majority. It may be that the minority view was right and that it was wrongly voted down by the majority. But as long as we decide matters by majorities in this House, we cannot complain if the

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Tribunal takes on itself to discharge faithfully the task which we by majority entrust to it. I have come to the limit of the time fairly allotted to me. The Prime Minister Go on. Sir F. Soskice The Prime Minister says, "Go on". I am aware that in that respect I disagree slightly with the view expressed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. The Prime Minister Wholly. Sir F. Soskice But I wholeheartedly agree with the strictures of my right hon. Friend against the Prime Minister. I disagree with what he said about the Prime Minister in only one respect. I thought that he was far too mild. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I thought that that observation might produce a change of view. I had provided for it. On that note, I may say to the Prime Minister, I conclude my observations. 9.31 p.m. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod) The concluding observations of the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice), as perhaps he noticed, were not greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm by his hon. Friends, which is not surprising, because they were in direct contradiction, 362 as I understood them, of the point of view put to us by the Leader of the Opposition. I will come to the point about the Tribunal. I have heard every speech in what I think has been a very good debate. I suppose that, in a sense, it might have been an even better debate if it had not been in the aftermath of one particular security case and when one particular Tribunal's Report was very much in our minds. I join with the right hon. and learned Member for Newport in the congratulations which many hon. Members have given to my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, Central (Mr. Ian Gilmour) on his outstanding maiden speech. I shall consider, first, the relationships with the Press, secondlywhich is at the heart of the matterthe question of security, and, thirdly, the interesting points raised about the procedure under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act. First, I wish to deal with the problems which arise from the relationship between politicians and the Press. May I take a text for this and quote something which President Kennedy said on 16th December last year? He was being asked whether he was still as avid a reader of the Press as he had been and what role he thought it should play in a democratic society. He contrasted the position in America with that in Russia and went on: there is a terrific disadvantage not having the abrasive quality of the Press applied to you daily, to an administration, even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn't write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn't any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active Press. I like the word "abrasive". It exactly sums up the relationship that there should be. I do not believe that the relationship between a government and the Press can be anything but tough if both sides are doing their job, although there is no reason why they should not have a certain regard for each other as well. Most people feel uneasy about the revelations in this Radcliffe Report. Although I am an associate member of the Institute of Journalists, I do not agree with the statement which it put out so swiftly after publication. I think that the two anxieties of the ordinary person are these. First, the realisation of how 363 quickly competition becomes

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cannibalism and how much copying of other people's stories is practised, and, secondly, the presentation of what is in truth speculation as if it were fact. Perhaps I can illustrate the last point. Since the agenda of Cabinet meetings is secret, nothing is revealed except the names of the Ministers outside the Cabinet who have attended. Sometimes, as with the pre-Budget Cabinet, everybody knows what is being discussed. But, for the rest, it is a matter of speculation, and the speculation is very often wrong. It is wrong because the presence of, shall I say, the Attorney-General is linked to whatever legal matter may be in the headlines. But the time scale of the speculation is wrong because it is likely that the Attorney-General's presence relates to something not yet in the headlines and which, perhaps, may never be there. There is a similar position with other Ministers. From this initial speculation other inferences are drawn until the end stories are far from reality. First, does it matter that the people of this country read political stories which are not soundly based? I think that it does. Clearly it conflicts with C. P. Scott's dictum that "Comment is free, facts are sacred." Secondly, we must ask ourselves whether this can be avoided. I am bound to say that, given the techniques of modern mass circulation journalism, I think that the only honest answer is "No"anyway, not entirely. I agree with the pointI believe that it is in paragraph 14of the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) about the different factual basis that a journalist must have. It is not possible or desirable to ban political speculation, and, more important still, it is not practicable for a working journalist to put into his story all the reservations that he either knows or thinks ought to be there. If he did the sub-editor would knock them straight out. The journalist does not write the headlines, so the story which he produces in the end which gives an appearance of factual reporting may be no more than intelligent guesswork. I think that one of the reasons for this is that in many papers the outlines of the news pages are planned before the 364 news is firm. Therefore, when a story which proves to have less foundation when investigated than was thought may be swollen to fit the space reserved for it. There is a classic example for all time of how a story based on very little can escalate, and that is the story of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith). The right hon. and learned Member for Newport was quite right. For months my hon. Friend and his family have had to bear the whole brunt of what Baldwin once called I think he used the words in connection with another tribunal, if I remember rightly"the unthinking cruelty of modern publicity." I believe that in calmer moments, looking hack on it, many people must now be sad and ashamed of what they wrote and what was said here and elsewhere. The remedies are for the Press itself. Parliament cannot effectively impose them, nor should it try. The Leader of the Opposition made the interesting suggestion that newspaper proprietors might have a self-denying ordinance not to buy the stories of spies, murderers and others. I agree with him. This suggestion was made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House of Lords when the Motion to set up this Tribunal was moved. It was also made, as I expect the right hon. Gentleman remembers, by Mr. Randolph Churchill in the News of the World a week ago. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman is in good but for him rather unusual company in putting the suggestion forward. Parliament should not try to impose these remedies. We have enough to do putting our own house in order. However, there are lessons for the Press in this Report. There are also lessons for the Government. Before leaving this topic I should like to sayI am sure all Members will join me in thisthat these disturbing events need not in any way affect the close traditional Lobby links that all Members have with the Press.

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On the question of security in a free society, the Leader of the Opposition was quite right. The Report and the debate were first and foremost about security. We cannot be, we must not be, and I assure the House we are not, complacent because, after all, it did happen. When all the words in the Report have been read, when all the explanations have been 365 made, it did happen that a spy was there for those years. Everyone must be or ought to be extremely anxious about this. The Leader of the Opposition put some direct questions to me which I should like to answer as well as I can. He first raised a very interesting point about local staff. He asked what the Americans do in Moscow and what the Russians do here. I am told that the American Embassy in Moscow employs local staff. I therefore presumeI have not had time to check thisthat it has to employ them through the same agency whose methods are described in the Report. The Russians have no local staff in London and I think this is their invariable custom. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister referred to this point. It seems to me be a difficult one. I do not put this on grounds of economy, but if an Embassy is to take the whole of its staff with itthis would mean presumably cleaners, charwomen, gardeners, everybodythe number of people who would have to undergo very strict vetting indeed would be enormously swollen and they would be automatic targets. This has to be balanced against the undoubted fact, which the Report brings out with great clarity, that all of these people that one employs in this way come from a corps organised for this purpose and are agents or potential agents. The right hon. Gentleman then asked when Lord Radcliffe was going to make a separate Report dealing with any weakness in the security arrangements which came to our notice during this inquiry. The House will remember that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in moving the Motion for setting up this Inquiry said that he had asked Lord Radcliffe to do this and that Lord Radoliffe had agreed to do so. The Prime Minister in his speech today referred to a number of points which are not recommendations in the Tribunal's Report but which suggested themselves on an examination of these incidents. The Prime Minister has discussed these matters with Lord Radcliffe. I do not think that it would be appropriate to publish them as a formal additional Report, but naturally my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, 366 just as he showed the Leader of the Opposition the full Report, would be glad to discuss this matter further with him if the Leader of the Opposition so wishes. The right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ballenger) made some references to my noble Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty. The right hon. Gentleman said that he was not going to say that hethat is, the First Lordknew that a spy was in the Admiralty. I am bound to say that I should hope not. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that in his view it was right, on the general doctrine of Ministerial responsibility, that my noble Friend should tender his resignation. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman did not hear the Prime Minister's words this afternoon on this particular point, and so it would be right for me to repeat them to the House. My right hon. Friend said, "And as regards my noble Friend, not one of the specific errors of judgment referred to in this Report, or for that matter in the Report in the Portland case, occurred while he was in charge of the Department", I think that disposes of that point. The most difficult point is the question whether one can in a free society make the positive vetting system better up to the point of being almost unassailable. Some suggestions on this were made. The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) said that, if there had been more investigation into Vassall's school and Service records, it would have thrown up evidence of his homosexual tendencies or behaviour. Vassall's school

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record is put down as satisfactory. His Service record is put down as "Very good conduct throughout iervice". This appears in paragraph 23 of the Report. I concede this point: if it were possibleI m not sure that the sheer mechanics of it would make it possible to have a much more detailed system of investigationin other words, to spread the P.V. system much wider and have far more investigations-1 suppose it is conceivable that such evidence would be thrown up. The right hon. Member for Bassetlaw asked me whether anyone who is known to be a homosexual is excluded from positions of importance in the embassies or in relation to classified material. The 367 answer is "Yes", but I recognise that this begs the question because one has to use the words "If it is known". If hon. Members study the Report they will see that all Foreign Service personnel, attachs and their staffs, are now positively vettedthis is in paragraph 77and that any such tendency would normally rule out the person concerned, which is in paragraph 158. I was asked whether we were protecting too much, whether it would not be better to protect less and protect it better. There is a good deal in this, but, of course, as the Leader of the Opposition knowsI think that he raised this point first and other hon. Members on both sides followed itthis was part of the recommendations of the Radcliffe Committee of April, 1962, which, I know, the right hon. Gentleman has studied. Lord Radcliffe's Committee at that time recommended a number of ways in which the definitions of security classification could be sharpened and their use more strictly controlled, although, of course, it recognised the difficulties which existed in achieving a completely satisfactory situation. I assure the House that this has been pursued and carried out. Instructions have been given to Departments to implement these recommendations, and detailed guidance on these matters has been given. Before I come to questions about the tribunal of inquiry procedure, I wish to make a short reference to the case of Mr. Pennells. One can understand the feeling with which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson) particularly, and those who served with him at the Admiralty, speak on this matter. It should be clearly stated that the one error of judgment which is suggested against Mr. Pennells was his failure to raise with the D.N.I. the question of whether the system of selection should be reviewed. It is not in dispute that he served faithfully and efficiently for many years in the Civil Service. Nor, I think, can the House, if it considers the matter, reasonably come to the conclusion that the Tribunal could have commented in any other way. Having gone into such detail, it could scarcely have omitted the name and, if 368 it had, the name would have been discovered within a very short time. Clearly, the Prime Minister, in authorising the very limited number of deletions from the full text, could not have left out the name, and in any case it would have been no protection. What one can say to the family and the daughter of Mr. Pennells, who, I think, will be comforted by some of the things said from both sides of the House today, is that everyone who is in public life must be conscious that, if every action of his over a period of years were looked at under the microscope, it would be found that there were things he had done which he ought not to have done or things that be had left undone which he ought to have done. This must be so. Certainly, no Minister would wish to claim that, on every single file on every single day while he was in office, he took exactly the right decision. In fact, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Dudleymy hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South was wrong in thisthere are in paragraph 171 people named as responsible for an error of judgment. So one should emphasise once more that this is an opinion of the Tribunal. it is not possible to hear Mr. Pennell's side of the case,

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and this single error of judgment, if, indeed, he were guilty of it, does not affect the fact of his life of faithful service to the Crown. Mr. Bellenger The point of the argument was not directed to whether the Tribunal was right or wrong in singling out Mr. Pennells for not making a recommendation to the D.N.I. but it was related to what one can only call the whitewashing of others who were equally responsible or remiss. Mr. Macleod I do not think that those words can reasonably be attributed to people of the calibre of Lord Radcliffe, Mr. Justice Barry and Sir Edward Milner Holland. Mr. H. Wilson The right hon. Gentleman really has not answered the point about the Service career rating. Would he deal with the point which some of us made about why in the P.V. procedure no attempt was made to get the views of Vassall's chiefs in Moscow on the particular question of his suitability for handling secret material? 369 Mr. Macleod The right hon. Gentleman has emphasised the point I was making a few moments ago, that the Tribunal did emphasise exactly this point and said that, if those mentioned in paragraph 171, which I shall not read to the House, had gone furtherthe right hon. Gentleman is quite rightthere might have been a different result. The Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, 1921, has been used on sixteen occasions during the past forty-two years. Thus, it can be said that, as the Leader of the Liberal Party suggested it should be, it has been used sparingly. The Leader of the Liberal Party asked me whether everything which was before the civil servants was also before the Tribunal. The answer is "Yes, it was from the beginning." The biggest single block of the sixteen cases were matters which concerned the police of this country. We are rightly jealous of any attacks which may be made upon the police. I think that only four can be looked on in any way as having taken place to clear, or otherwise, the conduct of Ministers. These were the 1936 Budget leakage case, the 1948 Lynskey Tribunal, the 1958 Bank Rate Tribunal and the Vassall Tribunal. Sometimes, particularly in the Vassall case, the question of security is even more important. Mr. Wigg This Act came into existence because the Conservative Government in 1921 were in very great difficulties. On the very first occasion it was invoked in order to protect Ministers. Mr. Macleod A better reason was given by my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, Central in his maiden speech when he said that the system of Select Committees, particularly in the Marconi case, had proved completely unsatisfactory. Do we need such a procedure at all? The right hon. and learned Member for Newport betrayed more enthusiasm for the Act than I feel myself, but I agree with him that we do need such an Act because it is a fact that neither the laws of libel nor the criminal law would be equal to the task. Quite apart from the delays in these matters, the laws of libel are concerned only with statements 370 actually published about particular individuals. They cannot, therefore, deal with gossip and cannot be used at all when allegations are made about public bodies like Government Departments. The issue of writs by the two members of the Government concerned would not have dealt with more than a minute

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part of the Vassall story; nor would it have dispersed more than a fraction of the public concern aroused. Finally, the criminal law of itself is not sufficient, because there may not have been sufficient evidence for prosecution, as in the Waters case, or indeed no crime at all, as in the case of Mr. Belcher. For these reasons, I hold that even with all its difficulties it is right to have such a system, and I do not believe that a Select Committee of this House could do this as efficiently in these cases. Two main arguments are used against the Act. The first is the procedural argument which we heard so much at the time of the Bank Rate Tribunal and at the time of the setting up of this one, but it is one we have not particularly heard today. The criticisms made after the 1958 Tribunal included suggestions that there should not be a hostile opening by the Attorney-General which was unanswered, that there should be an opportunity for counsel for individuals to make corresponding statements, that innocent people might have to pay large costs, and that it was unsatisfactory for the same counselthe Attorney-Generalto examine in chief and to cross-examine. All these matters, I think, have been largely and in most cases wholly met by the procedure. The second argument was put very well today by the hon. Member for Coventry, East. It is that even if we acceptand some of us do not, so I will not pursue it nowthat we do need some sort of tribunal like this, is it not possible for innocent people, insignificant people, ignorant people, to get caught up in this great juggernaut while we are trying to put right some rumours, malicious gossip or whatever it may be that such a tribunal in some cases is designed so well to deal with. Here I share the hon. Gentleman's anxiety to the full. I myself by accident saw something of it during the Bank Rate Tribunal, when I was Minister of 371 Labour. A member of my staff, who had been only three days in my Department and whom I had never met, said in a railway trainand I could have done without this tribute thenthat he had a splendid Minister who told him everything. By the time this story had rolled on a few stations and had passed on a few times from mouth to mouth, it had emerged greatly embellished. Fortunately, in that case it was easy to disprove. But other people are less fortunate. This is the main anxiety people have and I will consider the points about whether we should have a Select Committee or some other method to inquire into the whole procedure of Tribunals. We are debating a Motion to "take note." I imagine that this means we shall not vote, and that is good. We take note of a number of things. We take note that the standards of security were lax in some cases and we must do everything we can to improve them. We take note of the analysis of the Press stories, but 372 leave the remedy to the Press. We take note, with profound satisfaction, of the utter and complete vindication of the two Ministers. There was no fire. Indeed, there was no smoke in the stories. We take note also that the procedure of the tribunals does come under criticism, and I think that what has been said by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister of a suggested new method at least in security cases will show that we do not intend to leave this where it is. Enough criticisms there may be, but I do not think that anyone reading this brilliantly lucid Report can come to any other conclusion but that my right hon. Friend was right in his concluding sentence when he said that truth had prevailed. We take note of that and rejoice in it. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House takes note of the Report of the Tribunal appointed under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, 1921. to inquire into the Vassall Case and Related Matters, presented on 24th April, and of the operation of the Act. **********************************************************************

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SECURITY (MR. PROFUMO'S RESIGNATION) HC Deb 17 June 1963 vol 679 cc34-176 34 3.33 p.m. Mr. Harold Wilson (Huyton) This is a debate without precedent in the annals of this House. It arises from disclosures which have shocked the moral conscience of the nation. There is the clear evidence of a sordid underworld network, the 35 extent of which cannot yet be measured and which we cannot debate today because of proceedings elsewhere. I believe that the feelings that have been aroused throughout the nation axe similarly echoed in this House and that there are many hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite who are as sick at heart by what has been disclosed as those on this side of the House. There is the personal and family tragedy of a man lately our colleague here. However much we condemn himand we must condemn himthat is not the issue today. What concerns us directly is that the former Secretary of State for War, faced with rumours and innuendoes that could not be ignored, chose deliberately to lie to this House, and in circumstances in which this House allows freedom of personal statement without question or debate on the premise that what is said is said in good faith. What does concern us, too, is the question whether any other Minister in any sense connived at this action through foreknowledge or, being in a position to ascertain the truth, failed to take the steps that were necessary to fulfil the duty that he owed to the House. What concerns us, also, is whether a man in a position of high trust, privy to the most secret information available to a Government, through a continuing association with this squalid network, imperilled our national security or created conditions in which a continuing risk to our security was allowed to remain. We are not here as a court of morals, though the nation as a whole cannot escape the responsibility so to act. But questions affecting national security, questions affecting the duty of Ministers to this House, must be pressed and probed today, and this debate, in one form or another, must continue until the truth is known so far as it can ever be known. Much has been known to hon. Members and to the Press for many months. Many of us have witnessed the ceaseless interweaving of innuendo and rumour. We on this side of the House knew what was being said. I feel that I must begin by recounting to the House the 36 facts about the information which reached us, the conception we held of the duty of an Opposition in such matters, and the action we took. We did not canvass or propagate rumours about personal conduct, but where security questions were raised, and, later, where there was a question of the inaccuracy of statements made in this House, we felt that we had a clear duty, and any other Opposition would have had that same duty. Already, in February, the rumours to which I have referred were so pervasive, so widely canvassed in the Press, that there was a danger of a widespread cynicism developing about our public life, about our Government, about this House, none the less damaging for the inability of the Press, through fear of libel action, to publish those facts. Moreover, the legal inhibitions which function here to prevent publication do not operate abroad, and already, months ago, salacious and damaging stories were appearing in overseas publications. I say quite frankly to the House that, rightly or wrongly, we did everything in our power to prevent this becoming a matter of public discussion or a matter for party controversy. Many of my hon. Friends will confirm that we did all in our power to dissuade them

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from tabling Questions or, in some cases, to persuade them, in more than one case pretty roughly, to withdraw Questions which were already on the Order Paper. Then, on 21st March, the question was raised in the debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill. This was, of course, followed by the meeting of the Secretary of State for War with five Ministers and then by the Secretary of State's personal statement made in the House that Friday morning with the full and public support of the entire Government, including the Prime Minister. The following Mondayand I must recount in full what happenedmy hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) was invited by the B.B.C. to appear on "Panorama". In that programme he said, quite flatly, that in his view both Ivanov, the Soviet naval attach, and Ward were security risks. This statement provoked Ward the next day into telephoning the House and leaving a message for my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley to ring him. My 37 hon. Friend arranged for that telephone conversation to be monitored. During the course of the talk, Ward asked my hon. Friend if he could come and meet him at the House. So they met in the evening at the House. The meeting was, in fact, witnessed, and my hon. Friend later prepared a full memorandum of what Ward had said. During the course of the talk Ward mentioned that he had once written to me and had a reply. On my files being searched, I found that he had written to me last November, as had hundreds of others, during the time of the Cuba crisis. His letter purported to describe a high-level interview with the Foreign Office aimed, in what I think was the most crucial 24-hour period, at changing Britain's Cuba policy on the basis of an independent initiative by Her Majesty's Government. In the letter, Ward said that he knew about this, and he gave very full and circumstantial details about the approach to the Foreign Office and what happened after it arrived. He said that he knew about it. because I was the intermediary on behalf of the Soviet Embassy. I do not think that up to that moment anyone suspected that the Ward mentioned by the former Secretary of State as the chief witness, as it were, in his statement, was, in fact, a self-confessed Soviet intermediary. I will not trouble the House with the full text of this letter, because the facts of this particular case have come out in the Press during the last few daysthe initiative by Ivanov, the activities of Ward, the approach via Lord Astor and then Lord Arran to the Foreign Secretary, and the turn-down of the proposal. At the time I received the letter, I did not think it to be of any account. All of us are used at times of crisis to hearing from individuals who claim, or have claimed, to save the peace of the world. I thought that it was one of those letters and it received an appropriate reply. But now, of course, it had to be reread in the light of the former Secretary of State's reference to his friendship with Ward. I thought it my duty to bring it immediately to the attention of the Prime Minister, who might not know that this Secretary of State for War was associat- 38 ing with a selfconfessed Soviet intermediary. I did not mention the letter or the action I took on it either to the Press or even to my colleagues. By this time I had received from my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley a note about his very long conversation with Ward. I shall not weary the House with this. It is a nauseating document, taking the lid off a corner of the London underworld of vice, dope, marijuana, blackmail and counter-blackmail, violence, petty crime, together with references to Mr. Profumo and the Soviet attach. Quite frankly, I felt when I read it that if it were published as a fiction paperback in America hon. Members would have thrown it away, not only for what it contained, but as being overdrawn and beyond belief even as credible fiction.

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As I was myself going to Washington I asked my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice), as a former Attorney-General, to examine the document and, if necessary, question my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley to see if, prima facie, it should be sent to the Prime Minister. When I got back from Washington some days later my right hon. and learned Friend reported that it should certainly be sent to the Prime Minister and it was duly transmitted to the right hon. Gentleman through the respective Chief Whips. Again, knowledge of this was kept to the four of us concerned on this side of the House, and not a word reached the Press then or subsequently until the most recent events. I think that the House must realise this: one word from us on this side in this House and we should have released an explosion as great as we have seen in the last fortnight. But we decided that, although the documents in our possession were, in a sense, dynamite, and would have touched off such an explosion, it was our duty, as a responsible Opposition, to hand over all this information to the Prime Minister, who has first responsibility for security, and not to make public use of them. The implication of this was, of course, that the Prime Minister would handle his side of the matter with a corresponding sense of responsibility. He replied to me on 17th April. I have wondered whether I should quote these letters, but I think that it is all right because, indeed, some 39 have already been printed in the public Press. I do not complain, because this matter is one of public concern, and I know that the Prime Minister does not object to my quoting from them. Not all of them, in any case, were marked confidential. The right hon. Gentleman wrote: My Chief Whip has given to me the letter and enclosure from you dated April 9 and dealing with George Wigg's conversation with a Mr. Stephen Ward. I will ask the appropriate authorities to have an examination made of this information and will get in touch with you later on if this seems necessary. I think that the House will note a somewhat casual approach to a very serious allegation. Above all, there is the reference to "a" Mr. Stephen Ward, as though Ward were an unknown person. After all, five Ministers had spent half the night just before that with the then Secretary of State and Ward had been quoted as the chief witness to them of the respectability of the Secretary of State's proceedings. Yet we have this reference to "a" Mr. Stephen Ward, as though he were an unknown person in whom neither the Government nor the security services could take any possible interest. This one wordindeed, the letter as a wholewas symptomatic of the indolent nonchalance of the Prime Minister's attitude to this: the attitude of "what has this to do with me?" That is an attitude which we have seen since, as well. Some weeks later, having heard nothing from him, I tried again, and on 14th May he wrote to me: There seems to be nothing in the papers you sent which requires me to take any action. Nine days later, on 23rd May, I received a further letter from Ward, who wrote also to the Home Secretary complaining of police inquiries directed towards his patients and saying that, because of these inquiries, he now felt it no longer necessary to conceal the fact that Mr. Profumo had lied to the House. I immediately sent this letter, also, to the Prime Minister and learnt, at the same time, that Ward had sent a summary of the letter he sent to the Home Secretary to the entire British Press. From this moment it was a matter of common knowledge, though even so, for the reasons I have mentioned, the Press did not publish that summary. 40 The following Monday I asked to see the Prime Minister to discuss not this letter from Ward, but the right hon. Gentleman's own letter of 14th May, in which he said that no further action would be taken on the original material. The right hon. Gentleman and I were accompanied at this conversation by the Patronage Secretary and by the

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Opposition Chief Whip. The right hon. Gentleman maintained the attitude expressed in his letter. Nor did Ward's letter to the Home Secretary seem to make any impression on him in this respect. I say frankly to the House that I was completely dissatisfied with the reply I had from the Prime Minister and with the position and I drew a very sharp contrast with the Prime Minister I had served under, Earl Attlee. I told the Prime Minister that John Belcher had been crucified, his career broken, for no other crime than his unwise choice of social contacts, though at no time in the case had there been any suggestion of any risk or breach of security. I told the Prime Minister that on that occasion Lord Attlee sent for the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Jowitt, late at night for a report, calling him in within minutes of the allegations reaching him. In fact, the allegations turned out to be totally false, but on that occasion the whole machinery of the law was put to the task, and I know very well that Mr. Belcher's staff at the Board of Tradethe civil servants with whom he was in contactwere subjected to the most brutal investigation by the police. No one complained about that. But in this case all we got from the Prime Minister was that no action seemed to be called for. As a result of this interview, the Prime Minister, on 30th May, wrote a further letter to me in which he said: I have been thinking about our talk on Monday. I am sure in my own mind that the security aspect of the Ward case has been fully and efficiently watched, but I think it important that you should be in no doubt about it. The right hon. Gentleman told me of his decision to invite the Lord Chancellor to make an inquiry and require the information necessary from the police and the security authorities, and to report back to him. I repeat what he said in his letter: I am sure in my own mind that the security aspect of the Ward case has been 41 fully and efficiently watched, but I think it important that you should be in no doubt about it. So Lord Dilhorne was set to work right through the Recess in order to satisfy the Leader of the Opposition who, inconveniently, was not so easy to satisfy as the Prime Minister, who was in charge of the nation's security. This was the Thursday before the Recess. In the afternoon, I saw the Prime Minister across the Floor of the House in his place for Questions. I pushed across to him a hastily scribbled note saying that in my view he should immediately announce the commission with which he had entrusted the Lord Chancellor, in order to allay public anxiety, which was very great, because he knew that the Press had already received the Ward statement. I received an acknowledgment from the Prime Minister's secretary later that eveningthe Prime Minister, of course, was going away. In fact, it was only last Monday, ten days later, when the storm had broken, that the Prime Minister, by this time very much on the defensive, did announce that the Lord Chancellor had been asked to make these inquiries. I ask why did he not announce it at the time he wrote to me about it. The Times, last Tuesday, had the answerbecause the Prime Minister was gambling on the issue never seeing the light of day. This has been the right hon. Gentleman's attitude right through. After the Vassall case he felt that he could not stand another serious security case involving a Ministerial resignation, and he gambled desperately and hoped that nothing would ever come out. For political reasons he was gambling with national security. I think that this is why he was at such pains to demonstrate to me his unflappability and his unconcern. Now I will tell the House exactly what our attitude was on the basis of the material that had reached us. Our attitude was not that there was any evidence of a leak of secret information. Let us be clear on this: whether there was a breach of security at any time, whether there was a leak of information, is something we shall never know. There cannot beany assurance on this point and I shall later explain why. There is no means now of finding out.

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42 From that point of view, the inquiries of both the security authorities and the Lord Chancellor were bound to be fruitless, because the Prime Minister does not know whether there was any leak at all. He cannot know. What we were concerned with was clear evidence that, leaks or no leaks, there was a standing condition of a security risk as long as the Secretary of State for War was part of this quadrilateral made up of Miss Keeler, Ward, the self-confessed Soviet intermediary, and Ivanov, the Soviet attach. I did not myself think Ward to be a spy. He was too unstable for the Soviet authorities, who usually make use of better material; but he was undoubtedly a tool, an instrument, and his unique access to people in high places made him useful to them. But for a Secretary of State, a member of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet, with full access to all military secrets and to the military secrets of our allies, to be part of this dingy quadrilateral reveals a degree of security risk that no Prime Minister could tolerate for one moment after the facts were conveyed to him. I hope, at any rate, that there will be general agreement on that question throughout the Housethat no Prime Minister could tolerate this condition of security risk for one moment after the facts were conveyed to him. It was on 27th March that I gave the Prime Minister the information to which I have referred, eleven weeks before my insistence on an inquiry eventually forced the matter into the openI think that there is common agreement that this matter was forced into the open as a result of the Lord Chancellor sending for the former Secretary of State for War. There were eleven weeks between then and the Prime Minister's receiving even my materialand I would hope that he was receiving material before I handed in any on this question. Nor was it the first material that he had had. What I have to ask him isand I hope that the Prime Minister or his Parliamentary Private Secretary will take full note of the questions being put to him, because we shall want a straight answer to every one of these questions before the debate endsfirst, why did he not accept the Secretary of State's resignation when he knew the 43 degree of security risk? Was it offered by the Secretary of State and refused by the Prime Minister? If it was not offered, why did the Prime Minister not demand that resignation? We cannot escape the conclusion that the answer to this question is that politics, and not security, came first, and because a born gambler does not operate that way. I must now ask the Prime Minister how often he met the Secretary of State to discuss any of these questions during the past two years. Perhaps he will tell us the dates and what transpired. I am sure that he must realise that his was the responsibility in this matter and that this particular responsibility cannot be delegated to other Ministers. He had the responsibility, both as head of the security services and as the Prime Minister who appoints, and, indeed, sacks, Ministers who do not prove satisfactory. But for eleven weeks, to my certain knowledgeand this is clear from the letters I have quoted and it must have been for longer than thatthe Prime Minister refused to accept that there was a security risk. Does he now accept that there was a security risk during that period? I hope that he will tell us this, because on television on Thursday night Lord Hailsham said to Mr. McKenzie: Well, of course there's a security problem. Don't be so silly. A Secretary of State cannot have a woman shared with a spyif he was a spywithout giving rise to a security risk. The question is not whether there was a security risk, but whether there was an actual breach of securitybe sensible. Lord Poole, on Saturday, said: As we now know, there was from the start a security riska serious security risk. Does the Prime Minister accept that now, because he did not do so the last time I met him?

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This risk had been there for more than two years and no amount of the Press briefing which we have had in the last two or three days, no amount of Cabinet manoeuvring, no committee meetings upstairs, will disguise the fact that there opposite me is the man responsible for this continuing risk. We shall be told, we have been told, and we may expect this to be the central theme of the Prime Minister's speech, that, of course, there was a risk, but 44 there was no leak. That is what the Press has been assiduously briefed to say in the last 24 hours. How do we know that there was no leak? We cannot know; we shall never know. Unless the security forces knew about the relationship with this foursomeWard, Ivanov, the Secretary of State for War and Miss Keelerunless they tapped every telephone call to any of the four, unless they monitored every conversation between them or any pair of them, no one can know what information was handed over from one person to another. No one can know this. Yet the Prime Minister told me in his letter of 30th May, only a few days ago: I am sure in my own mind that the security aspect of the Ward case has been fully and efficiently watched. Were they watched? He has to tell us this. The Prime Minister knows that it is a standing instruction in the security services that no Minister can be followed without the Prime Minister's express permission. Was it given in this case and, if so, will the Prime Minister tell us on what date permission was given to follow the Secretary of State for War? If the House accepts, as Lord Hailsham accepts and as Lord Poole accepts, that there was a continuing security risk as long as these two were meeting, the Prime Minister's statement that they were being efficiently watched cannot apply unless he gave his assent to the Secretary of State being watched. When we say that there was a security risk we mean that through a personal defect of character, or a perverted political or other loyalty, or through the possibility of intolerable pressure, or through cupidity or financial need, or through a personal or family relationship, an individual is more liable than his fellows to disclose information. That is what we mean by a security risk. To diagnose such cases is the whole basis of security work. Civil servants, War Office clerks, engineers in Admiralty establishments, or workers in Ministry of Aviation contractors' works, are frequently moved on the initiative of the security authorities if any security risk condition such as I have defined is found. Only two days ago we read that an Oxford undergraduate was barred from the University O.T.C. on a security initiative because his mother was born in Moscow. [Laughter.] This is quite 45 serious. This is the job of the security authorities where they find a risk of this kind; it is their job to go to the employer or the commanding officer of the individual concerned and to see that the individual is moved out of harm's way as far as secret information is concerned. The Prime Minister, indeed the whole Cabinetbecause they are all in this now, including the Minister of Healthneed to have their attention drawn to Command 9715, the Statement on the Findings of the Conference of Privy Councillors on Security, as it were the official text, the bible, of security work. In paragraph 10, the White Paper says: The Conference recognise that today great importance must be paid to character defects, as factors tending to make a man unreliable or expose him to blackmail, or influence by foreign agents. There is a duty on Departments to inform themselves of serious failings such as drunkenness, addiction to drugs, homosexuality or any loose living that may seriously affect a man's reliability. In paragraph 12, the Conference said: While confining themselves to the security aspect of these defects of character and conduct the Conference also record the view that in individual cases or in certain sections of the public service, a serious character defect may appropriately be the determining factor in a decision to dismiss a particular individual or to transfer him to

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other work. Does this rule apply only to clerks, to civil servants, to workers in Government laboratories, or is there some reason why Secretaries of State are exempt from this condition? Does the Prime Minister accept the same responsibility as the head of any other Department to dismissor transferto other work anyone who is found to have a security defect? In a case like this, it is only too clear to the House that there are at least two obvious ways in which a security risk can become more of a risk and be translated into a reality. The first, of course, is if Ivanov, directly or through Ward, had asked the girl to put security questions to the Secretary of State for War. This has been alleged by her. It has been alleged that Ivanov, through Ward, asked her to put questions to the Secretary of State for War. She said that she never put them. However this maybe, the possibility was there. Have not the security authorities made full inquiries? How often have the 46 security authoritiesand starting whenmade inquiries of Miss Keeler as to the pressures put on her to obtain secret information from Profumo? We shall never really know the truth about this. For one thing, she has been terrified by suggestions that she will be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act, and this makes even her somewhat unreliable attitude to the truth perhaps even less dependable than it might have been. Here is the first point: that there was clearly the possibilityI am putting it no higher than this that this relationship could have been used by Ivanov for getting secret information. Secondly, there was the open exposure to blackmail. Blackmail has been used before in espionage cases. It was used in the case of Vassall, as the House will recall. Here the possibilities were infinite, because the disclosure of a photograph or a sound recording would have meant total ruin for the victim. I am not saying that this blackmail happened. We do not know. The White Paper on Security, which I have just quoted, is merely concerned with the risk that these things can happen; and one man was given the responsibility by the House for seeing that these risks were not allowed to continue, and that man was the Prime Minister. The security services, the Radcliff Report told us, are always very sensitive to the possibility of blackmail. There is another question which I want to put to the Prime Minister here. Even if there were no leakand it is clear, I think, that none of us can ever know whether there was, although the Government are clinging desperately to the argument that they do not think that there wasone issue is, as I have said, this long continuing security risk from another point of view: because Soviet espionage in this country is not directed only to the transmission of secrets. Perhaps of even greater importance to them is the effort which they make to sow in the United States deep doubts about the efficiency of the British security services. I wonder whether any hon. Member for one moment can doubt that in the episode which we are debating today the Soviet espionage authorities have been handed a triumphant success, not least by the failure of the Prime Minister to take action when the facts were made available to him. This is a question 47 which the Prime Minister must answer: does he or does he not think that there was a continuing security risk, and what effect does he think that this has had on our relations with our allies? I come to one further quite direct question to the Prime Minister and to the House because I think that all the House, and certainly hon. Members opposite, equally with us, will demand a full answer from the Prime Minister. I want to put it to him that we must have a full disclosure in the debate today of what is going on. We want to know whether there are any more revelations to come. Have we had all that the Government now know? Or is there more still being held back in the hope, the desperate gamble, that

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it will not come out in some other way? Is this the whole story that we have now, or is it only that part of the iceberg which is visible above the surface of the water? I say directly to the Prime Minister that if he purports today to give the House a full statement of everything that is known to him, and if, during the course of the next week or two, or the next month or two, there are more revelations, the House will hold him guilty, too, of misleading the House about the true facts in this situation. On Saturday, the Prime Minister courteously sent me a copy of the Lord Chancellor's report to him. May I say that in one sense it put me in something of a difficulty. Clearly, I cannot quote it, because it is not being laid on the Table of the House. I feel, equally, that I cannot use any of the facts contained in it, but, equally, I am sure that the Prime Minister will agree that I cannot be muzzled or gagged by the fact that I have seen it. It contains much information which was already public knowledge, or, at any rate, was fairly widely known, and I feel it right, therefore, to put to the Prime Minister today those questions which can be put on the basis of knowledge otherwise available to me. Indeed, I may say that these questions had already been pretty fully worked out in my mind before I saw the Lord Chancellor's report. This means that I have already put to the Prime Minister, and will be putting to him, some questions to which I now know the answer on the basis of 48 the Lord Chancellor's report. I will not give the answers. I will leave it to the Prime Minister to give the answers, because it is right that he should decide how much of the Lord Chancellor's report can be disclosed. First, as to Ivanov. His activities, we are told by the Prime Minister, were fully and efficiently watched. His contacts were wide. He took full advantage of this sector of London society. Why, then, was he not declared persona non grata by the Government? Secondly, I want to ask the Prime Minister on what date was a full security watch placed on Ward's flat? The Prime Minister told us that Ward's side of this was fully and efficiently watched. He said that in a letter to me. Thus, he will not mind telling us on what date the watch on Ward's fiat began and on what date, if any, it ended. If it were fully and efficiently watched, there must have been a watch. Will he tell us the date on which it began? He knows that I know the answer to that question. Thirdly, when did the Prime Minister himselfI think that this is central to the whole issuefirst hear these rumours about the Secretary of State and the girl? On what date? I hope that he will tell us this, because it is fundamental. The House must be told the precise date. Fourthly, who told the right hon. Gentleman? The information which I have had is that it was not, in fact, the security services, that it was a top executive of a newspaper group who had just bought one of the sets of the Keeler memoirs and who came to Admiralty House specifically on the security issue and informed the Prime Minister's staff of Miss Keeler's association with Mr. Profumo; and, of course, with Edgecombe and with Gordon and with Ivanov. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm this and will he give the date? Next, will the right hon. Gentleman tell us this? On receipt of this information, what did he do? Did he send for the Secretary of State for War and confront him with it? What checks did he make on receiving this information? Any hon. Member opposite, in whatever capacityin business; in the Armyon receiving information of a comparable character to this would have immediately sent for his junior and confronted 49 him with the charge. Did the Prime Minister do this? Fifthly, did the right hon. Gentleman instruct the security services to check the accuracy of the statement by reference to Miss Keeler herself? When did the real security checks on Miss Keeler begin and how thorough were they? I think that the right hon.

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Gentleman will realise the importance of these questions and the need to give a straight answer to them, If, in fact, the security services knew all about the Keeler relationship in 1961, it was their duty to tell the Prime Minister then, not only because he is their chief, because he is the only Minister responsible for security, but because he alone had the power to act. The right hon. Gentleman alone had the power to sack the Secretary of State for War. If they knew in 1961, when the danger was greatest, and if they did not tell the Prime Minister, there is a clear case for a ruthless inquiry into those responsible. I think that some heads would roll in the security services if this turned out to be the truth. If they did tell the Prime Minister, then his failure over two years to sack the Secretary of State, to end the situation, would represent an inconceivable lack of responsibility on his part. But this is not all. If they did know and if they did tell him, it would mean that he connived, that he was an accessory before the fact to the gross contempt of the House involved in the personal statement on 22nd March last, when the Prime Minister so clearly identified himself with the statement of the Secretary of State for War. Frankly, I find it quite impossible to believe that the right hon. Gentleman could be guilty of that. I do not believe for one minute that that was the situation. So if it is true, if I am right, then either the security services knew and deliberately withheld that information from him, in which case heads have to roll, or they did not know. If they did not knowit is a fair question to ask why they did not know, whether they should not have been on to itsomething follows from that. It follows that they could not have been monitoring, they could not have been watching, the effects of the Profumo-Keeler relationship. The Prime Minister doubts this: the whole matter has been fully covered. He 50 cannot have it both ways, because either the Keeler-Profumo relationship was known and the security services were following it and there was no security risk, in which case the Prime Minister is very guilty for not having taken action over that period, or the security services knew nothing about it, in which case they could not have followed it and, therefore, the Prime Minister has no warrant whatsoever for saying that there was no breach of security, because he simply does not know. Whether the security services are blameworthy or notthe House will take a lot of satisfying on this pointthey simply were not in a position to detect any possible breach of security. Therefore, I say to the Prime MinisterI think that the whole House must say to himthat, if the security services did not know, two years ago, about this relationship, then his letter to me of 30th May was totally misleading when he said: I am sure in my own mind that the security aspect of the Ward case has been fully and efficiently watched. So, on that assumption, all the complacent statements which have been fed out to the Press in the past 48 hours, that there were no security leaks, are completely dishonest. The Government have no means of knowing whether there were security leaks or not. Therefore, the Prime Minister must answer these questions about the date frankly and clearly. We shall not easily allow him out of the Chamber until he does. I will hazard my own view of the answer. The only one that I think fits the facts, except on a basis which would convict the Prime Minister and his colleagues both of scandalous unconcern for security and of being a party to misleading the House, is this. I believe that the first the security services knew or even guessed about this very big security risk was when a Sunday newspaper told them a few months ago. If this is truethe Prime Minister must be frank about thisthis would imply that the 60 million spent on these services under the right hon. Gentleman's Premiership have been

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less productive in this vitally important case than the security services of the News of the World. He must tell us this. It would mean, too, as I have said, that no one has any idea of the possible 51 security breaches, because on my information the first intimation of the Profumo-Keeler relationship did not reach the Prime Minister or the security services until after Ivanov had left the country this year. So how can he say that he knows what went on? It would mean something else. If my suggestion is correct about the Sunday newspapers, something else is involved. On the information that I have, this first allegation about the Profumo-Keeler relationship and the Profumo-Keeler-Ward triangle was made to the Government four and a half months ago. The Prime Minister is to give us the date in a minute. It was, therefore, two months before the Secretary of State's personal statement. There was plenty of time to check up with Miss Keeler. There was plenty of time to check up with the Ward set-up and with the other witnesses, who seem only too ready now to talk, especially if there is money involved. So, though I personally acquit the right hon. Gentleman of foreknowledge or complicity in this matterof course I do; of course we all do; I mean complicity in the misleading of the Househe cannot be acquitted of a grave dereliction of duty in failing to find out. The House was grossly misled and abused, not by his complicity, but by his inadequacy. I come now to the meeting of the five Ministers late at night, till five o'clock in the morning, with the former Secretary of State for War. Did they have this M.I.5 material before them, the material which M.I.5 presumably had been investigating for two months from the day it first received it from the Sunday newspaper? Was the head of M.I.5 invited to this confrontation with the Secretary of State for War? If not, why not? We have been given by Lord Poole, who seems to know all about these things, an account of who was at this meetingthe Ministers, the Law Officers, the Leader of the House, the Chief Whip, and, for some reason I cannot understand, the Minister without Portfolio, the head of the Government's information services. What in heaven's name was he doing there? The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod):I should be very grateful if, just on this point about 52 the Minister without Portfolio, I could make this clear. My right hon. Friend the Minister without Portfolio was there because he was in the House for the debate which the right hon. Gentleman will remember, and which had just concluded, on the two journalists. He was the only other Cabinet Minister in the House. It was nothing whatever to do with his other responsibilities. He was the only Cabinet Minister in the House, and he was in the House at the service of the House for that debate. Mr. George Wigg (Dudley) Before my right hon. Friend passes from that point, may I say that that statement is not true? The Home Secretary was present in the House and I put my question to the Home Secretary. Why was not the Home Secretary at the meeting? Mr. Macleod If the hon. Gentleman will study HANSARD a little more carefully, he will find that some hours before the House rose the debate with which the Home Secretary was concerned had concluded, and the Home Secretary had, in fact, left the House. Mr. H. Wilson As I myself was present, I cannot confirm the right hon. Gentleman's recollection. He had better check the times again, because the Home Secretary and I were crossing swords with one another at about 1.30 that morning and the right hon. Gentleman knows that Profumo had been sent for before that. In any case, the right hon. Gentleman

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knows, does he not, that the Home Secretary, at that time, was in possession of vital information from police inquiries about Miss Keeler in which the Secretary of State for War's name had been mentioned? If he had gone home, why was he not brought back for so important a meeting? After all, the result of the meeting, which lasted for several hours, was a statement which misled the House. For some reasonI should like to know whyMr. Profumo's solicitor was present. This is most extraordinary. I have never heard, and I am sure that the Patronage Secretary has not, of an hon. Member seeing his Chief Whip and asking for his solicitor to be present. This is a very serious point, because I should like to know on whose initiative the solicitor was brought along. After all, if the Secretary of State for War said, "I am not going to see the Chief Whip without having my 53 solicitor present", this is the sort of thing which any petty crook says when he is arrested. It ought to have aroused the suspicions of the Leader of the House. Or did the Leader of the House say, "We have a very grave charge to put to you. You had better send for your solicitor"? I hope that we shall get a clear answer about that from the Prime Minister. If there was time to get his solicitor out of bed and bring him here, why was not there time to bring both the Home Secretary, if he had gone home, and the head of the security services? We, and, I am sure, hon. Gentlemen opposite, too, will take a lot of satisfying about this meeting that took place late at night. There is one other matter of great importance to the House. I said that the deception of the House was a grave contempt of Parliament. It is important that this should be recorded in a formal decision of the House, otherwise there is a danger, through default, of eroding the principle that any calculated deception is an abuse and a contempt. I gather that there may be difficulty about tabling a Motion on the Order Paper before we leave today, but the Government must announce that they intend to table a Motion so that it can be debated, and we must ask them to put the matter right at once. If they fail, I give notice that we shall ourselves table a Motion and demand that time be given for adequate debate. I have dealt today with the problem of the security risk and the clear failure of the Prime Minister to fulfil his duty to this House and to the nation. I have given the Prime Minister some direct questions to which the House will insist we must have answers. For reasons which I have given, I have not dealt with the moral challenge with which the nation is faced. The uncovering of this sleazy sector of society in London and elsewhere is a matter to be pursued elsewhere. But the papers day by day add to the odious record. Saturday's papers told of an opportunist night club proprietor who had offered Miss Christine Keeleror should I refer to her as Miss Christine Keeler Ltd.a night club job at a salary of 5,000 a week, and I say to the Prime Minister that there is something utterly nauseating about a system of society which pays a harlot 25 times as much as it pays its 54 Prime Minister, 250 times as much as it pays its Members of Parliament, and 500 times as much as it pays some of its ministers of religion. But they are wrong at home and abroad who see this as a canker at the heart of our society. I believe that the heart of this nation is sound. What we are seeing is a diseased excrescence, a corrupted and poisoned appendix of a small and unrepresentative section of society that makes no contribution to what Britain is, still less to what Britain can be. There are, of course, lessons to be drawn for us all in terms of social policy, but perhaps most of all in terms of the social philosophy and values and objectives of our society the replacement of materialism and the worship of the golden calf by values which exalt the spirit of service and the spirit of national dedication. I once heard the Archbishop of York say that we were in danger of creating a system of society where the verb "to have" means so much more than the verb "to be", and now

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we are seeing the pay-off for that system of society. But our friends abroad are wrong if they draw the hasty conclusion that this country is entering the era of corruption which has heralded the decline of the great civilisations of the past. The sickness of an unrepresentative sector of our society should not detract from the robust ability of our people as a whole to face the challenge of the future. And in preparing to face that challenge, let us frankly recognise that the inspiration and the leadership must comefirst here in this House. 4.25 p.m. The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan) As the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) observed, this debate takes place in conditions which are wholly unprecedented. A great shock has been given to Parliament, and, indeed, to the whole country. On me, as head of the Administration, what has happened has inflicted a deep, bitter, and lasting wound. I do not remember in the whole of my life, or even in the political history of the past, a case of a Minister of the Crown who has told a deliberate lie to his wife, to his legal advisers and to his Ministerial colleagues, not once but over and over again, who has then 55 repeated this lie to the House of Commons as a personal statement which, as the right hon. Gentleman reminded us, implies that it is privileged, and has subsequently taken legal action and recovered damages on the basis of a falsehood. This is almost unbelievable, but it is true. Before I went away for my short holiday on 30th May, I felt pretty sure that this incident, as I knew it then, raised no serious security issues, and I shall explain why. Nevertheless, I had arranged for the Lord Chancellor to make an inquiry in circumstances about which the right hon. Gentleman has said something and about which I shall have more to say later. It was also my conviction that Mr. Profumo had not deceived me, his colleagues, or the House, but spoke the truth, and I was fortified in this belief by the successful action that he had taken. On the fifth day of my holiday I was informed of the truth. Since we cannot now, I fear, put much confidence in anything that he has said, the problem of security is now enhanced, but, in addition, moral issues of the deepest kind are involved. For what greater moral crime can there be than to deceive those naturally inclined to trust one, those who have worked with one, served with one, and are one's colleagues? The right hon. Gentleman has put a number of questions to me, and I can assure him and the House that they will be answered in the course of my speech, but I trust that hon. Members will allow me to deal with these points as they occur in the narrative which it is only right that I should give to the House. This is more convenient, though long I fear, and it is the proper way to deal with it. This means covering both the action I took before Mr. Profumo's statement and the action which I took to deal with any matters after it, but before his confession. However, there are certain aspects of this case to which I would first like to refer, as they affect myself. In a period of Ministerial office which runs altogether to 17 years, and more especially during the last six years as Prime Minister, I have had to face, like all Ministers, grave and baffling difficul- 56 ties. Sometimes, the House probably realises, looking back on their character, that they involved great strain and pressure, but these burdens were all bearable because, whatever the different point of view between both sides of the House, whatever the degree of political argument and conflict, whatever the international dangers involved, these have been questions of policy. This is different. I find it difficult to tell the House what a blow it has been to me, for it seems to have undermined one of the very foundations upon which political life must be conducted.

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However, in recent days I have been trying to search my heart and conscience, and I have approached the matter in this way: there is the question of good faith; there is the question of justice, and there is the question of good judgment. I know that I have acted honourably; I believe that I have acted justly, and I hope that when it has heard my account the House will consider that I have acted with proper diligence and prudence. Until my return from an official visit to Rome at the beginning of February, 1963, I had never heard of Mr. Ward. I only say this because I observe that it has been stated that I sat for a portrait for him. There is no reason why I should not have, but, in fact, I did not. I made inquiries, and found that he had done a sketch of me from the Strangers' Gallery, of course without my knowledge, and had written to my private office for permission to exhibit it, which was granted. When I returned from Rome, I was informed by my Principal Private Secretary that a general manager of a national newspaper had come to Admiralty House on Friday, 1st February, 1963, and had thought it his duty to report in confidence that certain rumours were going about linking the name of a Miss Keeler with the Secretary of State for War and Captain Ivanov, a former member of the Russian Embassy in London. My Principal Private Secretary at once transmitted this information to the deputy head of the security service with a view to my receiving a full report immediately on my return. My Principal Private Secretary also went to see the Secretary of State for WarI was awaythe same afternoon, and told him of the story he 57 had heard, and said that it was imperative that Mr. Profumo should come to see either me or my right hon. Friend the Chief Whip. I should tell the House that as soon as my Principal Private Secretary told Mr. Profumo of the rumours that were circulating he denied them in every important particular, in the same terms in which he subsequently made a statement in the House. That is to say, he admitted that he knew Miss Keeler, but emphatically denied that it was anything more than an innocent social friendship. He said that he had only met her, following their first meeting, at Lord Astor's house at Cliveden, at the house of a Mr. Stephen Ward. Mr. Profumo said that he had broken off their acquaintanceship after a short timeright back, two years beforeas a result of a warning that he had from Sir Norman Brook, then Secretary of the Cabinet, that Mr. Ward might possibly be a security risk by virtue of his friendship with Ivanov. The House will wish to know, and ought to know, exactly what this warning was, and why it was conveyed by Sir Norman Brook, as he then was, to the Secretary of State. The security service had obtained information in 1961 that Ivanov was acquainted with Ward. As the House knows, in this period of cold war between East and West the circles in which certain diplomatsparticularly members of the RussianElmbassy move are always, and must be, a matter of general interest to our security service. It was in pursuit of its duty that the security service obtained information of this acquaintanceship, namely, that between Ivanov and Ward. Of course, there is nothing wrong in British people meeting members of the Russian Embassy. On the contrary, in the long term there may even be some marginal effect for good upon the policies of the Soviet Government, and it would certainly be unfortunate if the only contact with diplomats from behind what we call the Iron Curtain countries was with dedicated Communists. As it happens, Ivanov was first introduced to Mr. Ward by the editor of the Daily Telegraph, not privately but at a luncheon party at the Garrick Club. There was nothing abnormal or reprehensible in this introduction. It was a normal journalistic occasion, held in con- 58 sequence of Ivanov's visit with a party of other foreign naval attachs to the Daily Telegraph office. Mr. Ward was included in the party because he was anxious

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to visit Moscow and to draw Soviet personalities from life. I mention it only because I feel that after all the rumours the House had better be told all the facts that I know. This introduction took place in January, 1961,and was a normal contact of the ordinary kind. It was only when this was followed up by a somewhat closer acquaintance that the Security Service thought it advisable to see and to warn Mr. Ward. It did this on 8th June, 1961. Without attempting in any way to put any bar on his association with a member of the Russian Embassy it nevertheless thought it right to warn him of the need for caution in circumstances of this sort. Later, Mr. Ward spoke of Ivanov in such a way as to imply that he, Ward, could be helpful to British interests in his dealings with this official. He also mentioned casually that he happened to know the Secretary of State for War. This was on 12th July, 1961. In view of this statement by Mr. Ward that he knew Mr. Profumo the head of the security service thought it right to tell Sir Norman Brook that it would be advisable that Mr. Profumo should be warned about this connection. The warning was of a possible security risk. The risk was that if Mr. Profumo did know Mr. Ward he knew a man whom they knew was friendly with a member of the Russian Embassy. There might be nothing in this. It was, in any case, a risk at one remove, but, still, it was a risk, however remote. I will now tell the House what happened after that. Sir Norman Brook called to see Mr. Profumo on 9th August, 1961, and gave him this information and this warning. Mr. Profumo was warned then about the possibility of danger by virtue of his friendship with a man who was thought to be rather friendly with Ivanov. Neither the security service nor Sir Norman Brook had ever heard of Miss Keeler, or about the things that have now been revealed, orI must be careful; they are sub judicewhich seem to have been revealed in the Ward 59 household. They knew nothing whatever about them. The only point was that here was a man, first introduced by the editor of the Daily Telegraphof whom he had made a friend, and he was warned, as a Minister, that this was the kind of man that he should be careful about, and ought not to see, or to see as little as possible. Neither Sir Norman Brook nor the security services knew of any other circumstances except exactly what I have said. Mr. Profumo told us later that as a result of this warning he immediately discontinued his friendship with Mr. Ward and paid no more visits to his house. I must at this point draw the attention of the House to a difficulty about dates in this period. In his personal statement Mr. Profumo said that he last saw Miss Keeler in December, 1961, and had not seen her since. I have told the House that Sir Norman Brook warned Mr. Profumo on 9th August, 1961warned him not about Miss Keeler, of whom he knew nothing, but of Mr. Ward. Nevertheless, as we know, the two associations were linked. But that was not then known. Mr. Profumo subsequently said that he was mistaken in saying that he last saw Miss Keeler in December, 1961. He said that he remembered that he had received the warning from Sir Norman Brook about Mr. Ward at the beginning of a Parliamentary Recesshe thought that it was the Christmas Recessand he knew that he had written to Miss Keeler on the same day that he was warned about Mr. Ward. There is no doubt at allfor this is all recorded in the proper minutesthat the warning was given on 9th August, 1961. This, as we now know, was the date of the letter breaking an arrangement to meet Miss Keeler9th August, 1961. I must tell the House that Sir Norman Brook did not inform me either of the fact that he had received this information from the head of the security service, or that he had thought it his duty to speak a warning word about Mr. Ward's friendship with Ivanov.

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He did not tell me. I have since consulted him and he is perfectly sure, in the minute he is perfectly certain, that his recollection is that he did not tell me. 60 I do not complain of it. I merely state the fact that the minute that Sir Norman recorded makes no reference to his having informed me. He himself is in no doubt that he did not think it necessary to make any reference to me. I mention this at some length because one of the allegations which I have seen freely stated in the Press and elsewhere is that I knew of Mr. Profumo's association with Mr. Ward as long ago as August 1961, and I did nothing about it. This is the first charge of dilatoriness of duty that has been brought against me and it is completely untrue. I must emphasise that while there was some undesirability, or even, if hon. members like, a security risk, there is no evidence whatever of any breach of security. None of the authorities concerned knew at the date of the warning of Mr. Profumo's acquaintance with Miss Keeler. Indeed, as I shall tell the House, none of them knew of it until the end of January, 1963. There is of course, unfortunately, under modern conditions, where so much is known of the ways in which private weaknesses can be played upon, a wide range of behaviour which is properly a matter of security. The right hon. Gentleman has referred to it. But if the private lives of Ministers and of senior officials are to be the subject of continual supervision day and night, then all I can say is that we shall have a society very different from this one and, I venture to suggest, more open to abuse and tyranny than would justify any possible gain to security in the ordinary sense. Moreover, the security services have not the resources to watch the houses of all citizens who number Russians among their acquaintances, and even though supervision of this kind were to be confined to those who are known to have personal acquaintanceships with members of the Russian and other Eastern European embassies in London the task would still be quite beyond the resources of the security services. In fact, it would be necessary to recruit an enormous army of invigilators, and that, I am persuaded, is not right, or the answer. I have gone into this at some length because the matter was raised by the right hon. Gentleman, and I have seen it suggested in the Press that the security authorities were keeping a perpetual 61 watch on Mr. Ward's house; that they saw Mr. Profumo enter and leave the house; that they saw Ivanov enter and leave the house and that these events were reported to me at the time. None of this is true. They did not keep this watch and they did not report to me during any of this period any of these things. Now I ought to return to the main narrative. I told the House of the first information received in my office in February of this year of events which had occurred in the summer of 1961. If I may remind the House, my principal Private Secretary saw Mr. Profumo in February. He denied any impropriety, and my Principal Private Secretary told him that he must report either to me or to my right hon. Friend the Chief Whip on the full facts. In the event, Mr. Profumo, who had talked to the head of the security service, and both the Law Officers of the Crown, saw my right hon. Friend the Chief Whip. He was questioned closely. To all of them he confidently and emphatically denied the rumours in all and every important particular and protested that there had been no impropriety in his association with Miss Keeler. I must tell the Housethis answers another questionthat while maintaining his innocence, Mr. Profumo asked the Chief Whip whether he ought to resign, in view of the rumours about him. The Chief Whip, rightly, replied that if the rumours had any foundation, of course he must resign. But, if not, there was no reason to do so. It may be asked why I did not question Mr. Profumo myself. I think that that is an extremely fair question and I will tell the House why. I did not do so for two reasons. First, I thought he would have spoken more freely to the Chief Whip and the Law Officers than to me,

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his political chief. Secondly, for me personally to carry out an examination of this kind, in the probing detail necessary, would have made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to feel in future, however innocent he might have been, that he enjoyed my confidence. The situation which then confronted me was that damaging and scurrilous rumours were circulating about a member of the Government which he solemnly and consistently, and on more than one occasion, denied. I could have 62 asked for his resignation, and now I come to the second point at issue. In thinking about it, I thought that it would have been unjust. There had been no public attack upon him. There was not known then in public any ground for lack of confidence in his integrity and his earnest assurance. I must confess frankly to the House that in considering what I should do the Vassall case, and the effect which it had upon my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), the present Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, was certainly in my mind. I have been reproached for accepting the resignation of my hon. Friend, when I did, when rather similar rumours were circulating and when nothing was specifically stated but only hinted at. Indeed, I told him at the time that I believed that in the long run his resignation might help him, but would not help me. In that case, and again in the circumstances presented to me at this stage, I was anxious to avoid any injustice. I would ask hon. Members: supposing I had required Mr. Profumo's resignation and thereafter he had issued writs for libelwhich, in fact, he did doand had been successfulwhich, in fact, he wasthat would have created the feeling that an innocent man had been unjustly treated by me. Quite apart from any personal considerations, the belief that any individuals innocent of any offence or misdemeanour could be victimised and their careers ended merely on the basis of rumour, which is subsequently shown by the judgment of the courts to be without foundation, would have a profoundly damaging effect upon the whole of political life. There is, of course, always the temptationthe right hon. Gentleman has accused me of dilatoriness and of wanting to save trouble. Of course, one way to save trouble would have been to demand Mr. Profumo's resignation. But I think that to have done so would have been an act of injustice. Ministers in the Vassall casethe right hon. Gentleman talked of the Vassall "scandal", but there was no scandal affecting Ministers except in the rumours, which were terriblewere made the subject of rumours, accusations and innuendoes which were, in fact, shown to be absolutely untrue, and 63 I think that it would have been quite unjust if, having seen recently what harm rumour could do, I had, merely for my own comfort, insisted on a resignation at this stage. Of course, it was most desirable that these rumourswhich were brought to me in great detail by my right hon. Friend the Chief Whip, but which had not been published in the national Press or in any similar organshould be dealt with. It would be specially desirable that rumours involving a Minister should be dealt with in the House of Commons, from which Governments of whatever character, individually and collectively, draw their support. Hon. Members with long experience of the House will realise the difficulty of anything in the nature of a personal statement denying rumours which are merely circulating in private circles by word of mouth. Some, though not all, hon. Members may have seen a broadsheet called Westminster Confidential, published by Parliamentary Profile Service Ltd., of which the director is a certain Mr. Roth. The issue of this broadsheet which appeared on 8th March contained some allegations about Mr. Profumo and this was brought to my attention. I consulted my right hon. and learned Friend the AttorneyGeneral. His view was that the limited circulation and the general character of this publication did not afford adequate grounds for the issue of a writ for libel by a Minister and that this was not the occasion for which we were looking. We wanted an occasion,

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Mr. Profumo having said this over and over again to us, to protest and prove his innocence. On 15th March a national newspaper printed an article on its front page about his resignation. Again, I consulted the Attorney-General and accepted his advice that there was nothing in this article which was libellous. But in the debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill, on 21st March, the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) and the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) all gave public expression in the House to at least some of the rumours which were circulating. Here then, at last, was an opportunity to nail the rumours, and nail them at 64 once without the inevitable delay following the issue of a writ of libel. These allegations were made, I think, at a lateish hour, when I had gone home, and, I think, gone to bed. I was told of them over the telephone and readily agreed with a suggestion that Mr. Profumo should now prepare a personal statement. It had to be done that night because next day was Friday and it had to be made as soon as possible, and, therefore, at eleven o'clock in the morning instead of 3.30 p.m. as is usual. Accordingly, Mr. Profumo arranged for his solicitor to go to the House of Commons in order to make quite certain, as he was to make the statement, that it should be correct in every particular[Laughter.]as we then believed, as I think we all believed. That was the real belief. There were present my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, the Minister without Portfolio, the Chief Whip, the Attorney-General and the SolicitorGeneral, Mr. Profumo and his solicitora man, by the way of great experience and, I understand, a member of a firm of high repute. Much has been made in the Press about this meeting and hon. Members may ask why other Ministers should be concerned in a personal statement by one of their colleagues. The answer is because the Secretary of State was one of our colleagues and accusations had been made against him as a Minister as well as a man. It was essential that they should satisfy themselves that the statement should be unequivocal and should leave no room for criticism that any of the allegations had been smoothed over, or evaded. This they did. They were satisfied with his account, which was the same that he had given on all previous occasions. There have been Press reports that at this meeting all those present had a copy of the letter which Mr. Profumo sent to Miss Keeler and which has since been published. That is not true. All those present knew of the existence of the letter, but they could not read it because it was in the possession of the recipient or of a newspaper if she had by then given it to them. Certainly, Mr. Profumo had not got it, or a copy. The knowledge that his letter might be published at any momentthat is the important pointmade my colleagues 65 feel confident that Mr. Profumo could hardly dare to give a misleading account of the contents of this letter. Here, I should tell the House that the Ministers did not know the contents. They were aware, and I was made aware that the letter began with the word "Darling". This was volunteered by Mr. Profumo, who explained that in circles in which he and his wife moved it was a term of no great significance. [Laughter.] I believe that that might be acceptedI do not live among young people much myself. My right hon. Friends were satisfied, in the face of repeated assurances of a man who, after all, was one of their colleagues, and fortified by the certainty that any falsity in his public account must, in the long run, be exposedas, indeed, it has beenand awaited with confidence the statement which would be made in the morning. All this was reported to me. I had a copy of the statement at 9.30 the following morning. Looking at itand I knew that it had been examined by a number of senior colleagues and two

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skilful lawyersI had in mind that it was a personal statement made in accordance with the conventions of this House which, as we all know, must be accepted without question or debate. Above all, the statement ended with the confident ring that should such allegations be repeated outside the House they would be made the subject of legal action. I could not believe that a man would be so foolish, even if so wicked, not only to lie to colleagues in the House but be prepared to issue a writ in respect of a libel which he must know to be true. So any doubts I may have had were removed. I thought it right to come to the House, and I do not reproach myself for that, to sit beside a colleague of my Administration while he made a personal statement refuting the damaging and scandalous remarks made about him. Mr. H. Wilson I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but may I put this question? He told us that he first heard of the story of the relationship on 1st February. Did he make full inquiries, through the security services, from Miss Keeler herself, and was all this information available to the five Ministers? 66 The Prime Minister I am coming to that. I said that I would take this in sequence. I do not object, but it all comes in turn. This deals with the action I took with some colleagues up to the date of Mr. Profumo's statement in the House. I wish to make this clear to the House and the country. At no time had I any indication either from the security service or from the police that there was any reason to doubt Mr. Profumo's statement as to his connection with Mr. Ward and his shortas his account saidfriendship with Miss Keeler. All the rest was rumour which he strenuously denied. There is one reportI wish to tell every fact to the Housedating from this period to which I must now refer. When the Lord Chancellor was making his inquiries, at the beginning of this month, he found that the security service had received at the beginning of February certain information from the police. Miss Keeler made a statement on 26th January when being seen by the police in relation to her appearance as a witness in the High Court that on one occasion, when she was going to meet Mr. Profumo, Mr. Ward asked her to discover from him the date on which certain atomic secrets were to be handed to West Germany by the Americansthis was at the time of the Cuban crisis and that she did not put this question to Mr. Profumo. I should explain that there is some confusion both about what she said and about what she was asked to find out. Certainly, on 30th January, 1963, a report was received from an inspector in the Special Branch to the effect that Miss Keeler had told someone that she was asked by Mr. Ward to obtain, if possible, certain secret information from Mr. Profumo relating to a transfer of documents from America to Western Germany. On 25th March, about two months later, the security service received a report that someone else had stated that Miss Keeler said Mr. Ward had asked her to ask Mr. Profumo when the Germans were likely toI quote the phrase"get the bomb". Finally, in a statement made to the police on 4th April, 1963, Miss Keeler herself said that Mr. Ward had asked her to get information from Mr. Profumo about the Americans giving the bomb to the Germans. The one consistent 67 point throughout these stories is that Miss Keeler always denied having asked the question whatever it was. Already, there is some confusion about the dates. I have told the House of the first statement on 26th January, when she said she was asked to obtain information at the time of the Cuba

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crisis last October. This would contradict the view that her association with Mr. Profumo ended earlier. However, in an article in a newspaper yesterday she states specifically that she was asked to get this information in 1961. But quite apart from this confusion in the various stories, I do not attach great significance to this from the purely security point of view because of the character of the information which she says she was instructed to obtain. What is significantand I fully admit itis that this is the first and only time that any suggestion came to the notice of the authorities that Mr. Ward was trying to use Miss Keeler as an instrument for obtaining information. This was 30th January. The security service did not pass either of these reports to me. [Hon. Members: "Oh."] I am only giving the facts. In view of the discussion between my private office and the security service, at the beginning of February, and as things have turned out, I think it very unfortunate that this information was not given to me, but the head of the security service, in considering these reports, did not take that as of great importance. As Ivanov had left the country he was satisfied, in the investigations he had already carried out, that the indirect contact between Ivanov and Mr. Profumo had not involved any breach of security. Yet I must repeat that I strongly regret that this information, which came originally from the police, was not, through the files of the security service, passed on to me. I have time only to give the facts to the House today and I think that I have the right to do so. I turn to the second part of the narrative: what happened after Mr. Profumo's statement until the time of his admission of the truth. I will deal, first, with the communications I received from the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Oppositionto which he referred todayand to the discussions I had with him. I will also deal with 68 other reports which are alleged to have been sent to me during this period. I have dealt with everything up to the time of Mr. Profumo making his statement and now I wish to deal with what happened between the time that statement was made to the Housein which I had every confidence [Hon. Members: "Oh."]Indeed, I think that that applies to the whole Houseand his ultimate confession. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition came to see me about this case for the first time on 27th March, that is, five days after Mr. Profumo's statement. I am not complaining that he did not come earlierif he thought that these security things were so dangerousbut, in any case, he came after the statement was made. He brought with him a copy of a letter he had had from Mr. Ward in November, 1962about five months before. I do not complain about this delay, although, if I am accused of dilatoriness, I am entitled to observe that the right hon. Gentleman's description of Mr. Ward as a "self-confessed intermediary of the Russians"if he thought him to be that should have led him to have forwarded the letter to me. But he did not. Before dealing with this letter, which had nothing whatever to do with Mr. Profumo at all but which described the activities of Ivanov in October, 1962at the time of the Cuba crisisI ask hon. Members to cast their minds back to that critical period. I confess that the last few days have not been very agreeable to me, but I must say, for the reasons I have given, that although the whole of this is so horrible and distasteful the week of the Cuba crisisand I have been through some in peace and warwas the week of most strain I can ever remember in my life. It then seemed to many of usand I think that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition shared this feeling that in the struggle of wills between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers, primarily the United States, the world might be coming to the brink of war. During that week, as the pressures developed and built up to the climax on Friday and Saturday, the strain was certainly very great. Naturally, the same was true of the Soviet

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Government, who 69 were doing all they could to further their policy and weaken the resolution of the West. Part of this Soviet activity was public, for example, the statement issued by the Soviet Government on 23rd October, and some of it was private. For example, Mr. Loginov, the Soviet Charg Affaires, called on the Foreign Secretary on 25th October at his own requestthat is, the request of Mr. Loginovand expressed the hope that Her Majesty's Government would do all in their power to avert developments in Cuba which, as he said "could push the world to the brink of a military catastrophe." Mr. Loginov's aim was apparently that Her Majesty's Government should bring pressure to bear on the United States Government. Similarly, many members of the Soviet Embassynot only in London but, I think, elsewherewere making approaches to various diplomatic missions in London and to other people from about 24th October until the crisis was resolved on Sunday, 28th October. Ivanov, with the assistance of Mr. Ward, was perhaps rather more persistent than most; but he was not the only one to try to bring this pressure to shake us and, by us, bring what pressure we could on the United States. But since these matters have been mentioned, I think it right that I should give the House a chronological account of the activities at that time with which Ivanov, whatever Tassmay say, was involved. On 24th October, 1962, Mr. Ward telephoned the resident clerk at the Foreign Office and gave him, to pass on to Sir Harold Caccia, an account of a conversation he had just had with Ivanov. Among other things, Mr. Ward said that Ivanov had stated that the Americans had created a situation in which there was no opportunity for either the Americans or the Russians to compromise and that the Soviet Government looked to the United Kingdom as their one hope of conciliation. The next day, 25th October, my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson) informed Sir Hugh Stephenson, then Deputy-Under-Secretary of the Foreign OfficeI think that my hon. Friend was one of Mr. Ward's patientsthat Ivanov had been to see him to give a somewhat similar story and to ask for some indication that the 70 British Government were considering working towards negotiations at the Summit. This day was the same day as that on which the Foreign Secretary had seen Mr. Loginov; and later the same afternoon Mr. Ward spoke to Sir Harold Caccia's private secretary to convey similar information. On the following day, 26th October, Mr. Ward telephoned Lord Arran and asked to bring Ivanov to his house for a discussion the next morning. Lord Arran agreed and Ivanov and Mr. Ward came to see him on 27th October. Ivanov again stated that he wished to get a message to the British Government by indirect means asking them to call a Summit conference in London forthwith. Lord Arran reported this initiative at the time both to my office and to the Foreign Office, and later sent in a full report. It is thus clear that at the time of the Cuba crisis Ivanov was using all the methods at his disposal to try to persuade the British Government to take some initiative. But he was not alone in this. Nor were we in any doubt about the motives of these approaches, which must have been to drive a wedge between ourselves and the United States at this very crucial moment. It is not uncommon, at a moment of crisis, that a lot of worthy people should be used to see whether they could be of some assistance. That has often happened. Ivanov's approaches were, therefore, only a small piece of the jigsaw; they were a natural part of the Soviet attempt to weaken our resolution. Our reply at the time was that the ordinary diplomatic channels were open. That was what the letter was mainly about. I was not quite sure whether it was a reproach to me for not having yielded to the pressures. Some people thought that we should have taken the initiative. It was not a very easy decision to make and hon.

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Members must remember our close discussion all the time with the President of the United States. That is what the letter was about and I have told the House about it in detail. It was, of course, known because Sir Hugh Stephen-son and all these people were involved init. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition next wrote to me on 71 9th April and sent me a copy of a memorandum, prepared by the hon. Member for Dudley, of a conversation he had had with Mr. Ward on 26th Marchfour days after Mr. Profumo's statement. I at once forwarded the right hon. Gentleman's letter, and enclosures, to the security authorities. They examined the material and concluded that there was no evidence in it of any breach of security and, indeed, that there were no new points in it. There was nothing of Mr. Ward's conversation, reported in this memorandum, not already brought to their attention, either by Mr. Ward or through other reports. It was a long memorandum and it is interesting to note that, among other allegationsand I hope that I am correct in thisit included the statement that there was no impropriety in the association between Mr. Profumo and Miss Keeler. On 13th May the right hon. Gentleman wrote me a letter asking what action I was going to take on his material and I replied that it did not seem to me that any further action was necessary. On 23rd May the right hon. Gentleman sent me a letter he had received from Mr. Ward which, among other things, said that Mr. Profumo had not told the truth in his statement in the House of Commons. On the following day the right hon. Gentleman asked to see me before the Whitsun Recess and we met on 27th May, when the right hon. Gentleman expressed the view that there were still security implications which required further examination. I said that I would consider the right hon. Gentleman's representations and inform him. I had, in addition, to consider further statement made by Mr. Ward. Whatever value can be given to them, I must consider them. On 7th May he had telephoned my Principal Private Secretary and asked for an interview with him. I was in some doubt about whether it would be advisable to grant this request or what useful purpose it would serve. But I decided that as it might be possible that Mr. Ward had some information to give bearing on security my Principal Private Secretary ought to see him. I arranged that he should be accompanied by a member of the security service, and this, in fact, was done on the same evening. 72 It transpired that Mr. Ward wished to complain about certain inquiries which the police were making at that time and which, as we now know, led eventually to his arrest. He was, of course, very properly told that this was nothing to do with me or, indeed, with any other member of the Government; that the police were charged with the duty and responsibility of investigating any alleged criminal offence and were not in any way in this country under political direction or control. During the course of his complaints, Mr. Ward let drop the remark that Mr. Profumo had not told the truth. This, of course, was the opposite from what he had been saying earlier in his conversation with the hon. Member for Dudley. I do not know how many people Mr. Ward wrote to or spoke to. He did write to the Home Secretary on 19th May, asking for the police inquiries to be called off and making allegations about Mr. Profumo's untruthfulness. He also wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Sir W. Wakefield) and to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, on 20th May. Of course, without saying again that this case is sub judice, it seems fairly clear that what he was hoping was that the police activities would be discontinued. As a result of these fresh allegations by Mr. Ward, Mr. Profumo was again closely questioned on several occasions and each time he firmly maintained the truth of his

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statements. On 29th May I learned for the first time about the statement that Miss Keeler made to the police on 26th January, which I have already described to the House. I heard of it for the first time on 29th May. This was the story that she had been asked to obtain certain information from Mr. Profumo and had not done so. Although I found and still find it difficult to attach weight to this story, I felt that in view of the doubts expressed by the Leader of the Opposition on the security angle and in view of this information which had only just reached me it would be right to take further action. I therefore decided to ask the Lord Chancellor to look carefully at the security reports and other documents which I had received in connection with 73 the case and to make any inquiries which he thought necessary from the security service and the police and to advise me whether, in his opinion, he thought that any further action seemed desirable. I informed the right hon. Gentleman by letter of my decision on 30th May. The Lord Chancellor accepted this duty and in the course of it not only made a large number of inquiries from the security authorities and from the police, but questioned a number of Ministers and Mr. Profumo. I received his report and, as I undertook to do, I sent a copy of it to the right hon. Gentleman. I have no complaint about the courteous way in which the right hon. Gentleman referred to the report and made use of it only to the extent of referring to things within his knowledge. Very serious things have been said about me and I must reply to them. I will now deal with the serious accusation which has been made that I had either received, or ought to have received, certain statements from the police authorities and from Mr. Eddowes which should have led me to question the probity of Mr. Profumo, In view of the importance which the Press has attached to this matter, I must deal with it fully. Here I will summarise with quotations a statement made to the police. I have placed copies of the whole of this statement in the Library. On 24th March, at a time when Miss Keeler was out of the country, her mother, Mrs. Huish, volunteered a statement to the Buckinghamshire police. She said that a Mr. Eddowes had called at her home on the previous day saying that he was concerned for Miss Keeler's safety, that she was in danger and that he was prepared to do anything to help. He suggested that Miss Keeler should make a statement saying that Ivanov was her boy friend and that she got information from Mr. Profumo and gave it to Ivanov for a joke. Mr. Eddowes went on to say that Miss Keeler would have to keep to this story to protect herself. He said that she would get 5,000 to 10,000 when the Press had the story. In that respect, it was an underestimate in my view. Mr. Eddowes addedthis is what he told the motherthat the Government would be forced to open an inquiry to which Miss Keeler 74 would state these things and turn out a little heroine. On 29th March, that is, five days later, a chief inspector of the Metropolitan Police saw Mr. Eddowes at the latter's house in London. Mr. Eddowes made a statement and handed the police an aide-memoire. This included the allegation that Miss Keeler had said she often met Ivanov at Ward's flat where she also met Mr. Profumo. He alleged that Miss Keeler said that Ivanov had asked her to obtain information about nuclear warheads, which she said she had not done. Mr. Eddowes was told that his information would be placed before the proper authorities. Of course, all this was hearsay, that is, Eddowes's account of what he said Miss Keeler had told him. As the police had already obtained a statement, to which I have already referred, and were, moreover, aware of the statement made by Mrs. Huish to the Buckinghamshire police, Eddowes's allegations did not have the importance which otherwise might have attached to them. Eddowes was not told, as he claimed, that his report would be on my

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deck the following morning. He was told that the matter would be dealt with by the proper authorities. A few days later Mr. Eddowes rang up the police, on his return from abroad, and asked what had happened to his statement and was told by the police officer to whom he spoke that the matter was out of his hands. This was at the beginning of April. From that date until 13th June, Friday of last week, Mr. Eddowes took no further action although there had, of course, been sensational developments in the meantime. Whatever the reason for the timing may have been, Mr. Eddowes wrote to me on 13th June and sent the letter to the Press. The House, I think, may draw its own conclusions of the way this story reads. I have now to complete the narrative of events. The Lord Chancellor began his inquiry on Friday, 31st May, the day after I asked him to undertake it. On the same day, the Friday, Mr. Profumo left for a short holiday in Venice. He had been told that the Lord Chancellor would want to see him in connection with the inquiry on the following Thursday, and he arranged to return in time for that. In the event, the Lord Chancellor made more rapid progress than he had 75 expected and asked Mr. Profumo to return a day earlier, on the Wednesday. Mr. Profumo returned on the Whit Monday, and that evening he asked for an urgent interview with my Principal Private Secretary, saying that there had been a serious development. This meeting took place at 10.30 the following morning, Tuesday, 4th June, when my right hon. Friend the Chief Whip and my Principal Private Secretary saw Mr. Profumo. He said at once that his protestations of innocence had been untrue and that he had, in fact, had an improper association with Miss Keeler. He immediately tendered his resignation and indicated his intention of applying for the Chiltern Hundreds. All this was reported to me at once and the information was announced by way of the exchange of letters, as the House and the country know. That completes the narrative. I must now summarise the position. In August, 1961, I had never heard of Mr. Ward and, indeed, I never did till February Mr. H. Wilson Nor did I know who he was. The Prime Minister But he sent the right hon. Gentleman a letter. I had not even had the pleasure of being his correspondent. I had never heard of Mr. Ward in August, 1961, nor had I heard of his connection with Ivanov or Mr. Profumo. The warning given to him by Sir Norman Brookand it was a warning simply to keep away from the house where the Russian diplomat wentrelated to Mr. Profumo's acquaintance with Mr. Ward, not with a woman. I had no information from the police or from the security service before Mr. Profumo's statement which lead me to doubt his veracity. I received from the right hon. Gentleman after Mr. Profumo's statement certain papers to which I have referred, but Mr. Ward's letter did not bring in Mr. Profumo and the hon. Member for Dudley's record of his conversation with Mr. Ward showed that at that time Mr. Ward was saying that he did not question Mr. Profumo's honour. No other communications were sent to me by the police or the security authorities from the date of Mr. Profumo's statement to the date of his confession that would 76 have led me to doubt the truth of his statement. Moreover, I would ask the House to consider what alternative I had except to believe what I was told by Mr. Profumo. Here was a man who had been for a long time a Member of the House; who had a good war record; who had been appointed originally to a junior office in 1951 and had worked his way up the ladder. Why, then, should I

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disbelieve what he told me? Would I not have been guilty of great harshness if I had then demanded his resignation? Mr. E. Shinwell (Easington) rose The Prime Minister Let me just finish. The House will, therefore, realise what a terrible shock it was to me suddenly to be confronted with this dreadful admission, and all that it implied regarding his conduct towards us alland I agree that it was towards us all Mr. Shinwell The right hon. Gentleman disclaims any appearance of harshness, or any intention of harshness, in connection with Mr. Profumo, but what about the harshness when he dismissed seven Ministers a year ago? The Prime Minister If I may say so, I think that tells exactly the other way. I have had the difficult task and Prime Ministers haveof making changes for what seemed to be improvements in the national service[Hon. Members: "Oh."] Of course it is a difficult task, but I have not had to do so by telling a Minister that terrible rumours are circulating about him and that I cannot believe his denial. That is quite a different order. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has suggested that it was only because of his insistence and the decision to ask the Lord Chancellor to make inquiries that Mr. Profumo decided to confess his guilt. I fear I am not able to speculate on the reasons that impelled him to confess. It is true that it may have been because he was asked by the Lord Chancellor to come before him, but, after all, he had faced examinations by very able menincluding the Law Officersnot just once but several times. There may have been other reasons. He may have felt the pressure too heavy 77 upon him. He may have been induced at last to open his heart to his wife. He may no longer have felt able to live with a lie. Or, to take a more cynical view, having heard that the activities of the police were leading to Mr. Ward's arrest, he may have feared that out of this the truth would inevitably come. I have no grounds for deciding between these various speculations. I have thought it right at this, the first occasion, to give the House a full and detailed account of my connection with this unhappy story. From the beginning, right hon. Gentlemen have said that we ought to concern ourselves only with the security aspect. Later, other commentators have laid more stress upon the moral implications. Of course, both aspects are serious, and both of great importance, and I thought it right to confine myself today to the strict matters before the House. Let me now summarise. I have told the House in great detail the whole story of this affair as far as I was concerned with it. I think that I have omitted nothing of importanceI hope not. I have certainly avoided nothing. I said at the beginning that it was my duty to act honourably, to act justly, and to act prudently. My colleagues have been deceived, and I have been deceived, grossly deceivedand the House has been deceivedbut we have not been parties to deception, and I claim that upon a fair view of the facts as I have set them out I am entitled to the sympathetic understanding and confidence of the House and of the country. 5.24 p.m. Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland) There are many elements of tragedy in this affair, and there will certainly be sympathy with the Prime Minister for what must have been for him a most painful occasion. It has

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been alleged that there is a personal attack upon his honour, but that, to my mind, has never been the case. When Lord Poole suggested at the weekend that we must make up our minds whether the Prime Minister was a man of honour and integrity or not, I do not think that he asked the right question. The question that faces this House and this country is not whether or not the Prime Minister's personal honour is established, but whether his 78 Government can now command respect and prestige sufficient to rule the country. The question is, further, whether they are a competent Government, and it is to that that we have to direct our attention. The Prime Minister has at last given us his account of the facts Sir Kenneth Pickthorn (Carlton) Why "at last"? Mr. Grimond I say "at last" because there has been endless speculation, and though the Prime Minister has had no previous chance to speak, time has been passing. The right hon. Gentleman has told us that there was some suspicion away back in 1961 that Dr. Ward and his associates were not very desirable people for the company of the Secretary of State for War, but that this information was not told him by Sir Norman Brook. Apparently, Sir Norman Brook took no further action other than warning the Secretary of State, and the Prime Minister has told us that, in fact, he knew nothing about the matter until February of this year. One point to notice quite clearly from this is that the Prime Minister is head of security, and that he cannot possibly assure the House or the country as to what damage may have been done by this, because he knew nothing about the association of the Secretary of State for War with Miss Keeler and Dr. Ward until about eighteen months after it was over. What happened then? In February of this year it was brought to the right hon. Gentleman's attention that there were certain rumours about this association with Dr. Ward and Miss Keeler. One thing I am not very clear about is that it is allegedwith, apparently, circumstantial evidencethat certain of our newspapers, in February of this year, had statements and letters from Miss Keeler and. possibly, from other people connected with the case. Is the Prime Minister telling the House that he had no information whatever from those newspapers? If so, have the Government made any attempt to get in touch with those newspapers to discover why, when they had this information, it was not made available either to the Government themselves or to M.I.5? The Prime Minister decided, however, on examining such information as was 79 available to him, that he should not accept Mr. Profumo's resignationMr. Profumo apparently offered his resignation, and it was refused. The Prime Minister has mentioned the case of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith). There is, I must say, a strange discrepancy between the treatment of the hon. Member for Hillhead and of the Secretary of State for War. On the strength of a story which not even the journalist who told it believed, the Prime Minister not only accepted the resignation of the hon. Member for Hill head but instantly set up a court of investigation Mr. Peter Tapsell (Nottingham, West) rose Hon. Members Sit down. Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir William Anstruther-Gray) Order.

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Mr. Grimond If the Prime Minister wishes to correct me, he can certainly do so. He, however, decided that the allegations against the Secretary of State for War did not warrant the acceptance of his resignation, I should have thought that they were more serious than those against the hon. Member for Hillhead. I can imagine few more serious things for the head of the security of the country than any allegations that his Secretary of State for War was putting himself in a position where he might be a security risk. Of course, it has never been and cannot be denied that that is exactly the position that he was in. Everybody has accepted that there was a security risk; but, nevertheless, this was considered apparently of less moment than the affair which led to the Vassall Tribunal. So we come on to the events of 21st and 22nd March. I must confess that I think these are without parallel. Whatever the Prime Minister may say, this tribunal of Ministers, sitting in the middle of the night to examine one of their colleagues, with a solicitor, would, I should have thought, have shaken everybody's confidence in the ability of the Government to conduct their business. However, in spite of what they already knew, in spite of the fact that they knew there was a letter in existence addressed to Miss Keeler and beginning "Darling", 80 they came to the conclusion that Mr. Profumo should be believed and that the association was entirely innocent. Did they ask where this letter was? Did they make any effort to get it? Did they make any inquiries of the papers? I would also ask, for what purpose did they think Mr. Profumo saw Miss Keeler? Did they think that it was merely to make conversation? They may say that at that time they did not know about Miss Keeler. Did they make any effort to find out who she was? Perhaps they did know; if so, did they think this was an entirely innocent affair? These are people who are in charge of the country. They are people of some standing. Perhaps they did believe what they were told then. But what happened afterwards? From then onwards there was a continual stream of evidence, not all of which may be good but all of which pointed to the fact that Dr. Ward was certainly an undesirable man and possibly a Russian agent, and that there was more to this story than had come to light in Mr. Profumo's statement. The Prime Minister may say that, individually, not all of these things which were brought to his attention could carry weight. First of all, there was the information from the Leader of the Opposition. Then there was information from the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg). Then there were various documents from Dr. Ward himself. As far as I can understandI should like the Prime Minister to correct this if I am wrongat no time did he see Mr. Profumo personally. [Hon. Members: "Answer."] In spite of the fact that he was head of security, and this continual stream of allegations was pouring in, at no time did he think it right to see the Secretary of State for War personally. The Prime Minister is head of security in this country. Mr. Wigg Can we take it from the Prime Minister's silence that at no time did he have conversations with Mr. Profumo? The Prime Minister What I said in my speech I will repeat. I thought it better that the examination which led up finally to the statement should be made by the Chief Whip and the Law 81 Officers. After Mr. Profumo gave it, he repeated it to me and made it quite clear to me that he proposed to take action in the courts. I advised him that I could see no objection and, indeed, I thought it would be wise of him to do so. Mr. Grimond

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I gather that the Prime Minister had no conversation with his Secretary of State for War. Throughout the whole of these events he did not see him personallyand he is head of security in this country. The Prime Minister Up to the statement there was no question of security, because if his statement was true his friendship with this woman had lasted for five weeks, eighteen months before. Of course, now that we know that what he said was untrue, then the security risk arises. Mr. Grimond But whatever the reason, the right hon. Gentleman never saw him. He was never seen by the Prime Minister. That is what we are told. The Prime Minister says there was no reason to see him. But there were, in fact, many allegations and he must have been aware of these allegations. He had seen and heard from the Leader of the Opposition. Hon. Members No. Mr. Wigg The right hon. Gentleman has got it right. Mr. H. Wilson The Prime Minister is certainly correct on this point. I made no approach to the Prime Minister till after the statement in the House because of the sequence of events that I described. But, certainly, the Prime Minister had had a statement from the police and the newspaper at the end of January and the beginning of February. Mr. Grimond I am not referring to any particular date. Further, it is very strange that the police never reported what they knew. Again, the Prime Minister is head of security in this country and is responsible. Nobody else can take the responsibility. When he assures this House that he is responsible for security in this country, that does not mean that he is responsible only when it goes right. He must also take responsibility when it goes wrong. There is no doubt that security did go wrong. 82 There is no possible doubt that this was reported to the Prime Minister, and there is no doubt that he ought to have taken much earlier and stronger action than he did. There is no doubt that whatever the five Ministers thought on this occasion on 22nd March, long before 4th June, they should have had serious doubts about the statement which was made to this House. There is no doubt that very serious doubt was thrown on to that statement long before Mr. Profumo's resignation. No steps were taken by the Government to ensure that the honour of this House was maintained. There is another aspect of this affair. I do not believe that politicians are particularly good guardians of public morals. Certainly, there is an aspect of private morality in this whole case, and an important oneand I compliment the Prime Minister on the fact that he did not attempt to deal with this matterbut during the past week we have been told by leaders of the Conservative Party that this shows a decline in national morality. We have been told that they cannot accept this division between public and private morals, and some have gone so far as to say that they cannot sit in a Government with people who might be blackmailed. Does this mean anything at all? If it means anything, it means apparently that there is to be an inquest into the private morality of people who take public office. I should regret that. If it does not mean that, it means nothing. Unless it means that, it is sheer rhetoric. Unless it means that an examination is to take place into private morality, it is meaningless.

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I do not believe that morality is confined to sexual morality. What I say is that there has been a series of events and that on the security side this is not an isolated incident. It is not the first breach of security from which this country has suffered. This is not the first bungle by the Government in a most vital part of the national interest. Furthermore, many of these people who are now calling for sackcloth and ashes and pouring fire and brimstone on the whole country are the very people who went through Suez. I do not remember many of them making a strong protest about Hola. Not an eyebrow was twitched when a 83 former Lord Chancellor left his office and went straight into private business at a very high salary, having been appealing for wage restraint. Not so long ago we had the Home Secretary defending in this House his failure to tell the House that Chief Enahoro could not have the counsel he wanted. This is the Government of whom Sir Roy Welensky said, "They put their arms round your neck so that they can find a soft spot in your back to stab." This is not an isolated incident and it is not to be written off by blaming a sharp decline in national morality. When did Ministers and their associates discover this sharp decline in national morality? When did they discover that the Church was at fault, or that it was all the fault of the Labour Party? To bring this in is the tactic of the cuttle fish; it is an attempt to darken the waters in order that the main point at issue may be obscured. The point here is: is this a Government which can command respect for this country in the world? After this succession of incidents do they really think that they can speak for Britain? Do they think that this has not damaged our prestige? This is the point which they have to answer. I know that it has been said that the Prime Minister will stay on for a short time and that then he will be quietly pushed aside. This, to my mind, would be the most cynical outcome of all. This really would be putting party before country in a despicable manner. If the Government have a contribution to offer this country, let them offer it, but if their party, at the back of its mind, has made up its mind that the Prime Minister must go, the time for him to go is now. There is no possible excuse for having a caretaker Government at this moment. At the back of all this, if there is an issue of public moralityandI think that there is oneit is an issue of public morality whether politics in this country are simply about maintaining office at all costs or whether they are about the country and humanity at large. If there is an issue of public morality, it is whether the Government are entitled to say, on the one hand, "This is a national matter and not a party matter", and, at the same 84 time, put out a three-line Whip. And then, when challenged about this, to say, "A three-line Whip does not tell you how to vote". If there is a question of public morality, it is a question of priorities. I think that the people of this country will be severely shocked if they come to the conclusion that the maintenance of a particular Government in office is much more important than the competence of that Government, or their ability to run the country. I do not see how the Prime Minister and his immediate colleagues can escape responsibility. They must either take responsibility for the security services and general conduct of the country, or they will be responsible for a very severe blow at the political life of this countryone or the other. A great deal of horror has been expressed about Mr. Profumo, and certainly no one will defend his conduct. But I think that all this ceremonial washing of hands in public on anything to do with Mr. Profumo has been overdone. The Government sat with him as their colleague for two years. Some at least have had the courage to say that Mr. Profumo was their friend and that he remained so. I think that that was a courageous thing to say. They may have been wrong to have him as a friend, but as they were his

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friends, they were not afraid to say so. I much prefer that to the idea that he should be kicked in the stomach and the teeth. The Government may have been wrong to keep him, but they left him. It is not a pretty thing to hear horror and disgust expressed about their colleague in this way. Here again, I think that the Prime Minister is responsible for keeping Mr. Profumo in his Ministry. There has been a very great deal of damage done to this House. There has been a great deal of damage done to politics in this country. There has been a great deal of damage done to people's belief in the responsibility of the Cabinet. It is very odd that the Home Secretary, apparently, on the night of the 21st, never knew anything about it. A great deal of damage has been done to the name of this country in the world. I do not think that this is due to any fault of the Tory Party as a whole, but I do believe that the Tory 85 Party should ask who is responsible and I do not see how their leaders in office can escape responsibility. 5.45 p.m. Sir Lionel Heald (Chertsey) Mr. Deputy-Speaker, in thanking you for calling me to speak in this debate, may I say at once that I speak in it only with great reluctance and unhappiness. As I see it, it is impossible for this House to discharge its duty today without reopening and further probing the terrible wounds, not only of a former colleague of ours and a member of this great fellowship of the House of Commons, but also those of his family and his friends. Nothing, surely, is more hateful than to hit a man when he is down. But we have our duty to do in the House of Commons, without any consideration of party whatever, without any consideration of personal feelings, friendship or hostility, and that duty can be fulfilled only if we make a calm and dispassionate examination, so far as may be humanly possible, of the circumstances in which the false statement came to be made in this Chamber by the then Secretary of State and to be approved by the Government. I think it is right to acknowledge the fairness and honesty, if I may say so, with which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition put this point at the very outset. He said that the Secretary of State deliberately lied to the House on a promise of good faith arising from a personal statement. The question has to be facedhe saiddid other Ministers connive at that or fail to inquire sufficiently into it? That is a perfectly fair and proper inquiry for the House to make. The House, as I have said, should, so far as is humanly possible, adopt a dispassionate attitude. When the House has been affronted in the way that it has, it is very difficult to avoid indignation and to preserve a judicial attitude either against Mr. Profumo himselfbut that is over, because he has admitted itor against those who might appear, as has been suggested, to have connived at it. In fairness to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, I do not think that he did actually make that accusation. He said that it must be made plain whether they had connived or not. 86 The accusation is, of course, put in the form of a dilemma. Either, it is said, there was a conspiracy, or there was almost criminal gullibility. I do not believe that the House is seriously concerned with the first of those two, the idea that there could be a conspiracy among Ministers, and I believe that we can, thank God, dismiss that possibility in this House. The second is a much more plausible suggestion. I believe that public opinion can be summarised, perhaps, from a rather unusual source. A letter appeared in The Timesunder the name of Mr. Osbert Lancaster. I can only assume that it is the same Mr. Osbert Lancaster who habitually makes a very good guess at public opinion in another

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medium. He said that had some of our politicians displayed a little healthy incredulity at the appropriate moment we should have been spared a lot of cant. In the circumstances, I believe that it is necessary for us to make a very strict appraisal of the situation. I should like to say that, as a former Law Officer, I have thought it my duty to do this with as open a mind as I could. Of course, it is perfectly right to say that as an ex-Attorney-General I would be anxious to sec the Law Officers come out of this affair well. That is only human. At the same time, the Law Officers of the Crown from time immemorial have regarded their first duty in this House as being their duty to the House, and, second and third, that to the Government and to their own party. I can honestly assure the House that that is the attitude I have tried to adopt. I shall not try to tell the House what it should decide. All that I shall venture to tell the HouseI believe that it might be of help to itis the conclusion that I have reached and the grounds upon which I have reached it. I have done so after the fullest and most frank discussion with the Law Officers of the Crown, who were appointed to deal with this matter and who, naturally, dealt with it when the statement came to be made. Also, I have had the opportunity of a full and frank discussion with Mr. Profumo's own solicitor, who had been authorised by him to waive his professional privilege and allow the whole of the facts to be stated. I think that the House should appreciate that, in 87 doing that, Mr. Profumo, for whom I hold no brief whateverI knew him only slightly; I have had no complaint to make of him of any kind, and I have always found him courteous, helpful and efficient in his workdid make a measure of atonement. He authorised Mr. Derek Glogg, of Messrs. Theodore Goddard and Co., his solicitors, to supply me and to supply everyone with a full account of his action in the matter. The matter began on 28th January when the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General were made acquainted with rumours, partly, no doubt, through what they heard in the House, and they asked Mr. Profumo to discuss with them the rumours which had circulated. As we know, he denied any connection with Miss Keeler other than a quite harmless one, and he pointed out that, at the time when he knew her, as was the fact, she was not in any way associated with West Indians, with hemp, or with anything of that kind. This is something which seems to have been forgotten, because, with hindsight, we all assume now that, when he met her he went into an atmosphere of that kind, which, of course, is quite inaccurate. The Attorney-General then gave him some advice. This may explain something which caused, it seemed to me, an unfortunate air of amusement, even of hilarity. I refer to the presence of Mr. Profumo's solicitor. The Attorney-General said to him, as I should have saidand, I may say, as I did say at the time to friends of mine in the House"The proper course for you to take in circumstances of this kind is to go to a solicitor of the highest experience. You have the right to absolute confidence with him. Go to him. Ask his advice and do what he tells you". That is what Mr. Profumo did. He went to Mr. Derek Clogg of Theodore Goddard and Co., a very well known firm of London solicitors. Hon. and learned Members of the other branch of our learned profession will know that if one wished to choose anyone to whom to tell, as one's solictor, an untrue story, Mr. Derek Clogg is about the last man in the world one would choose. He is a gentleman of great reputation. He has had great experience in cases dealing with libel, with divorce and all those matters where 88 human frailty and possible lying may come into account. Mr. Clogg believed what he was told by his client. Mr. Profumo told himthis I am authorised to tell the Housethat he realised that the story was an improbable one, but he said to him, "I implore you to believe me because I know how difficult it is going to be to persuade you". He was cross-examined. The matter was gone into. On 3rd

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February, Mr. Clogg told the Attorney-General that he was satisfied that the story which he had been told was true. On 4th February, a remarkable event occurred. Mr. Clogg and his counsel, a very wellknown member of the Bar, Mr. Mark Littman, visited the Attorney-General and informed him that an approach had been made by someoneI can say no more at the moment about thatto Messrs. Theodore Goddard and Co. which appeared to indicate a demand for money. For obvious reasons, I cannot give particulars. There was then a discussion and Mr. Profumo stated that he desired to go, as he did go, with his solicitor and counsel to the Director of Public Prosecutions and ask him to take action. What stronger confirmation could Mr. Clogg have of the truth of what he had been told? It is right and natural to askit is the question which I askedwhy did not the Director of Public Prosecutions proceed? There will be hon. and learned Members and Members on both sides of the House with knowledge of such matters who will know that there are circumstances in which it is difficult to take proceedings on a letter received from a solicitor unless certain evidence is available. I do not believe anyone will suggest that the Director of Public Prosecutions was engaged in any supposed conspiracy. In the event, proceedings were not taken. I pass now to 22nd March. This was the occasion of the Consolidated Fund Bill, when several hon. Members opposite referred to rumours. I interrupted, I hope not overstrenuously, the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) and suggested that, if an accusation was to be made, it should be made. After the debate, as we know, there was the meeting of Ministers. It has been asked, what in the world was Mr. Clogg doing there? The explanation was very 89 simple. The Ministers, particularly the Attorney-General, said to Mr. Profumo, "The time has now come when you have got to deal with this situation. The only way you can do so satisfactorily is to make a statement in the House of Commons". He said that he would like to do this, so it was than said to himI should myself regard this as a perfectly proper step"In the circumstances, we had better ask Mr. Clogg to come here and see that there is no question of your saying anything which you ought not to say". [Hon. Members: "Oh."] Certainly. If hon. Members will be patient, they will see what was meant by that. Mr. Clogg came here. The Law Officers of the Crown drafted the statement, and they submitted it to Mr. Clogg, asking him whether, in his view, it was right and proper that Mr. Profumo should make it. We should not forget that he might have been incriminating himself. They did not know what Mr. Clogg's attitude would be. [Interruption.] Let us be patient for a moment. After all, these men are in the dock; they are entitled to be defended. The Solicitor-General has told me that he said to Mr. Profumo, "You must realise that you are making a statement that there is no truth whatever in any of these allegations. Supposing that there is, for the rest of your life you will be submitting yourself to blackmail". Mr. Profumo's answer was, "I quite realise that, but, as it is all true, I have nothing to fear", and, as we know, he made the statement. It is now said that these people were incompetent and gullible. In the first place, how many people in the House, had they been there at the time, would really have supposed that Mr. Profumo was prepared to make that statement knowing that it was grossly false? I do not believe that any trained lawyer or anyone else would have thought it. In the circumstances, we ought to think very carefully before we start condemning anyone. Unfortunately, we must condemn Mr. Profumo, but, as I have already said, this is something which we ought to do at the right place and at the right time, if at all; and, in any event, I should have thought that for him and his family the last week and today have probably been punishment sufficient for anyone in the world.

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90 That, I believe, is the story which the House ought to appreciate. It leads me to the conclusion, first, that it is fantastic to suggest that there was any conspiracy, and, second, that it is hopelessly unreasonable to suggest that those people were incompetent and gullible and "led down the garden path". It is fair also to say this in the House of Mr. Clogg. Anyone who knows him and his reputation will know that he would be above any such thing if there were a wrong being done, and, in addition, he would not do anything which was utterly stupid or incompetent. Mr. Jeremy Thorpe (Devon, North) The right hon. and learned Gentleman has been kind enough to tell us some of the events which transpired at the meeting of the Ministers with Mr. Profumo. Since he is telling us what the Solicitor-General said to him, could he give us a little more information as to the extent to which Mr. Profumo was probed about this letter, the existence of which was known? To what extent did that figure in the matter? Sir L. Heald I gather that it began, and Mr. Profumo admitted that it began, with the word "Darling". I do not share the view of the Leader of the Liberal Party about that. If he would make inquiries, he would find that quite a number of young Liberals address each other as "darling". Mr. Grimond I take the right hon. and learned Gentleman's point. The point is the particular sort of darling that this was. A number of Ministers do not write letters to people who are practically tarts and begin with "Darling". Sir L. Heald They were also told, as was the fact on his story, that this was a farewell letter. It was a letter breaking off communication because, as he said, he had been told[Hon. Members: "Breaking off what?"] Breaking off connection in every sense of the word with this lady. Mr. Michael Foot (Ebbw Vale) rose Sir L. Heald I am sorry; I cannot give way. Lieut.-Colonel Sir Walter Bromley-Davenport (Knutsford) Do not give way. 91 Mr. Eric Fletcher (Islington, East) Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman explain why he thinks that it was necessary to break off an innocent association? Sir L. Heald I cannot answer that. As I understand it, this was a farewell letter, and, if one is terminating any kind of temporary association with a lady, I should have thought that it was much wiser to do it in a polite and pleasant way. Mr. M. Foot rose Sir L. Heald I do not think that some hon. Members have it in mind that it has been stated that before this letter was written Mr. Profumo had been warned and told to break off the association. That was why he broke it off. He had been warned against Ward. I do not think I can continue with this, but I must make this point quite clear. [Interruption.] I do not propose to satisfy the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman). That is not my duty. What I want to do is to address the House's attention to

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this point, that the letter was not one which could be quoted in detail. It was a letter written to a lady with no copy kept to put in a file. Mr. Iain Macleod May I correct this at once? We had no such letter before us at any time. Mr. Wigg rose Sir L. Heald I have given the House the information that I have been able to obtain to the best of my ability, and I will do anything I can to help the House, but I do not feel that I can subject myself to cross-examination on what other people did and why they did it. That is a matter for the House. I ask hon. Members to realise that this is the High Court of Parliament and, therefore, this is the place above all places where justice should be done. It should be done just as much to Members of the House who are Ministers and who took part in this matter as to anyone else. If that is done, I feel that I have no more to say. 6.5 p.m. Mr. F. J. Bellenger (Bassetlaw) No doubt by rising at this moment I am depriving my hon. Friend the Member 92 for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), who has a large dossier on this case, of the opportunity to speak at this stage. Having listened to the facts as recited by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and by the Prime Minister, I think we are in possession of enough of the facts to form a judgment. I do not think that the judgment will be an unbiased one at the end of the debate, because I quite frankly see the point that was so inadequately put by the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) in trying to make a case for his own party. It would be idle to suggest that the Opposition will not press their case to a point which might cause difficulties for the Government or, at any rate, the Prime Minister. I go so far as to say that, whatever the result of the Division tonight, a feeling will be left in the minds of constituents of my hon. Friends and of right hon. and hon. Members opposite which will not be affected by speeches similar to that of the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey. The issue has gone far beyond what Mr. Profumo's solicitor advised him to say or not to say. Surely if a Minister, or indeed any Member of Parliament, is convinced that he is speaking the truth, it is not necessary for a solicitor to advise him on what to say and what not to say to this House. After all, the House is very tolerant and if a Minister or Member comes to the House and says, "What has been said against me is untrue", we are prepared to accept that at its face value, and we did. That is not the issue. That was settled long ago by the resignation of Mr. Profumo, both from his high office and from this House. The real issue is very different. I shall not stress the security point of view as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition did today. Certain aspects of his speech when we read them over again will cause profound disquiet among those of us who believe in the security of our nation and who look to the Government and the Prime Minister, and those who are primarily responsible, to defend that security. Certainly it seems from what my right hon. Friend said today about security that some damage may have been caused to us as a nation. My right 93 hon. Friend went on to say that we shall never know. If we shall never know, it is no good prosecuting that point of view ad infinitum. What we must concentrate on is the Prime Minister's own responsibility in this case. I do not question his integrity for one moment. I do not think that any hon. Member does. What we do question is his complete inadequacy to control his own Government and to lead the nation in a way which the nation expects.

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The moral issue, which has been glossed over, both in the Press and probably in this House, in favour of the security issue, is something which has an impact on the minds of our constituents. I know very well that the majority of my constituents are not really concerned with the security issue. They do not understand it. They do not understand the workings of M.I.5 or of the police on that scale. What they do understand is that the Governmentand I say "Government"advisedlyhave failed. I say this to the Leader of the House, who has played a prominent part in this. I cannot believe that he is so innocent in his judgment when certain evidence, even if it is not sworn evidence, is given to him that he should not say to himself, "Is there any doubt?", and advise his colleague, "You had better resign, and resign of your own free will, otherwise you might involve the whole Government", as, undoubtedly, Mr. Profumo has done. There is not much that I want to say on the facts, because the facts are there and we shall read them again with considerable interest. The country is, however, concerned, on top of the Vassall case, which was not settled when the vote was taken in this House. The public are concerned about integrity, not only in Government circles, but in official circles, too. Today, there was published in The Times a full-page advertisement by Moral ReArmament. Hon. Members can dismiss that, but I should like to draw their attention to something in that advertisement which is an old story now but which is all part of the pattern. The pattern which I am trying to present to the House is this: are our security services so perfect or not under suspicion that even the Prime Minister can get the truth from them? 94 The Prime Minister told us today that as far back as 1961, there was a suspicion that everything was not all right and that Sir Norman Brook, as the Prime Minister said, warned Mr. Profumo. Did it stop there? I am amazed if that is the casean official occupying such a high position as he didthat it stopped there and that nothing went outside the Cabinet Office and reached the ears of the Prime Minister, the Chief Whip, the Leader of the House, and so on. That was in 1961. The Prime Minister, however, has told us that not until later, in 1963, did he get an inkling of the truth. Why was the truth not disclosed? I now come to the point in the advertisement which makes me think and I hope that it will make others think, too. The advertisement states: We must learn and learn fast the link between private sexual habits and public security risks. We discussed that in the Vassall case. In the book Burgess and Macleanspeaking of how these two men were warned to flee our country, the authors say: 'And so it was not from the Foreign Office but from M.I.5 that the warning came, and it came not to Maclean but to Burgess 'The Third Man was a senior member of the service who has since left and won honours in another field'. No individual is named, but sufficient is said there to cause many of us who know a little more about the case to wonder what is happening now. The advertisement goes on to say: 'He had been a close friend of Burgess, although he had not seen him for almost a year, and he was a homosexual' Again, in The Times this morning there was a report in the news column that Mr. Jordan, a convicted person, had seen Scotland Yard on Saturday last to discuss information which he had sent in a letter to the Prime Minister claiming that John Vassall had given him information when he was in Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Hon. Members may wonder what the connection is, but I think that there is something more that ought to be disclosed about our security services. Accepting that the Prime Minister is an honourable man and did not know anything about these things, I am not so sure that information was purposely withheld from the Prime Minister that would have been damaging to Mr. Profumo and his Government.

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95 I remember very well during the war when, in 1940, the then Prime Minister was under severe attack from the Opposition, as, I imagine, the Prime Minister is today. Some hon. Members may have been present and heard it. There was no question then about how Mr. Chamberlain went. He went because his own party lacked that trust in him which Government supporters should have in their own Prime Minister. What I am saying to right hon. and hon. Members opposite is that in spite of a three-line whip, in spite of loyalty to their party, they ought not to try to hide their true views; and surely, after listening to the Prime Minister, their true views must be that there was a lack of proper handling of this matter by the Prime Minister and some of his colleagues. And they should act accordingly. Sir Cyril Osborne (Louth) Let us decide that for ourselves. Mr. Bellenger I remember that in 1940, there were 43 Tory Members who voted with the Opposition because they believed that their Prime Minister had made a mistake and there were 80 more hon. Members who abstained from going into the Lobby in support of their Government. All I want to say tonight is this. Right hon. and hon. Members opposite should consider what they ought to do today and not merely obey a three-line Whip because it has been hinted to them that the Prime Minister may go at the right moment. What they should do is what the Tory Party did in 1940, when the Tory Party, or those who voted against their own Government, were absolutely right. 6.17 p.m. Mr. Nigel Birch (Flint, West) In many organs of the Press and, to a certain extent, during the latter part of the speech of the Leader of the Opposition, there has been a suggestion that the whole moral health of the nation is at stake and is concerned in this debate. I do not believe that that is true. As far as the moral health of the nation can be affected by any human agency, it is affected by prophets and priests and not by politicians. But this certainly has been one of the best field days that the 96 self-righteous have had since Parnell was cited as corespondent in O'Shea's divorce case. In all these miseries, the fact that so many people have found some genuine happiness is something to which, in all charity, we have no right to object. I must say that I view the activities of the editor of The Times with some distaste. Mr. E. L. Mallalieu (Brigg) First-class stuff. Mr. Birch He is a man about whom it could have been predicted from his early youth that he was bound to end up sooner or later on the staff of one of the Astor papers. Nor do I think that this debate is primarily concerned with the security aspect, although that, of course, is important. It was fully dealt with by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and, for my part, I am perfectly prepared to accept everything that the Prime Minister said about security. I believe that what he said was right and true and I am not prepared to criticise my right hon. Friend in any way concerning the question of security. What seems to me to be the real issue is something much simpler and much narrower. The real issue seems to be whether it was right to accept Profumo's personal statement. There are two aspects here. There is, first, the moral aspect of accepting that part of the statement which Profumo himself subsequently denied and there is a second issue of whether the Prime Minister in this case acted with good sense and with competence.

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I will deal with these two issues in order. First, there is the question of accepting Profumo's statement. We know a deal more now about Profumo than we did at the time of the statement, but we have all known him pretty well for a number of years in this House. I must say that he never struck me as a man at all like a cloistered monk; and Miss Keeler was a professional prostitute. We have had a legal disquisition from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) about the legal etiquette in all this matter, but as someone who does not understand the law, I simply approach it from the basis of what an ordinary person could or 97 would believe. Here one had an active, busy man and a professional prostitute. On his own admission, Profumo had a number of meetings with her, and, if we are to judge by the published statements, she is not a woman who would be intellectually stimulating. Is it really credible that the association had no sexual content? There seems to me to be a certain basic improbability about the proposition that their relationship was purely platonic. What are whores about? Yet Profumo's word was accepted. It was accepted from a colleague. Would that word have been accepted if Profumo had not been a colleague or even if he had been a political opponent? Everyone must, I think, make his own judgment about that. We were told that special consideration ought to have been given to Profumo because he was a colleague. It is certainly true that a Prime Minister owes to his subordinates all the help, comfort and protection that he can give them. But surely that help, that comfort and that protection must stop short of condoning a lie in a personal statement to this House. Then we are told, in many organs of the Press and in many speeches, that special weight ought to have been given to Profumo's words because he was a Privy Councillor and a Secretary of State. I am a Privy Councillor and I have been a Secretary of State, but when I sustained the burden of both offices I did not feel that any sea change had taken place in my personality. I remained what I was, what I had always been and what I am today; and I do not believe it reasonable to suppose that any sea change took place in Mr. Profumo's personality. He was not a man who was ever likely to tell the absolute truth in a tight corner, and at the time the statement was made he was in a very tight corner indeed. There are peopleand it is to the credit of our poor, suffering humanity that it is sowho will tell the whole truth about themselves whatever the consequences may be. Of such are saints and martyrs, but most of us are not like that. Most people in a tight corner either prevaricateif anvone is interested in prevarication they will find the locus classicus in the evidence given before the Bank Rate Tribunal by the Leader of the Oppositionor, as in this cane, they lie. 98 This lie was accepted. I have meditated very deeply on this, and though I have given some rather tough reasons for not accepting that Profumo's statement was credible, I have after deep consideration come to the conclusion that my right horn. Friend did absolutely genuinely believe it. I will give my reasons now for taking that view, and these reasons concern the competence and the good sense with which the affair was handled. Profumo on his own admission had been guilty of a very considerable indiscretion, for a Minister at any rate. He was not a particularly successful Minister. He had no great place in this House or in the country. I cannot really see that the Prime Minister was under any obligation whatever to retain his services, nor do I think that getting rid of Mr. Profumo would, in fact, have made the political situation any worse than it then was. On the other hand, to retain him entailed a colossal risk and a colossal gamble. The difficulties and dangers were obvious enough. The Press were in full cry. They were in

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possession of letters. They were hardly likely to have bought letters unless they had something of interest in them. Miss Keeler was pretty certain to turn up again, and if she did, editors were sure to make use of her literary talent. The dangers were enormous, and yet this colossal gamble was taken, and in this gamble, as it seems to me, the possible gain was negligible and the possible loss devastating. The conclusion that I draw from that is that the course adopted by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister could have been adopted only by someone who genuinely and completely believed the statements of Profumo, and therefore, I absolutely acquit my right hon. Friend of any sort of dishonour. On the other hand, on the question of competence and good sense I cannot think that the verdict can be favourable. What is to happen now? I cannot myself see at all that we can go on acting as if nothing had happened. We cannot just have business as usual. I myself feel that the time will come very soon when my right hon. Friend ought to make way for a much younger colleague. I feel that that ought to happen. I certainly will not quote at him the savage words of 99 Cromwell, but perhaps some of the words of Browning might be appropriate in his poem on "The Lost Leader", in which he wrote: let him never come back to us! There would be doubt, hesitation and pain. Forced praise on our partthe glimmer of twilight, Never glad confident morning again! "Never glad confident morning again!"so I hope that the change will not be too long delayed. Ahead of us we have a Division. We have the statement of my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Hailsham, in a personal assurance on television, that a Whip is not a summons to vote but a summons to attend. I call the Whips to witness that I at any rate have attended. 6.30 p.m. Mr. George Wigg (Dudley) I cannot hope to emulate the graceful oratory of the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch), but before I go on to deal with the part of the story with which I am concerned, perhaps I might be permitted to make an observation or two on his speech and the speeches of one or two other right hon. and hon. Members opposite. Two of my hon. Friends and I were reprimanded and criticised for using the privilege of this House for a declared purpose. All I did was to ask for an investigation and an inquiry. But today, when it suits the purpose of the Conservative Party, the privilege of this House can be used to describe a woman as a professional prostitute, and, in addition, we have Lord Hailsham, in the security of his great office and having the privilege of using the B.B.C., describing her as a woman of easy virtue. Let me tell the House, quite frankly, that I have not joined the movement for Moral Re-Armament. Neither am I going to wear a surplice, because if I did my puttees would soon show. Like the right hon. Member for Flint, West, I am what I am, and I shall remain so. I would not pretend for one moment to be a Christian. If some of the ideas of Christianity which we have heard from Lord Hailsham are representative, then I confess that I am a pagan, for the Christianity that I learned at my mother's knee taught me that it was something 100 which had to do with redemption and that there was not one Mary but two and that Jesus loved them both. To use this occasion or any other when the Tory Party is in a jam to pour moralising phrases, humbug and cant from their mouths is something that I cannot take. It gives me a queasy feeling in the stomach when I hear Lord Hailsham. Let me say, frankly, that if the moment ever comes when I see Lord Hailsham on one side of the road and John Profumo on the other, it is to John Profumo that I will go. I would prefer him, the sinner, to the sinister saint of Lord Hailsham's type pouring forth his smears, cant and humbug.

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How typical of the Tory Party! Lord Hailsham is put on to broadcast. He is a great actor. He seethes with moral indignation. He is the great champion of truth. He claims this to be a non-party matterthe object being to try to make out that we on this side of the House have played party politics. Then suddenly he is in a jam. For a split second he finds himself in exactly the same jam as John Profumo found himself. Someone asked him, "What about the three-line Whip?" He could have said, "You have caught me", but he did exactly the same as John Profumo did. He lied. There is not a right hon. or hon. Gentleman on either side of the House who accepts Lord Hailsham's interpretation of what a three-line Whip means. The three-line Whip is the final appeal to loyalty on party lines, and Lord Hailsham knows it. Whether I am in order or not, I call Lord Hailsham a lying humbug. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] Straight from that shoulder, let us turn to another matter, one which has not been mentioned by anybody, not even in a newspaper, and that is the position of the House of Commons. I think that this is a most extraordinary situation. I asked the Leader of the House about the Home Secretary, but again in a corner, very smartly, the Leader of the House said I had not read HANSARD. Not read HANSARD indeed! I shall be haunted as long as I live by what appeared in HANSARD on 22nd March. It will be blazoned on my heart. Whether hon. Members believe me or not, I say that during the last weeks I have gone through the tortures 101 of the damned. Of course I read HANSARD. The Home Secretary was here at 1.30 a.m. so why not the Home Secretary? They had time to fetch a solicitor, yet today we have the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) speaking as a learned counsel on behalf of John Profumo. For, of course, he cannot be here. If John Profumo had wanted to do so, he could have done what John Belcher did. He could have come hereand it would have been a manly thing to domade his explanation and left, as John Belcher did. But, with the connivance of the Government, he applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, which is an honourable estate, and he was granted it so that he could get away and would not have to go through his ordeal. I do not blame him for that. Mr. Speaker, I came to you earlier today because I am again faced with a personal dilemma. I make no claim for myself. The Prime Minister asked for sympathy. I ask for none, because there is one simple thing which hon. Members know very well: that the Wigg family motto is "Tomorrow is also a day" and that anything slung at me will in due course, God willing, be slung back again. But what about the position of my hon. Friends the Members for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) and Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman)? We made a statement in the House on the Consolidated Fund Bill. As far as I am concerned, that statement was made after much thought, after much care. I consulted a lawyer and was told that it was not actionable but that if I went outside the House I might, nevertheless, have to face an action for libel. With my modest resources I could not take this risk. All I asked the Home Secretary to do was deny or investigate. Now we know that Profumo's statement was drawn up between 1.30 and 5.0 a.m., with five other Ministers present, together with Profumo's lawyer. They produced between them the statement he made to this House on the morning of 22nd March. We are now told that this statement was approved by the Government. The Government must know, however incompetent they are, that, in the light of Mr. Speaker's Ruling of 3rd November, 1960, the Chair is involved because that state- 102 ment had to be approved by Mr. Speaker. They must have known then. Nevertheless, they produced that statement, and I ask right hon. and hon. Members to look at it again and remember that it was produced with the assistance of Profumo's own lawyer and the two Law Officers of the Crown.

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There are two statements contained in that statement, in the first and last paragraphs, which were a deliberate and calculated smear on my two hon. Friends. Twice, it was said that they had raised this under the protection of privilege. Why were such words put in? Was it because the Ministers had been engaged in an operation to find out the truth? Oh, no! They were engaged in shutting me up. That was the purpose of that personal statement by Profumo. That day I left here with black rage in my heart, because I knew what the facts were. I knew the truth, and I knew that, just as over the Kuwait operation, I had been trussed up and done again. If hon. Members doubt that, let them read the debate on 23rd November last and my statement to the House on 26th November. The mistake which John Profumo madehis only mistakewas the one which is unforgivable to the party opposite: he did not get away with it, he got found out. That is what is wrong. He ignored the warning given to him. Yet here we had the SolicitorGenerala junior Ministertelling a senior Minister what he should say to the House. I will not involve the Chair, so I only put the question and do not necessarily expect an answer. If you, Mr. Speaker, had known of the existence of the letter of Profumo to Miss Keeler and had known of the meetings down below, would you, Sir, as the servant of the House, have approved that statement on 22nd March? Members opposite must meet the charge of contempt of this Housea deliberate attempt to involve the Chair in a political action to defend themselves. This is a prima faciequestion of contempt. To me, there is no doubt about it. I am astonished that the Prime Minister, who has had such long service in this House, should not have been the first to defend it. We must remember that we in this House live by precedent. At the moment, 103 it is out of order for one hon. Member to say of another that he has lied. But unless the House of Commons passes judgment on this action, unless the Chair is absolved from the personal statements made by John Profumo, then twenty or thirty years hence we shall find the precedent quotedthat the House of Commons failed to condemn a calculated lie by a Minister of the Crown in circumstances which clearly involved other Ministers. Until this is cleared up by actions by the Government, their honour, whether they say so or not, remains impugned. I want to begin to tell my story, but before doing so I want to say a word to the Home Secretary. I was puzzled by him. I believe him to be an honourable and straightforward man, but on the night when I asked him, as senior Minister present, a question, he dodged it. If he had dodged it knowing of the inquiries which the Prime Minister had made, his honour would be involved, because the words he used that night made it appear as though he was sidestepping. I do not believe that he knew, but if he did not know, how can he remain a member of the Administration when the Prime Minister keeps this sort of knowledge to himself? I do not believe that the Home Secretary knew about these inquiries when he made the reply to me on the night of 21st March. The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Henry Brooke) What the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) is saying might seem to be inconsistent with something said by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that at that date, 21st-22nd March, certain reports were in my hands and provided knowledge which would cause me to doubt Mr. Profumo's statement. No such reports were in my hand at that date. Mr. H. Wilson Where were they? Mr. Wigg

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I shall not involve myself in a triangular controversy. If in what I have to say I impugn one man and tell the truth as I see it about him and if other right hon. or hon. Gentlemen are involved and I know the truth about them, I believe that it is my duty to tell the House. In my view the Home Secretary is an honourable and straightforward 104 man and he acted as he did that night because he did not know the facts. I now turn to Mr. Profumo. I have referred to Kuwait. This does not weigh very much with hon. Members, but it weighs considerably with me. It is the reason why I did not go to Mr. Profumo. I went to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, to whom I am greatly indebted for his kindness and consideration in very difficult matters indeed. He never attempted to interfere with my judgment. What I did I did on my own responsibility. I went to him on 10th March and told him the story as I then knew it and I told it in terms which, as far as I knew, were near certainty, not absolute certainty, but near certainty of what the situation has in fact turned out to be. I listened to and talked with him on many other occasions between 10th March and 21st March. I contemplated going to Mr. Profumo. Again, I took legal advice. I went to an old and wise and valued legal friend and told him the story. I asked him, "Should I go to this man and tell him what I know? Perhaps he does not know". I told him what had happened to me about Kuwait. He said, "In the circumstances, he will not thank you; if he did not tell you the truth about Kuwait, he will not do anything different on this occasion". Another right hon. Gentleman was involved. I heard stories about him and so I went to the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison) and I told him that I had heard stories which involved the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour. Let me hasten to add that I did not do it in any way of going to him and asking, "Is this right? Is this true or not true?" I went to him as an old friend and I asked, "Will you tell John Hare what I have heard?" He did so, and the right hon. Gentleman sent me a message to say that it was not true. The sum total of the story added up to the effect that the car of the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour had been used by Miss Keeler and Mr. Profumo. A week ago last Friday, the hon. Member for Maldon telephoned me again and told me that he was worried and anxious because the Minister of Labour had been in touch with him to say that his recollection was wrong and that the car had been used. This was a very anxious business 105 indeed. Later in the morning, the right hon. Gentleman telephoned me himself and said that his recollection was wrong. Of course, I unhesitatingly accepted what he said and when later last week I heard other stories, I did what I thought was right and, after making inquiries, I telephoned the hon. Member for Maldon, as I knew the right hon. Gentleman was ill. I said to him that I believed that the Minister of Labour was anxious and worried and that I would like him to tell the right hon. Gentleman that I intended to say in the House that his action was perfectly honourable and that what happened was no more than a slip of memory. Having heard those rumours, or at least some of them, I have taken the earliest opportunity to clear the right hon. Gentleman. I now turn to some other matters. My hon. and right hon. Friends have been smeared as though this was a party point, and so I shall explain my poistion. I made a firm resolve in this affair that if any matters ever came to my notice involving action by the police authorities, my duty was to go to the police. A week ago last Sunday, I heard that negotiations had been going on with a great newspaper company to purchase the story of Dr. Ward's life story for a colossal sum of money running into many many thousands of s and that Dr. Ward on the eve of his arrest had deposited a considerable number of documents and photographs of a particular kind in the safe of that newspaper company. I went straight away to Scotland Yard and told them the facts.

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Earlier, there was another character in this case whose name I shall not mention because he is awaiting trial. Here, again, I did not trust the Secretary of State for War. I went to the Secretary of State for Air and the Under-Secretary of State for War and I told them. So far as it is humanly possible, from the time I went to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and when I made my statement in the House and from my discussions with the hon. Member for Maldon and, through him, with the Minister of Labour and other hon. Members I have tried to keep my hands absolutely clean. I have approached this problem from the beginning not as a moral problem, but as a problem of security as part of 106 defence. This is what I want to say again to the Prime Minister in relation to the late Secretary of State for War. Who chose him? Who put him into that job? He was put into that job by the Prime Minister to carry out a specific task, a task which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Flint, West, or the hon. Member for Maldon, or other hon. Members who know anything about defenceand who care for the defence of this country, would not have carried out. What he had to do was to get 165,000 men by 1st January, and it did not matter two pence how he did it. What he did was to lower standards and he lowered the rejection rate from 70 per cent. to 40 per cent. I do not say that he did not care anything about the Army, but it was not as much as I do, or he would not have done it. This is not the first occasion when the Government have lied about defence. The whole defence policy has been based on a lie. Viscount Head did not remain as Minister of Defence because he knew that jolly well, as he said in the House. He refused to cook the books. There is also the whole Suez operation. Has the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) ever told the House the full truth of the negotiations which went on over Suez? He knows very well that he has not. What angered President Eisenhower was that the Americans broke our code and found that our Government had been lying. The Secretary of State for War was being asked to carry out a political job and he tried to do once too often what he had often done beforehe tried to get away with it regardless of truth. In the early part of January, it was perfectly clear, as plain as a pikestaff, that the Secretary of State for War had been meeting Miss Keeler on a number of occasions. There is no doubt that he had met her on 9th August, 1961. One of the things that flabbergasted me on that Friday morning was the admission that he had met her six times. If he had met Miss Keeler six times by accident, the laws of probability being what they are, obviously he must have gone to Dr. Ward's flat at least twenty times. Clearly he had not met this girl by accident on the only six occasions when she happened to be there. He had gone there regularly. 107 It is the weakness of the Prime Minister's case that he seizes any point that he can. In my memorandum I put down exactly what Dr. Ward said to me. On the question of impropriety, Dr. Ward used the words "As far as I know"those are the words in my memorandumbut he went on to say that he was not there all the time so he did not know, but by the time that Dr. Ward came to see me the question of any impropriety had faded from my mind. What loomed in my mind was the position of Commander Ivanov and the fact that the former Secretary of State for War had indulged in the chancy business of lying to this House. We heard the interesting revelation about blackmail. There are three gentlemenI shall not particularise because Dr. Ward's case is sub Judiceactively connected with blackmail on an international scale who got out of London last weekend as quickly as they could when they knew that Dr. Ward had been arrested, so we are dealing with something that is pretty hot, to put it mildly.

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The idea that at that stage Mr. Profumo could get away with it was a desperate gamble. From what he knew of Ward by this time, he knew pretty well that he was going to be blackmailed. I asked Ward when he last saw Profumo. He said that he had met him at the Dorchester three weeks before, and when he mentioned Miss Keeler, Mr. Profumo said, "Miss Keeler? I do not know her. Who is she?" Then Ward told him, "If you do not know, you should go and ask M.I.5. They will tell you who Miss Keeler is". The idea that at that stage Ivanov and Profumo were no security risks in the sense that they had not laid themselves open to blackmail is nonsense. This is the thing that interested me above all else. Here was Commander Ivanov, a master of the English language, dressing well, going around in a flash car, going to nightclub after nightclub, and, from direct evidence supplied to the Prime Minister, becoming a very good bridge player indeed. To play in such circumstances that he was bound to lose, and that his losses would be 20 to 50 a night, was common. I do not know much about the Soviet Union, and less about the Soviet Embassy, but I do not 108 believe that their petty cash would stand such losses every night unless they got something for it. The idea that Commander Ivanov was going round mixing with Dr. Ward and his friends merely for the sake of their company seemed fantastic. When Dr. Ward talked to me, he did not talk only about Cuba, but about the part that Commander Ivanov had played at the time of Berlin, and he talked to me in the most intimate terms on a political basis. Indeed, at one stage I wondered whether Dr. Ward himself was a Communist and whether he had caught any of the jargon. I came to the conclusion that that was not so. This man knew his way around London and around the joints, but I was certain that he had not told me the whole truth, and I was struck this afternoon with one point made by the Prime Minister. He said that he was told for the first time on 1st February. But what had happened two days before? Commander Ivanov left the country two days before that, and, whatever Dr. Ward may say, he was seeing Commander Ivanov up to within a few days of his leaving this country, so it is important to appreciate that the Prime Minister realised the position one day, and that two days before that the one man who could put his hands on what was happening had gone. He had vanished from the scene. From that time onwardsand this is what makes it so inexplicablethe Government did not realise that it became inevitable that the truth would emerge. I shall not go over all the ground that has been covered by my right hon. Friend or by the Prime Minister. What I am concerned about is what is going to happen in the future. This is the important thing. As the right hon. Gentleman said, things are never going to be quite the same again, and in some way somebody has to reconstitute the Army's faith in the political head of the Army. This is a not unimportant task, but the most important task of all is that somebody has to carry out a pretty drastic reconstruction of our security services. Despite the large sums of money which are spent, I believe that one of the reasons why Ward was not placed under active surveillanceand the same applies to Commander Ivanov, for that matteris that the intelligence service is 109 kept short of manpower. It is not paid enough. It is a part-time job of the Prime Minister. I do not believe that the Prime Minister, with his long history, and with his long record of public service to this country, has been engaged in any dishonourable action at all, but I believe that the story he has told this afternoon is a record of incompetence that requires that he should resign, and the whole of his Administration with him. 6.53 p.m. Sir Richard Glyn (Dorset, North) I listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg). He ended on a note which will be echoed by hon. Members on both sides of the House.

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He said that he could not believe that my right hon. Friend had been personally involved in any impropriety or disgraceful conduct of any kind. Earlier the hon. Gentleman had been very frank about the information which he had obtained from time to time from Dr. Ward, and he told us that he had been informed by Dr. Ward that as far as he, Dr. Ward, was aware, there had been no impropriety between the late Secretary of State for War and Miss Keeler. This, I think, must have been the report, or been included in the report, which was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in his opening speech, and this information must undoubtedly have played a part in enabling the late Secretary of State for War to convince so many experienced people that he was in fact not guilty of any impropriety during his association with Miss Keeler. My right hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) said that it was incredible that they should have believed the late Secretary of State for War on this point because, he said, Mr. Profumo was unlikely to be meeting what he described as a prostitute for social purposes. It is right to point out, however, that this comment is made with the full knowledge of hindsight. There were few people in the country and very few people in this Houseand I believe that there was no one in the Governmentwho, on 22nd March of this year, were aware that Miss Keeler could have been properly described in this way. It is easy to apply the knowledge that we have now to the situation that obtained then, but it is not 110 altogether just to condemn people because they did not know facts which were not then available to them. A certain amount has been said by the hon. Member for Dudley and others about the fact that there is a three-line Whip on the Conservative side tonight. I want to make it clear that I am quite confident that I speak not only as the representative of the people of North Dorset but for the great majority of the Tory Party throughout the country when I declare that if, at the end of this debate, I were left in any doubt whatever as to the integrity and honesty of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at every stage of this affair, I should no longer be able to remain a member of a party of which he was the leader. With regard to the Whip, I go further, and say that if, on the facts disclosed today, when properly considered in the light of the situation then obtaining, my right hon. Friend is shown to have been guilty of recklessness or even of negligence on an important matter of security, I, personally, would be quite unable to support the Government in the Lobby this evening. The decision of the House tonightand it is a decision of great importancemust be based not on hindsight or on guesses about what may become known in the future but on the facts and evidence available to the Government at the relevant times and on the facts and evidence which are before the House today. During the 12 days that have passed since the resignation of the late Secretary of State for War a series of sensational allegations have been published. Their cumulative effect has been to create more anxiety amongst the public than has been created in respect of any comparable episode in living memory. I agree that aspects of our security service are open to criticism, but I believe that what The Timesnewspaper describes as the moral issue is the more important one, and that it will be this issue, more than any point of security, which will finally determine the views of the majority of hon. Members at the conclusion of the debate. This is a Supply day, and the precise terms of the debate are decided at the option of the Opposition. They chose the question of security, with special 111 reference to the resignation of the Secretary of State for War. I say at once that I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and other hon. Members when they say that there was a security risk throughout the period when Miss Keeler was entertaining

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both the Secretary of State for War and the Russian naval attach. I do not attempt to disguise that fact. The Leader of the Opposition said that there was a standing condition of security risk as long as the Secretary of State for War associated with Dr. Ward, Miss Keeler and Ivanov. He described this as a security quadrilateral. I do not complain of that description. Whether or not Miss Keeler was ever asked for secret information by her Russian lover does not matter; there was a security risk as long as these two men shared Miss Keeler's favours, and as long as Dr. Ward was closely involved in the matter. This makes it extremely important to ascertain when this security risk period began and ended. One of the difficulties is that we must view with great care the statements which have been made by the parties concerned, and not readily believe them unless they are, to some extent at least, corroborated by outside evidence. Many of the parties have made more than one statement, and in some cases their statements have been rather conflicting. It seems clear, however, that the security period began in July, 1961. That seems to be well established. The parties met at a party at Cliveden. This has been the subject of a number of articles in the Press, thoroughly described and reasonably well authenticated. It is less easy to be sure, however, of the precise date at which this quadrilateral broke up. First, we had the date of December, 1961, given for the ending of the association between Miss Keeler and the late Secretary of State for War. I have noticed, however, that there has been one suggestion that it lasted longer. I shall deal with that point in a minute. It is interesting to note that the former Secretary of State for War had been warned against Dr. Ward. This has been agreed by hon. Members on both sides of the House. Because of this it is interesting to know what Miss Keeler said, as published very fully in the News of the 112 World on the 9th of this month. According to her she was staying in Dr. Ward's flat when her association with the former Secretary of State for War broke up. She said, He wanted me to leave Ward's flat. I would not go. He said he would not see me if I did not leave. I told him he must make his choice. She then said that she got out of the car and slammed the door, and added that she never met him again. We know from evidence given in the Old Bailey in another case that Miss Keeler left Dr. Ward's flat comparatively early in 1962 and went to live in Isle-worth, with a Mr. Edgecombe, who was involved in the case in December, 1962, when she had left him and was sharing a flat with a Miss Rice-Davies, outside the door of which he discharged a revolver. If Miss Keeler is correct in saying that this association stopped while she was still in Dr. Ward's flat it is clear that it stopped either at the end of 1961 or very early in 1962. This has been accepted by a number of newspapers. In its leading article yesterday the Observer particularly referred to the association between these two as being of only a few months' duration. If that is correct, the quadrilateral had a short existence, from July until December, 1961, when it appears that the first one broke away. It has been saidthere are conflicting stories about thisthat Miss Keeler was asked to get information from the late Secretary of State for War in December, 1962, at the time of the Cuban crisis. The fact that she was so asked would not absolutely prove that she was still seeing the late Secretary of State for War, but if that story be true it entirely conflicts with her statement that she never saw him again after the time when she slammed the car door outside Dr. Ward's flat, and when she refused to leave that flat. This is a matter upon which every hon. Member must form his own conclusion. Mr. K. Zilliacus (Manchester, Gorton)

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Did not the Secretary of State for War remain a security risk even after the end of this association, because of his liability to blackmail? Sir Richard Glyn That is another point that I shall be dealing with. I was seeking to establish the dates first 113 of all. I could not agree more with the hon. Member about the blackmail point. From the bulk of the evidence that has been produced so far it would seem that this quadrilateral began to break up at the end of 1961, although it is clear that Ivanov and Ward continued to associate for a considerably longer timeperhaps, as the hon. Member for Dudley said, right up till Ivanov left the country. I have no information about that. But, having said this, we should ask whether our security service was at fault or was guilty of negligence in not discovering the liaison between the late Secretary of State for War and Miss Keeler during the few months it lasted. It took place in Dr. Ward's house. Perhaps it was the visits of the late Secretary of State for War to that house to see Miss Keeler which resulted in his being warned by the security service that Ward himself was a security risk. It is not suggested by anyone now that anybody warned him that Miss Keeler was a security risk, because at that stage she was not known to the security service. Indeed, she was known hardly to anyone outside that circle. In February of this year, a newspaper quite properly informed the Government of the rumours which were then becoming widely known. It is important to realise that this was a long time after the quadrilateral had broken up and the period of security risk had finished. It is clear that from the first time he was confronted with them, the former Secretary of State entirely denied the allegations. He denied every word of them, and in those circumstances one might ask, what could the security service do? It could make sure whether or not he was still conducting a liaison with Miss Keeler. It appears that he was not and on this I suppose there would have been a negative report. They could not really ascertain what had happened in the dim and distant ages. Had the security service been alerted 15 months before while the liaison was in full swing it would have been entirely different. Mr. William Shepherd (Cheadle) May I ask whether my hon. Friend 114 knows that at the end of October I saw all the parties in this case at the flat of Dr. Ward, and Miss Keeler was certainly there at that time, and that I reported the matter immediately to security so that they did know of its existence? Sir Richard Glyn Which October? Mr. Shepherd October, 1962. Sir Richard Glyn I was saying that in October, 1962, we know that there was the story that she was asked to get information from the then Secretary of State for War. I said that there was no suggestion that the liaison was still going on. Her direct statement agrees with his, that it had long since ceased. There is nothing to prevent anyone going to an old "flame" and perhaps trying to ask for something. The question is whether the liaison was continuing, and the evidence is that it was not. The evidence so far published definitely suggestsI refer again to the leading article in the Observerthat it was a liaison of very short duration indeed. If a security report on what had been happening in the autumn of 1961 could have been prepared and given to the Government, it is clear that the misleading statement of 22nd

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March would never have been made. It could not have been made. The Government would have been in a different and an altogether stronger position. I think that the Leader of the Opposition was absolutely right in saying that it is very difficult to find out what happened a long time ago. He said that we should never be able to find out what was happening in the autumn of 1961not precisely. I suggest that the same thing applied a few months ago when the security people were alerted by a newspaper intervention. There was no means in February of this year of finding out what had been happening in the autumn of two years before. But, as I have said, if security could have put in a report, it would have made the entire difference. We come to the events of 21st March which have been referred to a number of times. We can read the HANSARD report carefully. Particular references were madeI do not complain about them; it was right that they should have been madeto the rumours linking the then Secretary 115 of State with Miss Keeler. We can refresh our memories from HANSARD. Every one of these rumours referred to a current matter. The word "liaison" was not mentioned. The suggestion was of a current scandalthat he had helped her to disappear. Whether he did or not we may never know. There is no evidence of it, at least none has been published. But there were allegations of a current scandal, not of an ancient passion long since expired, 15 or 16 months before. They were allegations, I do not blame anybody, of things being wrong at that time Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West) I find myself in this difficulty, that Mr. Profumo, in his statement, told an obvious, calculated and repeated lie. His statement is tarnished, and therefore one is still not satisfied whether he had any part or not in spiriting Miss Keeler away. Surely this is a current scandal? Sir Richard Glyn Yes, but it was a current scandal about which security and other people concerned were quite unable to discover any evidence. It would, of course, have been a criminal offence to have conspired to conceal a witness, and had he done so, the police would unquestionably have followed it up, had there been any evidence to follow up. But I say that these were rumours of current scandals about which no evidence has been produced. The last allegations were made, a few minutes before midnight, and only about five hours later a meeting was held between senior Ministers, the then Secretary of State and his solicitor. I will not go into that meeting; it has been referred to a number of times. But I put the point that the Government did take every step they reasonably could to ensure that the statement when made was comprehensive and accurate. This was the point. His solicitor was there to look after his interests and the Ministers were there to make sure that it was a comprehensive statement and accurate so far as they could possibly tell. There really was no reason to doubt its veracity. We had a number of rumours of scandalous conduct. But as the hon. Member for Dudley pointed out, Mr. Ward said firmly that up to that point there was no impropriety so far as he knew. [Hon. Members: "No."] This is what 116 the hon. Member for Dudley told the House. I wrote it down when he said it. This is what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister told the House, and he was not challenged. The hon. Member for Dudley said it and he was not challenged. I am repeating faithfully what they said. I have no personal knowledge. I am simply quoting what they said. And so I think at this time there was no reason why senior Ministers should have doubted what their colleague told thema story he had repeated many times before and which he stood by until the end.

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This is the point. It would seem unbelievable in March of this year that this considered, prepared statement should contain a calculated untruth. There may be hon. Members who re member that they had doubts about it at the time. But I am sure that I speak for the majority of hon. Members on this side of the House when I say that when we heard or read that statement we were absolutely, finally and completely convinced Viscount Lambton (Berwick-upon-Tweed) Not every hon. Member was convinced. I myself expressed complete disbelief in the statement. Sir Richard Glyn The noble Lord is perhaps not entirely typical of hon. Members on this side of the House. I say at once that I do not believe that there has been any other occasion when an hon. Member of this House, being a Minister of the Crown and a Privy Councillor, has made a personal statement to the House with the premeditated intention of misleading the House by a carefully worded falsehood. It is this which seemed unbelievable. His association with that woman was sordid and disgraceful, but in my view his deception of the House was much more so. It was an act in direct conflict with our traditional standards of public life. He has paid a heavy penalty for his misdeeds. He has brought ruin to himself and disaster to his unfortunate family for whom the House will feel extremely sorry. But the stain left on our national institutions will not lightly be erased. The questionthis is the question which will have to be resolved tonightis, was my right hon. Friend the Prime 117 Minister in any way a party to this fraudulent statement? Mr. Scholefield Allen (Crewe) That is not the question. Sir Richard Glyn That is the question. Was he a party? If it is agreed that he was not, let that be firmly known by our vote at the end of this debate. The House knows that this statement had been prepared by a group of senior Ministers who are of the highest integrity and very experienced, and it was in the particular circumstances of the case that the then Secretary of State was able to deceive his own solicitor and all the Ministers. Because of his assurances each of them eventually became convinced that he was telling the truth in his protestations. They accepted his word that he was innocent. In these circumstances, I cannot accept that my right hon. Friend was adversely affected in any way, either directly or indirectly, by that untruthful sentence in the statement made that day. In the short time available since the charges were brought the night before, everything possible had been done by the Government to check the truth of the statement. Had my right hon. Friend had the slightest inkling that the statement was not strictly correct, he would have acted very differently. Mr. William Ross (Kilmarnock) How can the hon. Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) say that the Ministers made every effort to check the truth of the statement? We have been told by the Prime Minister that, although it had not been reported to him, the police had already reportedI think the Prime Minister said on 26th Januarythat Mr. Ward had asked Miss Keeler to try to get information. That fact was available to the police and to the security service. Surely, if every effort had been made to check, this would have come out. Then we have had the statement of the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. W. Shepherd) that he, a back bencher, knew that this liaison or some connection still remained in October, 1962, and he reported it to the security service. Sir Richard Glyn

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None of these matters had been reported to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister or the other senior Ministers 118 Mr. Ross rose Sir Richard Glyn No, I must answer the point. I shall then consider whether or not I shall give way again. It is said that everything was known to the police, but how was everything known? Hon. Members say that everything which is known to the police was available at this meeting of senior Ministers which we know happenedas it had to happenat 5 o'clock in the morning, and at very short notice. There was no suggestion that every report on everyone concerned that was known to the police could be made available in that short time. There was no suggestion that it could have been made known or that the Home Secretary knew all the circumstances of that police report, even if he had had time to call for it. In the circumstances in which this was done it was out of the question for further information to be obtained. What the Ministers had got was a full report from the security service on this case. We know that. The report contained conflicting statements from different people and in the circumstances the Secretary of State, with his firm, resolute and untruthful denials was able to persuade the group of Ministers that he was right and the rumours were wrong. There was nothing more than rumour. Mr. Ross rose Sir Richard Glyn I must get on with my speech. No doubt the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) will succeed in catching Mr. Speaker's eye later. Others wish to speak and I do not want to detain the House for too long. It has been suggested that there was a security risk in allowing the former Secretary of State for War to remain in office in view of the mass of rumours and reports, although I point out that these began to circulate long after the time when there was any evidence at all of a current security risk, indeed just after the Russian officer concerned had left the country. Can it be said that there was an actual security riskit is very easy when looking back with the full knowledge of hindsightinthe fact that the then Secretary of State had formerly kept a mistress? If this constituted a security risk it certainly was not the first of its kind. Can it be said that, because his former 119 mistress had shared her favours with others, including a Russian, this was a security risk? Surely this is a possibility inherent in any such liaison? The basic difference between a liaison and a marriage is that both parties in a liaison are likely to be unfaithful to each other. What man who keeps a mistress can be sure whom she entertains in his absence? Any politician who has ever kept a mistress is liable to blackmail in this regard. This is the point which has been raised. It applies either during or after the liaison and applies to every such case irrespective of the apparent discretion or otherwise of the mistress involved. II could be argued that any politician who has ever at any time kept a mistress is too great a security risk to hold office, but that would have denied this country many prominent leaders in the past. After all, it was the Duke of Wellington who said, "Publish and be damned." Mr. Charles Loughlin (Gloucester shire, West) On this question of mistresses, surely there is just a subtle difference between a mistress in the accepted term and a dirty little prostitute?

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Sir Richard Glyn That, of course, is a matter which the hon. Member must decide for himself. There might be occasions where the same lady was referred to by both terms by different people. I am satisfied on the facts presented so far in this debate that there is no case against my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, no case of dishonesty nor any charge against his integrity and no evidence of neglect[Hon. Members: "Oh."]or of negligence in regard to the Prime Minister's handling of security. I am perfectly satisfied that no charge has been made out against him on the facts now before the House. 7.25 p.m. Mr. R. H. S. Crossman (Coventry, East) The speech to which we have just listened bore one resemblance to that of the Prime Minister in that both were coloured by a pleasing hopefulness about security. "We are all nice, honourable men." We are back in the atmosphere of the last Vassall debate when we had exactly the same kind of defence. We were told that if we wanted to be free 120 men we had to allow things to go on and no one can ever be blamed under a Tory Government if anything in security goes wrong. The people of this country found that difficult to swallow last time over the Vassall case. This time they find it even more difficult to swallow, as I hope to prove. I had been thinking about this debate for many days, and I had formulated a number of questions to put to the Prime Minister. I thank him for one thing. Four of the six questions I wanted to put he has fully answered, but in answering them he has raised much graver questions than I originally intended to ask, so one must prosecute the interrogation. Looking back to the debate on 21st/22nd March, I was surprised to find how grateful the Government were to myself and my hon. Friends the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) and the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle). We did not then get the impression that the Government were grateful, but they now tell me it was what they were waiting for. Indeed, one might have expected one of the Tories to do it for them. Why was the Prime Minister so anxious for us to do what we did? Parts of his speech were of a very pleasant, rather plaintive kind of candour. He made it quite clear that all he wanted was an opportunity to clap on a threat of libel so that no one could print the stories in the Press. This was what was required, a statement here which would enable the five right hon. Gentlemen opposite to gather round Mr. Profumo and with him draft a denial with a threat of legal action which would stifle the rumours. I do not criticise but record that this in fact was what the Prime Minister wanted. He wanted to stifle the rumours. He knew that the Press had these stories in its coffers. He knew the letters were there. There was only one hope. It was to have a situation in which no one would dare to publish them. The way to get that situation in Britain is for a Minister to come to the House and say, "This is not true, and I threaten to take legal action if you say it any more". Immediately it was extremely effective. It was, in fact, impossible to say any more. The hon. Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) meets different Tories from those I meet. I did 121 not meet many Tories who after Mr. Profumo's statement, to put it mildly, took it at face value. Quite a number of his colleagues shared my certainty that it was a lie but a number felt that we should never be able to find out. The chance would not come. It was only the investigations, the intrepid investigations, of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley and the building up of the case which has now broken open the statement. But, as it looked at the time, his statement would have finally prevented anything further being said. So do not let us be too noble about the Prime Minister's talk

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of "not doing an injustice" to Mr. Profumo. As the Prime Minister said, he asked him to resign. The Prime Minister told us that he told him, "Your resignation might help you but it would not help me." I knew what he meant. Mr. Ronald Bell (Buckinghamshire, South) The hon. Member is misrepresenting what my right hon. Friend said. I think that my right hon. Friend was referring to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith). Mr. Crossman I do not think so, but I am glad to accept that. We will read what the Prime Minister said in tomorrow's Official Report. It was my impression that I was right in my first comments and that the aim was to elicit a position where a threat could be made against anyone in the courts who continued to say these things or who dared to print articles which had already been prepared and which had been eagerly bought and competed for by two newspapers. That was the object, and it looked at the time that it might possibly succeed. I agree with the hon. Member for Dorset, North in that it would be silly to go over the whole issue of 1961 and 1962 and try to allot praise and blame on the security authorities and to discuss whether or not one should have a security system large enough to detect a Minister during the few weeks of a fleeting affair. That is something we need not discuss here right now. It would be difficult to do so, and in any case we have to consider not an affair of 1961 or 1962 but the conduct of the Government during the period when the affair suddenly came into the open again owing to a shooting. 122 All we are doing tonight is to investigate, stage by stage, whether the way the Prime Minister handled this affair, from 29th January when the security services first reported until the resignation of Mr. Profumo, was honourable and competent. I think that it was honourable, but was it competent? It was not only not competent but it was a ghastly degree of shifting, indecisive incompetence. For this reason, I wish to ask a number of questions arising out of the debate so far. My first question concerns D notices. A D notice is put on by the Ministry of Defence by an organisation called, I think, The Services, Press and Broadcasting Committee, of which the head is normally Admiral Thompson, although I gather that Colonel Lohan was in charge last January or February. It is stated in Fleet Street by people I respect that they have heard that an effort was made in January or February to get a D notice issued about Ivanov. The man who did this was either Profumo or someone working for him. The effort was unsuccessful and the Committee refused to do it. However, this question must be answered. Was any effort made to get a D notice put on the subject of Ivanov? This matter needs to be cleared up, because if it were true that such an effort was made then this is further evidence of neglect on the part of the Prime Minister when he looked back and began to suspect something about Mr. Profumo. My second question is this. The Prime Minister made a fascinating revelation about his relations with the Press. The man who used to run the Tory Party machine is now in the journalistic world; the managing director or high official of the News of the World. Remember, it was the News of the World and that newspaper's intelligence department which provided the Prime Minister with his first warning and information about the whole affair. I suppose that it was naturala friendly act by a Tory Party workerto feel that he was not only there to publish things but to try to help the Government by informing them of what the News of the World had in its possession. We now know just what the News of the World and the Sunday Pictorial had in their possession and for which they were competing for publication purposes. We 123 know it because we have

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read the various versions in the last couple of weeks, including the whole story that was current on both sides of the House. We have read this in all its detail. This shows that Mr. Mark Chapman Walker knew well all about it. He had seen the text of the letter and, presumably, he told the Prime Minister that the letter existed. Did the Prime Minister ask him to let him have a look at it? Is it not an extraordinary thing that when told that such a letter exists the right hon. Gentleman should not ask to see it? Or was the letter not therealthough it was in the offices of the News of the World and the Sunday Pictorial? If it was there, does there not seem a strange lack of curiosity on the part of the Prime Minister, that he should not want to look at a letter written by his Secretary of State for War and beginning "Darling"? considering a liaison with a Russian agent Why did the Prime Minister not bother to ask his journalist friend to let him have a look at the letter? This indeed seems a strange beginning to an investigation. Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies (Isle of Thanet) Is it not a fact that the letter about which he is speaking was in the possession of the Sunday Pictorial? If there was any truth in, can the hon. Member say why the Sunday Pictorial did not report the fact? Mr. Crossman The answer, I think, is that the letter was available to both of these great newspapers, who were both keenly competing to publish it. As I have tried to show, a lot of people outside those newspapers knew something about it. In this connection, I will now deal with the Sunday Pictorial. The three of us had something at stake. We had been accused in a personal statement of spreading rumours under the shield of privilege. I was interested to read the week before last in the Sunday Mirror that it had in its possession [Interruption]. It is significant that it changed its name at that time; that may be one reason it was a little coy about these things. The Sunday Mirror stated on 3rdApril-after the thing had become a political matter of the gravest momentthat the 124 editor had decided that in all the circumstances the prudent and fair course would be to arrange for Mr. Profumo's letter to be returned to Mr. Profumo. That was very sporting. On that dayin the offices of Mr. Nevil-Henle, Dr. Ward's solicitor, and in the presence of the assistant editor of the Sunday Mirrorthe Sunday Pictorial as it was then calledthe letter was handed over. It was later confirmed that a letter has been sent thanking the editor for the return of the document. I agree with the statement of Lord Francis Williams in the New Statesmanof 14th June last in which he stated: Not to have published this letter at the time Profumo made his first personal statement in the Commons, thus forcing the real issue, the security issue, into the open seems to me to be a dereliction of journalistic responsibility. This is a view with which I agree. Having said that, I must ask one or two further questions of the Prime Minister concerning his conduct over the letter. If there was a dereliction of journalistic duty regarding its not being published, there was a dereliction of Prime Ministerial responsibility in that he did not seek to see the letter for himself but that he merely said, in effect, "We are bound to trust old Jack Profumo in what he says." This makes me suspect whether the Prime Minister was very keen on checking Mr. Profumo's affairs. I appreciate the feeling that Mr. Profumo was one of the right hon. Gentleman's colleagues. However, when grave matters of national security are at stake, when a colleague gets into a mess of this kind and is having a relationship with a woman, it is as much a dereliction of responsibility not to ask Mr. Mark Chapman Walker to see the letter as it was for the Sunday Pictorial not to publish it. On both sides there was a dereliction of duty. If that letter had then been published the whole situation would have looked very different indeed, and there would have been an

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overwhelming case for the demand that my hon. Friend and I were making for a Select Committee. All we were saying then was, "This political crisis will grow and fester underground. Deal with it while it is early enoughput it before a Select Committee." That was the case we were making that night, and had that letter been published after we had made that case and 125 Mr. Profumo had denied it there would have immediately been a prima facie case and we might have found rather more careful investigations being undertaken. I want to ask some questions about those investigations, and I want the Leader of the House to reply to those questions perfectly categorically. First, how often was Miss Keeler interrogated, either before 22nd March or after 22nd March, by the Cabinet, or by people working for the Cabinet, in order to test her story? Was there any interrogation of the girl? Secondly, how often was Mr. Ward interrogated? Again, I want to be fair. One tends, of course, to want to believe Mr. Profumo, but when these stories are bruited and these people are about, surely a Premier must make sure that the charges are investigated and that the people are cross-examined. But, of course, I had forgottenthe girl had disappeared by then. That is very odd, now that we know that the security report came in at the end of January. I must say that one had thought until then that it was just a chief witness who had disappeared. But now we know the chief witness was also known by security to be involved in a scandal affecting a Minister. In an extraordinary way, the girl just disappeared, and after the Prime Minister's account there is more to investigate as to how that came about and why real care was not taken to ensure her presence in the country. She was required for two matters; one was the particular case of the shooting, but she was also wanted to help in investigating the Profumo charge. But we here have just one of those little gaps. It just happened that she went. I want to know a little more about whether, when she got back, the investigation took place of Miss Keeler and Mr. Ward. Many other people talked to this girl and her man. Many others investigated the case and formed their opinion of their characters and whether or not they could be relied on. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley investigated Mr. Ward. The only people who do not seem to have investigated were the six people who sat round drafting the letter. They did not investigate because they were busy drafting a statement designed to suppress further publication. Their minds were not on 126 the investigation of their colleague, which was their duty, however unpleasant it might be. We should not be too sentimental. I was a little shocked by that part of the Prime Minister's speech in which he told us why he did not talk to Profumo himself. I do not want to be unfair, but my impression was that he did not do so because it would have made his personal relations with his Secretary of State for War impossibleso he had to leave it to the Chief Whip. That is a very clear indication of what Chief Whips are for. They are for Premiers to avoid having impossible personal relations. The Prime Minister was very human: he was really avoiding action that would get below the surface. How easy and tempting in life it is to do that. How often in private life we are faced with a situation in which we do not want to know the truth. We do not want to change our conviction that something unpleasant is not true, so we do not ask the questions, we do not collect the evidence. We all commit this fault, but if one commits it as a Prime Minister one commits a fault that is fatal in that particular job. I was very glad that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said what he did about Lord Attlee as Prime Minister. One of the virtues of Attlee as Prime Minister was that in this kind of thing he was utterly unsentimental. There was no idea that one should be soft, that one would not do it oneself, or leave it to the Chief Whip, or put it off until next week. It Attlee had a fault it was in the other direction. If there was a fault

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in the handling of the Lynskey Tribunal it was the sadistic savagery in punishing a man for minor peccadilloes. I ask myself which kind of Prime Minister runs the country better. Who is better on the security rulethe man like Attlee, who is tough and knows that if one has that job of Premier it is because one is prepared to do the unpleasant parts of the job and not only the pleasant parts. If he is not prepared to do the unpleasant parts, the sooner the Prime Minister gets out the better. The attitude "I did not like to do it because it was uncomfortable" is natural enough, but one is not made Prime Minister to have those natural human tolerances. 127 I want to say something about toleration. We, as Members of this House, can be very proud of the improvement there has been in the last fifty years in our toleration. We are far more tolerant about each other's private lives. Questions are not asked about private Members' lives. That is a great advance, but it would be a fatal thing if the tolerance rightly extended to the private Member, who has not heavy responsibility, got confused with laxity in situations which demand great severity. We cannot apply to the Cabinet, and to Cabinet Ministers who deal with security matters, the easy-going tolerance that we apply to each other in private life as ordinary Members. It cannot be done. There has to be a severity, an austerity at that level. I have said it in previous debates. Going back to the case of Burgess and Maclean, it was a laxity in the Foreign Office that permitted Burgess to become a permanent member of the Foreign Officea laxity right at the top, which went unpunished. So, too, in the Admiralty with Vassall. Now, we have laxity at the top again. We have a politician behaving to his fellow politician with the kind of laxity that has grown so common in the Admiralty and the Foreign Office, and which is the major cause of the security problems we have faced in the last eight years. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley has said about the moral issue. I did not happen to see Lord Hailsham interviewed on television, but I heard the replay on "steam" radio, and although I missed the Churchillian jowl I got the tone of voice. When I heard Lord Hailsham on the need for a moral revolution I began to wonder what he was up to. Did he really want to insist on every Cabinet Minister's life being pried into mercilessly to find out whether or not he had been in the Divorce Court? Did he really want that? If he did not want that, what was he doing? I will tell the House. He was trying to deflect attention from the responsibility of individuals, including himself, for a disastrous situation. He was lighting a decoy fire, but the trouble is that had the fire got well alight it would have set 128 ablaze everything in the country that is worth having. I do not want to see this country a McCarthyite State, and it is a terrible thing for Tories to exploit the McCarthyite arguments in order to conceal things and prevent punishment coming to those who deserve it. The Prime Minister failed, Profumo failed, the five failed. Punishment should come, and the party opposite should not at this point try to defend themselves by stoking up the moral fire and saying that all Britain is sleazy and corrupt. Indeed, I think that it was the right hon. and learned Member for the Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) who actually said that the Labour Party was to blame. Fortunately, the British people do not take the Tories seriously. There is a lot of evidence in the Gallup poll for the fact that the British people when they hear about the Profumo case despise the Tory Government just two points more. It is a good healthy thing. But I would say this to the Home Secretary: he ought to be ashamed that he was not there at the time. What was he doing staying away from awkward decisions on matters

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of which he ought to have known? He or his colleagues ought to have known the facts. They ought to have investigated Profumo. They ought to have discovered what Fleet Street discovered and what most of the back benchers knew. The only people who did not know it were the Prime Minister and his friends, and I know why they did not know it. 7.51 p.m. Viscount Lambton (Berwick-upon-Tweed) I have often been a critic of the Prime Minister, but I could not help feeling very sorry for him this afternoon. It struck me when I was listening to his speech how badly indeed everyone had treated him. To begin with, Sir Norman Brook two years ago had made a security investigation into the allegiance to the Soviet Union of Ivanov and the relationship with it of Dr. Ward, and he had not bothered to pass this on to the Prime Minister. At the same time, the police this year in this country had questioned Miss Keeler and got from her statements relative to the treason of Dr. Ward, and once again most unkindly they had not passed it on to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. 129 Miss Keeler herself was, I think, rather like a successful selling plater. She was owned by a very great number of people for a short time. This year at different times I believe she was owned by the Express group of newspapers, the News of the World and the Sunday PictorialAll these people had information from her, and newspaper men always like passing on information, but none of them passed it on to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. What I would say, though, is that I would have been considerably sorrier for him had he asked for this information. The great question which I should like to ask is why it was not asked for in the spring. It was no surprise to anyone when Mr. Profumo was called before "the five" that night. Every one of us in the House had heard various rumours about it, the most dangerous rumours of security, of sex, of dope, of scandal in high places. Yet what were these five people obsessed with when they went to interview little Jack that night? It seemed to be: had little Jack been to bed with Miss Keeler or not? They were like five frightened mothers. It was a most extraordinary thing. The whole case of the Government has been made on the fact that Mr. Profumo's relationship with Miss Keeler was innocent, and it has been said that as he said it was innocent he deceived everyone. But his innocence was totally irrelevant. It would have been a much more dangerous thing had Mr. Profumo not been going to bed with Miss Keeler, because then he would have been going to discuss things with her six times for half an hour. My right hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) said that she was not a very literary woman. There have been from time to time great literary prostitutes, but I think Miss Keeler was a prostitute who was basically used for prostitution. What I never could understand was how these five members of the Government were apparently satisfied that because Mr. Profumo had not been to bed with her that was the end of the whole affair. But, to my mind, the most unsatisfactory part of the whole of this very dingy proceeding was the fact that when this inquiry was called, the police had not been consulted, the security had not been consulted and the newspapers had not been consulted. It did not come 130 out of the blue. Every single fact was known and almost wilfully and blindly our eyes were averted from them. I can almost see the Prime Minister putting his telescope to his blind eye and saying, "I cannot see any of these things". That is exactly what happened on this occasion, and that is what I find so very difficult to forgive. After this we come to something even more important, to what was definitely shown and known by everyone, after Mr. Profumo had been interrogated, to be a totally different type of security risk. Originally Sir Norman Brook had only warned Profumo

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about Ward and Ivanov. No mention had been made of Miss Keeler. This shows how unsatisfactory was the security screen, because our security was not really aware of what was actually happening at the time. That might have washed until the interrogation of Mr. Profumo and his statement, but after that a totally different set of circumstances existed, for it was known that Ivanov was a spy. It was known that Ward was in close touch with the highest of Soviet circles and it was known that Miss Keeler was a friend of all of them. Yet, despite this fact, for nearly three months Mr. Profumo, who had been in this set, or whatever one likes to call it, was allowed to remain in office as Secretary of State for War. How was that defensible? That was the question which the Prime Minister skated over this afternoon. No mention was made of the fact that the Leader of the Opposition had put facts in his hand which definitely proved that, sexually or innocently, the Secretary of State for War had been in close contact over a period of time with a spy, with a semi-Soviet agent, and with a girl in the prostitution racket. He was, therefore, subject to blackmail. He was, therefore, a person who could not be depended upon. It is also irrefutablethis is the most important thing of allthat as the secret service did not originally know that Miss Keeler was connected with this group, they could not have checked on the fact that there was no security lapse at that time. Why? That is the question which I would like answered by my right hon. Friend tonight. The worst of it is that even though my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister knew that his War Minister was in a 131 position where he could be blackmailed, he refused to change his mind about getting rid of him. He continued to maintain him in office. This is something which I find almost impossible to condone. 7.58 p.m. Mr. B. T. Parkin (Paddington, North) Like many other people, I have received an enormous correspondence in recent weeks and I should like to quote from a letter which I received this morning from my constituency, which says: Speaking as members of the teaching profession we are horrified at the mockery the present crisis makes of our job of building character. Without the qualities of self-discipline, honesty and integrity which we fry to teach, the next generation is lost. Will you speak out tomorrow in the debatenot as a party reactionary but as a defender of all that is best in our nation? I think I would have tried to do so in any case, but I think that letter is representative of a lot of the hurt and confused opinion in this country at the present time. I am particularly glad to quote that letter from my constituency because I am often askedeven sometimes by my colleagues by way of a jokeabout problems in my constituency as if they were all problems of vice and corruption. That is not the case. Like most constituencies, mine for the most part consists of ordinary normal people who are struggling to live up to what the writer of this letter refers to as "all that is best in our nation." My position as a politician is not that of a crusade on the issue of morals. My job as a politician is to fight to see that people who have to live in areas where there are social tensions, where there is overcrowding and strain, do not have their characters broken by the environment in which they live. It is not for us to be astonished at the number of moral breakdowns in overcrowded parts of the great cities. It is for us to be astonished at the very small number of people who in fact break downastonished at the resistance of normal people to this erosion and corruption arising from bad social conditions. The moral position of a politician in this House should be to fight for the alteration of the social background which has brought about some of these things.

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132 It happens that many people in my constituency were able to tell me in advance a great deal of the information which is now common knowledge. I cannot yet understand how it is that on the subject of this incident an ordinary back bench Member of Parliament could have thrust upon him from his own constituency information which we now are told was not available to the Governmentthat the Home Secretary was not present at that late night discussion, that he had not inquired from the police about inquiries which we now know that they were making, which they must have been making, and which they are constantly making about the typical background to this particularly sleazy scandal. It is the normal duty of the police to be aware of the contacts that go on, the activities that go on in clubs and so on. It is not my intention to recount any of these details, but I say to the Home Secretary that he has something else to worry about. I refer to the damage done in our relationship with other countries and within the Commonwealth, because this information was brought to me in the first place by West Indians who knew all about these contacts and habits and who were aggrieved that a West Indian had gone to prison for seven years while, as they put it, the rich white men go free. This is not news now and it ought not to have been news then to the Home Secretary. He ought to have been as well able to get hold of this information as I wasin fact, better able. Various protectors of this girl have been mentioned. One of the protectors of this girl, I was told, was a figure who is now dead, but a character who eluded the Home Secretary when he was Minister of Housing and Local Government and who eluded him as Home Secretarya character involved in a series of deals in slum property in the Paddington area. He was an expert in fiddling the ownership of houses from one company to another, so that it was never possible to catch up with him and enforce the law to get repairs done, and all the rest of it. His name, I am sorry to say, was a household word. It was a perfectly well known name to the police. It must have rung a bell. These names must have been familiar. 133 What beats me is the weariness and incompetence of the Government at every stage. If they had bestirred themselves they would have got the information. But all we get is the belated appearance on television of Lord Hailsham whose performance was particularly revolting to me because he tried to make out that this particular action what he called the proven liewas something quite in isolation, although it has been pointed out in the course of this debate that it was not the first time that that wretched Minister had been frog-marched to the Front Bench to make misleading statements to the House. If that exercise was devised to get the Government out of trouble it was not the first political lie that had been told. Lord Hailsham said that if he had been there he would not have remained a Member of the Government for five minutes, or that he would have got the man out in five minutes. It would take him half an hour to resign from all his positions in the Government, and during that time he might have had time to think again how many other proven lies, as he calls them, have been uttered from the Government Front Bench or Tory Party headquarters which have had an effect on moral welfare in my constituency. I am more concerned about the lie told at one election when the Government said that they had no intention whatever of interfering with food subsidies and at another when they said that they had no intention whatever of interfering with rent controls. Did Lord Hailsham threaten resignation then, or did he when he got to Tory Headquarters sack immediately the man who told that particular lie? These are political lies which have their consequences.

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This is a moral issue between political parties. It is between political parties, because if we are to have competitive co-existence in this country or in this world we must have it on the assumption that each of the sections of opinion accepts at least certain basic common principles. This is the sort of moral revival and restoration that we need in this country now. We need to be assured that we are agreed on certain primary objectives, not a list of moral rules which we suddenly produce with great enthusiasm when they are required, but things 134 like, "Are we all dedicated to the proposition that we have to restore human dignity, human equality and human freedom throughout the world?" These are the things that matter. The attitude of Lord Hailsham will not help, because that is the only way we can get on terms of human equality with evolving societies in other parts of the world. I do not know whether some hon. Members who have been speaking today have been rooting for Lord Hailsham as Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary, but does anyone think if he behaves like thatdevoid of compassion and charityhe will get on well on the subject of test bans or any other form of international relationships? Is no one in the House today going to say a word of compassion for the poor little slut who is at the centre of all this? I think of five men in a room in the middle of the night discussing how they can make it appear that the word "Darling" is not compromising in any way, when surely we need a little compassion to consider how these wretches get into the state that they do. It was not that she was short of someone to call her "Darling". It may be commonplace in certain strata of society. There are many others like her. How much better it would have been if there had been some older man, a relative, who had been able to say, "Darling, come home; darling, it is not worth it; darling, what are you fighting against?" Of course there was security risk in this and a political risk in relationships of this kind. There was the risk of the canker in our society. There are the wretched creatures, who, because of their personal circumstances, have a love-hate relationship with the father whom they have not got, or with any substitute father; they must both love and hate him and betray him. This is elementary. But where does a word of compassion come? It seems that some of the people who have been sounding off with their Pharisaical denunciations can never have had any problems in their own families. There would be far more compassion and understanding from the younger generation, from those who have to live in these circumstances, although they struggle against them and although they deplore and regret the breakdowns. 135 This is what we must, somehow or other, get out of this debate. If people mean what they say when they write to me telling me not to talk "dirt", not to talk party politics, but to talk of what is best for the nation, if we are to get back to a real understanding of the principles of democracy, there must be some kind of purging and renewal of principle. What pleasure is it to me to see the Prime Minister a beaten and broken man today? I hope that the Tories will not just trundle him out, without thinking of what their own responsibilities are and how far they go. It can fairly be said that the Opposition have treated this matter with a reasonable sense of responsibility. If the Prime Minister wants a book to read, I can recommend one to him. It is very difficult to get hold of; one has to go to the publishers for it. There is hardly more than one copy in existence. It is published by Macmillan, and it is a biography of Daniel Macmillan who, a hundred years ago, coughed himself to death before he reached the age of most of us in this House. He was, in those days, a Tory Christian Socialist, at a time when none of those words was a dirty word. He tried to restore the notions of stewardship and social responsibility in the heart of London, in Westminster, Lord North Street, Smith Square and the rest where the centre of the troubles was.

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In those days, it was the Liberals who were the bosses, the materialists, the cruel and immoral ones, who were destroying the notions of stewardship and social responsibility to which we must come back again. The Tory Party, will not revive until it reads that book and goes back to the best of its old traditions instead of the worst. It must face the fact, as we must face it across the Floor, that there are certain inbuilt defects in our society which must go. We have our recommendations for altering them. The Tories say that they have theirs. These are the problems we must tackle. Parliament will not survive, democracy will not survive, and we shall earn the contempt of the younger generation, if we get involved merely in sordid calculations about how best one can mislead the House of Commons into delivering a temporary voting triumph in the Lobby when, in fact, what is happening is a betrayal. 136 As for questions of security, I know nothing of military secrets. I have never had any military secrets to reveal. I do not suppose that professional spies hang about brothels to get details of the armaments of tanks or submarines. But, if there has been anything which brought disaster and war, it has been an error of judgment by people who have not been sure that one Power really intended to do what it said that it would do. It is a true sense of integrity which we must restore, an impression that one has a sound policy which is perfectly well understood, which ought not to be kept secret but which ought to be passed around the world by the best possible channels of communication which can be found. 8.12 p.m. Sir Cyril Black (Wimbledon) I hope to make what could be regarded on both sides of the House as, so far as I can make it, a non-partisan speech. First, in view of the many things which have been said here today and said in the newspapers for a long time past, perhaps I ought to make an admission. Speaker after speaker has said that for many months rumours have been circulating in the Lobbies of the House and elsewhere regarding the matters which have only recently come to a head and caused such a scandal. Probably, I do not move in the right circles, but I can only say that until Friday morning, 22nd March, when I was in my place at 11 o'clock and the statement was made I had heard absolutely nothing whatever regarding these rumours. To me, therefore, it is an even greater shock that this scandal has come upon us at this time than it has been to those many hon. Members who profess to have known all about it for a long time. I hold the view that the matter which we have been debating is far too grave for us to be prepared to regard it in terms of party advantage or party loyalty. We are dealing with something, whatever the outcome may be, which will have consequences which will last for many a day, many a week and many a month. My judgment is that this is one of those great Parliamentary occasions on which Members of all parties should be prepared to listen to and to weigh the arguments and then, at the end of the day, do what they believe to be right in the light of 137 their consciences. The issues involved are far too great to be determined upon the basis of a vote merely on strict party lines. I do not feel that I can add anything by seeking to go over the dates, the incidents or the arguments in relation to this long and sordid story or by trying to add to what has been said already in that connection. My impression is that there are still many dark and unexplained matters connected with this long and tangled story, and I do not believe that the whole truth is likely to be obtained by the kind of discussion which has been taking place in the House today. Indeed, a discussion of this kind often proves to be the worst possible means of obtaining a clear, impartial and objective view of what has, in fact, been happening and what have been the respective rles of the people concerned. I myself regret that, apparently, nothing is to be done by way of setting up an independent

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inquiry which could go into all these matters, examine all the witnesses and bring back to the House in an impartial and dispassionate spirit the result of its investigations. I should, I think, have been prepared to give my support to the Government today if it had been proposed that such an independent inquiry should take place. In the absence of such an inquiry, feeling as I do at this moment, I cannot see that I shall be able to bring myself to support the Government in the Lobby tonight. One aspect of this matter is at least as important as the question whether there has been a breach of security, namely, the moral issue implicit in this whole affair from beginning to end and in all details of the sordid story with which we are dealing. As a matter of personal judgment, I repudiate the view which has been expressed on many occasions in the Press, by prominent people in recent days and in the speeches of several hon. Members today, that the private morals of an individual who occupies a position of responsibility under the Crown are not a matter with which this House can be concerned. My right hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) suggested that moral standards were matters for priests and for prophets and they were not matters with which the House could possibly concern 138 itself. It seems to me that it is this kind of thinking which has landed us in our present situation and which has contributed to much of the difficulties which exist in the nation's life today. I do not believe that one can separate the private lives of men in positions of government from their public lives and their public actions. The whole moral character of what has been taking place comes as a reproach to this House and a reproach to the high court of Parliament and of government in this country. It seems to me a complete irrelevancy to argue that, because the private lives of Wellington, Nelson, Parnell and Palmerston were not blameless, the private lives of Ministers are not a matter of concern. I believe that those who have the privileges and obligations of leadership have a very special responsibility to try to set a lead to the nation as a whole, and I do not believe it reasonable to expect that the nation as a whole will adopt higher moral standards than those that are implicit in the legislation which is promoted by this House and the lives of those who have taken upon themselves the duties of leadership. If any choice has to be made, it is better that this country should be governed by good men than that it should be governed by clever men. As I think has been made clear in this debate, it is perfectly obvious that moral standards, both in this case and in all similar cases, are not remote and detached from security questions but are closely related to the whole problem of national security. Security is not only a matter of the operations of M.I.5, of keeping Cabinet and defence secrets, or of retaining privately the knowledge which is possessed about H-bombs and new weapons. The security of the nation depends at least equally on the character of the people, and when the kind of scandal breaks which we have witnessed in recent days it is not helpful to the character of the people which it is our duty as leaders in the nation to try to maintain and uphold. If history teaches us anything, it is that great empires and great nations in the past have come to final overthrow and defeat much more because the life of the nation has been corrupted from within than as a result of the assaults of their enemies from without. 139 I believe that there is a measure of responsibility upon all of us in the situation which exists today. I am not personally concerned to try to shift any share of the responsibility which is mine on to other people. I believe that, to some extent, what has been happening is a matter of responsibility for all of us because for a long time all parties and all of us as individuals have been putting the emphasis on the wrong things. We have been emphasising the importance of the material things of life, the things which make life pleasant and worth while. [Interruption.] I am trying to avoid being

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partisan. I am saying that a measure of responsibility in these matters rests on all parties and on most of us as individuals, and I am prepared to accept my own share of any responsibility that there may be. For fifteen years we have been producing blueprints for a better world and overlooking the fact that "man cannot live by bread alone" and that it is the character of a people which is important rather than the standard of life which they possess. Sir William Robson Brown (Esher) Is my hon. Friend suggesting that there should be a judicial inquiry in this matter? If he is, I support him. Sir C. Black That is what I have suggested. Sir W. Robson Brown A judicial inquiry? Sir C. Black Certainly. I am very dissatisfied that the matter should be left as it stands. Many questions have been unanswered and unexplained. Many aspects of this matter are dark and confused. If there had been a proposal today for an independent judicial inquiry, I should have been prepared to support the Government to that extent and to await the outcome of such an inquiry. But, in the absence of such an inquiry, it seems to me that this debate must end with a large number of things that we should like to know about unrevealed and a large number of questions to which we should like to know the answers unanswered. For that reason, and in the absence of a proposal by the Government to set up a judicial inquiry, I find myself unable to support the Government 140 in the Division which will take place at the end of the evening. I have spoken in the main about the moral aspect of this matter because, in my judgment, it is at least as important as any breaches of security which may have been involved. I hope that hon. Members will not feel that in dealing with the moral issue I have departed from the kind of speech and argument that is proper in this House. I have thought of little other than this matter for many days. Since this scandal broke, I have had this matter laid very much upon my heart, and I should have been unfaithful to those things which I hold most dearly if I had not spoken in the way that I have. 8.27 p.m. Mr. Marcus Lipton (Brixton) It is important that public confidence in the administration of justice should be maintained and strengthened. It is to that aspect of this problem that I propose to address myself. The shooting episode which took place on 14th December, 1962, alarmed quite a number of people who realised that it might lead to the appearance of Miss Keeler in the witness box. If she appeared in the witness box there was no knowing what she might or might not say. By some strange coincidence, within a very short time of that shooting incident, Captain Ivanov left London. Miss Keeler appeared at the magistrates court and was bound over in recognisances of 40 to appear at the trial to take place in due course at the Old Bailey. She was bound over in December 1962. According to what the Prime Minister told us today, she was being interviewed by security officers in January 1963. Therefore, some interest was being taken in her whereabouts and in her activities by the security authorities. Yet, when the trial of Edgecombe took place at the Old Bailey on 14th March, 1963, Christine Keeler had disappeared. The day after, Edgecombe was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. At the trial at the Old Bailey there were four charges in the indictment against Edgecombe. The first was shooting with intent to murder and the second shooting with

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intent to cause grievous bodily harm. Those two charges, the 141 most serious charges in the indictment against Edgecombe, could not be proceeded with because Christine Keeler was not available to give evidence. Therefore, the Crown had to fall back upon the third and least serious charge in the indictment, namely, possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life. It was on that, the third charge, that he was convicted. The question which I ask myself and which ought to be inquired intoand this is certainly a matter for judicial inquiryis whether an attempt was made by some person or persons unknown to influence the course of justice between the shooting incident in December, 1962, and the hearing of the charge against Edgecombe at the Old Bailey in March, 1963. There has still been no explanation why counsel for the prosecution, presumably in accordance with instructions from the Director of Public Prosecutions, made no application for an adjournment of the trial when the chief witness for the prosecution, who was named in the two most serious counts in the indictment, disappeared. Were the police making any effort to find her? I am glad that the Attorney-General is in his place, because he of all people would realise the significance of what I am saying. The conduct of the prosecution becomes all the more strange when it is borne in mind that at the previous Old Bailey session, when the case against Edgcombe would otherwise have been heard, the Crown obtained an adjournment for the purpose of calling as a witness a person who had not even been called at the hearing before the committing magistrate. At least, Christine Keeler had appeared before the committing magistrate and given evidence and had been bound over to appear. Nevertheless, the Crown applied for and obtained an adjournment for the purpose of calling as a witness the taxi driver who had taken Edgcombe to Wimpole Mewsnot a very important witness. When that adjournment was granted for the purpose of enabling the tax driver to be present in court to give evidence about the drive in the taxi to Wimpole Mews, Christine Keeler was still in this country and available to give evidence. 142 I am suggesting to the House that this is a matter which calls for serious investigation by an independent, impartial judicial tribunal or some kind. Once people get it into their heads that witnesses can be spirited away with the idea of protecting someone or other in high position, confidence in the administration of justice is destroyed. It is curious that although, apparently, no attempt was made by the police to see that Christine Keeler was available to give evidence at the Old Bailey trial, different methods are now being employed to ensure that witnesses will be available in certain proceedings that may be impending. I quote from the Daily Herald report of 3rd June: Miss Marilyn Rice-Davies arrived from Majorca. She had returned to Britain at the request of Scotland Yard. It only goes to show that if the authorities want a witness to be produced, that witness is there. It was because not the slightest attempt was made to ensure the presence of Christine Keeler at the Old Bailey at the Edgcombe trial that she was not there. Mr. H. Hynd (Accrington) Did not the police ask for a warrant? Mr. Lipton No, I believe not. I believe that nothing was done to ensure the presence of Christine Keeler at the Old Bailey trial, but that is one of the things I want inquired into. That is why I support the plea which has been put forward for a judicial inquiry, because many important issues will be left unexplained at the end of the debate.

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I am very concerned that there should not be any kind of suggestion that the course of justice has been tampered with in any way for the purpose of protecting someone in high places or protecting Cabinet Ministers or other Ministers from possible embarrassment. In the case of Miss Rice-Davies, she returned to Britain at the request of Scotland Yard. She said that the Yard had sent her two letters in the past week asking her to come back. She said that the police had promised to pay her air fares to and from Majorca and were arranging accommodation for her at a London hotel. That is the kind of thing that the police do when they want to make sure that a witness is there to give evidence and when they 143 want to obtain evidence. None of those things was done in the case of Christine Keeler when she disappeared without trace between the time of the magistrate's court proceedings and the trial of Edgecombe at the Old Bailey on 14th March. Mr. Grimond As the hon. Member has raised the question of Miss Marilyn Rice-Davies, I do not know whether he has noted that today she was, apparently, prohibited by the police from leaving the country. It would be interesting to know under what authority this was done and whether this procedure could have been used in the case of Miss Keeler. Mr. Lipton I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman, but I was just about to add that point to the argument, that not only had the police brought her back from Majorca and paid for her air passage, but that they had stopped her from going to Palma on Sunday night when, I believe, she was intending to go away. The police, therefore, know how to deal with this kind of case. They have their technique developed of making sure that witnesses turn up in the case of Crown prosecutions. If one looks at the number of cases in which an important Crown witness has not appeared at the Old Bailey in the course of a year, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. It rarely happens, because the police see to it, notwithstanding the variegated type of people who have to give evidence in Crown prosecutions at the Old Bailey, that in 99.9 cases out of 100 they are there to give evidence. But that did not happen in the case of Christine Keeler. The Attorney-General (Sir John Hobson) There is no power at all to detain a witness in this country. As far as my information goes, the police were unaware that Miss Keeler would not be available until the evening before. Miss Davies has been kept because a charge is made against her and not because she is is being retained as a witness. Mr. Lipton That makes it all the more curious why the Crown prosecution did not ask for an adjournment when discovering that Christine Keeler was not available to give evidence. 144 The Attorney-General I can assist the hon. Member. The first adjournment was because a very important independent witness was ill and had had a heart attack and, therefore, the prosecution asked for the adjournment of the trial on that occasion. On the second occasionafter all, the accused has to be consideredthe accused had already been awaiting trial and had had an adjournment, and Crown counsel at the Old Bailey, without any instructions from me or the Director of Public Prosecutions or any pressure, took the view upon the case as it stood that it was safe to go on and satisfactory to continue upon the evidence which was available even though it did not include Miss Keeler. Mr. Lipton

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Then somebody decided that the two most serious charges against Edgecombe should be dropped, namely, the shooting with intent to murder and the shooting with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. If they were seriously considered as charges against this man, then I cannot understand why they should be dropped as easily as all that and why the prosecution should content itself with the third count in the indictment. The other matter which possibly calls for some explanation is the conduct of the case itself at the Old Bailey. As soon as the jury trying the Wimpole Mews case had retired to consider its verdict, the judge at 3.45 p.m. on the Friday afternoon embarked on the trial of a separate charge against Edgecombe of wounding Aloysius Gordon with a knife. Again, Christine Keeler was an important witness on the depositions. The Attorney-General can look at the depositions to see whether what I say is correct or not. Yet the case was heard in a hurry in her absence, and Edgecombe found himself giving evidence in defence of himself on this charge while the jury in the first case against him was considering its verdict. That is a most unusual state of affairs. The second trial ended in Edgecombe's acquittal at 5.30 p.m. The day was a Friday, and some people still think that the circumstances were a little peculiar. It looks as if somebody had decided, first of all, that Christine Keeler should not be available and, secondly, that as she was not available the case could be dealt with simply and 145 quickly in her absencebecause the danger from the point of view of certain people was the possibility of Christine Keeler appearing in the witness box and being cross-examined. That was something which it was in the interests of certain people to avoid at all costs. Mr. Arthur Lewis (West Ham, North) Is my hon. Friend aware that Edgecombe wanted to call Profumo as a witness and was not allowed to do so? Mr. Lipton I must finish now. I want to conclude by saying (hat if the truth of the whole unsavoury business that we have been discussing today, including the administration of the law, is to be elucidated, there is a strong case for a judicial inquiry not only into the security aspect but also into the way in which the machinery of justice was interfered with in this case. 8.42 p.m. Mr. Ronald Bell (Buckinghamshire, South) The speech to which we have just listened has been characteristic of only too much that has been said about this whole matter, containing vague generalised accusations in a most irresponsible manner totally unsupported by even a shred of evidence. The hon. Member for Brixtan (Mr. Lipton) throughout his speech was making accusationsclear accusations against the counsel concerned in the prosecution of Edgecombe, I suppose virtually against counsel who are engaged for the defence; against the judge who was conducting the trial, against the police; against the Director of Public Prosecutions and, I suppose, against my right hon. and learned Friends the Law Officers of the Crown, and possibly against other people as well. He said, "It was decided by somebody"he did not specify whom "that it would be inconvenient if Christine Keeler gave evidence", and that it was, therefore, decided to keep her away and that the trial could be pushed through quickly in her absence. The implications in statements like that repeated over and over again in the course of a speech of 15 minutes are really quite disgraceful unless they are supported by some kind of proof.

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This is the kind of vague slur which has been cast around this case. It was 146 cast around before it in the Vassall case, and cast around in the Bank Rate case, and, indeed, is becoming a bad political habit in this country. Mr. Lipton rose Mr. Bell I will not give way. Two other hon. Members wish to speak before the closing speeches are made. I think that the speech which the hon. Member made was not one about which he will on reflection feel proud. In the two preceding speeches from the Opposition benchesthe speeches by the hon. Members for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) and Coventry, East (Mr. Cross-man)we also had these oblique references to bad faith on the part of the Prime Minister and the Ministers who interviewed Mr. Profumo and discussed with him on the morning of 22nd March the statement that he was to make. I put it directly to those hon. Members, and, indeed, to some extent to my noble Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Viscount Lambton), that if they really mean to say that this was done in bad faith and that the Prime Minister was privy to a deception of the House, they ought to say so, and in plain terms, and not first of all deny that they mean that and then go on to say things which can mean nothing else. This has been done time and again, and these are the habits which will lower the tone of political life in this country. [Hon. Members: "Oh."] Mr. Lipton The hon. Gentleman will be getting Law Officers' briefs. Mr. Bell That intervention was characteristic of the denigrations of personal character which have been made. The hon. Member is suggesting that I am saying all this so that I might get briefs from the Law Officers. Is that the kind of thing to say across the Floor of the House? Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne) The hon. Member will certainly get none on this performance. Mr. Ronald Bell There has been much talk about a moral issue. There are moral implications in this matter. But the issue before us of moral character is not whether Profumo should withdraw from public life. He has already 147 done so. Is it the issue that the Prime Minister should resign? [Hon. Members: "Yes."] If that is the issue, then it is a moral issue only if the Prime Minister was privy to the deception of the House by Profumo. [Hon. Members: "No."] Or if he was so negligent, so incompetent, so uninterested in matters put before him that it amounted not merely to incompetence, but was of such a degree that he was affected by the moral life of Profumo. Before one believes anybody to be guilty of that kind of complicity or negligence or condonation one has to have some pretty clear evidence against the person who is charged. What is the evidence here for the charge which has been made against the Prime Ministera charge not perhaps of direct complicity but of such culpable negligence, such indifference, that he should be considered morally blameworthy in this matter? That charge has been made repeatedly by hon. Members opposite, and. I am sorry to say, by my noble Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed. If there were no evidence to the contrary, I should be very unwilling to believe that it was so from ray knowledge of the Prime Minister and indeed of the working of the machine of Government. What is the evidence, however? We have had the Prime Minister's statement, which was in very clear terms, that he knew nothing at all about the security aspect except what he was told on certain specific occasions, and that about

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the material pointwhich was the relations with Miss Keelerhe knew nothing until the confession of Profumo. It is said that this was grossly negligent. We have had a lot of knowledgeable people here today who, after the whole thing is over, claim to have known all about it. They did not say so much before this disaster broke upon us. Mr. E. L. Mallalieu Yes, they did. Mr. Bell No, they did not. That is something we must get clear. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition accused the Prime Minister of negligence in this respect. My noble Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed said that the Prime Minister knew that his Secretary of State for War was in a position to be blackmailed and yet he allowed him to continue in office. 148 The hon. Member for Coventry, East said that the Prime Minister knew from security that Profumo was having an affair with a woman who was a security risk. I wrote these things down as they were said. What is the truth of the matter? The Prime Minister knew nothing about Christine Keeler until the spring of this year. It is said that he should have realised when this matter was put to Mr. Profumo and denied that Mr. Profumo was lying. Should he? On 26thMarch, the Opposition, through the Leader of the Opposition, placed before the Prime Minister a document in which the facts of this matter were set out. It had been obtained by the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) and the hon. Member for Coventry, East from Mr. Ward. What did that statement say on this material matter? It said that there was no impropriety in the relations between Mr. Profumo and Christine Keeler. That happened to coincide exactly with the assurance which Mr. Profumo had given to the Prime Minister. Of course the Opposition had been misled by their informant. He had lied to them. That was Mr. Ward. The Prime Minister was misled by the Secretary of State for War, who lied to him. Both were in the same position. Why should it be negligent for the Prime Minister to believe what he was told by the Secretary of State for War which coincided exactly with what had been put before him by the Opposition when no knowledge to the contrary had been placed before him? Nobody on either side of the House has suggested that there had been placed before the Prime Minister any information to suggest an improper relationship between Christine Keeler and Mr. Profumo. It made all the difference in the world. It is the vital issue here, because if the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House and the AttorneyGeneral and the Chief Whip believed on 21st March and 22nd March that Mr. Profumo was telling the truth, then they are not guilty of any conspiracy to deceive the House. Mr. S. Silverman Has not the hon. Gentleman yet appreciated that the important thing in Mr. Profumo's statement was not what it denied, but what it admitted? If Mr. Profumo's denial 149 had been truthful, on the evidence which he provided himself, he would still have been a security risk and would have been for two years. Mr. Bell The hon. Member is evading the point. The debate tonight is to end in a vote. If any hon. Member thinks that that vote is about the state of the security services in England, he is simply deluding himself. The vote is an attack on the integrity of the Prime Minister and nothing else. By making this an issue of confidence, hon. Members opposite are trying to suggest that the Prime Minister's honour is involved and that he should resign. That is what the debate and the vote are about, and it is on that issue that I shall cast my voteon the simple, narrow question of whether the Prime Minister and

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his leading colleagues were dishonourably involved in the deception practised on the House by Mr. Profumo. I am perfectly satisfied on the evidence that they were not. I am satisfied that their error about this was fully shared by the Opposition themselves, who had been equally deceived, and that everybody knew about this only after Mr. Profumo had confessed, except possibly one or two Members opposite who appear to have had contacts with the sort of people who might know the truth. I do not wish to say any more about this except[Interruption.]I am sure that hon. Gentlemen opposite do not want to hear facts which are disagreeable to them. They have tried to conduct this debate on a wide, smearing, basis and to attack the Government, and I think that it will be a great shame if the public life of this country suffers damage from some of the generalised things that have been said today. We try to exact a high standard from our men in public life. In political life we have to be a good deal more cruel to personal failure than we could find it right or possible to be in other departments of life. We do that because we want to ensure that those who presume to lead shall have high qualities, and that the public shall believe that they have them, and we shall doubly defeat ourselves if we spread these vague allegations around partly by chasing out of public life men who are not willing to submit their reputations to the repetitive attacks of the kind that we have had in recent years, 150 and partly, in a direct way, by leading people to believe, as I think the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) once protested, that the people who come to this House are squalid people, when in fact they are hard-working and responsible people in the main. For those reasons, whether or not they commend themselves to hon. Gentlemen opposite, I shall have no hesitation in casting my vote tonight in favour of the Government. 8.57 p.m. Mr. R. T. Paget (Northampton) I find a certain difficulty in following the logic of the argument that we have heard. On the one hand, we are told that, however improbable the story which Mr. Profumo told, however improbable this family friendship with Stephen Ward and Christine Keeler may have appeared, the Prime Minister and the five had so much of Mr. Profumo's special persuasion that they actually believed it, and yet we are also told to believe that the Tory Party, who cheered that improbable story without having any of these private explanations, believed it too. The noble Lord the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Viscount Lambton) made no pretence of having believed it, and I am bound to say that few hon. Gentlemen opposite to whom I spoke made any pretence whatever of believing it either. They were satisfied to accept his lie if he could get away with it. That is always the attitude of the Tory Party. My sympathy goes to Jack Profumo, whom I have known for a long time. I know that he had a gallant war record in which his courage was respected by those who served with him. As Secretary of State for War at a time when both sides wanted a volunteer Army, and when there were hon. Members on both sides who said that it could not be done, he succeeded in doing it, and he put great energy into the job. Kuwait is one of the very few successes that we have to chalk up. A war was probably avoided which would have been difficult for us. It was not an easy decision because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) pointed out, he had to move pretty unprepared. I believe that we owe him a measure of gratitude for that, but this is the man who is now the goat upon whom the members 151 of the Tory Party are seeking to discharge their guiltbecause it is their guilt and they were with him in this.

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From Lord Hailsham we have had a virtuoso performance in the art of kicking a fallen friend in the guts. [Interruption.] It is easy to compound for sins we are inclined to by damning those we have no mind to. When self-indulgence has reduced a man to the shape of Lord Hailsham, sexual continence involves no more than a sense of the ridiculous. [Interruption.] Yet this is the performance which made the Tory Party say, "Here is our missing leader." The moment he was cornered, by being asked about the three-line Whip, what did he do? He told a lie. [Interruption.] Mr. E. L. Mallalieu On a point of order. Is it in order for hon. Members opposite to shout all the way through a speech of an hon. Member on this side of the House? Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Robert Grimston) It is not in order, but it often happens on both sides of the House. It is to be deprecated. Mr. Paget When he was cornered he proceeded to lie. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley was right in saying that this was lying humbug. But all those hon. Members opposite who knew that were yet prepared to say, "This is our missing leader." I give this as a serious warning. We have inflated the position of the Prime Minister to one which is all-powerful. His dominance over this House will be demonstrated tonightwe all know thatas his dominance over the Cabinet has already been asserted. The only difference between the position of a Prime Minister and that of a Fascist leader is the personality of the man who holds the office. If we are going to appoint an hysterical demagogue, with a brutal tinge, such as we saw on television the other night, what we shall get is something like a Fascist State. I hope and believe that we shall avoid this. If the Tory Party, which in all conscience has not cared very much about the question of adultery, objects to the question of lying, I would say that there is a comparativeness and relativity in deceit. There is the deceit in which a 152 man seekswhen he has been pushed from pillar to postto offer his resignation, and is told by the Prime Minister, according to reports, "If it is girls, it is all right. If it is all right by your wife it does not concern me", and according to his own version today, "Resignation may help you but it will not help me". Having had his resignation treated in that way, he is driven on and on until he is put up to make the fatal statementa statement which was cheered by hon. Members opposite, not in belief, but simply because they thought that they had been extracted from a scrape in exactly the same way as they cheered the Prime Minister when he extracted the Home Secretary from the position of having deceived the House in the Enahoro case. If we are having relativity in deceit, the deceit of a man who seeks to avoid a question which perhaps should not be put is far less than the deceit of a man who deceives this House in order to deprive another of his liberty. And yet, because they got away with it, that deceit, hon. Members opposite were perfectly prepared to cheer. When I learn that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary is selected as one of those who have taken a high moral stand on this, as against the Prime Minister, weeks, only a few weeks, after the Prime Minister rescued him, I find that this touches an all-time depth in nauseating hypocrisy. I have only one further point to make. It is this. In the case of Baldwin, in the case of Chamberlain, in the case of Eden, the Tory Party attempted to rescue themselves by cutting the head out of the image of their party. Their problem today is to find a substitute head, because too many of them are involved in this discredit for them to be able to find a creditable or credible alternative. This is not a question of getting rid of

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the Prime Minister. As The Timessaid, it is a question of getting rid of a Government which has debased the whole moral currency of the country. 9.2 p.m. 168 How can the right hon. Gentleman reconcile that with a personal appointment with Miss Keeler? Mr. Macleod I do not find any difficulty in reconciling that, and my right hon. Friend dealt specifically with that point. I must answer specifically the point about security and the point about an inquiry. I want to dispose quickly of this matter. [Interruption.] Let the House wait. The first knowledge that the security service hadI repeat this; it answers another point made of any association between Miss Keeler and Mr. Profumo came at the end of January 1963. This disposes of many rumours that there have been that this information was available to the security service months before. So the position is that to the head of the security service Mr. Profumo told the same story on several occasions. He repeated it to the Law Officers, who were men trained in the examination of witnesses, and one of whom in particular, the Solicitor-General, has exceptional experience in this field. Mr. Profumo maintained the story repeatedly to the Chief Whipand gullibility is not a characteristic of Chief Whipsand he maintained it, finally, to the Minister without Portfolio and myself. Even if we are acquitted, as I am sure we are, on the charge of conspiracy, I cannot believe that anybody studying now the story of the events of that night can do other than think that the House must conclude that the charge of gullibility falls as well. Much of this debate has been upon security. I think that sometimes one has a false impression of the relationship between Ministers and the security service, because it is very rare indeed for a Minister to see a security report. I myself in eleven years have seen only two or three, and those when I was Secretary of State and some particular matter had to be drawn to my attention. And in exactly the same way I am sure that the police and the security service receive and investigate thousands of stories which have no foundation in fact. Mr. G. Brown About Ministers? 169 Mr. Macleod No, No. And the case of Mr. Eddowes, who, I see, has left for America this evening, is an interesting one indeed. But it cannot be denied, and we have not attempted to deny it, that there was a security risk. There are two phases to this. There was the possibility of a security risk from the beginning of February. Then the information which came to light was handed the same day to the security service. By that time, Commander Ivanov had left the United Kingdom. But, of course, a new and graver possibility of a security risk arose with Mr. Profumo's admission and resignation, for now it was clear that in a period in 1961, whether measured by weeks or monthsand the evidence is so conflicting that it is almost impossible to untanglea real security risk obtained. Nevertheless, because it was a security risk it does not mean that security information was obtained. But it remains trueand it was perfectly fair of the right hon. Gentlemen the Leader and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to make this pointthat security can never be absolute. The police deal mainly with crime and the security service, obviously, with security. It may well be that there is an ill-defined area between the two and, of course, we should review the situation. What should we do?

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The right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) suggested that there should be a Select Committee of this House. I would like to put forward an alternative suggestion without closing the door in any way to his suggestion. Perhaps we can discuss them both together, because there must be no doubt of our determination that any inquiry 170 that would be helpful in this matter should take place. I suggest that we look at the method suggested by the Prime Minister after the Vassall Case. This would mean that a small number of Privy Councillors would examine the Lord Chancellor's Report and that that could be followed by an independent judicial inquiry. I believe that that would be a better method. [Hon. Members: "No."] Let us discuss it. I have said that I do not close the door. Genuinely, we will discuss both these methods and any other together in full. There is no question about that. I said at the beginning that it was right that those who believed the statement made to the House on 22nd March should tell the House why they believed it. We have tried to do so, and it is for the House to judge whether we have done it convincingly. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, and the right hon. Member for Belper picked up his phrase, that it was his duty to act honourably, justly and prudently. The same triple duty lies on us all as we vote tonight, for this is a matter for the House of Commons and the House of Commons alone. In other aspects, particularly those of security, we may look for help to the sort of assistance we have been discussing, perhaps to a Select Committee, perhaps to a tribunal, perhaps to an inquiry. But here, none of these matters can help us. This is essentially a House of Commons matter. This is the forum and it is the House of Commons which must decide. Question put, That this House do now adjourn: The House divided: Ayes 252, Noes 321. ********************************************************************** THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MR. PHILBY HL Deb 01 July 1963 vol 251 cc540-3 540 3.52 p.m. THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF DUNDEE) My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, it might be convenient if I were to repeat a statement on the case of Mr. Harold Philby which was made a few minutes ago in another place by my right honourable friend the Lord Privy Seal. My right honourable friend said on March 20 that shortly after the disappearance of Mr. H. A. R. Philby from the Lebanon Mrs. Philby received messages purporting to come from him from Cairo. At the request of his wife and of a British newspaper which he was representing, Her Majesty's Government made inquiries concerning his whereabouts from the Governments in both Cairo and Beirut, without success. I can now tell your Lordships that more recently Mrs. Philby has received messages purporting to come from Mr. Philby from behind the Iron Curtain. On the other hand, the Soviet newspaper Izvestiya reported on June 3 that Mr. Philby was with the Imam of the Yemen. There is no confirmation of this story. Although there is as yet no certainty concerning Mr. Philby's whereabouts, there has been a development which may throw light on the question. On November 7, 1955, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, at that time Foreign Secretary, said in another place 541 that it had become known that Mr. Philby had had Communist associations and that he was asked to resign from the Foreign Service in July, 1951, which he did. My right honourable friend also said that his case had been the subject of close investigation and that no evidence had been found up to that time to show that he

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was responsible for warning Burgess and Maclean or that he had betrayed the interests of this country. My right honourable friend added that inquiries were continuing. In fact the Security Services have never closed their file on this case and now have further information. They are now aware, partly as a result of an admission by Mr. Philby himself, that he worked for the Russians before 1946, and that in 1951 he in fact warned Maclean, through Burgess, that the Security Services were about to take action against him. This information coupled with the latest messages received by Mrs. Philby suggests that when he left Beirut he may have gone to one of the countries of the Soviet bloc. Since Mr. Philby resigned from the Foreign Service in 1951 he has not had access of any kind to any official information. For the last seven years he has been living outside British legal jurisdiction. 3.57 p.m. LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH My Lords, we are much obliged to the noble Earl the Minister of State for repeating in this House the statement which was made by the Lord Privy Seal in another place. I think that on both sides of the House we have received with a fair degree of sadness the news that another incident should have arisen, though in this case, fortunately, it is not a new incident of current espionage. How much harm this man may have done when he was in the Foreign Service we do not yet know. I think it is a good thing that at last it has been found with reasonable certainty who was the third man, the one who tipped off Burgess and Maclean. At any rate, that mystery is cleared up. It is comforting to know that he has been discovered. He is now living abroad and outside British jurisdiction. But if he should come within British jurisdiction, I presume that he would be liable 542 to be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. I hope that what was done in the other case will not be repeated in this one. Why it was done I do not know. I do not see why these people, who are guilty of treachery to the State, should be able freely to draw money from this country in order to keep themselves going when they go abroad and take refuge in the hands of another Power. I just do not understand it. There is one other thing I should like to say arising out of this incident and one other recent bit of controversy that has arisen about another personnamely, that newspapers, especially those which are largely edited by longhaired journalists, might exercise reasonable care as to whom they employ. I should have thought it was not greatly desirable that a person who was caused to resign from the Foreign Service because he was unreliable, and has since found himself behind the Iron Curtain because he wanted to go there, should, in connection with employment, be given by newspapersI will not say preference, although sometimes I think that is what it is. But that is for the newspapers to decide. Thank goodness, we have a free Press, and we have an interesting Press. I should not like to interfere with them at all. I only, with the greatest respect, throw out the hint that a little discrimination in regard to whom they employ, especially on sensitive jobs, would be to the best. We are obliged to the noble Earl for the statement that he has made. It has its lessons, and I hope that everybody concerned will learn the lessons that are to be learnt from it. It would appear that he resigned from the Foreign Servicethat is a comfort to meat a time when I was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. I did not get any comfort out of Burgess and Maclean. If I had known previously about those two lads I should have sent them out "fired" them. But this at least is a little comfort, and we are obliged for the statement. 3.59 p.m.

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LORD REA My Lords, I think the whole House will agree that the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, has really covered the ground in answer to the statement, for which we are grateful to the noble Earl. I must dissociate 543 myself from the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, in his thinking that no journalist is to be trusted if his employing editor is long-haired. There is something to be said for his point of view. In this particular regard, the matter is twelve years old. It might have happened in the lifetime of almost any Government, except a Liberal Government, which we have not had for the last fifty years. Therefore, I do not think we can attach any blame to any Party. It is sad that this has come about now, but I will say to the noble Earl, if I may, that the public do appreciate being told as much of these affairs as is consonant with security. We are grateful to him for letting us know how this matter is proceeding. THE EARL OF DUNDEE My Lords, I am greatly obliged to the noble Lord opposite for his remarks, and to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, and I should like to assure him that I entirely exculpate the Liberal party from any part in this. ********************************************************************** MR. HAROLD PHILBY HC Deb 01 July 1963 vol 680 cc33-5 33 The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Edward Heath) With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement on the case of Mr. Harold Philby. I informed the House on 20th March that shortly after the disappearance of Mr. H. A. R. Philby from the Lebanon Mrs. Philby received messages purporting to come from him from Cairo. At the request of his wife and of a British newspaper which he was representing, Her Majesty's Government made inquiries concerning his whereabouts from the Governments in both Cairo and Beirut, without success. I can now tell the House that more recently Mrs. Philby has received messages purporting to come from Mr. Philby from behind the Iron Curtain. On the other hand, the Soviet newspaper Izvestiya reported on 3rd June that Mr. Philby was with the Imam of the Yemen. There is no confirmation of this story. Although there is as yet no certainty concerning Mr. Philby's whereabouts, there has been a development which may throw light on the question. On 7th November, 1955, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, at that time Foreign Secretary, told the House that it had become known that Mr. Philby had had Communist associations and that he was asked to resign from the Foreign Service in July, 1951, which he did. My right hon. Friend also said that his case had been the subject of close investigation and that no evidence had been found up to that time to show that he was responsible for warning Burgess and Maclean or that he had betrayed the interests of this country. My right hon. Friend added that inquiries were continuing. In fact, the security services have never closed their file on this case and now have further information. They are now aware, partly as a result of an admission by Mr. Philby himself, that he worked for 34 the Soviet authorities before 1946 and that in 1951 he in fact warned Maclean through Burgess that the security services were about to take action against him. This information, coupled with the latest messages received by Mrs. Philby, suggests that when he left Beirut he may have gone to one of the countries of the Soviet bloc. Since Mr. Philby resigned from the Foreign Service in July, 1951, he has not had access of any kind to any official information. For the last seven years he has been living outside British legal jurisdiction. Mr. Gordon Walker

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I thank the Lord Privy Seal for taking this opportunity to put the record straight. He said in his statement that it was"partly" as a result of an admission by Mr. Philby that this new information became available. Could the right hon. Gentleman say to whom this admission was made and in what circumstances? Since the right hon. Gentleman said that it was"partly" as a result of an admission by Mr. Philby, there must have been other evidence. Could that evidence have been known if the matter had been more diligently pursued in 1955, when the Prime Minister made his statement? Could the Lord Privy Seal tell us how an employee in the Foreign Office was able to know the intentions of the security services? This seems to me a matter of very great importance. Could the right hon. Gentleman tell us a little more about the Government's ideas as to the whereabouts of Mr. Philby? Surely it is inconceivable that he can be with the Imam if he has been working for Russia before and since 1946. If he is in the Yemen, and on the other side with the Government, can the right hon. Gentleman say whether he is having anything to do with the fate of our soldiers now in the Yemen? Mr. Heath We have, naturally, tried to secure confirmation of the report that he was with the Imam. There have been a number of statements or rumours of this kind, but, as I said in my statement, we have not been able to obtain confirmation. As to the evidence, I have said that the security services have never closed their files on this matter and, therefore, 35 over this long period of twelve years, they have continued with persistence to endeavour to find the truth about this matter. From time to time, they have been able to obtain items of information and finally, as I have said, there was, in part, the admission of Mr. Philby himself. Mr. Gordon Walker To the security services? Mr. Heath I did not say that. Mr. Gordon Walker To whom? Mr. Heath I am not prepared, nor would it be right, to give information about the way this information was finally brought together. That, however, is the conclusion we have reached. As to Mr. Philby's activities in the Foreign Service, he was a temporary First Secretary up to July, 1951, in the Foreign Service and in that capacity, as has already been stated, he had knowledge of certain information which he was then able, we now know, to pass to Burgess and Maclean. Mr. Gordon Walker Can the right hon. Gentleman answer my other question, whether, in 1955, if the matter had been more diligently pursued, the other evidence that is now apparently available could have been discovered? Mr. Heath No, Sir; I do not think it could have been discovered. The inquiries made at that time were extensive and intensive and I do not believe that at that particular moment it was possible to come to any other conclusion than my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, as Foreign Secretary, announced to the House in the debate. Mr. Lipton Does the Lord Privy Seal's statement mean that Mr. Philby was, in fact, the"third man" that we were talking about at the time of the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean? Mr. Heath

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Yes, Sir. ********************************************************************** HON. MEMBER FOR BRIXTON (PERSONAL STATEMENT) HC Deb 02 July 1963 vol 680 cc207-11 207 Mr. Lipton On a point of order. Mr.Speaker, I seek your guidance in the following matter. On 10th November, 1955, I made a personal statement in the House withdrawing charges I had made that Philby was the"third man" who had warned Burgess and Maclean. I made this statement having regard, in particular, as I said at the time, to the speech three days previously of the then Foreign Secretary, the present Prime Minister, in which he said: I have no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of this country, or to identify him with the so-called 'third man', if, indeed, there was one."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th November, 1955;Vol. 545, c. 1497.] Mr. Speaker What is the point of order which arises now? Can that be made plain to me? Mr. Lipton Subsequent events have shown that I should not have made that personal statement, but I had to assume at the time that the then Foreign Secretary had wider access to more information than was available to me. What I now hope may be possible is that the formal decision of the House will enable me to withdraw that personal statement so that the record may be put straight. Finally, I ask you and the House to believe that in connection with this matter I have been animated by no desire other than to serve loyally and to the best of my ability the interests of my country and the people I have had the honour to represent for many years. Mr. Speaker The hon. Member's observations about his motives will no 208 doubt appear in the OFFICIAL REPORT of today's proceedings. He must take procedural advice about securing some pronouncement on the other matter. I cannot do anything about it myself, much as I would like to help the hon. Member. Mr. Wigg Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. This case, like the recent one, has no place in the precedents of the House. This is a completely unique situation and my hon. Friend, therefore, has no recourse but to come to you and the House and seek guidance about the steps which should be followed. May I make one point plain? Not wishing to lack in generosity, we gave the Prime Minister notice that we intended to raise this matter today and, not wishing to lack in respect, we gave you notice, Sir. The Prime Minister's honour is not involved, but his competence is. My hon. Friend and I accepted statements made by the Prime Minister, doubtless made in good faith, but a Select Committee was refused and a judicial inquiry was refused and every point of fact was ignored and as a result Mr. Speaker It is perfectly true that the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), with his usual courtesy, told me that he wanted to raise something of this kind. That does not entitle him to make a speech about it now. I would be obliged if he would make his point to me. Mr. Wigg I am coming to the point of order. [HON. MEMBERS:"Oh."] I do not know why hon. Members opposite resent this. This, like the previous case, concerns the security of the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) has been traduced. He has been

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Mr. Speaker There must be a point of order which arises now and which entitles the hon. Member to address me. I am not causing him to resume his seat with violence, or rapidly, but I must follow the rules of the House and know what is the point of order on which he has risen. Mr. Wigg The point of order is this, [Interruption.] I can understand and sympathise with the anxiety of hon. Members opposite. I do not want to use too strong words, although I could use 209 the word"blackmail", but my hon. Friend was coerced into withdrawing a statement because of the action of the Government. The point is that either the Prime Minister had full knowledge, in which case he was a rogue, or he did not have full knowledge, in which case he was a fool. The House must decide what to do about it in relation to the honour of my hon. Friend. Mr. Speaker I want to know what the point of order is. With due respect, the whole thing is an abuse of our procedure unless there is a point of order. Mr. Wigg The point of order[An HON. MEMBER:"Bogus."] I wish that the hon. Member who made that statement would get up and say why it is bogus. My point of order is this, that my hon. Friend was coerced into making a personal statement withdrawing something which is known to be true. The Prime Minister, who was given notice, is not here, and he was the man who made the statement. In those circumstances, surely a method has to be found. I would have thought that we could leave it to the generosity of the Government to put a Motion on the Order Paper so that my hon. Friend would be able to withdraw his personal statement. Mr. Speaker I can help the hon. Member. If he feels in need of assistance about the procedure and practice of the House I would humbly offer my services to him in private, and, indeed, the officers of the House would be anxious to assist, but more than that on any point of order I cannot say. There is not one. Mr. H. Wilson On this point of order[HON. MEMBERS:"There is not one."] This is between us and you, Mr. Speaker. On the point of order[Interruption.] Mr. Speaker Order. I would be obliged if the House would keep quiet. I am being addressed and I desire to hear what is being said to me. Mr. H. Wilson On the point of order raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton), could you confirm what I, and, I think, some of us thought we heard you say earlier on this difficult matter of how the personal statement which my hon. Friend 210 was very much pressed and coerced into making could be withdrawn from the record or corrected? Did we understand you to say much earlier that you would take this matter under advisement, consider how this could be done, if it could be done at all, and report to the House? If that is what we understood you to say, it could end this business and we could get on with the foreign affairs debate. Mr. Speaker I do not think that I said that. I shall look at what I said. If I said that, I did not mean to say anything of the kind. The position is that as to the methods of recording the facts now revealed, and so on, and what happened in November, 1955, there are no doubt procedures available, but they do not arise now.

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I ask the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member in question, if they wish to do so, to come and consult us privately when we shall give all the advice we can about the available methods, but I can give no further help now. Mr. Bellenger What I should like to put to you, Mr. Speaker, is that this is the second occasion on which on the word of Ministers private Members have been forced to retract, apologise, or withdraw statements they have made in the House. Would you allow me to ask the Leader of the House whether he can do something to ascertain what we could not ascertain before? Mr. Speaker Questions of this kind do not arise today. We concentrate a good deal on business matters on Thursday. If we had to argue business questions every day we should never get on at all. Mr. G. Brown I am a bit puzzled by what you have just said, Mr. Speaker, that if we wish to consult you privately you will give us some help. My hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) is in the unenviable position that he was pushed into withdrawing something which has turned out to be accurate. On what ground do you deny us in public the advice which he asks of you in public which you say you are willing to give in private? Mr. Speaker This is much too clever for me. I am not here to give guidance in public. That is not my duty. My 211 duty is to rule on points of order when they arise. I respectfully, and as courteously as I could, offered assistance in thinking out procedures whereby the hon. Gentleman might attain his end, but I have no right to detain the House by suggesting them now, and in any event would wish to think out the matter with those who can help me. There is no other mystery about it. The point is that it does not arise as a point of order at this moment, and we have much to do. ********************************************************************** MR. PHILBY HC Deb 05 July 1963 vol 680 cc102-4W 102W Captain Kerby asked the Lord Privy Seal upon what date Her Majesty's Government first learned that Mr. Philby had moved behind the Iron Curtain; upon 103W what date Her Majesty's Government first learned that Mr. Philby was responsible for warning Messrs. Maclean and Burgess; and what details are known of any association between Mr. Philby and Mr. Blake, late of Her Majesty's Foreign Service and now serving a prison sentence for espionage. Mr. Heath As I informed the House on 1st July, there is, as yet, no certainty about Mr. Philby's whereabouts. It would not be appropriate for me to give details of either the exact time or place at which various items of information bearing on the case were received by Her Majesty's Government. I am not aware104W of any association between Mr. Philby and Mr. Blake. ********************************************************************** MR. HAROLD PHILBY HC Deb 08 July 1963 vol 680 cc863-70 863 The following Questions stood upon the Order Paper: 51 and 56. Lieut-Colonel Cordeaux: To ask the Lord Privy Seal (1) if he will state the nature of the reply sent by him to the inquiry from the Observer newspaper on 28th February 864 1963, concerning the whereabouts of Mr. Philby;

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(2) by what authority an official of the Foreign Office urged the Observer newspaper to employ Mr. Philby; and whether his department or the Observer newspaper took the initiative in this matter. 52. Mr. A. Lewis: To ask the Lord Privy Seal on what date or dates Mr. Philby himself admitted that he worked for the Soviet authorities before 1946. 55. Mr. Wade: To ask the Lord Privy Seal what assurances and recommendations were given to the editor of the Observer and the editor of the Economist by the Foreign Office before Mr. H. A. R. Philby was employed by them as a correspondent in the Middle East. 57 and 61. Mr. Grimond: To ask the Lord Privy Seal (1) what information was given by his Department to the Observer and other papers as to the suitability of Mr. Philby as a correspondent in the Middle East; (2) what evidence he has that Mr. Philby has been living outside British legal jurisdiction for the last seven years. 64. Mr. A. Lewis: To ask the Lord Privy Seal, in view of the Foreign Office's request for the resignation of Mr. Harold Philby as a security risk in 1951, why they advised his appointment with the Observer in 1956. The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Edward Heath) Mr. Philby's name was given by the Foreign Office to the Observer in 1956 as a former journalist who was seeking employment. In reply to inquiries about him, the Foreign Office based itself on the statement made in the House of Commons by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, then Foreign Secretary, on 7th November, 1955. The Foreign Office acted in this matter on the authority of that ministerial statement. The Observer was also informed that the circumstances in which Mr. Philby was asked to resign from the public service made it highly unlikely that he would ever again be employed in any 865 work involving access to official information. As I told the House on the 1st of July, he has had no such access since 1951. As to the Observer's inquiry on 28th February, 1963, the foreign editor of the Observer was given the same information as I gave the House on 20th March, in reply to a Question from my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux) concerning the whereabouts of Mr. Philby. It was shortly before his disappearance on 23rd January, 1963, that Mr. Philby admitted that he worked for the Soviet authorities before 1946 and had warned Maclean, through Burgess, that the security services were about to take action against him. During the seven years before his disappearance Mr. Philby is known to have been living outside British jurisdiction, having made his home in Beirut. He paid a number of visits to the United Kingdom during that period. He is also believed, in the course of his journalistic activities, to have visited territories under British jurisdiction in the Middle East. Mr. A. Lewis The Lord Privy Seal has now admitted that Mr. Philby has been here at least on two occasions. Why did the right hon. Gentleman say that he had not been within British jurisdiction, when he was entertained here in London? If the right hon. Gentleman will look at the Daily Sketch of last Friday he will find that it seems to have more information than the Foreign Office. Why was it that only yesterday the deputy-editor of the Observer said that at no time had that paper had any inquiries made of it officially by M.I.5. or anyone working for M.I.5? Why not? Mr. Heath As I said in my original statement a week ago, Mr. Philby had lived outside British jurisdiction. I stated today that he made his home in Beirut and was domiciled in the

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Lebanon. I have also said today that he made visits to this country and also, in his journalistic activities, to some colonial territories in the Middle East. As for the last supplementary question, it would not have been appropriate, in inquiries made about Mr. Philby, to have made inquiries from the newspapers. 866 Mr. Grimond Does the right hon. Gentleman not think it rather strange that, when, as we have been informed, the file has been open during all these years, and inquiries have been going on, the Observer was encouraged to take on Mr. Philby and employ him in Beirut? Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us when it was suspected that Mr. Philby was a possible agent? Why were no inquiries made of the Observer and why did the Lord Privy Seal say that during the last seven years Mr. Philby has been living outside British legal jurisdiction? Surely the point was that he was not available for questioning, otherwise what was the point? Did the right hon. Gentleman know that during that time Mr. Philby had visited Britain and had been within the jurisdiction and could have been available for questioning? Mr. Heath Mr. Philby was recommended to the Observer in 1956 on the strength of a statement made to the House of Commons that there was no evidence against him at that time. [Hon. Members:"Why?"] I am coming to that point. He was recommended because it was thought not unreasonable, and, indeed, wise, at that time that he should be in employment. [Hon. Members:"Why?"] There is a difference between the reason why he was asked to resign in 1951 by the then Foreign Secretary, because of his previous association, and the question of employment with a newspaper. It was thought, as the then Foreign Secretary stated in the House of Commons in 1955, that there was no evidence against him, and that it was not unreasonable that he should be employed by a newspaper. For that reason, it was put to the Observer. As for the second part of the question with which the right hon. Gentleman was concerned, I was aware that Mr. Philby had made his home in Beirut. The point about the legal jurisdiction was that it was possible to reach conclusions, as a result of the admissions made by Mr. Philby, only at a time when he was living outside British legal jurisdiction. He did not return to this country between that time and the time he disappeared. I was not aware of the details of his return to this country during the course of his journalistic conferences with his papers. 867 Mr. Wall Would my right hon. Friend make quite clear who took the initiative in finding Mr. Philby a job? Was it the Foreign Office or the Observer. Mr. Heath The Foreign Office took the initiative with the Observer, The Observer took the initiative with the Economist. Mr. Grimond I am greatly obliged to the right hon. Gentleman, but did he know when he answered Questions last Monday that Mr. Philby had visited this country at least twice? Mr. Heath I stated very clearly that I was not aware of the details of his return to this country. Mr. Biggs-Davison Since the Observer and the Economist have considerable attention paid to them, particularly, perhaps, overseas, may we now hope that since Mr. Philby must have

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influenced their judgment on the Nasserite rgime there will be an agonising reappraisal of their Middle East views on the part of these two journals? Mr. Heath It was a question for the two papers employing him to judge his work and its value to them. It was entirely within their competence and for them to decide whether he should continue in their employment. It will be seen from the Observer yesterday that it discussed in great detail the quality of his work while he was employed by the newspaper. Mr. G. Brown Will the right hon. Gentleman answer this extraordinary position? The Foreign Office asks a man to resign for reasons which had to do with his past political associations. Why did the Foreign Office then take the initiative to get a newspaper to employ him in the Middle East? The Foreign Office is not normally an employment agency. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this sort of thing is bringing out in the open a lot of things which as a rule ought to remain not discussed in the open? Why did the Foreign Office do this? Mr. Heath There seems to be a slight contradiction in the right hon. Gentleman saying that these matters ought not to be discussed in the open and then asking me directly why the suggestion 868 was made about Mr. Philby. I ask the right hon. Gentleman, who has certain experience of these matters, to recognise that fact. After Mr. Philby was asked to resign in 1951 by the then Foreign Secretary, because of his previous associations, there was a period in which he had some employment, arranged presumably by himself. In 1955, the then Foreign Secretary stated that after a thorough examination of this matter no evidence had been found against Mr. Philby and, therefore, no charge of any kind was brought against him. In these circumstances it was thought not unreasonable, and, indeed, in some circumstances, as perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will now recognise, wise, that it should be suggested that he should resume his previous journalistic employment. For that reason an approach was made to the Observer. Dame Irene Ward While detesting Communism, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he thinks that in this free world, for which at the appropriate time many Communists fought, nobody who had Communist leanings at any time should ever be able to earn a livelihood again? Would my right hon. Friend like me to outline in the House the number of Communists appointed by right hon. Gentlemen opposite when they were in office? Mr. Heath I think that my hon. Friend is referring to the point which I was trying to makethat there is a difference between the reasons for which Mr. Philby was asked to resign, owing to his previous associations, and which surely are not incompatible with employment on a newspaper if the proprietors so decide, and the question of his security risk in Government employment where he has access to secret information. Mr. G. Brown Is the Lord Privy Seal aware of what he is now saying? The only interest of the Foreign Office in this man being employed by somebody so that he could work in the Middle East could have been a Foreign Office interest. What was that Foreign Office interest? Was it that he should be available for work that he had been doing before, which was security work? Why should the Foreign Office put itself out, 869 when a man had been asked to resign because he was not regarded as security-worth-while, and ask somebody else to employ him to go back there to do security work; and subsequently, when he was

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found out not to be security worth-while, why should not the Foreign Office accept responsibility? Mr. Heath The right hon. Gentleman is not entitled to draw the conclusions that he has just drawn. In any case, he will not expect me to make any further comment upon conclusions of that kind. Mr. Burden My right hon. Friend gave the House to understand, I believe, that the abilities of this journalist were assessed by the newspaper that employed him, but surely their assessment of his value and of his ability was coloured by the fact that he was suggested for employment by the Foreign Office. Dame Irene Ward Rubbish. Mr. Burden I do not believe that is rubbish. Is it not dangerous for the Foreign Office to suggest to newspapers that any particular journalist should be given employment? Is this proper behaviour? Mr. Heath No suggestions were made by the Foreign Office about the quality of Mr. Philby's work, or his capacity for carrying out journalistic tasks. What the Foreign Office did was to suggest his name to the Observer, and it was always the responsibility of the Observer[Interruption.] I am dealing with my hon. Friend's question. It was always the responsibility of the Observer and the Economist, or whoever else employed Mr. Philby, to make a judgment about his work. If my hon. Friend casts his mind back to the time of these episodes he will recollect that one of these newspapers took the view that Mr. Philby had been somewhat unfairly treated in that at the time when there was no evidence against him he was unable to secure employment. Mr. M. Foot Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether the statement he made a week ago about Mr. Philby was because of the Government's ingrained preference for complete candour, or was there a less evident reason for it? 870 Mr. Heath I made the statement to the House because all the possible conclusions had been reached in this case, and I thought it right to tell the House at that time what those conclusions were. It is for similar reasons that I have answered these Questions after the normal Question hour today. Mr. Gordon Walker The right hon. Gentleman has told us that Mr. Philby made his admission just before his disappearance, presumably last January. Could he explain why, on 20th March, he told the House that he had given the House all the information in the Government's possession? Did he not know about this admission at that time, or was he not giving us all the information in his possession? Mr. Heath I can give the answer to that one very easily. The Question asked by my hon. and gallant Friend who asked Question No. 51 today concerned the whereabouts of Mr. Philby. If the right hon. Gentleman looks at my Answer he will see that I gave all the information that we had at the time about Mr. Philby's whereabouts. It was later than that that we gained further information about the suggestion that he might have gone behind the Iron Curtain. As the work on this particular case was still being carried on, it

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would, in any event, have been quite inappropriate for me and not in the national interest to have given such other information as we had. Several Hon. Members rose Mr. Speaker We cannot debate this matter now without a Question before the House. [An Hon. Member:"It ought to be debated."] That may be, but not now. ********************************************************************** MR. HAROLD PHILBY HC Deb 08 July 1963 vol 680 cc107-8W 107W Captain Kerby asked the Lord Privy Seal what cash compensation was paid out of public funds to Mr. Philby when he was requested to resign from Her Majesty's Foreign Service. Mr. Heath I must refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the reply given to him on this subject on 21st November, 1955, which stated that no officials were dismissed or transferred as a result of the inquiries into the Maclean and Burgess affair but that one was asked to resign in consequence and received a financial settlement in accordance with the terms of his engagement. As my hon. and gallant Friend will be aware, Mr. Philby had already been named in the House as the person who was asked to resign. Captain Kerby asked the Lord Privy Seal what orders were given to British Embassy personnel in Beirut regarding their contacts with Mr. Philby following his admission that he was the man who warned Maclean and Burgess of the proposed action of the security services 108W against them; and if these orders were in force on 23rd January. Mr. Heath All members of the Foreign Service are regularly reminded of the security regulations which are designed to prevent the disclosure of official information to unauthorised persons. These orders were of course in force on 23rd January, 1963. ********************************************************************** BURGESS AND MACLEAN HC Deb 09 July 1963 vol 680 c133W 133W Q1. Mr. A. Lewis asked the Prime Minister whether he will move to appoint a tribunal under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, 1921 to inquire into matters concerning Messrs. Philby, Burgess and Maclean. The Prime Minister No. ********************************************************************** MR. PHILBY HC Deb 11 July 1963 vol 680 c175W 175W Mr. W. Hamilton asked the Lord Privy Seal on what date Her Majesty's Government first knew that Mr. Philby had passed on a warning to Messrs. Burgess and Maclean. Mr. Heath As I told the House on 8th July, it was shortly before Philby's disappearance on 23rd January, 1963, that he admitted that he had warned Maclean through Burgess. News of his admission reached Her Majesty's Government not long after it was made. This was the first admission by Philby of which we had knowledge and the first occasion on which we knew of this fact.

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********************************************************************** FOREIGN OFFICE (EX-OFFICIAL) HC Deb 15 July 1963 vol 681 cc26-7 26 25. Mr. Shinwell asked the Lord Privy Seal on how many occasions in the last 10 years the Foreign Office has asked British newspapers to find employment for ex-officials of that Department. Mr. Heath Full records are not kept of approaches made by the Foreign Office to outside employers on behalf of former employees. But the Foreign Office always tries to help former members of the Service, who have retired or resigned, to find jobs for which they appear to be suitably qualified. Mr. Shinwell Is it not most unusual for the Foreign Office to seek employment for an ex-official of the Department who has beer at one time or another under suspicion, to put it no higher than that? Can the right hon. Gentleman inform the House who was the Foreign Office official who approached the Observer in order to try to obtain employment for Mr. Philby? Mr. Heath I dealt last week with the case which the right hon. Gentleman is raising. As for the general matters to which his Question refers, I should have thought that it was not unusual but only the work of any good employer to try to help people in those circumstances. Dame Irene Ward May I ask my right hon. Friend whether, if we are to have this question perpetually from the other side of the House, he could please 27 inform me on whose authority Burgess became established in the Foreign Office at the time of the Labour Government? Mr. Speaker That question is again hypothetical. Dame Irene Ward On a point of order. It is not hypothetical at all. Mr. Speaker I am sorry to differ from the hon. Lady, as at all times, but a proposition beginning, "If we are to have this question"appears to me to be hypothetical. Mr. Shinwell The right hon. Gentleman has just informed the House that he dealt with one aspect of my Question last week, but he did not tell the House who was the Foreign Office official who approached the Observer to obtain employment for Mr. Philby. Can we now be informed? Mr. Heath No, Sir. I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to tell the House of Commons the name of a particular official dealing with matters in the Foreign Office. This was dealt with through the usual channels. ********************************************************************** MR. HAROLD PHILBY HC Deb 22 July 1963 vol 681 c131W 131W 58. Mr. A. Lewis asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will give the actual time and date before 23rd January, 1963, when Mr. Harold Philby admitted warning Maclean, through Burgess;

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and what was the actual time and date that this information was given to Her Majesty's Government. Mr. Heath I have nothing to add to the reply given to Questions on this subject by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 16th July. ********************************************************************** UNITED KINGDOM AND EASTERN EUROPE (DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATION) HC Deb 02 August 1963 vol 682 cc832-48 832 1.14 p.m. Commander Anthony Courtney (Harrow, East) I am grateful for the opportunity to raise today a question which has been of some concern to me for some time past, namely, the mutual diplomatic representation between the United Kingdom and the Socialist countries of Eastern Europe. I wish to call attention to certain anomalies which I believe exist within that representation and to suggest to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State ways in which perhaps those anomalies might be corrected. I say at the outset that in this debate I am inhibited slightly by the fact that I have received much excellent hospitality and made a number of friends in the diplomatic missions of the countries to which I am about to refer. At this early stage I stress the hope that that hospitality will not be in any way mitigated by what I say today. As an amateur in the art of diplomacy I am depending, as many of my hon. Friends do, on textbooks such as Satow's Guide to Diplomatic Practice. I think it germane to this discussion to say that this was one of the first diplomatic textbooks which was translated into Russian. Diplomacy in this textbook is defined as: The conduct of business between states by peaceful means. I think we might add, with mutual agreement, that the object of such diplomacy is the improvement of relations between nations. For this purpose, by long usage, certain diplomatic immunities have been established and they are referred to in Satow's book in these words: Diplomatic immunities are founded on common usage and tacit consent on the understanding that they will be reciprocally accorded. It is further laid down that for the obvious use of the diplomat's operating art it is essential that a diplomatic agent should be able to communicate fully and 833 in all security on matters in which he is engaged. One might hold that that practice was not necessarily applicable to Governments of fairly recent vintage established by revolutionary action, but to the contrary, the Soviet Union, in its Decree of 14th January, 1927, declared that: Diplomatic representatives in their country, including commercial representatives, enjoy personal immunity on a basis of reciprocity and are not subject to administrative or judicial arrest or detention. I think that one can say with justice that the Soviet Union and the other Socialist countries of Eastern Europe look upon the practice of diplomacy slightly differently from Western countries. Those countries, we must note, have one strong thing in common. They have single-party Governments, the basis of which is the Communist Party which owes a great measure of control to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In fact Soviet influence appears to be predominant in all these countries. The theoretical basis of diplomacy under Communism also has a slightly different slant from that which we have in the West. I think the standpoint has never been lost that Soviet and other Socialist missions in foreign countriesI, of course, refer particularly to the United Kingdomare useful instruments for the presentation of the Communist image. To put that in general terms, it could sometimes be described as propaganda, which again in turn derives, as I think historians such as the hon. Member for

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Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) would agree, from the very early practical example given by Trotsky at BrestLitovsk of appealing to peoples over the heads of negotiators and over the heads of Governments. It is quite natural, and perhaps we should not be surprised, that this influence does actually obtain, but there is another and rather more sinister aspect of Soviet Communist diplomacy generally to which I wish to draw attention. It has surely become evident from the events of the past few years that Socialist diplomatic missions in this country are looked upon as useful cover for secret police activities. These can be classified under three broad headings. In the first place, there is published evidence of the attempted recruitment of agents from among British 834 nationals by accredited diplomatic personnel. Perhaps I may mention the name of the Soviet attach Rogov, whom I knew, and the Yugoslav Pecjak in this connection. Secondly, it is established, again in published evidence, that diplomatic personnel have been used as the so-called "controllers" of existing agents in this country. We had the mention of Gregory in the Vassall case and the reference to Karpekov in this connection in the recent trial of the Italian nuclear scientist. Thirdly, there is recent evidence of an even more sinister character among these diplomats, namely, the expert conduct of research into the sleazier sections of our society, as exemplified by a naval colleague, Commander Ivanov. Surely, these facts, as I believe them to beculled from desperately little evidence, I agreeare supported by the fact that since 1949, when it can be said that the Iron Curtain really came down, 17 Soviet and other Communist diplomats have been declared persona non grata by Her Majesty's Government. There are other instances, as the House well knows, of the swift departure of diplomats from these missions shortly before, to use a journalistic expression, the "breaking" of news on security cases. Here I should like to express a few doubts and to ask a question. Why cannot we have details in this House of diplomats who are declared persona non grata in this way? What prejudice to British interests, if there is such a thing, is involved in not disclosing these matters? Surely, if in the opinion of the country which extends him hospitality a diplomat has been guilty of conduct which requires his removal, the first thing to do, and which is done, is that the Foreign Secretary speaks to the ambassador concerned. Are we, therefore, to assume that if, say, the Polish Ambassador is given such information by the Foreign Secretry, it is to be denied to Members of this House? I should very much welcome a little enlightenment from my hon. Friend the UnderSecretary of State on this subject. From the weight of evidence availableand a mass of conjecture has rather swamped the facts which have been given to usit is, none the less, fairly certain that in the opinion of reasonable men embassy contacts in the missions 835 to which I am referring were used for contact lines of communication for such individuals as Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blake and others. I say in parenthesis that this would not apply to a man like Houghton who, some of us thinkwithout much background knowledge, admittedly was probably working for a different organisation, the G.R.U., and had his extradiplomatic contact in Lonsdale. Is it sufficient, furthermore, that if personal contacts exist, as I believe they do, in these cases, they should be left at that? Obviously, they cannot. There must be a physical means of passing the information, where it is bulk information, back to the country where use is to be made of it. An obvious conclusion here must be that the diplomatic facilities accorded in accordance with the ancient practice which I have described are misused and have been misused probably over a considerable period for this purpose.

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I think that I have said enough to confirm what must be in the minds of many people who have thought of these affairs, that diplomatic privileges in our sense of the term have beenperhaps, still are beingabused by the missions of the countries to whom I am referring. Another aspect of this is the treatment by the Governments concerned of United Kingdom missions in their respective capitals. Here again, there are anomalies to which I should like to draw attention. It would seemthis is a long story, but I have had personal experience of these mattersthat the Governments of the Soviet Union and the Socialist countries of Eastern Europe look upon United Kingdom missions in their countries from two main points of view: first, as a convenient post office medium for the exchange of official communications, but, at the same time, as representatives of the United Kingdom who must be debarred from any real contact with the peoples of the countries to which they are accredited. One sees in that the remarkable difference in opportunity of real contact with Russians, Poles and others between diplomatic personnel in Warsaw and Moscow and between visiting businessmen, among whom I include myself. It is, I am afraid, true that our missions in those countries are subjected in vary- 836 ing extent to a degree of restriction and harassmentI cannot express it otherwisewhich applies both physically and administratively and which severely reduces the efficiency of these organisations as diplomatic media. They require, in addition, a disproportionate number of administrative personnel to look after what I could describe in military terms as the "teeth" of our missions, namely, the high-grade diplomatic personnel. At the same time, however, they do not allow the full employment of British nationals, requiring the employment of locally-recruited personnel, such as Mikhailsky, the Pole, who was of such considerable use to the Soviet secret police during his term of employment at the British Embassy in Moscow. That brings me to my second point in that connection. It would seem that the individuals belonging to our diplomatic missions in these countries are looked upon by their hosts as a target for the activities of the local secret services. We have surely had enough examples recently to bear out this conviction. We have had the seduction of Vassall in Moscow by Mikhailsky. We had the subversion of Houghton in Warsaw. We had the seductionagain, I use the word advisedlyof an air attach in Warsaw by a notorious and extremely attractive Polish agent-provocateur, all these, incidentally, under the noses of their respective ambassadors. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary knows of many other cases, successful and unsuccessful, of action against British individuals in these missions abroad. It is of interest in that connection that over 200 Foreign Service personnel have had to leave their posts in these missions since 1949 before the expiration of their normal term. Seventy-eight of these have left for reasons of misconduct or unsuitability. I cannot believe that these figures do not reflect to a considerable degree the activities of the secret police in those countries. I think that I have said enough to indicate my belief that the principle of reciprocity in diplomatic practice and the same principle in the treatment of respective diplomatic personnel has not been observed between the United Kingdom and the countries to which I am referring. May I turn to numbers and to the relative strengths of the missions in the 837 United Kingdom and these countries? I think that it will be convenient to the House if I divide them into two, firstly United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, and secondly, the United Kingdom and the remaining countries of the bloc. Where career diplomatic personnel bearing diplomatic immunity are concerned, the Soviet Union, by my calculation, has in this country at present 58 individuals. The corresponding figure for the British in

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Moscow is 39, a balance in favour of the Soviet Union of 19. Of the others, the British and Soviet nationals attached to their respective embassies and living in London or Moscow respectively, the numbers are Soviet 195, British 70in this case a Soviet preponderance of 125. When one breaks these figures down into the commercial representation, to which I shall draw special attention in a moment, the Russians have 125 and the Britishand this is a rather difficult calculationhave eight, the figure including two or possibly three B.E.A. representatives in Moscow. This gives a Soviet preponderance in commercial representation of 117. There are three commercial attachs diplomatically immune on each side, which makes no preponderance on either side. According to my calculations, the other Socialist countries have in this country a representation of 255 diplomatic and non-diplomatic personnel, with 147 British personnel accredited to missions in those countries, a preponderance in favour of the Socialist countries of 108. Therefore, once again we see anomalies and lack of reciprocity not only in diplomatic conduct but also in numbers of mutual representation. Incidentally, nowhere in the diplomatic textbook, which I know many of us have studied, is the word "espionage" even mentioned. I am sure that my hon. Friend will say that the reason for the disparity on the commercial side is due mainly to a fact which we all know about and of which some of us have had experience. The Russians and these other countries operate State trading organisations which require a higher proportion of State servants in foreign countries to conduct their commercial affairs. We, on the other hand, by our system of private enterprise, send businessmen 838 over to Russia. I would lay a small bet, if that were in order, that my hon. Friend will mention the large number of Soviet trade delegation personnel in this country as being set against a comparable number of British businessmen visiting the Soviet Union. That is really not quite a valid comparison. A point which is often forgotten in this context is the very large number of Soviet and satellite technical and commercial delegations who are continually visiting firms and institutions in this country. I prefer to set these last against the numbers of British business men visiting the Soviet Union and the Socialist countries, leaving an unexplained preponderance of over 100 personnel by any calculation which I am able to make. This represents a glaring disparity on any count and an unhealthy state of affairs which can and should be corrected in the interests of ourselves and of these countries themselves. On the security aspect in which I have taken a certain interest and which I consider to be the most serious side of what we are discussing, it is surely reasonable to say, without any knowledge of this service, that our security service must be overburdened by the sheer weight of numbers resulting from the disparity to which I have drawn attention. I wonder whether I shall be greeted by my hon. Friendthough I think he is too wise by the old reply to such questions, "It is a very good thing to know who the foreign agents are so that we can keep a file and make sure with whom they make their contacts." If that is so, I suggest that the price we have paid over the last 15 years has been heavy, and much too heavy to make up for any reasons which can be advanced in favour of such a state of affairs. The average of over 10 years during which Burgess, Maclean, Fuchs, Pontecorvo, Vassall, Philby and the rest have worked for our enemies is a high price to pay for the luxury of allowing our security service to be overburdened in this way. ********************************************************************** The Late Guy Burgess HC Deb 03 December 1963 vol 685 c970 970

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32. Mr. A. Lewis asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will ensure that no moneys or bequests from the late Guy Burgess are transmitted to Moscow to Mr. Kim Philby. Mr. Maudling No, Sir. The late Guy Burgess was non-resident for the purposes of Exchange Control. Under the normal rules, any assets of his estate in this country are freely transferable to any other country. Mr. Lewis Is not the Chancellor aware that most people would think it very wrong for currency to go out of the country to this particular individual? Mr. Maudling In the first place, the currency is already out because he was non-resident. In the second place, I think that it is absolutely wrong for the Government to use powers given to them for one purpose for a quite different purpose. ********************************************************************** INCOME TAX MANAGEMENT BILL HC Deb 12 February 1964 vol 689 cc387-430 387 3.52 p.m. Order for Second Reading read. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Alan Green) I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. The Bill brings the law governing Income Tax machinery and procedures up to date. It should prove a useful contribution to the modernisation and simplification of the tax code, enabling worthwhile administrative changes to be made immediately and paving the way for possible future reforms. It will assist the revenue to adopt the most businesslike arrangements for dealing with assessments and claims and for collecting tax. I also believe that its proposals will be welcomed by the professional bodies concerned and that it will be to the convenience of the general body of taxpayers. The Measure incorporates a number of changes which have been candidates for a Finance Bill in recent years. It is difficult to find room in a Finance Bill for procedural reforms or time for their consideration during the Budget and Finance Bill debates, when other more immediately interesting matters fully occupy the time of the House. This has resulted in the accumulation over the years of a series of acceptable changes, any one of which hardly warranted priority taken by itself, but which, taken together, seem well worth making. Accordingly, the Government decided to combine these charges in a Bill which will not affect the scope of the charges to tax and which can, therefore, properly be considered apart from and before the Budget and Finance Bill. I am particularly glad that it falls to me to introduce the Bill, for its most important purpose is to give effect to two recommendations of the Select Committee on Estimates based on evidence given to a sub-committee, of which I happened to be chairman. These recommendations were, first, that responsibility for the making of Income Tax assessments should be transferred from the general or special 388 commissioners to the inspector of taxes, as earlier recommended by the Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits and Income, and by its predecessor, the 1920 Royal Commission, and, secondly, that Profits Tax assessments should also be made locally by the inspector of taxes, instead of centrally by the Board of Inland Revenue. Effect is given to these recommendations by Clauses 5 and 10. I think that the proposals in the Bill regarding assessing functions will be more easily followed if I deal first with these Clauses and certain associated Clauses. I will come

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back later to Clauses 1 to 4. In Clause 5 there is a saving for certain income from Government and foreign securities which will be assessed centrally by the Board. Clause 5 also transfers formal responsibility for making Surtax assessments from the special commissioners to the Board, but the Board is given a general power to delegate any of its assessing functions to an officer of the Board. This would enable the administration of Surtax to be decentralised, in whole or in part, without further legislation, if this course seemed desirable. This bears on another recommendation of the Estimates Committee; that the possibility of decentralising Surtax should be re-examined. The Board explained to that Committee why it would be desirable to defer a decision on this for a year or two, but, whatever views may be held on the merits, I am sure that it would be generally agreed that a decision on this point should depend on administrative considerations and that this opportunity should be taken of introducing the necessary enabling legislation. The removal of nominal responsibility for the making of assessments from the commissioners should be generally welcomed. Nominal though the responsibility may be at present, it has meant that Income Tax assessments have tended to be made in batches two or three times a year. This has meant congestion of work for professional advisers and, therefore, some inconvenience to taxpayers, as well as some additional cost to the Revenue. This change will mean the abolition of the office of additional commissioners. These commissioners have done good 389 service and I should like to thank them warmly for the work they have performed. I am sure that the committees which advise the Lord Chancellor on the appointment of general commissioners will have the names of those who have been acting as additional commissioners very much in mind when they make further recommendations. The recommendations of the Estimates Committee and the Royal Commission on this topic were unqualified. Further examination of the implications, however, have led us to propose one important restriction on the assessing powers to be given to the Revenue. This is contained in Clause 6, with a corresponding restriction for Profits Tax included in Clause 10. Assessments for years outside the normal time-limits in cases of fraud, wilful default or neglect are to be made only with the leave of a general or special commissioner. It did not seem right to give the Revenue unfettered discretion in such cases, especially as the present practice is to draw them especially to the attention of the assessing commissioner. The Royal Commission also recommended that the appeal commissioners should be relieved of their other executive functions. Most of these relate to claims for reliefs and the transfer of functions is effected by Clause 9 and its consequential repeals. I return to Clause 1. When the assessing responsibilities have been transferred to the Inland Revenue, the general commissioners will be free to devote themselves entirely to the hearing of appeals. It is hoped to help them in this by removing the present limits on the number of appointments which may be made; and Clause 1 also empowers the Lord Chancellor to alter the number and boundaries of the "divisions" for which general commissioners act. This will enable the number of commissioners for any division to be matched to the volume of appeal work for that division. It is, of course, the appeal work that has become the main responsibility of commissioners in recent yearsand it is a very important responsibility. When Income Tax was first introduced, in 1799, its administration was placed generally in the hands of local bodies 390 of general commissioners. Over the years, this work has come largely into the hands of the Government, but it has remained the position and will still

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remain the position that the inspector of taxes as the representative of the Government does not have the final say as to the amount of tax that any person must pay. The final arbiters, subject only to appeal to the courts on a point of law, art the general commissioners and they with their local knowledge are the persons best qualified to decide the many questions of fact which come before them. It has often been said that the Income Tax system of this country can work only so long as it is accepted, however reluctantly, by the great majority of taxpayers. If that acceptance is forthcoming, and I believe that it is, it is mainly because members of the public know that if they disagree with the assessments made on them, they do not have to accept the inspector's say-so and can put their case to an independent tribunal in whom they may have the fullest confidence. This is not, I trust, an inappropriate moment for a Financial Secretary to make his bow to the way in which the great bulk of the taxpayers face up to their responsibilities for the payment of tax. I do not think that it is fully appreciated how much time the commissioners devote to their duties. I should like here to pay them a most warm tribute for the work they do. There are about 5,500 commissioners at work in 700 divisions throughout the country, meeting regularly and in some of the busiest divisions as frequently as once a week, or perhaps a fortnight. To preserve the confidentiality of appellants' Income Tax affairs, the public are not admitted to commissioners' proceedings and for this reason the valuable public service which they render goes largely unrecorded. Their work is nevertheless as important within Income Tax as that performed in another respect by the lay justices. Like justices of the peace, the general commissioners receive no payment for their services. They have, however, since 1958 received travelling and overnight lodging allowances similar to those paid to justices. The Administration of Justice Bill, now before the House, pro- 391 poses that justices should also be paid day subsistence allowances and we are taking the opportunity of the present Bill to authorise the payment of day subsistence allowances to general commissioners as well. At this point I might perhaps mention one or two other changes in Clause 1 relating to the appointment and tenure of office of general commissioners. Since 1958, most appointments of commissioners in England and Wales have been made by the Lord Chancellor. The City of London, certain City corporations and 11 other ancient cities, selected as long ago as 1799, at the time that Income Tax itself was selected, and some of them now relatively small, have, however, retained the power to make a number of additional appointments. We propose that all appointments shall in future be made by the Lord Chancellor. We have sought the views of these appointing authorities and I am glad to say that they are all content to surrender these powers. In Scotland, the general commissioners are appointed by the county councils and by certain town councils and we are proposing no change there. Finally, on Clause 1, we propose to introduce a retiring age of 75 for commissioners such as already exists for justices of the peace. Clause 2 deals with the commissioners' clerks. It introduces a retiring age of 70, with extension beyond that age to a limit of 75, if the commissioners so wish. This follows broadly the present practice for justices' clerks, and we are also making provision for the payment for the first time of pensions to the small number of full-time clerks to commissioners. To dispose of the first Part of the Bill, headed "Administration", I take now Clauses 3 and 4. Clause 3 and its associated repeals makes it clear that inspectors or collectors, wherever serving, may act in relation to any part of the country. They may also continue any proceedings, legal or administrative, begun by any other inspector or collector,

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without prejudice, of course, to the right of the courts to require any particular inspector or collector to appear. 392 Clause 4 and Schedule 1 generalise the statutory declarations of secrecy, at present limited in terms to Schedule D. This follows a recommendation of the Royal Commissionand the Clause also requires the same declarations to be made by members of appeal tribunals not at present covered. I should also mention here that there is no reason why these first four Clauses should not come into force one month after the passing of the Act and provision is made accordingly. The remainder of the Bill would come into force on 6th April, next year. The proposals to which I have referred so far have been concerned primarily with the making of assessments and the determination of appeals. I now pass to two Clauses directed to facilitating the collection of settled liabilities. Clause 8 extends the limits on the amounts of Income Tax which the Revenue can recover by local proceedings by enabling recovery action to be taken in certain cases in the county court as an alternative to High Court proceedings. At present, collectors can take local action for recovery by proceedings before magistratesin Scotland, in the sheriff courtbut only where the unpaid debt is less than 50. The 50 figure dates from 1924. Where the unpaid tax is 50 or more recovery proceedings have to be taken in the High Courtin Scotland, in the Court of Sessionwhich involves heavier costs than local proceedings. I think that it is clearly desirable to enable local proceedings to be taken in a wider range of cases, and for this purpose Clause 8 confers on collectors additional rights to take proceedings in the county courtin Scotland, the sheriff court. The ordinary limits on amount in those courts will apply: namely, 400 in England and Wales, 300 in Northern Ireland and 250 in Scotland. The other Clause dealing with collection is Clause 13. This will interest the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) particularly. This extends the existing provisions for what is usually known as a "payment on account" to be made before the determination of an appeal. In strictness, such payments follow at present a decision by the appeal commissioners that part of the tax 393 assessed appears not to be in dispute. In practice, agreement is usually reached without bringing in the commissioners but sometimes the payment on account is not, in fact, paid as promptly as it is agreed,. Where this happens the case must be taken to the commissioners for a formal order, with consequent further delay in collection. This Clause, modelled on the provisions under which the appeal itself can be settled by agreement without a formal order by the commissioners, will enable agreed payments on account to be collected without troubling the commissioners. Other new provisions requiring special mention relate to Northern Ireland cases. These are to be found in Clauses 14 and 15. There are no general commissioners in Northern Ireland; all appeals go in the first instance to the special commissioners. The Northern Ireland taxpayer can, however, in effect, have his appeal against an Income Tax or Profits Tax assessment determined by a local tribunal by requiring a rehearing by the county court judge if dissatisfied with the decision of the special commissioners. This rehearing provision has caused much unnecessary work and has enabled dilatory taxpayers to delay payment. New arrangements have, therefore, been worked out in consultation with the Northern Ireland Government. Under these the Northern Ireland taxpayer will retain his right to go to the county court. This will, however, be not a rehearing but an alternative to the special commissioners, if the taxpayer so elects. Clause 15 also provides for a right of appeal to the courts on a point of law against determination by the county court judge whose determinations at present, on a rehearing, are final. Such an appeal from the county court will go to the Court of Appeal

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in Northern Ireland under the County Courts Appeals Bill (Northern Ireland) 1964, at present before the Northern Ireland Parliament. Provision is, therefore, made in Clause 14 for cases stated by the Special Commissioners in Northern Ireland cases to go to the Court of Appeal also. Those provisions of the Bill which I have not so far mentioned can, I think, be disposed of at this stage quite quickly. Clause 7 provides a single statutory base for the annual returns of income in general use. These are at present issued 394 under the authority of an amalgamation of provisions, some directed to income not taxed at source, others requiring information only in support of claims for allowances. The opportunity has been taken in Clause 9 to set out anew the procedures for making and determining claims to reliefs and allowances, and we hope that Schedule 2, which lists the standard procedure for virtually all claims, will prove helpful. Such changes as are made accord with accepted practice, and they are in no way prejudicial to existing appeal rights or options. Clause 11 and Schedule 3 are required to determine which general commissioners have primary jurisdiction on appeals; that is, to determine the "place of appeal", replacing the present "place of assessment" which ceases to be significant. The rules again preserve all the options at present open to the taxpayer, and new provision is made for transfers of proceedings between bodies of commissioners to be agreed between the parties. Clause 12 is largely a restatement of incidental appeal provisions, but new provision it made for the acceptance of late appeals by the inspector without reference to the commissioners, so authorising what is, in fact, generally accepted practice. Finally, opportunity is taken in the various Clauses and Schedules of clarifying the existing law and of repealing many provisions which are spent or obsolete. As a result, it will be possible to remove about 65 Sections and five Schedules from the Statute Book and to facilitate that future consolidation which I am sure we all wish to see when time permits. I feel quite sure that the general purpose and main proposals in the Bill will commend themselves to hon. Members on both sides of the House, and, certainly, their inclusion in a management Bill will haveI am surethe support of the hon. Member for Sowerby who has on more than one occasion suggestedand often quite stronglythat such a Measure deserved consideration. Administrative matters are perhaps not so exciting as the heady topics we debate on the Finance Bill, and the present 395 administrative arrangements for the Income Tax have served us well for a long time; but I am sure the time has now come to modernise them. A great deal of thought has gone into the proposals in the Bill. I believe that they will give us a sensible and up-to-date code of machinery and procedures for operation. Accordingly, I trust that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading. 4.14 p.m. Mr. Douglas Houghton (Sowerby) I am sure that the whole House will thank the Financial Secretary for his very clear and lucid explanation of the Clauses of the Bill. I wish to acknowledge straight away his kindly reference to my own efforts over many years to get a Bill of this kind. I should have appreciated the honour had the Government asked me to add my name to the Bill, because I have been anxious that reforms of administration should be brought before this House at a time when we were not under the stress of the timetable and the controversial matters which are frequently in the Finance Bill itself. On the face of it, this is very dull stuff. Only those in the business know what an exciting and historic Bill this is. It ends out-of-date and cumbersome procedures and a long-standing and wasteful fiction in Income Tax administration. The Financial

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Secretary made it clear to the House that the Bill is administration. It deals in the main with the machinery of assessment and appeals. It neither imposes additional tax nor gives any relief from tax. All it does is sweep away some of the remaining cobwebs of 1842. It repeals more than it enacts, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, towards the conclusion of his speech, and later I shall be referring to the great waste-paper basket of the Bill, which is Schedule 6. The Financial Secretary harked back to 1920. I hope that the House will bear with me for a few moments while I sketch the history of the Bill. I am sure that the Financial Secretary is right when he says that this will be a non-contentious Bill, but 43 years ago, when a Revenue Bill was first introduced, it was so controversial that the Government withdrew it before the Second Reading. The proceedings on that Bill 396 were an absolute fiasco, because the Government were beaten by the Daily Mail and the General Commissioners for the City of London before they had uttered a single word in this House in defence of the proposals in the Bill. There has never been an occasion, as far as I know, to equal it. Strong forces were gathered behind the preservation of the traditional local administration of the Income Tax. The general commissioners were held out to be the estimable body of gentlemen, and certainly they wereand arewho stood between the tyranny of bureaucracy and the helpless taxpayer; the assessors were men who saw that justice was done; and the collectors held themselves out to be the buffer between the bureaucracy and the taxpayer. Emotions ran high in 1920. The surveyor, as he then wasnow the inspector of taxesthe Treasury watchdog, had his function, and no one doubted it, but neither the House, nor, so it appeared, the country, was then willing for the inspector of taxes to exercise legally the functions which, by force of circumstances, he had come to exercise informally within the procedure of the Income Tax Act. I think that the story of the Bill may be a slight discouragement to those in the House who are calling upon the country to modernise itself and bring itself up-to-date and somewhat of a discouragement to those in the House who would like to see law reform got under way, because my short story will show that the clarion call comes from a Legislature which takes as its own model not the hare, not even the tortoise, but the snail. That is the history of this Bill. We had a Royal Commission in 1920, and Clauses in the Bill are derivatives of recommendations by that Commission. It recommended that all collectors should be appointed by the Board of Inland Revenue and that the general management of collection should be under the Board's control. It recommended that, as soon as administratively possible, all collectors should become civil servants. It recommended that the office of assessor should be abolished and his duties should devolve upon the inspector, and that the functions of general commissioners should be practically confined to 397 appeals. That all sounds commonplace today, and part of it is in the Bill, but it seemed outrageous then. I can only think that the Government did not give way on that Bill except under the strongest pressure. On 22nd February, 1921, the then Leader of the House was asked what he was going to do about the Bill and whether it would be taken on the Floor of the House. He said: No, I shall ask the House to send it upstairs. That is the only hope of passing it. If the House treats it as a contentious measure it will not be proceeded with."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd February, 1921; Vol. 138, c. 760.] And in the event it was not proceeded with. They introduced the Bill on 6th April, 1921a very appropriate date: the first day of the Income Tax year. I looked at that Bill the other day. It proposed to abolish the office of Assessor and the notices to be issued by the Surveyor. It proposed that the power of making assessments

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should go to the Surveyor in the case of Schedules A, B and E. As regards Schedule D, the power to assess was to be put in the hands of the inspector only if any assessment did not exceed the amount returned for assessment, or was computed from accounts furnished by the taxpayer, or did not exceed the amount assessed for the previous year on the same source of profits or income. That was a real strait-waistcoat for the inspector of taxes, but it was in that Bill of 1920 which, apparently, some vested interest and public opinion could not swallow. On 4th May, 1921, the then Leader of the House was asked what was to happen to the Bill. He replied: It is not now proposed to carry the Revenue Bill further this Session" [OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th May, 1921; Vol. 141, c. 1045.] The next relevant entry in the OFFICIAL REPORT is "Bill withdrawn"and that is the last we hear of it. It was sunk without trace, and for years afterwards the ancient procedures and wasteful methods which the Royal Commission in 1920 unanimously declared had "outlived their usefulness" were continued. The inadequate machinery had to be worked by the Inland Revenue. The grand total of time and materials wasted in administering the Income Tax under the old provisions which this House failed to reform 43 years ago must be very 398 great, indeed. I humbly suggest to this House that if that is its record, it is not in a position to lecture other people about getting rid of cumbersome methods, about bringing their organisation up to date, about cutting out things that lead to waste of staff, and all the rest. We have been guilty for 43 years, but I see no blushes on the faces of right hon. and hon. Members opposite. After all, they have been able to do something for the last 12 yearsbut I will not make a party point of this; I will say that successive Governments have failed to bring about the reform They have done some of it piecemeal. Under the stress of war, it was necessary to make drastic changes in the method of assessment of wages and salaries, and a very significant change was made then Mr. R. H. Turton (Thirsk and Malton) I am sure that, as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Gentleman will wish to pay tribute to the fact that this situation has been ended through the Estimates Committee, and the Chairman of Sub-Committee C of the Estimates Committee, having gone into the question and advocated the alteration. Mr. Houghton I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman, but he is rather overtaking my speech. I will pay full tribute to Sub-Committee C of the Estimates Committee but, if the House will bear with me, this is the only entertainment the House will have. All the rest will be had going on individual Clauses, so hon. Members should make the most of this light interlude on the history of the Bill. I shall not weary the House by describing the appointment and swearing in of assessors who no longer assessed, of collectors who could no longer collect, and of general commissioners who had to be persuaded to make and allow assessments they never saw, but that is what has happened in Income Tax administration over these years. It is no wonder that two Royal Commissions paid tribute to the resourcefulness and skill with which the Inland Revenue improvised and circumvented to overcome the impedimenta of a century. It is hard to believe that the withdrawal of that Bill in 1921 meant that 399 the only statutory means of communication between the tax assessors and the taxpayers generally was the church door noticeand that was only one stage removed from the town crier. Assessors nailed these notices on church doors right up to 1939. In 1941, through the initiative of the agreeable, and subsequently notorious, Guy Burgesswho

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died in Moscow just recentlythe first radio talk on Income Tax was given, and it fell to me to give it, in a programme called, if I may say so without advertising, "Can I help you?". That is still a popular feature of our sound radio, and I am glad still to be in it. That was a break-through into the twentieth century but, of course, the machinery of Income Tax could not stand still even though the House had failed to reform it by statutory means. Collectors had to be absorbed into the establishment. It took 11 years after the dropping of the 1921 Bill to embark on the first Measure of centralisation. The old service was by then near breakdown. Collectors appointed by local commissioners were frequently incapable of doing the job properly, large sums of money were passing through their hands, and the Public Accounts Committee and the Comptroller and Auditor General drew attention to the increasing amount of all faults and muddle. The Government had to act, as they did in 1931. But, true to tradition, in 1952 this House passed the Income Tax Act, a consolidation Measure, which, in the Fourth Schedule, reaffirmed the power of general commissioners to pursue defaulting collectors beyond the grave. I quote from paragraph 6(1) of the Fourth Schedule of the Act of 1952not of 1852, but of 1952: If a collector fails to pay any tax or moneys received by him as collector, and detains in his hand, and does not pay or account for the same in manner directed by this Act, the General Commissioners, in their respective divisions, may seize and secure the freehold estate and all other estate, both real and personal, belonging to him or which has descended or come into the possession of his heirs, executors, administrators or assigns, wheresoever the same can be discovered and found. That was the power given to general commissioners of Income Tax as recently as 1952. When I asked how many collectors were then in a position to be pursued beyond the grave, the 400 answer was. I think, one. This present Bill now tumbles the whole lot into limbo. The Royal Commission of 1955 had a go at this business, too, and dealt with it all in Chapter 31 of its Report. Six years later, the Estimates Committee had a go and, as the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) has just said, the hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary, as Chairman of Sub-Committee C, heard all the evidence, produced an admirable Report, and pursued the recommendations with a doggedness that was quite reassuring. The Sub-Committee put the Board of Inland Revenue on the spotI hope that the hon. Gentleman is still keeping the Board there. As he has said, the proposals in this Bill emanated from the Report of the Estimates Committee. So here we are, in the year 1964; we complete the story of 43 years of galloping reformand arrive, breathless, at the Second Reading of this Bill. That is the story. Indeed, I believe that we only get the Bill now because, the Government having postponed the General Election, there is a little lull in the legislative programme and the Bill has been pulled out of the pigeon-holethough I am glad that it has been. I am sure that the House will welcome it. I can assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that the whole of the Inland Revenue Department will welcome it, not because its staffs are thirsting for more power, or thirsting to exercise the responsibilities of bureaucracy any more intensively than in the past, but because it will facilitate their work. For an inspector to be able to make an assessment at any time, especially if it has been agreed with the taxpayer, to clinch the thing, get it settled and the money paid, will surely be good business, instead of waiting for the general commissioners to raise additional assessments, with all the apparatus and paraphernalia connected therewith, leading often to much delay and to the possibility of losing the money in the end. The hon. Gentleman referred to almost all the Clauses, and I was grateful to him for explaining Clause 1 which gives power to change the number and the boundaries of

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divisions. That stems directly from the Report of the Royal Commission of 1920. The method of 401 appointment of general commissioners comes partly from paragraph 348 of the 1920 Royal Commission and partly from paragraph 958 of the Radcliffe Commission of 1955. It now completes the process which was begun in the Tribunals and Inquiries Act, 1958, when, as the hon. Gentleman has explained, certain exceptions from appointment by the Lord Chancellor were then accepted by the House, and I am very glad to hear that a clean sweep can be made by agreement with all those concerned. That is a good thing. Clause 2 is welcome because it deals with the position of many public servants who are full-time, and who give long and faithful service, but who have not been provided with any superannuation arrangements. They are not civil servants, and it is right that they should continue not to be civil servants. They are servants of the commissioners, who, in their capacity as the appellant body, will want to have a clerk who can advise them independently without owing any allegiance whatever to the Inland Revenue Department. Clause 4 deals with declarations of secrecy which came under some criticism in paragraph 949 of the Radcliffe Report. There were some weaknesses in the declarations that had been required under the existing law. The new proposals will make them more comprehensive. Clause 5 is the major Clause and the main reform of the Bill. It transfers to inspectors and to the Board of Inland Revenue the power of making assessments. The first part implements the recommendations of the Radcliffe Committee, paragraph 943, and the second part implements paragraph 950. I was very glad to hear the hon. Gentleman say, because I was going to ask him, that Clause 5 paves the way to decentralisation of Surtax. The hon. Gentleman was Chairman of Sub-Committee C of the Estimates Committee, which had all the evidence from the Inland Revenue Department, the Income Tax Payers' Society, the Association of Certified and Corporate Accountants, the Federation of British Industries and staff associations and which showed a considerable weight of opinion in favour of decentralisation of Surtax. The Inland Revenue was a little 402 coy about it. It pleaded overwork. which is nothing new for the Inland Revenueit is always suffering from itand it begged for a little more time to consider what it should do. For the moment, I think that we can be content that it is now possible for that to be done without fresh legislation. The Financial Secretary was right when he said that it had to be considered as a matter of administration in all its aspects. I do not think that we need any longer concern ourselves with any feelings of sensitiveness of the Surtax-payer about having his affairs dealt with by the special commissioners and not by the general commissioners. That was certainly in the matter to begin with, but I do not think these considerations weigh any longer. It is now a question of economy and efficiency of administration. I stall not detain the House by expressing any judgment on that matter. I would only permit myself to say that I am sure that the Financial Secretary will agree that there is a good deal of inter-communication between district officers and the special commissioners at present, and a very large amount of that would be saved. There are factors on the other side. I suppose that I had better say outright that I am a decentraliser and have been for years. I think that it makes sense, and I hope that further examination will prove that that is a wise thing to do. The Financial Secretary pointed out that Clause 6 qualifies the right of the inspector to make an assessment on his own when it is out of time on grounds of fraud, wilful default or neglect. Then he has to get a general or a special commissioner to assent to

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the making of the assessment which is out of time in those conditions. I think that that is a reasonable safeguard to the taxpayer. The inspector is then moving perhaps into a contentious field where a taxpayer may feel strongly about something and where tensions may develop rather more than at another time, but I think that for the inspector to get the support of an independent person is a reasonable safeguard. Clause 8 is of importance because it deals with the power of recovery. It has been absurd that the recovery of unpaid Income Tax, not recoverable by 403 distraint, could be dealt with only by summary proceedings for amounts up to 50 and that recovery of amounts over 50 had to be taken through the High Court. It was quite fantastic. No wonder the so-called assessment division of the Inland Revenue has files years old because it cannot take proceedings for one reason or another, and I hope that this will clear up a lot of arrears which, under the existing system, have unavoidably accumulated. In being able to go to the county court for up to 400 in England and Wales, 300 in Northern Ireland and 250 in ScotlandI do not know why there is this difference, but that has nothing to do with the casewe are adopting the limits provided for under the county courts procedure, which is right, and certainly no attempt should be made to overstep them in the interests of the Inland Revenue. Clause 10 is the counterpart to Clause 6 in relation to Profits Tax. Clause 13 deals with the collection of the undisputed portion of an assessment which the taxpayer is questioning. The Financial Secretary described the existing procedure. On the face of it, it appears that this weakens a little the power of the Inland Revenue to recover the undisputed portion of the outstanding tax. As I see it, the provisions of the Clause apply only in the event of agreement being reached between the taxpayer and the Inland Revenue. If agreement is reached on the undisputed portion then that portion can be collected and payment can be enforced, but under Clause 13(2) it seems that the taxpayer is given 30 days from the date of reaching agreement to withdraw from it. He has a month to think it over after reaching agreement. If he decides that he would rather not, or his advisers suggest that he should not, continue, he can repudiate and only thereafter is he bound by the agreement reached. If there is no agreement, it looks as though there is no means of enforcing payment on the undisputed portion of the assessment. We shall have to examine this a little more closely in Committee. I am not at the moment pressing for anything. I merely want clarity on this. We can conceive of circumstances in which the disputed portion of the assess- 404 ment is the smaller pair, so that by disputing the pence the taxpayer can delay payment of the pounds, and only if he reaches agreement on the undisputed portion is he bound to pay anything at all till the appeal is settled. I think that the House will wish to be assured that taxpayers cannot play ducks and drakes and that if they want time to pay they should go to the collector for it in the proper way and not get it by methods of this kind. In parentheses, recalling that the Financial Secretary said that I would be interested in Clause 13, I wish to make clear that I do not owe anybody anything. There is no dispute on any part of my assessment. My interest in this matter is purely academic or administrative. I can hardly contain my enthusiasm for the Bill and my pleasure at seeing it after all these years. I congratulate the Financial Secretary on being the ministerial agency for its introduction. It must give him great satisfaction to be able to do it, especially after all his work through the many sittings of Sub-Committee C of the Estimates Committee. I am sure that the whole House will give this new and bold jump into the Britain of tomorrow a warm welcome. This is modernisation. This is creating a Britain which is up to date. On these grounds alone we should welcome the Bill.

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********************************************************************** CONDUCT OF THE HOME SECRETARY HC Deb 31 October 1966 vol 735 cc115-70 115 7.17 p.m. Mr. Quintin Hogg (St. Marylebone) I beg to move, That this House deplores the refusal of the Secretary of State for the Home Department to set up a specific inquiry to report as a matter of urgency on the escape of George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Mr. Speaker Before we proceed, may I inform the House that three Front Benchers, four Privy Councillors and a number of back benchers wish to take part in this debate, which is a comparatively short one. Mr. Hogg I must say at the outset that we on this side think it a pity that, contrary to all the recent precedents which we have been able to discover, at least those since the summer of 1963, the Home Secretary does not propose to rise in his place at the beginning of the debate to answer what is said and leave a senior colleague, perhaps the Prime Minister, to defend his conduct at the end. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman, no less than I have, has reflected more than once upon the exchange of opinions which took place in the House last Monday afternoon. The more I reflect upon this exchange, the more convinced I become that the action taken by Her Majesty's Government over the Blake case has been not merely inadequate but inappropriate. I say "by Her Majesty's Government" advisedly. The target of this Motion of censure is, of course, the right hon. Gentleman because what has happened happened within his Department and because he was the Minister who made the statement last Monday to which we take exception. But it would be nave for anyone acquainted with the way in which government works not to realise from the start that a statement of this character could not have been made by the right hon. Gentleman if he had not concerted it at least with the Prime Minister and with other senior colleagues in the Cabinet. Therefore, what has been done has been done by Her Majesty's Government. The general problem of prison security has caused anxiety, I suppose, on all 116 sides of the House in recent years, especially since the summer of 1964, when one of the train robbers broke out of Birmingham Prison, an occasion which established almost for the first time in our prison history that our prisons, which had been constructed to keep people in, were not in future to be immune from organised rescue attempts from outside. Such escapes constitute a serious problem for any Government to consider. There were over 520 escapes of all sorts in the calendar year 1964 and over 520 escapes of all sorts in the calendar year 1965. The Home Secretary has told us, I think, that up to 11th June this year there were 200 escapes of all sorts. The crude figures do not reflect the seriousness of some of the escapes, rescued and organised from outside as a result of criminal conspiracy. Therefore, there can be no dispute on either side of the House that the Home Secretary was quite correct when he considered that the general problem of prison security constituted a serious question for us all. The more I think about this problem, however, the more I am convinced that what is needed to solve the general problem of prison security is not an investigation under an eminent personage to report, to use the right hon. Gentleman's own words, in a few months, but a programme of action operating, as all programmes should operate, under the responsible Minister and not under a close relative of the Royal Family. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]

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My reason for that conclusion is that I should be astonished Mr. Leo Abse (Pontypool) On a point of order. Is it not quite improper, Mr. Speaker, for any reference to be made to the Royal Family, particularly in a way which by implication is clearly depreciatory? Mr. Speaker If there had been any depreciation in the reference, I would have called the right hon. and learned Gentleman to order. Mr. Hogg The reason for my conclusion is that I should be astonished if the Home Secretary were not already well aware, after nearly a year in office, of what is needed to be done. If he does remain ignorant, which I do not suppose 117 or suggest, I doubt whether his Department is ignorant. That this is so appears plainly from what has been done since Blake's escape. Now that the horse has been stolen, stable doors are swinging ponderously to all over the nation. Guard dogs have mysteriously appeared. Prisoners have been switched, although, curiously enough, potential rescuers have been told where each is going. Watch towers have been springing up like mushrooms. It is possible that the Home Secretary has even considered the unlovely but not wholly inappropriate idea of putting a concertina of Dannert wire over some of the walls. One is almost tempted to think that if some of this had been done at any time during the last two years, Mr. Blake would still be inside. What is needed, therefore, to improve the general pattern of security is a programme of action under the Minister and not an investigation under Lord Mountbatten. In the judgment of my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself, what needs an immediate and specific investigation is not the general pattern of the security of those still inside, but the particular question of how and why Blake has been allowed to escape. May I say here and now, in view of something which fell from the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse), that whatever anyone else may think I mean no discourtesy whatever to Lord Mount-batten. I acknowledge his public spirit, and I am sure that the whole House will acknowledge his public spirit, in undertaking what must be an onerous and, perhaps not unlikely, disagreeable and exacting task. But the more I think[HON. MEMBERS: "When?"]about the nature of the inquiry [Interruption.]and I sometimes think that hon. Members opposite might do some thinking, toothe more I am convinced The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins) May I put one point to the right hon. and learned Gentleman before he leaves the last point which he has been making? In his last question to me last Monday, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that there were two separate issues: The first is the general question of security in the prison service, for which the right hon. Gentleman has, quite rightly, appointed a 118 general inquiry".[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th October, 1966; Vol. 734, c. 655.] Why has the right hon. and learned Gentleman changed his mind? Mr. Hogg The right hon. Gentleman is mistaken. What I am saying now is the same thing. I am saying that what is required to solve the general problem is a programme of action, and what requires an inquiry is the specific question of Blake. The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Richard Crossman) That is not what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said last Monday. Mr. Hogg

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I am sure that that is a conclusive and important observation. The right hon. Gentleman might care to reflect that, save for a brief moment, of which his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is aware, I had no prior notice whatever of what the Home Secretary was to say. One of the very reasons why it becomes necessary to reopen a matter of this importance in debate is so that the whole question can be ventilated in the light of the reflections of the last six days. The more I reflect upon it, the more certain I become that the Mountbatten inquiry was calculated, and by the Prime Minister almost certainly designed, to shroud under the billows of smoke which will be engendered in the next few months The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson) Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman take it from me that, while I of course accept full responsibility, as we all do, for this, it was my right hon. Friend who decided that Lord Mountbatten was the right choice and I concurred with it? Mr. Hogg Well, I am glad exactly to know the division of responsibility in this matter, and, of course, I shall accept what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, but it is a curious reflection upon how experience of office sometimes develops[Interruption.] sometimes develops, that on 10th May, 1965[Interruption.] Mr. Speaker Order. I hope the House will control itself. 119 Mr. Hogg that on 10th May, 1965, the right hon. Gentleman, in answer to a Question from this side of the House, used these words about security matters, in describing his own responsibility as Prime Minister. He said that there was a special responsibility on the Prime Minister in such matters, and that it simply was not good enough once the horse has bolted to have a high-level inquiry six months after to see what was wrong. And since the right hon. Gentleman's memory is so good he will immediately recall to the House that that quotation is to be found in column 42 of HANSARD of 10th May, 1965. I remember the context very well, and we are going on to it. But the object of this exercise is to shroud, under billows of smoke engendered by a public inquiry, the sharp outlines of a national scandal which emerged starkly as the result of a particular occurrence. Now George Blake was, at the time of the right hon. Gentleman's appointment and of the appointment of the Government in October, 1964, probably the most important single prisoner we had in Her Majesty's prisons. An Hon. Member Why were you not there? Mr. Hogg I am perfectly sure that the public will notice the frivolous attitude of hon. Gentlemen opposite, but I have been too long in this House[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] to be deterred by jeers and frivolity, and I notice that right hon. Gentlemen are not altogether well comforted by the attitude of their supporters. Blake had been sentenced to the appalling total of 42 years in prison. His crimes had related to matters so sensitive that virtually the whole trial was in camera. In any other country, or almost any other country, as the Lord Chief Justice reminded him at the time of his sentence, he would have paid for what he had done with his life, without question, and certainly without mercy, either in the United States of America or in Soviet Russia. I do not pause to examine the full extent to which he may be a national danger. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister made a statement about 120 that in answer to a

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Private Notice Question in the House, and, of course, I accept without question, on the narrow matter to which the Private Notice Question related, that what the right hon. Gentleman said was correct, and I should be doing no service either to the House or to national security were I to pretend the contrary, but surely it is rather innocent to believe that a dedicated enemy of this country who has spent 10 years or more in the security services can be of no use at all, if he takes refuge behind the Iron Curtain, either as to matters of consultation or organisation, on the matters on which he had been previously employed, or about the methods of interrogation to which he was subjected since he was arrested, and which must have told him a great deal about methods of interrogation employed by the counter-espionage service, and which might be of the highest possible use in training agents from the other side. Incidentally, surely a far more important question even than that, is the question of moraleboth of the security services of the Communist Powers, which must have been greatly enhanced by Blake's rescue, and of our own security services, when they reflect on what Blake has done and what has now become of him. Clearly, this is not a laughing matter. The escape of such a prisoner as this delivered a swingeing blow at the national prestige of this country, at a time when this country cannot afford very well further blows to its national prestige, and a serious setback to the international standing of the security forces of our allies; and we think this is something which cannot be erased without a particular inquiry. The right hon. Gentleman in his statement last Monday reflected upon the fact that Blake had been placed in Wormwood Scrubs in 1961 when Lord Butler was Home Secretary, and from the jeering which greeted this announcement from the benches opposite one would have thought that disposed of the entire matter. I wonder whether the public will think the same. I wonder whether the public will think that it is a defence in a Government who have been more than two years in office Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne) Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way? 121 Mr. Hogg Not at the momentand who got in under the precise promise that they were going to make all things new, that they had, on this crucial matter, left things exactly as they were. I wonder whether the public will think that the Opposition ought to be deterred from doing their duty to subject the Front Bench to the necessary scrutiny of criticism, if they allowed themselves to be deterred by the fact, if it was a fact Mr. Silverman rose Hon. Members Sit down. Mr. Silverman rose Mr. Hogg No. I will not give way at the moment. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] Because I am addressing myself to the Front Bench opposite. I wonder whether the country would think that we as an Opposition would be doing our duty to subject the Front Bench opposite to the scrutiny of criticism in the public interest if we allowed ourselves to be deterred by the fact, if it be a fact, that a former colleague had been guilty of an error of judgment? But I doubt whether, on mature reflection, the right hon. Gentleman will consider that what he said to the House on Monday last reflected the whole of the information in his own possession or really constituted a candid admission of all he knew. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] The right hon. Gentleman knowsperhaps he will confirm

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whether he knows or not, but I assert that he knowsthat in May, 1964, there was brought to the Home Office, while Mr. Brooke was Home Secretary, the report of an elaborate plan to rescue Blake, and on the instructions of the then Home Secretary the Home Office was instructed that, true or false, this report must be taken extremely seriously, the more seriously as by that time Lonsdale had been exchanged; and he raised the questionand the question was raised, to which I shall revert in a moment as to whether Blake should not be moved to another prison. He also, so I am informed, instituted special precautions and security measures against Blake which, had they still been in force in October, 1966, would certainly have prevented the escape. I hope that it will not be thought that I want to make an unfair point. I recognise 122 that special security precautions involving a constant watch cannot be continued indefinitely either from the point of view of the necessities of the prison service or from that of simple humanity to a prisoner. But if and when they were relaxedand the House is entitled to know when they were relaxedin the light of the question which has been raised as to whether Blake ought to remain in Wormwood Scrubs, surely that should have led the right hon. Gentleman or his predecessor to move him. Even that is not the whole story which the right hon. Gentleman did not tell us last Monday. In August, 1964, WilsonI mean, the train robberescaped from a Birmingham prison. Again, that was considered by the Home Secretary of the day, and again he instructed his office that it was clear that, from that moment of history, organised rescue attempts by professional criminals would have to be guarded against from without. He recommended what had not then been donebecause, up to that point, prisons had mainly been places to keep people insidethe strengthening of Durham, Parkhurst and Leicester to be secure against it. That has now been done but, when it was done, why was it not considered that Blake should be transferred to a new security wing. If he had been transferred to one of those new security blocks, there is little doubt that he would still be inside it now. Instead of being kept in an ordinary prison 20 yards from a public street and 20 minutes from London Airport and allowed, we read, the facilities of a VHF radio and coffee mornings, why was that not done? In addition, Mr. Brooke then set up a working party to draw up plans immediately for a special security establishment, which has since been located at Albany but which has not yet been completed under the present Government. In addition to that, the Home Secretary of the day drew the special attention of his Department to the danger of Blake escaping after he had learned of the escape of Wilson. He pointed out that if Blake were to escape, it would be as disastrous as or more disastrous than if one of the other train robbers were to escape. The right hon. Gentleman has not told us another fact. In October, 1964, within a fortnight of taking office, the Labour Government who were going to 123 be so peculiarly careful about matters of security and promised and boasted that they would be, received a fresh report from Birmingham Prison which indicated the method of Wilson's escape. A request was thereupon made by the then Home Secretary that a special officer with security experience should be appointed forthwith to act as a security adviser throughout the prisons of the land as to what further measures were necessary. It was not done for over a year. It was not done until another train robber escaped. It was not done until the end of 1965, and then, lackadaisically, fecklessly and at last, Lord Stow Hill appointed not a security adviser but a retired Metropolitan Police superintendent. One wonders what he has been doing since December, 1965. Did he go to the Scrubs? Did he make a report upon it? Did he tell the right hon. Gentleman that within 20 yards of a public street, within 20 minutes of London Airport and at a point at

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which a bold and successful escape had already taken place, there was in custody the most important State prisoner of the time? Did the right hon. Gentleman know it? It is no good trying to cower behind Lord Butler's skirts when those are the facts. Blake has escaped, just as Mr. Brooke warned the Home Office that he might escape. It has been disastrous, more disastrous than any of the escapes of the train robbers. Even from the meagre information that we got last Monday certain unalterable facts have begun to emerge. He was rescued from without as a result of a conspiracy in which there must have been a considerable number of participants, involving an elaborate plan, the expenditure of large sums of money, the importation of sophisticated material and, for the purpose of concerting plans and securing co-operation over quite a period of time, a freedom of communication between the outside and the prisoner. We see that it is even suggested that those communications were effected by wireless. It was a conspiracy, moreover, involving an escape vehicle, an escape route and perhaps rehearsals on the part of the conspirators, a getaway plan, perhaps a temporary hideout and an ultimate destination. 124 Those are the facts which have emerged even from the meagre information that we have been given by the Home Secretary. They are facts which demand a short, sharp, brisk inquiry, resulting in criminal prosecutions, if necessary, and the publication of such conclusions as are arrived at which do not damage security. It should be completed within weeks rather than months, as the right hon. Gentleman told us on Monday. It should be empowered to summon witnesses, because one can well understand that some of the potential informants might be reluctant to give evidence, and to compel the production of documents. Finally, it should be headed by a man with some professional experience of eliciting facts and marshalling evidence and not by one of the most eminent subjects of the Crown. Surely that is what is wanted. Instead, we have a general inquiry which will take months, or so the right hon. Gentleman told us last Monday, under this eminent person who has not the technical expertise and has not been afforded by the right hon. Gentleman the rather miserable powers accorded by his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to the prospective Ombudsman. That is what we have been given. Is it to be wondered that we were not wholly satisfied with what the right hon. Gentleman had to tell us the other day? Let me remind the House of what the right hon. Gentleman said. He gave us the information then at his disposal about the actual escape. He gave us the proposalsor the fact that he was about to take action to remedy the want of securitywhich, so far as they have been put into force, might have been put into force at any time in the last two years, and most certainly would have been if Mr. Henry Brooke's suggestion in October, 1964, had been acted upon properly. Lastly, as the pice de rsistance, the right hon. Gentleman said: Second, I believe that an independent inquiry into prison security is now called for. I have asked Lord Mountbatten to head such an inquiry and he has most generously agreed to undertake this important task. I hope that his report will be available in a few months. I at once challenged the right hon. Gentleman's judgment in this matter. I said: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider a fuller report into the particular case to which 125 the Question relates, since an escape of a prisoner of this kind is a matter which must necessarily cause widespread concern quite outside the ordinary questions of security in the prison service. The right hon. Gentleman, as he was entitled to do, turned me down flat. He said: But it will certainly be perfectly competent for the inquiry to look into the circumstances of this particular escape and to report anything which it thinks should be reported on that. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition then pressed the right hon. Gentleman and asked him to make it a specific instruction to Lord

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Mountbatten, and the right hon. Gentleman turned him down flat, too. He said: But what I think is required at present is an inquiry into our prison security as a whole. I do not think " lest there be any doubt about his attitude it would have been in any way appropriate to ask Lord Mountbatten to conduct an inquiry into a particular escape on Saturday evening. That is the issue between us. I put it to the right hon. Gentleman again, and he answered me a little less flat footedly than before. I asked him to reconsider his attitude about a particular inquiry, and the right hon. Gentleman was quite right, because these are far too serious matters to make false points, to remind me that I said: Will not the Home Secretary give us an assurance that there will be a specific investigation, with a report, into this specific instance, either independently of or as an integral part of the Mountbatten inquiry?". The right hon. Gentleman then said: This can certainly be done, and, I hope, will be done, as an integral part of the inquiry."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th October, 1966; Vol. 734, cc. 65055.] I had at one time thought that the right hon. Gentleman was moving this way, but when hon. Members afterwards said, "Order it" he did not order it, and it is clear that although there may be attempts, as there nearly always are in the case of the right hon. Gentleman, to take into account seriously made criticisms of his conduct, the gulf between us remains. It remained at the end of Question Time on Monday, and it remained after he had defined the terms of reference and released them to the Press. We want a specific inquiry of the kind that I have indicated into the 126 stark outlines of a particular national scandal. The right hon. Gentleman is offering a general inquiry into recent escapes, reporting, so he told us, after a few months into what has gone wrong. That leads me to the question of responsibility for the whole matter. Of course the Home Secretary is the constitutional target for our Motion, and I think it is only honourable of him to have shouldered that responsibility without qualification. He is of course responsible for the prison service. He is responsible for the police force which should prevent crime and should set in motion perhaps more vigorous measures to recapture the criminal. Also, as the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister reminded us on 10th May, he has the responsibility for the operation of the security services as well as the responsibility for the police. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman has rightly been selected as, and has accepted the rle of, the target for a Motion of Censure. But, as the Prime Minister frankly accepted at the beginning of this debate, the responsibility in this case is not the sole responsibility of the right hon. Gentleman. It is the responsibility of the Government of which the Prime Minister is the head. Mr. A. Woodburn (Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire) To use the right hon. and learned Gentleman's analogy, is not the issue here that the right hon. and learned Gentleman wants an examination into one of the stable doors, and not an examination into all the stable doors? Mr. Hogg I want the horse to be found. The Prime Minister, in the speech to which I referred at the beginning of my remarks, after defining the rles of individual Ministers and then of the Home Secretary, said: In addition to this, the Prime Minister has a very special responsibility as head of the security services. I have taken certain dispositions, certain action to make sure that I am kept fully informed of everything that I feel can possibly involve any security risk " Has he? because" he went on to say it is not enough once the horse has bolted to have a high-level inquiry six months later to see what was wrong. 127 And he spelt it out: It is the duty of the Prime Minister to see that he is so informed about these matters that he can take immediate action and close that door and any other doors which may be open."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th May, 1965; Vol. 712, c. 423.] I realise

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that in the Blake matter the right hon. Gentleman is largely shouldering the blame for other persons. Behind the Home Secretary is the Prime Minister, and possibly also the even more coy figure of the Paymaster-General. I am sorry for the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, but I cannot help that the rules of Ministerial responsibility in this country are harsh, and sometimes operate cruelly. If the right hon. Gentleman feels that he cannot take the blame for his colleagues, he has one course open to him, but so long as he remains in office he must recognise that what has happened has happened altogether within his own Department. There has been a great lapse of security within his Department. The measures which he has taken to put things right confuse two entirely separate issues, and do not carry the confidence of the country. But what are we to say about the Prime Minister? There he sits, peeping out from behind his colleagues' skirts, unwilling to take his place on the firing step when his colleague to his right is exposed and to shot and shell. One of the most disagreeable features of public life in recent years was the sustained, vindictive, and if I might borrow a phrase, politically motivated attack mounted upon the then Home Secretary, Mr. Henry Brooke, by the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, and the present Paymaster-General. I more than ever regret that it was the Home Secretary that we have had to attack tonight, because he was an honourable exception to what I shall always look upon as one of the basest features of Labour opposition. I want to quote once more the words which the present Foreign Secretary uttered of Mr. Henry Brookeas he then wasafter the first of the escapes, which was the Wilson escape from a Birmingham prison in 1964. Referring to a whole series of episodes amounting to nothing in comparison to that to which the right hon. Gentleman has exposed the country, he said: Just a few years ago almost any one of these messes would have been regarded as 128 sufficient of a scandal for the Minister to take personal responsibility. That would have meant the offer of his resignation. But not so with the right hon. Gentleman; still less so with the Prime Minister, the man whose bungling incompetence in almost every field of policyequalled only by his almost terrifying conceithas brought our once proud country in shame to her knees in so many things. 8.1 p.m. Mr. Patrick Gordon Walker (Leyton) I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) adopted the tone he did tonight. On Monday last it seemed that he was taking a much more politic and temperate line than his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, but tonight he not only made a very long speech for this short debate; he resorted to extraordinarily farfetched metaphor to pad out a very weak and poor case. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he intended no discourtesy to Lord Mountbatten, but he contrived on at least three occasions to make such discourteous reflections upon him. He went so far as to imply that Lord Mountbatten is the sort of man from whom things can be shroudedthis man of great vigour and energy who has always been ruthless though fair in any inquiries that he has made. Remmebreing that he has three very able assessors to help him I thought that it was an extremely unworthy slur upon him. Then, in the last words of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's speech, we discovered what it was all about. This was to be a covert attack, under the guise of a Motion of censureto which the right hon. and learned Gentleman never referredupon the Home Secretary, who is one of the best men that has ever presided over the Home Office. That is the motive behind the Motion.

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The escape of Blake is a very grave and disturbing affair, but it is not the issue that is before us tonight. The issue chosen by the Opposition concerns the method of inquiry into Blake's escape. The right hon. and learned Gentleman was very careful not to tell us about the terms of reference of the Mountbatten inquiry, because those terms of reference completely destroy the entire basis of the 129 Motion before the House. The terms of reference are To inquire into recent prison escapes, with particular reference to that of George Blake, and to make recommendations for the improvement of prison security". Directly those terms of reference were made known, the Political Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, last Tuesday, said of the terms of reference: They meet the point repeatedly made by Mr. Heath" who is now leaving us and Mr. Hogg from the Opposition Front Bench yesterday, that the Blake affair should be the subject of special investigation. That was just before the Motion of censure was put down. The terms of reference exactly meet the point made on Monday by the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone, when he asked for an inquiry either independently or as an integral part of the Mountbatten inquiry."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th October, 1966; Vol. 734, c. 655.] This is precisely what the right hon. and learned Gentleman was asking for last Mondayso precisely that he had to seek refuge tonight in a piece of hot, coloured verbiage. It is clear that the right hon. Gentleman had rather a bad conscience about having to put down this Motion. There was an obviously inspired report in the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday last, written by its Political Correspondenta man of known integrity who would not have published such a story save on the highest authority. He said that the terms of reference issued from the Home Office some hours later than the Motion was put down. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition obviously wanted to give the impression that he and his right hon. Friends did not know anything about the terms of reference, but it is demonstrable that they must have known hours before they put down the Motion. I have looked up the times when these various things appeared on the tape. On the Press Association General News Service tape the terms of reference appeared at 6.55 p.m. one hour and thirteen minutes before the censure Motion appeared upon the tape. Mr. Hogg The right hon. Gentleman is suggesting the precise contrary of the fact. I not only did not desire to pretend 130 that the terms of reference were preceded by the Motion of censure; I expressly said that the Motion of censure was designed to object, among other things, to the terms of reference. Mr. Gordon Walker The Political Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph would not have published this story unless there had been some very strong informationI am not accusing the right hon. and learned Gentleman himselffrom whoever it is whose job it was to convey these things to the Daily Telegraph. For a good hour or more before the Motion was placed upon the Order Paper right hon. and learned Gentlemen must have known that the Home Secretary had given themand had published that he had given themexactly what they were asking for. Therefore, the question arises: why was this Motion put down after the terms of reference were known? The reasons are simple. The Leader of the Opposition committed himself rashly and too far last Monday and, like the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself tonightI regret to sayhe was determined to extract any little party capital that he possibly could out of the situation. If Conservatives are tempted to make party capital out of this they should remember the key dates. Blake was convicted on 31st May and was then put into Wormwood Scrubbs,

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which is 20 yards from the street and a few miles from London Airport. In October, 1961, he was taken off the escape list. I do not complain about this; it was done after due care and consideration and, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said on Monday, after discussions with the security services. It was a decision taken after all thought and care had been given to the question. Perhaps Blake should have been moved during the last two years, but it does not lie in Conservative mouthsleast of all in the mouths of right hon. Gentlemen oppositeto say so, because that would be to ask us to alter arrangements made after all due care and consideration and calculation by the previous Administration. I should like to raise very briefly a point about a remark made on Monday by the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), of which I have given him 131 notice. He made a reference to the police being already pretty demoralised by the right hon. Gentleman."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th October, 1966; Vol. 734, c. 653.] The right hon. Gentleman was referring to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. For the right hon. Gentleman to say that, with his known views on hanging, and so on, was the clear implication that the failure to alter the law in this respect was demoralising the police. This is very dangerous and irresponsible doctrine. The law on hanging is not a matter for the Government. The law was carried on a free vote in the House. What the right hon. Gentleman said was an unworthy slur on the police. All of us have a duty to stand by the police in their hard, arduous and often dangerous duties. But the police also have a duty, which they fully recognise and carry out, to accept the law of the land laid down by Act of Parliament. After all, that is the basis of their activity as a law-enforcing organisation. I should like briefly to return to the main issue. Whether or not there should be an interim report, which seemed to be one of the points which the right hon. and learned Gentleman made in the midst of his turgid remarks, must by all precedent, be left to the chairman of the inquiry. This was the case in all committees of inquiry set up by the Opposition when they were in office. It is the accepted precedent. A chairman cannot decide in this or other matters whether to produce an interim report until he has begun his inquiry. I do not doubt that Lord Mountbatten will start straightaway going into the Blake escape, and will have to decide whether it is proper and possible to separate this from the other matters and make an interim report. According to all precedent, this should be left to the chairman. Mr. Hogg The right hon. Gentleman is quite inadvertently misrepresenting my position. I have never asked for an interim report. I and the Motion both ask for a special inquiry. Mr. Gordon Walker On Monday, the right hon. and learned Gentleman asked for a special inquiry as an integral part of the Mountbatten inquiry. If that is 132 all he wants, I do not know why he made such a long speech today. When we have the report or reportswe do not know whether there will be an interim reportit will be right to have a searching debate in the House into the whole question of prison security and the Blake escape. What is wrong is to spend the time of the House of Commons on this squalid, pointless Motion, which has been primarily produced for covert reasons to attack my right hon. Friend and partly for party reasons. It is an abuse of the right of the Opposition to demand time to debate a Motion of censure on a Minister of the Crown. The Motion should be withdrawn. If it is not withdrawn, it should be resoundingly and scornfully rejected. 8.14 p.m. Mr. Duncan Sandys (Streatham)

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The right hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Gordon Walker) criticised me for referring to the demoralising effect of the Home Secretary's attitude to crime and punishment. I do not believe that anything I said was either untrue or unfair. Have we not good reason to be worried when we read that the Home Secretary has been booed and jeered at by the police and that the prison warders are threatening to go slow as a protest against his decisions? I am not commending these deplorable occurrences[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Of course I am not. But do they not show the extent to which the Home Secretary has strained the loyalty and weakened the morale of the police and prison services, who feel very badly let down? Mr. Ben Whitaker (Hampstead) On a point of order. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman is under a misapprehension about which Motion we are discussing. Mr. Hogg Further to that point of order. I noticed that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, allowed the right hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Gordon Walker) to make the attack on my right hon. Friend. I imagine that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Sydney Irving) I have not heard anything out of order from the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys). 133 Mr. Sandys Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was not proposing to pursue that point further. I consider that, by his reluctance to hold a proper type of inquiry into Blake's escape, the Home Secretary has further undermined general confidence. Of course, I welcomed his decision to institute a comprehensive study into the problems of prison security. In fact I asked for it even before the right hon. Gentleman made his statement. Having worked closely for several years with Lord Mountbatten in the Ministry of Defence, I appreciate his great abilities. I am perfectly sure that he will carry out this general review into the broad problems of prison security with the utmost thoroughness and efficiency and that he will produce a valuable report which will contain constructive and useful recommendations. But the investigation into the circumstances of Blake's escape and the opportionment of responsibility is quite a different kind of inquiry and should have been kept entirely separate. It is more in the nature of a tribunal. It will have to cross-examine witnesses, weigh evidence and pronounce opinions which will affect the reputations and careers of officials in the Home Office and prison service. I am sure that Lord Mountbatten would be the first to agree that this aspect of the inquiry is a job, not for an admiral, but for a judge. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because it is essentially a judicial matter. It is a quasi-judicial investigation. The truth is that when the Home Secretary instituted this inquiry he did not intend that it should probe too deeply into the circumstances of Blake's escape. Otherwise he would surely have included among the assessors somebody with legal experience. If he intended this inquiry to examine witnesses and sift evidence about Blake's escape, which is a quasi-judicial task, why did he not include among the assessors somebody with legal experience? The right hon. Gentleman obviously hoped that by hurriedly ordering a wide-ranging inquiry into future methods he would distract attention from past mistakes. But that is such an old trick that I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman could have thought that he was going to get away with it.

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134 The only result of his evasive tactics has been to give the impression that he has got something to hide. Blake has been allowed to escape from prison. But we do not intend to allow the right hon. Gentleman to escape from his duty to tell the whole truth to Parliament and the people. 8.21 p.m. Mr. Frank Tomney (Hammersmith, North) Of one thing we can be sure. It is that this issue is too serious to be laughed off or jeered off. It is an issue which concerns the very fabric of our society. That being so, I intend, with Mr. Deputy Speaker's indulgence, to go rather wide of the Motion, because the matters involved here are much wider. They concern principally the Home Secretary himself and the execution of his office while he holds that post, remembering that it is an office which is responsible for tendering to the Cabinet advice on issues which affect the moral, ethical and behavioural standards of the British people. I am speaking of standards which have been slipping disastrously in the last 20 years, standards which must be brought up with a jolt if confidence in the office held by my right hon. Friend is to be restored and if confidence in the police by the public and in the public by the police is to be put on a better footing than is the situation at present prevailing. These are the issues before the House affecting the office of my right hon. Friend. Like other hon. Members, I have had a nodding acquaintance with the present Home Secretary during my years in the House and I know that he is a somewhat diffident and shy man; a little difficult to approach, although I believe him to be sincere in the execution of his office. I have, on most other issues, agreed with him on policy matters. On this issue, however, I have not. My views are known and were known before the eventindeed, were deliberately known. Everything seems to happen in Shepherd's BushWormwood Scrubs, the murder of the three policemen. These are matters which affect the security of the nation and are worrying my constituents. They are particularly worried about the number of prison escapes19 during the past 20 monthsclose at hand. The 135 task of Parliament tonight is to try to put these matters into perspective. What are we doing? What can we be said to be doing now to help to put matters in perspective? Environment and upbringing come into this, but responsibility and respect for law and order is something else. These are taught through our institutions to our children on their way to adulthood. What the Home Officeand, to a lesser degree, the police have been unable to tackle adequately and to take adequate measures to achieve is the tempo of life and Britain's crime rate, which is ever rising and becoming more violent. The Home Secretary is a man of very little love[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]When the three policemen were murdered in my constituency I expected either a letter or a word of sympathy from him. [HON. MEMBERS: "He paid a visit."] I am sorry to say that nothing arrived[Interruption.] There is no need for my hon. Friends to interrupt me. They know that I say what I mean and I mean what I say. No letter of sympathy from my right hon. Friend was received by the hon. Member for the constituency concerned. Naturally, this hon. Member was under considerable pressure from his constituents, who were anxious for him to say something about the issue. I therefore left my investigations until the followins day and left my right hon. Friend to settle down to his job and make his on-the-spot investigation. T should have thought, in the circumstances, that he could or should have written to me a message of sympathy, and Mr. Deputy Speaker

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I understand how strongly the hon. Member feels about these issues, but he is getting a little wide of the Motion, to which I hope he will relate his remarks. Mr. Tomney Gladly, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I thought at the time that the Home Secretary's decision, taken almost on the spot, not to recommend a change in the law had been given with undue haste. I still think so. The Metropolitan Police is 6,000 recruits short and resignations are occurring every week. A new type of criminal is before us. For the first time, the British policeman appears to be losing his nerve[HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] 136 in the face of unrelenting pressure against him personally. It is one thing for a policeman to be backed up by the law. It is another for him to be backed up by the public. But when neither give him adequate protection, he is in a frightful dilemma. I have said previously, and I repeat now, that we should, in circumstances where there is wilful murder of a policeman, protect Mr. Deputy Speaker Order. The Motion concerns the refusal of the Home Secretary to hold a specific inquiry into a prison escape. I hope that the hon. Member will speak to the Motion. Mr. Tomney It is all tied up with the Motion. We are speaking of the escape of prisoners from prison and of a depleted prison service for which recruits are difficult to obtain. In the sort of free society we have, it is not easy to get men to take dangerous employment, and the prison service provides dangerous employment. The prison about which we are speaking has been understaffed for the last seven years. Correspondence has passed between the Home Secretary and myself about staffing, but the prison is still understaffed. It should be pointed out and recognised that we are now dealing with a new type of criminal who, by power of money and organisation, is able to engineer escapes of a spectacular character from prison. This, therefore, places a responsibility on us and the Home Office to put matters right. At Question Time last Monday week I said that Blake should not have been at Wormwood Scrubs. It is not a maximum security prison[HON. MEMBERS: "Who put him there? "] I am dealing with the point that Blake was at Wormwood Scrubs. I am not concerned so much with who put him there. The man has just recently escaped to the detriment of the nation. Let us not try to dodge the issue. He has escaped to the detriment of the nation and of the security services, and it is something we should not have allowed to happen Mr. Alexander W. Lyon (York) My hon. Friend has said that this prisoner has escaped to the detriment of the nation. Does he, with the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), also accept what the Prime Minister said 137 this afternoon, that there is no further security risk from this prisoner, even though he has escaped? Mr. Tomney I am not in a position to answer that question, nor do I think that anyone else is. The men to whom I refer are now organising escapes from outside the prison in the most deliberate and coldblooded circumstances. In this situation, how is the prison service to be strengthened? What can the Home Secretary do to to attract and retain recruits? What is the overall policy of the Home Office in this matter? In all service employment which carries a service tenancy it is laid down that the tenancy ceases when the man reaches retiring age. This is a grievous thing in the prison service. The day a man finishes, he is out of his prison flat or cottage. The same applies to most policemen who are in police; houses. I therefore suggest that as a first step we

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ought to begin to put this on a proper footing, and make long-term provision of this character in a service right through to a man's retirement Mr. Deputy Speaker Order. The hon. Member is very much wide of the Motion. I must ask him to bring his remarks to the Motion, otherwise he will have to resume his seat. Mr. Tomney All right, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I thought that I was speaking to the Motion. What I am saying is all bound up with the original Motionhow to protect the police and warders, how to induce men into the service, and so on. If we cannot get that, I do not know what the future of the police and the prison services will be. Maclean and Burgess were one thingthey were never apprehended. Kroger and Lonsdale were put inside. This man Blake, possibly the greatest criminal of them all, was put inside for 42 years. It is obvious that his escape could not have been engineered without considerable help from inside, and perhaps from outside, the prison. Therefore, any investigation must be of the widest character possible. It must range from the top officials downwards through the whole staff and the ancillary services. The prison staffing must be checked, and the hours of maximum relaxationBlake escaped during an hour of maximum relaxation. ********************************************************************** CABINET DOCUMENTS (DISCLOSURE) HC Deb 28 June 1976 vol 914 cc39-106

Mr. F. P. Crowder (Ruislip-Northwood) The hon. Member speaks as a journalist. I understand institutions of that sort refusing to give the name of the person who has given information. However, since he works in Fleet Street, as the Leader of the House used to do, could he give us some indication of the sort of sum of money he would pay for information like this which is undoubtedly leaked? 82 Mr. Crawford In all my journalistic experience, I never offered any money to any informant. Mr. Crowder Could not the hon. Member suggest a sum? Mr. Crawford I did not actually work in Fleet Street. I worked as a journalist in Scotland. This practice is very rare, if it exists at all. 6.6 p.m. Mr. Jonathan Aitken (Thanet, East) I wish to raise a mildly dissenting voice against the view expressed by many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, to the effect that what we are debating is an immensely grave and serious matter. Like the right hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) I also wonder whether we are debating this subject at the appropriate time. I tend towards the view that we are making a mountain out of a molehill. I see this leak as just the latest ludicrous scene in the 75-year-old Whitehall farce of excessive official secrecy. Perhaps the one urgent aspect of this so-called emergency debate is that it has brought everyone's attention to the fact that it is high time that we rang down the curtain on the Official Secrets Act of 1911, which is the Ark of the Covenant, which still ordains all the rules of Government secrecy and confidentiality. Unless those rules are soon changed sensibly and rationally, in the interests both of

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preserving essential Government confidentiality and of creating great openness for the Press and public, unsatisfactory episodes like this will continue. We must be careful to stress that two different and conflicting interests are at stake here. The Leader of the House referred to this in an interesting passage in his speech about balance. The interests are the Government interest and the public interest. They are not one and the same, as some Ministers would like to pretend. I would go so far as to say that the public interest seems to have been well served by the child benefit leak in New Society. What are the two principal revelations that Mr. Frank Field, the principal mover in this affair, has brought to the attention of the public? First, we learn that the scheme was sabotaged by some manoeuvrings by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, in his capacity as go-between between the Trades Union Congress and the 83 Cabinet, acted in a manner that can only be described as devious. Secondly, it was brought to our atttention that the final blow to the child benefit scheme was struck not by Ministers or Members of Parliament but by trade union bosses, who agreed to crush the scheme by what I can only describe as their typical male chauvinist reactions of hostility to the realisation that father's pay packets would be reduced in order to pay child benefit to mothers. Both these matters and the decision-making process that led up to them deserve the spotlight of publicity. It is very much in the public interest that those facts should be known. As for the Government interest, I can see that the Government were gravely embarrassed by these revelations. But embarrassment and security are not one and the same thing. Obviously the Government will want to pursue their investigations into the identity of Mr. Frank Field's "Deep Throat" with the utmost vigour, and if they catch him they will be right to punish him for a serious breach of trust and confidence. Perhaps an appropriate punishment would be to send him back to sing in the Rhondda Valley. But all this is the Government's business. It is not the business of the Opposition or the public to join in the witch hunt. It is not our job to help the Government over the consequences of their incompetence in preserving confidentiality, unless, of course, real interests of vital national security are at stake. If the Government want to preserve their confidentiality effectively, as they must, there are many good ways to do this. They could start by employing only Ministers, civil servants and political advisers who can keep their mouths shut. What the Government should not try to do is to try to crack a nut with a sledge-hammer every time an awkward secret leaks out that has no relevance to national security. That is what they are trying to do in this massive inquiry headed by Sir Douglas Allen. I am surprised at the reticence of the Leader of the House on the subject of where Sir Douglas Allen's report has got to, because after some contact over the weekend with the Whitehall branch of the Rhondda Valley 84 Choral Society I have managed to learn that the short list of people suspected of this leak has been narrowed to 30, because one of the papers quoted by Mr. Frank Field was not a Cabinet minute, which has a wider circulation than 30, but an annex to a Cabinet minute, which has a much more limited circulation. But even so, how can the police or the security advisers hope to crack a short list of 30 if people are determined to resist giving the information? My information is that there is no question of any photocopying, no question of the selling of a document, and no question of theft. I advise the Government's plumbing squad to look at the Marvin case in 1878 if they are interested in knowing the way in which the information might have leaked, and they will see the difficulties that they will have in tracing the route of it.

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The Government are creating a quicksand for themselves if they go on trying to cope with the problem of preserving Government confidentialitywhich is a right thing to wish to preserve, particularly for Cabinet papersif they try to do this without reforming the Official Secrets Act, because Section 2 of that Act is now a broken and unusable reed. The Government admitted as much when they refused to use it in the Crossman Diaries case, and Lord Goodman's article in yesterday's Observer was an admirable illustration of that. The pantomime of double standards will continue over Government leaks if that Act is not reformed urgently. Indeed, we are soon going to need an Official Secrets Relations Board to deal with cases of unfair discrimination under that Act. Why is there so much fuss about New Society's disclosure when there was no fuss about Granada Television's World in Action programme on "Chrysler and the Cabinet" which revealed many Cabinet secrets and verbatim accounts of what was said? Why was no action taken, and not even questions asked of the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), when he revealed the full text of the Hawley Report on immigration? Why was there no meaningful effort to trace the source of the leaks flowing out of the devolution unit? Why has the loquacious hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Price) not been asked to supply the list 85 of names of all the untrustworthy and garrulous Ministers to whom he referred? We have here an Augean stables of hypocrisy, double standards and double dealing that need to be cleaned out by a firm commitment to open government and new rules. The Government are in an impossible position. On the one hand, if they get a leak that they regard as serious, they are in the position in which they have either to throw down the gauntlet and prosecute, and that makes them look absurd, or to throw in the sponge and do nothing about it, and that, too, makes them look absurd. Either reflex action is ludicrous. The only way to settle this affair is by reforming the Official Secrets Act without delay. 6.14 p.m. Mr. Robin Corbett (Hemel Hempstead) Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) and the hon. Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken), I am puzzled to know why we are having this debate. We do not have the report, and no doubt when we have it and the statement from the Prime Minister there will, quite legitimately, be a demand for yet another debate to go over the ground again. Perhaps the difference on that occasion will be that we shall know more about the subject that we are debating. I think that this House would receive more credit if it were less concerned at saving the embarrassed face of the Government for a change of mind on the child benefit scheme and more concerned about whether it was right in the first place that this material, the subject of the inquiry, should almost wantonly have had the "Secret" stamp appended to it. I should like to think that we in this House are not so supine as to say that every time the Government tell us that something is secret we shall go along with it and not question it, because if the Government say so it must be right. I hope that, increasingly, whatever the colour of the Government, hon. Members will not take that attitude. Reference has been made to the need for trust and honesty. I accept that absolutely, but trust and honesty do not amount to a one-way street with signs put up by the Government. The matter works both ways. The electorate have a right to trust and honesty, and when 86 decisions taken by the Government not only fly in the face of a commitment in a successful election manifesto but go against the expressed wishes of the House that has passed enabling legislation, it is my view that the electorate have a

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right to that trust and honesty, and to be told candidly the reasons why the Government have had a change of mind. The Government maintain that they have a case for their point of view, and I accept that, but if that is so, why was the case not argued before the thousands of poor families who will be the suffererers because of this change of mind? I hopethere has been no hint of it so farthat there will be no call for a witch hunt of either civil servants or journalists. I am not experienced in the ways of this House or the workings of Whitehall, but it is right that the old-fashioned dictum of Ministers taking responsibility for what happens in their Departments should hold, and often they take responsibility for the brief rather than the leak. It was my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson)the then Prime Ministerwho, some years ago, went on record as saying that one man's leak was another man's briefing, and indeed the entire system by which any Government operate is an organised system of leaking. It used to be known as forced feeding by those employed by newspapers. I am perhaps the only hon. Member who, having been a journalist, was once summoned by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Office to another great Department of State where a Press conference was called to deny a report, over my name, in the paper on which I was working. The purpose was to tell the assembled multitude that all this was wrong, villainous and totally inaccurate. I was asked whether I would print an apology, and that the person concerned was coming to the House to wipe my name all over the papers. That was followed, only a fortnight later, by a statement that what I had said would happen was to happen. Many journalists are employed specifically and quite honourably to find out what the Government want kept secret. That is a legitimate and important part of the rle of the Press. Indeed, in so doing, the Press is often deluged with information 87 on a nonattributable basis, and much of the information with which it is supplied on that basis either must be secret, because it is currently before the Cabinet or is soon expected to go before the Cabinet. This information is known in the business as kite-flying, and those who get mixed up in this system are able to deduce with great skill how long is the string on that kite. I think that it is not a question of paying for information, because journalists are paid for their stories and they like to see their names in print. The House should be much more concerned about, for example, something reported in The Times today, under the by-line of Miss Pat Healy, the social services correspondent, which reveals that there is in existence at the Department of Health and Social Security a code that is used by the social security staff as the basis on which it uses the discretion that we have given it when deciding whether to admit claims. Literally thousands of peopleperhaps millionsare affected by what is written in this so called A code, which can make the difference between a claim being granted or refused. Knowledge of it by the claimant could also mean earlier payment and more help in such matters as children's clothing and shoes. Knowledge of it could help deserted wives to light the prospect of being evicted from their homes because their husbands have defaulted on mortgage payments. There are about 5,000 separate instructions in this A code, and apparently an equal number in other codes. There is an AX code as well, which covers cases of fraud in alleged cohabitationand an unbelievable V code; I am not sure what that stands for. It is so secret that we do not know what it is intended to deal with. What excuse have either Front Bench, both of whom have been in government, for keeping this kind of information secret from claimants who are in needoften extremely urgent needand denying them the information on which to prosecute their

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legitimate claims against social security? Is this secrecy not a matter of real concern to the House, concerned as it is with giving additional help to the disadvantaged and to the poorer families in our society? 88 I attach no importance whatsoever to this leak. I congratulate Mr. Paul Barker, the editor of New Society, on his courage in using this material and publishing the article. It is a shameful decision that had this material classified as secret in the first place. I only hope that my right hon. Friend and others concerned will now review the documents on which they so easily and automatically put the stamp of secrecy, so that we can begin to develop a system in which we trust the electorate and encourage an informed electorate, which can use that information as the basis on which to make serious and sensible decisions. 6.21 p.m. Mr. Eldon Griffiths (Bury St. Edmunds) I am sorry that the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Corbett), who spoke with passion and sincerity, should have congratulated anyone on having broken the law of this country. I understand his passion. I, too, was a journalist for many years, but I ask him to consider whether, standing in this House, he should endorse any action which was based in the first instance on the breach of an oath of office, on the purloining of papers, and on the conveying of those papers, in breach of the law of England, to another person. I am sorry that he should have felt it right to congratulate anyone on doing that. Mr. Corbett Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the editor of New Society is guilty of the matters to which the hon. Gentleman has referred? If there was the slightest hint of a security risk in his obtaining those documents, surely the D notice system would have been involved? Mr. Griffiths What the hon. Gentleman does not realise is that Cabinet papers are often all of a piece. It may be difficult, virtually impossible, to separate from one Cabinet meeting to the next the many items on the agenda. The serious matter that we are debating today is the fact that there exists a person with access to Cabinet papers, who is prepared, no doubt for sincere reasons, to make those papers available to others in breach of the law. It can be argued that Burgess, Maclean and Mr. Philby provided confidential material which they obtained in this country to the enemies of Britain because they genuinely believed that the acquisition by 89 the Soviet Union of nuclear secrets would balance up the power between East and West, and that, in their twisted view, this could lead to peace. No doubt, that was the rationalisation that led them to believe that they were justified in conveying secret information. The hon. Gentleman, however, should recognise that if there exists a person who can steal one kind of Cabinet paper in respect of subjects like child allowances on which he feels so strongly, equally such person can and probably does have access to Cabinet papers on other matterson defence and nuclear technology. By the same token he would be in a position to pass on those papers, too. I hope the hon. Gentleman will realise that this is not a matter in which one can defend the crime by reference to the criminal's motive or by reference to the content of the Cabinet papers. That which is confidential to the Cabinet, regardless of the subject matter and regardless of the motivation of those who are custodians of those papers, must remain confidential to the Cabinet. Oherwise there can be no trust between colleagues in Government and no trust among outsiders who provide confidential information to Government in the belief that their confidences will be respected.

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