GUY BURGESS IN HANSARD ARCHIVE 1951-1989 II compiled by Eliah Meyer Broadcasting (Annan Report) HC Deb 16 June 1977 vol

933 cc532-4 532 2. Mr. Hugh Jenkins asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is his policy regarding the recommendations of the Annan Committee. The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Merlyn Rees) As I said during the debate on the Annan Report on 23rd May, I shall consider in the light of the comments that are made on the Committee's recommendations what proposals to put to Parliament for the future structure of broadcasting. Mr. Jenkins In what form does my right hon. Friend propose to make these 533 recommendations to the House? Is he proposing to make them in the form of a statement or a White Paper, or will he bring forward a Bill? Will he say what his proposal is, so that we may have some idea of what to look forward to? Mr. Rees I have not yet decided, but at this stage my mind is directed towards a White Paper before legislation. Mr. Rathbone Does the Secretary of State remember that he committed himself to giving sufficient time to debate whatever form of recommendation is brought before the House? Will he give us a reassurance now that when the White Paper is brought forward there will be sufficient time to study it before the debate? Mr. Rees I cannot give a commitment in a precise form, although it sounds a sensible idea that when we have the White Paper we should hear what the House has to say on what is essentially a matter for the House as a whole. Mr. Alexander W. Lyon What representations have been made by the BBC about a further increase in the licence fee? Will my right hon. Friend seriously consider whether this is an appropriate way of funding the BBC in future? Will he look at the alternative ways, of advertising or using the Independent Television levy? Mr. Rees That matter is being discussed as part of the future. With regard to the present, there is no doubt that the BBC suffers from inflation, and the effects of inflation, the same as anyone else does. Mr. D. E. Thomas Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House whether the Government now propose to take action on the Annan recommendation for the allocation of the fourth network in Wales before the rest of the United Kingdom? In the meantime, will he say whether he proposes to implement any medium-term plans for the extension of Welsh language broadcasting and English language programming from Cardiff. Mr. Rees In the debate on 23rd May I reaffirmed the commitment to the project for a fourth channel in Wales. On 8th June officials from my Department and the Welsh Office began discussions 534 with the broadcasting authorities on how progress might be made on the project when the funds are available so that an immediate start can be made. Sir Anthony Royle

May I draw the Secretary of State's attention to another aspect of Lord Annan's activities, namely, his letter in The Times today regarding the question of a fourth man involved with the Burgess case back in 1956? Does the Secretary of State agree that he should look into this matter and make a statement to the House Mr. Speaker Order. I do not think that that comes under the heading of the activities of the Annan Committee. Sir A. Royle On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The name of Lord Annan is mentioned in the Question Mr. Speaker Order. It is quite clear that we are dealing here with the recommendations of the Annan Committee. ********************************************************************** SIR ANTHONY BLUNT HC Deb 15 November 1979 vol 973 cc1529-32 1529 Mr. Skinner On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I want to raise a matter on the revelations affecting Sir Anthony Blunt, and a statement that has been provided in the form of a written answer today by the right hon. Lady the Prime Minister. 1530 Sir Anthony Blunt is known to have confessed to having been involved in the Burgess-Maclean-Philby-and-others affair. I want to ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether you consider that this matter of security is so important that it should be the subject of a statement from the Dispatch Box so that it can be properly examined and probed by Members of the House of Commons? Is it not worth noting that it contrasts sharply with the relentless pursuit of the journalists involved in the ABC case, and Mr. Philip Agee? Does it not warrant a statement now from the Box and also a full debate on the matter in the course of next week? Mr. Speaker Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman is interested in the same question. I allowed him to make his full point of order in the knowledge that I am not responsible for national security. That responsibility does not lie with the occupant of this Chair. Therefore, there can be no point of order about that. Mr. Skinner On a different aspect of the point of order[Interruption.] Mr. Speaker There can be no point of order about national security, because I am not responsible for it. Mr. Christopher Price I want to raise a point of order about the issuing of written answers in this House. It is a convention in the House that when a question is down for written answer the normal time for the issuing of that answer is 3.30 pm. One of the reasons for that is that hon. Members should be able to raise during business questions matters which are the subject of written answers. On this occasion, Mr. Speaker, the answer to a written question formed the subject of a very important issue, which has been reported in all the newspapers today, and on which I wished to address a question to the Leader of the House asking for an urgent debate next week on this issue. This answer was delayed until the end of business questions, which deprived hon. Members of their proper and rightful privilege of questioning the Leader of the House on this issue, when the whole country is wanting to know when we are to debate the double standards about the

Official Secrets Act that this Government are attempting to introduce in another place, thereby making matters very much worse. 1531 Mr. Foot Further to the point of order raised by my hon. Friend, I believe that the House will agree that a matter of significance to the House as a whole arises here. Could not the Leader of the House assist us by saying that a statement will be made tomorrow, so that questions can be put? I would have thought that this was a subject on which it might be at any rate debatable whether it should have been the subject of a statement rather than a written answer. Therefore, will the Leader of the House assist us by saying that a statement will be made tomorrow? The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. St. John-Stevas) As to the point raised by the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price), written answers come at various times of the day. There is no absolutely fixed time. Sometimes they come much later. There was no particular significance in the time chosen for this. As to the need for a statement, in these matters of security it is advisable, as you have shown, Mr. Speaker, to tread prudently. I should have thought that the written answer by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was of such length and detail that we would be wise to consider that before pursuing any other matter. Mr. Foot On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman made an important statement. I hope that what he says means that he is not excluding the possibility that the Prime Minister 1532 will make a statement on the question so that she may have questions put to her on the subject. After all, this has been a matter on which statements were made in the House. I hope that the answer means that he is not excluding the possibility of a further oral statement on the subject. Mr. Cryer rose Mr. Skinner rose Mr. Speaker Order. We have dealt with that point. ********************************************************************** SECURITY HC Deb 15 November 1979 vol 973 cc679-81W 679W Mr. Leadbitter asked the Prime Minister if she will make a statement on recent evidence concerning the actions of an individual, whose name has been supplied to her, in relation to the security of the United Kingdom. Mr. Skinner asked the Prime Minister if she will make a statement on recent evidence concerning the actions of an individual, whose name has been supplied to her, in relation to the security of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister The name which the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter) has given me is that of Sir Anthony Blunt. In April 1964 Sir Anthony Blunt admitted to the security authorities that 680W he had been recruited by and had acted as a talent-spotter for Russian intelligence before the war, when he was a don at Cambridge, and had passed information regularly to the

Russians while he was a member of the Security Service between 1940 and 1945. He made this admission after being given an undertaking that he would not be prosecuted if he confessed. Inquiries were of course made before Blunt joined the Security Service in 1940, and he was judged a fit person. He was known to have held Marxist views at Cambridge, but the security authorities had no reason either in 1940 or at any time during his service to doubt his loyalty to his country. On leaving the Security Service in 1945 Blunt reverted to his profession as an art historian. He held a number of academic appointments. He was also appointed as Surveyor of The King's Pictures in 1945, and as Surveyor of The Queen's Pictures in 1952. He was given a KCVO in 1956. On his retirement as Surveyor, he was appointed as an Adviser for The Queen's Pictures and Drawings in 1972, and he retired from his appointment in 1978. He first came under suspicion in the course of the inquiries which followed the defection of Burgess and Maclean in 1951, when the Security Service was told that Burgess had said in 1937 that he was working for a secret branch of the Comintern and that Blunt was one of his sources. There was no supporting evidence for this. When confronted with it, Blunt denied it. Nevertheless the Security Service remained suspicious of him, and began an intensive and prolonged investigation of his activities. During the course of this investigation he was interviewed on 11 occasions. He persisted in his denial, and no evidence against him was obtained. The inquiries which preceded the exposure and defection of Philby in January 1963 produced nothing which implicated Blunt. Early in 1964 new information was received which directly implicated Blunt. It did not, however, provide a basis on which charges could be brought The then Attorney-General decided in April 1964, after consultation with the Director of Public Prosecutions, that the public interest lay in trying to secure a 681W confession from Blunt not only to arrive at a definite conclusion on his own involvement but also to obtain information from him about any others who might still be a danger. It was considered important to gain his co-operation in the continuing investigations by the security authorities, following the defections of Burgess, Maclean and Philby, into Soviet penetration of the security and intelligence services and other public services during and after the war. Accordingly the Attorney-General authorised the offer of immunity from prosecution to Blunt if he confessed. Blunt then admitted to the security authorities that, like his friends Burgess, Maclean and Philby, he had become an agent of Russian intelligence and talent-spotted for them at Cambridge during the 1930s; that he had regularly passed information to the Russians while he was a member of the Security Service; and that, although after 1945 he was no longer in a position to supply the Russians with classified information, in 1951 he used his old contact with the Russian Intelligence Service to assist in the arrangements for the defection of Burgess and Maclean. Both at the time of his confession and subsequently Blunt provided useful information about Russian intelligence activities and about his association with Burgess, Maclean and Philby. The Queen's Private Secretary was informed in April 1964 both of Blunt's confession and of the immunity from prosecution on the basis of which it had been made. Blunt was not required to resign his appointment in the Royal Household, which was unpaid. It carried with it no access to classified information and no risk to security, and the security authorities thought it desirable not to put at risk his co-operation in their continuing investigations. The decision to offer immunity from prosecution was taken because intensive investigation from 1951 to 1964 had produced no evidence to support charges.

Successive Attorneys-General in 1972, in June 1974 and in June 1979 have agreed that, having regard to the immunity granted in order to obtain the confession which has always been and still is the only firm evidence against Blunt, there are no grounds on which criminal proceedings could be instituted. ********************************************************************** NATIONAL SECURITY HC Deb 16 November 1979 vol 973 cc1662-4 1662 Mr. William Hamilton On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In the newspapers this morning, there are further references and revelations concerning the espionage scandal involving Professor Blunt. It is clear from those revelations that for many years this amazing story has been kept under wraps by what I loosely call a conspiracy of the Establishment. Had today not been a Friday, I would have sought to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9. As I cannot do that, I should like to give notice that I shall do so on Monday. It is clear that the Government do not intend to allow us a debate on the matter. That was made clear in exchanges yesterday, and the course that I propose seems to be the only immediate alternative open to me. I give you notice, Mr. Speaker, that I shall raise the matter under Standing Order No. 9 on Monday. Mr. Skinner Further to that point of of order, Mr. Speaker. I concur with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton), but I go further and say that, in the light of the revelations in the past 24 hours, the absence of a statement by any of the Ministers concerned, the fact that we hear that ex-Prime Ministers such as Lord Home knew nothing about the affair and that Rab Butler has said the same thing on the wireless this morning, questions are being asked outside the House by thousands, maybe millions, of people as to who is running the country and whether there is a network over and above the democratically elected Government. Ex-Prime Ministers apparently did not understand what was taking place. It is high time that this squalid Tory Government got someone to the Dispatch Box in order to answer some very important questions. Mr. Speaker Order. I have taken the hon. Gentleman's point of order and note that he supports the application made by the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton). 1663 Mr. Cryer Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I attempted to raise a point of order last Friday, but you said that the matter had been concluded and I accepted your ruling. The country is greatly concerned about the startling revelations that have been made. It is not good enough for hon. Members to be given information in a written answer. It is a convention that only minor matters are dealt with by way of written exchange, and that is not good enough on a scandal of national proportions. As the Leader of the House is present, and as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot) invited him last Friday to state whether the Government would consider a debate or whether they would continue with what appears to have been an Establishment cover-up, may I ask, through you, Mr. Speaker, that the Leader of the House tells us whether the Government are prepared to consider that this matter should be debated and that an authoritative statement should be made on whether there are other "moles"whether it is one or, as has been alleged, 20so that it can be brought out into the open, with the wraps lifted, and so that people may know precisely where

they stand on this issue and whether there is an inner Government or whether we have a democratically elected Government operating? Mr. Christopher Price Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. While associating myself with the points that have been made, I would, on a point of order, put it, through you, to the Leader of the House Mr. Speaker Order. I am not a messenger boy. The hon. Gentleman makes his point of order to me, and requests to the Government, which I overlooked in the case of the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer)because I thought that the longest way round was the shortest way homeshould not be made on a point of order. The hon. Gentleman will have his opportunity, but I must ask him to address his point of order to me. Mr. Price I apologise, Mr. Speaker, for going the wrong way round. In your long experience of this House, Mr. Speaker, you have seen the odd 1664 security scandal in your time, other than this one. May I ask you to confirm that there are precedents, in the Burgess and Maclean case, for bringing this subject to the Floor of the House for a full debate? I ask you to confirm that you have studied all the precedentsI am sure you haveand that there is no absolute ban on discussing very grave and important matters of this kind in a full debate on the Floor of the House. Mr. McNally Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. You quite rightly said yesterday that you were not responsible for security. However, I put it to you that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) said, millions of people in this country cannot understand why their House of Commons cannot discuss this matter. I think that your position as defender of the rights of the House of Commons now comes into play in the matter. Mr. Speaker The hon. Member for Stockport, South (Mr. McNally) overlooked the fact that I was answering a specific question yesterday as to whether I was responsible. I undertake to the House that I shall give very serious consideration to the matters that have been raised. As the application by the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) will come before me on Monday, the House would not expect me to go further at this point. ********************************************************************** DR. WILFRED MANN HC Deb 19 November 1979 vol 974 cc18-9W 18W Mr. Cryer asked the Attorney-General if he will refer to the Director of Public Prosecutions with a view to prosecution for breaches of the Official Secrets Act the conduct of Dr. Wilfred Mann in connection with the defection of Burgess and Maclean. 19W The Attorney-General No. I have no information relating to the conduct of Dr. Wilfred Mann which would justify my making any such reference to the Director of Public Prosecutions. ********************************************************************** MR. ANTHONY BLUNT HC Deb 19 November 1979 vol 974 c19W 19W Mr. Skinner

asked the Attorney-General if he will refer to the Director of Public Prosecutions with a view to prosecution for breaches of the Official Secrets Act the conduct of Mr. Anthony Blunt in connection with the defection of Burgess and Maclean. Mr. Christopher Price asked the Attorney-General if he will refer to the Director of Public Prosecutions the case of Mr. Anthony Blunt with a view to prosecution under the Official Secrets Acts in respect of the Burgess and Maclean case. The Attorney-General No. I refer the hon. Members to the written answer given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 15 November to the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter). ********************************************************************** MR. ANTHONY BLUNT HC Deb 20 November 1979 vol 974 cc91-2W 91W Dr. David Clark asked the Prime Minister whether a formal warning was given to Anthony Blunt's solicitor prior to her parliamentary answer of 15 November; and, if so, why. The Prime Minister In view of the previous publicity we thought it reasonable to tell Professor Blunt's legal adviser that a statement was to be made in this House the following day which would disclose the facts about Professor Blunt's confession and about the activities to which he had confessed. There was no reason not to do this, since there were no grounds on which criminal proceedings could be instituted. Mr. Meacher asked the Prime Minister if she will set up a public inquiry into the full security implications of the Blunt affair. The Prime Minister No decision has yet been taken. Mr. Meacher asked the Prime Minister, in the light of the fact that the Prime Minister in 1964 was not informed of the spying activities of Anthony Blunt by the then head of MI5, whether she will institute new procedures to ensure that a similar failure to inform her does not recur in future. The Prime Minister No. The arrangements for the political control of the Security Service remain as set out in Sir David Maxwell Fyfe's directive of 24 September 1952, the general principles of which, together with their application, were endorsed by Lord Denning's reportCmnd. 2152, paragraphs 238 to 241. Mr. Meacher asked the Prime Minister if she will make a further statement regarding the other public services in which it is suspected that there may have been penetration by foreign security services in relation to the Blunt affair. The Prime Minister The reference to "other public services" in my answer of92W 15 November to the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter) was intended to allow for the fact that Burgess and Maclean had been members of the Diplomatic Service. ********************************************************************** MR. ANTHONY BLUNT HC Deb 20 November 1979 vol 974 cc98-9W 98W Mr. Cryer

asked the Attorney-General if any persons other than Mr. Anthony 99W Blunt have been granted immunities, waivers or concessions of any kind in connection with the defection of Burgess and Maclean. The Attorney-General No. Mr. Marlow asked the Attorney-General if he will specify under what legal provisions Anthony Blunt was given immunity from prosecution; and whether there is any power to revoke this decision at a later date. The Attorney-General The undertaking to Mr. Blunt that he would not be prosecuted was given on the authority of the then Attorney-General, who, as the principal Law Officer of the Crown, had wide powers under statute and the common law both to prevent the institution of certain criminal proceedings and to terminate criminal proceedings on indictment. Such decisions are for the Attorney-General alone, and the extent to which successive Attorneys-General honour the undertakings of their predecessors are matters for Attorneys-General themselves. But in any event, confessions obtained as a result of such undertakings would, by virtue of the inducement given, be inadmissible as evidence in any prosecution. Mr. Skinner asked the Attorney-General, following the Prime Minister's statement regarding Anthony Blunt, whether any other persons connected with the Burgess Maclean case have been given concessions or immunities from prosecutions under the Official Secrets Act; and if he will list the names. The Attorney-General Mr. Blunt is the only person to whom an immunity has been given on the authority of the Attorney-General. I understand that in a few cases in interviews with other persons inducements were offered which might have rendered any statements made as a result of the inducement inadmissible in any subsequent criminal proceedings. In my view it would not be in the public interest to give further details. ********************************************************************** MR. ANTHONY BLUNT HC Deb 21 November 1979 vol 974 cc402-520 402 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Wakeham] Mr. Speaker Before the debate begins, I should like to make a statement. As the House knows, it is the general rule that matters which would entail legislation must not be discussed on a motion for the Adjournment. However, as I reminded the House on Monday, I am given discretion under Standing Order No. 16 to permit incidental reference to legislative action when enforcement of the prohibition would unduly restrict discussion. I propose today to exercise this discretion in respect of the general matter of the possible modification of the Official Secrets Act. In the Prime Minister's written reply to a question by the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter), reference was made to information conveyed to the Palace. I therefore think it wise at this stage to draw the attention of the House to our well-established rule that any references to the Royal Family must be phrased in courteous language and must not reflect upon the conduct of the Sovereign. This does not, however, inhibit the full discussion of any advice which may or may not have been given to Her Majesty.

4.15 pm The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher) In the early part of last week, Professor Blunt was publicly identified as having been a suspect Soviet agent. This disclosure understandably gave rise to grave concern. Last Thursday, in response to a priority written question from the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter), I thought it right to confirm that Professor Blunt had indeed been a Soviet agent and to give the House the salient facts. Today we have an opportunity to debate the whole matter. It may be convenient, therefore, if I start by setting out the facts in greater detail. Professor Blunt has admitted that he was recruited for Russian intelligence when he was at Cambridge before the war. In 1940 he joined the Security Service. 403 To us today it seems extraordinary that a man who had made no secret of his Marxist beliefs could have been accepted for secret work in any part of the public service, let alone the Security Service. But that is with the benefit of hindsight. Perhaps standards were relaxed because it was a time of considerable expansion and recruitment to deal with the wartime tasks of the service, which were directed against Hitler's Germany. Professor Blunt has said that during his period in the Security Service from 1940 to 1945 he regularly passed to Russian intelligence anything that came his way which would be of interest to them. We do not know exactly what information he passed; we do know, however, to what information he had access by virtue of his duties. There is no doubt that British interests were seriously damaged by his activities. But it is unlikely that British military operations or British lives were put at risk. Further, the story that he jeopardised the lives of secret agents in the Netherlands is without foundation; he was never in the Special Operations Executive. After he left the Security Service in 1945 and resumed his career as an art historian, Professor Blunt ceased to have access to classified information. He has said that from 1945 to 1951 he passed no information to the Russians. In May 1951 an investigation which had continued for some years caught up with Donald Maclean. It was Philby who warned Burgess to tell Maclean that he was about to be interrogated. And it was Burgess who used Blunt as a contact with a Soviet controller to help with the arrangements for Maclean's flight to Russiaa journey in which he was joined by Burgess. Blunt admits that on one occasion between 1951 and 1956 he assisted Philby in contacting Russian intelligence. He has said that he has had no contact with Russian intelligence since then. The defection of Burgess and Maclean led to intense and prolonged investigations of the extent to which the security and other public services had been infiltrated by Russian intelligence. At an early stage in these investigations Professor Blunt came under inquiry. This was as a result of information to the effect 404 that Burgess had been heard in 1937 to say that he was working for a secret branch of the Comintern and that Blunt was one of his sources. Blunt denied this. Nevertheless, he remained under suspicion, and became the subject of intensive investigation. He was interviewed on 11 occasions over the following eight years. He persisted in his denial, and no evidence against him was obtained. Of course, until his confession, the authorities did not know the extent of his involvement with the Russians or the period over which it lasted. It was early in 1964 that new information was received relating to an earlier period which directly implicated Blunt. I cannot disclose the nature of that information but it was not usable as evidence on which to base a prosecution. In this situation, the security

authorities were faced with a difficult choice. They could have decided to wait in the hope that further information which could be used as a basis for prosecuting Blunt would, in due course, be discovered. But the security authorities had already pursued their inquiries for nearly 13 years without obtaining firm evidence against Blunt. There was no reason to expect or hope that a further wait would be likely to yield evidence of a kind which had eluded them so far. Alternatively, they could have confronted Professor Blunt with the new information to see if it would break his denial. But Blunt had persisted in his denial at 11 interviews; the security authorities had no reason to suppose that he would do otherwise at a twelfth. If the security authorities had confronted him with the new information, and he still persisted in his denial, their investigation of him would have been no further forward and they might have prejudiced their own position by alerting him to information which he could then use to warn others. They therefore decided to ask the Attorney-General, through the acting Director of Public Prosecutions, to authorise them to offer Blunt immunity from prosecution, if he both confessed and agreed to co-operate in their further investigations. I should like to pause for a moment on this question of granting immunity, because I think that there may remain some misunderstanding about it. It is not 405 unusual for the Attorney-General to be asked to authorise immunity from prosecution in return for co-operation in the pursuit of inquiries. It happens from time to time in the course of criminal investigations. Under our constitutional arrangements, the decision is taken by the Attorney-General in his capacity as a Law Officer. Mr. Dennis Canavan (West Stirling-shire) It is one law for them and another law for everybody else. The Prime Minister He takes it on the basis of what, in his view, is best in the public interest. He may consult his ministerial colleagues but he is not bound by their advice. The decision is his alone. In this case, the then Attorney-General, Sir John Hobson, decided that it was in the public interest to offer an immunity from prosecution. In fact, to this day there is no evidence which could be used as a basis for prosecution against Blunt. So the offer of immunity was made. Professor Blunt confessed. Both at the time of his confession and subsequently he has co-operated in the inquiries of the security authorities. He had provided information about Russian intelligence activities and about his association with Burgess, Maclean and Philby. After the Attorney-General's authority to offer immunity had been given, the Queen's private secretary was invited to a meeting with the permanent secretary at the Home Office and the Director-General of the Security Service. The Queen's private secretary was asked to the meeting because Blunt had, since 1945, held an unpaid appointment in the Royal Household for which he had been awarded a knighthood in the Royal Victorian Order in 1956. At this meeting, the Queen's private secretary was told that Professor Blunt was suspected of having been an agent of Russian intelligence, but that, provided he confessed and co-operated in the inquiries of the security authorities, he would be granted immunity from prosecution. The Queen's private secretary asked what action the Queen was advised to take if Blunt confessed. He was told that the Queen was advised to take no action. Any action would, of course, have alerted Blunt's former Russian controllers and others who were already under suspicion to the fact that he had 406 confessed and could well be providing information to our security authorities. After Blunt had been interviewed and had

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confessed, as I have already described, the Palace duly followed the advice that had already been given. I turn now to the question of how Ministers were informed. Relations between the Security Service and Ministers are governed by the directive given to the DirectorGeneral of the Security Service by the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, in 1952, which is reproduced in Lord Denning's report of September 1963 at paragraph 238. When discussing and endorsing the principles embodied in that directive, Lord Denning said: The Head of the Security Service is responsible directly to the Home Secretary for the efficient and proper working of the Service and not in the ordinary way to the Prime Minister The Head of the Security Service may approach the Prime Minister himself on matters of supreme importance and delicacy, but this is not to say that the Prime Minister has any direct responsibility for the Security Service If the Director General of the Security Service is in any doubt as to any aspect of his duties as, for instance, when he gets information about a Minister or a senior public servant indicating that he may be a security riskhe should consult the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary will then have to take responsibility for further action. I can tell the House that in the case of Blunt the Director-General of the Security Service followed scrupulously the procedures which had been laid down. He had a meeting with the Home Secretary on 2 March 1964, in the course of which he told the Home Secretary about the new information implicating Blunt and he indicated that he would be discussing with the Director of Public Prosecutions how to conduct the interview with Blunt, bearing in mind the Security Service's need to obtain as much intelligence as possible about Soviet penetration. The Home Secretary drew his attention to the need to inform the Queen's private secretary. On 17 June 1964 a further meeting was held between the Home Secretary, his permanent secretary and the Director-General, in which the Director-General reported that Blunt had admitted spying for the Russians throughout the war when he was serving in the Security Service. The Home Secretary of the day, now Lord Brooke, who, at first, did not recall being told[Interruption.] At first, he 407 did not recall being told, which is quite understandable[Interruption]. Mr. Speaker Order. The Prime Minister I shall start the sentence again. The Home Secretary of the day, now Lord Brooke, who, at first, did not recall being told, has been reminded of these meetings and has, with characteristic integrity, accepted that his memory must have been at fault. [Interruption.] There is no more honourable or devoted servant. It is also clear that when the Attorney-General took his decision to authorise the offer of immunity from prosecution he knew that the Home Secretary had been made aware of the matter. There was therefore no failure on the part of the Security Service to carry out their duty to inform the Home Secretary of these matters. It was for the Home Secretary to decide whether the Prime Minister should be informed. There is no record on this point. Neither Lord Brooke nor Lord Home can recall discussing the matter. In the light of these events, I see no need to change the principles governing the relationships between the Security Service and Ministers, as set out in the Denning report. I think it right, however, that there should be a clear understanding among all those concerned about how we expect those principles to be applied. I have accordingly

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agreed the following points with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General. First, the Director-General should report to the Home Secretary if he receives information about a present or former Minister or senior public servant indicating that he may be, or may have been, a security risk, unless circumstances are so exceptional that he judges it necessary to report direct to the Prime Minister. Secondly, when the Director-General has reported to the Home Secretary, it is the Home Secretary's responsibility to inform the Prime Minister or make sure that the Prime Minister is informed. Thirdly, if the Attorney-General is asked to authorise a grant of immunity from prosecution in a case involving national security, he should satisfy himself that the Home Secretary is aware 408 that the request has been made. In cases of especial doubt or difficulty, the Attorney-General or the Home Secretary, or both, may wish to see that the Prime Minister is also aware that the request has been made. The Attorney-General and the Home Secretary should always be informed of the outcome of the offer of immunity. It is the responsibility of the Home Secretary to ensure that the Prime Minister is informed. So much for the procedures between the Security Services and Ministers. I turn now to another matter. I am advised that since 1967 successive Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries have all been informed about the position on Blunt. Further, as I indicated in my written reply, the matter was also brought to the attention of successive Attorneys-General in 1972, June 1974 and June 1979. This was to inform them of the immunity that had been given. Any legal matters will be dealt with by my right hon. and learned Friend the AttorneyGeneral when he replies to the debate. I have been asked why a day's notice of my intention to reply to a written question was given to Professor Blunt's solicitor. Had there been any question of prosecuting Blunt, of course there would have been no advance noticeand, indeed, no detailed reply either. Since there was no question of prosecution, there was no question of enabling Blunt to escape justice. His name had already been published, and it was reasonable therefore to tell his solicitor that I was going to give the facts in reply to a question in this House. Clearly the public services are an attractive target for Soviet penetration, and the Security Service especially so, The service is very conscious of that danger. Indeed, in the light of all that has happened, it should be. Procedures for recruitment, vetting and monitoring members of the public services who have access to classified information have been much extended and improved. Of course nothing can be absolutely proof against penetration. In a democratic society it is always possible that a few will try to use freedom to destroy freedom. We must do everything that we can to prevent them. 409 I will sum up. First, the procedures under which the Security Service is directly responsible to the Home Secretary were scrupulously followed. After 1967 successive Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries were all informed about this case. Secondly, the immunity was offered to Blunt to get information on Soviet penetration into the public services. Neither at the time nor since has there been any evidence on which he could be prosecuted. I am advised that a confession obtained as a result of an inducement given would not be admissible as evidence in any prosecution. Thirdly, the events of this case began well over 40 years ago. Many of the principal figures concerned, some of whom I have mentioned, have long since retired, and some have died. For obvious reasons, it is therefore not possible, and never will be, to establish all the facts accurately.

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 Mr. William Hamilton (Fife, Central) How many are still living? The Prime Minister These are some of the factors that will have to be taken into account in deciding whether there should be an inquiry, a matter on which hon. Members will doubtless wish to express their views. Fourthly, we have now put beyond doubt the arrangements for reporting to and consulting the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister on security matters. Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)rose The Prime Minister May I go straight through? It is a very carefully marshalled statement. In practice my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I both make a point of keeping in close touch with the Director-General of the Security Service. Fifthly, it is important not to be so obsessed with yesterday's danger that we fail to detect today's. We know what happened to a very few of that pre-war generation who had Marxist leanings and who betrayed their country. We find it contemptible and repugnant. Our task now is to guard against their counterparts of today. 410 Finally, the Security Service, by its very nature, has to work in secrecy. Mr. Eric S. Heffer (Liverpool, Walton) What about the brother of the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery)? The right hon. Lady cannot have it both ways. There were others as well as Marxists. The Prime Minister It cannot therefore defend itself in public. That task falls to Ministers. The Government's purpose is to do everything possible to improve the morale and effectiveness of the Security Service, and to do nothing to undermine or weaken it. In that aim I believe that we shall have the support of the House. 4.38 pm Mr. Merlyn Rees (Leeds, South) One point that has arisen from the Blunt affair is the accountability of the Security Service and what part this House should play. I shall turn to that in a moment, but first I simply observe that this House will be unworthy of playing any part in security matters if today's debate develops into a witch-hunt. The Prime Minister has revealed the names of those who had knowledge of the matter. I make clear my disgust at the sordid activities of the group that have now been revealed. In my view "conscience" is the wrong word to invoke in that respect. However, it would be unworthy of this House to concern itself with political trivia in that context. I have played a part in security matters over the years and I know that for either side of the House to believe that all the problems are on one side or the other would be a mistake. I shall concern myself with three mattersthe events of April 1964, the directive given by the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe and the way in which that directive worksthe House must put its mind to that matterand the future. It is clear that the events of 1964 have been clouded by the memories of old men, the deaths of some of the participants and the self-justification offered in recent days. It may be that the procedures at that time, despite what was on paper afterwards, were not carried out well, but we are concerned with more recent years and the present. That is certainly what I was 411 concerned with when I was Home Secretary. Confusion may have arisen about the events of 1964 because of a lack of understanding of the role of an Attorney-General. I am grateful to the Prime Minister for spelling out that role. If the present Attorney-General and his predecessor catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, I expect to learn more about that role. I have felt in recent days that a lack of

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understanding of that role has made understanding of the whole matter more difficult for some people. In my experience in Northern Irelandwhere, unlike here, one has a day-to-day involvement in security mattersand as Home Secretary, I have seen that AttorneysGeneral properly distance themselves from the Government of which they are members in carrying out their Law Officer role. I can see that because of what the Prime Minister has laid down the position could be changed. I certainly always received any information that should have come my way. In light of the role of the Attorney-General, we should decide whether the events of Apriland, as I now learn, June 1964rather than the procedures, need to be inquired into. Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East) Does my right hon. Friend attach any significance to the dates of April and June 1964, given the highly charged political overtones of that period, the background of Profumo and Vassall, and the knowledge that an election was not far away? Mr. Rees I regard them as a coincidence. When one has responsibility in this area, one is dealing with honourable men. If we cannot take each other on that basis, in the House, but instead reduce our debate to the level of some of the discussions that take place in general election campaigns, we shall never find the answer to these problems. The Prime Minister went into greater detail today than she did in her statement last week. I offer my views to the House becauses they concern considerations that a Home Secretary in this and other cases might have to take into account. The Prime Minister said last week that 412 It was considered important to gain his cooperation in the continuing invesigations by the security authorities, following the defection into Soviet penetration of the security and intelligence services Blunt then admited to the security authorities that, like his friends he had become an agent and talent-spotted that he had regularly passed information Both at the time of his confession and subsequently Blunt provided useful information about Russian intelligence activities". [Official Report, 15 November 1979; Vol. 973, c. 680.] That is an important factor to take into account when deciding what to do. One requires information that is not easily obtained. The Prime Minister said that the House should turn its attention now and in future to the remit given by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe to the Director-General of the Security Service, because we are not only looking at the past but trying to see what we should do in future. That remit is still the basis of the relationship between the Home Secretary and the Director-General. The principles outlined by Lord Denning in his report in 1963 are also important and I wish to base my remarks on them. The Prime Minister has already outlined those principles. The directive said: In your appointment as Director-General you will be responsible to the Home Secretary The Security Service is not, however, a part of the Home Office. On appropriate occasion you will have right of direct access to the Prime Minister. Lord Denning added: The Head of the Security Service is responsible directly to the Home Secretary for the efficient and proper working of the Service and not in the ordinary way to the Prime Minister. We all have to be guarded in how much information we give to the House. Any glimmer of information can provide evidence that, bit by bit, can be put together by those who are interested. I am not speaking only in the context of what happened between 1939 and 1945. We live in an age of terrorism,

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not just in Northern Ireland but in many other parts of the world. Terrorists have methods that are far more sophisticated than I had imagined. When I was Home Secretary, in consultation with the Prime Minister, who had a major role to play, I appointed a new 413 head of MI5, following the retirement of the previous head. If we are to examine what should be done in futureI shall make some suggestions about thatwe shall have to consider not only the bare bones of the conclusions but how they are to work in practice. When I was Home Secretary I had regular meetings with the head of the Security Service on the same basis, though not as frequently, as I had meetings with the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. We made changes in the Security Service in such areas as accountability and recruitment. A good deal of that information cannot be given to the House, but I can say that the type of person who has been recruited in the past 10 or 15 years is completely different from those who came in from the universities during the vast expansion in 1939. Mr. James Callaghan (Cardiff, South-East Thank God. Mr. Rees I visited the service regularly, as a Home Secretary should. I offer that information because the Home Secretary of the day has an important job in interpreting the rules. The question that I wish to pose is whether the rules should be changed. The directive to the Director-General states correctly the aims of the service. It says: The Security Service is part of the Defence Forces of the country. Its task is the Defence of the Realm as a whole, from external and internal dangers arising from attempts at espionage and sabotage". That is a statement of fact, but we ought to ask whether that explanation is sufficient, given the problems that face us now and will face us in the 1980s. The directive continues: the work of the Security Service is strictly limited to what is necessary for the purposes of this task. It is essential that the Security Service should be kept absolutely free from any political bias or influence and nothing should be done that might lend colour to any suggestion that it is concerned with the interests of any particular section of the community". It is easy sometimes, when certain things happen, to believe that that is not the case. It is the job of the Home Secretary to see that that is done. Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland) As the right hon. Gentleman is 414 more experienced, perhaps he can assist the House on one point. The Prime Minister clearly pointed out the responsibilities under the directive. Those responsibilities were that the Home Secretary and if necessary, the Prime Minister should be informed. The Prime Minister told the House that successive Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries were informed. However, it appears that several of them have totally forgotten the whole incident, although it involves an important man in the Palace. Perhaps there is something wrong about the way that the directive is carried out. The incident has passed so rapidly from the minds of those people that they have forgotten about it. Mr. Rees I raised that matter earlier. I did not forge tthe incident, or the full briefing that I received. I am not saying that in self-justification. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) can speak for himself and the Prime Minister has already spoken. However, it is one thing to have it on paper but another for Prime Ministers or Home Secretaries to interpret what is written.

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Perhaps the directive was not carried out properly. It may be that some of those who participated are very old, and we all know the effects of age. There is a smile on the face of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), but he may be old one day. Mr. Hugh Fraser (Stafford and Stone) There is an element of confusion when the right hon. Gentleman refers to the Security Services. Will he make clear whether he is referring solely to MI5, or to MI6 as well? That is a point that needs clarification. Mr. Rees I have no experience of MI6, but I shall mention it briefly. Mr. Mike Thomas (Newcastle upon Tyne, East) Elucidation is required on two specific points that have been referred to by the Prime Minister. First, did the Home Secretary inform the Prime Minister in 1964? The Prime Minister's explanation was not entirely satisfactory. Secondly, what was meant by the phrase "the Palace"? Does that phrase mean that the Queen was told? Mr. Rees My hon. Friend must ask the Prime Minister about the latter point. 415 I shall return to his first question shortly, because whatever the rules were, it appears that they were not carried out properly at the time. The House must decide whether that is relevant today. In newspaper articles there has been a tendency to imply that the involvement of the Home Secretary and the Attorney-General should be changed. The Prime Minister has already given her view on that. In some instances the rules may not seem to have worked, but Lord Denning said: You and your staff will maintain the well-established convention whereby Ministers do not concern themselves with the detailed information which may be obtained by the Security Services in particular cases, but are furnished with such information only as may be necessary for the determination of any issue on which guidance is sought. That statement requires interpretation by the DirectorGeneral. A Home Secretary would obviously follow the rule, but there are occasions when the Home Secretary would find out what is going on through discussion. Any issue requiring guidance demands a great deal of information. It may be asked to what degree sufficient information was given at that time. In a different context, the present Home Secretary and I have both worked in Northern Ireland, where there is a security involvement. That job demands that one goes into detail frequentlyperhaps daily. Experience teaches that whatever the rubric says, one should become more involved than was possible 15 years ago, when those involved lacked experience. I am glad that the Prime Minister has not decidedwhether she considered it, we shall never knowthat the whole issue should be put in the hands of the Prime Minister. She is absolutely right not to do that. As Lord Denning said, The Head of the Security Service may approach the Prime Minister himself on matters of supreme importance. Anyone with experience knows that information must be in the hands of one Minister on one side and MI6 on the other. Whoever is Prime Minister, ultimate responsibility must lie with that office. It is right that three Ministers are involved. In some of the earlier material there was talk of a Minister of National Security. That would be a mistake. It is right that the Prime Minister and two other Ministers 416 should be involvedsupreme as the Prime Minister is. I find matters concerning 1964 incredible. Perhaps I can understand the situation more easily thanks to the Prime Minister's statement. The events of 1964 gave rise to the

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present questioning both inside and outside the House. I have no doubt that in recent years, and beyond, procedures have been carried out properly. When a party comes into power it is right that the chop comes down quickly. Monetary policy takes over from incomes policy and Keynesian theories, and so on. Such changes take place in all Departments and no one can grumble. There is no contact from the moment that one takes over as a new Minister. Sometimes I find that strange. However, in terms of security there must be a different attitude. On 4 May I returned to London after the election result. I went to the Home Office, as the new Home Secretary knowsbecause I told himand I carried out those duties. I was still Home Secretary in name, and the following day the new Home Secretary was fully briefed about what I had done, as I had left instructions for him. It would have been stupid to say "The election is over, the Prime Minister has conceded defeat and therefore this matter must await decision until after the weekend." The present Home Secretary gave information to the Opposition that in no way corralled the Opposition, but meant that the job would be done better. New and old Home Secretaries should discuss security procedures and any issues pending. Prime Ministers should also do that, because they have a wider picture. Perhaps Foreign Secretaries should also get together, although I have no experience of that. In no way does it commit an incoming Government. What might be the case is that incomersit would apply to all of ushave no experience in these matters, so it is weeks or months before they become fully aware of all the implications of what is put before them. My view is that security is a matter for the nation. It should be paramount. As I have said, as much as we may disagree on a number of issues this liaison would improve the situation. The lack of it may well have been one of the reasons why, in 1964, when the information was 417 passed on, the full implications were not taken into account. I come to the question of accountability to Parliament. Under the rules that we have, the job of Home Secretary no longer raises the awesome decisions of the pastdecisions of life or deathbut there are great powers there. In terms of security I had to take certain decisions on matters of which the House will be aware, and one or two of which came before the House. Those decisions may not have been popular in all quarters. There are the problems of terrorism today. There are the decisions that are takenin my view, correctly takenas regards interception of communications. The principles by which a Home Secretary is carrying out his job should be discussed, but in my viewwhich will not be agreeable to all hon. Membersthe Home Secretary's job cannot be put into a committee, to officials of the Home Office or to this House. But it is to this House that a Home Secretary is responsible. Trust is at the core of this relationship. If ever that trust is seen to be brokenthere is no way of covering upthe whole system is at risk. From my own experience in two important jobs in this respect, the job that one has to do cannot be given to committees or to civil servants. The judgment of the man concerned has to be taken. Posterity will decide, and if the man is a fool the present time will also catch up with him. It is trust that matters. Mr. Christopher Price (Lewisham, West) I agree that the job cannot be given to committees. However, if the Germans' scrutiny and the United States' scrutiny of the job can be given to parliamentary committees, why is it so disastrous to put some scrutiny of the job to a parliamentary committee in the United Kingdom? Mr. Rees Perhaps my hon. Friend will listen to what I am about to say, in terms of what I believe we should do. The Germans' experience, in their context and in the context of how their

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constitution is built, is one thing. I do not think that the American security service arrangementsI have to choose my words carefullyhave been exactly successful in recent years. [Interruption.] I am asked "What about ours?" There is this example and there have been others. What 418 is going on should not be bandied about from day to day. If it is, it washes back on to the service concerned and its members behave almost in the way that public opinion expects them to behave. To come to this House and justify the detailed activities in what one is doing would be wrong, and it would not work. On the question of principle and the events of 1964, concerning Philby, Maclean and Blunt, I have given my view and I shall listen to what the Attorney-General says. Whatever else the House should consider, any idea of a 1921 tribunal of inquiry would be wrong. In no way could I recommend that. With regard to the directive of which I have spoken, I have no reason to say aught than that I have confidence in both Directors-General who have worked to me. If I were Home Secretary I would be considering the need to review the directives, to see whether the procedures meet the needs of the 1980s, and the role and the ministerial responsibility. I should also be considering, separately, whether the time had come to examine the question of interception as Birkett did 20 years ago. I believe that that should be done as well. The best way is for this to be undertaken by a team from the Security Commission. The Security Commission as a whole is not suitable, because some of its members are permanent officials at the Foreign Office and the Home Office. But my view is that the time has come for a review of our procedures. I conclude where I began Mr. David Steel (Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles) Before the right hon. Gentleman concludes, perhaps I may ask him a question. I understand his argument about continuity between Ministers. The Prime Minister has told us the reasons why, after 1964, Blunt was allowed to retain his position and was not publicly exposed. I think that we understand that. What we do not understand is why that situation was allowed to continue until 1978 and why, in 1972, his appointment within the Royal Household was changed. Surely at some point he should have been phased out of this position. Mr. Rees I do not think that that question should be put to me. However, if the right hon. Gentleman thinks that it is worthy of investigation, let me say 419 that that is what we are deciding today. We should listen carefully to the debate and hon. Members' views. Mr. Robin F. Cook (Edinburgh, Central) My right hon. Friend indicated that he would refer to the answerability of the Minister to Parliament, but I do not think that he has done so yet. Will he accept the point that was putthat of course responsibility must rest with the Home Secretary, but is he really satisfied that the answerability and accountability of the Home Secretary to Parliament is at present adequate? Mr. Rees I think that it is the best system. If my hon. Friend has ideas on how the principle can be discussed here without what is being done being bandied about, I shall listen to them very carefully, but before we go any further, let me say that my view is that we should use this occasion not because anything that I found was wrong but to review the existing principles to which a Home Secretary has to apply himself. This country needs a Security Service. I know it to be vital. The events of the last week have undoubtedly caused concern. We have to ensure the continuing efficiency of the Security Service. An inquiry into the procedures and control would do much to reassure

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the community as a whole. The events of the last week have led people to question matters, perhaps unnecessarily, but a review of the procedures is now necessary. 5.7 pm Mr. Robert Rhodes James (Cambridge) One of the first major debates that I attended in this House was on 7 November 1955, when, in an atmosphere of embarrassment and unease, the whole question of the defections of Maclean and Burgess was debated. It was a very strange experience for me recently to re-read that debate and to be reminded of the atmosphere of that occasion, which many of my right hon. and hon. Friends will remember. There was a very profound willingness in the House on that occasion, almost exactly 24 years ago, to believe that this was the end of an episode that had done very great harm to our national reputation, to that of the Foreign Service and the secret service and to our relations with our allies, particularly 420 the United States. Alas, it was not the end of that episode. The House, 24 years ago, was also obsessed by the problem of balancing the duties of the State, in a dangerous world, against a menacing and powerful enemy, with the rights of the individual in a free society. That dilemma also remains with the House today. I remind the House of some of the words said by the then Foreign Secretary, Mr. Harold Macmillan, in that debate: 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." [Official Report, 7 November 1955; Vol. 545, c. 1487.] That same dilemma, as I have said and as the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) emphasised, remains. Let me say at once that I fully recognise why it was that members of that generation in the 1930s, and not only in Cambridge, repelled as they were by the menace of Facism, by the pusillanimity of the then National Government and the irrelevance of the then Labour Party, should see in the Soviet Union and Communism a force against that Facism, and a force sanctified, or apparently sanctified, by a form of intellectual respectability. I understand that. However, there are differences between those and others, who, having taken that view and joined the Communist Party, saw the realities, first, in the cynicism of the Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War and, secondly, the events of September 1939the pact with Nazi Germany, the invasion of East Poland, Finland and the Baltic States. At that moment most of those involved recognised the reality of what they had been flirting with. But there were, alas, those who not only retained their idealistic faith in this evil creedas evil and undistinguishable in its evil from that of Nazi Germany against which we were fightingbut maintained it and furthermore, remained as agents for that nation. The House hardly needs to be reminded of the fact that for nearly two years, between September 1939 and June 1941, 421 the Soviet Union was the warm ally and assistant of Nazi Germany, against which we were fighting for our very survival. For different reasons these men remainedduring the war and afterwardsin the service of an enemy nation that was only temporarily, and very reluctantly, our ally. Maclean, Burgess, Philby and Blunt were among their number. Mr. Joseph Dean (Leeds, West) What about the Russians killed in the war? Mr. Rhodes James

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Does the hon. Gentleman blame anyone except the then Soviet Government for the deaths of those Russian people, because of the folly, ineptitude and incompetence of their flirtation with Nazi Germany? Was it the fault of the poor Russian people that they were then invaded by that Nazi ally? Mr. Dean Has the hon. Gentleman forgotten the 20 million Soviet people who were killed beating Hitler? Has he conveniently forgotten that? Mr. Rhodes James The hon. Gentleman did not answer my pointit is a fundamental pointand say why so many people who had been supporters of the Communist Party and of the Soviet Union ceased to be so, particularly after 1939, in spite of the fact that for a period the Soviet Union was indeed our ally in a common conflict. After the war the loyalties of some of those involved remained. Let us not be mealy-mouthed about the matter. Some of my constituents have told me that it is unworthy to pursue an old man who has confessed and who should now be forgotten. I hope that my constituents and those of the hon. Member know me well enough to realise that I would have no part of a witch-hunt or vendetta. But a traitor is a traitor is a traitor. I ask those who try to exculpate Mr. Blunt to think just for a moment what their attitude would have been had he been discovered to be a German rather than a Soviet agent. On the question of immunity, I fully accept that it must have seemedand no doubt wasthe best answer to the problem and the national requirements in 1964. It is not fair to say, as some of my hon. Friends have alleged, that the Government broke their side of the bargain. Blunt was found out by an exceptionally 422 intelligent and persistent biographer and journalist. His identity was known throughout Fleet Street. In these circumstances I have no doubt that the Prime Minister had no realistic choice but to make a full and complete statement. To those who say that this event will in future deprive the Security Service of the weapon of immunity, I say only that no Government can offer a traitor complete immunity from treachery. That is what occurred. As for the questions of responsibility and future action, I wish to state with very particular emphasis that the operations of the Security Service must be the responsibility of governmentand government alone. To quote Mr. Macmillan again, from the debate of 24 years ago: 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, 7 November 1955; Vol. 545, c. 1484.] A particular initiative was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken), who suggested, in effect, a permanent Committee of this House monitoring or investigating the Security Service. It seems to me that of all the proposals that have emerged, that one is least likely to be of any assistance whatever in the pursuit of the national security of this nation, which is the concern of us all, whatever the enemy may be. As the right hon. Member for Leeds, South reminded us, this is part of the defence of the realm an unpleasant part, perhaps, but a necessary one in all its aspects. Ministers and Governments must bear the responsibility. Mr. Blunt has hadand still hasimmunity. He has lived serenely in a free country, enjoying the privileges of an open, tolerant and decent society. His life has been lived in an atmosphere of liberal scholarship, civilised behaviour, friendship and libertyall of which he and his friends imperilled and betrayed. Let that be his epitaph. 5.15 pm Mr. S. C. Silkin (Dulwich)

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The purpose of my intervention is not to follow the remarks of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James), very important though the points that he raised no doubt were, or the many issues which 423 were raised both inside and outside the House. It is to place the facts, as far as they are relevant and within my own knowledge, before the House for the assistance of the House, in considering those issues. I have seen newspaper reports, some of which referred to my part in the affair in erroneous and misleading language. That of course adds to my concern to be as accurate, as full and as clear as I can in what I say to the House. As the events, as far as I am concerned, fall within a fairly narrow compass, I hope also to be fairly brief. My first knowledge of the Blunt case was in June 1974, some three months after my appointment to the office of Attorney-General. I understood that that knowledge was imparted to me at the request of the Cabinet Office, for reasons which I shall explain. The Prime Minister has spoken of the original grant of immunity from prosecution given to Mr. Blunt in 1964 with the authority of the late Sir John Hobson, as AttorneyGeneral, and of the confession which was made upon the assurance of that immunity. The immunity was given in the widest possible terms. The right hon. Lady also referred to the occasion in 1972 when my immediate predecessor Sir Peter Rawlinson, now Lord Rawlinson, was informed of the position. Lord Rawlinson, so I understood, had been asked to advise whether, in the circumstances of the confession obtained upon Sir John Hobson's promise of immunity from prosecution, a prosecution of Mr. Blunt could none the less be launched in the future. He advised that it could not. When the Government changed, those concerned in the Cabinet Office wished to satisfy themselves that the incoming Attorney-Generalthat is, myselftook the same view as his predecessor, and, if not, what advice he had to give. Mr. Phillip Whitehead (Derby, North) Did my right hon. and learned Friend seek to inquire at that time why a similar courtesy had not been extended by these officials or their predecessors to Sir Frank Soskice, later Lord Stow Hill, the Home Secretary in the Government between 1964 and 1966? 424 Mr. Silkin No, I did not ask that question. If I may give the facts as far as I was aware of them, I shall continue. The Cabinet Office wished to satisfy itself that the incoming Attorney-General took the same view as his predecessor and, if not, what advice I had to give. I was aware of no new evidence or new event unknown to my predecessor, but it was clearly a sensible precaution, in my view, for the Cabinet Office to ensure that there was no conflict of legal view on the effects of Sir John Hobson's grant of immunity. Having carefully considered the matter, I reached the conclusion that a prosecution of Mr. Blunt could not, in the circumstances disclosed to me, be launched, and I so advised. I was asked to do no more than that and, with one exception, I did no more. That exception was that I observed that of the four Attorneys-General in the period between 1964 and 1974, only one, Lord Elwyn-Jones, had apparently not been informed of the decision in the Blunt affair, although he had become Attorney-General some four months after Mr. Blunt's confession and had held the office for six years. By 1974, of course, when I was consulted, he was Lord Chancellor. I thought it desirable that he should be informed of the decision which Sir John Hobson had taken; and I so advised. That advice was passed to the Secretary of the Cabinet, and he sought approval for its implementation. Later I was told that it had been approved. I assumed that that approval had been given by my right hon. Friend the Member for

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Huyton (Sir H. Wilson), but of that I have no personal knowledge. So far as I knew, the events of 1974 ended there. I mentioned that last point, not because it had any special significance in itself, but because one or two organs of the press have stated as a factindeed, as some sort of criticismthat I failed to inform the then Prime Minister. But, given the source of the request for my advice, the Cabinet Office, and the subsequent report from the Cabinet Secretary that my suggestion had been approved, I certainly had no reason to suppose that the Prime Minister was unaware of the matter. My right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton may wish to catch your eye later, Mr. Speaker, but I 425 have read what was announced in the press yesterday and I do not think that my right hon. Friend suggests that he was not aware of the matter. I emphasisethis is a matter of importance to Law Officers generallythat to inform the Prime Minister of a matter of this kind is within the responsibility of the Cabinet Office and perhaps the Home Secretary, as has been said, but not within the responsibility of the Attorney-General. I heard no more of this matter until about a year ago. It was then raised again, so I understood, because it had then become known or suspected that publication of Mr. Boyle's book was contemplated. It was expected that events would take such a turn that a public statement, on lines similar to those of the statement made by the present Prime Minister, might become desirable. The Cabinet Office accordingly asked me if I would reconsider and confirm or amend the view that I had expressed in 1974. On this occasion I received a fuller account of Mr. Blunt's pre-war activities and associations than I had received in 1974, and I studied a draft statement prepared in the Cabinet Office. Having reconsidered the matter, I remained very firmly of the opinion that there was no prospect of the Crown embarking upon a successful prosecution. I also formed the very clear view that, even if there had been such a prospect, Sir John Hobson's grant of immunity would have created an unshakable impediment to a prosecution. There could not be a successful prosecution, because I was assured that when Sir John Hobson dealt with the matter, the only evidence against Mr. Blunt, or likely to become available against Mr. Blunt, was his own confession given after 11 abortive interviews, and that confession was inadmissible in evidence against him because, it having been obtained in consequence of the inducement of the offer of immunity, it was not a voluntary confession as understood by the courts. That, indeed, is trite law. Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop (Tiverton) Was the immunity granted only in respect of offences to which Blunt had truthfully confessed, or did it extend to offences which might be discovered in the future and which had occurred before the 426 immunity was granted but to which Blunt had not confessed? Mr. Silkin As I was informed, the immunity was granted in the widest terms. If there is any doubt about the matter, no doubt the Attorney-General will deal with it more fully when he winds up. On that occasion in 1978, in view of the need to draw up an agreed, careful, full and accurate statement, I gave my advice in person to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who was then Prime Minister, and he accepted it, although with a very natural distaste which, indeed, I shared. The book had not been published by the time the Labour Government went out of office and I was not called upon again to advise or reconsider my advice. No doubt that task

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fell to the present Attorney-General who, I understand, will wind up the debate and will doubtless follow the story to its conclusion. It would be quite unfair for me to pass any view on the action taken by the late Sir John Hobson. He is not here to defend himself. I do not know the full extent of the information upon which he acted or what inquiries he may have made. What I can say, with the fullest emphasis, is that, once he had made that decision, and once immunity had been granted and a confession obtained on the strength of that immunity, none of his successors had any alternative whatever but to adopt the course that each one has adopted of advising that Mr. Blunt's immunity from prosecution must be accepted as unimpeachable. Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman understand that the legal immunity to which he has referred also extended to protecting Mr. Blunt from any disclosure of the treason that he had committed? If that were so, would it not have committed Ministers to being untruthful about him should the matter ever be raised in the House, which quite properly did not happen in the disclosure made by the Prime Minister? Is that the right hon. and learned Gentleman's understanding? Mr. Silkin The legal immunity that was granted was immunity from prosecution. What might follow as a matter of 427 policy from that legal immunity would be a matter for the judgment of Ministers. Mr. Mike Thomas I accept what my right hon. and learned Friend has said about immunity, but can we be quite clear about what he said earlier, that whereas the Attorney-General in the Conservative Government of 1964 was apprised of this matter, his immediate successor in the Labour Government of 1964 was not? Is that what my right hon. and learned Friend was saying earlier? Mr. Silkin Yes, indeed, that is what I said. That is the reason why, when it came to me and I observed this fact, I took the view that it would be right for me to set in train the events which eventually led to the information being given to my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor. Those are the matters of which I am aware and with which I have been concerned. I have no doubt whatever that the advice that I and other Attorneys-General have given on this matter is correct. Whether it likes it or not, and whether it finds it distasteful or not, the House must proceed on the basis that that advice must be followed. Several Hon. Membersrose Mr. Speaker Before I call the next hon. Member, I should inform the House that a very large number of right hon. and hon. Members have indicated a wish to catch my eye during the course of the debate. I shall be grateful if hon. Members do not come to the Chair. We shall do our best to be fair, but it is more difficult when approaches like that are made. I shall follow the rule of not calling two Privy Councillors immediately in succession if they are in the same party. 5.30 pm Mr. Edward Gardner (South Fylde) It is right to say that the case of Blunt, and the debate that we are having now, must have exhausted the vocabulary of outrage. Perhaps the cry of "Damn his conscience" sums up all that needs to be said about him.

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I was happy to hear from the Prime Minister that the proper procedures, set out in the Maxwell Fyfe document of 1952, were followed in this case. One can say with confidence that the disclosures 428 that have followed this case will do nothing to harm the morale and efficiency of the secret service. It is difficult to know just how effectively and successfully the secret service performs its duties. As learned counsel in a number of spy cases, I was most impressed by the number of spies who were caught as a result of the skill and determination of the secret service and who expressed astonishment and admiration at the way in which they had been trapped. This case raises three supremely imporant questions, all dealing with official information. First, there is the question of how the Prime Minister in a particularly difficult and delicate case should be informed of what is going on. That aspect has already been dealt with by the Prime Minister in her opening speech. The second question is what we should do about restricting information so that we can be certain that the interests of the State are not injured by improper and damaging disclosures. At the moment that is decided by the terms of section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911. I doubt whether there are many hon. Members who regard section 2 of that Act as a satisfactory or acceptable conclusion to this problem. At least this case has brought to light what might well have been a defect in the new legislation which the Government were quite properly considering to replace section 2 of the Official Secrets Act. It is the third question which causes the most concernthat is, not what information should be restricted but what information should be disclosed, not only by the Government but by local government and bodies much as new town corporations. It is too much to ask that precise legislation be introduced at this moment, but I hope that the Government will look again at the report made by "Justice" which suggested that there should be a code of practice which would make it possible for reasonable and practicable ways of releasing information to be devised so that the Government could show themselves predisposed towards letting be known what can safely be known, and distinguishing between what is essentially a secret matter in the interests of the State and what should be released in the interests of the public at large. 429 5.35 pm Mr. William Hamilton (Fife, Central) As this story has unfolded in the course of the last week or two, I am sure that many hon. Members, and millions of people outside the House, have shared my feelings of outrage. In all my years of public life I have never felt so sick, angry and frustrated. Many of us must have experienced a feeling of infuriating helplessness as this squalid conspiracy in high places has had part of the mask torn from its ugly face, not by the Government or the Prime Minister, but by the courage and diligence of Mr. Boyle in writing his book. These feelings arise from the terrifying fact that whatever is said in this debate from whatever source, or whatever is done subsequently, we in this House, and still less the people outside, will never ever know the truth. We are fishing in the deep and dark waters of what is termed "national security", and we are battling against the fierce determination of what I call the Establishment to protect its own. [HON. MEMBERS: "A Communist?"] At every stage in this story vital decisions appear to have been taken by faceless men in security services and the Civil Service without the knowledge or consent of accountable Ministers.

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The Prime Minister referred to the history, of this episode dating back to the 1930s. How did Blunt get his appointment in 1945 in the first place? The Prime Minister posed this question but did not attempt to answer it. How did a known Marxist get such an appointment in the security services and who judged him fit? Was his homosexuality known at the time? That is a very relevant point which I shall come to later. In her statement last week the Prime Minister talked about Blunt leaving the service in 1945. She suggested that, because he had left, he was no longer in a position to supply the USSR with classified information. But according to The Sunday Times last week this was not sohe was still in a position to obtain it. He continued to work part time, clearing things up, in MI5 up to 1950. Is that true? Could he have obtained classified information between 1945 and 1950? He was apparentlyaccording to The Sunday Timesin a high position in MI5. He 430 was number three in charge of administration. In early 1950 he became involved in section Q of the Foreign Office security service helping to trace a major leakage from the British Embassy in Washington. Therefore, he had not washed his hands completely of the British secret service after 1945. Despite the record up to the 1950s and then up to 1964, successive Attorneys-General decided that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute this man. We have to believe that. Were all the Prime Ministers up to 1964 informed and advised of the position? The Prime Minister said that they were after 1967. I presume by inference that those up to that period were not so informed. In April 1964 a confession was made by Blunt after he had been promised immunity from prosecution. The Prime Minister has explained the position up to a point, but was the Prime Minister at that time informed? Was he acquainted with the contents of the confession and the immunity that have been referred to? The then Prime Minister, now the noble lord Lord Home, and the then Foreign Secretary, now the noble lord Lord Butler, have denied that they knew of the Blunt affair at the time. I knew the Attorney-General of that timeand I do not wish to speak unkindly of Sir John Hobsonbut he was not a prominent politician. He may have been a very experienced lawyer, but he was scarcely known in this House. He was the Minister who took the decision. It seems to me to be quite wrong that a decision of that kind did not have to be accounted for to this House or even to the senior Ministers in Sir John's own Government. That is scarcely a credible position and I find it extremely difficult to believe that other Ministers were not acquainted with the situation at the time. Mr. Patrick Cormack (Staffordshire, South-West)rose The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. William Whitelaw) If the hon. Gentleman had listened to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, he would have heard her say that the noble lord Lord Brooke, the then Home Secretary, was informed of these matters. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman is wrong when he says that Ministers were not informed at the time. 431 Mr. Hamilton I am sorryI meant to say that. We now know that Lord Brooke was informed. What I want to know is whether the then Prime Minister was informed. The right hon. Lady did not make that point clear this afternoon. I pose that as the sort of question that needs to be answered. Sir Charles Cunningham, who was the permanent secretary at the Home Office at the time, said that the then Home Secretary was advised. Another civil servant said last weekend that there were different ways of informing Ministers without actually telling them anything. Quite

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clearly there is a lack of liaison between top civil servants and Ministers who are accountable to the House. That aspect of the affair needs to be cleared up. Whatever Ministers were, or were not, toldand we have in the past fortnight had as many denials as we would find in the Bible, including that of Pontius Pilatethey have all said that they knew nothing about it. They have provided their alibis. Whatever the truth of that, I come now directly to the Queen's private secretary. The Queen's private secretary, Sir Michael Adeane was told. There could be only one reason for telling him. He was not told because he was Sir Michael Adeane, the Queen's private secretary. He was told because he had no other role in this context but to act as a messenger boy to Her Majesty the Queen. He had no other role at all. All reasonable men would, therefore, assume that Her Majesty the Queen knew of Blunt's confession, and of his immunity, early in 1964. I noticed that the Prime Minister, whenever there was a danger of embarrassment, referred to "the Palace" as distinct from "Her Majesty the Queen". "The Palace" means the Queen, just as "Her Majesty's Government" means the right hon. Lady. I want to put some questions to the right hon Lady and to the Government, though I do so without hope of getting any answers. Was Her Majesty the Queen told the full story? Was she given all the reasons for the granting of immunity to Mr. Blunt? Was she told the full nature of the confession? Assuming that Her Majesty the Queen had all that information, did she then, or subsequently, advise 432 or warn her Prime Minister? That is the constitutional role of the Monarchy, according to Bagehotand who am I to criticise Bagehot? Lord Home was then the Prime Minister. He has said that he did not know of the affair. Did Her Majesty the Queen know that he did not know? Did she warn him, advise him, or even ask him if he knew? All these questions are running through the minds of people outside this House. Did Her Majesty approve of all this? Did she approve of the immunity granted to Blunt? Let us not forget that by 1964assuming that Her Majesty the Queen knewMr. Blunt had worked, no doubt with great distinction, at Buckingham Palace for 19 years. Indeed, in 1956 the Queen rewarded Mr. Blunt with the KCVO. That was a personal honour for services rendered. There was Mr. Blunt, a knighted ex-public schoolboy, a known[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] This is very important and relevant. Here was a knighted ex-public-school boy, a known homosexual and a traitor for over 20 years, within the Palace gates. When the Queen was toldif she was toldof the manifold qualifications of this man, her artistic adviser, in 1964, she must have been deeply shocked, very angry, greatly alarmed and highly embarrassed. When, nevertheless, she was advised to keep such a creature in her employment, the reasons given to herif reasons were givenfor so doing, must have been overwhelming and irresistible. What were the reasons that compelled and persuaded the Queen to say "All right, we know that he has got all these characteristics, but nevertheless the State thinks, and I am accepting advice to this effect, that it is worth while for me to keep him in my employment." That is one possible scenario. But perhaps Her Majesty was never told these things. Perhaps she was kept in the dark along with her Prime Ministers all those years up to and beyond 1964. Perhaps when Mr. Blunt's confession was made and immunity was granted to him the Queen was not told about that either. Therefore, in her innocence, she had no valid reason for dispensing with his services. If the security authorities thought that Blunt was still useful as a double agentthat is the only inference we can 433 drawand as a "squealer" perhaps the authorities thought that his continued employment at Buckingham Palace would give him a superb veneer of respectability and credibility as he went about his dirty work. That is also a possible explanation. If

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that were the case, I ask whether it is right that the Monarchy should be deliberately abused in that way. These are the questions reaching me through the post and I will try to reply to them. As far as Buckingham Palace is concerned, the situation is very obscure. I have here a photocopy of what appeared on the tape machine in the Lobby last Friday. It says that statements emanating from the Palace on these matters were absurdly obscure, and that it was time that the wraps were taken off. Here is the statement from the tape: The Queen's Press Secretary, Michael Shea, today commented on a Press Association report that Buckingham Palace had said the Queen was told in 1964 of Anthony Blunt's confession that he had spied for the Soviet Union. He said this afternoon" this was Michael Shea the Queen's press secretary 'The statement from Buckingham Palace carried by the Press Association was indeed made by a Buckingham Palace spokesman in response to a question from the Press Association. It was a personal interpretation made by a member of the Press Office'. He went on, and I quote his words directly as they appeared on the machine: 'Our position'" that is, the Palace position 'remains as set out in the Prime Minister's statement yesterday. Exchanges between the Private Secretary to the Queen and the Sovereign are confidential'. The Prime Minister's statement to which the press secretary referred reads as follows: The Queen's Private Secretary was informed in April 1964 both of Blunt's confession and of the immunity from prosecution on the basis of which it had been made. Blunt was not required to resign his appointment in the Royal Household".[Official Report, 15 November 1979; Vol. 973, c. 681.] That, coupled with the press secretary's statement on the tape on Friday, conveyed nothing remotely near the truth as we want to ascertain it. Immediately following the Prime Minister's statement, the knighthood was withdrawn from Blunt. On whose advice or instruction? Was that done purely on the decision of the Queen and advised by the Prime 434 Minister? We should like to know. Was there any consultation with the right hon. Lady about it? I should like to make a few comments on the Prime Minister's statement. Reference has been made by some Labour Members, and in the press as well, to the liming of the Prime Minister's written answer. In the view of many people it was sheer political opportunism on her part. It put the 17 per cent. minimum lending rate and other things off the newspaper headlines. That is not only my view. I quote what The Times said on 17 November: Mrs. Thatcher's formal unmasking did not have to come out the same day as the Chancellor shocked the business world with his three per cent. jump in MLR. It could have come the day before or the day after. On Monday last, the Leader of the House, as is his wont, poured lavish praise on his political mistress. He said that she had been more forthcoming than any of her predecessors. She had. But why? Again, I turn to The Times, and not the Labour Weekly or anything like that. Mr. Ted Leadbitter (Hartlepool) I respect my hon. Friend's views, and I conclude that he has made his statement after reading the press. But the truth is that I insisted on an answer on that day, and the Prime Minister co-operated after only a first request. Hon. Members Withdraw. Mr. Hamilton My hon. Friend should not be so nave as to assume that, because he insists on a reply from a Minister on a particular day, he automatically gets it. I have never known that during all my time in the House. Mr. Robert Atkins (Preston, North)

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On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for an hon. Member to attribute a point of view to someone else when a member of his own party has told the truth? Ought you not to advise him to withdraw that remark? Mr. Speaker Order. Everyone in the House will make his own assessment of what has happened. Mr. Hamilton I again quote The Times: a traitor has been allowed by successive governments to remain at the heart of the establishment, imperilling the reputation of our Queen, and yet" 435 [Interruption.] I do not understand why Conservative Members should laugh, because it is no laughing matter. This is the Establishment talking about the Establishment tipped off by the Government before the announcement so that he could decently retire from unseemly questioning. It defies belief". Therefore, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) remarked on Monday, the Prime Ministerhowever she excused herself todaychose to adopt the role of political nark by telling this man 24 hours before she was due to make the statement that she was about to do so. The Times continuedhow grateful we are for its return: You will search in vain in Mrs. Thatcher's statement for the word traitor; treason is still a hanging offence and Mrs. Thatcher is an ardent advocate of the return of hanging. Mr. Michael English (Nottingham, West)rose Mr. Hamilton I am sorry, but I must get on, otherwise I shall take too long and I still have a lot to say. Mr. John Heddle (Lichfield and Tamworth)rose Mr. Hamilton No, I must get on. Mr. Speaker has asked for reasonably short speeches, and mine will be fairly long anyhow. The Times added: At the same time let it not be believed that this was some venture in open government. Professor Blunt had been flushed out by an author, formerly a distinguished BBC producer and also named in Private Eye." He was not flushed out by the author, he was flushed out by Private Eye, and we must pay tribute to that establishment paper as well. Mr. Heddlerose Mr. Hamilton No, I shall not give way. The hon. Gentleman must contain his impatience. The Times went on: We might expect the Prime Minister after all this to be a little more prudent before setting the law onto journalists as her first reflex". That brings me on to saying just a few words about the obnoxious Protection of Official Information Bill, which has now been dropped. There is no merit in the Government dropping that Bill. It probably would not have got through the House anyway in view of what has happened 436 in the last fortnight. They were wise to do so, but what will they put in its place? Do they have any ideas in mind? In view of what the Prime Minister said, I need only say that in the past 30 years our history has been littered with scandals and misjudgments about security. In almost every case the public have been amazed and indignant as they gaze with an awed fascination on the corrupted glamour of the characters involved. But the public are always frustrated, because the authoritieswhatever Government are in powernever come clean. As I said earlier, we shall never get at the truth. How many public servants in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and the 1970s were suspected of treachery, actual or potential? The Prime Minister today referred to men long since dead. How many are still alive and roaming around? We do not know. She did not refer to that. What was done to those men? We can never be given the answers to some of those questions; and I, as well as anyone, understand that.

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However, the names of the fifth man, the sixth man and the nth man will continue to float to the top. The Blunt case is one more instance of the long-lived conspiracy of British Governments against the governed in this respect, a conspiracy to keep this House, and still more to keep the people outside, in the dark. The Prime Minister made no suggestions as to how that might be ended, how to bring more accountability of the security services not only to the Prime Minister but to the House of Commons. The House feels strangely impotent in these matters, and we should seek to devise some machinery to reduce the frustration and fear inspired by cases such as this. We have the right to demand a far-reaching inquiryperhaps a public inquiryinto this case. It is no use saying that this is history, that we must sweep it under the carpet and be concerned only for the future. Unless we can learn lessons from the past we are unlikely to get answers for the future. A whole lot of other questions need to be asked, but I confine myself to making one point to the Prime Minister. We have had to endure from her for a long time all the jibes about Reds under 437 the bed and about the Labour Party falling under the influence of people who would seek to create the kind of society that exists behind the Iron Curtain. Let me give the right hon. Lady some advice and let me answer her in kind. If she wants to initiate searches for the fifth man, the sixth man and those after him, she does not need to look for them in the Labour Party, in the trade unions, in the comprehensive schools, or even among the British Leyland shop stewards. Let her look for them among the ex-public school boys, those with homosexual propensities, those who voted Tory at the last election and those in social groups 1 and 2. Let her perm any three out of those four and she will be on the right track. When she is looking in the public schools, just let her look in the one bed, not under the bed, and she will find them both there. I say those things because we take great exception to the right hon. Lady's jibes and attacks on this party. We have fought for democracy in this country, and against the people that she represents. The case of Blunt far transcends the question of security. This is a battle between the Establishment and the people. Let me conclude with a quotation from the leader in The Guardian this morning: So the issues for today's debate become clearer. How can a country which gaols trivial traitors and throws away the key allow gentlemanly traitors to parade in Buckingham Palace? When, if at all, was the Queen told? I repeat that question. Was the Queen told? We do not know. The Prime Minister has not told us, and we may never get to know And how, in future, can our elected representatives get a better grip? I do not believe that we shall ever get the answers to those questions, and so this kind of scandal will go on. Those who think that it is not anything other than a great squalid conspiracy of the Establishment should simply reread Denning and they will see exactly what we are up against in this debate. 6.5 pm Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop (Tiverton) In the 19 years during which I have been a Member of the House I think that I have often heard the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) make the same speech. It is purely a matter of conjecture as to what will be the next event 438 to which he will attach that same speech which seems to be such a deeply held obsession with him. It is now so widely known on both sides of the House that his comments come as no surprise to any of us. Out of the events that the House is debating today arise certain useful lessons for the future. The first concerns the borderline between the responsibilities of a Minister and the responsibilities of a civil servant. The two are not the same. There is a similar distinction that can be roughly drawn between the functions of the Attorney-General as a Minister and his functions as a non-Minister.

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It is clear that the Attorney-General has a non-ministerial function in the general supervision of prosecutions in criminal law, but I suspect that I am not alone in this House in believing that when those functions are to be exercised in the restricted and specific category of potential prosecutions for treason or espionage, he is not the most appropriate person to make that decision. After a lot of thought, I believe that the decision to grant immunity for reasons concerned with national security ought more appropriately to fall to the Home Secretary than to the Attorney-General. The reason for that is clear. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the former Labour Home Secretary the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) have described it, it is to the Home Secretary that the Director-General of the Security Service reports. It is the Home Secretary who decides whether he should draw a matter to the attention of the Prime Minister. There may therefore be much information in the possession of the Home Secretary, but not automatically in the possession of the Attorney-General, germane to the decision whether immunity from prosecution should be granted in security cases. It is predominantly not a legal matter, but is predominantly a matter of judgment of advantage and disadvantage in the sphere of national security. As my right hon. Friend and the right hon. Member for Leeds, South reminded the House, that task is now, and has been for some time, constitutionally the function not of the Attorney-General but of the Home Secretary. I turn now to the question of the scope of immunity. We have not been told 439 the scope of the immunity granted to Blunt. Why he should be referred to as "Professor", when to the best of my knowledge he has not had that emeritus title conferred upon him, is not immediately clear to me. Whether the immunity was for events past only or also for events in the future is highly material. It is important that any immunity ever given in these cases should be contingent and not absolute. Immunity should be contingent upon full disclosure. If the immunity carries into the future as well as relating to the past, the person concerned is at liberty to conceal information because of a desire to protect those for whom he feels emotions of loyalty. Immunity should not be afforded to a person who is not prepared to make a full disclosure. Moreover, if there is blanket immunity, immunity in the "widest possible terms", presumably that covers future acts of espionage as well as past ones. Mr. Ronald Bell (Beaconsfield) Why? Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop If it does not, it is not in the "widest possible terms". If the words "widest possible terms" are taken literally, they cover future events as well as past ones. Mr. Ronald Bell If there can be immunity in the "widest possible terms" relating to all past actions, surely there could also be immunity in narrower terms relating to past actions. Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop Yes, certainly, I agree with my hon, and learned Friend. But I did not hear "in respect of past actions" uttered in the House. That is why I intervened when the right hon, and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. Silkin), the ex-Attorney-General, was telling us how he had examined the terms of the immunity and had advised the Cabinet Office that there could be no prosecution. We do not know the circumstances in which the question was put. Had there been suspicion that, since the granting of the original immunity, Blunt had committed further treasonable acts? If so, were those acts covered by the "widest possible immunity"? We do not know.

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Although we are told that the then Attorney-General informed the then Home Secretary, we are not told that he sought the agreement of the Home Secretary 440 to the terms in which the immunity was given. The Home Secretary may well have been told that an appropriate offer of immunity was to be made; but if the Home Secretary was not aware of the specific terms of that immunity, his belief as to the terms of the immunity might have been materially different from the actual terms in which the then Attorney-General gave it. I do not know the answer to the question that I have posed. I do not even ask to know the terms of the immunity. There may be good reasons why that should not be revealed to the House. The important issue is that no immunity should cover non-disclosure. Full disclosure should always be a part of the contingent grant of an immunity. I do not believe it to be appropriate that in cases of this sort advice to the Sovereign should be given by a civil servant. I believe it to be appropriate that advice to the Sovereign should be given by a Minister. If I interpreted correctly what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, the advice to retain the services of Mr. Blunt in the Royal Household may have been in the national interest. I am not in a position to form a judgment on that. However, I form the judgment that that advice should have been given not by a civil servant but by a Minister. It is the duty of Ministers to advise the Crown, and Ministers are answerable to the House. I do not mean to imply that Ministers are under an obligation to disclose to the House the advice that they have given to the Crown. However, Ministers who no longer retain the confidence of the House are dismissable on a motion of censure, while civil servants are not. That is why I consider it to be an important constitutional principle not that a Minister should subsequently accept responsibility for the action of a civil servant but that advice should be tendered by a Minister and not by a civil servant. During the debate and in public discussion there has been some blurring of the difference between accepting responsibility and making a decision. The two are not the same. There are decisions that need to be taken by Ministers on the basis of information that is as full as possible. Merely to place something on a Minister's file in the expectation that 441 he will not see it may technically fulfil the requirement of informing the Minister, but it does not fulfil the function of enabling the Minister to take a decision that is appropriate to a Minister and inappropriate to a civil servant on the basis of the full disclosure of information to the Minister so that he may take that decision. There is a tradition in Parliament that Ministers accept responsibility for the actions of their civil servants. Therefore, in terms of conventional ethics a Minister is bound to state that he has been informed of something by his civil servant, if the civil servant has placed it on the file for him, even though the civil servant does not intend the Minister to become aware of it and, indeed, the Minister has not become aware of it. The difference must be drawn between fiction and fact. It is important that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gives clear instructions, which will continue to exist unless and until those who come after her in office alter them, that when security information is supposed to be communicated to a Minister, the Minister should initial the minute to indicate that he has read it. The disparity between formal communication and receipt of information will thereby disappear. Mr. English The hon. Gentleman is skirting around what is commonly called the previous Administration rule, namely, that Ministers are not allowed to see the papers of their predecessors who were members of a different Administration. As I understand it, that rule does not apply to foreign affairs. That is logical. I hope that it does not apply to

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national security. I hope that it will be made clear from the Government Front Bench whether it applies in the Blunt case. Whatever else it applies to, it should not apply to national security. Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop That point is a different one, but I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says. He has made a point about successors in office having access to security information. My point was about information actually being received by a Minister rather than it merely being formally placed at his disposal. That is different. Learning from these lessons, there is further action that my right hon. Friend 442 needs to take: first, to give a positive instruction that immunity shall be granted by the Attorney-General only on the instruction of the Home Secretary and in terms approved by the Home Secretary; secondly, that on any matter involving securityit might well be more general than thatany advice tendered to the Crown should be tendered by a Minister of the Crown and not by civil servants; and thirdly, that there should be a clear distinction between acts that have not yet been committed by a person to whom immunity is granted and acts that have been committed in the past. I want to place on record my conviction that it is important that Parliament should retain the right, which it undoubtedly has, to proceed against malefactors, employing its own rarely used criminal jurisdiction where there is reason to believe that the criminal proceedings that ought to be taken in the national interest are barred from process in the normal courts by a wrongful act of immunity by an Attorney-General. I am not alleging that in this case there has been a wrongful act by an Attorney-General but, for instance, if the Prime Minister gave the instruction that I have recommended and, notwithstanding that, an Attorney-General gave a nolle prosequi in terms that have not been approved by the Home Secretary, Parliament might then wish to proceed against a malefactor, particularly one who had continued treasonable activities after the grant of immunity. If anyone cares to look up the history of the process of impeachment and attainder which is set out at great length in Hatsell's "Precedents of Parliament" he will see that in his commentary Hatsell draws particular attention to the importance of retaining these procedures where the existing processes of law are for some reason blocked. It is therefore important that, little used though they are, we should be aware of the continued existence of these procedures, as should those who might be subject to them, to guard against a belief that an immunity unwisely given can confer upon the person to whom it is given the right to commit future treasons with impunity. 6.24 pm Mr. Arthur Bottomley (Middlesbrough) I think that the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) will 443 agree that the British public have been led by recent events to believe that there is one law for them and another, much less harsh, for those of the Establishment. At the time that Mr. Blunt was engaged in his treacherous activities I was a trade union officer attempting to recruit members of the newly formed civil defence force into my organisation. I was, however, forbidden to do this by the so-called Ministry of Home Security, a department of the Home Office. Subsequently, the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, Ernest Bevin, led a deputation to the Home Office, where we met Sir Wilfrid Eady, the Under-Secretary in charge of home security. He told us that the civil defence force was equivalent to the Armed Forces and that trade unionism was not allowed in the Army, Navy or Air Force. Then, in an aside, he said that there might be unreliable elements in them.

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I recall Ernest Bevin thumping the table and saying that Quislings were not to be found in the ranks of the trade union movement and that they belonged to Sir Wilfrid's class. The Under-Secretary promised to report to the Minister. In due course, we were able to recruit members of the civil defence force into the trade unions. At that time the Establishment was more concerned about patriotic trade unionists than the real enemy. As Secretary for Overseas Trade and then Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations I could not escape having contact with the secret service. The head of the Diplomatic Service and permanent secretary at the Commonwealth Office, Sir Saville Garner, now Lord Garner, kept me fully informed about security matters that were concerned with my responsibilities. On one occasion, Sir Saville Garner brought the head of security to see me personally. I cannot believe that others were not so informed. If they were not, the civil servants concerned were not doing their duty. As Secretary for Overseas Trade, I was asked by the then Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, to host a party of members of the British and Dutch secret services who cooperated together in the war. The reason for getting them together was to assure the Dutch that it was inefficiency 444 and not evil or wilful intent that had caused the death of their comrades. It was vital that the British secret service should be seen to be completely reliable and dependable. Allegations have now been made that raise doubts about these unfortunate incidents. It is most important that these doubts should be removed. It is understandable that if a spy is uncovered the intelligence services should wish fully to exploit the situation in order to gain knowledge for the benefit of the country. We have a right to know the facts concerning the present case. It is essential that the public should know that double standards do not operate. We must remove all doubts about sending Dutch agents to certain death. Other right hon, and hon. Members, as well as the media, have given good reasons why there should be a full inquiry into this unhappy business. I make my own strong plea that the full facts should be brought into the open. 6.29 pm Mr. Jonathan Aitken (Thanet, East) I begin by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on the measured and largely reassuring speech with which she opened the debate. After listening to her I felt that there was not much more benefit to be obtained from raking through the embers of what is, after all, a very old and rather distasteful story. I regret only that some of the decisions taken in the course of the Blunt saga have given some people, such as the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton), the opportunity to direct mischievous criticism towards the Royal circle. Before I come back to that matter, may I turn to the general themes of the debate? I think that some anxieties remain, particularly about procedures and accountability. The basic case that I want to advance is that I believe that the time is coming when the security services must be made more accountable to Parliament. I believe that the best way to do that would be for the House to set up its own Select Committee on security and intelligence. It would consist of a few senior Privy Councillors, meeting in closed session and playing a watchdog role. That idea may deserve more careful consideration than perhaps is generally 445 realised, in the context of the entirely new position that appears to have been created by the procedural reforms that brought about the setting up of our new Select Committees. Once the Government decided to establish those new Select Committees to monitor Government Departments, they placed at the disposal of those Committees machinery to investigate any aspect of those Departments, including certain aspects of security.

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For example, there is nothing to stop the new Home Affairs Committee from sending for persons and papers and inquiring into such subjects as the activities of the Special Branch, which is the arresting arm of MI5. I should not mind betting that the leading lights of that CommitteeI think of the hon. Members for York (Mr. Lyon) and for Ormskirk (Mr. Kilroy-Silk), for examplewill not tarry long before they turn their busy hands in precisely that direction. My point is that the option may no longer exist for us to fall back on the familiar argument that monitoring security matters is far too serious a question for Parliament and must be left exclusively to the highest echelons of Government. Like it or not, no area of Government is now sacred and able to escape the inquiries of those Select Committees. Indeed, I do not think that it is too fanciful to foresee the day when a Foreign Affairs Committee in a different Parliament, perhaps dominated by Left-wing Back Benchers, will decide to take a serious look at the activities of the Secret Intelligence Service, or when a similar Defence Committee will decide to look at the activities of MI6. Against that background, the Government should carefully consider whether they want to risk seeing the activities of our security services probed by the new Select Committees, which will inevitably include some of the more controversial characters from the Back Benches, or whether they would rather see a quiet monitoring job done by a senior and more cautious committee of Privy Councillors, who, it is to be hoped, would always put their patriotism before their politics. This is a new dimension of the problems of accountability, to which sooner or later the Government will have to turn their mind. 446 Mr. Leadbitter I am rather surprised at the hon. Gentleman for drawing those conclusions. We have recent experience of a Privy Councillor betraying his responsibility to the House and the country. Secondly, will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that it took a question from me in the House before we were able to debate the matter today? Hon. Members of all parties together have a relationship in matters of the defence of the realm and of security. Through the Select Committee procedure we could have a probing role which would be of service and help to the national Security Service itself. Mr. Aitken My answer to the hon. Gentleman's first point is that one black sheep among Privy Councillors does not prove very much. The answer to his second point is that one debate and one written answer do not add up to adequate and continuing scrutiny of the Securely Service. There is nothing to fear, and much to be gained, from a Select Committee on intelligence. I refer the House to an encouraging precedent set on the other side of the Atlantic. In 1976, following disturbing revelations about failures by the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Senate set up the Senate Intelligence Committee, charged with the duty of monitoring the FBI, the CIA and the national security agencies. The committee, under the chairmanship of Senator Birch Bayh and the vicechairmanship of Senator Barry Goldwater, has had the good effect of reassuring the American public that the CIA is fully accountable to the democratic institutions and is not a law unto itself. In the light of some of the Blunt revelations, similar reassurance would not come amiss in Britain. [Interruption.] Some of my hon. Friends appear, to judge from their sedentary interruptions, to think that the committee has Mr. Raymond Whitney (Wycombe)

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Is my hon. Friend aware that, whatever else the committee may have done to reassure the American public, the moves have effectively destroyed the American intelligence services? Mr. Aitken My hon. Friend is uncharactistically misinformed about the committee. If he looks at recent history and the dates, I am sure that he will 447 agree with me that among the major factors that have weakened American intelligence are a series of well-publicised failures in Chile, at the time of Watergate, and others. They all happened before the committee was set up. Secondly, any of the other changes most usually criticised have emanated from the massive personnel changes made at the top by the Director of the CIA, Admiral Turner. Those have not been matters for the committee. In fact, it is said by many senior members of the United States intelligence community that that Senate committee, which normally meets in secret sessions, has, far from compromising or weakening the United States intelligence effort, to some extent strengthened it, simply because it has made useful recommendations and has voted and appropriated certain funds for special operations. But perhaps we should not look too hard at United States precedents. After all, the Blunt affair is a peculiarly British scandal, in which it seems that too many of the decent chaps decided not to sneak on the old school spy until, unfortunately, those beastly rotters, the journalists, came in and debagged him. I say "Thank God for Mr. Andrew Boyle and for the other journalists who followed in his wake." Without them Blunt would never have been unmasked, and without them a despicable traitor would still be basking in a place of honour in the Royal household. Something is wrong with a system in which it took one author to get the Soviet mole out of the Palace circle. Much harsher questions should have been asked earlier, especially the key question whether the advantages of not scaring Blunt's contacts were really worth the risk of involving the Palaceit subsequently happenedin an operation that the public will inevitably see as a cover-up. It is for that reason that I am rather surprised that the Prime Minister of the day was not informed, even though the Home Secretary was. That may have been a mistake of accountability. However, I am not interested in the accountability of the past. It is to the accountability of the future that the House should direct its attention. Whether we like it or not, open government is 448 growing in this country, and accountability to Parliament of all Government Departments and all aspects of Government is growing, too. I should be the first to recognise that the security and intelligence communities should enjoy special and privileged treatment under such parliamentary accountability, but I cannot believe that they will go on enjoying what is virtually total immunity from such accountability. 6.38 pm Mr. Ted Leadbitter (Hartlepool) I must confess that when I raised this question last week I did not envisage the extent to which matters would develop in so short a time. A number of people have asked me what prompted me to table the question. There have been some assumptions, which I understand, but I must place on record, because I respect those concerned, that I posed the question after I had thought about the problem myself. I consulted no one, and no one sought to consult me. Therefore, I was surprised and impressed when on my approach, first, to the Home Office, and, secondly, to the Prime Minister's office, I found that there were circumstances in which I could expect a considered answer. Of course, the Prime Minister's office did not intimate the nature of the answer, so I informed that office much later the same day that I had firmly decided to table the question, and that all that

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I required was an assurance that its answer would be available on the date when in fact it was given. I have given my explanation. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) is not present, I shall address myself to his remarks and say that I respect the conclusions that he reached. The press has given the impression that there was another objective. Therefore, I neither criticise my hon. Friend nor do I feel that there should be any doubt about how the question arose or about the date and timing of the statement. The whole country has been saddened by the affair. It is right and proper that in the conduct of the business of the House we begin by asserting that such matters do not serve the purposes for which we aimthe establishment of a national Security Service which is efficient and, without question, capable of doing 449 its job. We should seek to do that in the best way, pursuing the idea that it would be most unhelpful to impugn anyone's reputation in the pursuit of that objective. I accept that Prime Ministers and Attorneys-General in the past have genuinely believed that they were not informed but, upon reflectionno doubt on advice from the Cabinet Officethey agree that, in some way, they were informed. Therefore, I accept the extent to which[Interruption.] I remind my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-leStreet (Mr. Radice) that this is no laughing matter. By no means do I consider it to be a laughing matter. I accept the extent to which the Prime Minister was able to go in this regard to clear up the question of whether those in responsible positions were informed as far as they could be informed. The country must be sad and anxious today. I have looked at the press reports with great care. One editorial in the Evening News read as follows: The Establishment won another round yesterday and the honour and the dignity of the country was lost. It continued that Anthony Blunt was: permitted to twist truth around his little finger unchallenged. That was with reference to the so-called press conference. I examined the press reports for any deviation from that sort of conclusion. I do not approach the matter with any sense of criticism. The editorial continues: That old tradition of appeasement appeared to be alive and well at The Times yesterday. So it seemed to be. The conclusion of the editorial is dramatic: The Blunts get their cigars and their smoked trout while those outside the magic Establishment circles, the Blakes and the Vassalls, are locked in jail. It can only deepen the damaging cynicism with which people regard those who rule us and those who seek to lead us. In the calmness of today's debate, I hope to persuade the Government Front Bench to set up an inquiry. Comments have been made in the press. It is beyond doubt that there is bad feeling in the House. Those of us who have served for a long time in this place and those in high officeirrespective of political convictionhave sought to do 450 our duty by the nation, and we have been misled. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to seek some form of inquiry. The Blunt affair is only like a pea on the top of a mountan or, as The Sunday Times described it, the "tip of the iceberg". We need to know much more. I consider that the defences of the realm are in danger. Security, even at NATO level, is now subject to hazardous risk. I do not accuse anybody in the House, but we are dealing with a development which has grown to a point where it is not supervised. Hitherto, when questions have been asked about security, even when no security matter has been involved, there have been no answers on the basis that "This is a matter of security." I understand the difficulties that any Government would have in taking the step of setting up an inquiry to seek the best way to root out the remnants of the Blunt

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circle in high places. They are still thereBlunt himself admitted that yesterday. Some are in office, others are out of office. When Anthony Blunt finished his fulltime service with M15 in 1945 he retained a parttime relationship. The Prime Minister was right to say that he was not in a position within M15, at that time, to supply information to the enemy. However, he was in a position to obtain it, He and his friends were closely knit together, not only in business terms but in terms of their responsibility. Also, in social terms they behaved in the most peculiar way. I return to the Prime Minister's statement in an effort to illustrate some of my concern. It appears that the Prime Minister's statement in reply to my question last week was specific. I took it for granted that it would not be comprehensive. There may well be good reasons why that could not be so. Frankly, it was made clear that Anthony Blunt had actively recruited talent for the Russian intelligence service in the 1930s, and that during the war he had passed information to the Russians. There is no point in suggesting that the Russians were our allies. Eventually that relationship developedin a way in which the peace of the world could eventually be established and fin, war brought to an end, But, before Russia was our potential enemy, Herr von Ribbentrop had 451 signed a pact with the Russians. Earlier we had troops ready to embark to deal with the threatened Russian invasion of Finland. We are considering a treasonable wartime activity, an offence for which two men were subsequently tried and hanged. The Prime Minister went on to make it clear that with the suspicion under which Anthony Blunt was beginning to work, inquiries followed in later years after the defection of Maclean and Burgess. I come now to the question on which we cannot get answers. In 1964 an event happenedthat is how it is describedand information was received that directly implicated Anthony Blunt, and he decided to confess. The point I wish to illustrate is that the Prime Minister's statement is considerably different from that of Anthony Blunt at his so-called press conference. If one analyses his statement, one sees that he went no further than to seek how best to describe the protection of his conscience and the protection of his friends. Even then, there is no sense of remorse or of being sorry that he had been found out as a traitor. Indeed, he picked on the idea of feeling that conscience was more important than loyalty to his country. That brings me to an interesting question to which the House might address itself. Bearing in mind the statement of Anthony Blunt and the statement that the Prime Minister made just few days before that, why did the Cabinet Secretary spend the reported hour of his time examining the statement with Mr. Blunt's solicitors? Let us be frank. There was not the scintilla of an infringement of the Official Secrets Act. No one with any legal background, in or out of Government, could sustain an argument to the effect that it was necessary for the Cabinet Secretary to look at the statement. I can give another reason. Mr. Blunt had a close working relationship throughout his time in high office and in the higher echelons of the intelligence service with those in similar positions in major Departments of State, who have spent their lives being cognisant of the conditions of the Official Secrets Act. That gave him and those associated with him a special knowledge of the workings of 452 that Act. How, therefore, did Anthony Blunt suddenly come to be in need of the Cabinet Secretary's advice about what to put in his statement and what to keep out? I repeat that there is nothing in the statement from beginning to end. Why was the Cabinet Secretary interested?

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I put my point even more forcibly. We have here a man who for 40 years successfully contrived and conspired to keep as far away from the Prime Minister and the Cabinet as possible. His normal working relationships in the pursuit of his nauseating objectives required him never to be near the Cabinet Office. Why, then, have that rather interesting meeting, and why did it take an hour to look at the statement? I read the damned thing in two minutes. I shall say some things shortly which I hope I will not personally regret. Why was it but a few days before the meeting in the Cabinet Office with Mr. Blunt's solicitor, and literally but a few hours after I had tabled my question, that Mr. Blunt was warned that a statement was to be made in the House? Whatever else is said, this hon. Member who tabled the question had not heard the answer and neither had the Parliament of which he was a Member. Here is a man known to be a spy and known for his guilt. Yet he is given notice that a statement is to be made about him. I ask the Front Bench to consider the anxiety, even of reasonable people like myself, about that sort of procedure. There was no doubt about the man's guilt. To say the least, it was most imprudentand at this stage that is the only criticism that I offerthat the Cabinet Office should have been involved on those two occasions. Mr. Cormack What possible damage could have been done by that piece of information? We have heard, and we know, that there was no question of prosecution. There was no question of a man fleeing the country to escape his just deserts. What possible damage could have been done by the extension of that small courtesy? What do we know about the information given by Mr. Blunt in 1964? It would appear that it might have been fairly valuable. Mr. Leadbitter There is no doubt about it. I do not foresee any damage. 453 All the damage has been done. My question is what good did it do, and where should the real courtesies lie? Surely the answer is to this House of Commons and its hon. Members. Mr. Michael Brotherton (Louth) Will the hon. Gentleman be assured that there are hon. Members on this side of the House who do not believe in extending courtesy to traitors? Mr. Leadbitter I think that the House is well apprised that all my comments take into account the genuine feelings on both sides of the House. Where there are exceptions, the majority of hon. Members will take note. Courtesy to the House should be a greater priority than courtesy to a man who has betrayed his country. I wonder whether a further conclusion of mine would at least lead the House to feel that there is some credence in the conclusions that many people are beginning to draw. In the light of other activities in the past few days, not least the VIP treatment that this man received in The Times offices, farcically described as a press conference, there is a suggestion of a cover-up of the cover-up. It is no good laughing about it. Too much has happened; and no one can afford to laugh. The reputation of a number of people whose names we have not yet heard may be at risk. There is evidence of an attempt to cover up the 15 years of cover-up. Let us not offend the House or the country by suggesting that 15 years of unholy silence can be condoned. Senior officials and others involved in the play have been falling over themselves to say either that they did not know or, on reflection, that they might have known. We are dealing with people who are used to the disciplines of public life. There

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are bound to be suggestionsand I put it no higher than thatwhere there are areas of doubt, hesitancy, haste or a shifting of feet. I am trying to get the House to respond to a feeling in the country. Let us for a moment forget about ourselves. Our responsibility is to the people of the country. The suggestion is that there has been a cover-up or a tendency to cover up the cover-up. Mr. Blunt's rise and fall is on the record. Pursuing him further will not serve the ends to which we must commit 454 ourselves in our examination of the operations of the Security Service in recent years. Our purposes must be to consider the Service in a wider context. The punishment for Mr. Blunt's treachery, which he has avoided for so long, is a thousandfold greater with his exposure at such an old age. Let the blame for that lie at the door of his friends and all those in office who preferred silence to the ringing words of truth. Let it be clear to any holders of high office, Ministers or Prime Ministers, and any officer involved in matters of national security that they have no special privilege to grant asylum by inducements or promises of immunity to enemies of the State. There may be some who wish to pursue a twisted, legalistic thought-provoking exercise on what is meant by inducements and immunities. That may be interesting in relation to some offences, but inducements and immunities should never exist for an enemy of the State, and no one should argue this qualification, because they have been granted to only one man. Mr. Anthony Blunt is the only man, to our knowledge, who has been given such immunity. It is important for the House to recognise that no Minister, Prime Minister or person given the honour temporarily to hold office should accrue to himself the privilege of saying "I am the law. I will say who is immune and who is not." Let us understand also that the assertion of that sickening man Sewell that the withdrawal of immunity would mean that spies would not be so ready to give themselves up is nonsense. Once we suggest that immunity may be offered to those in prominent positions, it will be a reason for them to spy. They will know that they will be safe. Mr. Alan Clark (Plymouth, Sutton) The hon. Gentleman said that Blunt is the only person who has had immunity. Would it not be more correct to say that Blunt is the only person who we know has had immunity? Mr. Leadbitter Indeed. That sort of thinking will help us get nearer the truth. I qualify what I said. Blunt is the only one of whom we know. That may be a further inducement to the House to think 455 that there needs to be a more positive examination of the Security Service. As far as I am concerned, that is the end of Blunt. We must now concentrate on the Security Service and the need to establish an inquiry to examine how the scandals of the successful defections of Burgess, Maclean and Philby, the long years of treachery by Blunt, and the acts of treason of others, were made possible, and what new arrangements can be made to provide a more efficient form of national security. The importance of inquiring more positively and scrutinising the history of our Security Service arises from the interesting list of trials for treasonable acts under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act. They are of paramount importance. In 1946 Dr. Allan Nunn May passed information to the Russians on the first atomic bomb test. In 1949 Klaus Fuchs, who worked at the Atomic Energy Authority, passed reports on tests to the Russians.

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In 1952 William Martin Marshal, who worked in a Foreign Office branch in Moscow, passed information. In 1961 Lonsdale, with Harry Houghton, Ethel Gee, Peter Kroger and Helen Kroger, worked in the military underwater research department and passed information from that establishment in Portland to the Russians. George Blake, a member of MI6, received a long prison sentence in 1961 for his crimes. In 1962 John Vassal, a secretary in the office of the naval attach at a British embassy and in the naval intelligence division of the Admiralty, passed to Russia information about radar, torpedo and anti-submarine trials. Also in 1962, Barbara Fell of the Central Office of Information passed information to Yugoslavia. Frank Clifford Bossard of the Ministry of Civil Aviation passed information to Russia about guided missiles. In 1965 Percy Sidney Allen of the Ministry of Defence passed information to Iran and United Arab Republic embassies. In 1968 Douglas Ronald Britten, an RAF technician, passed information to the Russians, and in 1972 David James Bingham of the Ministry of 456 Defence passed information to Russia on submarine and torpedo warfare. I do not suggest that they all belonged to what is known as the Blunt circle, but the cases are a measure of the Russian penetration not only of our national security and our security and intelligence agencies, but into major Departments of State involved with security. We can only conclude that, if there is a communications system between this country and Russia, the general lines of communication cannot be too different from those employed by Blunt and his far more specialised group. The House may not be unaware of the magnitude of the problem, but given what has happened and the revelation that others may be involved, I sense that we had better be on our guard. We had better watch out. I suggested that all those I named were not related to Blunt, but there is a list, which must be known outside the House, of those who are vulnerable and who are committed in their sympathies towards Russia. In the light of Blunt's statement and his answers to questions yesterday, the House would do well to consider how deep is the penetration in the offices of our State and in our Security Service. The Sunday Times has described the revelations as the tip of the iceberg; and that alone calls for an inquiry. One or two comments of recent days may interest the House. Many hon. Members will have read them, but it is important to put them on record. Some Conservative Members seem to be showing impatience. I hope that their constituents get to know about that. The whole nation is asking for everything to be on the record. I want my part to be on the record, in order to show that I am concerned. Sir John Langford-Holt (Shrewsbury) The hon. Gentleman is talking about penetration. I do not wish to make a political point, but will he not recall the case of an hon. Member giving information to the Czechs? Will Owen was his name. Penetration comes right through to the Chamber. Mr. James Wellbeloved (Erith and Crayford) Withdraw. He was found not guilty. 457 Sir J. Langford-Holt I am sorry; and I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. If he was acquitted, I withdraw my statement. Mr. Leadbitter I am glad that that point has been made clear, because there was a complete acquittal. Sir John Colville, formerly private secretary to Sir Winston Churchill, has recently made it clear that: A top civil servantone of the best brains in the Foreign Office

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worked secretly for Moscow by passing information to Burgess. Sir Charles Cunningham, permanent secretary at the Home Office in 1964, said on 17 November that he knew that a contact had taken place, and thought that he would probably have told the Home Secretary. There has been an uncanny repetition of the words "someone probably was told" or "they might have been told". The imprecision about whether information has been provided is an alarming feature of recent events. John Wyndham, who is now in another place, said that when he was private secretary to Harold Macmillan he urged The Sunday Times to consider Philby as just the tip of the iceberg. The comment this week in The Sunday Times makes that point clear: With the revelations about Anthony Blunt another few inches of the iceberg is revealed. But most of it is hidden still. Bearing in mind those comments, the list of those tried for treasonable acts, and the knowledge, derived from other sources, that there is continued activity in some of our Departments and in the Security Serviceparticularly by people who have, or who had, associations with Bluntthere is a need to look into the extent of any damage. This morning I received a letter that has also been sent to the Prime Minister. The letter comes from someone who has held high office in the international department of NATO. He says: There has been talk about doing nothing to reduce the efficiency of the Security Services. The fact is that they are grossly inefficient, as can be expected of Services which have no supervision and use cloak of 'security', when usually no 'security' is involved. The author goes on to enumerate in detail questions that pinpoint lapses in security. Those lapses are highlighted by two traitors, one of whom defected. That man was named Volkov and he was eventually executed. Nothing apparently was done 458 by the security services about those men. The letter also indicates the damage that has been done to NATO. Mr. English I understand that as a Back Bencher, my hon. Friend is not obliged, as a Minister would be, to lay a document in the Library if he quotes from it. However, it is a matter of courtesy to the House to do that. Does he propose to put a copy of the document in the Library? Mr. Leadbitter Yes, I am referring to the letter because much of the material was published in The Sunday Times of 26 November 1976. I would not have referred to it unless it had been necessary, because of the nature of some of the comments in that letter. An allegation has been made in that letter that so much damage was done because of the lack of security in NATO that 100 million was allocated for the relocation of missile sites. As a result of an investigation, NATO did not have the courage to admit to any damage, although the Russians knew about it. Instead, it carried out its normal policy of hoodwinking the public. Mr. Cormack Who is the author? Mr. Leadbitter The author is Mr. Louis Smith. At least I am more open than the services that I am criticising. I am more open in my concern for the safety of the nation than the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Mr. Hamilton), whose laughter imputes ridicule. Accordingly, I shall conclude in a manner in which I had not intended to conclude. An inquiry into the history of the national Security Service, MI5, and the secret intelligence service must involve the relationships of all those concerned with Blunt. That inquiry must also deal with accountability, monitoring, vetting and responsibility for recruitment. Steps should be taken to ensure that those who go into that service do

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not all come out of the same social pot. This is a responsible and important matter and the whole country is alarmed about it. The only political point that I shall make is one that was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central in a striking and forceful speech. Some people and some parties have spent many years criticising the party to which I belong. Those people talk about Reds 459 under the beds, and they create a lack of confidence. I accept that any man is entitled to hold whatever political views he choosesMarxist or otherwisebut that is very different from betraying one's country. I received a telephone call on Sunday that made it abundantly clear. Mr. Archie Hamilton (Epsom and Ewell) Mr. Smith again. Mr. Leadbitter The hon. Gentleman must stop. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman did during the war, but I lived through that war and many of my compatriots died. They did not die in order to see the hon. Gentleman laughing. It is no small matter. There is only one jester and one fool around the place from time to time. Does not the hon. Gentleman think it is important that we deal with the question of accountability once and for all? We should say that we have enough evidence to show that it is not the ordinary working man, nor the person who seeks to represent people in constituencies such as mineor those in constituencies represented by Conservative Membersnor the trade union movement, nor the Communist Party of Great Britain, who betray their country. Those that have betrayed Britain to such a great extent are those that I have listed. These are the people who have committed a crime against the nation. As I have said, when I tabled my question I was not aware of the extent to which matters would develop. But what I was aware of was that the people that I thought would be involved could come only from one class structure and from one situationand so they did. In conclusion, therefore, this House[HON. MEMBERS: "Too long"] Since I raised the matter, anyway, I am entitled to some extra time. This House should demand an inquiry. If the Government do not give us one, certain hon. Members can get together to force one. I say from past experience that if the Government do not use their judgment properly to seek to have an inquiry, politically they will regret the day, because there are plenty of rats among those about whom I am talking who are ready to spill the beans on their friends to save their own skins. Some of the letters that I have received have 460 surprised me. I thought that even among those who have had it good for all their lives and have come from the same public schools there would have been a loyalty to each other, but I have found that when they are in a corner they are ready to spill the beans. Members of Parliament who are determined to set up a group in this House to make themselves available for information will be acting properly and reasonably in a way conducive to dealing with the national Security Service, so that it can have removed from it the kind of people who have served this country wrongly. The Security Service deserves to be made efficient. In that sense and for that purpose, if such a group can take the place of the duty of a Government, so be it. 7.21 pm Mr. Edward Heath (Sidcup) I want to make only a brief intervention. The first thing that I should like to do is to agree with the words of the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), when he emphasised the care and attention paid by those in positions of responsibility to security questions. This has been doubted by some speakers, including the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter).

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As Chief Whip in 195559 I was responsible for advising two Prime MinistersLord Avon, or Sir Anthony Eden, as he then was, and Mr. Macmillanabout the handling of security questions in this House, because of the interest of the House in such events as occurred. From 1960 to 1963 I was in the Foreign Office as Lord Privy Seal and had experience, therefore, of the overseas services, which the Leader of the Opposition has also had. As Prime Minister, from 1970 to 1974, I was naturally concerned with all the security services. First, I know of no questions that are dealt with by people in positions of authority with more care and attention, and are treated more seriously, than these matters of security. I hope that the House will accept that from someone who has had over 20 years of responsibilities, in one way or another, for dealing with these matters. Secondly, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out very clearly the rules that were laid down by Sir David 461 Maxwell Fyfe originally governing the relationship between MI5 and the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister. All that I want to say about that is that in the period 197074 I found that those rules worked satisfactorily. There were occasions when the head of the service, who knew that he had direct access to me, took the opportunity of that access and came to discuss particular problems with methe Home Secretary, of course, always knowing, and sometimes being there and sometimes not. The head of the service had complete right of access to the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary informed me of what he considered to be major questions of which the Prime Minister ought to be aware. Of course, it is possible for a Home Secretary to make a misjudgment as to which problems ought to be referred to the Prime Minister. It is possible for a head of a Government Department to make a misjudgment about a question that afterwards he would think he ought to have referred to the Prime Minister, and sometimes a Prime Minister has matters referred to him by the head of a Department which he thinks that the Minister ought to have dealt with himself. These are matters of judgment, and one uses one's human faculties in dealing with them. I am glad, therefore, that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has again publicly laid down the rules that apply in this matter. Working with Home Secretaries from 1970 to 1974 and with the head of the service, I found that the rules functioned satisfactorily. Within the limits of human frailty, I believe that this is so. Mr. Skinner On the face of it, what the right hon. Gentleman is saying sounds good and comfortable, yet Mr. George Young, who, I am told, had something to do with MI6, spoke on the radio at the weekend and said that what happens in practice, as distinct from theory, is that busy Ministers, inundated with work and with answering parliamentary questions, can be informed without realising it. It is the way in which they are informed that matters. I may have got it wrong, but I sensed that what he was saying was that it is possible to shove a piece of paper under the Minister's nose when he is thinking about the way in which he should reply to next week's 462 parliamentary questions, and the thing never gets dealt with with the kind of seriousness that the right hon. Gentleman implies. What the right hon. Gentleman should address his mind to is the question whether his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has today drawn up a set of guidelines that will ensure that there exists a fail-safe mechanism, which makes it possible for the Prime Minister of the day and important Ministers to know these facts. I got the impression that the Prime Minister had not achieved that. Mr. Heath

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I am sorry, but I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I also disagreed with the broadcast, which I heard on Sunday. First, the speaker was never head of the service, and therefore the opportunities that he was likely to have had of dealing with Ministers were slight. Secondly, I do not accept for one moment the speaker's accusation that when the head of the Security Service talks to a Minister what he says goes in one ear and out the other. The amount of time spent by senior Ministers in dealing with these questions is very great indeed. I repeat that I am very glad that my right hon. Friend has laid down these rules again and that they are publicly known and can be carried out by Ministers. I come now to the questions that arise from the Blunt case. Here, I want to deal with some of the remarks of the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton), who said that those in responsible positions had denied that they ever knew anything about it. That certainly does not apply to myself, and I noticed that the Leader of the Opposition shook his head in disagreement also. I was informed about this case. Perhaps I may add here that I was informed when I became Prime Minister. I was fully briefed by the services, and I was informed of the current problems with which they were dealing. I therefore have no criticism of the services for that. In February 1973 I was informed in detail about this case, because of certain other matters associated with it that had arisen. I therefore had to consider the matter from various points of view and judge what action should be taken. Perhaps at this point I may deal with one or two of the points raised by the 463 hon. Member for Hartlepool. I did not have to consider the question of immunity, because that had already been granted. As we have heard today, all the Attorneys-General who have considered the matter believed that the right decision was taken. Let me deal with the points raised by the hon. Member for Hartlepool. If he is saying that this is a cover-up he is saying that no immunity should have been granted. He has overlooked a point that was emphasised by the Prime Minister, quite rightlythat in this case there was no evidence on which a prosecution could have been brought. In all the other cases that the hon. Member described, with some of which I had personally to deal at different times, there was evidence, and a prosecution could be brought, and was brought, and the penalty was paid. In this case there was no evidence. That is presumably why the Attorney-General of the time, Sir John Hobson, concludedagain on the advice of securitythat if immunity was granted, a great deal of information would be obtained. That was information about the damage done to this countryand also about the enemy's network. I ask the hon. Gentleman to ask himself a question. Put in this situation, would he say that no prosecution should be brought but that no immunity would be granted, and therefore insist on forgoing the information that was available and that continued for many years? That is a decision that the Attorney-General has to take. I fully understand the argument that these cases should not be left entirely to the Attorney-General but referred to the Home Secretary. I take the view that the AttorneyGeneral, with all his activities and responsibilities, should not become involved with the political side of government. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that he could discuss with and consult colleagues. I would prefer that he did not even do that, as it is very difficult for him not to be influenced by political considerations that may be in their minds. I do not entirely agree with the proposal that he should do so only in consultation or agreement with the Home Secretary. Mr. Leadbitter I agree with the right hon. Gentleman on the views that he is 464 expressing. If he will recall, I deployed a great deal of understanding about the decisions that had to be made.

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However, it is still a matter of public concernand, of course, concern to the House that the immunity carried with it the promotion to a prominent employment in Buckingham Palace, with the knowledge, on top of that, that Mr. Blunt had received a knighthood some years before. When the matter became public the knighthood was taken away. That led the country to believe that the immunity and the activities were all right provided that the public did not know. Mr. Heath Yes. But I ask the hon. Gentleman to weigh once again those factors, which he quite rightly enumerated, against the benefit of having information that is vital to our national security and to the operation of the security services. The Attorney-General at that time took the view that I, looking back, believe was absolutely justified. The information that was obtainable was valuable to us. We would not otherwise have had it. Mr. Alan Clark Surely there is an inconsistency that might be further illuminated, to the benefit of the House. If, as we are told, Blunt stopped spying in 1945, it is reasonable to infer that the quality of information that he gave in 1964 and thereafter was not very relevant, or of urgent merit. If, on the other hand, he was capable of giving information that was relevant, urgent and germane, surely it cannot be the case that he had stopped spying in an effective sensethat is to say, that he had stopped communicationsas early as 1945. Mr. Heath I repeat that the information that was obtained was valuable. Until immunity has been granted and we hear the information that is provided, we cannot judge whether it is extremely valuable. We can work only on what is a suspicion about what has been done. However, it is of immense value to be able to confirm it and also to obtain the additional information that is available. If we change the situation of the person who decides to make a confession, we immediately warn everybody that there has been a change. Looking back, this obviously was what the service tried to avoidand did avoid successfully. As for immunity, we always must weigh up that question. 465 There is another reason for the Attorney-General's handling the matter. It is not only on questions of national security that the Attorney-General must deal with immunity. There are other questions, in criminal matters of other kinds, in respect of which immunity is granted, for the similar reason that what we receive in return is, we believe, valuablenamely, the convictions of others. That is another reason why I should prefer to leave the matter to the Attorney-General. Mr. Bob Cryer (Keighley) The right hon. Gentleman is talking about a particular instance of great significance and importance. Is he not alarmed that the Prime Minister of the period when the immunity was granted claims that he did not knoweither because the Home Secretary did not tell him or, more importantly, because the Director-General of the Security Service did not exercise his right, under paragraph 4 of the general list of instructions, to use his right of access directly to the Prime Minister? Should there not be a more positive instruction, so that the Prime Minister, the head of the Cabinet, is informed about such matters? Mr. Heath Looking back on the matter, we can each form our own judgment. One may judge whether the Director-General, having told the Home Secretary and had discussions on several occasions, as the Prime Minister described, should then have said "I am now

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asking for my right of access to the Prime Minister to tell him directly". That again is a matter of judgment. Looking back we may say "The Home Secretary would have been wiser to tell the Prime Minister of the day". One could also say that the head of security should have exercised his right. However, the fact is that the first part was carried out correctly. The Home Secretary of the day was told fully and discussed the matter on, I think, two occasions. He himself took the judgment. He did not tell the Prime Minister. I have dealt with the question of immunity. I did not have to decide that when I saw all the papers, as the matter had already been settled. I had to look at the particular circumstances of the time. What is meant when it is said that there had been a cover-up by successive Prime 466 Ministers? I can speak only for myself. It means that when I saw the papers I should have said "There will now be a public announcement". What would have been the purpose of that? I knew from my discussions with security that the information was still of value to useven though my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Clark) may be surprised. Therefore, the only way in which a charge of covering up could possibly hold good would be if the information were no longer of value to us and it was a matter that should deliberately have been made public. In February 1973 I did not come to that conclusion. From a personal point of view I do not mind whether there is to be a public inquiry, as I shall take exactly the same view. I was justified in saying to my advisers that this was not a matter to make public at that momentnot that they suggested it for a moment. The only way in which there could be any accusation of cover-up is if, at a particular point in time, a Prime Minister, looking at this matter, had said "The time has now come to make all of this public". Therefore, I ask the hon. Member for Hartlepool not to persist in the accusation that people who were responsible for dealing with such matters were covering up. Mr. Leadbitter I should like to make one point. I did not say that Prime Ministers were involved in covering up. My remarks were directed completely towards those who were anxious to have a cover-up. It does not follow that Prime Ministers are told everything. Mr. Heath I am sorry if I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. I withdraw my remarks at once. He said that people in positions of the highest responsibility should recognise that we demand the truth. I was mistaken in thinking that a Prime Minister was in the position of the highest responsibility. I at once withdraw that. This is an important point. The hon. Gentleman rightly emphasised the interest of the public in this matter. What I am saying is that the word "cover-up" is not applicable and should not be used to mislead the public. Mr. Whitehead I have one further point on concealment and accountability. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, with hindsight, that it was regrettable that the 467 officials responsible and the Security Service did not inform the incoming Government in 1964 and that there was no further information for the Labour Government until two general elections had elapsed, in 1967? Mr. Heath I cannot comment on that, as I had no responsibility at the time. I am not acquainted with the history. It may be that the Leader of the Opposition, who I understand will wind up the debate, will be able to enlighten his hon. Friend on that matter. One can always say, looking back, that it would have been advisable if somebody else had been informed, or if something else had been done. That is a matter on which I cannot comment.

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I now come to the point about what should be done. The hon. Member for Hartlepool said that this was just the tip of the iceberg. I want to utter one word of caution. Quite rightly, there was a very loud reaction when one of my hon. Friends made a point about a former Member of the House who was acquitted. Many suspicions are bandied about in the world of security, and many of them appear in books. Most people do not bother to deal with them. We cannot put ourselves in a position where, because there is a suspicion that may have come from an unknown source and gone on for a long time, we say that such-and-such a person will be excluded from these areas. That, to my generation, goes back to McCarthyism. It is guilt by association. The last thing that we want in this countryI am sure the public do not want to have itis guilty by association. I fully agree that the security services should continue to make the most strenuous efforts to deal with people who are traitors and who convey information. It is rather a sad aspect of the security services that they can never be given credit for success. There have been occasionsI recall at least twowhen the head of a security service has said to me "We have had this success; can we not possibly let it be known?". I have had to say "I am sorry, you cannot. This is an inviolate rule. When you have a success it must not be made known because it immediately gives information to the enemy which we do not want the 468 enemy to have." In fairness to the security services, one must point out that they do have successes. I remind those who speak or write from time to time in the tone of the hon. Member for Hartlepool that in October 1971 we sent 105 spies back to the Soviet Union. It was the first time that that had ever been done by any country or Government. Naturally, we did not want to break relations with the Soviet Union because of it. My right hon. Friend the then Foreign Secretary said to Mr. Gromyko on a number of occasions "Look, this is the situation. We know it exactly. You must be able to confirm it. If you are prepared to deal with it we will not tell the world, because we want to maintain relations with the Soviet Union. If you are not prepared to do anything it is very doubtful whether it can be other than world news. We fully appreciate that you may then break off relations, but the initiative for breaking off relations will not come from us." How could we have sent 105 Soviet spies back to the Soviet Union unless our own security forces had been doing their work extremely well? I give credit to the security services. Like everything else, they have failings, and those who have had to deal with the security services know perfectly well what they are. But they also have great successes. In a general way one can pay tribute to what they have achieved. Their hand should be strengthened. I do not believe that by having a Committee of this House or both Houses we shall strengthen the position of the security services. My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken), who represents my own home, spoke about the American system. What happened in the American security services caused the gravest anxiety throughout the whole of the Western world. The example of the Federal Republic of Germany has been cited. One has only to recall that the downfall of the Chancellor was brought about by the fact that the Russians had penetrated his private office. I ask the House to be a little cautious. Do we really think that we can make the security services more effective, more efficient and more accountable for their moneyafter all, the money spent on the security services is minimalor under better supervision from the point of view 469 of the work that they do. The fewer people who know about the operations of the security services, and the higher those people are, the more effective the control can be. Those who occupy those positions of responsibility must see that control is properly carried out.

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After I had studied all these papers when they were quite properly put before me, I gave instructions about the action that should be taken. It was taken and I was satisfied with it. That, for me as Prime Minister, was what I felt was right. 7.44 pm Mr. Tony Benn (Bristol, South-East) The whole House is indebted to the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) for the way in which he balanced the problems of security with the rights of freedom and the avoidance of witch-hunting. This debate, which will be unusual in that three Prime Ministers will be speaking in it, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition will be winding up the debate, is essential because it provides the House with one of its rare opportunities to discuss our political liberties and how they should be maintained and protected from enemies at home and abroad, and whether Parliament has any role whatever in upholding those rights and liberties. Having been in office for over 11 years, always very much on the fringe of security matters but never directly involved, I discovered that it was impossible for any Cabinet Minister with responsibility for the Post Office, the Ministries of Power, Technology, Aviation or Energy, not to be enough on the fringes to understand some of the points made by the right hon. Member for Sidcup. I believe that the House would be making a great mistake if it contented itself with the measured memoirs of three or four people who have held the highest responsibility asking the House to accept that that is as far as it should go in examining these matters. I shall give my reasons. We are really debating not only the security services but our liberties and how they may be maintained by military defence against those who might try to invade or infiltrate our country and how to safeguard ourselves against guerrilla or terrorist attacks and to secure the effectiveness of our security and military services 470 by maintaining secrecy around their operational work. The first question that the House must ask is: is anybody asking for details of the operational work of the security services? To my knowledge, nobody is asking for those details. What we are concerned about is the policy upon which those services operate. Certainly the defection of Anthony Blunt revealed a weakness in those defences. The secrecy which the right hon. Member for Sidcup properly said is necessary to cover the operations of the security services also covered a serious failure by them in allowing Blunt to remain for so long. The second aspect of our civil liberties depends upon much more than national defence. It depends upon our being satisfied that we are governed by Ministers who are elected by the people and accountable, through Parliament, for all the major policy decisions that they take, including those on defence and security matters. What the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds. South (Mr. Rees) and the right hon. Member for Sidcup are all agreed about is that there can be no true accountability in this sensitive area of security. We are talking not about operationsnobody in the House is interested in thatbut about the policy on which the security services rest. We are entitled to be sure that the defence and security services, and the civil servants who work in them, report directly, immediately, fully and truthfully to the Ministers responsible. What has been really interesting to me, observing this debate, is that Minister after Minister has either said "I was not told" or "I was told." Nobody has said "I demanded to know what was going on in the security services." Ministers are not passive people to be told or not told. If a Minister is in charge of the security services, his first duty is to satisfy himself that they are efficient. Where, in any of the speeches that we have

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heardI understand that the winding-up speech will come from the third Prime Ministerhas there been an explanation that the duty of an elected Minister is not to wait for the Director-General to come and see him, but to call the Director-General and say "What is the position?" 471 That is the sort of problem that arises because a Minister is not accountable to Parliament. After all, if one can ask a parliamentary question about health, housing or education, an angry Minister, hounded in the House, goes back and raises hell with his permanent secretary. A Minister involved with security, who cannot be hounded in the House, gets into a cosy relationship with the security services. I am not making a personal attack on anyone. I am making a constitutional point. The reason that democratic self-government works in Britain is that Parliament presses Ministers, and Ministers in turn must press officials. Take the pressure of Parliament off a Minister, and before he knows what is happening he becomes part of the Establishment that he was elected to control. Mr. Heath The right hon. Gentleman is making a great deal of a small point. This is not a constitutional matter. When I became Prime Minister I arranged with the Secretary to the Cabinet to be briefed on all those matters which I knew were my responsibility. These matters included security. I was properly briefed. The right hon. Member also forgets that the Prime Minister must approve the budget of the security services, and this gives him complete control over them. When he is dealing with the budget and changes made in the expenditure, he can examine every aspect. Mr. Benn I hope that nothing that I say seems to be critical of those who have exercised these high responsibilities. I simply ask the House of Commons, before it lets these matters go, to ask itself whether it is prepared to accept the soothing argument that conies from those who have held these responsibilities so that at the end of the day's debate we can go away and leave it to those who hold such responsibilities. The right of Parliament and of the people to know the policy under which the military and security services operatenot the operational detailsis basic. If we did not know the budget of the defence services, or the policy under which they operate, that would be held as a denial of the long-established rights of Parliament. Mr. Wellbeloved Can my right hon. Friend explain whether he considers the 472 decision taken about Mr. Blunt to be an operational or policy decision? Does he agree with me that the policy covering the security services is laid down not only in the Maxwell Fyfe memorandum but in a number of reports to this House which set out the whole process of security vetting and other matters? Can he define exactly what he means by "operational and policy matters"? Mr. Benn I am drawing the same distinction as that which is drawn when we discuss defence matters. Defence is much more publicly discussed than security. We have a White Paper every year on defence policy. Even the Birkett figures on the number of telephone interceptions recorded in 1957 has never been updated. We do not know today how many telephone calls are intercepted or how many letters are opened. Is that a matter of operational secrecy, or a matter of policy that the House should know? How many people are on a police dossier? How many people are on Special Branch files? We do not know. The degree of supervision of the security services cannot be a matter of operational secrecy.

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The third point is the right of the citizen, alone or with others, and of the media, to probe the conduct of the Government, to report on it and to criticise. It is a coincidence that the Protection of Official Information Bill, which would have clamped down on studies such as the one Andrew Boyle published, should have come at the time of Blunt. Those people who exercise the very responsibility of running the security services are also those who are most keen on tightening up on security. By that I mean that they are most keen on the "Protection of Official Information Bill" which has the advantage of covering their own conduct, as well as covering the legitimate secrecy of the security services. The Blunt case has thrown serious doubt on the conduct of the services, the control exercised by Ministers, the effectiveness of Parliament and the extent to which Whitehall might not like to see the press in some way muzzled by new legislation. It is known that Whitehalland I am talking about the highest echelons of the Civil Servicehas been uneasy about an Official Secrets Act which was so uncertain and absurd in its provisions that it could not be prosecuted 473 and used against people. In fact, Whitehall wished for an Armalite rifle, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South said, to pick off some real cases. The other issue is the legal aspect of our liberties. Democracy depends not only upon national security and self-government but upon the maintenance of certain legal rights, including the right to know that the law will be applied impartially. When hon. Members say that if their constituents had been guilty of these offences they would not have been treated in the same way, they are making not a class point but a legal one. There must be one law for everybody, and not a different law for those who have friends in high places. That is a matter of legal rights, upon which our liberties depend. Also, the courts must be kept free from political or administrative pressure. There is nothing that can so influence the courts as to deny their right to prosecute or judge a man because he has been covered by a pre-empted immunity. Mr. Christopher Price This is why our judges have condemned the immunity given to some of the "supergrasses" recently. They can see what a poison this immunity can be if it spreads across the legal system. Mr. Benn My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) and I are trying to widen this discussion on our liberties. It is not just a matter of a strong Army and a big MI5. It is a matter of strong accountability and an independent judiciary. All these institutions are only important because they protect the most precious freedoms of allthe freedoms which differentiate a libertarian society from the dictatorships of the Right and the Left; from the Hitlers and Mussolinis or the Stalins and Mao Tse-tungs, and the massive tyrannies which span the world. What are these differences? This is what the whole thing is aboutthe absolute right of any person to choose and hold any religious or political faith and opinion that he believes to be right, without committing an offence. The right hon. Member for Sidcup went back to the McCarthy period. Perhaps we have to be of a different age group to recall it. That was a terrifying period when people were guilty as of opinion and not for what they had done or not done. Another freedom is the right to 474 express opinions freely and without harassment by the authorities and the right of conscience to be respected. The fact that Blunt has tried to justify his treason and his spying by reference to conscience must not lead us to say what the Daily Express said today about "damn your conscience". Ultimately, conscience is the basic safeguard of our liberties. It is hard to say this in a debate today when a man who is a spy and traitor has pleaded conscience as

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justification, but it must be said. The laws are man-made and men must have, and have had historically, the right to refer to matters of right and wrong. The hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) said that he would like to go back to impeachment and State trials. If he goes along the corridor behind the Speaker's Chair he will find volumes on State trialsfour a year from 1640 to 1669on treason. Take, for example, the freedom of Catholics. They were once treated as agents of an alien Pope, but later, in Catholic emancipation, they were allowed into the House of Commons. There was the right Bradlaugh won as an atheist to sit here. It was as serious a matter to be an atheist 100 years ago as it is to be a Marxist today. There are the rights of the conscientious objectors who, in the war, were allowed to pursue their faith. We hanged the Germans after the Nuremberg trials because we said that conscience must come above an order from the duly authorised officer. If there is to be a public outcry against dissidents, against men and women who claim conscience, homosexuals and Marxists, we shall endanger the very liberties that this House is today trying to maintain. If a nation were to be hounded by public hue and cry or, worse still, to contribute to it, it would find that it had lost what it had sought to uphold. What, then, should we now be doing? I question the value of inquiries, for I fear that if we had an inquiry it would lead to the naming of two other personsboth of them deadand we should be no further forward. If there is a desire for that I should not wish to say that it is wrong, but I do not believe that it has much to offer us. The central question for the House of Commons today is how to secure the 475 democratic control of our security services. Why is that? First, it is to be sure of their efficiency. The Blunt case suggests that they are not efficient. Secondly, it is to be sure that they are accountable to Ministers. The Blunt case throws serious doubt on that. Consider the contorted convoluted descriptions about who should talk to whom. Should an official speak to the Attorney-General, should the Attorney-General have told the Home Secretary? Our former Attorney-General said that he had discovered that his predecessor had not been told 10 years ago. He went to the Cabinet Office to ask if he could tell that man who was then Lord Chancellor. For heaven's sake, democratic control lies in the collective ministerial responsibility in this area. The one thing that should come out of this affair is that Ministers should not handle these matters alone, but should do so by collective discussion among their colleagues. Is it too much to ask that the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister, the head of the Security Service, the Attorney-General and the Lord Chancellor should meet so that they do not have to depend upon whether they have a minute which has been pushed through the file? The second point is to assert the right of Parliament to satisfy itself on the policy and the control in these matters and to open up the issues raised. Reference has been made to the United States. I was interested to hear that my right hon. Friend the former Home Secretary said that the United States security services were in a mess. Someone else said that they were demoralised. But at least information about what they did has been published. If anyone wants to know what came out of the inquiry, let me quote Vice-President Mondale who, after all, is in the White House today as Vice-President. He said: Perhaps most terrifying abuse of power during the period was what the FBI called Cointelpro. That ugly little acronym would have been at home in any police state it meant illegal investigations targeted against America law abiding individuals in groupsand punishment administered not by a court but by a government agencythrough harassment and tactics designed to break up marriages". All right, I have no knowledge of what happens in our security services 476 because not

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one word has ever come out. I am trying to make an all-party point. There is a need for an inquiry. The right hon. Member for Sidcup dismissed what Mr. George Young said on the radio on Sunday. I heard it, and I obtained the transcript five minutes ago. He said: There's a curious convention in Whitehall, you can inform the Prime Minister without telling him. Mr. Young was asked about Lord Home and he said: This may have happened or it may be that Sir Alec was rather dim, I can't remember. That is a statement from the deputy head of MI6. He was asked about my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson). The deputy-head of MI6 said: I would be rather hesitant to have informed Harold Wilson". Then came the key passage: The higher reaches of the Civil Service undoubtedly make most of the decisions for Ministers. They put them in front of them and say, Ministers, do you agree? The ethos of the higher reaches of the Civil Service is not one of stirring up hornets' nests, particularly if some of your best friends are hornets, but in my experience of dealing with Ministersand I've met a fair amount off and on over some 12 yearsthey don't hear what you say; you tell them something, it goes in one ear and it's out of the other and they are busy thinking up the next Parliamentary answer to the next Parliamentary question. I am not confirming Young. I have never met him, but it is one thing to hear the former Prime Minister saying that he was in charge and another thing to hear the voice of the man who was under the control of the former Prime Minister giving his view about what happened. The reality is that the House is entitled to know. We need a freedom of information Act which will exclude operational secrecy. We want to know the budget and the staffing. We are entitled to know the names of those who are in charge of MI5 and MI6. We need to know the policy, the number of dossiers and the names of countries with which we have intelligence links. Did we have intelligence links with Savak when we had a relationship with the Shah? Did we have relations with BOSS in South Africa? I do not know. All I know is that intelligence links are part of foreign policy, and the House of Commons is entitled to know with which 477 foreign intelligence agencies our intelligence officers exchange information. We are entitled to a Select Committee which would look at these policy matters. What is important here is the issue of accountability. We cannot entrust our liberties to a State within a State, with its own policies, its own prejudices, its own friends, and its own enemies; with unlimited powers of surveillance, of scrutiny, of black listing or of granting immunity. The freedoms that we are trying to defend are too important to be trusted to the security chiefs or the secretaries to the Cabinet, however high principled they may be. Sir Norman Brook, Sir Burke Trend, Sir Robert Armstrong and Sir Maurice Oldfield are all distinguished public servants, but they were not elected to run the system that safeguards our liberties. They cannot be removed for what they do, and we do not know what they do, because everything that they do is behind the tightest secrecy that covers their failures, their successes, their friendships and their prejudices. This debate requires us to reassess the freedoms that we are seeking to uphold. It also requires us to reassess, as a House, the control that we believe we should exercise on behalf of the people, of the means that we use to protect them. 8.7 pm Mr. Archie Hamilton (Epsom and Ewell) I welcome the speech of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in this debate. It demonstrated a new and refreshing candour and revealed the self-confidence of her Government. One could say that this is in marked contrast to the previous Government,

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because I do not believe that the previous Administration would have had the courage to make such a full and frank statement to the House. We are discussing Mr. Anthony Blunt, who conspired, in the name of Marxism. His recent apologia has indicated that his Marxist treachery went under the guise of antiFascism. Plus a change, plus c'est la mme chose. That means, for those xenophobic hon. Members on the Opposition Benches, that however much things change they remain the same. Is it not under the guise of anti-Fascism 478 that so many people operating as Marxists strive to destroy this country? Many of those who claim to campaign on behalf of our liberty are, through their dedication to Marxism, intending to deprive us of those freedoms that we have today. How sad it is that Blunt did not share the fate of Burgess and Maclean and end his days in a dreary block of Moscow flats with nothing but a bottle of vodka for company, with no freedoms and no opportunity to hold press conferences to explain his position to the world at large. The very freedoms that he set out to betray guaranteed him a congenial and comfortable life. Those freedoms recognised his undoubted talents and tolerated some of the less orthodox aspects of his life. The debate should be concerned with freedomfreedom to speak, freedom to know and freedom to share in the decision-making processes that affect people in this country. That is the privilege of a successful society, and it is also indispensable to it. These freedoms must be enshrined in legislation. The Government must recognise that people need to know, in the interests of democracy and of better government. At the same time, we need to protect our freedom from those who indulge in excesses. In their desire to know, they do not care how much they destroy. For this reason it is welcome that the Protection of Official Information Bill has died. It is a good thing that it has lapsed. In the form in which it was originally drafted it would have been difficult to find wholehearted support for it from the Conservative Benches. However, I believe that we need a revised section 2 of the Official Secrets Act. It is essential that at the same time we have a freedom of information Act as well, which gives people access to information that concerns them so that they can share in the decision-making process of our democracy. We now have a Government who are intending to reduce the numbers in the Civil Service, as well as the money spent on it. It is only through freeedom of information that we shall be able to get the accountability from the bureaucracy that we now need. We must show the country that we have good and self-confident government. If we have those 479 things we do not have to hide behind unnecessary official secrecy. 8.11 pm Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) It is an ill wind that blows nothing any good. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Mr. Hamilton) was one of many voices who during the course of our discussion on this sad and miserable case have spoken up for a freedom of information Act and a quite different attitude than was involved in the Protection of Official Information Bill. That is welcome, and it is a point to which I shall return. I do not often find myself in agreement with the Daily Express, but in one of its comments today it set the right note of reaction to the extraordinary self-defence of Mr. Blunt. It said that: The British deserve better than this load of phoney humbug". That aptly sums up the reaction of most people to the press conference that he held. There is a deep public outrage at the actions of Blunt; at the fact that for reasons good or ill he was able to get off scot-free; at the fact that he of all people, with that background and those crimes against our country, should have been so closely involved in the counsels

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of the Sovereign over a considerable period; and that in the end he was tipped off as a matter of special courtesy a day before the truth was revealed. I am inclined to the view that the Prime Minister shares much of this feeling of public outrage, and was herself probably taken aback and rather shocked to discover what had gone on. That makes me the more surprised that her office should have indulged in this particular piece of special courtesy and assistance. However, I do not think that hon. Members, in the security of this place, should forget that the public's reaction involves the belief that people who have the right accent, the right friends, and the right background, and who are seen in the right places, get off more readily from crimes of this kind than do others. We must see this against a background of spy cases in which the professionals get very big sentences, although in some cases they never serve them. George Blake got 42 years, although he was not there for very long. The Krogers got 20 years. Vassal 480 got 18. Bossard got 21 years. Even the smaller fry, such as Bingham in the 1972 case, got 21 years. Bingham's wife got 2 years. The public can see that the State rightly exacts penalties for this kind of treason, but it views the events in this case with great concern when all that this man lost was a knighthood and a quiet life. Mr. Cryer Does the hon. Gentleman also accept that there are other examples that perhaps raise even greater ire amongst libertarians, and that concerns people who collated already published information and were then visited by the whole panoply of the law? I think of the "ABC" trial, where two journalists and a social worker were accused of breaking the Official Secrets Act. Mr. Beith I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I believe that he touches upon the absurdities of our secrets legislation, to which I shall return. Of course, questions arise from the very circumstances of the Blunt case about which it is still hard to be satisfied. For instance, should the immunity have been given at all, and did the Prime Minister of the day know or not know that it had been given? There is another question that I posed in an earlier intervention. Was Blunt, as he now seems to suppose, given an undertaking that he would be protected from publicity for as long as the immunity would last, namely, indefinitely? He seems to suppose that he was given such an undertaking. But for him to be so assured, successive Governments would have to be committed to concealing that fact from the House when they were pressed about it on subsequent occasions. The Attorney-General shakes his head, and I am reassured by the indication that he has given. Perhaps he will make this point clearer when he replies. Clearly, the Government did not owe such an assurance to Blunt. Immunity from prosecution ought to have been benefit enough for whatever services we received. Another question relates to the Palace, and why Blunt's involvement there was allowed to continue over such a long period. There still remains some doubt about who was told what and at what stage. When the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) suggested that Blunt's presence at the Palace over such a long periodit should be remembered 481 that it was renewed in 1972 with a further posthad tainted or damaged the Palace, he did not get a warm reception, no doubt because he is known to be hostile to the monarchy and has made no secret of that hostility. It must be said that although others of us take the view that the monarchy is a desirable and proven institution in Britain, and that the Queen herself has made an enormous personal contribution to its value, we feel that the presence within the Royal Household for so long a period of an acknowledged and known spy is a matter about which we ought to be concerned. The suggestion which seems to emerge, that the Palace is an appropriate

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place for people to remain in covert occupations while they are of some vague use to the security services, is not one that we would want to encourage. The two major issues that emerge from this case relate to the secrecy and accountability of the security services. The belated revelations have at least brought about the abandonment of the Protection of Official Information Bill. Never was a measure so dramatically torpedoed as that. I criticised it because it enabled one Minister to pull the curtains of secrecy around anything he chose without any check. It would have enabled Ministers to conceal this case. Indeed, if the existing Official Secrets Act had not been shattered by the courts, we might never have got the information that led to this case being pursued. We must now start to work from the principle that is enshrined in the Bill brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud)that the public are entitled to know, unless we can show good reason why particular information should be kept secret. Where reason has to be shown, there should be some process of check on that decision. We cannot simply allow one Minister, let alone one public servant, to make that sort of decision. I believe that the obsession with secrecy has harmed the security services in two ways. First, it allows incompetence and corruption to go on undetected for very long periods. If Ministers are not subject to some occasional questioning on the broad issues affecting the security services, it is highly likely that they will not pose questions to the security services on those matters. In saying that, 482 I do not accuse Ministers of any wish to conceal, or of any laziness in office. It is a fact of life, as many ex-Ministers will acknowledge, that they tend to be most assiduous about things in regard to which they are under pressure from the House and their parliamentary colleagues. There is no doubt that the likelihood of a strong parliamentary attack is one that compels civil servants to move rather more quickly in dealing with certain matters. I believe that the absence of a parliamentary pressure in any effective way helps to ease the security services and frees them from the kind of scrutiny that we believe to be necessary if Departments are to be made effective and if inefficiency and corruption are to be rooted out. The recruitment and employment of Blunt, like that of Philby, Burgess and Maclean, reveals that there was this long strain of incompetence in the security services. I believe that the lesson of recruitment was learned a long time ago. These people were recruited a very long time ago, but other mistakes can be made in the future, and we must have means of scrutiny. There is a second reason why I believe that secrecy and the extent to which it is pursued has harmed the security services. I believe that it has made impossible proper public acceptance and discussion of the value and importance of security services. We need intelligence services. It is important for us to know, for example, the scale and nature of the Russian arms build-up. It is important that we investigate whether the sanctions applied against the Rhodesian regime were being applied, or were being contravened and by whom. We also need counter-intelligence in order to protect this country from the sort of things that have emerged in this case. Yet we go on pretending that the services do not exist. We pretend in the formal documents of State that the Security Service is not voted money. We bury the vote for its financing to prevent Members of Parliament from discovering how much is spent on it. There was a time when D notices were applied in respect of the naming of the head of the home Security Service. We try to preserve the fiction that in this country we do not have security services. It is only by things having gone wrong and through 483 reports such as that from Lord Denning that the facts of the matter have been brought out.

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From where has anyone quoted the Maxwell Fyfe memorandum in today's debate? It has been quoted only from the Denning report, which was the report of an inquiry into something which went wrong. If we treat a part of our defence system as though we were ashamed of it, and if we do not think that its existence should be admitted, we cannot be surprised if its value is not appreciated and if from time to time its standards fall. A more serious and practical recognition that we need security services and that we must subject them to some suitable scrutiny is an essential prerequisite of their existence and their effective operation. Much of the work of security must, of course, be carried out in secret. That makes it even more important that accountability to Ministers is successfully carried out. I do not believe that the Maxwell Fyfe memorandum ever provided a sufficient basis for that. Let me quote the operative passage from paragraph 6 of that memorandum. You and your staff will maintain the well-established convention whereby Ministers do not concern themselves with the detailed information which may be obtained by the Security Service in particular cases but are furnished with such information only as may be necessary for the determination of any issue upon which guidance is sought. The implication of that memorandum is "You let us know when you want our advice." There are far more circumstances in which Ministers need to be informed of what is going on in the Security Service. There are many more in which they are than are listed in that memorandum. There are others in which they ought to be. Mr. Cryer Does the hon. Member agree that the Prime Minister's statement basically contains simply a reiteration of the Maxwell Fyfe memorandum from the report of the Denning committee and that the point that I raised earlier, that the Prime Minister in 1964 was not informed, has not been met because the report has not been updated or changed to ensure that there is accountability? 484 Mr. Beith I disagree with the hon. Member in one particular. I think that the Prime Minister has updated the Maxwell Fyfe memorandum in one point that she made. She made it clear that cases where immunity is granted should be referred to the Prime Minister in future. That is going beyond the Maxwell Fyfe memorandum, but it is only locking one stable door after one horse has bolted. The Prime Minister has to go further and indicate that unusual operations of any kind and the granting of immunity is only one of themhave to be referred in this way, just as departures of policy and changes in the direction of the work of the Security Service have to be reported. A far broader measure of reporting to Ministers is called for than is remotely suggested by that memorandum. I would expect the Prime Minister to go beyond cases that happened to parallel the one we are now considering in her assumptions about what she will need reports on in future. I do not doubt that, having gone through this experience, she believes that the situation needs a great deal of tightening, but I do not believe that what she said today goes far enough. I have dealt only with accountability to Ministers. I want to see more accountability to Parliament, although I realise some of the problems involved. Ministers should surely answer to Parliament on the basic functions of the Security Serviceon its existence and on the scale of its operations. The service finds that it has to report when things go wrong, as the Prime Minister has required in this case, but I think that she should be

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more interested in asking the service to answer questions about the basic nature, purpose and activities of the service. If we were to go beyond that, Parliament would need a more sophisticated device. That is where I believe the Select Committee system could be usedperhaps involving a sub-committeein order to have more extensive scrutiny of the work of the Security Service. That may be more important than inquiries into the Blunt case. There may be very little more that we can learn about the details of the Blunt case, but there are vital lessons to be learnt from it. 485 We should get rid of two particular attitudes to the Security Service. One of them I caricature slightly as a soft Left attitude. It is the attitude that all this is unnecessary, that we do not need security services, that this is just a lot of people playing at James Bond and that we could dispense with them. I do not accept that. I think that the threats that exist to this country, its people and its freedoms require the operation of intelligence services. We should make that clear and not be ashamed to admit it publicly. Equally, there is a hard Right attitude not peculiar to Members of the Conservative Party, but which is quite widespread. It can be broadly summed up as "Our boys are doing a grand job and we do not need to ask any questions." That is not right either, because it was that attitude that made it so easy for men like Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt to flourish for so many years. We must be realistic about security services. We must recognise the dangers that are involved. We must ensure that the service is accountable to Ministers and that Parliament exercises some scrutiny over it. 8.26 pm Mr. Michael Neubert (Romford) My interest in this story began with the defection of Burgess and Maclean in 1951. Their take-off point in Tatsfield was not much more than two miles across the valley from my boyhood home. It taught me that the face of modern espionage is often mundane, commonplace and even familiar. That a man could show his season ticket at Victoria, take a train home, and that night leave on a journey for Moscow never to return to his country, made a great impression upon me. That impression was further underlined by another experience 10 years later. Two aspects of this question have intrigued me from the start. They still seem highly relevant. I offer them not as a complete case but as a contribution to discussion. My first question is: why should these spies apparently be exclusively centred on Cambridge, the university to which I went 20 or so years later? The second question is: why were these spies able to remain unsuspected and unrecognised in spite of the most damaging evidence of their personal unreliability? These doubts were doubly reinforced by the unmasking of Philby and 486 further intensified by revelations about Blunt. Let me take up the first of those strands On Blunt's admission yesterday there were and possibly are many more like him Some may be alive and some may have been neutralised by the Security Service, while others may be neither. It seems that it would be a mistake, however, to concentrate only on the Cambridge connectionwhat the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) described as the "one core". There is a danger in our being too introspective by concentrating on matters of immunity and parliamentary accountability. We should surely take a wider perspective, because Blunt, in an area of ambiguity between two interviews yesterday, claimed that he was not recruited at Cambridgealthough the Cambridge link was crucialor at least that there was no spymaster there. The pernicious idea that Communism was the only defence against Fascism swept through a whole generation. It was not confined to the Cambridge clique. In "My Silent

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War" Philby wrote it cannot be so very surprising that I adopted the Communist viewpoint in the thirties: so many of my contemporaries made the same choice. So, why not Oxford? I ask that question in all seriousness. At a time when public servants were almost exclusively, and certainly predominantly, from Oxbridge, is it likely that Oxford undergraduates were not similarly affected and penetrated by the Soviets? Mr. English They were cleverer. Mr. Alan Clark No, heterosexual. Mr. Neubert General Krivitsky, who defected to the United States in 1937, believed that there was an agent in the Foreign Office whose background was an education at Oxford. He was probably mistaken in that belief. He probably had Maclean in mind. However, there was a presumption by a high-ranking Russian intelligence officer that at least one of his agents could have been from an Oxford background. I contend that Cambridge is not necessarily the common denominator. Mr. John Stokes (Halesowen and Stour-bridge) I was at Oxford during the 1930s. Some of my more misguided colleagues, unfortunately, went to fight for the Communists in Spain and got themselves killed, but there were very few of them. 487 Mr. Neubert That is common knowledge. Mr. Alan Clark Perfect cover. Mr. Neubert The most astonishing aspect of the current revelations is the failure to recognise the face of treachery despite the most damning evidence. There appears to be a congenital weakness in our defences, a chronic inability to recognise the face of treason. The case of Burgess is the most notorious. He was given to lurid episodes of flagrant behaviour. That was countenanced even by the Minister of State in the Foreign Office under the Attlee Government. How could Burgess survive for so long? That question has still to be asked, because the answer may still be relevant. By comparison, the case of George Blake was more comprehensible. In the early months of my marriage my wife and I lived in a house previously built for the Prince Imperial, son of Napoleon III, when exiled at Chislehurst. The house has now been converted into flats. George Blake and his family were neighbours of ours in those flats. When we returned from a holiday in Turkey in 1961 it came as a serious shock to discover that the man living next door, with whom we exchanged greetings as we went on our respective ways to work, was a Soviet spy who had sent possibly many hundreds of British agents to their death and had been sentenced to 42 years' imprisonment. I am therefore under no illusion about the difficulty of recognising traitors in our midst. When we consider Philby's case we are asked to believe a quite improbable story. First and foremost, the improbability lies in the switch that he made from one end of the political spectrum to the other in a short time. Philby left Cambridge in 1933 a Communist. He engaged in a year's illegal activity among Socialists in the slums of Vienna. He married a woman called Litzi Friedman. She was described by Gaitskell in 1934 as "that young Communist girl". That was on 24 February 1934. Philby returned to England in May of that year and started attending functions of a proNazi organisation called the Anglo-German Fellowship in white tie and tails. If the face

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of a traitor cannot be recognised in that amazing volte-face, how much more difficult it 488 must be to recognise treachery in a more plausible move, perhaps only a few degrees across the political spectrum, when the dissociation is much more discreet. The implausibility of Philby's background survived a series of disasters. Against all the evidence, he remained an active agent in the heart of the Establishment for 30 years without discovery. It may be that there are others still in high places. Now that a spy has been unmasked in the Royal Household it seems that there are no limits to the heights that such infiltrators may attain. These people may well have a chequered record of errors of judgment for which the only rational explanation is a covert commitment to another cause. We need to remain on our guard in respect of the pre-war generation to which I have referred. Burgess may not be the only example to combine intellectual arrogance with heavy drinking. Blunt may not be the only example of a flirtation with the Communist Party combined with an interest in aesthetics. If we apply such a psychological template, it may fit others who are still active and influential. Should we assume that service to the Communist cause takes only the form of active espionage? Is it not at least possible that the Communists have sought other ways of advancing their cause when, even today, more than 60 years after the revolution, the paid-up membership of the British Communist Party stands at about 20,000somewhat fewer than the crowd that Chelsea can attract to Stamford Bridge on a wet night. I also urge the House not to underestimate the enduring strength, in certain cases, of the original commitment. Witness Philby's own quotation of Graham Greene from his novel "The Confidential Agent" You choose your side once and for allof course, it may be the wrong side. The continuing work of investigation and vetting must be the responsibility of the security services. We cannot expect to know anything of it. In my view, no case for an inquiry has been made. Such an inquiry would only give aid, knowledge and comfort to our enemies. The idea that the security services should be accountable to Parliament is preposterous. 489 One might as sensibly attempt to store cognac in a colander. Much information would spill out at once, and the rest would evaporate slowly into the outer atmosphere. One would have thought that, above all, the secret service is entitled to err on the side of secrecy. This is not the end of the story. It is just another chapter. There will be several more. 8.36 pm Mr. James Wellbeloved (Erith and Crayford) The idea that there has been a conspiracy from Buckingham Palace downwards against the national interest to protect a traitor and a Soviet spy takes some believing. The more the debate proceeds, the more this theory is seen to be the patent nonsense that it obviously is. Two main issues have to be considered. The first is the squalid activities of the traitor Blunt and the Soviet spying system in this country. The second and perhaps more important, for the future, is the control and the accountability of the Security Service. The Security Service is a major element in the protection of our democracy and our national security. It is those very freedoms that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) so eloquently put before the House that the activities of our security services are fundamentally designed to protect and preserve from treachery and treason. I do not believe that the security services in this country are much different in their make-up from any other organisation. A survey of the security services and of Members of Parliament would probably reveal at least as much integrity, sanity and dedication in

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the security services as was found in Parliament. Some would fall short of the views and standards that we believe Members of Parliament should uphold. Likewise, in the security services, there would no doubt be one or two who fall below those standards. I would guess that, overwhelmingly, like other organisations, they are composed of loyal and dedicated people who sincerely try to perform a difficult job. The Blunt case is a further example of the whole squalid business of treachery. This is a man who, by his own admission, betrayed his country on the pretext 490 of conscience and loyalty to his friends. When confronted with possible exposure, and perhaps even eventual arrest, he found that his battered and tattered conscience could be betrayed, along with his friends, in order to secure his immunity from any further prospect of prosecution. That is the essence and nature of treachery itself. There is no loyalty to anything. It is a travesty of the word "conscience" to pray it in aid as a reason why someone becomes a spy and a traitor against his own country. The passage of time may have lessened the whole impact on our security of the Burgess, Maclean, Philby, and now the Blunt, disclosures. I do not believe that the passage of time has eroded the danger that we still face from foreign espionage in this country or the danger that continues through the fomenting of the idea in the mind of the general public that the Blunt case is a conspiracy of the Establishment. We cannot leave the Philby-Maclean-Burgessand now the Bluntcase as it stands. There must be an inquiry. There are innocent as well as guilty men still under the shadow of suspicion, and it is time this unsavoury episode was laid to rest, if laid to rest it can be. I am clear in my own mind that there should be an inquiry to try to clear this matter up as far as is humanly possible. I know that a number of my hon. Friends are very much against the use of the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921. I believe that that would be precisely the right avenue along which to pursue the Maclean-Philby-Blunt episode. It would clear the air of the stench of treason committed by that small clique of traitors. Lord Justice Salmon's report on tribunals and commissions of inquiry comes down firmly in favour of tribunals of inquiry under the 1921 Act to deal with matters of this importance to the nation. Contrary to what some people believe, that is really what Salmon saysthat it is the avenue that should be used in matters of national crisis and national confidence, and particularly in matters of security. I hope that the Government will, without waiting to be pushed into it, concede some form of inquiryit may not be the 1921 form; they may find some other 491 wayinto that sordid episode so that we can at least try to end that nonsense. There have been major changes in security matters since 1951. They are all published and on the record. Numerous reports have been presented to Parliament setting out clearly the policies under which the Security Service operates. I give one illustration. The whole business of vetting, which has been adequately reported to Parliament, cannot ensure that another nest of traitors will not emerge, but at least the possibility is minimised by the system that now operates when people enter the public service. There are some peopleI count myself among themwho say that the system of positive vetting should include politicians when they take certain offices. It should not be applied when they are elected to the Housethat would be intolerablebut we should accept when a politician goes into certain areas that there must not be one rule for those whom he governs and contols and another for himself. I hope that the Government will give consideration to that matter, in joint talks with other parties in the House. The public and Parliament are entitled to an assurance that the security services are under proper control, and that the rules laid down by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe and

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confirmed in the Denning report, and now further adjusted and perhaps improvedI have not had a chance to study the full implications of what the Prime Minister said about the three or four extra provisions that she is introducingare being applied and are adequate to meet the present situation. I do not believe that we can simply leave the matter at the end of the debate, saying "We have these one or two additions that the Prime Minister has outlined." We need further deep consideration of this matter. It must be separated from the inquiry into the Burgess-Maclean-Philby business, which stands on its own, to be dealt with on its own. There must be a separate inquiry into the question of the future and the control of the Security Service. I am not in favour of a Select Committee's dealing with these matters. I believe that the Security Commission already established could, given fresh terms of 492 reference, be the body for the Prime Minister to ask to review the rules, their application and their adequacy. The first question that must be examined concerns a point partly touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East. It is whether all the security services, whatever Department of State they may happen to fall into, should be brought under one centre of Government control and ministerial responsibility or whether we need a small ministerial security committee composed of appropriate Secretaries of State with varying degrees of responsibility. Should we have a senior Minister of State attached to the Home Office under the present laws whose prime function would be the day-to-day oversight of the Security Service? He would have regular and frequent meetings with the heads of the Security Service and its operational chiefs and would be able to report direct to the Home Secretary. If we seriously wish to improve governmental and, therefore, democratic control of the Security Service, we should consider these questions. I believe that a Security Commission with new terms of reference should examine the problems. We should consider what value there might be in the Commission's being charged with a continuing responsibility for the oversight of the application of the policies and, in some cases, the operations of the Security Service. Are we satisfied that the existing arrangements which have developed from 1952 are sufficient? Is the crucial role of the Home Secretary acceptable, and is it the best way of proceeding in this highly sensitive and secret area? Public interest is such that it is not possible to leave matters where they are. We should give detailed and careful consideration to the future. I believe that the best way to conduct that review is under a Security Commission with new terms of reference. I hope that that proposal will be acceptable to the Government. Treason and subversion are not figments of journalistic imagination. History, both ancient and modern, has proved that. Treachery, treason and subversion have been with us since almost the beginning of time. The Security Service is an essential factor in the defence of democracy. Those members of it who serve the nation 493 are entitled to the understanding and support of Government, Parliament and the public. For that understanding and support, and for the efficiency and morale of the Security Service, we need clearer rules and proper accountability to a democratic Parliament. As much as anybody else, the Security Service is entitled to the reassurance that can come only from a review of the rules, methods and policies under which it operates. 8.47 pm Mr. Raymond Whitney (Wycombe) I am happy to follow the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved) in his analysis of the lessons that should be learnt from the Blunt affair. His proposal for a

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Security Commission inquiry is worth examination, particularly if it will increase the level of public confidence in the Security Service. I feel that the whole flurry of the Blunt affair has been fastened on to by the media and by the House to a far greater extent than the people in the country, who readily accept the need for the Security Service and its contribution. There are other lessons that we can learn from the Blunt affair. First, we should realise that these Marxist, homosexual, public-school and Cambridge-educated young menthe elite of the early 1930sdid not simply walk into an unbaited trap. The bait was put on the hook for them. There was a conscious recruiting drive by the Soviet Union against what it believed to be a vulnerable section of society. The Soviet Union perceived with considerable accuracy that that section of society would shortly achieve positions of power and influence in the country. It scored a bull's eye. That is the first lesson that we should learn, and it has application for today. Secondly, of course the security services were appallingly incompetent in their recruitment 40 years ago. The war was one of the reasons for that, but there were mistakes which must never be allowed to occur again, and I do not believe that they will. However, we should give credit to the fact that, although it took a long time, the traitors who we know of were at last brought to book. It is a "Catch 22" situation. One of the snags of the game is that if the traitors are not caught no one knows and one is in trouble. If 494 they are caught, everyone knows and one is in trouble. That is a paradox that the security services have to suffer. At the end of the day they did what was necessary and they followed the rules laid down. The political control was kept in play. The Maxwell Fyfe rule seems to have been observed. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, my other right hon. Friends and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, with the high offices that they have held, confirmed in their various contributions that the rules of the game were played to an encouraging extent. Those lessons are important and should not be forgotten. The situation that we face today is what matters. To a certain extent we should let the past bury its dead. I believe that everyone in the House will agree that there is an increasing need for good intelligence services and security. The military position is moving against us. Anyone with military experience knows that the more inferior are one's forces, the more one needs intelligence services. Technical means are not of significant help in determining the intention of a country that may have designs against our interests. We need our intelligence services operating overseas. Those services need to operate in many parts of the world. Our interests, for example in oil and raw materials, are worldwide and our services cannot be limited to countries behind a particular curtain. We cannot rely on our allies. Despite what the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) and my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) said, the American security services have suffered grievously. We have a need for our overseas intelligence services. We are frequently reminded of the attack on this country and the West in general. It has been reliably estimated that about 40 per cent. of Soviet citizens working overseas in an official capacityand there are 12,000 outside the Soviet Unionare linked with the security services. To use a phrase that has perhaps been ridden to death, that is just the tip of the iceberg because they are the people who run the agents. That is the real sad world. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) said, thanks to 495 the security services we discovered the 105 in 1971. However, it must be reasonable to assume that, with the best will in the world, some of their replacements have crept back

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into the country. Only last year we had a bitter reminder of that when the Bulgarian defector, Georgi Markov, was killed on Waterloo bridge, by, it would appear, Bulgarian agents in London. That is the extent of the threat. It cannot be supposed that those Soviet spymasters or their successors, who so brilliantly identified the targets in the 1930s, are not operating in the same way today, identifying the targets. They are being identified and the agents are working at them, although the targets may be different and it is not the homosexual Marxist in Cambridge who is the threat today. What should we do about it? I believe that from experience overseas it has been proved conclusively that we should not follow the pattern in West Germany or the United States. The intelligence services in the United States and their political masters were largely discredited by operations at home, such as Watergate, and overseas, such as what is alleged to have happened in Chile. I would not defend that sort of action for a moment. I do not believe that any Home Secretary, any Prime Minister or any Director-General of the Security Service would consider doing anything remotely like that. The other development that has threatened the Americans and, to a considerable extent, neutralised the efficacy of their intelligence and security services, has been the imposition of a deep and penetrating degree of political control which has reached the point where the services are almost non-existent. The so-called Hughes-Ryan amendment would require all covert operations to be approved by eight Senate committees. We all understand that that could not work. The question comes down to whether we are satisfied with the present arrangements. I submit that over the years, our security services have proved to so many right hon. Members, many of whom have graced our debate, that they obey the rules and are susceptible to democratic control. The right hon. Member for 496 Bristol, South-East suggested a parliamentary Question Time so that hon. Members could ask what the Director-General of the Security Service was up to last week. Mr. Christopher Price My right hon. Friend did not say that. Mr. Whitney He came close to it. If we had some sort of White Paper, it would be very white. It would be blank unless it revealed so many valuable secrets that the whole operation was rendered highly dangerous. We must make sure that we do not allow the Blunt affair to do any more damage to the standing and morale of our security services. If there were ever a time when we needed our security services to be efficient and democratically controlled, and to have a high morale, that time is now. 8.57 pm Mr. Robin F. Cook (Edinburgh, Central) I listened with great care to the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), who almost convinced me that everything done in regard to Mr. Anthony Blunt in 1964 was entirely reasonable, straightforward and almost inevitable. My only reason for cavilling at that interpretation is that we have so many invidious comparisons, some of which the right hon. Gentleman referred to, in the list given by the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith). There are so many other cases where considerable sentences were imposed on those who were brought to book, many of whom are still inside our prisons. It is not simply that Mr. Blunt was not prosecuted in 1964. I am most grateful for the statement of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. Silkin),

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who made clear that the reasons why Mr. Blunt was not prosecuted were entirely legal considerations. I am also grateful for the additional information provided on that aspect of the matter by the right hon. Member for Sidcup. Not only was Mr. Blunt not prosecuted but he was retained in a high and honoured position in our society, which involved giving some advice to our Head of State. I find it difficult to believe that it was necessary to keep him in that position 497 in order to conceal from the Russians that he had confessed. Blunt had refused an instruction from his control 13 years earlier. The Russians must have known that deeply implicated as he was by the defections of Burgess and Maclean, he was doubly implicated by the defection of Philby. It is inconceivable that the Soviet secret service could ever have come back to Blunt or that the British Security Service could believe that the Soviets might return to him. I find it unconvincing that not only was Blunt not prosecuted, as a decision of policy my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich made that point fairlybut he was retained in society and his treason was concealed. There is no other way of putting it. Mr. Blunt was not prosecuted, stripped of his knighthood, or dismissed from his position. The extent to which our security services were penetrated by foreign agents during the war was concealed from the British public for 15 years. It would still be concealed from the public had it not been for the American Freedom of Information Act, which has been referred to in scathing terms. The way in which the affair was handled in 1964 has proved very convenient to the security services. They had a potentially damaging piece of information about themselves, which they concealed from the British public. However, that information was not concealed from the Russians. I am sure that they knew about it. The House must therefore address itself to the question whether the answerability and accountability of the security services are sufficient. Perhaps the security services did play the game by the rules, but are those rules adequate? In answering that question one must turn to the legislation governing the activities of the security services. My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) was scathing when he attacked the Government's withdrawal of the Protection of Official Information Bill. I grudgingly give credit to the Government for having the courage to withdraw that Bill. It was clearly unsatisfactory and would have extended even greater protection to the operations of the security services than they receive under the Official Secrets Act. 498 The present Official Secrets Act gives the security services too much protection. I am sure that I am not the only hon. Member to find it absurd that during yesterday's press conference a man who had admitted giving every secret that came his way to the Russians whilst he was in the security services should then plead, in response to a journalist's question, that he could not answer because of the Official Secrets Act. The information that the journalist required was about how many people Mr. Blunt had recruited. Blunt's reply to that question was that he could not answer that question because he had revealed the information to the security services and therefore it had become an official secret. It is bad enough that facts that originate from the Government may be secret, but if we accept that any fact that becomes known to the security services becomes an official secret it will be intolerable. The Act is being used to keep secrets not from the Russians but from the press and from the British people. The case for political accountability is far greater now than it was in 1945, when Mr. Blunt was employed in the security services. I listened very carefully to the opening words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees). He referred to the Maxwell Fyfe directive. He quoted from part of it, and I hope that he will not mind if I quote from the bit that came afterwards.

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The directive states quite clearly that one of the functions of the security services is to protect the realm from actions of persons and organisations whether directed from within or without the country, which may be judged to be subversive of the State. Nowadays we are concerned not only with preventing foreign espionage but with monitoring subversion in Britain. Questions of great political sensitivity and delicacy therefore arise. It is not sufficient for the House to say that it is a matter to be left to the discretion of the security services. If we are to have a Security Service that monitors subversion in the political and industrial scene, it must be debated openly. However, if we leave to a closed and isolated security community the definition of a subversive action, we run a grave risk. I am not satisfied with the arguments that have been put forward about why we 499 cannot achieve greater accountability. It has been said that the Home Secretary gives great care and attention to these issues. I am sure that he does, but he is not answerable to the House. I have tried to table questions to the Home Secretary on security, but every time I have been defeated. When the Government produced the Protection of Official Information Bill, I discovered that an interpretation clause defines security or intelligence as meaning the work of the security or intelligence services. I went to the Table Office and said "I wish to ask the Prime Minister to list the security and intelligence services which are referred to in clause 15 of the Bill", but I was not allowed to table even that question. Again, we do not debate the secret Votes. By conventionadmittedly it is a convention that has not been challenged in modern timesthis is the one item in the Consolidated Fund that cannot be challenged on the Floor of the House and cannot be debated in any Committee of this House. It may be that there are good reasons why we cannot table parliamentary questions on the security services. There may be sound reasons why we cannot debate that item on the Consolidated Fund Bill. But I refuse to believe that there is any compelling reason why we could not have a Select Committee of senior Members of this House who could meet without the press and without the public present and produce for the House a report in exactly the same way as the defence Select Committees have done over the years: a report which is censored and expurgated, but which, nevertheless, gives us the information on general policy and general budgeting that we need if we are to maintain our defence policy. After all, every police authority in Great Britain has an annual debate on the policy of its police force, even though at no stage can it touch on operational decisions. I accept the case for having a Security Service. I accept also that that service inevitably has to be the most secretive part of the Government's arms. However, having said that, it is an impossible irony and a logically untenable position to say that we require a Security Service to protect our democracy but that we cannot make that service answerable to 500 democratic control and democratic structures. If we retain a large Security Service responsible not simply for looking at the Russians and the Albanians but for looking at us and at shop stewards at British Leyland, without making the service answerable to democratic structures, we run a risk that the service will pose a greater threat to democracy than many of the comparatively harmless Communist front organisations which it watches. 9.7 pm Mr. Alan Clark (Plymouth, Sutton) I am most grateful, Mr Speaker, that you have given me the opportuinty to put three questions, very briefly, to my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, so that he may exercise his judgment as to the degree to which he thinks that the House should receive an answer.

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Of course, no one wishes to undermine the Security Service. That would be the very last thing that any Conservative Member would intend to do. But one might ask to what extent the morale of the Security Service is assisted by the granting of immunities and dispensations to those who have betrayed it. I feel that it is relevant to ask this question: what was it exactly that Blunt did? Surely, at any rate, we can be told what Blunt did in the period up to 1945, when we are told that he actually stopped spying. Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop The Russians must know. Mr. Clark As my hon. Friend says, the Russians must know. There are obscure, distasteful and slightly sinister elements still attached to this case. We understand that conscience may decree the imparting of military information, of plans, designs, formulae and so on. But the quartet, the Blunt-Philby-Burgess-Maclean association, was not necessarily connected simply with the imparting of information. These people were actually putting the finger on our agents or on the agents of our allies in foreign territory. It is a long way from the civilised conversation and vintage claret of the Travellers' Club to the interrogation cells, but there is a direct link between these 501 people and those who were tortured and executed because they were acting as our agents, as our soldiers, defending the values that we cherish here. I fully accept what my right hon Friend the Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) said in his answer to me when, very courteously and without any equivocation, he said that the information that Blunt imparted was of such value that the immunity had to be sustained and that he had to be kept in office. This is a man who had been so highly trained in the techniques of interrogation that on 11 occasions he was able to resist those who had also been trained in those techniques. This is a man who, we are told, was still in touch with his Russian controller 30 years later. It was not the same controller. Anyone who knows anything about the KGB will verify that the Russian controllers in Kensington change every two or three years. Therefore there is an assumption, is there not, that this man was a traitor of very much more significance and was in very much closer contact with the Soviet Union than is implied by the very slight element of information which has leaked out regarding him? It is said that it was all over in 1945, and then he was just a dear old thing helping to advise Royalty and occasionally doing other work. It is either one or the other. Either he was a highly dangerous individual or he was a relatively insignificant spy whose activities stopped in 1945. If he was the former, it does not seem to me that it could possibly have been anything that he could have given us that merited the immunity, the dispensation and the effect on the morale of the secret service. If he was so important, two supplementary questions are attached. If he was so important, and therefore so wicked, why was the Queen not told the full extent of his infamyor was she told? Finally, there is a trivial point that has upset a great many people. If Blunt was so wicked, and had committed such betrayals, why was it necessary to save him discomfiture by extending to him what one of my hon. Friends called the courtesy of advising him that we in the House were to discuss his case? 9.12 pm Mr. James Callaghan (Cardiff, South-East) The hon. Member for Plymouth, 502 Sutton (Mr. Clark) asked some very pertinent questions, which I think I can say must have concerned everybody who has looked at

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this case at any time since 1964. I do not wish to take the view that it has been easy to decide or to reach conclusions about everything in this case. The Attorney-General will no doubt try to answer the questions put to him by the hon. Gentleman, but they are proper questions, which concern many of us. The atmosphere of the debate has bezn very rational and calm. However, we must not forget, as a House of Commons, that this announcement, which was properly made by the Prime Minister, came as a very great shock to the British people. They asked questions whether Ministers knew. I must say that Ministers, or former Ministers, have not always helped themselves about that matter. The public are asking whether Ministers were lax. They are asking whether there is a separate group above, beyond or outside the Government which can take decisions of which Ministers are not properly made cognisant. They have askedand do askwhy Mr. Blunt was allowed to re main at the Palace. I ask another question that has concerned me very much. Would Mr. Blunt have had the same treatment if he had been a humble corporal in the RAF? I beg hon. Members not to think that those questions have been absent from the minds of many of us, including those of us who have had to deal with them during the years when we were responsible for them. It is right and I am very glad that the Government decided to give a full day to debate this matter, as I believe that a number of misapprehensions and red herrings have been got out of the way as a result of the debate. I should like to deal with two or three questions. One of the principal questions that has come out in speech after speech in the debate is the relationship between the Security Service and Ministers. The questions of secrecy, scrutiny and responsibility to Parliament also arose. Should more be done in view of the serious penetration of MI5 that has taken place? Was the approach in the Blunt case, and his treatment, proper? Are Ministers and Law Officers or the Security Service to be faulted because of the treatment received by Blunt? Those are the kinds 503 of questions that the House has a right to ask, and those of us who have had some responsibility should seek to answer them and not sweep them aside or brush them away. I thought that the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) put questions that need very careful answer. He said that Ministers are most alert when they are under parliamentary pressure, and that when they know that they are to face the House of Commons and answer questions that is when they will be most on the qui vive and will inquire into the matters upon which they are to be questioned. The hon. Member went on to say that secrecy allows incompetence and corruption to thrive. I accept that. I have been a Minister for many years and I accept that when one is under pressure from Parliament one undoubtedly responds. Therefore, there is a special responsibility when one is not under pressure from Parliament to take a very careful and positive interest in these matters. I disagree totally with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn), who seemed to think that Ministers were passive about these matters and waited for somebody to come and say to them "Look, we want your advice". That does not happen. Indeed, he prompted meno, tempted meto go out and look up a particular area from which I want to quote some examples of the way in which Ministers can and do behave on such issues. I should like to come to the question of responsibility straight away. Although today's debate has arisen out of recent disclosures about Mr. Blunt, I remind the House of what I think has been just beneath our consciousness all day. Blunt is merely one part of a highly complicated case that the Security Service has spent many years and many manhours seeking to unravel to find the truth.

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 Mr. Skinner To cover up. Mr. Callaghan I despair of ever persuading my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) that anyone has any motive other than one of deceit or cover-up. Perhaps one day he will believe that there are other motives at work in people. 504 The morale of the Security Service has suffered greatly as a result of what took place when there was a deep penetration during the 1930s and 1940s. It has been a matter of the deepest anxiety and the Security Service has never given upas I know, because I have had intermittent connections with this matter over a number of years the task of seeking to identify those whose names have come to light. It is probably true to say that because of the effluxion of time those concerned in that penetration of the service have passed, or are passing, out of active service because of age, ill health or death. But the matter has never been fully cleared up. I think that the House is aware of that. I must say to the House, and even to some of my doubting hon. Friends, that I do not think that the matter ever will be cleared up. The truth of the matter will be known only in the deepest recesses of the Kremlin despite the effort that has been made. I think that I speak for all those who have held officeI am sure that we all approached such matters in the right waywhen I say that our aim, in the light of the knowledge which was given to those with responsibility, was to ensure, as far as a Minister humanly could, that the Security Service is now clean and that there is no risk of information being passed on to the Soviet Union or indeed to any other country. In the nature of things I do not believe that it is possible to give the House an absolute and categoric answer. We all do our best, but it is not possible to say that at no time will there be penetration. After all, there is a steady flow of defectors to the West from the Soviet Union. People come across its fontiers at all times. It would be wrong to assume that there is no penetration. However, I think that I can say that the heads of those services, and those concerned in the Security Service, who are in some ways deeply ashamed at what has happened, have taken special care to try to rid themselves of the taint that befell them. I was fortunate enough to see the relations between Ministers and the security and intelligence services in three aspectsas Home Secretary, as Foreign Secretary and as Prime Minister. In relation to the Home Office, I confirm what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member 505 for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees). The Maxwell Fyfe directive certainly guided me, and the same kind of approach guided me as Foreign Secretary between 1974 and 1976. It is true that paragraph 6 of the directive said: Ministers do not concern themselves with the detailed information which may be obtained by the Security Service in particular cases but are furnished with such information only as may be necessary for the determination of any issue on which guidance is sought". That could be regarded as a weakness. It depends to some extent on personal relationships and the sense of responsibility of those who hold these offices. I do not think that at the end of the day any rules are likely to make that situation much better. I welcome the clarification that the Prime Minister has given today about the relationships. I would have said, and I hope she would agree, that broadly the situation that she has now put out in the form of a new memorandum is one that has endured so farperhaps not in 1964, but certainly subsequently. I do not think that the third point has been said specifically before, namely, that if the Attorney-General is asked to authorise a grant of immunity from prosecution he can satisfy himself that the request has been made. That is a useful addition. However, I cannot conceive in modern times

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of anything else happening. I see that the Home Secretary is inclined to agree with me on that point. Let us look at the relationship, because this is what interested the House. When I was Home Secretary and then Foreign Secretary I took a number of decisions on operations that were put to me by the heads of the services and which I did not communicate to the Prime Minister of the day because it seemed to me that they were of such character that I could legitimately take responsibility without bringing him into the picture. At times the heads of the appropriate security services would ask to see me, and at other times I would ask to see them. But if it was a major matterand this is where the discretion comes inof course I would inform the Prime Minister. We cannot alter that kind of relationship. In the end it must be a matter of judgment as to whether the Home Secretary thinks that something is of such deep significance that he should not reach a conclusion 506 without informing the Prime Minister. I do not see how we can ever escape from that if Ministers are to have any responsibility at all. The same relationship existed when I became Prime Minister. I would ask to see the heads of the two services. Alternatively, they could and did ask to see me from time to time. The same relationship applied between Ministers and myself and between the Home Secretary of the day and the Foreign Secretary of the day. I give the House an illustration of how I think the Prime Minister can conduct his affairs in this matter. I give it not to be complacent but because I think it genuinely illustrates how a Prime Minister carries out his or her work. There was an occasion when I was Prime Minister when, for certain reasons that are not related to Mr. Blunt, I called a joint meeting with the Secretary to the Cabinet, the Director-General of MI5 and the head of MI6. The four of us sat down with my private secretary at No. 10. I reminded them that there was no room for complacency in view of what was going onthe attempted Soviet penetration, which still existsand I reminded them of the past record, which is at the forefront of their minds all the time. Although I said that the matters that constantly weighed on their minds had originated several years earlier, nevertheless I wanted to go over the ground again. We went over that ground on my initiative. I did not wait for them to come and see me. I thought that this was an occasion on which I should do it myself. They confirmed to me what I said to the House a little earlier, that in their view those who might have been concerned with acts of treachery had, for the most or greater part, reached the end of their active life. They had either resigned or retired. That was the first point we examined. Secondly, we discussed, once again, as I had previously done with them individually, the nature of the procedures for positive vetting. We discussed their thoroughness and whether they were adequate. These procedures had been changed since the time of the earliest incidents in 1964. That was the second area that we covered. We then went on to the question of the management and recruitment of the two services. I can tell the Housethere is no reason 507 why it should not have been said earlierthat my right hon. Friend the then Home Secretary did change the nature of recruitment into the Security Service and the way in which it was conducted. I think that it was necessary so to do. We discussed to what extent that method should be applied to MI6 and whether we should make certain changes there in order to achieve a better balance. That was the third item. Fourthly, we discussed the question whether any of the recent Soviet defectors who had come across had been planted, and what we thought happened to particular people.

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Finally, we went over once more the most important question of all, which was whether grounds existed for continued suspicion in the Security Service, and if so, what we should do. That was not a passive attitude of sitting back and waiting for something to come to one. That was an example of the positive role that I am sure all Prime Ministers have played. I quote that example because it was suggested that we waited to see what came up, gave advice to someone, sent him away, and forgot all about it. That is absolutely untrue. I think that what I have described illustrates, from one meeting that I called, the way in which the subject can be approached. Subject to my earlier remarks, it is never possible to give an absolutely categorical answer. I do not believe that much, if any, of the earlier conspiracy remains alive and active today. What is true, I believe, is that there are people who have remained undiscovered and unknown so far who are still alive, though probably inactive. So much, then, for the control exercised by the Prime Minister and Ministers. There has, I repeat, to be trust between the Prime Minister and her Ministers and between the Prime Minister, Ministers and the heads of the two services. The relationship between them cannot be the same as the relationship between the Minister and his permanent secretary in a normal Department, if only for one physical reason. They live in separate places. Therefore, there is not the close intimacy that exists in a Department where a permanent secretary walks three doors along a corridor, knocks on the door, walks in and says "Look here, I would 508 just like to tell you about something that is happening", and gets advice. The relationship between the Prime Minister and the heads of the two services is much more an arms-length relationship. It is much more formal when the head of the Security Service or the head of MI6 comes to see the Prime Minister. That places a special responsibility on the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary to see that they are themselves active in these matters. From what I know of my predecessors, I believe that the heads of the Security Service and MI6 came to Ministers. They came to me when they needed decisions of major importance, quite apart from any initiative I myself might have taken. From what I have heard today, I think that that situation has obtained all the way along the line. As far as it concerns the responsibility of Ministers it is a fine matter of judgment whether or not an operational decision should be put to the Home Secretary by the head of the Security Service and put by the Home Secretary, in due course, to the Prime Minister. At the end of the day it will be the judgment of those who apply the rules that will prevail. Having said that, I come to the question of an inquiry. However, I will first say a word about Blunt. The nub of the Blunt affair is that insufficient attention has been paid todayit may have been paid by one or two hon. Membersto the atmosphere of the 1930s. That may be because not every hon. Member was alive, active or grown up in the 1930s. However, at the risk of incurring anyone's displeasure, I should point out that there was a terrible feeling in the 1930s that we were facing a prospect of either Fascism or Communism, and that people had to choose. I was never bitten by the bug, but I can understand those who were. At the risk of incurring the displeasure of Conservative Members, I must say that it was the craven attitude of the Government of the day, in the face of the Nazis, which led people to reach that conclusion. Had there been a different attitude towards the Nazis in the 1930s by the Government of the day, I do not believe that some of these people would have gone where they did. When I watched Blunt on television last night, it was like the rustle of dead leaves 509 underfoot. I could hear those accents of someone from the 1930s. Having said that, there is nothing that can condone his treachery, whatever his beliefs. I am sure that no

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hon. Member believes that I am doing anything of the sort. I am merely trying to paint the background against which these people reached that position, and I trust that we shall never reach that stage again. The net was closing on Blunt. I believe that is why he eventually confessed, because as the Prime Minister said, information became available in 1964. He did not know how much more would become available, and so in the end he confessed. I accept the view that the immunity offer was made to him honestly and genuinelyit is a matter of judgment as to whether or not it was misguidedin order to secure further information from him. I accept what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. Silkin) said. He said it to me when I was Prime Minister, and he said it again today. A prosecution could not have been launched at a later stage in the circumstances in which the immunity was given. However, looking back, and without any sense of recrimination, I think that the advice at the time about his being allowed to stay was wrong. I do not know what decision I would have reached in those circumstances. None of us knows. Those who took the decision are now gone. But since this was almost bound to come out in due time, and however good the intentions of those who reached the original decision, I regret it. Of course, I have been a party to it, like seven other Home Secretaries, four AttorneysGeneral and four Prime Ministers, excluding Lord Home. Therefore, I am sorry that this has happened. I am bound to say that I think that there has been a tendency to treat Mr. Blunt with kid gloves. That is not my view with hindsight; I expressed it as Prime Minister and was minuted to that effect. Once one is committed to a particular course, one must sometimes go on on that course, whatever one may think. I think that all of us found ourselves in that position. Should there be a further inquiry into the Blunt conspiracy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. 510 Wellbeloved) suggested? Frankly, I think not. We shall never know the truth now. The security services have done all they can. Innocent names will be bandied about. Indeed, they have already been bandied about. Actions have been attributed to some of us that are totally untrue. I have not corrected them. There is a story in the newspapers today about inquiries that I am supposed to have ordered. I have checked with No. 10 Downing Street and have discovered that it is totally false. This kind of rumour is bound to go on, and I cannot see any particular prospect of a further inquiry into Blunt and what happened being successful. I believe that if the security services could have found out, for their own pride they would have found out who had penetrated and how. So far they have failed to uncover that. However, I do not think that we should leave the matter there. I am in favour of an inquiry into certain aspects of this case. I believe that the questions which have been asked by the hon. Member for Berwickupon-Tweed and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) need an answer. None of us should feel too proud about what we did or should feel that all wisdom resides in us and that this matter should not be examined. I discount some of the propositions that have been advanced, but it is worth looking again at the relationship that exists between Ministers and the Prime Minister and between Ministers and the heads of the services, to see whether improvements can be made in that matter. The question of ministerial co-ordination is important. It would be possible for consideration to be givenwith a report to the Prime Ministerto the question whether Parliament can be brought in on this matter to any greater extent. I have always found Parliament to be pretty responsible about this, and it would have to be denied, if not the question, then at least the answer from the Prime Minister.

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I urge the House to reflect on how far we shall get. We could ask the head of M15 every year whether he had observed the rulesthe Maxwell Fyfe rules and the new procedure laid down today along with any new procedures we might deviseand we should get the answer "Yes". 511 At any rate, that procedure might remind the head of MI5 that the rules exist, and that might be the value of it. At any rate, I should like to see the subject examined. Therefore, I urge the Prime Minister, within the limits of what I am discussing, to consider whether it would not be worth while, in order to satisfy the proper curiosity of hon. MembersI do not use "curiosity" in its narrow sense, because they have a right to be satisfiedto set up some kind of inquiry to be conducted by Lord Diplock or someone of that calibre. We could discuss how it were done, what its terms of reference were and who would conduct it. It would report back on whether any change were needed in relations between Ministers and the heads of the services, or whether Parliament could be involved more, not in the decisions, but in the rules and the way in which they were applied and observed. I conclude by saying that this has been a very sorry story in our history. It is one in which no one can feel any sense of pride. I wish that it had never happened. I fear that the morale of the service was damaged. I would not wish to see it damaged further, and one can damage the morale of a bad service as well as of a good service, as we know. It is our task, since this intelligence and security is required, to see that these services are given the fullest help to do their job, that they are kept under proper ministerial control in doing it, and that, as far as possible, Ministers should account for themselves to Parliament on the way in which these great and grave responsibilities are carried out. 9.38 pm The Attorney-General (Sir Michael Havers) Before attempting to deal as fully as I can with the main points made in the debate, I should first, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister foreshadowed, like to deal with the question of immunity, a matter at the heart of this affair. The granting of immunity is a promise that a man will not be prosecuted, and it is given when the public interest in obtaining the man's co-operation is judged to be sufficient to forgo the opportunity or possible opportunity of prosecuting 512 him. It mayand this is more usually the case nowadaysbe a more limited affairthat is, limited to saying that a man's confession would not be used against him, but leaving open the question of his prosecution based on admissible evidence from sources other than his confession. In that kind of case any confession given becomes unusable as a matter of law because no statement is admissible unless it is voluntary; and it is not voluntary if there has been promise or inducement. In the case of Mr. Blunt, the immunity was not so limited because that was a situation in which there was no admissible evidence against him and little, if any, prospect of ever obtaining any. His denials had been firm over a number of years. What was given to him, therefore, was not merely a promise that his confession would not be used as evidence against him, but in return for his co-operation and his giving of information useful to the Security Service he was given a promise that he would never be prosecuted for his previous spying activities. One of the issues that has been raised is whether the immunity should have been granted. I shall summarise what happened when Professor Blunt was interviewed by the Security Service on 23 April 1964 at his home. He was told of the new information to which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has referred. He maintained his denial. He was offered immunity from prosecution. He sat in silence for a while. He got up, looked out of the window, poured himself a drink and after a few minutes confessed.

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Later he co-operated, and he continued to co-operate. That is how the immunity was given and that is how Blunt responded. In my view, events have clearly justified the decision that was taken by Sir John Hobson in 1964. If the House is troubled about the extent to which immunities may be given, I shall say a word or two about who may give them. Immunities may be given by the Director of Public Prosecutions who, I remind the House, carries out his duties under the superintendence of the Attorney-General. Alternatively, immunities may be given directly by the Attorney-General or on his authority. In serious cases they 513 would not be given by the Director without reference to the Attorney-General. The authority for the giving of immunity to Blunt in 1964 was given, as the House knows, on the authority of my predecessor Sir John Hobson, after the matter had been referred to him by the then Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions. There is no specific legal statutory authority for the giving of immunities, but what is meant by immunity is the promise not to prosecute, and that promise can be effectively honoured by the Director and the Attorney-General. Some offences may be proceeded with only with the consent of the Attorney-General. Offences under the Official Secrets Act fall within that category. Other statutes require prior consent to be given by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and sometimes by the Attorney-General. The Director has a power to take over cases and offer no evidence. Ultimatelyperhaps it is the most important powerthe Attorney-General may enter a nolle prosequi, which will stop any prosecution on indictment. That is how an immunity can be effectively carried out and implemented. The decision of an Attorney-General to authorise the granting of immunity such as that granted in the Blunt case is a decision, like many others in the area of law enforcement, which the Attorney-General takes without the prior approval of his ministerial colleagues. The constitutional position is clear. An Attorney-General may seek from his ministerial colleagues information that may be relevant to the public interest affecting his decision, but the final decision is his alone. Whether he should inform his ministerial colleagues of such decisions is another matter. As has already been made clear, Sir John Hobson, when taking his decision, was told that the matter had already been brought to the attention of the then Home Secretary. My position in this matter as Attorney-General, and that of my immediate predecessorsthe Attorney-General in 1972, now Lord Rawlinson, and the AttorneyGeneral in 1974the right hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. Silkin)has been to agree that Blunt's confession obtained as a result of the inducement would be inadmissible in criminal proceedings. That was made clear in the 514 useful intervention of the right hon. and learned Member for Dulwich. We are agreed that Blunt could never now be prosecuted in respect of matters about which he confessed, even if evidence, apart from the confession, existed to sustain a prosecution. In the event, no such other evidence has ever existed. However, the position of successive Attorneys-General must be that they honour the undertakings given by, or on the authority of, their predecessors. In saying that, I am not to be taken as implying that I would have taken a different decision from my predecessor, Sir John Hobson. It is not now a decision for me to take. It was taken at the time on the basis of material properly put to him and on which he was in a position to balance the public interest in favour of the granting of immunity. I have already demonstrated to the House how effective the offer of immunity turned out to be. It is equally clear that once an immunity has been granted in wide termsthat is, that no prosecution will be launchedto retract it later could only do damage to the public

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interest. It would inevitably diminish, if not destroy, the purpose for which it was granted. No further offer would be likely to be relied upon by another suspected person. It also seems to me that, although the immunity is in respect of prosecution, its usefulness in future, for other cases, would also be diminished if publicity were given to the confession that followed it, even when any security grounds for maintaining silence had disappeared. The publicity in this case followed directly from the priority written question to my right hon. Friend which itself arose from the book and the press comment on the book. Generally, apart from the question whether it would be right for the Crown to take the initiative in naming a man as a spy when there was no evidence on which to prosecute him, it seems to me that anonymity should usually be inherent in the granting of immunity. This would not apply in an ordinary criminal case where the super-grass or one of the defendants is called as a witness for the Crown, because everyone would then know what had happened. Mr. Beith What should then happen if Ministers are questioned in Parliament about that person? 515 The Attorney-General I have noted what the hon. Gentleman said. I intended to deal with the matter later. I will deal with it now. If a Minister is questioned, the truth will come out. He must tell the truth to the House. There is no question about that. Mr. English The right hon. and learned Gentleman will recollect the debate on the Select Committees. I pointed out that it was odd that the Home Secretary would be capable of being questioned by the Home Affairs Committee but that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would not. The right hon. and learned Gentleman could be questioned on the Floor of the House but not before the Select Committee. There may be reasons for excluding the Lord Chancellor in his judicial capacity, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman, even when he does not consult his colleagues, is not a judge: he is actually performing a professionally, legally advised executive act but cannot be questioned by the Home Affairs Committee that could investigate this matter. That must be wrong. The Attorney-General The whole matter was debated. The hon. Gentleman made a speech at some length on that occasion. I do not think it is relevant to this debate. Mr. James Callaghan I apologise for interrupting, but the Attorney-General gave an absolute answer that, if a question was put in Parliament, then the name would have to be given. If he did not say that, I hope he will make clear that this is not what he means. There could be cases in which the national interest would be ill served by giving the name at that time. What he is required to do in the House is not to tell a lie to the House. The Attorney-General The way in which the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) put the question was: Would that force a Minister to tell a lie? Of course, it would not. But there would be occasions, I agree, when one would have to reply that in the public interest, it was impossible to answer the question. I would like to go back for a moment 516 Mr. Skinner rose The Attorney-General

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I have not time to give way. I should like to go back for a moment to the priority written question and the squalid speech made by the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton). There is no doubtI have checked thisthat the rules require that in the case of a priority written question of which due notice has been given, as it had in this case, the answer must be given on the day for which that notice has been given. So any attempt to allege that this was done deliberately by my right hon. Friend in order to try to provide different headlines is not only unfair but completely untrue. I should like now to deal with some of the matters raised in the course of the debate. I wish to make clear right at the beginning one point about the position with regard to the Palace and information that is known to Her Majesty the Queen. All communications between Her Majesty and her private secretarythis is a longstanding traditionare absolutely confidential, and must remain so. Therefore, it is quite wrong, and impossible, for any Minister to answer questions as to what was said between Her Majesty and the private secretary. Mr. William Hamilton Did she, or did she not know? The Attorney-General The first speech following that of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was that made by the right hon. Member for Leeds. South (Mr. Rees). I was delighted to hear him say that he was against any form of 1921 Act tribunal. I agree with him that it would be quite inappropriate in this case, and also that it would not be right for any Select Committee to look into the matter or look more into the whole of the Security Service. I accept, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary also accepts, what the right hon. Gentleman said about the Home Secretary's responsibility in these matters involving secrecy. He suggested that the Security Commission should look at the problem. But one wants to know what the problems are. They have been identified in various ways. One would also have to consider what terms of reference would have to be put before the Commission. 517 I am sure that the House was very grateful to the right hon, and learned Member for Dulwich, who gave a clear account of what happened during his term of office. I have no disagreement whatsoever with the right hon, and learned Gentleman, because it is clear that the practice adopted during his four or five years in that office is the same as was adopted both before and after it during Conservative Administrations. The right hon, and learned Gentleman made the position very clear, and I am very grateful to him. I have referred to the squalid speech of the hon. Member for Fife, Central, which I suspect was written before he had even listened to the opening speech of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. Mr. William Hamilton I should like to ask the right hon, and learned Gentleman a very simple question. He has talked about the private secretary to Her Majesty the Queen and the private secretary's relationship with Her Majesty. Will he state why the information was given to the private secretary, if it was not for conveying to Her Majesty? The Attorney-General I was not in office at the time, and that is not a question that I can answer. The hon. Gentleman finds it so easyhe has done it a number of times in the House to attack the "faceless men" in the Civil Service and say that they are not accountable. He had to be corrected by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, because he appears completely to have overlooked what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister saidthat the Home Secretary of the day knew, so there was somebody who would have been

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accountable to the House. I want to emphasise that it is untrueI do not know where the hon. Gentleman's information came fromthat Blunt worked for the Security Service after October 1945. Mr. William Hamilton Part-time. The Attorney-General There is no evidence that he obtained any classified material after that date. The hon. Gentleman went on to say that it was quite wrong that only the AttorneyGeneral should take the decision. First, the Home Secretary knew the facts. Secondly, as I have already pointed 518 out, it is a constitutional duty of the Home Secretary to take that decision by himself. Mr. Whitelaw The Attorney-General. The Attorney-General Yes, the Attorney-General. Need I remind the House of the consequences of the Campbell case in 1926, when the first Labour Government were brought down as a result of an instruction to the Attorney-General? I do not think that that is something that any Government wish to have repeated. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) speculated about the immunity, and especially the widest possible terms. Immunity could not include immunity in respect of future acts, and it never did. It was immunity in respect of Blunt's shying activities before he was seen on 23 April 1964. My hon. Friend continued by saying that immunity should be given on the instructions of the Home Secretary. No Home Secretary can govern the actions of an AttorneyGeneral. A decision to grant immunity is made only by the Attorney-Generalthough, of course, he is entitled to consult. The principal reason for that is that it is only the Attorney-General who can bring to a halt any criminal proceedings by entering a nolle prosequi. Mr. Cryerrose The Attorney-General I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman as I am very short of time. [Interruption.] Mr. Speaker Order. The Attorney-General My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) wanted to have a Select Committee to overlook the work of the Security Service. I take the same view as the right hon. Member for Leeds, South, the previous Home Secretary, about that matter. I am sure that the House was impressed by the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath). It is clear that, during the time that he was Prime Minister, the rules were carried out satisfactorily. He was clearly in constant and effective touch with the Director-General, and the Home Secretary of the day kept him in touch as was necessary. He told us that he 519 was informed throughout. He said that if publicity is given to something, everybody is alerted to what has happened. I have already dealt with that important point. He pondered upon whether he should have announced that there was a cover-up. He said that he was told by the Security Service that it was still of value. That indicates the importance of the secrecy that was preserved at that time and it is one of the reasons why the silence was maintained. The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) spoke of Ministers being passive. The Leader of the Opposition dealt effectively with that matter from his point

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of view when he was Prime Minister. As Attorney-General, I was briefed within a month of entering office about all the matters that the Security Service felt I should know. When I have had any queries they have been dealt with promptly and efficiently. The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East suggested that immunities were granted because there is a special law for some people. It may interest the House to know that in these matters of secrecy one immunity has been granted since the warthe one in the case of Blunt. There is no question of what the right hon. Gentleman described in a rather offensive phrase as "pre-emptive immunity" for special people. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Clark) asked why Blunt was kept in office at the Palace. That question has been dealt with partly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sidcup, and it is partly explained by the reasons of lack of publicity and the inherent immunity that should apply in such a case. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton felt that there was nothing to merit immunity. Nevertheless, there was nothing which would have led to the prosecution and conviction of Blunt. By granting immunity, the Security Service achieved a bonus that it would not otherwise have had. The Leader of the Opposition spoke of the relationship between the Security Service and Ministers. I agree with him that the matter will never be cleared up fully. Too many people are out of reach either by reason of ill health or death. I am not sure what form he would like the inquiry that he referred to to take. 520 The Prime Minister today spoke of the new safeguards that have been put into effect. When the Attorney-General is asked to consider granting immunity, as a matter of course he will now inform the Home Secretary. That safeguard would not have been lacking in 1964 because the Home Secretary had already been informed. I pose these questions to the House, Js there any need to hold an inquiry? Is it worth while in 1979 to inquire into whether the investigation into Russian intelligence penetration of our public service, following the defection of Burgess and Maclean, all of those years ago, was as thorough and effective as we would wish? We have to remember that the Blunt confession itself is now 15 years old and any necessary action has been taken. Are the procedures that we now operate sufficient to guard the State against a repetition of anything that might have gone wrong? Surely this debate has demonstrated that no inquiry is needed. Mr. William Hamilton rose in his place and claimed to move. That the Question be now put. Mr. Speaker The Question is. That the Question be now put. As many as are of that opinion say "Aye". Hon. Members Aye. Mr. Speaker To the contrary "No". Hon. Members No. Mr. Speaker Order. I did not quite hear that answer. I will put the Question again. Question put and negatived. ** ********************************************************************** PUBLIC SECURITY HC Deb 21 November 1979 vol 974 c173W 173W Mr. Meacher

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asked the Prime Minister how many persons were questioned as a result of suspicions aroused in the light of the Burgess-Maclean affair; how many of these worked in the Civil Service; what action was taken as a result of these questionings; and how many persons were asked to leave the Civil Service. The Prime Minister Thorough investigations were undertaken following the defection of Burgess and Maclean and many interviews of public servants and members of the public took place. Not all those questioned were themselves under suspicion and it would not be in the public interest to give numbers. A number of people left the public service, or were transferred to work which did not involve access to classified information. I am satisfied that all appropriate steps were taken to safeguard national security. Mr. Meacher asked the Prime Minister if she will publish the guidelines currently operated by the security services in respect of their relations with ministers. The Prime Minister Relations between the security service and the Prime Minister and Home Secretary are as set out in paragraphs 238 to 241 of Lord Denning's reportCmnd. 2152of September 1963. ********************************************************************** NATIONAL SECURITY HC Deb 29 November 1979 vol 974 c719W 719W Mr. Meacher asked the Prime Minister what evidence she has that three more persons are known to be involved in the Burgess-Maclean-Philby-Blunt affair; and if she will name them. The Prime Minister I do not propose to comment further on suggestions of this kind. I refer the hon. Member to my answer of 15 November to the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter) and my speech in the House on 21 November. ********************************************************************** Security: Prime Minister's Statement HL Deb 26 March 1981 vol 418 cc1285-94 1285 3.36 p.m. The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone) My Lords, I understand that this would be a convenient moment for me, with permission, to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. My Lords, the Statement is as follows: "I will make a Statement about the security implications of the book published today which purports to give a detailed account of the investigations into the penetration of the security service and other parts of the public service which were undertaken following the defection of Burgess and Maclean in 1951. "The events into which those investigations were inquiring began well over 40 years ago. Many of those named or implicated in this book as having been the subject of investigation have died. Others have long since retired. None of them is still in the public service. "The extent of penetration was thoroughly investigated after the defection of Burgess and Maclean, as indeed the author of this book makes clear. The book contains no information of security significance which is new to the security authorities. And some of the material is inaccurate or distorted. All the cases and individuals referred to have been the subject of long and thorough investigation.

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"The investigations into the possibilities of past penetration have inevitably extended widely. They 1286 have covered not only those suspected of being guilty, but also all those who could conceivably fit the often inconclusive leads available. The fact that somebody has been the subject of investigation does not necessarily or even generally mean that he has been positively suspected: many people have had to be investigated simply in order to eliminate them from the inquiry. "The results of the investigations into Philby and Blunt are now well known. There were good reasons for suspecting a few others, but as it was not possible to secure evidence on which charges could be founded, they were required to resign or were moved to work where they had no access to classified information. Many others were eliminated from suspicion. "Apart from the main allegation, which I will come to, I do not propose to comment on the other allegations and insinuations in this book. Nor can I say which allegations are unsubstantiated or untrueas some certainly aresince by doing so I should implicitly be indicating those which were suspected of having a degree of substance. "I must, however, comment upon the grave allegation which constitutes the main theme of the book, that the late Sir Roger Hollis, Director General of the Security Service from 1956 to 1965, was an agent of the Russian intelligence service. "The case for investigating Sir Roger Hollis was based on certain leads which suggested, but did not prove, that there had been a Russian intelligence service agent at a relatively senior level in British counter-intelligence in the last years of the war. None of these leads identified Sir Roger Hollis, or pointed specifically or solely in his direction; each of them could also be taken as pointing to Philby or Blunt. But he was among those that fitted some of them, and he was therefore investigated. "The investigation took place after Sir Roger Hollis's retirement from the security service. It did not conclusively prove his innocence; indeed it is very often impossible to prove innocence; that is why in our law the burden of proof is placed upon those who seek to establish guilt and not on those who defend innocence. But no evidence was found that incriminated him, and the conclusion reached at the end of the investigation was that he had not been an agent of the Russian intelligence service. "This view was challenged, however, by a very few of those concerned, and in July 1974, Lord Trend, the former Secretary of the Cabinet, was asked to review in detail the investigations that had taken place into the case of Sir Roger Hollis, and to say whether they had been done in a proper and thorough manner, and whether in his view the conclusions reached were justified. He examined the files and records and he discussed the case with many of those concerned, including two people who considered that the investigation should be reopened. "Mr. Pincher's account of Lord Trend's conclusions is wrong. The book asserts that Lord Trend 'concluded that there was a strong prima facie case that MI5 had been deeply penetrated over many years by someone who was not Blunt', and that he 'named Hollis as the likeliest suspect'. Lord Trend said neither of those things, and nothing 1287 resembling them. He reviewed the investigations of the case, and found that they had been carried out exhaustively and objectively. He was satisfied that nothing had been covered up. He agreed that none of the relevant leads identified Sir Roger Hollis as an agent of the Russian intelligence service, and that each of them could be explained by reference to Philby or Blunt. Lord Trend did not refer, as the book says he did, to 'the possibility that Hollis might have recruited unidentified Soviet agents into MI5'. Again, he said no such thing.

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"Lord Trend, with whom I have discussed the matter, agreed with those who, although it was impossible to prove the negative, concluded that Sir Roger Hollis had not been an agent of the Russian intelligence service. "I turn next to the arrangements for guarding against penetration now and in the future. "All departments and agencies of Government especially those concerned with foreign and defence policy and with national security, are targets for penetration by hostile intelligence services. The security service, with its responsibilities for countering espionage and subversion, is a particularly attractive target. Recent security successes (like the expulsion of members of the Russian intelligence service from this country in 1971) would hardly have been achieved, if the security service was penetrated. The security service exercises constant vigilance not only against the risk of current penetration but also against the possibility of hitherto undetected past penetration which might have continuing implications. But, however great our confidence in the integrity and dedication of those now serving in the security service, we need to make sure that the arrangements for guarding against penetration are as good as they possibly can be, both in this area and throughout the public service. "Existing security procedures were introduced during the years following the Second World War. Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt were all recruited by the Russian intelligence service before the Second World War, and came into the public service either before or during the war, well before existing security procedures were introduced. It was in 1948 that the then Prime Minister announced the Government's intention to bar communists and fascists and their associates from employment in the public service in connection with work the nature of which was vital to the security of the state. This led to the introduction of what came to be know as the "purge procedure". In 1952 the positive vetting procedure was instituted, with the object of establishing the integrity of civil servants employed on exceptionally secret work. In 1956 it was publicly declared that character defects, as distinct from communist or fascist sympathies or associations, might affect a civil servant's posting or promotion. In 1961 security procedures and practices in the public service were reviewed by an independent committee under the chairmanship of the late Lord Radcliffe. The committee's report, published in 1962, contained an account of those procedures, and 1288 made various recommendations for modifying them, which the Government accepted. These procedures, as modified in 1962, are still in operation today. "These arrangements have over the years substantially reduced the vulnerability of the public service to the threat of penetration, and have served the interests of national security well. But it is 20 years since they were last subject to independent review. In that time the techniques of penetration and the nature of the risks may have changed. We need to make sure that our protective security procedures have developed to take account of those changes. "I have therefore decided, after consultation with the right honourable gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, to ask the Security Commission: 'To review the security procedures and practices currently followed in the public service and to consider what, if any, changes are required.' "These terms of reference will enable the Security Commission to review, and to make recommendations as appropriate, on the arrangements and procedures used in all parts of the public service for the purposes of safeguarding information and activities involving national security against penetration by hostile intelligence services, and of excluding from appointments which give access to highly classified information both those with allegiances which they put above loyalty to their country, and those who may for whatever reason be vulnerable to attempts to undermine their loyalty and extort information by pressure or blackmail.

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"There are difficult balances to be struck here between the need to protect national security, the nature and cost of the measures required to do so effectively, the need for efficiency and economy in the public service, and the individual rights of members of the public service to personal freedom and privacy. The Security Commission will be able to consider how these balances ought to be struck in the circumstances of the present time, as they conduct their review and prepare their recommendations. It will be my intention to make their findings known to the House in due course, to the extent that it is consistent with national security to do so. "Mr. Speaker, in conclusion I should like to emphasise once again that this Statement arises out of a book which deals with investigations of matters and events which occurred many years ago. My concern is with the present and with the future. That is why I am asking the Security Commission to undertake the review which I have described." My Lords, that concludes my right honourable friend's Statement to the House of Commons. 3.50 p.m. Lord Elwyn-Jones My Lords, I know that the whole House will be most grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for reading out this extremely important Statement. A great deal of public concern and anxiety has arisen out of the publication of a certain book which has been publicised widely throughout the world and more widely through the media than any book in recent times, and to learn 1289 from this Statement that much of the main causes of public anxiety seems to be ill-founded is, indeed, a deeply disturbing state of affairs. The law of this country does not enable the dead to sue for libel. I have always thought that there ought to be a right at least to get a declaration by the relatives to enable any defamation to be nailed. That cannot be done. So those who write about the reputation of the dead can do so more or less with immunity. Here we have a case where the matters alleged against Sir Roger Hollis have apparently been investigated on several occasions and most recently by the noble Lord, Lord Trend, the former Secretary of the Cabinet. It is almost shaming to hear it said that: The book asserts that Lord Trend 'concluded that there was a strong prima facie case that MI5 had been deeply penetrated over many years by someone who was not Blunt', and that he 'named Hollis as the likeliest suspect'", when the Statement says, after inquiry, and no doubt discussion with Lord Trend, that: Lord Trend said neither of those things, and nothing resembling them". It is shaming, my Lords. The Statement says: He was satisfied that nothing had been covered up. He agreed that none of the relevant leads identified Sir Roger Hollis as an agent of the Russian Intelligence Service, and that each of them could be explained by reference to Philby or Blunt. Lord Trend did not refer, as the book says he did, to 'the possibility that Hollis might have recruited unidentified Soviet agents into MI5'. Again, he said no such thing. The Statement then continues: Lord Trend, with whom I have discussed the matter, agreed with those who, although it was impossible to prove the negative, concluded that Sir Roger Hollis had not been an agent of the Russian Intelligence Service. That, I suppose is the most that can be done now in regard to the reputation of Sir Roger Hollis. There cannot be a positive acquittal because he is dead and cannot be tried and brought to judgment. But the House will read this Statement with care and I have little doubt that at any rate it will give some comfort to the family and relatives of this man, who must have suffered agony in recent days. With regard to the proposal of the Government and the Prime Ministerwhich has already been put to my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition and with which he has

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entirely agreedthat there should now be a further inquiry into the efficiency of our security services, I should like to say that we on this side of the House, and I am sure the whole House, will be in full agreement. It is clearly essential that we should ensure that our safeguards against Soviet or any other penetration of our security and intelligence services should be as effective as possible. If I may say so, the note that was struck towards the end of the Statement seemed to me to be impressive and valuable. As the Statement says: There are difficult balances to be struck here between the need to protect national security, the nature and cost of the measures required to do so effectively, the need for efficiency and economy in the public service, and the individual rights of members of the public service to personal freedom and privacy. I am sure that that sane and civilised approach to the problem will be welcomed. We are, indeed, most grateful that a Statement in such depthsomewhat unusual depth in cases of this kindhas been made by the Prime Minister and made available to the House. 1290 Lord Gladwyn My Lords, we, too, would like to thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for repeating this very important Statement, which, on the face of it, appears to discredit completely the insinuations regarding existing security made in the recent book by Mr. Chapman Pincher. That is most satisfactory. On behalf of my colleagues, I should also like to share the indignation of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, at what has happened and to express our deepest sympathy with the family and relations of the late Sir Roger Hollis. I understand from the Statement that the Government have no reason whatever to doubt Sir Roger's loyalty, but, if the faintest doubt should still persist on that score, then I imagine that it would be only prudentif it has not been done alreadyto re-vet positively those members of the service who were recruited by him or when he was in a position to influence recruitment. There would be no harm in doing that. We think in any case that it is excellent that the Government have decided to instruct the Security Commission to hold another review on the terms of reference suggested, which seem to me to be admirable. I imagine that the inquiry will be conducted in private and it is satisfactory that Parliament will be informed of its results from time to time. Perhaps I may add, as one who long, long ago had some knowledge of the secret services, that the trouble often is that such services, if they are, indeed, of the cloak and dagger typethat is to say, clandestinetend inevitably to attract what might be called cloak and dagger characters who are perhaps unduly fascinated by unorthodox schemes such as double agents, double bluffs, deception, bribery and whatever; whereas, on the contrary, if such services are completely open and are conducted exactly like any other Government department, they may well be pretty useless, as, I am afraid, is evident from what happened to the CIA when it was, as it were, rendered inoperative as a result of disclosures over Vietnam. So perhaps we in this country shall do no harm if in the future we steer between this Scylla and this Charybdis. Lord Home of the Hirsel My Lords, The Lord Chancellor My Lords, I shall of course answer my noble friend Lord Home of the Hirsel separately. I should like to thank both the noble and learned Lord on the Opposition Front Bench and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, for what they have said. I agreed with my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, and I hope that the House will think that this was right, that I would stick pretty closely to the Statement in repeating it to your Lordships'

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House. However, I had the feeling very strongly that both the noble and learned Lord and the noble Lord were speaking, in a sense, for the whole House when they gave vent to the sentiments which they have expressed. I do not think that I can usefully add very much to what they have said. As regards the two suggestions made by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, I shall gladly pass them on to the appropriate quarter. Lord Home of the Hirsel My Lords, the doubts thrown by Mr. Chapman Pincher on the loyalty of the head of the security service were, as my right 1291 honourable friend the Prime Minister said in her Statement, very grave and disquieting. They really are the more so now that we have learnt from the Statement that there were serious errors of fact in his judgment of Sir Roger Hollis. I join with the noble and learned Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, in hoping that this Statement will give some comfort to the relations of Sir Roger. In her response to the book, I think that the Prime Minister struck the right balance between past, present and future. There never can be any cover-up of treachery and it is quite clear that there has been no such thing in this case. But perhaps it is reassuring that the highest officers in the service are not free from investigation and that a constant watch is kept on matters which concern the security of the country. On the other hand, an unrestrained witch-hunt by those who are careless of the facts can play straight into the hands of our potential enemies. I think that we know how closely our potential enemies watch these matters. The Prime Minister was quite right in asking the Security Commission to look at the organisation of these matters, and it is very important that this should be agreed between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, because that is how we should handle these very grave matters. The Lord Chancellor My Lords, I am absolutely sure that the whole House would wish me to express my gratitude to my noble friend, who speaks from a position of unique authority and almost unique experience. Lord Paget of Northampton My Lords, I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor one further question. We are not really concerned only with one man or one book. The practice of exploiting libels on the dead has become too common. Could not the criminal law of libel at least be examined to see whether any amendments are necessary in order to make criminal prosecution available against those who libel the dead? The Lord Chancellor My Lords, that is a question which has been ventilated from time to time. We all feel indignation against those who traduce those who can no longer answer for themselves; but I think that it raises very wide issues which had perhaps better not be explored too closely on this occasion, especially as I am not the normal spokesman for the Home Office, which is responsible for the criminal law. Lord Shinwell My Lords, I think that every Member of your Lordships' House must accept the opinion of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that he stands by the Statement made by the Prime Minister, which he repeated in this House. We must accept that and not start an investigation of our own in your Lordships' House. However, I should like to ask one or two questions which I believe are important. One emerges because of the question asked by my noble friend Lord Paget. It is much more than a question of what can be done about the libelling of the dead; in recent weeks there has been some libelling of those who are not yet dead. 1292 For example, references to the book have been made in the press and I recall one statement in which 20 Peers were involved, although I am ready to be corrected about that if I am wrong. I

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read that statement. It appears to me that we cannot allow that to pass because we shall look at our neighbours and they will look at us: that cannot be allowed. In 1952 I was involved along with Lord Radcliffe and the late Selwyn Lloyd, who were members of the committee, in an investigation which was based on statements made by Mr. Chapman Pincher in the Express. After very close and meticulous investigation, we came to the conclusion that there was no substance in the complaints made, and we dismissed them. A Statement was made in another place, and that was the end of the matter. Is it not at all possible to do the following? If someone makes a statement, either direct or by implication, that a Member of your Lordships' House, or anyone in public life or even outside public life, is guilty in some form or another of disclosing secret information, has the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor no authority to call that person to book and say, "Produce your evidence"? I do not think that we ought to allow the matter to lie completely at rest, but we should investigate so far as we possess authority to do so, and no more than that. I should like the opinion of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor My Lords, as regards individuals who are still alive, they are, of course, entitled to invoke the law of defamation either in England, or in Scotland (where I think that it is slightly different). Where it is not possible to identify the passage as referring to them and, therefore, they would not be able to invoke the law of defamation, of course, both Houses of Parliament have privileges of right and powers to enforce those privileges. This House has them, but of course it has been extremely slowand probably wisely slowto invoke them. I do not think that I can expand on that because it would perhaps be injudicious of me to attempt to do so. Lord Boothby My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord for the Statement that he has made and also much relieved, because the history of the secret services of this country since the war has really been pretty deplorable. I should like to make one suggestion. Shortly after the first World War the then head of MI5, who was a friend of mine, said, "If you want to know how the Secret Service works you only have to read a book by a friend of yours, Sir Compton Mackenzie. It is called Water on the Brain, and every word of it is true". The only suggestion that I should like to make to the noble and learned Lord is that he should ensure that this inquiry which is set up reads the book. It will not only derive great enjoyment from it, but much interest. It is one of the most amusing as well as one of the truest books that Sir Compton ever wrote; and, since I have read it, I have never had any illusions about MI5 or MI6. The Lord Chancellor My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord. I was aware of Compton Mackenzie's book. There is also another very well-known author who has written on the subject in the form of fiction. 1293 Lord Beswick My Lords, can the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor give us any indication whether, in the course of the inquiries, the investigations and the reconsiderations that will take place, Mr. Chapman Pincher will be asked about the sources of information on which he based the statements in his book? Is it not a fact that he claims that he obtained his information from members of the secret service? The Lord Chancellor My Lords, I think that the noble Lord will see that the terms of reference of the investigation to which I have referred are: To review the security procedures and

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practices currently followed in the public service and to consider what, if any, changes are required". I have no doubt that if the Security Commission wishes to interview any particular person, it will be able to do so. Lord Hankey My Lords, before we leave this question, would it be in order to ask the Government whether they have considered the light that this affair throws on Soviet policy towards this country? Would it not seem that the Soviets are doing their best to discredit the security services on both sides of the Atlantic? Have the Government considered the possible connection with the declared Communist, Mr. Phillip Agee, who has caused infinite trouble for the CIA on the other side of the Atlantic, and then came over here and caused very great embarrassment to Her Majesty's Government by writing a book about our secret services? The Government tried to get that book suppressed and lost the case in the courts, I believe. I say that subject to correction. We have also seen a really disgraceful broadcast on BBC1 about MI5, MI6, and GCHQ. I believe that the material published in Philip Agee's book was more extensive still, but in my opinion that broadcast ought not to have been allowed to take place. I know that it was cut down in length at the request of the Ministries concerned, but in my opinion it should not have been allowed to take place and I should like to know what the Government think about this. I should particularly like to ask the Government whether it is not clear that these security services are our principal protection against Soviet subversion; that this country is very high on the list of those which the Soviet Government wish to subvert, and that a great deal of material could be found to support that? Would the Government consider whether more effective measures ought now to be taken in view of the position of this country, to ensure that we can support these important security organisations in the work that they have to do? The Lord Chancellor My Lords, I am quite sure that many noble Lords will share some of the feelings of the noble Lord who has just spoken from the Cross-Benches. I think that our greatest protection is a robust determination to defend our own values and our own services from false attacks wherever they are made and however they may be motivated. But we have to balance the needs of a free society against the needs to protect its values. One does not in fact cast out Satan, as I think the right reverend Prelates would remind us, by invoking Beelzebub. 1294 Lord Balogh My Lords, will the review include the methods of recruitment and the methods of promotion in these services, because I think there is an essential fault at that point? The Lord Chancellor My Lords, I am not sure that I entirely caught the noble Lord's question, but of course methods of recruitment, either by hostile intelligence or by our own counter-intelligence services, would be within the purview, I think, of the review which my right honourable friend has in mind. ********************************************************************** Security HC Deb 26 March 1981 vol 1 cc1079-85 1079 The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher) With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement about the security implications of the book published today that purports to give a detailed account of the investigations

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into the penetration of the Security Service and other parts of the public service that were undertaken following the defection of Burgess and Maclean in 1951. The events into which those investigations were inquiring began well over 40 years ago. Many of those named or implicated in this book as having been the subject of investigation have died. Others have long since retired. None of them is still in the public service. The extent of penetration was thoroughly investigated after the defection of Burgess and Maclean, as, indeed, the author of the book makes clear. The book contains no information of security significance that is new to the security authorities, and some of the material is inaccurate or distorted. All the cases and individuals referred to have been the subject of long and thorough investigation. The investigations into the possibilities of past penetration have inevitable extended widely. They have covered not only those suspected of being guilty but all those who could conceivably fit the often inconclusive leads available. The fact that somebody has been the subject of investigation does not necessarily, or even generally, mean that he has been positively suspected. Many people have had to be investigated simply in order to eliminate them from the inquiry. The results of the investigations into Philby and Blunt are now well known. There were good reasons for suspecting a few others, but as it was not possible to secure evidence on which charges could be founded they were required to resign or were moved to work where they had no access to classified information. Many others were eliminated from suspicion. Apart from the main allegation, to which I will come, I do not propose to comment on the allegations and insinuations in the book. Nor can I say which allegations are unsubstantiated or untrueas some certainly aresince by doing so I should be implicitly indicating those that were suspected of having a degree of substance. I must, however, comment upon the grave allegation that constitutes the main theme of the bookthat the late Sir Roger Hollis, director general of the Security Service from 1956 to 1965, was an agent of the Russian intelligence service. The case for investigating Sir Roger Hollis was based on certain leads that suggested, but did not prove, that there had been a Russian intelligence service agent at a relatively senior level in British counter-intelligence in the last years of the war. None of these leads identified Sir Roger Hollis, or pointed specifically or solely in his direction. Each of them could also be taken as pointing to Philby or Blunt. But Sir Roger Hollis was among those that fitted some of them, and he was therefore investigated. The investigation took place after Sir Roger Hollis's retirement from the Security Service. It did not conclusively prove his innocence. Indeed, it is very often impossible to prove innocence. That is why, in our law, the burden of proof is placed upon those who seek to establish guilt and not on those who defend innocence. But no evidence was found that incriminated him, and the 1080 conclusion reached at the end of the investigation was that he had not been an agent of the Russian intelligence service. This view was challenged, however, by a very few of those concerned, and in July 1974, Lord Trend, the former Secretary of the Cabinet, was asked to review in detail the investigations that had taken place into the case of Sir Roger Hollis and to say whether they had been done in a proper and thorough manner, and whether, in his view, the conclusions reached were justified. Lord Trend examined the files and records and discussed the case with many of those concerned, including two people who considered that the investigation should be reopened. Mr. Pincher's account of Lord Trend's conclusions is wrong. The book asserts that Lord Trend concluded that there was a strong prima facie case that MI5 had been deeply

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penetrated over many years by someone who was not Blunt", and that he named Hollis as the likeliest suspect". Lord Trend said neither of those things, and nothing resembling them. He reviewed the investigations of the case and found that they had been carried out exhaustively and objectively. He was satisfied that nothing had been covered up. He agreed that none of the relevant leads identified Sir Roger Hollis as an agent of the Russian intelligence service, and that each of them could be explained by reference to Philby or Blunt. Lord Trend did not refer, as the book says he did, to the possibility that Hollis might have recruited unidentified Soviet agents into MI5". Again, he said no such thing. Lord Trend, with whom I have discussed the matter, agreed with those who, although it was impossible to prove the negative, concluded that Sir Roger Hollis had not been an agent of the Russian intelligence service. I turn next to the arrangements for guarding against penetration now and in the future. All Departments and agencies of the Government, especially those concerned with foreign and defence policy and with national security, are targets for penetration by hostile intelligence services. The Security Service, with its responsibilities for countering espionage and subversion, is a particularly attractive target. Recent security successes, such as the expulsion of members of the Russian intelligence service from this country in 1971, would hardly have been achieved if the Security Service had been penetrated. The Security Service exercises constant vigilance not only against the risk of current penetration but against the possibility of hitherto undetected past penetration, which might have continuing implications. But, however great our confidence in the integrity and dedication of those now serving in the Security Service, we need to make sure that the arrangements for guarding against penetration are as good as they possibly can be, both in this area and throughout the public service. Existing security procedures were introduced during the years following the Second World War. Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt were all recruited by the Russian intelligence service before the Second World War and came into the public service either before or during the war, well before existing security procedures were introduced. It was in 1948 that the then Prime Minister announced the Government's intention to bar Communists and Fascists and their associates from employment in the 1081 public service in connection with work the nature of which was vital to the security of the State. This led to the introduction of what came to be known as the "purge procedure". In 1952 the positive vetting procedure was instituted, with the object of establishing the integrity of civil servants employed on exceptionally secret work. In 1956 it was publicly declared that character defects, as distinct from Communist or Fascist sympathies or associations, might affect a civil servant's posting or promotion. In 1961 security procedures and practices in the public service were reviewed by an independent committee under the chairmanship of the late Lord Radcliffe. The committee's report, published in 1962, contained an account of those procedures and made various recommendations for modifying them, which the Government accepted. These procedures, as modified in 1962, are still in operation. These arrangements have over the years substantially reduced the vulnerability of the public service to the threat of penetration and have served the interests of national security well. But it is 20 years since they were last subject to independent review. In that time the techniques of penetration and the nature of the risks may have changed. We need to make sure that our protective security procedures have developed to take account of those changes. I have therefore decided, after consultation with the right hon.

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Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, to ask the Security Commission To review the security procedures and practices currently followed in the public service and to consider what, if any, changes are required". These terms of reference will enable the Security Commission to review, and to make recommendations as appropriate on, the arrangements and procedures used in all parts of the public service for the purposes of safeguarding information and activities involving national security against penetration by hostile intelligence services, and of excluding from appointments that give access to highly classified information both those with allegiances that they put above loyalty to their country and those who may for whatever reason be vulnerable to attempts to undermine their loyalty and to extort information by pressure or blackmail. There are difficult balances to be struck here between the need to protect national security, the nature and cost of the measures required to do so effectively, the need for efficiency and economy in the public service, and the individual rights of members of the public service to personal freedom and privacy. The Security Commission will be able to consider how these balances ought to be struck in the circumstances of the present time, as it conducts its review and prepares its recommendations. It will be my intention to make its findings known to the House in due course, to the extent that it is consistent with national security to do so. In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I should like to emphasise once again that this statement arises out of a book that deals with investigations of matters and events that occurred many years ago. My concern is with the present and with the future. That is why I am asking the Security Commission to undertake the review that I have described. Mr. Michael Foot (Ebbw Vale) Although it is not always the custom to make statements to the House on such matters, I am sure that the right hon. Lady was right to do so in this instance. The House and the country will 1082 be grateful to her for having done so. In different parts of her statement she emphasised the fact that some of the material in the book was unsubstantiated, untrue, inaccurate and distorted. That must be taken into account. Individuals can be grossly misjudged and defamed by such material. People should take account of such matters, whether they are writing about the dead or the living. Some of the newspaper reports included material that, in the right hon. Lady's words, was "inaccurate or distorted", as if it were proven and unchallengeable. Such reports could also lead to grave injustices. In addition to the extremely important security questions involved, those matters must be taken into account. When the right hon. Lady put the proposal to me that we should have a commission of investigation, with the suggested terms of reference, I thought that that was the right course for the Government and the House to take. I certainly support it. I should like to call the attention both of the House and of the right hon. Lady to the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), the previous leader of the Labour Party. When these matters were debated in the House on 21 November 1979 he made a recommendation to the Government concerning the appointment of an inquiry. He did so following the changes in security arrangements that my right hon. Friend the former Home Secretary had made as a result of certain revelations. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East proposed that there should be an inquiry. He said: We could discuss how it were done, what its terms of reference were and who would conduct it. It would report back on whether any change were needed in relations between Ministers and the heads of the services, or whether Parliament could be involved more, not in the decisions, but in the rules and in the way in which they were applied and observed".[Official Report, 21 November 1979; Vol.

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974, c. 511.] I hope that the right hon. Lady will take into account all my right hon. Friend's recommendations. I agree that the House should be primarily concerned with the present and the future rather than the past. It is right that the House should adopt the recommendation that the right. hon. Lady has made and I certainly hope that it will be adopted. The Prime Minister I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for what he said and for the spirit in which he said it. I especially agree with some of his earlier comments. I remember when my predecessor, the former Prime Minister, made some comments in the debate on Blunt. I have now made references to the Security Commission. During that debate I announced certain changes in accountability between the director general of the service and Ministers. It would be best to rest on those new arrangements for the time being. Sir Harold Wilson (Huyton) Is the right hon. Lady awareI think that she isthat with her agreement I refreshed my memory about what I was told about Sir Roger Hollis' pre-Civil Service connections at university and elsewhere? There were reasons for anxiety. However, two other personseither Philby or Blunt, or bothwould have been a sufficient cause for anxiety. The right hon. Lady referred to the Trend inquiry, which I set up in 1975. Will she confirm that Lord Trend spent nearly a year on that inquiry and felt that what successive Governments had done had been thoroughly and objectively investigated? There was certainly nothing that could substantiate any accusation of a cover-up. He agreed with the conclusions of those who were satisfied that 1083 Hollis had not been a spy, although, according to the report, the inquiry's members felt that they would not be able to prove that 100 per cent. Will the right hon. Lady confirm that although Sir Roger Hollis operated during seven premiershipsincluding my ownI was the first to set up an independent inquiry? Indeed, I am very glad that she is setting up this inquiry. The Prime Minister The date of the inquiryI think that it was July 1974shows that the right hon. Gentleman set up the Trend inquiry. Lord Trend certainly took a full year on it. It was an exhaustive inquiry, in that it examined all the documents and also interviewed people. There is no doubt about its conclusion, as the right hon. Gentleman said. Since the premiership of the right hon. Gentleman, all Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries have been told of the results of that inquiry. Sir Derek Walker-Smith (Hertfordshire, East) Does my right hon. Friend appreciate that thinking people will give the Prime Minister a warm welcome both for her reference to the Security Commissionunder the distinguished and objective chairmanship of Lord Diplockand for her characteristically full and frank statement? It was at least equal to, and probably superior to, any statement made on security matters within the recollection of the House. Will my right hon. Friend continue to have regard to the importance of not prejudicing the work of the Security Service? Does she recognise that a Prime Minister of this country is under no duty to canvass on the Floor of the House every allegation or insinuation made by private persons against peopleregardless of whether those people are alive or dead, whether the allegations are made orally or in print, and whether or not they are made for gain? The Prime Minister I entirely agree with everything that my right hon. and learned Friend said. It would be appalling if we had defamation by allegation in the House. We should be very careful not to do it. I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for pointing out that it is

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unusual to have a statement in such detail as this on security matters. There is not much that I can usefully add, because, as my right hon. and learned Friend pointed out, in an open society we must have security services and they must necessarily operate partially in secret. We must protect them in doing that. Mr. Speaker Order. I propose to call three hon. Members from either side and then to move on to other business. Mr. A. E. P. Duffy (Sheffield, Attercliffe) Is the Prime Minister aware that the House has heard assurances and denials on national security before, but scandals and rumblings of scandals have endured? The House understands her contention that in any assessment of the integrity of a security officer it is impossible to prove the negative, but is she satisfied that none of the achievements of those years when Philby and Blunt were operating, or when their influence was persistingthe Portland naval spy ring, Blake, Blunt, Vassall and Philbywere mere cover-ups of even greater scandals affecting national security? Will she impress upon the Security Commission the importance, in future and recent recruitment, of 1084 selecting a different type of officer, from a different social backgroundsomeone who is well aware of the social conditions of the entire country and not one part of it? She may stumble, and the House may stumble, on a more patriotic, dependable and reliable officer. The Prime Minister With respect, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman's words do full justice to our security services, in whom I have the greatest confidence. The events referred to in the book published today were events of 20 to 40 years ago, by a group that was recruited just before or during the war. I am concerned now with the future. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree with that. I assure the hon. Gentleman that security services recruit from all social backgrounds. They are anxious to obtain those most suitable and appropriate for the difficult work that they have to do. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join the rest of us in paying tribute to and recognising the value of that difficult work. Mr. Julian Amery (Brighton, Pavilion) Does my right hon. Friend agree that in the perennial clandestine war there are bound to be casualties on both sides, but that the number of defections to our side has been considerably greater than the other way? Will she take the opportunity to pay tribute to the remarkable successes of our intelligence and counter-intelligence organisations, which, for obvious reasons, cannot be publicised?. The Prime Minister My right hon. Friend is pointing out that the defections the other way have far exceeded any defections from this country to Soviet Russia and, indeed, have given us a great deal of information. The successes of the security services, even the known ones, have been very considerable. The Lonsdale case, and the cases concerning Houghton and Gee, the Krogers, Vassall and Blake was all successes, and so were the expulsion of over 100 spies from the Soviet embassy in the early 1970s. Mr. Richard Wainwright (Colne Valley) Does the Prime Minister accept that the review that she has just announced, welcome though it is, is unlikely to provide full reassurance to the public unless it is known that the commission is examining carefully every possibility of making the Security Service more responsible to Ministers? In that connection, will she bear in mind that the Security Commission at present contains no one who has ever been elected to public

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office? Will she consider the possibility of adding to the commission, for the review, one or more suitable persons who have been Members of the House? The Prime Minister No, Sir. The Security Commission has been set up and has been in existence for some time. During the Blunt debate I announced changes that made the director-general of the Security Service more responsible to Ministers. I think it is best if we let those work for a time. Mr. Raymond Whitney (Wycome) I add my congatulations to my right hon. Friend on the way that she has responded to this difficult problem. Does she agree that we as a nation should be playing into the hands of our adversarieswho have succeeded on occasions in the past in subverting elements in our security servicesif we allowed our natural concern about those successes, generations or decades ago, to damage the present morale or operating efficiency of our services today or in the future? 1085 The Prime Minister I agree with my hon. Friend. The security services are a vital part of the defence of our country. It is important that we enable them to continue to do their work properly. Mr. Leo Abse (Pontypool) Is there not a clear need to strengthen still further the rigours of the Security Service selection board which was introduced in 1977, so that the motivation of candidates is probed in depth? The dangers are increasing. We face dangers in admitting those whose private heterosexual infidelities bear witness to their incapacity for loyalty, or those whose disturbed homosexualityfollowing a long line of spies from Marlowe, to Casement, to Burgess and Bluntmeans that they are compulsively disloyal. Surely it is time that we sophisticated our procedures and brought in psychoanalysts and psychiatrists to be attached to the board, so that we do not use out-of-date, oldfashioned, rule-of-thumb methods of selection. If the Prime Minister is looking to the future as she says, surely it is time that we made certain that our selection procedures were worthy of the twentieth century and not the nineteenth century. The Prime Minister That is exactly what the terms of reference will enable the commission to do, among other things. The terms of reference are: To review the security procedures and practices currently followed in the public service and to consider what, if any, changes are required. What the hon. Gentleman said will be within the terms of reference. Mr. Kenneth Warren (Hastings) I welcome the Prime Minister's statement. Will she give an a sssurance to the House that she is well aware of the disinformation practices of the KGB, which seek to undermine the credibility of loyal citizens and thus draw fire away from secret agents still in position? I feel that that might mistakenly be inherent in some of the statements in the book. The Prime Minister I am very well aware of the disinformation practices of the KGB. That is one of the difficulties with which the security services have to contend. Beyond what I have said, I do not wish to comment further on the allegations in the book. Mr. Dennis Canavan (West Stirlingshire) On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I was the first hon. Member to table a question to you about this matter Mr. Speaker

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Order. The hon. Gentleman is his customary self, but he must obey the rules of the House. ********************************************************************** Burgess, McLean and Philby (Public Records) HC Deb 25 January 1982 vol 16 c244W 244W Mr. Arthur Lewis asked the Attorney-General why the Lord Chancellor decided not to release all the documents and papers referring to Burgess, McLean and Philby under the 30-year procedure set out in the Public Records Act. The Solicitor-General The papers in question have been retained by the Departments which hold them in accordance with the general approval granted by the then Lord Chancellor in 1967, under the proviso to section 3(4) of the Public Records Act 1958, whereby Departments may retain sensitive records related to security and intelligence matters. ********************************************************************** Advisory Council on Public Records HC Deb 25 January 1982 vol 16 cc244-5W 244W Mr. John Grant asked the Attorney-General if he will now replace the Master of Rolls as chairman of the Advisory Council on Public Records. 245W The Solicitor-General No. Mr. John Grant asked the Attorney-General if he will take steps to make the Advisory Council on Public Records more representative of the users. The Solicitor-General An announcement on this will be made as part of the Government's response to the Wilson committee report. Mr. John Grant asked the Attorney-General if advice was received by the Government from the Advisory Council on Public Records concerning the recent decision not to release documents relating to the Burgess-Maclean espionage case; and whether the council received detailed information about the documents concerned. The Solicitor-General No. The papers are retained in the relevant Department under the authority of the general decision of Lord Chancellor Gardiner in 1967. ********************************************************************** Public Relations HC Deb 26 January 1982 vol 16 cc740-1 740 12. Mr. Dubs asked the Secretary of State for Defence how much his Department will spend on public relations in 198182. Mr. Blaker This year we expect to spend just over 3.5 million on public relations in the Ministry of Defence. That covers the salaries of Ministry of Defence public relations staff throughout the world, overheads and a wide variety of press briefing and press facility work both at home and abroad. Mr. Dubs

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Is the Minister aware that expenditure on defence is inevitably a matter of political controversy? Can he identify the proportion of his public relations budget that is being used to justify his present expenditure policies? For example, is he aware that in recent months the Royal Navy has been carrying out a series of presentations that, according to my constituents, have borne a close resemblance to party political broadcasts? Can he justify those presentations? Mr. Blaker If the need to defend Britain adequately has become a matter of controversy between the parties in the House, that is a matter of great regret, because it used not to be a matter of controversy. We used to agree that a satisfactory defence policy was the prime objective and duty of any Government. The purpose of our public relations effort is to explain the facts of our defence policy. It is obvious from some of the questions from the Opposition that that is a necessary task. Mr. Stokes Would it not greatly help public relations if some Opposition Members, instead of constantly criticising Her Majesty's Forces, praised Britain's defence effort? Mr. Blaker That would be a welcome change. I have no doubt that the vast majority of British people welcome the activities of our Armed Forces and believe that they are doing an excellent job. Mr. Arthur Lewis Can the Minister tell us how much of the 3.5 million will be used to explain to the public and the world why, in 1982, the Government are refusing to disclose the documents and evidence about the traitors Burgess, Maclean and Philby, on the ground that those public schoolboys' activities may damage us now? Is it not a cover-up of public schoolboys? Mr. Blaker The hon. Gentleman knows that that is not a question for me. Mr. McQuarrie Will my hon. Friend consider spending some of that money in carrying out a public 741 relations exercise in Gibraltar to try to increase the morale of the people there, which was badly deflated by his Department's decision to close the dockyard? Mr. Blaker We shall be explaining, as we have already explained, our policies on Gibraltar. Within the next few days I shall be receiving a deputation from Gibraltar. Mr. John Silkin Would it not have helped public relations concerning the closure of the Gibraltar dockyard if the Minister or one of his colleagues had been to Gibraltar and had had the guts to talk and listen to the people there? Mr. Blaker The right hon. Gentleman always gets his timing wrong. Last time we discussed this he urged me to go immediately to Gibraltar. I pointed out that Sir Joshua Hassan was about to arrive and that if I followed the right hon. Gentleman's advice we should cross in mid-air. As I am about to receive a trade union deputation from Gibraltar later this week, if I followed the right hon. Gentleman's advice exactly the same would happen again. ********************************************************************** Public Records (Burgess-Maclean) HC Deb 27 January 1982 vol 16 c349W 349W Mr. Newens

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asked the Attorney-General why public records which relate to the Burgess-Maclean case have not yet been made available for public inspection under the 30-year rule; and if any decision had yet been made on the period of time for which they should remain closed. The Solicitor-General The records have been retained by the Department which hold them in accordance with the general approval given by the then Lord Chancellor in 1967, under the proviso to section 3(4) of the Public Records Act 1958, whereby Departments may retain sensitive records related to security and intelligence matters. No decision has yet been taken on the period of closure.

********************************************************************** Falkland Islands Review HC Deb 08 July 1982 vol 27 cc469-508 469 3.57 pm The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher) I beg to move, That this House approves the decision of Her Majesty's Government to set up a Falkland Islands review as announced by the Prime Minister in her reply to a Question by the right honourable Gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition, on 6th July 1982. Mr. Speaker I have not selected any amendments. The Prime Minister As early as 8 April, I announced in reply to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) that there would be a review of the way in which the Government Departments concerned had discharged their responsibilities in the period leading up to the invasion of the Falkland Islands. Since then, although a few have argued that it is not necessary, there is widespread agreement that a review of some sort should be conducted and that there should be prior consultation with the Leader of the Opposition and the leaders of other opposition parties in the House who are Privy Councillors. It would be fair to say that the consultations led to broad agreement on the nature, scope and composition of the review. Accordingly, I set out the form of the review and its terms of reference in my reply of Tuesday to the Leader of the Opposition, and I welcome the opportunity to explain to the House today the reasons why the Government have decided to appoint a Committee of six Privy Councillors to conduct the review and to give it the terms of reference set out in my answer to the right hon. Gentleman. I wish to deal in turn with the nature of the review, its scope and its composition. As to its nature, the overriding considerations are that it should be independent, that it should command confidence, that its members should have access to all relevant papers and persons and that it should complete its work speedily. Those four considerations taken together led naturally to a Committee of Privy Councillors. Such a Committee has one great advantage over other forms of inquiry. As it conducts its deliberations in private and its members are all Privy Councillors, there need be no reservations about providing it with all the relevant evidenceincluding much that is highly sensitivesubject to safeguards upon its use and publication. A Committee of Privy Councillors can be authorised to see relevant departmental documents, Cabinet and Cabinet Committee memoranda and minutes, and intelligence

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assessments and reports, all on Privy Councillor terms. Many of these documents could not be made available to a tribunal of inquiry, a Select Committee or a Royal Commission. The Committee will also be able to take evidence from any Ministers or officials whom it wishes to see, and I hope that former Ministers or officials and others who may be invited to assist the Committee will think it right to do so. There are several precedents for a Government setting up a Committee of Privy Councillors to look into matters where the functioning of the Government has been called in question and sensitive information and issues are involved. 470 I will refer to just one. A conference of Privy Councillors was established in November 1955 to examine security procedures in the public services as a result of the defection of Burgess and Maclean. The results of the inquiry were reported to the House by the then Prime Minister on 8 March 1956, although he stated that it would not be in the public interest to publish the full text of the report or to make known all its recommendations. In the case of the present review, information made available to the Committee whose disclosure would be prejudicial to national security or damaging to the international relations of the United Kingdom will need to be protected. The Government will therefore suggest to the Committee that it should seek to avoid including any such information in its main report which is to be published, and that, if it needs to draw conclusions or make recommendations which, if published, would entail the disclosure of such information, it should submit them to the Government in a confidential annex which will not be published. In the last resort the Government must retain the right to delete from the Committee's report before publication any material whose disclosure would be prejudicial to national security or damaging to the international relations of the United Kingdom. But I very much hope that the arrangements that I have just described will make it unnecessary for the Government to do that. However, should it be necessary I can give the House the following assurances. First, the Government will make no deletions save strictly on the grounds of protecting national security or international relations. Secondly, Ministers will consider any proposals for deletions individually and critically and will accept such proposals only on the grounds I have specified. Thirdly, the Chairman of the Committee will be consulted if any deletions have to be proposed. The fact that the Committee would know what deletions had been made from its report offers the best assurance to those who might believe that the Government would try to make unjustified deletions. Nevertheless, I repeat that it is the Government's aim to present to Parliament the report of the Committee in full. So much for the nature of the review. I turn now to its scope. First, geographically, it includes the dependenciesthat is, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. Secondly, the review will be directed to the events leading up to the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands on 2 April. If these events are to be fairly viewed, they must be seen against the background of negotiations, actions, intelligence and other assessments over the years. For that reason the terms of reference given to the Committee empower it to take account of all such factors in previous years as are relevant. For this purpose the Committee will need to have access to any relevant documents of previous Administrations, as well as to documents of the present Administration. I have consulted Mr. Harold Macmillan, my noble Friend Lord Home, the right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson), my right hon. Friend the Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) and the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), and they have

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agreed that the Committee should have access to the relevant documents of their Administrations, subject to the following conventions, which are consistent with what has been done in the past. 471 First, documents will be made available to members of the Committee by virtue of their being Privy Councillors and solely for the purposes of this review. Secondly, any member of a previous Administration who is invited to give evidence to the Committee will be able to exercise his normal right to see documents which he saw as a member of that Administration. Thirdly, serving and former officials and members of the Armed Forces invited to give evidence to the Committee will be able to see documents which they saw as advisers to Ministers on matters covered by the review. Fourthly, documents of previous Administrations will not be disclosed to members of the present Administration or to any other persons not entitled to see them. Fifthly, documents made available to the Committee, and any copies made of those documents for the use of members of the Committee, will be returned to the Departments from which they came as soon as they are no longer required for the purposes of the Committee's review. Sixthly, it is understood that the Committee may need to describe in its report the gist or purport of documents made available to it, so far as that can be done consistently with the protection of national security and the international relations of the United Kingdom. But no part of Cabinet or Cabinet Committee documents or other documents which carry a security classification may be reproduced in the Committee's report or otherwise published without the agreement of the Government and that of the former Prime Minister of the Administration concerned. So that there is absolutely no misunderstanding on this point, I repeat that no member of the present Government can or will see any documents of any previous Administration unless he or she, himself or herself, was a member of such an Administration and is entitled for that reason to see those papers. There is one other procedural matter on which I should say a few words. Although it will be for the Committee itself to determine its own procedure, it will be suggested to the Chairman that should the Committee wish to criticise any individual it should, before incorporating that criticism in its report, give the person concerned details of the criticism, and an opportunity to make representations, orally or in writing. At that stage the Committee would have to decide whether to allow the individual concerned to be legally represented. Even though the review will be conducted in private, it is important that individuals should not be inhibited in giving evidence to the Committee through fears of making themselves vulnerable to criticism which they may think unjustified and which they might not be given an opportunity of rebutting before the Committee. Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian) The Prime Minister has outlined a massive amount of work for the Committee. Will she tell us about its staff? Are they to be drawn exclusively from the Cabinet Office and the Civil Service, or may members of the staff be brought in from outside? The Prime Minister The staff of the Committee are being provided under the leadership of the Home Office. The Home Office civil servants have not been connected either with Foreign Office work or with Ministry of Defence work, but they have been accustomed to handling 472 intelligence. It seems right and proper to make arrangements for them to provide the secretarial assistance to the Committee Finally, I turn to the composition of the reviewthe membership of the Committee.

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 Mr. Andrew Faulds (Warley, East) rose The Prime Minister I shall, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, be replying to the debate this evening and will hope then to answer arty questions that have arisen. Does the hon. Gentleman still wish to persist? Mr. Faulds Is it intended that the inquiry should be free to examine the political advisability of the Prime Minister's recent exercise in the South Atlantic? That is very important. The Prime Minister The Committee will act within its terms of refere ace as it construes them. The terms of reference are: To review the way in which the responsibilities of Government in relation to the Falkland Islands and their dependencies were discharged in the period leading up to the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982, taking account of all such factors in previous years as are relevant; and to report. Judging by the distinction of those who have agreed to serve on the review, I think that we can leave them to interpret the terms of reference as they think best fitted to the discharge of their duties. I come to the membership of the Committee. As I announced in my reply to the right hon. Gentleman on Tuesday, Lord Franks has agreed to be the Chairman. I know that that choice is acceptable and indeed welcome to those whom I have consulted. Lord Franks will bring an unrivalled breadth of experience to the work of his Committee, and we are fortunate that he is ready to take on the task. As I also announced on Tuesday, the other members of the Committee will be my noble Friend Lord Barber, Lord Lever of Manchester, Sir Patrick Nairne, the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) and my noble Friend Lord Watkinson. The Queen has been graciously pleased to approve that Sir Patrick Nairne be sworn a member of Her Majesty's Privy Council. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition proposed the names of the right hon. Member for Leeds, South and Lord Lever. I hope that the House will share my view that a Committee with this membership gives us the best possible assurance that the review will be carried out with independence and integrity. Mr. Dick Douglas (Dunfermline) Does the right hon. Lady agree that there might be an outside impression that this coterie is comfortable, conservative and clubable, as there is no female member on the Committee? Do only males understand war and its events? Why does not the right hon. Lady appoint someone suitable from her own sex to the Privy Council such as Mary Goldring, who might bring in an outside view, away from the claustrophobic atmosphere of Westminster and Whitehall? The Prime Minister All those concerned with choosing those who should be on the Committee have been anxious to select people who have the right experience, sagacity and integrity to conduct the review. I believe that that is how it will be seen outside. Mr. Dalyell rose 473 Mr. Speaker Order. The hon. Gentleman must not keep interrupting. The Prime Minister has not given way, as far as I know. Is the Prime Minister giving way? Mr. Bob Cryer (Keighley) Of course she is.

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 Mr. Speaker Order. The Prime Minister can speak for herself. Mr. Dalyell The Prime Minister is a lawyer. Is there not a case for having either an international lawyer or a Queen's Counsel on the Committee? Is there not a case for having someone representing the view of what one might call the awkward squad? The Prime Minister My noble Friend Lord Barber is a distinguished lawyer, who practised for many years. Lord Lever is also a barrister. They will be well able to sift the facts from the opinions and to make a judgment upon the evidence and not upon the imagination. The Committee must be given the time it needs to carry out its work thoroughly. But the review also needs to be completed as quickly as possible, and it is my hope that it can be completed within six months. I have confined my comments to the setting up of the review, because that is the subject of the motion. We are not concerned today with the substance of the events that led up to the invasion of the Falkland Islands. That is for the review itself and for the debate that will follow publication of the Committee's report. I hope that hon. Members will welcome the review, and I commend the motion to the House. 4.14 pm Mr. Michael Foot (Ebbw Vale) Since a review of the matter that we are debating was first raised in the House and outside, the Opposition have taken a view about the way in which it should be approached. We have believed from the beginning that there should be an inquiry or a review. We have believed that it should be directed predominantly to the events leading to the invasion at the beginning of April. We have believed that it should be reasonably swift in making its report to the House and the country. We have believed that the review must be likely to secure general support in the House. In particular, we have believed that the House should support the way in which the final publication of the review is to be made. I shall respond to the Prime Minister's remarks. I shall say how far we think those requirements that we have always thought to be right have been fulfilled and how far we may proceed along those lines. The House would be wise to accept the Government's motion, and I shall give the reasons. Major constitutional questions are involved in the establishment of a Committee of this nature. If in any quarter of the House there were any doubt on such a point, the possibility of misunderstanding was removed by the intervention of the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) a few days ago when he gave a fine display of his customary perception and bonhomie. In the manner in which he presented his case he showed that there was an important background to such reviews and that we should examine it carefully. In the main, I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman implied in his intervention. Important constitutional matters are involved. I do not seek to minimise them. The speech by the Prime Minister showed that she, too, accepted the importance of those constitutional questions. 474 There is the question of rummaging in the pigeon holes and other places where the work and deliberations of previous Governments may be found. I agree with what the right hon. Member for Sidcup implied. It would be an inhibition to good government if every incoming Administration were to spend considerable time examining what the previous Administration did, with special access to matters that the previous Administration had been most eager to keep quiet. That would not assist the processes

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of good government, although I know that some people think that that would be advantageous. In centuries gone by that was the practice of British Governments. At the beginning of the eighteenth century incoming Governments spent a considerable part of the beginning of their period in office drawing up the measures of impeachment or Bills of attainder that they wished to make against their predecessors. No doubt they had good grounds to do so. I am not saying that any such possibilities have evaporated now. In the early part of the eighteenth century a great barrier was placed against the way in which the Government conducted their affairs. Over a period, particularly in this century, not by any precise enactmentthat does not make it any worse under our constitutionbut by the general usage of Cabinet Government, there grew up the practice that Governments should not have access to the documents of their predecessors. That is a good rule. If it is to be abandoned, it should be done so only if there is a clear statement of proceedings, in circumstances that are fully understood. There remains the issue that the right hon. Member for Sidcup underlined in his interventionministerial responsibility in these matters. If the proceedings of previous Governments are ransacked, ministerial responsibility to the House will be injured. I strongly favour sustaining ministerial responsibility. It is essential to parliamentary government. Ministers should not be allowed to shelter behind the claim that civil servants have offered them incorrect advice. They should take absolute responsibility for what they say. That principle could be injured if matters are not dealt with in the scrupulous way that the right hon. Gentleman suggested. Civil Service responsibility may arise in the inquiry. Civil servants are not necessarily absolved from the advice that they give. Ministers who accept advice must take responsibility for it, but, in an incident such as this, it is right that the advice, suggestions and propositions about a course of action that a civil servant may have suggested should be examined. I do not refer to civil servants in any one Department, although I noticed that the Prime Minister was diffident about clearing the Foreign Office a little earlier. I hope that she will be a little more generous as we proceed [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"]Because I favour being generous to everyone if I can even the Foreign Office. We are debating a matter of great concern to the whole country, as was demonstrated by the debates on 2 and 3 April. We are concerned to a considerable extent about the type of intelligence that was provided for the Government and what judgment was made on it by both Ministers and civil servants. There is no absolution for Ministers in the proposed inquiry. If we are to use any information that may be discovered about the failures of the intelligence service, it will involve civil servants. The matter must be examined. It is one of the central features of such an inquiry. 475 Mr. Robert Adley (Christchurch and Lymington) As I understand it, the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting that it is not necessary, when considering the way in which the Government reached their decision, to compare the present decision-making process with previous decision-making processes. How is that so? Mr. Foot I am not suggesting that. I agree with the terms that the Prime Minister proposed and the interpretation that she placed upon them in her speech. I am not suggesting that there should be no comparisons between what happened on this and on previous occasions about the interpretation of intelligence. The Opposition have no desire, nor did we when we were in Government, to suppress, circumvent or hide information. The more the

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report brings the matter into the open, the better we shall like it and the better will be the service done to the nation. I have not heard the right hon. Lady's statements on the rights of individuals who may be charged or accused or whose conduct may be criticised by the report. I was gratified to hear that they will have the right, prior to the report being published, to see what is said about them so that they will have an opportunity to comment. I assume that they will also be able to present their own views to the inquiry. I have heard much in the past about various forms of tribunals of inquiry. I participated in some of the debates after which we set up the inquiries into tribunals of inquiry. We set them up because grave injustice had been done to individuals in many tribunals. It was the overwhelming opinion of the Housecertainly on the Labour sidethat there must be protection for people in those circumstances. Should anyone question what I say, they should examine the debates on the inquiry after the Vassall tribunal, for example, or earlier ones. People were implicated in inquiries at which they did not have the chance to defend themselves. Gross injustice was done to some of them. Some were excluded or driven from public life as a result of charges that they had not seen before they were published in newspaper headlines. I am opposed to British citizens, even if they are civil servants or in the Foreign Office, being subjected to that type of trial. The inquiry may have presented a different picture. Therefore, I warmly welcome what the right hon. Lady said. It may be thought that inquiries are always to be approved and that they always have been. That is not so, partly for the reasons that the right hon. Member for Sidcup hinted at in his intervention and partly for others. The House has rejected the idea of inquiries on important occasions. In the main, the Opposition have always supported them. In circumstances of great national concern such as this, we have consistently argued for such inquiries. I warmly welcome the fact that the right hon. Lady and the Conservative Party now accept the necessity for an inquiry in present circumstances. It is a conversion. I say that as one who, together with my right hon. and hon. Friends, for many years argued for an inquiry into the Suez fiasco. There has been no such inquiry from that day to this. The Falklands crisis was solved by a considerable military success, but what preceded it cannot be called a diplomatic success. It is wise for the House to have learnt about these matters. The Suez catastrophe led to the loss of British lives. This country's reputation was injured and great damage was done to our international affairs. That is why the Labour Party, with the Liberals of those times, pressed 476 hard for an investigation into Suez. I am glad that there has been a conversion. It would have been much better for the country if it had listened to what the Labour Party said on the matter some 20 or 25 years ago. Sir Anthony Kershaw (Stroud) If the Opposition are so keen on inquiries now, why was there no inquiry into the invasion of Cyprus? That invasion was widely expected when the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends were in Government. They refused any inquiry or information. Mr. Foot The hon. Gentleman is misinformed. There was a Select Committee on the matter, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) played a most distinguished and independent part. He was not silenced in any way. The Committee revealed many facts that were of great importance to the country. There was no suppression of the inquiry. We are now to have the type of inquiry that best suits the present circumstances. That is wise. Mr. James Callaghan (Cardiff, South-East)

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Is my right hon. Friend a wareI am sure that if he charges his memory he will recall itthat not only was there an inquiry, but the Foreign Secretary of the day and his officials appeared before the inquiry and gave evidence? Mr. Foot My right hon. Friend shows how unwise I am to give way to Conservative Members and how wise I am to give way to my right hon. and hon. Friends I shall follow that principle for the rest of my speech. Sir Bernard Braine (Essex, South-East) The right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot) is a great parliamentarian. Would he consider it proper that the inquiry should investigate whether, in the course of this unhappy affair, the House of Commons was deceived? I refer particularly to the fact that, in undertaking diplomatic talks with representatives of the Argentine junta, Ministers but not Parliament were aware that among some 15,000 people who had disappeared in Argentina itself, most of whom must now be presumed dead, there were also British subjects. Should not that information have been conveyed to Parliament, and would it not have been justification for calling off talks with the Fascist junta? Mr. Foot I fully accept w hat the hon. Gentleman says. I only wish that greater attention had been paid to the disgraceful state of affairs in Argentina at that time. The hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir B. Braine) must also be more careful, because he was one of those who opposed an inquiry into Suez. I welcome his conversion. [Interruption.]I have been so forbearing that I did not mention that the right hon. Member for Sidcup was Chief Whip at the time. Such matters, of course, cannot be overlooked. The inquiry will deal with a serious and important matter, and it will be of great benefit to the country if the matter is probed in the way in which the House is determined that it should be. I believe that the names of those appointed to the Committee are the guarantee that that will be so. Mr. Douglas I in no way impugn the integrity or excellence of the people chosen but this is a House of Commons matter. Will my right hon. Friend therefore give us some idea of the criteria on which he chose those representing the Labour Party? 477 Mr. Foot I wish to carry my party with me on this matter. I realised that in picking two names out of such a comprehensive selection I might involve myself in some difficulties. I think that is better for us to consider the two who have in fact been selected. I am sure that all Labour Members will have absolute confidence in the two people selected to perform this important function. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) is always eager to ensure that the "awkward squad" is properly represented. I can assure him that, if he had been a member of the last Labour Cabinet, he would know that my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Lever qualifies for that appellation better than anyone else in the country, rising even to the high standards of my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian. As I have said, the inquiry will investigate extremely important matters. I believe that it should be conducted speedily. If there is any difference in emphasis between me and the right hon. Lady about the way in which she presented this matter to the House, it is on timing. I do not believe that the inquiry need take six months. I believe that the work could be completed considerably more speedily and that it would be better for the country and the House and for those who wish to judge these matters that that should be so.

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For the rest, I believe that what the right hon. Lady has proposed is right and that the House would be wise to support it. I emphasise what she said, and what we have always understood in our discussions, about the fullness of the report to be made to the House and to the country. That is an absolute requirement, but I do not believe that there has been any difference between us on that. Mr. Cryer My right hon. Friend has put forward the names of two Privy Councillors. Does he accept that people may get the impression, first, that those representatives are in a minority and, secondly, that if the entire membership of the inquiry consists of Privy Councillors, who are thereby close to the Establishment, the necessary zeal to pursue the inquiry may be lacking? There seems to be an undercurrent to the effect that only Privy Councillors can be entrusted with a task of this kind, which is plainly not true. Mr. Foot I am not making any reflection upon those who are not Privy Councillors. Indeed, I have my eye on my hon. Friend as a prospective Privy Councillor at some later stage. Until the convention is changed, there are certain qualifications that Privy Councillors have to sustain and to which they must subscribe. That is why I believe that in these circumstances it is wise to choose them, but I repudiate entirely any suggestion that the two spokesmen who will be there on behalf of the Labour Party will not prosecute these matters with sufficient zeal and independence. Of course they will. Moreover, as I understand it, in a case such as this they retain the right to make their own independent assessment and to produce their own report if they so wish. It does no service to the country to suggest that the inquiry will in any sense be conducted by a coterie. It will be conducted on behalf of the House of Commons. That is why I ask the House to vote for it now. I believe that it is the right course to take and that the House should give its confident support for it. Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South-East) I do not know whether it was a slip of the tongue. My right hon. Friend said that the inquiry was being conducted on behalf 478 of the House of Commons. The Prime Minister may claim that that would be the effect, but, constitutionally, it is clearly being set up by the Government for the Government to edit at their discretion. Mr. Foot I do not accept that. If that had been the case, the first requirement that I laid down and on which we have always insisted throughout our discussions would not have been fulfilled. If the Prime Minister had said that she intended to set up a Committee on this without securing the approval of the House, that would have been an error. In the circumstances, the House has the opportunity to decide whether it wishes the inquiry to proceed on this basis. I believe that that is the right way to proceed. The House of Commons has the opportunity to state its view. If my hon. Friend is saying that the whole nature of the inquiry must be changed to ensure that the Prime Minister's position in such a matter should be abandoned in accordance with precedent, I do not agree. We have asserted the right of the House to judge the matter. No service is done by suggesting that an inquiry of this kind, on which some of my right hon. Friends will serve, will do anything other than seek to carry through the task that the House wishes it to fulfil. Having watched events in the past months since the beginning of the Falklands crisis, I have been reminded occasionally of a scene in Victor Hugo's book, "Ninety-Three", in which a sailor lets loose a great battering ram against a ship. When it looks as though the ship will be destroyed by it, by a skilful piece of agility and manoeuvre at the last minute, he manages to prevent it from doing the fatal damage. I sometimes see the

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Prime Minister as the heroine of that scene. The hero in the book was first decorated and then shot. I believe that that would be a proper way to apportion responsibility. I speak, of course, in political and electoral terms. I welcome the inquiry. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will support it. I believe that the report may be of great consequence for the country. It may help us to avoid the terrible errors that landed us in this crisis. It may also help to sustain the vigilance with which the House of Commons exercises its rights over the Executive. 4.39 pm Mr. John Peyton (Yeovil) After the undertaking given by the Government at the start of the Falklands expedition, I can see that the inquiry is inescapable. I agree that, if we are to have one, its terms of reference and the form that it is to take are the least undesirable. In this country we are habitually given to a great preoccupation with the past. That frequently clouds our interest in the future. We should reflect on who is likely to benefit from this inquisition and who is likely to be injured by it, both individuals and the nation. A collection of wise and venerable men will make their services available. I hope that they will bear in mind that such inquisitions can have a damaging and dampening effect upon discussion. They tend to make Ministers cautious, officials careful, records scarce and discussion shallow. They must be careful that attention is not diverted from what has been magnificently achieved by raking over the ashes. I hope that I shall be forgiven if I refer to some of those in my constituency who have made a notable contribution. The Harrier pilots were mainly based there. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will agree that the 479 families of those who were killed in action should not be unduly prejudiced by their irreparable loss. The Westland helicopters played an important role in the prodigiously successful campaign. I hope that the inquiry will remember the danger of hindsight when considering the difficulties that confronted those who took part in the events that led to the rape of the Falkland Islands by Argentina. I hope it will not be deceived into making the same facile use of hindsight as have so many of the Government's critics. I recall the doubts that I had at the outset of the campaign. I wondered whether it was wise for us to take such a huge risk, whether such a military expedition was feasible under such appalling conditions, whether we should keep the staunchness of our friendsour friends stood by us magnificently, although no one had high hopes of Mr. Haughey, and such high hopes would not have been justifiedand whether our resolve and determination would survive, not only the long delays and uncertainties, but the inevitable grim toll of casualties. I hope that the inquiry will consider carefully how many of the Government's accusers, both inside and outside the House, are immaculate. There is a danger that its report may become a fertile quarry for those who habitually scavenge for material that can be used to discredit their country. I do not believe that there are many countriesgiven the events of the past few monthsthat would turn their backs so readily on what was done on our behalf and indulge this passion for raking over bitter ashes. Easy and plausible arguments can be adduced for holding such inquiries, but I believe that the longer-term consequences of such exercises are damaging. Mr. Alexander W. Lyon (York) Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the investigations into the conduct of the generals in the First World War had a profound effect in changing attitudes to military tactics in the Second World War, thereby saving lives? It was demeaning to those who were the subject of the inquiry, but it was surely right that it should have taken place.

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 Mr. Peyton The parallel is not exact and I do not wish to take up the time of the House by going so far back into history. I believe that such exercises can easily do far more damage than good. I fear that that is likely to be the case with this inquiry, even given the wide reservations that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has placed on the Committee's powers. 4.47 pm Mr. James Callaghan (Cardiff, South-East) The right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) has only this is in his favour: previous such inquiries, going back to the Crimea, and even before, have rarely produced a satisfactory answer. That is not the only point with which we are involved, and I differ from him in his conclusions. Once the task force had been despatched, I was not willing either to give comfort to the Argentines by showing that there were differences in the House or to make our men, who were steaming towards the Falklands, feel that there was disunity here. I believed that it was right that criticism of the Government, which I had expressed before, should be suspended, but only suspended. I do not believe that it would be right to ignore entirely what took place before the task force set sail. My view is shared. I 480 am influenced by the voluminous correspondence that I have received from the public on this matter. I do not recall receiving such a volume of correspondence for many years, and certainly not since I was Prime Ministerand a Prime Minister, of course, always receives a great deal of correspondence. There is a real feeling of shock and alarm among the public, if my correspondence is representative. I shall be happy to supply any part of it to the inquiry to show why the issue should not be allowed to trickle on and dwindle away without an answer. It came as a shock to the British people that Britain should find herself at war with another sovereign State for the first time for at least 30 years, that all three Services of our Armed Forcesthe Army, Navy and Air Forceshould be involved and that when battle was joined many lives should be lost, men wounded, some maimed for life, and aircraft and ships lost, all at immense cost. We cannot brush all that to one side. In addition, two senior Cabinet members resigned and a third member of the Government, a junior Minister, resigned. Another member of the Cabinet, the Secretary of State for Defence, offered his resignation. It was refused by the Prime Minister on the ground that his Department was not responsible for policy, which pointed the finger clearly at the Foreign Office. But the Prime Minister has an overall responsibility for everything that takes place. However, when she gave that reply in her letter to the Secretary of State for Defence, I do not believe that she was implicating herself. All those matters have alarmed public opinion. The gallantry and professional skill of all our men in the South Atlantic have not washed away the alarm and doubts. They should be resolved now. Hence the need for the inquiry, which has been conceded almost volunteeredby the Prime Minister. I assume that she shares at least some of the views that I hold about why those matters should be inquired into. I have read suggestions that the inquiry should make a long and leisurely investigation into affairs over the previous 20 years. I do not know whether such reports are accurate, but the Prime Minister's emphasis in the terms of reference is different. Mr. David Ennals (Norwich, North) While my right hon. Friend is dealing wiht the question of the Ministers who resigned, I recall the former Foreign Secretary's statement that the matter had been a great national humiliation. Are not Lord Carrington and the others involved entitled to hear the inquiry

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and its conclusions? Is not an essential part of the inquiry to give them an opportunity to explain the circumstances and not just to point an accusing finger? Mr. Callaghan My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made that point clearly. Lord Carrington and the others are entitled to have their explanations and actions fully examined and to make what reply they can; then, as the right hon. Lady said, if it is thought that injustice is being done to them, to have the opportunity to comment. A similar proposition was put by my right hon. Friend when he was Leader of the House on the question of the commission of inquiry to follow the Bingham report. I believe that the precedent has been correctly followed by the Prime Minister today. I believe that hon. Members are entitled to offer guidance to the inquiry on what people are anxious about. 481 It will start with a blank sheet. The point in the correspondence that I have received can be summed up in one general but central question. Nearly every letter comes back to the question whether a prudent Government should have taken more positive and firmer action at an earlier date to forestall an invasion. That is the central issue with which the inquiry should concern itself. It is generally put to me that more positive action would have been to have had sufficient force on hand early enough to anticipate an armed attack. The test of firmer action is important. I start from the belief that the junta would not have invaded had it known what our response would be. I cannot prove that, but I believe it strongly. When the Government were finally convinced that an invasion would take place only a matter of days before it happened, they were incapable of getting men, ships, aircraft and other equipment to the area in time. What action did they take? President Reagan was approached by the Prime Minister. We read in the press that she had several conversations with him. I have no doubt that she put her point with great urgency. We understand that President Reagan urged Galtieri not to invade the Falklands. That was the action of a friend. Indeed, President Reagan had other interests to consider in Latin America. Did the Government convey to General Galtieri, or ask President Reagan to convey to Greneral Galtieri, that in the event of an invasion Britain would not only protest peacably but would use armed force to retake the islands? That is a central question. I never had any doubt about what we would do. I was certain that we would send the task force. Although I was not in the House on that famous Saturday, I was certain about that. We all know our instincts. The Prime Minister is not the only patriot in the House. There are 635 of us. We all knew that that would be the instinctive response of the Government and the House, but did Galtieri know that we would send a task force to retake the islands? If not, the Government are open to grave criticism. In considering whether the junta understood what our reaction would be, the inquiry will also want to consider the events involving HMS "Endurance" and the proposal by the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) to consider transferring sovereignty of the Falkland Islands to the Argentines, subject to a leaseback arrangement. What signals were those? What was the junta supposed to conclude from such actions? To what extent did the Prime Minister endorse the offer of a transfer of sovereignty to Argentina with a leaseback arrangement, or did the hon. Gentleman make the suggestion on his own account when he was discussing the matter with his opposite number? [Interruption.] I have no hesitation in saying that I have a fixed view. I would be unfit to be a member of the inquiry. I would not have offered myself; in any case, I was not asked! Until my dying day I shall never get out of my head the belief that, as I

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said on the day that the task force sailed, this was an unnecessary war. I hold the Prime Minister responsible for what took place. Sir Hugh Fraser (Stafford and Stone) The right hon. Gentleman should go back a little further and explain why his Government failed to build a military airfield on the Falkland Islands in 1977. 482 Mr. Callaghan I fear that that was a question of expenditure, and we did not do so. But I am prepared to go over all those matters in detail. Mr. Edward Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil) The present Government did not do so for three years. Mr. Callaghan As my hon. Friend says, nor did this Government. Mr. Peyton I hope that in addition to saying that we must not brush the affair aside the right hon. Gentleman will tell us what benefits he expects to flow from the inquiry. Mr. Callaghan I am not sure that the Prime Minister will learn much from the inquiry, but I hope that she will. We need a new Government if we are to develop a better manner of conducting our affairs. [Interruption.] I am not playing games. I feel very deeply about this, and I have a right to do so. The Labour Government decided to have discussions about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, beginning on 13 December 1977. Because we did not know what form those discussions would take, we decided to make our analysis of what might happen. We did so. It was our belief that the Argentines wanted, naturally, a peaceful transfer of sovereignty, but if there were no prospects of real progress towards Argentine sovereignty there would be a risk of a resort to forceful measures, including direct military action against British shipping and the establishment of an Argentine presence on the dependencies, especially South Georgia, in addition to the scientific station already on Southern Thule. We also believed that there was the prospect of some private venture activity on one of the dependencies, possibly South Georgia, and that if that took place the Argentine Government would be under such pressure from public opinion that it would have to follow it up. There was internal pressure on the Argentine Government at that time to divert attention from their internal problems. As a result, we took legal opinion on whether we could establish an exclusion zone of 25 miles. We worked out rules of engagement, authorising a challenge to Argentine ships coming to within 50 miles of the islands to declare their intention. We decided that "Endurance", which the Ministry of Defence wanted to withdraw, should not only be kept on station but should be refitted. We sent my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. Rowlands) to the talks that began on 13 December, but we made certain that on that day there was a naval presence off the Falkland Islands to strengthen his hand in the event of a breakdown in the talks leading to our beliefs being fulfilled. That was what the Labour Government did. When my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked questions about this recently, the Prime Minister's response was to hurl across the Dispatch Box"sneer" is the correct wordthat if a Labour Government had been in power we would not have fired a shot. I tell the right hon. Lady, if we had been in power we would not have needed to. Mr. Speaker

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Before I call the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney), I remind him that the terms of the motion before us are whether we should have an inquiry. 483 5.5 pm Mr. Raymond Whitney (Wycombe) I welcome this opportunity to comment on the terms of the inquiry, which is a matter of great public concern. Although serious problems have been raised about the mechanics of the inquiry and the constitutional issues, it is essential, for the political health of the country, that the air should be cleared and as many facts as possible relating to previous years brought out. It is important for the country to know whether it has been adequately served by all the Government agencies that have been involved in this sad adventure. Some years ago I was involved in the Falklands and in Argentina. I offer to the House a few thoughts to justify the Committee's taking accountit is eminently qualified to do soof all relevant factors from previous years. It is not enough to recognise the facts of the three months that led to the events of 2 April. I give two or three examples to justify that assertion. We have heard a great deal, in our debates and in the press, about Argentine press comments in January, February and March of this year. It is impossible to make a fair judgment and analysis of the significance of such press reports in Buenos Aires newspapers unless comparisons are made with similar flurries of tension over the previous 10, 15 or 20 years. Some years ago there was an incident which became known as the "Cronica landing". Cronica is a Buenos Aires newspaper. It sponsored and paid for the landing of an aircraft on Port Stanley airstrip. At that time, to put it mildly, tempers were running high and the apprehensions of those concerned in the British Government, and elsewhere in the world, were intense. Therefore, if an examination is conducted into press comments during the past few months, a comparison must be made with what happened on previous occasions. Another matter that received considerable prominence recentlythe right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) made some mileage from thiswas the comments of the present captain of "Endurance". In a television interview some days ago he said that when the "Endurance" visited Ushuaia in January he found a certain coolness in the atmosphere, which worried him. It is important that the inquiry should establish the amount of alarm that was sounded in the reports that he sent back to the Government on that occasion. It is also important for the inquiry to consider other incidents in the pastremembering, of course, that the present captain of "Endurance" was not the captain at the time. I believe that the present incumbent has held the post for about 18 months. The inquiry should recognise that in 1976 "Endurance" was forbidden to visit Ushuaia. There was a period of heightened tension on that occasion. Lord Franks and the Committee of Inquiry should also take into account an occasion in earlier years when shots were fired across the bows of the research ship "Shackleton". Those examplesand I can offer many moresuggest that it would be inadequate to look only at the events of this year. It is essential to go back a long way. That will, in many ways, be regrettable, because of the understandable difficulties about constitutional propriety, but the composition of the Committee and the terms of reference announced by the Prime Minister will ensure that 484 none of us need have any fears about those constitutional issues. We can all be confident that they will be handled properly.

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It is not for me or any other hon. Member to prejudge the outcome of the inquiry, but I should like to offer one thought. Things often go wrong in life, and there is no doubt that they went badly wrong over the Falklands. However, sometimes they go wrong, not because of some immense miscalculation, moral turpitude or fatal inadequacy of any particular individual or even a particular service, but because of a blind and determined refusal by countries to face realities. For reasons that we shall no doubt explore, even after the Committee has reported, it just may be that our two countries, and we in this House, refused to face realities. If there is telephonic communication between two people and the individuals concerned do not have their ears to the handset, it is not much good blaming either the instrument or the wires that connect them. If this is a case of deafness between two countries, the way to wisdom is to restore the connection, to make sure that the deafness is removed and that our ears go back to the handset. That is the sort of lesson that we should learn. The inquiry must not be turned into a political dogfight. The right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) talked about the country not forgiving. I doubt whether he would disagree with my view that the country will not forgive if this issue is turned into a political dogfight. After the brilliant courage and heroism that have been shown, the nation and this House must rise above that. 5.13 pm Mr. Roy Jenkins (Glasgow, Hillhead) The responsibility for not turning this issue, on which there has been a substantial measure of national unity, into a party political dog-fight rests on both sides of the House and on all parties, including the Government. That must be carefully borne in mind in the future. I agree with the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), and not with the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) that an inquiry is necessary. However, I share some of the views of the right hon. Member for Yeovil about the unhappy history of inquiries of this sort, partly because they are inquiries into unhappy affairs. That is not the only reason, and I shall return to it in a moment. As the Prime Minister probably recognises, an inquiry has always been part of the bargain. It was understood that there should not be criticism during the operation while British lives were at risk, but that she would agree to the fullest inquiry as soon as the operation was concluded. It has been satisfactorily concluded, and we are all grateful for that. The Prime Minister indicated that view in reply to a question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grirnond) as early as 8 April. In that reply, she talked about an inquiry into the work of Departments. I think that she had that in her mind until quite recently. That would have been a mistaken approach, because what is involved is not merely, or even primarily, Departments but the responsibility of Ministers and the Government as a whole. It is wrong to pretend that Ministers or the Prime Minister herself can distance 485 themselves by talking about Departments and inquiries into Departments. If we did that, we would get ourselves into a dangerous constitutional position. I do not wish to pursue that point too far, because the terms of reference are now about right. They are approximately what they should have been all alongprincipally to tell us what went wrong in the runup to the Argentine invasion on 2 April 1982. I wholly accept that it is appropriate for the inquiry, if necessary, to look back for purposes of comparison or clarification. It would be reasonable, if it judged it right, for the inquiry to bring together a review of the facts about successive attempts at negotiation. However, I believe that they are already very much more in the public

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domain than what happened in the immediate run-up to 2 April. I do not think that there is any great obscurity about those negotiations, but, if there is, let the cloak of obscurity be lifted and let us see absolutely clearly what happenedindeed, back to 1967 and intervening times. Let us see what happened when the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who was then at the Foreign Office, nearly brought off a settlement in 1980. Still more relevantly, let us see what happened in the negotiations in New York conducted by the hon. Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce). None the less, let us be absolutely clear that the central point at issue is why an invasion was allowed to take place on 2 April 1982. It is not why an invasion did not take place on a limitless number of occasions in the past. It is no good pretending that there is an equality of status between non-events and events. As to the composition of the inquiry, the Chairman is a good choice. He is certainly a man of outstanding ability and experience. He has been criticised for having some Foreign Office connections. I do not share the view of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) about the Foreign Office. In any event, Lord Franks was very much a non-Foreign Office ambassador to Washington as long ago as 1949, and his only connection with the Foreign Office was that for four years he prevented a Foreign Office official from getting that highly coveted job nearly 30 years ago. I do not think that that amounts to a disqualification. Lord Franks is admirably qualified, not least by being a member of the Liberal Party, having taken the Liberal Whip in another place for a number of years. I turn to the politicians, because Lord Franks is not a politician. [Interruption.] Perhaps I should say that he is not primarily a politician. I doubt very much whether the Prime Minister would have appointed him Chairman had he been so. Everybody can produce his favourite or non-favourite list of politicians. I notice that the hon. Member for York (Mr. Lyon) has put forward an alternative list. We can all argue about that, but, however it is done, I see no way of avoiding the fact that under a whipping system the representatives of the two major parties are chosen by the Government and Opposition Front Benches. I make no point about that. Sir Patrick Nairne, the sixth member of the inquiry, is a former civil servant. He was an outstanding civil servant. At one time I worked closely with him and found him to be a man of great power, decision and effectiveness. He will be a useful, perhaps outstanding, member of the inquiry. However, I take issue on one thing, and, 486 surprisingly, I partly agree with one or two of the hon. Membersnot hon. Friends who sometimes share this Bench below the Gangway in such neighbourly proximity. I have no objection to Sir Patrick Nairne being made a Privy Councillor on the ground of his services to the State, which are great. However, there is a danger of making a fetish of Privy Councillorhood. It does not make great sense to pretend that a man's discretion and sense of secrecy cannot be trusted if he is not a member of the Privy Council, but if he is made one it is absolute. People who are not Privy Councillors, such as permanent secretaries in the most sensitive Departments, receive information of great secrecy. Staff will have to be appointed to this Committee who will be members of the Home Office who are certainly not Privy Councillors and whose discretion will need to be absolute. Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland) In his capacity as historian and not politician, can the right hon. Gentleman throw any light on when this custom concerning Privy Councillors grew up? Is it of recent origin that no one can speak to anyone who is not a Privy Councillor, that they are the only people who can be trusted to keep a secret, and that it is only when one is 70 or so that one is respectable enough to become a Privy Councillor?

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 Mr. Jenkins It is fairly recent, although I hesitate to speak with absolute authority. The Prime Minister referred to a precedent from 1955, but that was specifically a security inquiry. The two inquiries that were rather similar to this one, those into Mesopotamia and the Dardanelles, were not confined to Privy Councillors and there was no suggestion that they should be so confined. It is a curious concept that a man has a different sense of responsibility to his nation if he is a Privy Councillor than if he is not. As far as I can recollect, part of the Privy Councillor's oath may be more honoured in the breach than in the honouring, for it is hardly the case that if ill is spoken of another member of the Council it is never passed on unless disclosed to him in Council. [HON. MEMBERS:"Order."] What are we talking about? We do not live in a world of secret societies in which we should not know even what oaths people are bound by. Mr. Dalyell As one who was twice Home Secretary, is the right hon. Gentleman happy that the talented civil servants of the Home Office should exclusively provide the crucial staffing? Is there not a case for having some members of staff who are from outside lawyers' offices, the academic world or the trade unions? Mr. Jenkins That is a point for the hon. Gentleman to make himself, which I am sure that he can do with great power. I am satisfied that, from my experience of the Home Office, there are people there who are fully capable of discharging the responsibility that is here involved. The history of inquiries has not been an inspiring one, and it is difficult to say that a wholly satisfactory formula has emerged over a substantial period. The right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East referred to the Crimean war inquiry. That was conducted by the whole House sitting as a Committee of inquiry. I doubt whether anyone would propose that that should be done for this inquiry. All hon. Members were not made Privy Councillors for that. There was the Jameson raid inquiry, about which the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) is 487 a considerable expert as the biographer of Joseph Chamberlain. That was a Select Committee of 15 members, but with the Minister whose conduct was principally at issue playing a great part in appointing the Committee, drawing up terms of reference and sitting on the Committee together with three other members of the Government, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Attorney-General. The Leader of the Opposition also sat on the Committee, but that did not prevent Joseph Chamberlain, it is generally assumed, from withholding three vital telegrams. Thus, that, too, was not a good example of how the truth should be arrived at. Mr. Christopher Price (Lewisham, West) rose Mr. Jenkins There was then the Marconi Select Committee which, by sheer partisanship, devalued the whole concept of Select Committees. For the inquiry into the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia we had a different form not too dissimilar from that which is here proposed, except that members were not all Privy Councillors. The House added certain members and later added the right to send for persons and papers, which was not in the original resolution. The House also made the resolution rather more precise that it was previously. That, too, is not a particularly good example. The Mesopotamian inquiry led to the resignation of Austen Chamberlain, who probably ought not to have resigned, although perhaps his father should have resigned 20 years

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before. The Dardanelles inquiry is not judged by historians to have led to any very close approach to the truth. Certainly Sir Winston Churchill did not accept it. Following that, because of the reaction against the Select Committee, we had the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921. I am unaware of the form set out in that Act having been usefully used in any proceedings similar to that with which we are here concerned. Probably its most notable use was the Lynskey tribunal, which had great disadvantages. The right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East referred to the recent proposal for a Committee, rather similar to this one, following up the Bingham inquiry. That was passed by the House of Commons, rejected by the House of Lords and died between two Governments. Thus, we do not have a vastly inspiring record, and it cannot be pretended that a perfect formula has been worked out. Various amendments have been tabled which you have not called, Mr. Speaker, including one from the right hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Macmillan), which deals in great detail with points relating to confidentiality of the papers of previous Administrations. My impression was that that was largely covered by the qualifications that the Prime Minister set out in her opening statement. Those propositions seem to me to make good sense and to strike about the right balance between the needs of proper investigation and those of adequate confidentiality. There is need for a certain degree of confidentiality in Government. The Prime Minister said the other day that she was attached to the 30-year rule. I do not necessarily go as far as that. There is nothing sacrosanct about 30 years and it may well be changed in the future, as the 50-year rule was changed. On the whole, we are moving towards rather more open government, not least in the Cabinet of the right hon. Lady. Rarely have we heard more from within an Administration about what went on in the Cabinet, about what Ministers think about each other and 488 what the right hon. Lady thinks about Ministers individually from time to time. [Interruption.] We have the precedent of certain diaries, but they were published a few years after events, although nothing like 30 years after the event. That is different a few days after the event. However, a degree of confidentiality in Government is essential. We should lose a great deal without that. I deplore the attacks made by the hon. Member for Macclesfield upon the Foreign Office. If officials could not allow their minds to play around a problemI am not talking about exercising executive responsibilityand offer Ministers advice without feeling that they would be pilloried subsequently, we should lose a great deal. One human freedom that is important in Government, even for Ministers, is the right to change one's mind in private. If that freedom were removed, we should find that more wrong decisions were stubbornly stuck to than if Ministers are allowed to take a tentative view of a subject, then have another look at it, with free advice from officials acting honestly, and then decide that it is perhaps better to proceed in a different way. There is much to be inquired into. There is much that we need to know. We do not have a perfect formula for inquiries, but this seems about as good as we can get in the present circumstances. I hope that the inquiry will get on with its work expeditiously, fearlessly and frankly. In my opinion, six months is the maximumit may be even too longbut certainly it should not be allowed to go on longer than that. We wish it well in its work, and we look forward with interest to its report. 5.30 pm Mr. Humphrey Atkins (Spelthorne) This is, I think, the first occasion since last Friday on which the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins) has addressed the House. Perhaps I should congratulate him, at any rate on filling the Opposition Benches below the Gangway with slightly unusual and in some ways more agreeable faces than one normally sees

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there. I was particularly interested to hear the right hon. Gentleman describe the distinguished Member of the other House who takes the Liberal Whip as not being a politician. We shall have to see how relations between the two parties develop. I shall detain the House for only a few minutes. I am one of those into whose activities before the events of 2 April the Committee that is being set up will inquire. I very much welcome the setting up of this inquiry. As the right hon. Member for Cardiff, SouthEast (Mr. Callaghan) said a few minutes ago, on 2 April the House and the country had a very disagreeable shock. No one likes an unpleasant surprise. The immediate reaction of all of us when we have an unpleasant surprise is to say, first, "Why was l not warned?" and, secondly, "Could not something have been done to stop it happening?" That is what the country is asking, and that, I suspect, is what the country will want this inquiry to discover. However, there is one flawa completely unavoidable flawin any inquiry or other body that can be set up by the Government, this House, or in any other way in this country, and that is that it cannot question General Galtieri. It takes two to make a bargain, and it takes two to make a quarrel. The inquiry canand I hope willdelve deeply into everything that happened in this country. It can review the decisions of Ministers. It can scrutinise the advice given by officials to those Ministers. It can study the messages 489 sent to this country by our representatives overseas. It can peruse the intelligence reportsand I shall return to that matter in a moment. It can investigate the liaison between Ministries and Departments in this country. All those things it can do. What it cannot do is to assess accurately the impact of what we did here on the Argentine President, the junta, the generals, admirals and air force officers, or whoever it was who took the decision to invade on 2 April. Obviously, what we didor did not dohere had a powerful effect, because the Argentines did invade. That, as we all now know, was a reckless decision which caused considerable loss of life, led to a humiliating surrender and an enormous loss of material and an even greater loss of confidence in that country's leadership. But what led it to take that decision? Was it because it thought that it would have an easy victory? Did it perhaps take an outside gamble to distract attention from pressing problems at home? Or were there other considerations? Many people, with or without axes to grind, have already given their opinions. I have no doubt that over the next weeks and months many more will give their opinions. But do they know? No, they do not. Will this inquiry know? I have to say that I doubt it. Nevertheless, as I said, I am certain that it is right to hold it, and I welcome the motion before us, which sets it on its way. I am more than ready to give the inquiry every help that I can, and I hope that its report will produce lessons for the future. The inquiry may or may not apportion blame. That is for it alone to decide. However, I venture to suggest that if it can point out ways in which the Government machine in this country, from Ministers down, can be made to work better and minimise the chance of this kind of thing ever happening again, that will be the best service that it can render its fellow citizens. If I may say so, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has got the terms of reference of the inquiry exactly right. Most people are interested in the events of the weeks and months leading up to 2 April, and no doubt the inquiry will concentrate mainly on that, but it would be wrong to attempt to confine the inquiry to an arbitrary period. It may well bein my view, it is almost certainthat events before the beginning of this year had a powerful influence on what happened. The most extreme example of that is that in 1965 the United Nations passed a resolution calling on this country and Argentina to discuss together our difficulties and settle them.

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It may be that the passage of 17 years, without any real noticeable progress, led to a gradual build-up of resentment in Argentina which may have created almost irresistible pressures. It may be that something else done before 1982 caused the Argentines to make up their minds about their course of action. I do not know, but it is clearly right to empower the inquiry to pursue this or other points if, in its judgment, they are relevant. It is also rightindeed, essentialthat the inquiry should be able to see every document having a bearing on the matter, including the most sensitive and secret of all, the intelligence reports. The motion before us does not state precisely that it can do that, but my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister spent a good deal of time spelling out the precise terms on which the inquiry will operate. I am delighted that the inquiry will be able to see everything that it needs to see. The whole proceeding would be futile if it could not do that. 490 The necessity to do that places some restriction on the number of people who can serve on the new body. I take a rather different view from the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead about Privy Councillors. I believe that there is a compelling reason for believing that the discretion of Privy Councillors can be trusted, and that is because they take an oath. Unlike the right hon. Gentleman, I pay some attention to the oath that I took, and the fact that I took that oath on becoming a member of the Privy Council weighs heavily with me, as I think it does with most others. Mr. Roy Jenkins I of course pay great attention to that. Surely the right hon. Gentleman is not saying that had he not been a Privy Councillor, and had be been required to deal with highly secure matters, as he may well have done in the Department before becoming a Privy Councillor, he would have been careless about the information with which he was dealing in the interests of the State. Mr. Atkins I like to think not, any more than the right hon. Gentleman would have been careless before he became a Privy Councillor. However, the fact that somebody has become a Privy Councillor and is known to have taken the oath means that outsiders can place reliance upon him. I place reliance upon those who have been chosen to conduct the inquiry. I rely not only upon their discretion, but upon the way in which they will approach their task. It is my beliefhon. Members may challenge it if they wishthat Privy Councillors, bound by the Privy Council oath, will have the necessary credibility outside the House. Two of the members are unknown to me, but their reputations speak for themselves. I am as confident in them as I am in any of the others. I am glad that my right hon. Friend resisted the temptation to appoint a judge to the inquiry. It is not that I do not have the highest respect for Her Majesty's judges, I do, but this is not an inquiry for a judge. There is no justiciable issue. There is a great need for an understanding based on experience of how the Government machine works. Without such knowledge it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to know the right questions to ask. If the right questions are not asked, the right conclusions will not be drawn and the right lessons will not be learnt. I am glad that the inquiry has been proposed by my right hon. Friend. I hope that the House will support the motion before it tonight and that the inquiry, once it is under way, will proceed with all possible speed. 5.41 pm Mr. George Foulkes (South Ayrshire)

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I greatly welcome the opportunity for the House to debate this subject. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) said, I hope that we shall be able to give some guidance to the members of the inquiry before they begin their task. I greatly welcome the fact that there seems now to be general agreement that there should be an inquiry, although I do not agree with the terms and some of the details of it. I welcome the privilege of being called to speak in the debate, particularly as I am the first Labour Member to be called who is not a Privy Councillor. 491 I welcomed the opportunity of participating in the debate on 3 April. On that occasion, amongst other rather more controversial remarks, I said that everyone, except the United Kingdom Government, seemed to know that the Falkland Islands were to be or were in danger of being invaded by the Argentines. That is becoming increasingly clear. We now know that the captain of HMS "Endurance" warned that the Falkland Islands were in danger of being invaded. We know that even Mrs. Madge Nichols was worried about the Falkland Islands being invaded. We also know the kind of dismissive reply that the Prime Minister gave to Mrs. Madge Nichols. I asked the Prime Minister how many other people had written to her expressing concern about the withdrawal of HMS "Endurance". She said that she could not provide that information because it would cost too much. That she was not willing to spend some money and to give her staff time to discover the extent of the opposition to that withdrawal does not bode well for the inquiry. I welcome the scope of the review that the Prime Minister has agreed to institute. The right hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins) seems to have misinterpreted the scope of the inquiry. Under pressure from my right hon. and hon. Friends, it is to concentrate on the events leading up to the invasion. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition shold be congratulated on that achievement. It is only incidents previous and relating to the invasion that the inquiry will look at. There, I am afraid, my welcome must end. I have serious reservations about the inquiry that we have heard about today. First, we must consider how the inquiry measures up to the principle of natural justice. It does not measure up to the principle of natural justice. It does not measure up very well. The Prime Minister has said that it is to review the action of Government Departments. That matter was raised by the right hon. Member for Hillhead. My understandingthe Madge Nichols letter and other evidence point in this directionis that the actions of the Prime Minister herself must come under scrutiny. If the actions of the Prime Minister are to be among the principal subjects of the inquiry, is it in accord with the principles of natural justice that she should choose the members of the inquiry, set its terms of reference, receive its report and finally have the power to delete any part of the report that she wishes on grounds, as she said, of national security or international relations? Those two broad grounds have been misinterpreted and misused by Governments in the past. On those tests, this inquiry does not measure up to the principle of natural justice. That is why I am unhappy. I move with some trepidation to the membership of the inquiry. I suppose that I should not question the age, experience and distinction of the members of the Committee, particulary as I used to work for Age Concern. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) is the youngest and most militant member of the inquiry, which says a lot about its membership. I do not question that people of experience and distinction have an appropriate part to play in the inquiry. However, there should be some people with more inquiring minds

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as well. There should be some members who are less a part of the Establishment. I question the myth that respectabilty, age and experience equate with objectivity. The Establishment has a self-protection mechanism. One has only to recall the way in which the 492 misdeeds ofdale I mention the names?Philby, Blunt, Burgess and Maclean were covered up by their fellow members of the Establishment to realise that the Establishment has a powerful self-protecting mechanism. Without criticising the individuals, I would argue that the attitude of mind, background, education and experience of most of the members of the inquiry lead them to a predisposition to defend the Establishment. Their experience in the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office will lead them to protect those who in many cases were their former colleaguespeople whom they appointed and worked with. Why is no one.perhaps the right hon. Member for Hillhead came nearest to doing soarguing strongly that we have now set up a system of powerful and, I hope, experienced Select Committees? [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear".] My fellow members of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs agree with me. The Defence and Foreign Affairs Select Committees have already agreed to set up their own inquiry into the circumstances leading up to the invasion. There will be problems in that regard. ********************************************************************** Espionage (Release of Documents) HC Deb 13 April 1983 vol 40 c411W 411W 42. Mr. Arthur Lewis asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether, in view of the recent death of Anthony Blunt, the sole British citizen known to be involved in the Burgess, Maclean and Philby spy scandal, he will now agree to the publication of all the papers and documents connected with these Soviet and former British citizens. Mr. Hurd No. The policy set out in the answer which I gave to the hon. Member on 21 March is not changed by the death of Mr. Blunt.[Vol. 39, c.347.] ********************************************************************** Interception of Communications Bill HC Deb 12 March 1985 vol 75 cc151-244 Mr. Eldon Griffiths (Bury St. Edmunds) The House will have been struck by the contrast between the speeches of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) a clever, facile and secondhand speech and those of the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan) and the right hon. Member for Morely and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees). While the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South was speaking, I heard a remark from below the Gangway opposite to the effect that the Home Secretary could be deceived. Hon. Members should remember that one can perhaps fool a weak Home Secretary about some things for much of the time and about many things for some of the time, but one cannot possibily fool a diligent Home Secretary about everything all the time. I agree with the central point made by the right hon. Members for Cardiff, South and Penarth and for Morley and Leeds, South that, at the end of the day, this House must trust the Home Secretary. We have no alternative. He is accountable to Parliament and

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he must exercise his discretion maintaining the difficult balance between liberty and accountability, secrecy and freedom, and it is right that we should put on record that we have had good reason to trust all our Home Secretaries. I include in that the present Home Secretary. In trusting them and allowing them to perform their difficult task we thereby strength the morale of the security service, on which a great deal depends. My interest in this matter has developed over about 25 years. I knew of Burgess and Maclean in Washington. I did not know when I met them that they were traitors. They were men of charm and high intakes of liquid. Subsequently, from time to time, though not closely, I also knew Kim Philby. I did not know then that he was a spy. I was told subsequently by people in the American security service that a fourth man was spying in Britain and I pursued that matter closely, inquiring into it at the highest level of politics and security in this country. I was told that there was nothing in the story. In fact, we were wrong and the Americans were right. Anthony Blunt was the fourth man. 197 Since then I have followed these issues as closely as it is possible for an hon. Member to follow themand as one who has links with the police service in Britain and I have no doubt that at any time there is a persistent attempt to spy on this country, to sell its secrets and to subvert its freedom. The Bill must be seen against the background that we are facing, whether or not we like it, a continuing attack on our liberties by those who wish to destroy us. I support the Bill, as one who at one time had his telephone tapped. I support the Bill because it will clarify the law, because it will regularise the procedures under which this disagreeable but necessary activity is to be allowed and because it will provide important and new safeguards ********************************************************************** Russia Committee: Records HL Deb 18 March 1985 vol 461 cc321-4 321 2.44 p.m. Lord Gladwyn My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. The Question was as follows: To ask Her Majesty's Government why it is not possible to make available for public inspection the conclusions and recommendations of the Russia Committee of the Foreign Office for the period of Lord Gladwyn's chairmanship (194849). The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young) My Lords, a number of the 1948 and 1949 papers of the Russia Committee fall within the terms of the general approval given by the Lord Chancellor in 1967 for the retention

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within Government departments of records relating to security and intelligence matters for longer than 30 years. The question of the release of records which interest the noble Lord was reviewed in 1982 and again in 1984 by two of my ministerial colleagues at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Both were unable to find grounds to vary the original decision to withhold these records. Lord Gladwyn My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for that not unexpected reply, may I ask her two very short supplementary questions? In the first place, is it not perhaps a little absurd not to allow the chairman of what was, after all, the firstand, I think, very successfulpolicy planning body of the Foreign Office, at any rate to refresh his memory of recommendations and conclusions of that body, more especially if he gave an assurance that he would never make any use of or refer in any way to these papers without the consent of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office? However that may be, since, as I think I recall, there were normally representatives 322 of MI5 and MI6 on this committee, including, from time to time, I rather suspect, the notorious Soviet agent Mr. A. R. Philby himself, would it not be desirable for the Government to recommend searchers after truth, and historians generally, to have recourse to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow, where the documents would presumably be readily available? Baroness Young My Lords, of course I note what the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, has said. As he will appreciate, access to papers retained under the provisions of the Public Records Act 1958 is permitted only to those who need to see them for official purposes. Perhaps I may say that over the past 18 months my department has done its best to be as helpful as possible to the noble Lord, and my Ministerial colleagues in the Foreign Office have held a very extensive correspondence with him. With regard to his second supplementary question, I think that he has answered it himself. Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos My Lords, I should be grateful if the noble Baroness would make this clear. Is she saying that the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, cannot now have access to papers of a committee of which he himself was chairman, even if he makes plain and gives an undertaking, as obviously he would, and as he could on Privy Council terms, that if the Foreign Office so decides, he will not impart any of the information he obtains? Baroness Young My Lords, the answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, is as I have already given it to the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn. It is a question of the law and what is allowed under the Public Records Act 1958. Lord Thomas of Swynnerton My Lords, bearing in mind that some papers in this series, including the terms of reference, are in the public domain, would it not be possible for the Government to

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consider a technique practised in the United States, where, when there are papers which would otherwise be available but which contain items or names which even now it would be considered undesirable to reveal, the Government can suppress those items and those names by means of blacking them out? Baroness Young My Lords, I note what my noble friend has to say on this matter. Of course what is right for the United States is not necessarily right for us. However, perhaps he would agree that it would be wrong to tamper with a historical record. Lord Paget of Northampton My Lords, did the noble Baroness say that there had already been an "eccentric" correspondence with the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, on this subject, or did I mishear her? Noble Lords Extensive. Lord Paget of Northampton Oh, "extensive". I thought she said "eccentric"; it sounded much more realistic. When the noble Baroness replied she said the Government could not vary their position. Apparently she was then talking, as the Question indicated, about 323 general publication. It now emerges that what has been asked is that the noble Lord, who is an ex-ambassador, and the man who drew up this report, should be allowed to have a look at his own report. How in heaven's name does that affect this country's security? This has reduced the whole thing to a farce. Lord Gladwyn Hear, hear! Lord Paget of Northampton My Lords, surely there should be a little revision here? Baroness Young My Lords, I do not think I have anything further to add to what I have already said to the House. Lord Morris My Lords, if the noble Lord in question had made his own notes at the time, this Question would not arise at all. Lord Kennet

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My Lords, one appreciates that the question is very complex, but can the noble Baroness say anything about the differences which appear to exist in the regulations affecting first, ex-Ministers; secondly, ex-ambassadors who wish to look at their own ambassadorial papers; and, thirdly, ex-ambassadors such as my right honourable and noble friend who want to look at their own old papers written before they became ambassadors? If the differences are as wide as I think they are, is it not verging on the absurd? Baroness Young My Lords, I cannot give the detailed information that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, seeks without notice; but the position with regard to the release of papers is of course as I have described it in two supplementary answers that I have given. Lord Mayhew My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the proceedings of this Committee of which I, too, was a member would not have been reported to Moscow by Mr. Philby? This task would have been entrusted to Mr. Guy Burgess whose work was very closely associated. Baroness Young My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord. Lord Mayhew, can regard as a joke what may have happened with those two people in question. ********************************************************************** WARRANTS FOR INTERCEPTION HC Deb 17 April 1985 vol 77 cc300-23 300 Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington) I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 2, line 19 leave out paragraph (a) and insert '(a) for the defence of the realm or to prevent subversion, terrorism or espionage;'. Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong) With this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 7, in clause 10, page 9, line 19, at end insert 301 subversion" means an attempt to overthrow Parliament by unlawful means;'. Mr. Corbett The amendments concern more than mere definitions, which they may appear at first sight to be. They concern an area that is vital to every citizenour freedom within the law, as individuals and collectively, to challenge and try to change Government policy. That is important not just with the present Government, who have shown such scant regard for freedom in relation, for example, to GCHQ at Cheltenham or their attempt to

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deny the vote to millions of citizens in the metropolitan counties and the greater London area. When the Labour party forms a Government, Conservative Members will no doubt wish to challenge our policies. The road of freedom does not have just a left-hand side or a right-hand side. There are two sides to that important road. The first criterion on which the Bill allows the Home Secretary to issue a warrant to snoop and spy is in the interests of national security". That must be one of the most overworked and abused phrases in the world, as it can be held to cover anything that anyone wishes it to cover. Who actually defines national security? I would argue that possession of American nuclear weapons by this country is the gravest threat to our national security and that the sale of weapons to the middle east and South America also threatens our national security because it threatens peace and stability in those areas, but I suspect that the Minister and his supporters take a different view. We believe that the words in the interests of national security are too wide and too vague. They are wide enough and vague enough to run the risk of misuse in any big brother, or indeed big sister, state. This is not a case in which we all know what we mean but find it difficult to agree an exact form of words. The Opposition believe that the definition in the Bill is drawn deliberately wide to give the Home Secretary maximum discretion. We do not believe that our freedom can or should be left in the hands, and resting on the judgment, of one individual. Our amendment therefore seeks to put more flesh on the concept of national security. The definition in amendment No. I seeks to be more specific. It refers to "subversion, terrorism or espionage", which is what national security is generally assumed to be aboutsomething separate from serious crime, although equally serious, and standing on those three legs. That being so, amendment No. 7 seeks to define what is meant by subversion. In the past few months, the Government have provided a wide variety of choice in terms of what constitutes subversion, but in our view none of those definitions are acceptable. The recently published terms of reference for the three wise men state simply that a subversive group is subversive because it is acknowledged as such by the Minister". That is menacing in its starkness. It suggests that the Minister can say to an individual or group, "You are subversive because I say so." The opening paragraphs of the document make it clear that a person suspected or accused of being subversive does not even have to be a card-carrying member of an organisation held to be subversive. The document refers simply to suspected sympathies. That is further watered down by the words is susceptible to pressure from such organisations or groups" 302 that is, those judged to be subversive. That clearly and frighteningly opens the door to the advent of the thought police. However, the position is even worse. Under the test of susceptibility to pressure, scarcely a Member of this House is not susceptible to pressure at some time or another. Pressure does not always walk up to hon. Members waving flags and identifying itself. We all at times run the risk of being taken in. That three-part test is rather dangerous. The Home Office gave us a Christmas present in the form of the guidelines for the special branch. There we find that subversive activities are those which threaten the

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safety or well being of the State, and which are intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means". That definition is far too wide. It is open to a wide variety of interpretations, not just by the Home Secretary but by any officer serving in the special branch of the 43 police forces. Day by day, such officers are called upon to make judgments against that guideline definition of subversion. Amendment No. 7 makes it clear that we prefer that there should be in the test a mention of the lawfulness and unlawfulness of the action being taken or proposed to be taken. The Home Office definition uses such phrases as safety or well being of the State". We could probably stay here until Christmas trying to agree among ourselves what that phrase means. Mr. Waddington The hon. Gentleman talks about the Home Office definition but he is quoting from the definition propounded by a Labour Minister, Lord Harris of Greenwich, in 1975. Mr. Corbett He was a Home Office Minister. Mr. Waddington I ask the hon. Gentleman not to talk about the Home Office definition as though we had propounded that definition in the last month or so. It was propounded by a Labour Government. Mr. Corbett The present proprietors of the Home Office have accepted that definition. The Opposition do not accept that Lord Harris's definition was meant to be given the solemnity and importance that is now claimed for it. It was given on the back of an answer to a random question in another place. That is why we do not attach to it the weight that the Minister seems to, and seems to think that we should. Mr. Waddington I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to mislead the House. It must be within his knowledge that the Labour Government when in office followed that definition in exercising the powers to intercept. Mr. Corbett I accept that absolutely. As the Minister will have divined during the course of these debates, the Labour party sometimes tries to learn from experience when in government and from the mistakes that parties can make when in government. I tell the Minister once again that when we return to government we will change that definition. Mr. Winnick

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The Minister protests too much. When Lord Harris gave that definition, he did so as a Home Office Minister. It was a Home Office definition, albeit under the preceding Government. At no time, to the best of my knowledge, was that definition changed or debated in this House. It was accepted. There has been no 303 parliamentary debate of the question whether there should be a different definition, or of the earlier one given by Lord Denning. 6.15 pm Mr. Corbett My hon. Friend is quite right, to the best of my knowledge. We have said time and time again in the debates on the Bill and elsewhere that we do not like that definition and that we shall change it as soon as we have the chance. The definition is far too wide. It uses blanket phrases such as the safety of the State and intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy". It qualifies that phrase with the words by political, industrial or violent means". As has already been said, many of us became active in Labour party politics precisely in order to use lawful political means in order to try to turn out the present Government by means of the ballot box and replace them. There is nothing wrong in that ambition, which was shared by hon. Members on the Conservative Benches when in opposition. Mr. Cash I may have missed it, but I cannot find the word "subversion" in the text of the Bill. It is in the amendment, but is it in the Bill? Mr. Corbett One of the purposes of the amendment is to define subversion within the Bill as an alternative to using blanket phrases such as the interests of national security". Mr. Cash The hon. Gentleman should refrain from attacking the Government for not including a definition that he would like to include in the Bill himself. Mr. Corbett I cannot satisfy the hon. Gentleman on that point. One of our complaints about the Bill is that the definitions are inadequate. In our view, there is no proper definition of subversion. I have quoted from documents. I will not weary the House by doing so again. I have tried to place the amendments in the context of the proper concern of all of us to defend the rights of every individual citizen collectively and lawfully to challenge and try to change the policies of Governments of any colour. We believe that our alternative definition of subversion not only helps to make that clear but also underlines, restates and reaffirms the fact that that freedom is most important.

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 Mr. Waddington rose Mr. Deputy Speaker I call Mr. Waddington. Mr. Winnick rose Mr. Waddington I shall be happy to sit down again. Mr. Winnick If the Minister stands up, the debate is closed, I suppose. Mr. Deputy Speaker Order. I cannot call an hon. Member who does not stand up. Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones (Watford) The hon. Gentleman should wake up. Mr. Winnick The Government Whip seems to be even more vocal than usual, even though he never makes a speech. 304 The essence of much of the disquiet which exists about security matters is the question how subversion is interpreted by the security services. As the hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Norris) said an hour or so ago, there is a good deal of disquiet, even if it is more openly expressed on this side of the House than on the Government side. In my view, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) was absolutely right to say that the present definition of subversion must give rise to concern. Speaking in another place in February 1975, Lord Hams interpreted subversion as activities which threaten the safety or well-being of the State, and which are intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means." [Official Report, House of Lords, 26 February 1975; Vol. 357, c. 947.] That gives the security service a great deal of discretion, and far more than it should have. That is why, when I raised this matter on the Adjournment on the day that the House went into the Easter recess, I said that the definition of subversion was far too wide. It is all very well for the Minister to say that Lord Harris gave the definition when a Labour Minister, but he is no longer a member of the Labour party. I do not think that there is a great deal of regret about that. Moreover, as far as I am aware, the definition of subversion has never been debated in the House.

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 Mr. Waddington The hon. Gentleman missed the significance of what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) said in reply to my intervention. He confessed that that definition had been expressed by a Labour Minister and that the Labour Government had operated their powers to intercept on the basis of that definition. That is the important thing to bear in mind. Mr. Winnick It is remarkable how Ministers pray the Labour Government in aid when they support Labour's activities. It is otherwise denunciation. I do not complain. The Minister is using whatever arguments he can find to advance his argument. Nevertheless, Lord Harris's definition of subversion was never debated, I believe, in the House. The matter affects citizens and civil rights and we should all be anxious about how such rights can be eroded or undermined. It must be right for the House to debate what the definition should be. Mr. Cash Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like a debate on what subversion means, but it is the Opposition amendment which includes that word. It is impossible for us to deal with a debate in which the Opposition are attacking the Government for including in the Bill a word that does not appear in it. Mr. Winnick It might not appear in the Bill I concede that pointbut Ministers have stated, and the Home Secretary made it clear when he gave evidence in public session to the Home Affairs Select Committee, that the special branch works on the definition of subversion given by Lord Harris in February 1975. It is therefore reasonable to assume that when the special branch and the security services decide on these matters they will use that definition, which is the subject of a great deal of controversy. Mr. Cash Will the hon. Gentleman, when he is discussing definitions, tell us what espionage means as that word is in the amendment and is not defined? 305 Mr. Winnick We are debating amendment No. 1 at the moment. Lord Denning gave a definition of subversion in the 1960s. Yesterday I prayed Lord Denning in aid on another matter and I am about to do so again now. He must think that he has a fan on the Labour Benches. With respect to his lordship, Lord Denning is not renowned for his pro-Labour movement sympathies. I imagine that even Conservative Members take him to be quite a safe person. Nevertheless, he gave a far closer definition that Lord Harris. He defined

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a subversive as one who would overthrow or contemplate the overthrow of Government by unlawful means". That is very much in line with the amendment. I should like the House to be reasonably satisfied that those who carry out these delicate and sensitive duties do not at the same time erode the rights of which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) spoke. Such rights have been slowly built up over centuries. Is not the safeguarding of the rights of citizens one of our main responsibilities? Some time ago, I raised the case of Mrs. Haigh, who was interviewed and lied to by the special branch regarding letters that she had written about cruise missiles. Some people might ask, "What does one person matter?" Surely one person's civil liberies are as important as those of many. Other matters which cause concern have come to light as well. The security services do not have the complete confidence of everyone. I accept that we must have a security service. When asked a few weeks ago whether I favoured a security service, I gave the obvious answer. I know of no country without one. We know how dictatorships operate, but democracies require a security service too. However, such a service would be in a stronger position if it had the confidence of the whole House and the public, and I am not satisfied that the security service understands or appreciates sufficiently the strong feelings about the right of dissent and the right to hold minority opinions. About three months ago, the hon. Member for Stroud (Sir A. Kershaw), Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told the Home Secretary at Question Time that if these peoplehe did not qualify who they werewere not investigated, he wanted his money back. What was the reaction of Tory Members? They roared with laughter and approval. Included among them, I am afraid, was the Home Secretary. Some of the people under investigation are acting perfectly legally. They just happen to disagree with the Government on major issues, such as defence. Should they be subject to surveillance and investigation, simply because they disagree with the Government? The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) nods his head in agreement with that proposition. The difference between him and me is that I do believe in parliamentary democracy and people's rights that do not exist in eastern Europe or Latin America. I believe that people have a right to disagree and to express those opinions freely without being subject to investigation and surveillance. My hon. Friend the Member for Walton has mentioned a section of the security service. On 4 April, I mentioned the F branch of MI5. F2 investigates trade unions and F7 investigates various other political groups. Apparently there is a special group of the F branch which investigates teachers, Members of Parliament, lawyers and journalists. Those allegations have been made Mr. Eldon Griffiths Allegations? 306 Mr. Winnick

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Of course they are allegations. Am I supposed to go to MI5 or write the Director General a letter asking him to confirm them? Such things though cannot be dismissed out of hand. If it is true that such a branch and such sub-branches exist, should we not be worried? Should we simply dismiss the allegations and say that, even if they are true, those sections of MI5 are justified? One of the functions of the House, I hope, is to safeguard civil liberties. We must be worried if there are civil servants in the security service with files on a very large number of people and groups. It is interesting that there has been no allegation that investigations are made into the Conservative party, the City or the stock exchange. If there were, would not Conservative Members be worried? Of course they would. They would be probing the issue and causing a fuss. Mr. Cash I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware that the Bill provides for investigations into questions arising from economic well-being, and the pointed remark which he has just made goes rather wider than the content of the Bill. Mr. Winnick That is a matter for the Chair. I do not think that we need a substitute Deputy Speaker in the form of the hon. Gentleman who has graced us by his presence. I do not expect for a moment that the Minister will accept the amendment, because he does not believe in any form of parliamentary scrutiny of the security services. However, even though these amendments may be lost, I hope that they contain the sort of changes which the next Labour Government will be able to carry out. Given a tighter definition of subversion, one hopes that it will not be possible in future for Conservative Members, such as the Minister, to bait us on what the Labour party did when in office. 6.30 pm Much has been said about those who want to undermine parliamentary democracy. Yet in the last few days it has been discoveredit is not an allegation but a confirmed factthat someone working at the Department of Trade and Industry has a known Nazi past, has been involved in the most extreme Right-wing organisations, went to prison for Nazi activity and apparently even now is considering the formation of a new organisation based on race hate and fascism. Despite all the talk about the need for a security service, which I accept, it is surprising that someone with such a background and involvement in extremist Right-wing politics, and who is a declared hater of blacks and Jews, should be a civil servant working in the Department of Trade and Industry. I wonder about the basis on which that gentleman was investigated, or do we take it that so long as someone has a Nazi background and has been to prison for Nazi activity, it is perfectly acceptable, whereas if someone is the general secretary of CND, files can be opened and such a person can be the subject of much gossip by special branch officers through interviewing a former editor of the CND journal?

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Two laws seem to operateone for those who carry out perfectly lawful responsibilities, and another for people on the extreme Right, such as the person I mentioned, who, according to the Department only yesterday, would continue in his job. There must be a much wider look at the security service. At the end of the 307 day, steps should be taken to strengthen the rights of ordinary people, thereby allowing the security service to operate under a much tighter definition of subversion. Mr. Maclennan I do not doubt that the intention behind the amendment is worthy, in that it seeks to strengthen the defence of the individual from unacceptable intrusions into privacy by the exercise of the Secretary of State's discretion. But from the way in which the amendment seeks to achieve its ends and the effect of its language, it is clear that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) is under a misconception. The hon. Gentleman made an error in believing that the most effective way of protecting the citizen from an abuse of discretion is by seeking to narrow that discretion. As I said on Second Reading, senior Ministers who have the duty to authorise interception of communications must have a very widein many cases, almost unlimiteddiscretion, and the real protection of the individual from the abuse of power which such discretion makes possible is the ex post facto examination of the exercise of the discretion, provided in the Bill by the continuing role of the commissioner, and the right of access to a tribunal for a remedy. The attempt to narrow the ambit of the Secretary of State's discretion in respect of clause 2(2)(a) should not be supported. Whether or not the amendment succeeds in narrowing the discretion is far from resolved by the speech of the hon. Member for Erdington. I do not believe it achieves the purpose which it seeks, nor do I believe that the definition in amendment No. 1 for the defence of the realm or to prevent subversion, terrorism or espionage" is narrower than that contained in the phrase "national security" which is in the Bill. Nothing that the hon. Gentleman has said has persuaded me that the Labour party would succeed in reducing the circumstances in which Secretaries of State might exercise their discretion if Parliament were to make the mistake of accepting the definition in amendment No. 1, which I consider to be verbose and unnecessary. The hon. Gentleman's apparent justification for the amendment was some dissatisfaction with the definition of subversion given by Lord Harris of Greenwich, a former Labour Minister, and acted upon by the Labour Government during their term of office. The hon. Gentleman made an extraordinary point when he said that he and his colleagues had been elected to use political, industrial and other means to overthrow the Government. Mr. Corbett I did not say that. Mr. Maclennan

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When the hon. Gentleman reads Hansard tomorrow, he will see that he said something like it. Mr. Corbett The point I was trying to make was that, by political means through the ballot box, we should try to throw out the Government. Mr. Maclennan That reinforces my point. The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood Lord Harris's definition, which refers not to Government but to parliamentary democracy. It is wholly misconceived to seek to redefine 308 subversion when that conceals the circumstances set out by Lord Harris, which do not need to be altered. actvities intended to overthrow parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means are patently unlawful. Mr. Waddington The hon. Gentleman does not do justice to himself, because the definition is in two parts and it is not even a question of either-or. The definition as a whole includes activitieswhich threaten the safety or well being of the State", and which are also intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy". [Official Report, House of Lords, 26 February 1975; Vol. 357, c. 947.] Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that there is no need for even a moment's hesitation and that no one but an idiot would conclude that trying to replace the Government through the ballot box came within Lord Harris's definition? Mr. Maclennan I agree entirely with the Minister. I was merely focusing on the part of Lord Harris's definition which the hon. Member for Erdington addressedhis reference to the overthrow of parliamentary democracy. The amendment dresses up a proposal which is somewhat misleading. On the face of it, the proposal seeks to narrow the Minister's discretion, but it does not achieve that. On the face of it, the proposal provides a remedy for the aggrieved citizen, but it does not achieve that. For those reasons, the House should reject the amendment. Mr. Waddington The question which the House is addressing is whether we can find a more appropriate phrase than "national security" when defining the Secretary of State's powers to issue warrants under clause 2. First, the phrase "national security" is no stranger to us. It has appeared in many statutes over the years. It appeared in the Employment Protection Act 1975, in the Race Relations Act 1976, and in about 50 further Acts sprinkled through the statute books. No Government have found it necessary or appropriate to define the term, which Parliament has accepted as it is, when passing those Acts. By their nature, decisions about questions of national security must be for Ministers, who must form a judgment in

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the light of all the information available to them about what does or does not raise issues of national security. Uniquely, under the Bill there is an independent check on those decisions by the tribunal or the commissioner, who will be able to see all the facts. Therefore, Parliament has less to complain about on this occasion than on previous occasions when the Labour Government were perfectly happy to put before Parliament Bills in which the phrase "national security" was used with no suggestion that any protection should be afforded to citizens lest the Labour Government should misconstrue the meaning of that expression. Mr. Eldon Griffiths Given the fact that the Government are providing these new safeguards, is it not curious that the previous Administration, which operated Lord Harris's definition, at no time felt constrained to bring to the House legislation to deal with the problem about which Opposition Members now complain? Mr. Waddington My hon. Friend is right. We had this nonsense from the Opposition last year on the Data 309 Protection Act 1984. Every sort of fiddling, piddling, ridiculous criticism was made of the Bill, but no explanation given why the Labour Government never introduced one when they were in power. Yet they now try to pose as the guardians of liberty. As they did nothing when they were in office, we can be excused for growing slightly irritated by their cant. Secondly, the use of the phrase is appropriate because it properly reflects the way in which interception has been authorised by successive Governments of the Left and Right. It emphasises the important point that the Bill provides for no extension of existing practices. That is why I was glad to hear the reply of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) a few moments ago. Thirdly, the use of the phrase "national security" is especially appropriate in the context of the Bill because article 8 of the convention on human rights refers to matters being done in the interests of national security. What could be more natural than for us to import into the Bill a phrase from the convention, when part of this exercise is to ensure that we conform to our obligations under the convention? 6.45 pm Fourthly, when I consider the Maxwell Fyfe directive, I can see why the formulation in the amendment was reached. However, it is obvious from all that the hon. Gentleman has said that there is a complete misconception by the Opposition. There is obviously more to preserving the nation's security than safeguarding against subversion, terrorism and espionage. I am taking not merely the narrow point that the amendment deals only with prevention and not with the detection of those who may have engaged in such activities although it is extremely odd that detection should be omittedbut the point that the defence of the realm, which is one of the phrases that appears in the amendment, together with these words is of uncertain meaning. If, in this context, it

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means no more than defence against armed attack, the phrase is certainly not wide enough to cover all that it is necessary to do and that has previously been done. I refer hon. Members to paragraph 10 of the White Paper published in February 1985. It states that interception is authorised in accordance with the Government's requirements for intelligence in support of its defence and foreign policies whenthatis necessary in the interests of national security. Interception may be necessary to protect our national security at international level to provide secret intelligence in the foreign and defence areas. Undoubtedly, the acquisition of such intelligence may sometimes be essential in the interests of national security. Without it, the Government's ability to safeguard the country's vital interests would be undermined in a way which I do not believe Opposition Members can intend. No previous Government have contemplated the sort of changes proposed in the amendment, and great harm would be done to our national interests if the amendment were carried. I now turn to the question of subversion. First, I shall put into perspective the use of the power to intercept on this ground. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) was right continually to remind the House that at present the word "subversion" does not appear in the Bill. It is for the Secretary of State to decide whether a warrant is necessary in the interests of national security. The starting point is satisfaction in the mind of the Minister that 310 interception is necessary. His view can be considered by the commissioner. If the commissioner gets it wrong, his view may be rejected by the tribunal, if a complaint is made to it by someone who is affected. Therefore, although Lord Harris's definition is a statement of cases within one limb of the national security test, it is not part of the Bill, and no definition of subversion is needed for the Bill to work effectively. I shall now deal with the meaning of subversion, because the Opposition seek to incorporate a definition of it which not only does not correspond with Lord Harris's definitionwe have gone over that so often that hon. Members must be tired of hearing that that is the casebut which is different from and far more limited than the one that they sought to incorporate in Committee. I remind the House that they then defined subversion as having in contemplation the overthrow of the Government. Now they say that that is wrong and that subversion exists only when there is an attempt. Even more strangely, they say that it should not be an attempt to overthrow a Government, only to overthrow a Parliament. Can one imagine anything more ridiculous? So tight is the definition which they are now trying to persuade Parliament to accept that it is hard to see how anything could be subversion under this definition except the gunpowder plot. It is sheer nonsense, and we have better things to do in the House than to debate sheer nonsense. There can be no doubt that those changes would make far more difficult the task Sir Philip Goodhart (Beckenham) Surely the gunpowder plot was an attempt to blow up the House of Lords. I thought that was the policy of the Opposition. Mr. Waddington

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That may be so, but it is absurd that they should put down an amendment on Report which is entirely contrary to what they said in Committee. Mr. Cash Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the last time there was at attempt to put down such an amendment was during the interregnum, when Cromwell was in charge of things? Mr. Waddington I shall not indulge in a dissertation on the history of the Commonwealth. I intend to draw my remarks to a close, which will no doubt give much satisfaction to the House. I am sure that hon. Members will not hesitate a moment before rejecting the most absurd amendment that has been tabled during the proceedings on this Bill. Question put, That the amendment be made: The House divided: Ayes 122, Noes 226. Question accordingly negatived. Sir Philip Goodhart I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 2, line 23 at end insert 'or unless the persons whose transmissions by post or whose communications by a public telecommunications system are the subject of a warrant are officials of any Government department or of Her Majesty's Armed Forces or of any police force, who are authorised to receive and read information that for the time being is classified as secret.'. Mr. Deputy Speaker With this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 3, in page 2, line 29 at end insert '(5) No warrant shall be needed to intercept the communications of any public servant who is entitled to read Government documents classified "secret"... Sir Philip Goodhart In the debate on the previous amendments, my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) pointed out that the word "subversion" does not have any part in the Bill, although all the speeches from the Labour Benches, without exception, have touched on the subject of subversion, in one way or another. The amendments which I and my hon Friend the member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) have tabled are not concerned with trying to draw up guidelines on tapping the telephones of business men or of trade union leaders who may be conspiring with agents of foreign countries to do damage to the country. We are not concerned with trying to draw up guidelines to exclude or include members of organisations which may be seeking to dismantle the defences of the country.

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The amendments reflect the concern of my hon. Friend and myself that we should do nothing in the Bill that makes it more difficult to track down spies and traitors who have high position in the public service. We are anxious that we should not inadvertently make it more difficult to unmask what the headline writers in the popular press would call "traitors in high places". No one has to seek employment in that part of the public service which entitles him to work with secret material. Those who choose to undertake this work, whether it be in the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office, GCHQ or the Underwater Research Establishment at Portland, are generally required to undergo some form of security vetting. Despite that, within the past few years, vetted employees from all these establishments have been convicted of espionage. Therefore, it seems probable that our vetting procedures need some improvement and change from time to time. I do not see why the routine random tapping of personal communication should not be part of the continuous vetting system. Mr. Golding Would this category include all members of the Privy Council? Sir Philip Goodhart I see no reason why anybody working with secret material should be excluded. I am concerned that the Bill will inadvertently make it more difficult to introduce such random taps, so my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds and I have put down these amendments. I commend them to the House. Mr. Eldon Griffiths I support my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Sir P. Goodhart) in everything that he has said. I recognise that he is suffering from a 314 temporary disability, which I am sure will disappear quickly, and that the brevity of his speech reflected that. He had a great deal more to say and no doubt he would have said it if he had been able to do so. My hon. Friend and I seek to tackle the problem of traitors and spies at very high levels within the Government. Our view is that we need to do a better job of discovering those spies and traitors who exist, or have existed, in high places, and also of preventing their activities being used to damage the highest interests of the state. I start by defining the problem. The external threat from the Soviet bloc intelligence services remains undiminished. The internal threat has become more varied and grown more serious. The fall in Communist party membership has been accompanied by the proliferation of new subversive groups of the extreme Left and the extreme Right (mainly the former) whose aim is to overthrow democratic parliamentary government in this country by violent or other unconstitutional means, not shrinking, in the case of the most extreme groups, from terrorism to achieve their aims. They might well seek to make public information that is injurious to the interests of this country, not at the behest or for the benefit of any foreign power, but simply to harm this country itself, whether by causing a rift between it and its allies or otherwise, and by these means to

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weaken its defences against the overthrow of democratic government here by force. Those are the words of the Security Commission as quoted to the House in the White Paper laid by the Prime Minister in 198182. To summarise what it says, both the external threat and the internal threat are serious and growing. Nor is that the only definition of the threat to which the amendments are addressed. Only 18 months ago we had information in a further report of the Security Commission dealing with the damage caused by the spy and traitor, Geoffrey Prime. We read in paragraph 5.22 of the 1983 report of the Security Commission: In the course of Prime's employment both in the RAF and in GCHQhe had access to information of the very highest secrecy. An account of the information which we believe Prime passed to the Russians and our assessment of the damage he caused are set out in Appendix D. Quite rightly, appendix D was never published, but we get some inkling of what it contains from paragraph 1.6 of the same report of the Security Commission: The disclosures following Prime's trial naturally occasioned the gravest public disquiet that a traitor involved in the most secret intelligence work should have for so long escaped discovery. Moreover the extent of the injury to the public interest was greatly magnified by the fact that United States secrets had been no less gravely compromised than our own. There can be no doubt that the problem which my hon. Friend and I are addressing in these amendments is very real. Nor are these the only examples where people in high positions have behaved as spies and traitors. There was the extraordinary case of Commander Trestrail, though I ought not perhaps to apply the words "spy" or "traitor" to him. A police officer appointed to safeguard in the first instance the Duke of Edinburgh and subsquently the Queen, Trestrail was in no sense a traitor or a spy. But he was a personality who could, because of his sexual proclivities, have been capable of being blackmailed, as has happened in other cases. According to the report of the Security Commission. at the time that Trestrail was originally engaged to safeguard Her Majesty, he had not been positively vetted. That is most peculiar when one remembers that all members of the special branch who are engaged in protecting foreign 315 Heads of State or Heads of Government when they are in Britain are positively vetted. Trestrail at the material time was not, though I should add that since then the Metropolitan police have imposed positive vetting on all members of the royalty protection squad. 7.15 pm I mention a number of other individuals of whom I have had some passing personal experience. During the 1950s, when I worked in the United States, I came into contact from time to time with senior members of the British diplomatic service working in the British embassy. I am not sure whether I ever met Burgess and Maclean together, but from time to time I had contact with both. Neither of those two was ever imagined by me or any of their colleagues to be traitors or spies, but we now know that they were. Subsequently, it was widely argued in the United States that there was a third mana third traitor and spy. Mr. Golding

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What are we to make of this hon. Member who claims the acquaintanceship of those two spies and then puts up a smokescreen about a third man? Mr. Griffiths It was bruited about in the United States, especially in the intelligence community, that there was a third man. At the time that was denied by the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and members of the security service. Subsequently we discovered that Kim Philby, whom I also met, was a spy and a traitor. If it helps the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding) with his interventions, I may say that a former British ambassador, whom I know well, shocked me the other day by asking me whether I remembered when we had last met. I replied that I did not. He said, "It was when I gave you lunch in Beirut with Kim Philby." I had forgotten the incident. My point is that Burgess, Maclean and Philby were all spies in high places and that they did irreparable damage to our country. They were members of the foreign service, but there were others in the defence services. I think of Vassall and of Blake, and since then we have had the shocking case of Geoffrey Prime. I make one specific point about the Prime case to my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, who I am glad to see in his place. The allegations about spying in the security services, notably in the book by Mr. Chapman Pincher, were examined very carefully by the Security Commission. My right hon. and learned Friend will recall that in May 1982 the Diplock Security Commission reported to the Prime Minister and that the Prime Minister, who has been more open about the procedures of the Security Commission than any other British Prime Minister, told the House in her White Paper of May 1982: The procedures as they have been appliedhave worked well. She added that the present system of security was well conceived and operated effectively. Unfortunately, as we discovered some nine months later, that conclusion was not accurate. It was then discovered that, despite the investigations that the Security Commission itself had conducted, Geoffrey Prime was still at work, undetected. It is right to remind the House that, as the White Paper of that day made clear, there had been an investigation by 316 the Security Commission which lasted nine months and involved 32 meetings and interviews with 36 witnesses, among whom, I must suppose, since the Security Commission was conducting the investigation, were the heads of all our counter-espionage services. At the end of that investigation, the Security Commission gave the Prime Minister its considered assessment of the efficacy of the vetting arrangements set up after Radcliffe and applied throughout Geoffrey Prime's career. That assessment said all was well. But that assessment turned out to be wrong. It did not uncover Geoffrey Prime, but it should have done so. If the security services had had better instrumentalities, would they have been able to do the job that they failed to do? The Security Commission concluded that at the time there were no available resources whereby Prime's treachery could have been detectedsave only perhaps the polygraph. I understand that experiments as to the efficacy of the polygraph are continuing and, no doubt at some stage, the Home Secretary or the Prime Minister will give us the conclusions. However, I believe that, if the security services had had available to them the powers proposed in the amendment, there would in fact have been a much greater chance that they would have apprehended Prime during his

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period at GCHQ. No one can be certain that that would have happened but the chances would have been far better if it had been axiomatic that no person handling intelligence material at the level that was available to Prime should be immune from having his telephone tapped. The central point of the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham and myself is that too many of the acts of treason and espionage that have come to light have been conducted by people at the very highest levels. Mr. Corbett From public schools. Mr. Griffiths I accept that. Too many of them have been from public schools. Too many have come from the Oxbridge background. But that is in no way an indictment of public schools or Oxbridge. What matters is that too many of these acts of espionage and subversion have come from those occupying positions in which they have access to information that is classified for the time being as secret. Those who join the police service put aside most of their personal civil liberties, and rightly so. From the moment of engagement, a police officer may join no trade union, engage in no politics, affiliate to no political or trade union organisation. He must live where he is told and be available 24 hours a day. Certain officers too, are covered by the Official Secrets Act 1911, and that is entirely correct. It is a precondition of the policeman's employment that he should accept the restrictions imposed on his civil liberties that are necessary for him to do his job properly. We are now asking in these amendments that another category of public servant at the highest level should accept as a condition of employment that some of the civil liberties that are available to the generality of people must be forgone. It is a proper and reasonable condition of service that those at the most senior levels in the Ministry of Defence, in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, perhaps in GCHQ, and certainly in the Atomic Energy Authority, and any of the agencies that are to be engaged in space, especially where they collaborate with the Americans in the strategic defence initiative, should be 317 asked, as a condition of taking on their post, to put aside the civil liberties that the rest of us enjoythe right not to have our communications intercepted when suspicion justifies interception. Mr. Golding Do the hon. Members for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) and for Beckenham (Sir P. Goodhatt) include Privy Councillors? Do they include the Home Secretary in this category?
***************************************************************************** The Soviet Union: Relations with the West HL Deb 23 April 1985 vol 462 cc1012-112

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Lord Hankey My Lords, I am very glad to support my noble friend Lord Home's Motion. I think it is most important to improve our relations with the Soviet Union and to have a constant dialogue with the Russians on all current international questions. But we really must not be bamboozled any more. I propose to embroider this theme. In my 38 years as a diplomat I served in five countries neighbouring on Russia and also dealt with the USSR and with communist policies generally for a number of crucial years in the Foreign Office itself. My first visit to Moscow was with Anthony Eden in 1934. Hitler had left the League of Nations and was rearming, and the problem was to draw Russia into a more effective system of collective security. It was obviously in Russia's interest too, and the atmosphere was quite good. I remember we went to lunch with 1081 Litvinov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, at his dacha outside Moscow. The door was opened by Mrs. Litvinov, who turned out to be a Londoner. She greeted us warmly with the words "Well, fancy you coming to lunch with a horrid old bolshie like me". We went in laughing and the atmosphere never declined. To cut a very long story short, we brought the Russians into the League of Nations and we had a certain amount of co-operation with them in those years, until the Spanish Civil War and Munich, which was an awful calamity. Please note carefully that it was in those years of reasonable relations that the Soviet Union recruited in Cambridge Burgess and Maclean, Philby, Blunt and certainly many more of our countrymen. They also penetrated Spain in a big way, and the amount of communism they were able to introduce in parts of Spain certainly contributed to the rise of Franco. I am not saying anything on Franco's side in this, but there are things to be said on both sides. Come forward, my Lords, to the last part of the war and to the terrible aftermath. We were allies with Russia and we really tried our utmost to help the Russians. Our people at home really wanted to believe in Russian friendship. Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt got to know Stalin quite well and could not easily believe he would be as mistrustful after the war as he had been before. We hoped to co-operate in a post war settlement of Germany. But note carefully what happened: it was in those years that the USSR reneged on the Yalta and Potsdam agreements and they forcefully communised Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania and Bulgaria, and we only just saved Greece. They had previously absorbed Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into the Soviet Union. They had a good shot at the Finns, but the Finns were too tough for them. They communised East Germany, contrary to all the agreements we had made with them. If it had not been for the Marshall Plan, OEEC and NATO, for all of which we must be greatly indebted to the Americans and to our great Foreign Secretary, Mr. Ernest Bevin, and I must say also to the generous bipartisan support from Mr. Churchill and Mr. Anthony Eden in Parliament, I think Stalin might well have communised the whole of Western Europe. I know that he intended to do that. There really was a cold war, but it was Stalin's cold war and definitely not ours. In the 1950s the scene changed again. Stalin died in 1953. A new era opened. B & K travelled all over the place, if your Lordships remember. We were extremely glad to see them and we all tried hard to open the way for better times. But then what happened? That attractive wolf in sheep's clothing, Fidel Castro, replacing an unpopular and brutal dictatorship, was established in Cuba and became a centre of support for subversive moments in Latin America, led by brilliant guerrilla leaders like Che Guevara. When the French had to withdrew from Indo-China, another brilliant guerrilla leader, Ho Chi Minh, communised North Vietnam; and, finally, in spite of the agreements which we had made and about which we were told today, conquered South Vietnam, where the Soviet Union has now one of the biggest and 1082 best naval bases in the

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Pacific. Attention has been drawn today to the domino effect, which is now going on in South East Asia. Incidentally, the Soviet Union also got a naval base in India from which area we had withdrawn. Does not all that call for some reflection? In the 1970s, we had the heady period of dtente. We are greatly indebted to my noble friend Lord Moran for the fascinating description that he gave of the misuse of those attractive phrases by the Soviet Union. Having lived for years behind the Iron Curtain, including in Hungary, I listened with fascination and agreed with everything that he said. But, unfortunately, the Helsinki agreement did not carry us very far on human rights behind the Iron Curtain. President Carter was bamboozled by the talk of detente, which he construed quite differently from the correct way that my noble friend put it. The Europeans were in a mess and were bamboozled also. In those years, the Russians secured communist control of Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Libya and South Yemen. They have a naval base in Aden now and they have troops on Socotra Islandsomething that we never achieved. Now of course there is Aghanistan. They also laid the groundwork for extensive penetration and subversion in Central America which, if it now succeeds, would change the balance of power in the world. We really have to watch that situation, although like the mass of my countrymen I do not like it. Over 50 years the Russians have taken advantage of every improvement in our official relations with them to recruit agents among us, to press forward insidiously to get influence and even control of more and more countries in the outside world and to undermine Western influence there. It is what the French call un recul pour mieux sauter, and we have to look out for that. They have built up a world-wide fleet, far too big to be purely defensive. Their very high level of armaments, both conventional and nuclear, hangs like a dark cloud over Europe and over all their neighbours. It is extremely important to negotiate an understanding to limit or reduce the arms race. We cannot do that from a position of inferiority. Any act of unilateral disarmament on our side would be entirely counterproductive and probably very dangerous. I am very sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, is not present to hear me say that. I speak from great experience of dealing with these people. The conclusion of this short review of our era is, I think, very clear: try to be friends with the bear but do not let him hug you. That is very dangerous. Now we have this new leader in Russia, Mr. Gorbachev, with a far more agreeable and forthcoming personality than his predecessors. How ought we to handle our relations with him in the light of our previous experience over the years? I think that it is extremely importantbut extremely importantto lose no opportunity of settling outstanding problems with the Russians. Let us get our official relations on the best possible basis. I agreed with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill of Harrow, said about getting the widest possible contacts. Let them go on with the scientists and everybody else. Let them get to know lots and lots of 1083 Russians. I think that the Russians have more to learnand, in a way, to losefrom contacts with us than we have from contacts with them. We should realise the importance of "the idea". I agreed very much with what my noble friend Lord Mayhew said. I do not think that we have to be ashamed of what we have done. We have done a splendid job in Europe. But the force of "the idea" is something that the British underrate. We underrated the force of Hitler's idea. That was a great error. We never believed that he would start extermination camps; I could not possibly believe it. With the Russians also their ideas are very important. I remember once going to a dreadfully boring dinner party in Warsaw and sitting opposite General Spychalski who was the principal communist in the Polish army. After a time the dinner got too boring and I fixed the general with a beatling eye and said, "Now look, General, there is something I don't understand about what you do". "Why, what's that?". "Well", I said,

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"you purvey politics to the Polish army, don't you? If we purveyed politics to our army, they probably wouldn't fight. How do you explain the difference?" "Ah", he said, "you haven't understood the position at all. You see, your secret weapon is the atom bomb but our secret weapon is 'the idea'. We believe that if you combine a million men together with the same good idea they will fight even better than if they had an atom bomb". That was a jolly good answer. I just say to your Lordships that we have a very, very good idea in our democracy and it is reasonably successful. I wish that we had less unemployment; it is dangerous. But our democratic idea is something that I think we have to propagate and to bear in mind in our relations with the Soviet Union and the satellites. It is amusing to recall that General Spychalski was later accusednot so much laterof having co-operated with me and the American ambassador to produce a counter-revolution and introduce a regime of priests and landlords. I had already left Poland. I was not a Catholic, although I belong to the Church of England, and I had never owned a square yard of land, so I thought that this was a big joke. But General Spychalski was condemned to 10 years in prison, and I was careful not to go back to Poland. When Stalin died, he was let out after three months, and he became Minister of Defence and later was President of Poland for years and years. ***************************************************************************** Interception of Communications Bill HL Deb 16 May 1985 vol 463 cc1255-71 Lord Harris of Greenwich My Lords, I welcome the fact that we are debating this Bill today, but I do not propose to go through the history of it. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said. His version of history was rather more accurate than that of the Home Secretary in another place. That is undoubtedly the position, but I found it remarkable that the Home Secretary spent quite so much time boasting that it was a truly wonderful thing that the Government brought forward this Bill without at any stage referring to the fact that the only reason it was being brought forward was that the Government had been defeated in this House. However, as we recall from what he said last year, the noble Viscount gave an undertaking then that we would have this Bill and he has entirely fulfilled his bargain, as we would expect. But as the noble Viscount will realise, our debate today is bound to range over rather wider territory than that covered by the Bill itself; for the Bill deals not only with activities involving the police but also those involving the intelligence community. After the report of the Security Commission on the case of Mr. Michael Bettaney and the allegations on the Channel 4 programme involving Miss Massiter, it is clearly our duty to raise these matters in the House today. First, I turn to the contents of the Bill. I believe that telephone and mail interception is highly necessary in a number of clearly defined and strictly limited circumstances: for instance, where it is the only means of detecting and bringing to justice people involved in serious crime. In such a case I believe it is essential. May I take just one fairly obvious example. As we all know, we are now faced with an alarming increase in the trafficking in narcotics. This is a major problem in many parts of the country and it is growing, as again we all know, at a most disturbing rate. High quality professional criminals are continuing to move into this trade and are establishing relationships both with the Mafia and with criminal elements in south-east Asia and South America. It seems to me not only desirable but absolutely essential that the police and customs authorities are given encouragement to use both the existing powers and

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those set out in this Bill to apply for warrants to help them bring to justice these dangerous men and women. There is only one point that I would make on this to the noble Viscount; it is that in the 1980 White Paper, and repeated in the most recent White Paper, the Government said that a test applied by Ministers in authorising a warrant was whether or not the alleged offence was serious. This is definedI am aware this happened during the period of the previous Governmentas to whether the person concerned, if he had no previous convictions, could reasonably be expected to be sentenced to at least three years' imprisonment. I am bound to say that I find three years' imprisonment rather on the low side. I suspect that in the overwhelming majority of cases where warrants have been applied for and granted by the Secretary of State, they would have been issued even if the test had been five rather than three years. I am bound to say I would prefer the higher figure, and I 1268 hope that the noble Viscount and Ministers will consider this point at a later stage. Quite apart from issues of crime, there are other circumstances which clearly necessitate the use of intercepts, as the noble Viscount said in his own speech. I believe the case for this approach was argued in the most persuasive terms by the European Court of Human Rights itself in the Klass case of 1978 when it said in its judgment, and I quote: Democratic societies nowadays find themselves threatened by highly sophisticated forms of espionage and terrorism with the result that the State must be able in order effectively to counter such threats to undertake the secret surveillance of subversive elements operating within its jurisdiction. The court has therefore to accept that the existence of some legislation granting powers of secret surveillance over mail, post and telecommunications is, under exceptional circumstances, necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security and/or for the prevention of terrorism or crime". That is the European Court of Human Rights in the Klass case. As I have indicated, I think it got it just about right, because this country is threatened, as are our colleagues in the European Community, with espionage directed by the KGB and from East European embassies, and also by a sustained campaign of terrorist violence. We have also to accept that the level of collaboration between terrorist organisations is growing. Not only that; there is now regular contact between many of the terrorist organisations, and some of them have even been involved in joint operations. In these respects, I believe the powers set out in the Bill are justified. But the question before us today is not just whether the Bill deals satisfactorily with these issues and with the Malone case, or whether (to take an example) the members of the tribunal to be appointed under the terms of the Bill should be appointed by Ministers or by some independent authority; it is whether, following recent revelations involving the security service and the secret intelligence service, the Bill should not cover far wider territory. It is this issue I now propose to discuss. First, when discussing matters of this sort, if we are frank with ourselves we have to accept one deeply unpalatable truth; that is, that as a nation our record in security cases over the past 40 years has been dreadful. We have had the atom spies. They gravely damaged our relations with the United States, to the immense benefit of the Soviet Union. We have had the cases of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt, all men with a most direct involvement in our intelligence community, all passing on some of the highest secrets of state to the Soviet Union. We had Blake, an intelligence officer who became a Soviet agent and caused the deaths of several of our own agents in eastern Europe. And only two years ago we had the case of Mr. Geoffrey Prime. He was a Soviet agent for 13 years, first with the Royal Air Force in Berlin and later with GCHQ. Then, as your Lordships may remember, Mr. Prime was brought to justice, not as a result of the activities of our own counter-intelligence service but as the result of an investigation into a number of sex offences by the West Mercia police.

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Most recently we have had the case of Mr. Michael Bettaney, an MI5 officer who offered his services to the Soviet Union as a spy. I welcome the detailed recent report on this matter by the Security Commission. But 1269 I still find it quite extraordinary that a man involved in highly secret work continued to drink the equivalent of a bottle of spirits a day without it apparently occurring to anybody that it was a good idea to have another look at his positive vetting status. The Bettaney case was serious enough in itself. What made it even more disgraceful was that it was the last in a whole series of scandals which have affected our intelligence community. I consider that this case and the deplorable series of cases that preceded it make it necessary for us to consider whether it is not now essential to write into this piece of legislation specific statutory requirements affecting the accountability of both MI5 and MI6. At present the position of the Government on this appears to be inflexible. "Leave it to us", they say. "These matters are far too sensitive to allow any outsiders to become involved" they say. The only trouble about that particular argument is that Parliament has followed precisely that advice in the past. They left it to Government after the defection of Burgess and Maclean. They did the same in the Philby case, in the Blake case and in the Blunt case. Two years ago they left it to Ministers after the revelations in the Prime case. Are we in Parliament really going to tolerate the same cosy complacency after the revelations in the Bettaney case? Then there have been the allegations of Miss Massiter and an unnamed former MI5 officer in the recent Channel Four programme. What was alleged here was altogether different. Two serious charges were made. First, it was suggested that, in deliberate breach of the Maxwell Fyfe guidelines, Ministry of Defence officials obtained information from MI5 about the political beliefs of members of the executive committee of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, for use by Ministers. Secondly, it was alleged that the definition of a subversive, as given by me in this House in 1975 and as was quoted a few moments ago by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, was misused so as to enable telephone intercepts to be used against the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. What was alleged here was that a warrant was secured for intercepts against a Communist Party member who was on the executive of the CND and that, as a result, information was obtained relating to many non-Communists in that organisation. I hardly have to say that I am not regarded as a particular friend of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Indeed, since I was Hugh Gaitskell's personal assistant 25 years ago and watched the CND marching round a hotel in Scarborough chanting "Gaitskell must go", I have regarded the CND as dedicated political opponents. However, there is a big distinction between political opponents and a subversive organisation. I do not regard the CND as a subversive organisation, either within the definition as given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, or as given by me in this House in 1975; nor, am I am glad to say, does the Home Secretary, who made his position on that clear. That being so, when allegations of the kind made by Miss Massiter and others are publicised, and widely publicised, I believe that it is necessary that they should be investigated by someone. 1270 I believe that there are a number of possibilities. The first is that which was put forward by Sir Edward Gardner, a Conservative Member of the House of Commons. During the Committee stage of this Bill in the Commons, he proposed that there should be an independent complaints commissioner standing outside MI5 and MI6, who could be approached by members of these two organisations if they believed that some improprieties were taking place. Given the very difficult position of members of both these services, it seems to me to be crucially important that some attention should be given to this particular proposal of Sir Edward Gardner. The commissioner, as recommended by Sir Edward, would, as I have indicated, have a right to look into these complaints by members of MI5 and MI6 and then report his findings to the Secretary of State.

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If I may give a single example relating to Miss Massiter, I think it is only right to say that, as I indicated earlier, she alleged that there had been a deliberate breach of the Maxwell Fyfe guidelinesthe directive issued by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe when he was Home Secretary some time agoby members of MI5. I have no idea whether that allegation is true or false, but it seems to me essential that if members of both these services are genuinely concerned about what is going on, they should have a right to go to some independent person who can look into the matter and, if necessary, report on the question to the appropriate Secretary of State. As I have indicated, I think that the House should look at this particular proposal. I believe that it is a modest one and I think that it would represent a considerable improvement on the present situation. Then there is the far more wide-ranging proposal to establish a small committeebe it a Select Committee of the House, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, or, as I would prefer, a small committee of Privy Counsellors from both Houses of Parliamentto consider intelligence issues from time to time. I favour that approach. I think it is quite apparent that many of the issues that I have mentioned today raise highly sensitive questions about the efficiency of our two intelligence organisations which obviously cannot be freely debated in public. Unlike other issues, they obviously do not fall into that category. That being so, I believe that it is the responsibility of Ministers to reasure both Parliament and the country that vigorous action is being taken to bring to an end this deplorable series of security blunders which has taken place under Governments of both political persuasions and which, unhappily, has damaged the reputation of both MI5 and MI6 and, for entirely understandable reasons, has led to some lowering of morale among members of both organisations. I hope that we shall not be told once again that these issues are so sensitive that no one outside Government can possibly be allowed to have any knowledge of them. I believe that that argument would be very hard indeed to accept. First, in the United States, Congress has a degree of over-sight of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, and the United States has rather more secrets to protect than we do. Secondly, as a result of the sheer scale of past Soviet penetration of our own security organisations, I believe that it would be foolish to 1271 suggest that more damage would have been done to this country's vital interests if there had been some consistent monitoring by a committee of senior Privy Counsellors, than by the lamentable series of episodes which, as we know, have taken place. I believe that the Government have to accept that there is public disquiet about the past failures of our intelligence community. I hope that they will recognise this and, by agreeing to amendments to this Bill, use it to store the morale of both organisations and public confidence about their competence ***************************************************************************** Security Services HC Deb 15 December 1986 vol 107 cc782-828 782 Mr. Speaker Before I call the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), I must tell the House that I have not selected the amendment on the Order Paper. 3.43 pm Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington)

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I beg to move, That this House calls upon Her Majesty's Government to set up a judicial enquiry to examine the circumstances surrounding alleged attempts by officers of the security services to subvert the government of Lord Wilson of Rievaulx in the 1970s, and to carry out all party discussions with a view to repealing official secrets legislation and to the introduction of a new legal framework giving appropriate and necessary protection to official secrets and, in particular, official secrets in relation to national security; and calls for consistency in the application of the law. There are two motions on the Order Paper and they are almost identical. One is an earlyday motion and the other a motion for debate. The early-day motion carries the names of 153 hon. Members. Therefore, I start this debate with the support of 153 hon. Members and I intend at the end of the debate to divide the House, if possible, and to pick up more hon. Members in support of the principles set out in the motion. On my way to London last week a colleague I was travelling with asked me what I was trying to prove. During the course of this campaign I have been trying to prove that the law as it stands is not working, that the law is an ass in so far as it is being inconsistently applied, and that there are those who are beyond the law. Those who are beyond the law include certain groups of officers within the security services. Some authors and journalists who rely for their daily bread on being fed information on the security services are also beyond the law. They are in the business of buying and selling secrets, most notably Mr. Chapman Pincher. Mr. Rupert Allason, a Conservative party candidate otherwise known as Mr. Nigel West, has also sold secrets. I include among those who are beyond the law a number of security officers, including specifically Mr. Arthur Martin. Mr. Martin is a former Clerk to the House. Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge) The hon. Gentleman is making a speech about those who consider themselves to be outside the law. Would he dare to make the rest of the speech outside in the street without the benefit of parliamentary privilege? Is that not a far worse abuse of the law? Mr. Campbell-Savours I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has intervened, because it gives me an opportunity to say to those who wish to intervene that I shall be dealing with all of these matters. If at the end of my speech the hon. Gentleman still feels moved to intervene, I shall give way to him. Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) rose Mr. Campbell-Savours Mr. Arthur Martin was a Clerk to the House of Commons from the mid-1970s until approximately 1981. He worked for MI5 until 1965 and then worked for MI6 until 1975. Mr. Arthur Martin remained very close to the security services during that period. Mrs. Kellett-Bowman rose 783

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 Mr. Campbell-Savours Indeed, he remained so close that he was able to brief Mr. Rupert Allason in detail for his book, "A Matter of Trust". I also include among those who are beyond the law the two Conservative Members of Parliament who, if Mr. Wright's allegations are true, were involved in action against the Crown. Mrs. Kellett-Bowman rose Mr. Campbell-Savours Mr. Wright names the two Conservative Members in his book, but I ask the Government to deny that that is the case and that they are named. Mrs. Kellett-Bowman On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it fair for the hon. Gentleman to refer to certain people who are allegedly making money while not saying anything about the gentleman in Australia who is probably making a packet out of his memoirs? Mr. Speaker Order. The question as to whether that is fair is for the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours). Mr. Campbell-Savours I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that you will now understand why it may not be necessary to give way again during my speech. According to Mr. Wright, those Conservative Members of Parliament, only one of whom is now sitting, acted as conduits for the smear campaign against Harold Wilson which was organised from within MI5 by some 30 security officers, some very senior. They knew that the information they were receiving came illegally from within MI5. They did not stop it, nor did they report it to the Home Secretary. They just passed it on in the knowledge that it would destabilise the Labour Prime Minister and his Government. I do not intend to name the Members of Parliament involved, I am simply approaching one of them and asking that person to make a personal statement prior to Mr. Wright's book being published. The whole affair has been plagued by inconsistencies which derive directly from deficiencies in the law. Far worse is the fact that the Government, in a desperate attempt to plug the dyke of inconsistency, have had to practise deceipt and duplicity. That was what Sir Robert Armstrong was doing in the Australian courts. He was lying for the Crown. He lied over the AttorneyGeneral's failure to stop the Pincher book; he lied over the crucial question of how copies of a synopsis of Pincher's book came into the hands of the Government; and he lied over the arrangements for the clearing of Mr. Allason's book. It is better not to answer than to tell a lie. He has disgraced his country and earned the justifiable contempt of Australia. He has also done irreparable damage to the historic relationship between our two peoples. It is only the existence of close family ties at a very personal level between those at home and those in Australia which

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will ensure that the historic relationship endures. I am at a loss to understand the lack of public protest over his indiscretions. What has happened to the old values, or was I brought up to believe in a myth? I was able to predict all this in July 1986, when I raised this matter on three occasions in the House of Commonson 14, 21 and 25 July. I did so with the single intention of smashing the injunction that was pending against The Observer and The Guardian newspapers. I did it by reading into Hansard the Cathy 784 Massiter evidence. I wanted to secure an open debate without the courts breathing down the neck of Fleet Street, because I believed that this affair was not about not the Hollis affair, or about security officers publishing their memoirs, but about one issuethe allegation that attempts had been made to undermine the Wilson Government by security officers. It is the biggest political scandal of this century. It is a story of collusion between the British Right and the security services. It surpasses in importance the Zinoviev letter which effectively sealed the fate of the Labour Government in the 1920s. To quote "Man and an institutionSir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Custody of Cabinet Secrecy" by Mr. J. F. Naylor, published by the Cambridge University Press, on the Zinoviev letter he said: there is no longer room for doubt that 'the political bomb which exploded in the last days of the Labour Government was planted by the intelligence community' the 'Zinoviev letter' was deliberately manipulated by a number of hands to secure a political end, namely Labour's defeat at the polls from a historical perspective, the shocking aspect of the sordid electoral proceedings is the joint intrigue of the intelligence community with leading Tory party officials, including the chairman, Sir Stanley Jackson, and the treasurer, Lord Younger, to ensure the publication of a document bound to influence the latter stages of the campaign. It happened then, it happened in the 1960s and in the 1970s and it will happen again, unless we intervene. Down the years, there have been repeated reports of collusion. Today I want to concentrate not on collusion but on the specific issue of the interfence by the security services with the Labour party and the Government of that time. Mr. Nicholas Soames (Crawley) Has the hon. Gentleman had time to study the Official Report of 8 December 1977 when the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan) said: The Prime Minister has conducted detailed inquiries into the recent allegations about the Security Service and is satisfied that they do not constitute grounds for lack of confidence in the competence and impartiality of the Security Services".[Official Report, 8 December 1977; Vol. 940, c. 1645.] Is the hon. Gentleman saying that what was said by his right hon. Friend was not true? Mr. Campbell-Savours I shall send the hon. Gentleman a copy of the whole statement by my right hon. Friend. The hon. Gentleman proves once again the need for me to finish my contribution, because I intend to deal with these matters. The hon. Gentleman should not be so impetuous. On 12 May 1977 Mr. Barry Penrose and Mr. Roger Courtiour were summoned by Mr. Harold Wilson to his house in Lord North street. During that conversation he set out in detail and at subsequent meetings his allegations against the security services. "The Pencourt File", a book that was published about these matters, said: Sir Harold spoke in detail about the burglaries that he and some of his Labour colleagues in the Government had suffered. He spoke too about the extraordinary 'dirty tricks' which he said had been aimed against some of his Ministers in order to discredit them. He said the culprits were connected with South Africa and with intelligence circles in Britain itself. There was an important story to be investigated, he said, and more than once he used the name Watergate to describe what had been happening in Britain. Sir Harold is

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quoted as saying: I am not certain that for the last eight months when I was Prime Minister I knew what was happening fully, in Security". 785 The book goes on: He" Sir Harold really would not rule out the possibility that individuals working inside MI5, and even MI6, had contributed to the 'smears' which, he complained, had frequently appeared in the Press and elsewhere while he had been at Number 10". That is all on tape and available today to be heard by those who want to know the truth of what happened in that period because those two journalists made a point of taping what they were listening to. Mr. Chapman Pincher, who will feature later in my contribution, also had much to say on these matters. In his book, "Inside Story" he said: Wilson was reported as having accused certain officers of MI5 of having tried to undermine him and his government. He was quoted as believing that some of the disaffected faction in MI5 with extreme right-wing views' had even suggested that there was a Communist cell in the Cabinet and that he and Lady Falklender, his political secretretary, formerly Mrs Marcia Williams, were part of it. Mr. Pincher went on: I have confirmed that these were indeed Sir Harold's views and that long before his feelings about MI5 became public knowledge he had been in the habit of sounding off about them in private This had come to my notice when a most eminent Oxford Professor wrote to me to describe what had happened at a literary lunch he had attended in Leeds in January 1977. 'I happened to sit next to Sir Harold He told me that MI5 had spied on him when he was Prime Minister, plotted against him, tried to secure his downfall. I was embarrassed by this conversation. Finally, I said "But isn't MI5 under the Prime Minister?" He replied, "Oh yes, on paper, but that didn't make any difference."' Mr. Pincher went on: Some of Wilson's friends also told me that he had gone much further in his condemnation of MI5 in conversations with them. There is much in Mr. Pincher's book on these matters and I do not want to detain the House by quoting them because they are there to read for all who are interested in these matters. There were a number of articles in the newspapers at the time. I have a file of articles in the British press, and, in particular, from The Times, which sought to take these allegations seriously and published much material. Indeed, it did further investigative work. We also have the words of Mr. Nigel WestMr. Rupert Allason, the Conservative candidate to whom I have referredwho commented on a plot which took place in the 1960s. He said: It seems that an invitation extended by Lord Mountbatten to various public figures, to engage in talks to discuss the country's decline under Socialism, led to allegations to MI5 of an attempted coup d'tat. Sir Martin Furnival Jones comments on those in an interview with reporters on The Times, much of which is also available today, in a form of which he may not be aware. All those attempts involved security officers. Indeed, the discussions on the allegations that we hear today of what took place in the 1960s involved, to some extent, the same officers who were involved in the 1970s. The only dissenting view on these matters is the voice of Mr. Joe Haines, a very reputable journalist on the Daily Mirror, but I am told that Mr. Haines has had his differences with Lord Wilson and it might be that those differences account in some part for the varying views on these matters. The question is, why was not Lord Wilson taken seriously at the time? The first reason is that the whole 786 issue was overshadowed by the Thorpe affair which dominated Parliament for months and prevented a realistic debate from taking place on security matters. At a time when even reference to the security services was frowned upon in the House, it was seen as the accusation of a retiring politician and Prime Minister. When it was raised in the early 1980s it was once again crowded out by the debate on the Hollis affair and Blunt. Now there is a

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distinction, a difference, and that is because Mr. Wright has surfaced. He is directly involved in these allegations and is the first security officer to whom I give full credence on these matters. He says that he was involved and that, to some extent, he masterminded the operation. He speaks about burgling and bugging all over London. We cannot quote directly from Mr. Wright's manuscript, but we know that by one means or another over the past one and a half years parts of it have come into the hands of the media in Australia and especially into the hands of freelance journalists in New South Wales. That was before the matter became an issue of public controversy. The matter is of immense importance because the allegations strike at the heart of our democratic institutions. The assumption that everyone plays by the Queensberry rules has been shattered. The implications go far wider because, if we look at Zinoviev, the 1968 discussions about a coup and the 1975 discussions about a couperhaps in some ways irrelevant but nevertheless importantwe see the destabilisation of a Labour Government. One has to ask what could happen to a future Labour Government. Could this happen again? If there is any chance of it happening again, Parliament has a duty to act fast. Where dos this stop? The security services could effectively assassinate the character of any politician, and we all know how. Indeed, they could assassinate this Prime Minister by way of rumour and innuendo. The Prime Minister has not the persuasion of my hon. Friends, but in many quarters she is seen as radical in her own way, and all radical Prime Ministers and politicians are threatened by a security service which, in defence of the interests of the establishment, might choose to take action to destabilise its Government. There is a special responsibility on the Prime Minister to act because over the past few years she has upset many interests in Britain. If those interests sought to destroy her, they could do it and the Prime Minister must know that. The hon. Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames) has referred to the response by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan). The hon. Gentleman came in to make an intervention and now he has disappeared to have his press conferece. We know what happened in the inquiry that the hon. Gentleman spoke about. It was small and drew its information from a few people. My right hon. Friend took soundings from the director-general of MI5 and MI6, the very organisations which we now condemn for irresponsible acts. At that time I do not think that my right hon. Friend was fully aware of the implications of the accusation by Sir Harold Wilson. I am sure that he did his job within the confines of his being responsible for the security services. If my right hon. Friend were faced with that decision today, I feel sure that he would undertake a far more detailed and profound inquiry. That is what would happen 787 in the United States of America in the event of such allegations being made there. If such allegations were raised in the United States, Congressional committees of inquiry would be set up to examine them. That is what happened over Watergate, and it is happening today over the supply of weapons to Iran. When Americans feel that their constitution is being challenged by anti-democratic bodies, the first thing they do is to bring into action their Congressional investigative committees to establish the truth. That is the sort of thing that we should do. If such an inquiry were held here, it would reveal the truth. That is at the heart of the first part of the motion. Such an inquiry could well take us down some strange routes and could lead to some interesting doors. The inquiry would have to take evidence from a number of organisations and individuals. It would need to take evidence from Sir Martin Furnival Jones, the former head of MI5, and from MI5 and MI6 officers, including Mr. Wright, if he could be induced to come back to the United Kingdom. It might even have to take evidence from General Sir Walter Walker about civil

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assistance, and from David Stirling's GB75and what about the elusive Mr. Greenwood, with his so-called 700 security vetted members, or perhaps from Mr. G. K. Young, a former deputy director of MI6 and his UNISON committee for action? At first glimpse they may not appear to be elements within MI5, but these fringe organisations operated in conjunction with MI5 officers. That is what an inquiry would establish. Indeed, it might establish that some of the people involved were in the mainstream of British politics. As I have said, two Conservative hon. Members are identified by Mr. Wright. Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) Does my hon. Friend agree that Field-Marshal Lord Carver, who was Chief of the Defence Staff at that time, said that in February 1974 some Army officers at Army headquarters were talking about the possibility of military intervention? That talk was condemned by Field-Marshal Lord Carver, because he would have been the last person to show any disloyalty to Britain and its democratic institutions. Is my hon. Friend aware that, when I raised these matters in the House, among those who pooh-poohed the whole business was the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow), who I understand had some MI5 connections in the past? Mr. Campbell-Savours I do not know of the connections about which my hon. Friend speaks. All such matters would be dealt with exhaustively by a judicial inquiry, if one were set up. It would establish the truth, because we need to know the truth. We need to know the connection between the Conservative party, the security services and these private armies, because that is most embarrassing to the Government. Perhaps that accounts for the Prime Minister's refusal to allow the Wilson allegation transcripts to come out in the Australian courts. The Government allowed the transcripts about Hollis to come out, but they blocked the transcripts about the Wilson allegations. Ministers should tell us why they did that. We need a judicial inquiry and it ought to have most of its hearings in open session, because the matters that I have spoken about have implications for our democratic system. 788 I should now like to turn to the Official Secrets Act, the reforms sought in my motion, and the matter of lifetime obligations of confidentiality to the Crown. Ministers have frequently spoken about that. Ever since I first heard the allegations by Mr. Wright, my overriding objective has been to destroy the case in the Australian court. That is not because I have any sympathy for Wright; on the contrary, to sell information to Summerpage was an act of treachery, and it was equally treacherous of Pincher to buy it. Lord Rothschild's role becomes more mystifying day by day, but a lot has still to come out. I have asked for prosecutions under section 7 of the Official Secrets Act, because that section makes it an offence to incite and persuade civil servants to provide information which is officially secret. When Pincher and Allason appear on television slagging me off and protesting their innocence over section 2 inquiries and hiding behind Treasury solicitors and D notice authorisations, they are missing the point. I am asking for their prosecution not under section 2 of the 1911 Act, but under section 7 of the 1920 Act. No authority can authorise illegality under that Act. I am about to table a parliamentary question asking for the prosecution, under section 7, of Rupert Allason, prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate for Torbay, for soliciting, inciting and persuading Mr. Arthur Martin, the MI6 officer to whom I have referred, to provide information for his book "A Matter of Trust".

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As I have said, Mr. Martin was a Clerk in the House of Commons until 1981. He was Clerk to the Agriculture Select Committee and I am told that he was a pleasant character. He was a member of MI6, and the House is entitled to know what was the relationship between Mr. Arthur Martin and MI6 while he was a Clerk to the House. It was Martin who confronted Blunt with the allegation that he was a spy, and he debriefed him. Martin was a key figure in MI5 and later MI6. I find it curious that no mention of him was made in any book on the security services until the beginning of 1981, after his retirement from the House of Commons, and then in Pincher's book. There was no reference in Pincher's book "Inside Story" in 1978, but Martin left MI6 in 1974, or thereabouts. For whom was Martin working when he was working in the House of Commons? We are entitled to know. Is there an MI6 man in the House of Commons today? The House will know that I have been the subject of repeated accusations of irresponsibility in naming names. Only those in the Press Gallery know how careful I have been not to breach national security in my campaign. My bid to destroy the case was not only to secure the publication of the Wilson allegations but to focus on the nonsense of section 2 of the Official Secrets Act and the inconsistency in that Act. This meant that I had to name names. All the names that I have tabled on the Order Paper are of people who have surfaced themselves and made statements publicly, thereby declaring their interest and identifying themselves as former security officers. They have all broken section 2 of the Official Secrets Act in talking to journalists and authors. All their names are to be found in books available in every public library in the United Kingdom that cares to stock them. I tabled the names to show the inconsistency in the Government's position. I had 43 names the other week. I have tabled two since and I have a further 41. I have no desire to carry on tabling names, but what does one do 789 with those people who have broken the law? Does one ignore them, as the Government seem to have been doing over the past few years? The Government's position is totally inconsistent. It is inconsistent to drag Mr. Wright through the courts while ignoring others in the intelligence community who have leaked information. I have been tabling their names, and it has been interesting to see the Government's response. The names have either been referred to the Metropolitan Police for their investigation or drawn to the attention of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The Government have admitted that prosecutions are now being considered. Inquiries have been set up as a result of names that I have tabled and letters of reprimand have been sent out to former security officers. So much for the allegations of irresponsibility tabled against me. Mr. Eric S. Heffer (Liverpool, Walton) Surely the point that my hon. Friend is making is that the Government are wrong in doing what they are doing. That does not mean that peoole who have given evidence and declared what they were should be prosecuted, because, if we do that, we would be no better than the Government. Mr. Campbell-Savours My hon. Friend is correct. I have tried to explain that my campaign is to show inconsistency. One must table questions to draw attention to those who have not been prosecuted. Mr. Heffer It is one thing to table questions, and another to argue for prosecution. Mr. Campbell-Savours My hon. Friend takes the words out of my mouth.

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Who are the rest of the security officers? West, or Mr. Allason, in "A Matter of Trust" says: Meticulous research backed by hundreds of hours of interviews with agents, double agents and case officers has resulted in answers to these compelling questions. He was interviewing agents and people in the security services, to whom, somehow, he had access. Every one of those agents, in speaking to Allason, broke the law, but the Government took no action. In Pincher's book "Too Secret Too Long" one is able to identify 32 MI5 and MI6 sources, but what action did the Government take against those sources when they fed Mr. Pincher, a highranking member of the Conservative Party? In the book "Conspiracy of Silence", Penrose and Freeman identify 18 officers, all of whom are quoted. All 18 are quoted in default of section 2 of the Official Secrets Act, but there has been no action by the Government. I asked the Government what action had been taken under section 2 to silence them, and the answer was none. In all three cases, no action to prosecute was taken, because the Government gave clearance to the books and in doing so sanctioned leaks from officers. They would never have given clearance for those books unless they had been sanctioning leaks from officers. That is why I tabled a question, to which I have just received an answer from the Secretary of State for Defence, about the operation of the D notice committee. He tells me that he is not in a position to answer questions as to criterion considered and work carried out by that committee. The Government replied that Wright is a former MI5 employee. Are former MI5 employees bound by lifetime obligations to the Crown? If that is true, how did they respond to Friday's letter to the editor in The Times from Mr. Pincher, in which he said: 790 I have never paid Mr. Wright anything. Mr. Wright received royalties on a jointly-authored book". Mr. Pincher now says that Mr. Wright was the author of the book. Last Monday, in a BBC transmission, Mr. Pincher said that he had received approval from the highest levels of the Government. The Government, in the words of Mr. Pincher, if he is to be believed, sanctioned a book by a former MI5 officer. It might be that Mr. Pincher is so worried about the questions I have tabled calling for his prosecution under section 7 for paying money to Mr. Wright that he is wriggling so much that he is now having to mislead the British media into believing that his role was not quite what Parliament is being told and what Ministers are saying behind cupped hands behind closed doors. He is wriggling, and it is interesting to see the way in which he is responding. Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West) Does my hon. Friend agree that the revelation by Chapman Pincher in the letter on Friday is incredibly hard to reconcile with the Attorney-General's comment the idea that we can allow officers or ex-officers of the security services to write books would probably end with us not having any important secrets which should be preserved."[Official Report, 1 December 1986; Vol, 106, c. 620.] Mr. Campbell-Savours My right hon. Friend draws attention again to an inconsistency, but then this whole affair is riddled with inconsistencies, and that is why we want to change the law. All these matters would come out if there were some form of inquiry for, in that case, there were in existence the scrutiny arrangements which were the subject of debate only a week and a half ago in the House of Commons. Many books have been produced by security officers. For example, there is "Handbook for Spies" by Courtney Young and Michael Serpell, both MI5 officers. That book was written on the request of Sir Percy Sillitoe, the director general of MI5. "Cloak without Dagger" was written by Sir Percy Sillitoe with the help of Russell Lee, another MI5 officer. I am told that the journalist, Andrew Boyle, is currently researching a biography of Sir Dick White, another

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former director-general of MI5. What does the Minister intend to do about that book? It may be that it should come into the public domain. We should like to hear what the Minister has to say about that. I am sure that those in Australia want to hear what he has to say about these matters. It is a pity that those involved in the Peter Wright case are summing up now and not examining these matters in evidence. "A Man Called Intrepid" is the biography of Sir William Stephenson, a former head of intelligence. It was written by Hartford Montgomery Hyde, another intelligence officer. Hyde wrote another book entitled "The Quiet Canadian", and included the name of the chief of the British secret intelligence service, Sir Stewart Menzies. He obtained official permission to do so. Sir John Masterman wrote "The Double Cross System". As a former MI5 officer he obtained permission from the Government to publish the book in the early 1970s. I am told that that permission was obtained from a Government of whom the Minister was a member. Perhaps he will deal with that when he replies. Another example is the interesting book which was written by Mr. John Moe which I dug out of the woodwork for the Minister the other week. The book was published only nine weeks ago, and when I tabled a question about it I received the famous blocking answer 791 that it would be inappropriate to discuss how the book was published while proceedings are going on in the Australian courts. That book, which was written by a security officer, has been made available in British shops. I brought Joan Miller's book into the public domain, and when I tabled a question about it the Government decided in desperation and in haste to run to the Irish courts to take out an injunction. A lady judge of the Irish courts gave them a good smack in the face. She realised that it was a lot of nonsense for the Government to apply Mr. Max Madden (Bradford, West) A lot of baloney. Mr. Campbell-Savours That seems to be the in term today. I have mentioned only some of the many books which have been written and published over the years. I have a list of them which came off the computer of the House of Commons. It has become fashionable to hold up in the Chamber lists which have come from Library computers for relating to party conferences, for example. These books all include statements by security officers or are drawn on their experiences, and all these officers have over the years broken the nonsensical law that exists. The Government have turned a blind eye to these happenings Mr. Heffer My hon. Friend may not like this, but of great importance is a book written by Sir Paul Dukes about the secret service operations in the Soviet Union at the end of the first world war. I think that it was published in 1933. It is something that the Government have forgotten. Indeed, most people have forgotten about it. Mr. Campbell-Savours

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My hon. Friend is right. I saw him studying the papers on these matters last week when he was sitting next to me in the Chamber. He has provided another example which goes back 40 or 50 years. I did not introduce it because I felt that it was important to introduce contemporary material. Another interesting name is David Cornwall. I am told that he is known otherwise as John Le Carre. I am sure that I shall be corrected if I am wrong. I am told also that he is a former MI6 officera former section chief in Berlin. Under the guise of novels he has released a substantial amount of information on what Mr. Wright has referred to as tradecraft, which is an interesting term. The Government's policy is being applied inconsistently. Certain writers are given the green light, most notably Pincher and Allason. What is Chapman Pincher's relationship with MI5 and MI6? In my view, it is questionable to say the least. We know that he is a prominent Conservative, but, putting that aside, he claims a friendship with a former director-general of MI6, Maurice Oldfield. He claims to know innumerable members of the security services. The Prime Minister used Chapman Pincher to deal with the Hollis allegations, and the right hon. Lady's statement of 26 March 1981 is a classic. It was as if she were introducing a Green Paper or White Paper. She said: Mr. Speaker, with permission, I will make a statement about the security implications of the book published today that purports to give a detailed account of the investigations into the penetration of the Security Service and other parts of the public service"[Official Report, 26 March 1981; Vol. I, c. 1079.] 792 In other words, the Prime Minister waited for the publication of the book, and on the very day that it came into the public domain she made a statement in the House. I say that the Prime Minister's hand is behind the book that was published by Pincher. If Pincher is right in what he wrote in his article that appeared in The Times last week, the right hon. Lady has sanctioned a breach of the law. Some might say that she, too, should be prosecuted. I believe that Mr. Chapman Pincher is very close to some elements in MI5, and so close that a deal was stitched up to ensure that his book was published. It was Bernard Sheldon, a junior solicitor in MI5 for the Security ServiceI do not know whether he was in MI6who cleared the book. We learn so much from that. If Pincher did not know that he was getting the green light, he certainly knew that by the beginning of 1981. I know that Mr. Pincher denies that that was the position, but anyone reading the Sunday Express over these past weeks, howeverit has been delightful readingwill take all that he has to say with a pinch of salt. His predictions do not come true. He was writing only a few days ago about how my hon. Friends and I were being used by Mr. Turnbull. He claimed that all would be revealed when Mr. Wright went into the witness box. We know now that nothing happened. Readers of the Daily Express and the Sunday Express are entitled to know what went wrong with his predictions. What of Mr. Allason's relations with MI5 and MI6? His relationship is especially interesting. His book, "A Matter of Trust" is an encyclopaedia of information on the security services. At the front of his book there is a plan which sets out the structure of MI5 until 1965, which I hold up for the House to see. How did Allason obtain that information? How did he know what was going on internally? We know that the Government sanctioned the book, because the AttorneyGeneral told us that he had done so. It seems that all the obstacles were cleared. The Government made a few amendments and removed a few names, but all the material contained in the book came into the public domain. I am not saying that it is wrong that this information should be made available publicly, but as the law stands it should not be made available publicly. We know, however, that there were no prosecutions. If the Government are willing to allow that material into the public domain, they should change the law. In providing the

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information they know that security officers have broken section 2 of the Official Secrets Act, yet they are refusing to take action. Hundreds of names were deleted from Mr. Allason's book, but having written it he was invited by MI6 to write another, and it was quickly produced. Indeed, it seems that someone in the background must have been writing it for him. I am told that it was produced in only a few months, yet it dealt once again in great detail with the internal workings of MI6 during a crucial period of its existence. Perhaps even more remarkable is Mr. Allason's book that is entitled "GCHQ". It seems to be a compendium of signals intelligence from the second world war to the present day. How did he get that information? Has someone been leaking? If someone has been leaking, why have prosecutions not been brought under the Act which the Government know is not working in the way that, many years ago, was intended by Parliament? Every author in this business wants to know how Mr. Allason gets his material. He is being systematically fed. This is no ordinary researching effort by Mr. Allason. 793 Could it be his Tory connections, and the fact that he stood in two general elections as a Tory candidate and today stands for the constituency of Torbay? He seems to know more about security services successes than failures, which leads me to believe that he is being fed from on high, and not just my Mr. Arthur Martin, the former Clerk to the House of Commons. I want to know to what extent he was involved in revealing to MI5 Mr. Wright's intention to write a book. The Sunday People, as it is now, published a letter about that matter some years ago. Did he give advance warning to MI5? If he did, why? What was his motive? He has become the unofficial spokesman for the security services, with some form of special access, and with some form of special immunity from prosecution given not only to him but to his sources. The Attorney-General's position confounds me. I cannot understand how he survives politically. From Wright's letter to Pincher, we know that he revealed the innermost considerations of his office on why Allason should not be prosecuted and also told him of Martin's indiscretions in revealing classified information. The Attorney-General himself breached section 2. The Government responded by claiming self-authorisation as a defence. That is rubbish. It does not justify what he did. I have read every word on self-authorisation, including Franks. Selfauthorisation is permissible only when it is part of one's duty, as a Minister in this case, to reveal information. Pincher had no right to that information; he had no duties in regard to it. He had no responsibility to receive it, but he was given it by the Attorney-General. Under section 2, the Attorney-General had a responsibility to prosecute Pincher for revealing that that which Armstrong said in the Australian Court breached security. The story is sordid and squalid. It is a cover-up of the Attorney-General's position. A Labour Attorney-General would not be allowed to get away with it. I am told that the Attorney-General is desperate for the Woolsack. How desperate can a man be for his 30 pieces of silver? History will judge him harshly. I have had two objectives in this campaign. They have been to secure the Wilson revelations, to ensure that they were made public, and to show the deficiencies in the Official Secrets Act. We need a more open, accountable, yet effective security regime. We should seek to protect information of operational importance and information which, if published, would be prejudicial to national security. We should have followed closely the American system. In the United States of America, the director of the CIA appears on television. His office location is not a national secret. The CIA is so open that, only last year, Stansfield Turner, a former head of the CIA, was able to publish his memoirs. Indeed, 400 former CIA security service officers have published articles and books.

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They have all published works with authorisation from the CIA management review board. If a system can be set up in America that allows those people to write books and to ensure that they are published, surely we can set up a similar system, particularly if we have the scrutiny committee for which my hon. Friends have called. Over the past weeks, I have been repeatedly asked what I should have done in the case of Mr. Wright. Under existing law, the Government have an obligation to make stick the lifetime oath of confidentiality and to use injunctions and the Official Secrets Act for the protection of official secrets of a national security natureonly 794 those. But the law should have been applied to all. It was not. That means no selection and no special favours because of connections. In so far as the Government have turned a blind eye to the law for years, it simply cannot be justifiable for them to take action against Wright's book, particularly when Turnbull, when he came to London, offered the Treasury Solicitor a deal that would have erased from the book any references to Security Service activities of a sensitive nature affecting the security of the nation. Under existing law and in the light of Government practice over years, the Government should have done a deal with Turnbull. Under the law as it should be, that is to say with the repeal of Section 2 and the retention of the body of section 1, a freedom of information Act in place, and the proper definition of classified material of a national security nature which should be defined as information of operational importance which, if revealed, would be prejudicial to national securityWright would have been able to publish. He would have had to secure clearance of sensitive material and delete, where necessary, on the instructions of a security clearance committee, but he would have been able to publish, particularly his allegations on Wilson. I have written to the Prime Minister, asking her to ensure that that part of the book that deals with the allegations against the security services involving Wilson is published, irrespective of what happens in the Australian courts. There is no reason why that information should not be brought into the public domain this week. The great British public want to know the truth. They want to know whether it is true that a small group of people set out to undermine a democratically elected Government. Mr. Williams I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend, but this is a critical point. Does he agree that we are here to discuss not just the contents of the book but one of the major offences that can be committed under our lawthe act of sedition? "Halsbury's Laws of England" states: Sedition in the common law means acts done, words spoken and published or writings published with a seditious intention, that is an intention (1) to bring into hatred or contempt, or to excite disaffection against, the Sovereign or the Government". In his book, Wright admitted that he and his colleagues were guilty of sedition against the then Labour Administration. In those circumstances, it is beyond credibility that the Government do not set up some form of investigation. Mr. Campbell-Savours The law must apply equally to allthe highest and the lowest in the land. That is what the public want. We do not want special treatment of certain people. We want the law to apply to everyone. If the law is an ass, repeal it. 4.39 pm The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Waddington)

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The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) asked what had happened to the old values. Having heard his speech, many of us may be asking ourselves that same question what, indeed, has happened to the old values? The hon. Gentleman is entitled to say that the House should be indebted to him for using this opportunity to debate these matters. I do not cavil at his having selected this matter for debate. We should be grateful to him for being so delightfully frank with us. 795 The hon. Gentleman said that the explanation for his behaviour over recent weeks was that he had one overriding objectiveto destroy the case in the Australian courts. That case was brought by the British Government to preserve the principle that a person employed by the security services has a life-long duty of confidentiality, which, if my understanding is right, the hon. Gentleman acknowledged at the close of his speech. That has been the hon. Gentleman's ambition. Some of us may think that it is a curious ambition to set out to destroy the British Government's case in the Australian courts, but at least it is as well that the British public know. I should think that almost everyone in the country accepts that we have to have a security servicethat it is a crucial element in the safety and security of the people. I should think that there is also a general agreement that the responsibilities of the Security Service cannot be carried out effectively in a blaze of publicity. That is why it has been the general policy of successive Governments not to comment on the operation of the Security Service, even if it means that false and misleading allegations have to go unanswered. But I think that we ought to bear it in mind that, when wild allegations are made and not answered, it must be very disheartening and dispiriting for the people working in the service in our interest. The present director-general is known personally to some in the House. He is a man of considerable breadth of experience and, as those who know him will agree, a man of quite unshakeable personal integrity. He is supported by a staff who are scrupulously careful in their role as defined by the directive. The staff do not and cannot receive public and detailed recognition for their work: but I do hope that among all today's controversies about what happened some time ago, the House will not treat lightly the debt that we owe to today's members of the Security Service. Unfortunately, one sometimes wonders, when listening to contributions by Opposition Members, what has happened to the old values. Mr. Winnick No one would dispute the need for a security service, especially in the fight against terrorism, and so on. I have previously paid tribute to the Security Service in that role. However, is there not a sharp distinction to be made between the legitimate work of a security service in a democratic society and otherwise? Miss Cathy Massiter, who worked for the MI5, said that the National Council for Civil Liberties was under active inquiries by MI5, and that anyone who was on the executive council of that organisation or who worked for it had a file in MI5, including, apparently my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman), who, prior to coming to the House, was the legal officer of that organisation. While recognising that the Security Service overall plays an important role in safeguarding the security of our state, what possible justification can there be for such activities? Mr. Waddington Before the hon. Gentleman made those allegations, he must have known that I would do no more than other Ministers have done, whatever party they have belonged to, and whatever Government have been in power, and that is to observe the conventionthe purpose of which is obvious to all of usthat Ministers do not allow themselves to be drawn into comments on allegations of that nature.

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796 Mr. Heffer I should like to draw the Minister's attention to a programme on Granada television on which he and I appeared many years ago, and on which he suggested that I and all members of the Tribune Group in those days were agents of the Soviet Union. I do not accept his position at all. Mr. Waddington I did not say anything of the sort. I remember that meeting clearly. It was in Rossendale town hall. During that meeting, I had cause to say that I doubted the complete conviction on the part of all members of the Labour party that our parliamentary democracy was the right form of government, and the hon. Gentleman was very cross with me[Interruption.] I am only answering the hon. Gentleman. He was very cross with me. That is what happened. The well-established policy of not commenting on the operation of the Security Service has been followed by successive Governments, but I can comment on the part of the motion of the hon. Member for Workington calling for the setting up of a judicial enquiry to examine circumstances surrounding alleged attempts by officers of the security services to subvert the government of Lord Wilson of Rievaulx in the 1970s. I can comment because the allegation was dealt with long agoduring the period in office of the previous Labour Government, whom the hon. Gentleman supported. I have to remind the House of the statement by the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan), on 23 August 1977, which was referred to in the House on 8 October 1977 and is set out in the amendment on the Order Paper in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind). During a reply to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames), the hon. Member for Workington said that my hon. Friend had not read out the whole statement. Let me read it out now: The Prime Minister has conducted detailed inquiries into the recent allegations about the Security Service and is satisfied that they do not constitute grounds for lack of confidence in the competence and impartiality of the Security Service or for instituting a special enquiry. In particular, the Prime Minister is satisfied that at no time has the Security Service or any other British intelligence or security agency, either of its own accord or someone's request, undertaken electronic surveillance in No. 10 Downing Street or in the Prime Minister's room in the House of Commons. In the House on 8 December 1977 the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth also saidthis is of some importance in view of press comment over the weekend: My right hon. Friend meaning the former Mr. Harold Wilson, now Lord Wilson associated himself with the statement that I made".[Official Report, 8 December 1977; Vol. 940, c. 1644.] It is necessary to add only one thing. It is necessary because of some of the wilder comments made this afternoon about officers being beyond the law. No one is above the law in this country, and members of the Security Service are no more immune from prosecution than anyone else if they commit criminal offences. The Security Service operates under the directive issued to the director-general by the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, in 1952. The directive was made public in paragraph 238 of Lord Denning's report and still applies today. It makes the director-general personally responsible to the Home Secretary for the proper and 797 efficient implementation of the tasks set out in the directive, and it is through that relationship that ministerial control is exercised. The director-general is expected to seek direction and guidance from the Home Secretary as to the way in which the service goes about its business. But with one exception, the Home Secretary does not concern himself with particular operations. That one exception is when an

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interception warrant is sought, when of course the Home Secretary must be given sufficient supporting information for him to judge whether the application comes within the established criteria. But in general the Home Secretary is not concerned with particular cases. As paragraph 6 of the directive makes clear: Ministers do not concern themselves with the detailed information which may be obtained by the Security Service in particular cases, but are furnished with such information only as may be necessary for the determination of any issue on which guidance is sought. Mr. Merlyn Rees (Morley and Leeds, South) The hon. and learned Gentleman has referred to the statement of 8 December 1977 with which, of course, I was associated. That statement refers to a detailed inquiry. I know the nature of that inquiry. A Minister of State in the Home OfficeI make this point only to clarify the factsis not briefed on security matters. What the Minister of State is reading has been supplied to him. That is true of all Ministers of State. I am concerned about whether Wright's allegations were investigated at that time. They have been made more recently. They infuriate me because I stand by MI5. I know many of its members. They have served me well. I am angered that a small group under a man such as Wright, of little political intelligence, should now write a book saying that this sort of thing was taking place. I want the hon. and learned Gentleman to tell me not what was investigated then I accepted that in good faithbut that Wright's allegations were investigated then. If they were not, surely they should be looked at afresh, or I, at least, was fooled at that time. I want the matter cleared up. Mr. Waddington I want to make absolutely clear the context in which I read that extract from Hansard and referred to that statement. In ordinary circumstances, no Minister would stand at the Dispatch Box and answer allegations about what is or what is not in a book which is or is not going to be published. The only reason why I read that statement is that I am in the rare position of being able to answer some of the allegations which have now been made in the press because a specific statement was made in the House about them. I do not put the matter higher than that. I am in no position to argue with the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) as to what is or what is not made known to a Minister of State in the Home Office. I am entitled to tell the whole House what the Prime Minister of the day told the House at the time about those allegations, which was precisely what I said this afternoonthat the allegations had been investigated and had been found wanting. Mr. Merlyn Rees I am grateful to the Minister. Given what I said about MI5, for which I accept full responsibility during my time as Minister, in the terms of the remit which we were given, I again ask: is the hon. and learned Gentleman saying that he has found out that the 798 allegationsthey are no more than allegations and it will all come outmade by Wright in a book were covered in 1977? That is all that I want to know. Mr. Waddington The House may or may not at some future time wish to return to some of these matters. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I do not know why hon. Members express such surprise. They would have been surprised if I, a Minister of State in the Home Office, was the first Minister of any Government to stand at the Dispatch Box to answer questions put in a debate of this nature about the contents of a book that has not yet been published. The right hon. Member for Morley

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and Leeds, South may have his fun, but he knows what the answer has to be because it is that which would be given by any Minister of any Government. Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith) I understand what the Minister is saying, but, basically, it adds up to the fact that he does not know. We understand that. The powerful intervention by my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), speaking as a former Home Secretary, must carry a lot of weight. Will the hon. and learned Gentleman undertake to ask the Home Secretary in the near future to answer my right hon. Friend's question? Mr. Waddington I was not saying that I do not know, although the truth may well be that I do not know. I was giving the classic answer that, whether I had known or had not known, I certainly would not have disclosed the matter, even to the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South, whom I much admire, as he knows. I was referring to the passage in the directive that explains that Ministers do not concern themselves with the detailed information which may be obtained by the Security Service in particular cases. There are good reasons for that policy. The Security Service is not, as some have alleged, in the business of obtaining information on behalf of the Government. It is there to protect the state against external and internal dangers, and must, as the directive makes clear, do this in a way that avoids any suggestion that it is concerned with any matter other than the defence of the realm as a whole. There must be no political bias or influence in its work. That is why the operational judgments must be for the director-general to make. If he gets them wrong, and the safety of the state is jeopardised or civil liberties unjustifiably infringed, he must answer to the Home Secretary. Mr. Heffer I am sorry to keep interrupting the Minister, but will he now explain who determines the internal enemies? Who lays that down? Surely that must be a political decision. If it is not, who says who are the internal enemiesa Labour Government or members of Cabinet? Mr. Waddington I am afraid that I must bore the hon. Gentleman by referring him to the statement made by Lord Harris of Greenwich, a Minister of the Labour Government in 1975, who gave the classic definition of "subversion", which is by way of a direction to the Security Service. Subversion means: activities which threaten the safety or well-being of the State, and which are intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means". 799 That definition was closely examined by the Home Affairs Committee in last year's inquiry into the Special Branch. The Committee agreed that the definition was broadly correct. The director-general is personally responsible to the Home Secretary but it is also well established that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister concerns herself with major Security Service matters. The Maxwell Fyfe directive provided that the director-general must approach the Prime Minister on matters of supreme importance and delicacy; and my right hon. Friend amplified this role, in her statement on the Blunt case in November 1979, by stressing the Home Secretary's responsibility to inform the Prime Minister or make sure that the Prime Minister is informed, in that type of case. She added that, in practice, both the Home Secretary and she make a point of keeping in close touch with the director-general.

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Some of those arguing for some form of external oversight Mr. Heffer The enemy in the trade unions. Mr. Waddington I have been very generous in giving way. There is no point in the hon. Gentleman bawling from a sedentary position. Some of those arguing for some form of external oversight seem to think that present arrangements for ministerial responsibility for these matters are static and uninformative. That is not so, and this Government can claim to have discharged their responsibilities to Parliament in as full and open a way as is consistent with the need to preserve national securityindeed, there has been greater openness under this Government than ever before. On 21 November 1979, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made her statement on Blunt, deciding that it was right to confirm that Blunt was a Soviet agent, a fact of which previous Governments had been aware but had never informed Parliament. On 26 March 1981, the Prime Minister made a further statement on the implications of the Chapman Pincher book, "Their Trade is Treachery", indicating that the positive vetting procedures had not been reviewed since 1962 and that she had asked the Security Commission to review the security procedures and practices then followed in the public service and consider what changes were required. In 1985, we came to Parliament and secured approval for the Interception of Communications Act which made unauthorised interception a criminal offence and, for the first time, provided a statutory and public framework for authorising practices of interception of communications which had, in fact, been carried out under the authority of Ministers of successive Governments for many years. That step hardly lends support to the story put about by some Labour Members that the Government have been unwilling to make any changes and have been less open even than their predecessors. The facts prove the reverse. Mr. Campbell-Savours Will the Minister answer a very simple question? Why is he delaying telling Parliament whether Mr. Pincher will be prosecuted for paying Mr. Wright for information which he knew was classified? Mr. Waddington The hon. Gentleman knows the answer to that question as well. He would be the first to 800 rise in his wrath if anything was said which suggested that the decision to prosecute was not for the Attorney-General alone. There was then the report to the House by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on the results of the inquiry by the Security Commission into Bettaney. She made a full statement on the commission's criticisms and said that she and the Home Secretary were determined to see that action was taken to remedy management weakness within the Security Service. The present director-general has devoted a major part of his time to that management task, particularly in relation to personnel. Earlier this year he put forward a report which the Prime Minister made available to the Security Commission, and the Security Commission has

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informed my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister of its approval of the more open style of management which the director-general has introduced throughout the service, and of the changes in procedure affecting the appraisal, posting and promotion of staff. The commission also noted with approval that the vetting procedures were being improved, following the recruitment of more investigating officers, and that the division of responsibility between line management and the specialist personnel managers had been tackled and clarified. In short, the Security Commission considers that the director-general is to be congratulated on the way in which he has tackled the problems which it identified. The record shows that this Government have been far more open and receptive to fresh ideas in this field of security than the Labour Government. The principle of ministerial responsibility has shown itself able to adapt to particular events and situations. Discussion is bound to continue, but we are not at present persuaded that any of the proposals for changes in the system so far put forward would provide marked advantages. The public have a fairly clear view of these matters. They understand the need for a security service and they are, I believe, becoming impatient with those who wish to undermine that service by removing the confidentiality which must lie at its core. This is an area in which fair sounding compromises can be particularly dangerous. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary will maintain to the full their responsibility as the points of contact between the Security Service and this House. In a dangerous world we shall continue to do all that we can to preserve the integrity and the necessary confidentiality of that service. Lastly, the motion calls for the repeal of official secrets legislation and its replacement by a new framework to protect official secrets and, in particular, official secrets in relation to national security. Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) Can the Minister tell the House whether the security officers who gave information to Mr. West broke the law? Mr. Waddington I have not the slightest intention of being drawn into that matter for the reason that I gave a short time ago. All Opposition Members who think about it for one moment will understand why Ministers have said that, in all circumstances, it is wrong for them to be drawn into discussion about what is or is not correct Mr. Campbell-Savours Did they break the law? Mr. Waddington about the various allegations made about the Security Service. 801 There is another reason why it is impossible for me to be forthcomingit has already been stated. Whatever may be the sub judice law in Britain, we are still under the judge in Australia. Mr. Tony Banks

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But we are in England. Mr. Waddington We are now dealing with that part of the motion which calls for the repeal of official secrets legislation and its replacement by a new framework to protect official secrets, especially official secrets in relation to national security. We have to consider what that would entail. I do not think that anyone seriously objects to section 1 of the Act, which is concerned essentially with spying, pure and simple. It is section 2 which has attracted the criticism, and it may be helpful if I remind the House of the background. In 1971, the then Conservative Government appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Franks to review the operation of section 2, and the committee's report recommended repeal and replacement of section 2 by an Official Information Act containing narrower and more specific provisions. The first category of information which the committee suggested should be protected was information relating to the defence or security of the realm, or to foreign relations or the currency or the reservesinformation which had been classified on the ground that its authorised disclosure would cause serious injury to the interests of the nation. Before any prosecution could have been undertaken, the responsible Minister would have had to confirm the classification personally, and the prosecution would have had to satisfy the court that the information fell within one of the prescribed categories and had been classified. The committee also recommended that certain other categories of information should be protected if disclosed by a crown servant contrary to his official duty. These categories included information likely to be helpful in the commission of offences, all Cabinet documents irrespective of subject matter, information given to the Government by private individuals or concerns, or any information the disclosure of which was for private gain. The receipt of official information would have ceased to be an offence, but the unauthorised disclosure of such information would have remained one. It was not until some six years after publication of the Franks report that the then Labour Government published, in July 1978, a White Paper setting out proposals for legislation, but when they did so their proposals were, broadly speaking, based on the Franks recommendations. I remind the House that the last part of today's motion suggests that new legislation should concentrate on matters relating to the nation's security. That reads rather oddly in view of the fact that both the Franks report and the Labour Government's White Paper made plain the obviousthat any replacement of section 2 would have to go far wider than national security and have, for instance, to guard against corruption and the commission of crime. Mr. Merlyn Rees The Minister is doing us a service by reminding us of what the Franks committee, of which I was a member, recommended. When, in October 1976, I announced that the Labour Government would follow the Franks report, the Attorney-General asked me to announce that he would not prosecute under section 2 of 802 the Official Secrets Act except under the classification of secret and above. That was a profound step and thus, under the Labour Government, de facto, the Attorney-General carried out a major part of the Franks recommendations. That was the only reason for my speaking as an expert witness for Mr. Pontinghis was not a security matter, as the Government made clear. I made it clear that that was why he should not have been prosecuted under the Act, although I do not say that he should not have been dealt with in some other way because I do not like people who leak. Will the Minister ensure that those facts are included in Ministers' rubric in future?

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 Mr. Waddington That came out at the time, but the right hon. Gentleman is perfectly within his rights to put that on record. However important it may be, it was not the matter with which I was dealing. I was giving the history of the establishment of the Franks committee, its report, that it considered that any offence should go wider than releasing information about national security and the fact that when the Labour Government left office in 1979 no legislation had been introduced to implement the recommendations of the Franks report. Unlike the Labour Government, which sat on the Franks report, this Government acted and the House knows what happened. The Protection of Official Information Bill which would have repealed section 2 of the 1911 Act and replaced it with provisions based broadly on Franks got its Second Reading in another place, but it was clear that there was not sufficient agreement to enable it to proceed further. That potted history illustrates the whole difficulty. While it is easy to say that section 2 should be repealed, nobody has yet put forward proposals which would give both proper protection to matters which must be kept secret and seem likely to command a sufficient measure of agreement. No doubt the hon. Member for Workington and others will keep on trying. I did not think much of his effort today. But I wish he and some of his colleagues would be sufficiently frank and generous to admit that this Government, unlike their predecessor, the last Labour Government, have already tried and should be given credit for it as they should also be given credit for the Interception of Communications Act and the other steps which they have taken in this immensely difficult field of security since 1979. 5.11 pm Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith) My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) has proved the substance of his motion well. Throughout his time spent on the issue he has shown, above all, first, that the Government have been incredibly inconsistent in their interpretation of the law and, secondly, the nonsense of the Official Secrets Act. I would have been more impressed with the Minister's response if he had made it clear that the passage of the Interception of Communications Act 1985 was the result, not of a voluntary effort by the Government, but of a case at the Strasbourg court which forced the Government to act. I agree strongly with the Minister that the British public will not forgive people who undermine the effectiveness of the British security services. That is why the British public will not easily forgive the Government. Whatever else has been shown by this dreadful affair in 803 Australia, it is that the way in which the Government have managed this and every previous case has severely damaged confidence in the security services. My hon. Friend showed the Government's inconsistency. We recognise that the Minister is not the Attorney-General, but he is a lawyer and knows well that he, like any other hon. Member, can say whether he thinks that the law has been broken. It is almost impossible to conclude other than that Mr. Chapman Pincher's efforts have involved a breach of the law. It is a matter for the Attorney-General whether to prosecute and he must make several judgments to reach that conclusion, one of which is whether the law was breached. No one can reasonably conclude from anything that has come within the public domain that the law has not been broken. One good result may arise from this sorry saga and that is that no hon. Member can seriously believe that the present way of controlling the security services will continue for much longer. I

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doubt whether it will continue beyond this Government. The Prime Minister will probably have to stick to the present method, but no other Prime Minister, political party or Government is likely to continue with a system that has brought the security services into such disarray in recent years. The Government have got themselves into an acute mess because they tried to stop Mr. Wright's book being published. Yet, both MI5 and MI6 knew that Chapman Pincher was writing a book with MI5 help two months beforeSir Robert Armstrong has saidthe Government knew. We understand from Mr. Chapman Pincher that Mr. Wright was a co-author who received royalties. If that is the case, clearly the law is being interpreted inconsistently. M15 and MI6 apparently released secret information without telling the Prime Minister. Sir Robert Armstrong is the principal adviser to the Prime Minister on security and intelligence matters, yet it appears that he did not know that information had been released. As he is the principal adviser to the Prime Minister, clearly we must assume that neither the Prime Minister nor the Home Secretary knew of that disclosure. If that is the case, what sort of accountability exists through Ministers to the House for the security services? The answer must be virtually none. MI6 knew that Mr. Pincher's book would refer to allegations that Sir Roger Hollis'was a Soviet agent. Worse still, Sir Robert was told that the advance copy of Mr. Pincher's book was obtained on conditions which made it impossible to take any action about it. What does that imply and what did Ministers know about the way in which the copy was obtained? If they knew nothing, what sort of accountability exists through Ministers to the House? The Government's actions have seriously damaged the security services and the way they work in the eyes of the public. Since 1979 the Government's approach has been a mass of confusion. Clive Ponting and Sarah Tisdall were treated differently. Cathy Massiter was treated differently again and there was an incredible mess over GCHQ. Few people knew how GCHQ operated until the Government tried to ban trade unions there. Now people throughout the world know more about the activities of GCHQ than ever before. 804 In 1979 the Prime Minister started by giving the House more information in advance and detailed information about the Blunt case. Yet in response to an intervention the Minister said that it would be wrong for Ministers to give detailed answers. In 1977, as Leader of the Opposition, she asked my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan), then Prime Minister, for a statement on the bugging of Lord Wilson's office. Despite the fact that the Prime Minister, whom the Minister serves, asked for a full and detailed statement on the bugging of Lord Wilson's office in 1977, and in 1980 gave a detailed answer on Professor Blunt, the Minister has said that the Government do not want to give information. As the Prime Minister and the Government got themselves into a series of confusing positions over Clive Ponting, Sarah Tisdall, GCHQ and others, they began to clam up. My hon. Friend the Member for Workington was absolutely right in saying that then the information came out in diverse ways, revealing in the worst possible way the contradictions and absurdities of the present legal position. The Prime Minister has given up answering questions which could be answered simply. Some weeks ago a national newspaper carried a major story about the possible bugging of the office of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock). The Conservative party leapt on that and used it as a red herring, but no Opposition Member ever argued that the office of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition had been bugged. Our argument was that in some way the Prime Minister appeared to know about that in advance. There are several ways that she

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could have known about it. One way, as I said on one occasion, was through a perfectly normal conversation, perhaps with a solicitor in Australia or perhaps with a Conservative Member. I must emphasise that when I wrote to the Prime Minister telling her what I had told the media, I made no allegations about the bugging of offices because I did not consider that that was likely to have happened. In my letter I wrote: I said that I recognised there might be a perfectly conventional explanation, but another very real possibility is of course that the information came to you through the normal daily work of GCHQ in monitoring overseas communications where the question of security is concerned. We all know from the previous debates on GCHQ that that is part of its normal work. If information relating to security was passed upwards in the normal way, and eventually came to the attention of the Prime Minister, that is one way in which she could have found out. The answer that I received could have said that the Prime Minister obtained the information in a perfectly straightforward way by word of mouth, or it could have said that the Prime Minister obtained the information from the GCHQ tapes. That, again, would have been perfectly understandable, but the answer said: The Government's policy on telephone tapping remains as set out in 1966 by the then Prime Minister, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx. Lord Wilson said he had given instructions that there was to be no tapping of the telephones of Members of Parliament. He said that that remained the policy of the Government and if there was a development which required a change in the general policy, he would, at such moment as seemed compatible with the security of the country, on his own initiative, make a statement in the House about it. I reaffirmed that this Government stood by that undertaking on 6 February 1980 and on 31 October 1983. The position remains the same today. 805 No one quarrels with that and no one asked that question. The letter gives no answer to the question of the GCHQ tapes. The easiest and simplest way for the Government to deal with that part of the question is to release that tape, if it exists. It would not cause any problems to any hon. Member and there is no reason why the tape should not be released. We should be given more detailed answers, especially if the Prime Minister and the Government consider, as they appear to have considered in the past, that it is appropriate to give such information. Indeed, the Minister has made great play of the argument that the Government are prepared to do that. What is to be done in future? I said that the mess that we are now in is largely of the Government's making and that it has done immense damage to the country's security services. But we must also look to the future and accept that no future Government will allow the present situation to continue. One of the greatest nonsenses is that the two security servicesMI5 and MI6have no statutory existence, yet are probably the best known security services in the world. It is time that we gave some attention to placing them on a proper statutory footing. If we could do that, we could then deal with some of the problems, which several Opposition Members have mentioned, such as how the security services should operate, whether they should operate outside the law, which of course they should not, and whether they should operate against trade unionists, the National Council for Civil Liberties, or any of the others. We could also talk about the guidelines that existed for such security services instead of pretending that those services do not exist and instead of having a system which, when it breaks down, is disastrous for the morale of those security services and indeed for security generally in Britain. When I have spoken on Home Office matters relating to security and so on I have pointed out that in the 20th century the United Kingdom has allowed itself, for very understandable reasons, due primarily to two world wars, to become excessively obsessed with secrecy. In this country it is almost impossible to get to the truth of matters which are, or should be, in the public domain. That undermines the confidence that people have in the system. Worse, if there is a rumour about, such as that Lord Wilson's office was bugged, and no one can disprove it, it gathers pace.

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Whether it is true or notI am not in a position to know thatmy hon. Friend the Member for Workington is saying that a rumour which has been around for many years has never effectively been put down. It is our contention that it will not be put down until we have a system of considering such things which satisfies the public. We must be able to do that if we are not to have constant problems of this sort. As my hon. Friend the Member for Workington said, the Official Secrets Act needs radical change. It needs to be underpinned by a freedom of information Act. That concept has received support from every significant sector of the House except for the Conservative party. That is the one party that resists moving towards, or giving public support to, a freedom of information Act. I exempt the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) and one or two of his hon. Friends, who have spoken out in favour of such a measure. Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act is absurdly and dangerously wide. The democratic and civil rights of the British people have been undermined by an excessive 806 obsession with secrecy resulting partly from two world wars, partly from Northern Ireland and partly from other issues that have troubled us from time to time. Section 2 is far too wide. It drags far too many people into the net. If it did not exist or if the wording of that section was more appropriate, the Government would not be in the mess that they are in with Mr. Wright. We also need a Select Committee to deal with the security services. That is long overdue. I was about to say, as I suspect I heard sotto voce from behind me, that the Select Committee should not, in the Opposition's view, be composed of Privy Councillors. Mr. Campbell-Savours Not only Privy Councillors. Mr. Soley I accept that gracefully. If we have confidence in our parliamentary system, we must have confidence in the hon. Members who are elected and the way in which they are selected to serve on committees. No one has said that it should be only Privy Councillors who serve on the Select Committees on Defence. Secret information is discussed in Select Committees, and they can go into secret session when it is necessary to do so. Other countries such as Australia, Canada, the United States and several west European countries have confidence and trust in their elected representatives, and that enables them to carry out the discussions necessary to ensure that the security services operate effectively and efficiently, and at the same time act in a way which does not destroy or undermine the confidence of the public in their democratic and civil rights. Mr. Winnick Does my hon. Friend agree that, in some respects, opposition to such a Select Committee denotes a feeling that, although there should be every confidence in those who serve in the Security Service, there should not be the same feeling of confidence about hon. Members on either side of the House and that, therefore, in essence, hon. Members are not to be trusted with such matters? Mr. Soley That is precisely the trap that I am talking about. We are saying that our Members of Parliament, elected by the people, are not sufficiently trustworthy to do the job. All hon.

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Members, wherever they stand politically, have a duty to refute that. If people are given responsibility, they normally discharge it well. There are perfectly satisfactory safeguards, within the democratic system as it is operated in Britain, to ensure that the security services can operate effectively and efficiently under the system that we propose. There must be someone to whom personnel in the security services can turn if they consider that they are being misused or have obtained some information which they consider they cannot pass on within the existing service. We should consider, say, an inspector general or an ombudsman for the security services. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) said, in another debate, that we should consider a parliamentary commissioner for civil rights. We certainly need someone to do the whistle-blowing operation for those who serve in the security services. The Minister made much of Lord Harris's definition of subversion. During the passage of the Interception of Communications Bill, we said that the definition should be reconsidered. I understand the importance of Lord Harris's definition, and I do not rule it out of court. However, although I am not always the greatest supporter 807 of Lord Denning's interpretations, he came up with a very good definition of subversion. He said that it must mean the overthrow of the state by unlawful means. It is the unlawful part that should worry us. When allegations have been made to the effect that the security forces have been used in an inappropriate way against trade unionists, the NCCL or some other group, it is assumed that it is unlawful to challenge the Government. That idea must not be allowed to gain ground. A challenge to a Government should not be allowed if it is unlawful, threatens to bring down the Government by violence, or if there is criminal dishonesty, such as corruption, which is designed to undermine the stability of that Government. Such challenges would be unlawful, but other challenges would not be. There is a strong case to be made for the motion, and it was put very powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington. The Minister was unable to answer all of the questions. I do not criticise that, as I realise that the Home Secretary or Prime Minister should have been here to answer them. However, this debate will not end today; it will continue until the security services are put on a much better footing in the House and until we have a much better way of dealing with the sort of problems that we have faced recently. 5.32 pm Sir Ian Percival (Southport) I am sorry that the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) should have put the weight of the Opposition Front Bench behind the attempt made by other hon. Members to make my hon. and learned Friend the Minister say something that he should not say. My hon. and learned Friend, however, dealt with those questions in the only manner open to him, and did so with firmness and dignity. I for one appreciated that the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) made his point and was then good enough to show that he accepted that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister had to give the answers that he gave. The hon. Member for Hammersmith should know that, if he was a Minister, he would have to answer all questions relating directly to security in the same way as my hon. and learned Friend the Minister has just done. Mr. Merlyn Rees I render unto the Minister just as one might render unto Caesar, in that he is doing his job, and I have no complaints about that. However, he prayed in aid the 1977 statement. New allegations have been made by that man in Australia, for whom I have no time. They are serious

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allegations, and I just want to know whether they were taken into account. I feel very strongly about the fact that a small group of men like that in MI5 should have acted in such a way. Sir Ian Percival The right hon. Gentleman made his point clearly in his previous intervention. I thought that he then acknowledged that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister could only have given the answers that he gave. Perhaps I misinterpreted the right hon. Gentleman's gestures, but it seemed clear to me that he was doing that. Those who read this debate will realise that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister could only give the answers that he gave with such firmness and dignity. There were many tempting items in the speech of the hon. Member for Hammersmith. He referred to the matter 808 that we debated last Wednesday, but he seemed to overlook the fact that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that we were not closing the door on the issue, and may wish to come back to it in a calmer atmosphere. We regard the position as being far from fixed. Indeed, it is the oldest question in history: who guards the guards, or who watches the watchers? One day, someone will find the answer, or at least a better answer, and we shall all embrace it with open arms. Let us by all means return to that issue, but it is sufficiently important for it to be debated on its own. Even in this short debate, the references to it show some of the difficulties that will have to be met. Some say that Privy Councillors should be involved, while others say that they should not be. Some say that there must be secrecy, and others say that it is not necessary. I accept that all those points must be debated, but not in this atmosphere. My criticism of the speech made by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) will be brief, as I wish to be constructive. However, I thought that in many respects what he said was deplorable Mr. Campbell-Savours Havers? Sir Ian Percival No. That was cheap and nasty. I shall have something to say about those comments, and I am not surprised that the hon. Gentleman's immediate reaction should be that I might have something to say about his sordid and squalid remarks concerning my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General. Mr. Campbell-Savours The right hon. and learned Member for Southport (Sir I. Percival) is now quoting me. Sir Ian Percival I am, and I am turning the hon. Gentleman's comments back on him. It is deplorable that the hon. Gentleman should have speculated to that extent. It is also deplorable to use the privileges accorded to the House to say things about people when they may long to have the opportunity to clear up the matter in the courts. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman had been a Member of Parliament for long enough to know that he should be more careful. It is deplorable

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to use this subject for scoring party political points. However, the hon. Gentleman apparently cannot resist that. The hon. Member for Workington accused my right hon. and learned Friend the AttorneyGeneral of behaving in a sordid and squalid fashion. When the hon. Gentleman looks at his speech, he may well conclude that it was his attack that was sordid and squalid. My right hon. and learned Friend has served the House faithfully and well, and with a dignity that some others may well wish to try to emulate. We can all differ, but not in the way that the hon. Gentleman did. I should like to start my next remarks on common ground. There cannot be any argument among us about the fact that if any of us received information in confidence we should never publish it without permission. The critical words are "without permission". What we learn as lawyers, Members of Parliament or, a fortiori, as an employee of the security services should not be divulged without permission. The hon. Member for Workington obviously agrees with that, because in several of his recent speeches he has put it even higher than that. He says that it is treachery for an ex-member of the security services to publish information received in that capacity without permission. Those last two words must always be there 809 Mr. Campbell-Savours For money. Sir Ian Percival The critical words are "without permission". I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman in that regard. The next part of his argument is that there are many cases in which either we should not have given permission, or we should have prosecuted. But he is not being consistent in this case. He says that we should have prosecuted other cases beforehand. I have just realised that I have fallen into the error of not drawing a distinction between prosecution and civil proceedings. But the hon. Gentleman argues that we should not have taken civil proceedings in this case. From the start, his aim has been to destroy our chances of preventing publication of information, although he acknowledges that publishing it is treachery. The hon. Gentleman must consider that to be an inconsistency. I do not concede that permission was granted where it should not have been, because I do not know the facts. However, if it has been given and it should not have been, that is a fit matter for discussion because, ex hypothesi, the material is in the public domain and we can all have our say as to whether permission should or should not have been granted. There may be differences of opinion as to whether civil or criminal proceedings should have been taken in previous cases. However, surely to goodness, there can be no question about what should have been done in this case. The Wright case involves a man who was in the service who is bound by his oath. He is publishing for moneywithout permissionthe information that he obtained in the service. By the definition of the hon. Member for Workington, he is engaging in treachery. Should we say, "Never mind, we will not prosecute this time because there might have been errors."? I do not accept that there were errors. I do not know the facts and I will not speculate. However, even if there was fault to find in previous decisions, should we say "Here we have a case"

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 Mr. Campbell-Savours Ah, yes. Sir Ian Percival I wish that the hon. Gentleman would remember that he had an hour in which to address the House. I am trying to make my comments in less time. By common consent, Wright is engaging in treachery for money, yet should we not take proceedings against him? That is ludicrous, especially when we realise that he has moved outside our jurisdiction so that we cannot deal with him here. He knows better than anyone that if he tried to publish here, the odds are that civil proceedings would have been commenced against him and he would have been prosecuted. However, he knows that we cannot do that now. Another feature of the case is that the hoohah of the past weeks has destroyed confidence. Confidence is really destroyed when someone from the inside engages in treachery. Wright is breaching confidences given him by his fellow members of the service. Confidence is destroyed when those working in the service can no longer rely on their colleagues not taking the kind of action that Wright has taken. The fact that Wright's actions received so much support from politicians on the Opposition Benches must also do much to destroy the confidence of those in the service. What are we trying to do in Australia? We are asking for the assistance of the courts of a friendly country to stop 810 a man who, by common consent, wants to engage in treachery for profit. I would hope that if a friendly countryor indeed any countrycame to us to protect itself in similar circumstances, we would have a ready ear to listen to that country. However, it is not simply our security that is at stake. Opposition Members seem to have lost sight of the fact that it is the present Labour Government of Australia, who are not in the business of helping the British Governmentnot Mr. Gough Whitlam who has no reason to be that pleased with our actionswho have put their senior civil servant before the court to say that, in the Government's opinion, Australian security interests are at issue as well. He has said that there is a danger to Australian security interests. I would not be surprised if there is not more reference to that before the proceedings are ended. It is almost unbelievable that Opposition Members can express views about the case without taking into account the fact that the Australian Government have had their senior civil servant give evidence on oath to state that Australian security interests are at issue. In such circumstances, it is extraordinarily inconsistent of the hon. Member for Workington not to separate certain matters. The Peter Wright case must be considered separately from the other cases. We must consider what that man is trying to do and, by our common definition, he is indulging in treachery for profit. Mr. Campbell-Savours The right hon. and learned Gentleman has misunderstood the body of my speech. He must consider Wright's motive. Wright does not believe that he has been treacherous because he cites the precedents of others who have been allowed to go to print. We are considering Wright's view and position and the right hon. and learned Gentleman's speech is based on the wrong premise. Sir Ian Percival

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The hon. Gentleman had an hour in which to state his case. I am not mixing up anything. We must clarify these issues. The question here is whether someone in the secret service may publish for money information gained in the secret service.. The hon. Member for Workington has said that, prima facie, that is treachery. Mr. Campbell-Savours The right hon. and learned Gentleman is misquoting me. Sir Ian Percival Very well, if the hon. Gentleman did not say that Mr. Campbell-Savours The right hon. and learned Gentleman can read my speech tomorrow. Sir Ian Percival I gave the hon. Gentleman credit for saying that. However, I do not think that he would go so far as to say that he would agree that anyone with such confidential information is entitled to publish for profit. I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman would say that for a moment. That is exactly what Mr. Wright is trying to do. Mr. Wright cannot be the judge of whether he has a motive to justify actions that people in his position are not allowed to take. That is a very dangerous approach to the matter and one that I would not have expected to hear from the hon. Member for Workington, as that is unsustainable and unworthy. I urge the House to consider the case in Australia on its own. If we do that, there can be only one answer. It was 811 right and necessary to take proceedings, whatever had happened before. We can only hope that right will prevail and that the publication[Interruption.] We can only hope that what should happen will be the right outcome and that the book will not be published. I urge Opposition Members to consider the fact the some people have had a lot of fun speculating about the case. In the course of today's debate and in other debates, other subjects have been raised that deserve further consideration. However, we must put the case in Australia into the right perspective and we should stop playing party politics with national security. I urge Opposition Members to re-examine their position. In the light of day, when emotions are cooler, how can Opposition Members justify setting out with an overriding desire to ensure that the Government fail in an action in a foreign country? 5.49 pm Mr. Michael Foot (Blaenau Gwent) I shall come to what I consider to be the core of the speech by the right hon. and learned Member for Southport (Sir I. Percival), but first I must make it clear to him that at no time in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) or at any time during the proceedings have the Opposition been engaged in any party political fight [Interruption.] It is clear, if the confessions and boasts of anyone are justified, that there is one person who was engaged in a party political fight of the most outrageous kind and that is Mr.

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Peter Wright himself and some of his associates. If what Mr. Wright says is true, they were engaged in a treasonable attempt to attack the Government of the day. The Minister's speech touched on some of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington but did not answer the central question. The right hon. and learned Member for Southport had no right to say that the question had been answered. The question is, what have the Government done about the recent revelations made by Mr. Wright? I do not know whether those revelations are true but they deal with what happened in the days of the Government of Harold Wilson. All the Minister did was quote from what was said by the previous Labour Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan). I am sure that when he and my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) conducted their inquiries at that time they listened carefully to what they were told by the security services and, of course, they conducted a proper inquiry and took the proper action of coming to the House to state the position as they knew it. At that time, among other things, they did not know about the claims of Mr. Peter Wright, who was a long-time member of the Security Service. The Minister and the right hon. and learned Member for Southport have not attempted to answer that question. I would have thought, whatever differences we may have on these matters, that all of us could agree that, if Mr. Peter Wright's accusations are correct, it is a serious matter. The security services have a greater interest in getting the matter examined and dealt with than anybody else, because otherwise the slur will hang over the modern secret service that it engaged in a treasonable conspiracy against the Government of the day, in breach of its undertakings, just as history shows that the secret service did engage in 812 such a treasonable outrage at the time of the Zinoviev letter. If anybody reads the records now he will see that the way in which the secret service behaved in 1924 was palpably wrong according to its undertakings. Today it would also be a monstrous scandal if Mr. Peter Wright's charges are correct. Therefore, the charges must be examined. They have not yet been examined. The Minister has come to the House today and had to confessI do not blame himthat there has not been any examination. The motion arguesI certainly agree with itthat there must be a proper examination. We propose a judicial inquiry, where a judge is appointed to look into it. It would have to be a secret inquiry because I do not believe that we can have a full-scale public inquiry into the operations of the secret service. If my hon. Friend the Member for Workington was asking for that, I do not think it is right. In any case, if the Government do not like the exact form of the inquiry we are asking for, it is their business to come forward with an alternative. This matter will not go away. These are serious charges, and the Government have less right than anybody to say that they do not take any notice of Mr. Peter Wright's charges. If Mr. Peter Wright is doing sufficient damage to the Security Service by the publication of this book on the other side of the world, then, in heaven's name, surely the Government cannot say that they will take no notice. I might be able to say that I do not give a damn about what Mr. Wright says about anything, which is probably my considered view, just as it is my view about Mr. Chapman Pincher. However, the Government have thought it necessary to have the whole process of a prosecution on the other side of the world which has made fools of our eminent civil servants. That contraption has had to be wheeled on to deal with Mr. Wright's accusations, so it is impossible for the Government to shelter in the way in which the right hon. and learned Member for Southport so ill advised them to do. The Government have said that it is an important case. They are prepared to spend large sums of taxpayers' money to present their case. When part of that casenot all of itrevolves around the question whether the charges about a conspiracy in

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1974 were correct, there has to be an examination. If the Government do not agree to that now, they will have to do so at some later stage. One of the most objectionable features of the issue is that it is inextricable from secret service operations. I am not complaining. Secret service operations have to be kept secret and they cannot be discussed at every available opportunity. However, occasionally inquiries are made by the Government and one important inquiry was made by the present Government into the case of Sir Roger Hollis; in fact, I believe that two or three inquiries were made. The last inquiry came up with a clean sheet for Sir Roger Hollis. The Prime Minister, quite rightly, made a statement to the House saying that Sir Roger Hollis was cleared. I accepted that, as did the House. I believe that every decent citizen of this country accepted that, in those circumstances. Therefore, what in heaven's name were the Government playing at in the court in Australia when they tried to smudge that issue? I know that there is some legal excuse for it, but the common, ordinary, sensible people do not always understand obstruse legal obfuscations. It was said in the court that the case against Sir Roger Hollis was to be accepted. I know that that does not mean that 813 the Government are saying that he is guilty. However, the Government have no right anywhere other than in the House to put any new charge against him. If there is any new charge or suspicion against Sir Roger Hollis, the Prime Minister has a special duty to come to the House and say what it is. Until that happens, the previous statement of the Prime Minister stands. It would be a gross injustice to the memory of Sir Roger Hollis, his family and those associated with him if such rumours should be peddled and if the Government did not take clear steps to knock them on the head as they sought to do a few years ago when the charges were made by Mr. Pincher and a few others. Ms. Clare Short (Birmingham, Ladywood) Obviously my right hon. Friend has some knowledge of Sir Roger Hollis and the family and feels for their distress. I have no such knowledge and that must be typical of most of the population. The request my right hon. Friend makes to the Government to clear one family is an impossible task when the people have no confidence in the Government's oversight of our security services. The only way in which people such as Sir Roger Hollis and his family can be secure is when, if the Government say that we have a sensible security service and that it is under control, it is believed. At the moment, whatever they say is not believed. Mr. Foot I understand my hon. Friend's argument. However, I am in favour of the proposals made by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington. There should be a new method of surveillance over the secret service because these events have made that essential, not only in the interest of Sir Roger Hollis but in the interest of others. The well-paid vultures are happy to make charges against the dead, whether it is Sir Roger Hollis or others. They believe that once people are dead they can make any charge they wish, make any kind of money they like out of it and make the accusations in the wildest possible terms. That is most unjust, and in the interests of fair play and justice and also in the interests of the security services the Government should take steps to try to protect the dead. A major revelation by Mr. Peter Wright relates to the attack on the Labour Government. That must be cleared up. However, there are other so-called revelations. Mr. Wright is supposed to have said that when he was in the security services they engaged in a conspiracy to murder President Nasser. I should be bitterly concerned if a British Government agency had engaged in the preparation of acts of terror. It would be an outrage if the security services were told in 1956

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by Sir Anthony Eden and the Government of the day that they could prepare a plan for the assassination of President Nasser. I hope that the charge that the British Government gave instructions to engage in an act of terror can be repudiated. That is why there should be a proper investigation of these matters. I was in Cairo a few days ago, before these revelations were made. Heaven knows what injury they will do to the future operations of the British security services. They must not engage, either in this country or elsewhere, in illegal acts, in particular in criminal acts, because eventually it comes out into the open and when that happens it can do appalling damage to the security of the state. That is happening in the United States. The exposure of the arms sales to Iran, behind the back of Congress and 814 of those with responsibility for these matters after a section of the security services had been given orders by somebody, has wrecked United States foreign policy in the middle east. Many of the worst acts of terror have been carried out with Iranian money and Iranian backing. The Iranians helped to kill the previous President of Egypt, and I have no doubt that many other killings have been carried out by them. If the United States security services are prepared to engage in such operations, we should be all the more determined to keep our security services out of them. It would do nothing but harm to the effectiveness of the security services if they were to engage in such manoeuvres and such trickery. This squalid business should be cleared up in the interests of the security services, and that cannot be done effectively unless that part of the motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington which relates to a judicial inquiry is adopted. A judicial committee would be the best body to carry out such an examination. Mr. Robert Rhodes James (Cambridge) I hope that in his remarks about 1956 the right hon. Gentleman is not giving credence to Mr. Gough Whitlam's allegations relating to events that took place long before he held public office and for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Mr. Foot I am saying nothing against Mr. Gough Whitlam, although I should examine what he has said on this and other matters. I am referring to what Mr. Wright says in his book. Mr. Wright says that he engaged, with others, in a treasonable conspiracy in this country and that MI5 or MI6 engaged in the preparation of an act of terror to murder the President of the republic of Egypt. If that is the truth, it should be examined. If it is a lie, let it be exposed. But if it is the truth, or if there is any element of truth in it, I and, I should have thought, every decent citizen in this country would want our security services to be cleaned up. I do not agree with all that my hon. Friend the Member for Workington does. However, it would help to improve the effectiveness of the future operations of the security services if this motion were to be passed and if the Government were to act upon it. 6.5 pm Mr. Jonathan Aitken (Thanet, South) I am pleased to be following the former Leader of the Opposition. If he has done nothing else, he has livened up our proceedings this afternoon, which I felt were in danger of achieving the remarkable result of making the exciting subjects of security and espionage excruciatingly boring. He asked a few pertinent questions with which I shall deal later.

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The speech of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) was a strange and curious mixture of tedium and hysteria. However, it contained a few perceptive passages and it is to those and to the motion itself to which I shall refer. The motion breaks down into three main parts. It calls attention to the management and operation of the security services". Just about everybody in the world seems to have been doing that lately. The most interesting comments on the management and operation of MI5 were made in the 1985 report of the Security Commission. It highlighted many management weaknesses, many of which we are told, and believe, have to some extent been remedied by the present director 815 general. However, it is germane to ask why there is such a sharp difference between the management of MI5 and that of MI6. Almost all the criticism that one hears of the security services zeros in on MI5, whereas MI6 appears to have a relatively trouble-free and criticismfree record. There is a lot to be learnt by looking in detail at the comparisons, but there is no time to do so todaywhether those comparisons relate to selection, management methods or the lack of introspection in MI6, which is a comparatively open organisation in the sense that it mixes and mingles with other people in the world of foreign policy, whereas MI5 personnel are so hunkered down in their bunker that sometimes quite extraordinary things seem to be able to go wrong without anybody taking much notice. If I understand correctly the hon. Gentleman's main criticism of the management of the security services it is that at times they are outside political control. That also seemed to be the main point of the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). The second part of the hon. Gentleman's motion highlights that criticism most dramatically. It calls for a judicial inquiry into the allegations relating to the Government of Lord Wilson. The most interesting intervention this afternoon was that of the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) who asked a question to which no satisfactory answer has been given. There is no need to worry about this matter if the 1977 statement that was read out by my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State applies precisely to the alleged events. However, if that statement does not cover those allegations, it is a completely different ball game. I, too, should like a judicial inquiry to be held if that matter has not been covered in any way. I know nothing about these matters and I make only one comment. It is almost inconceivable that any operation of the kind that seems to have been alleged could have been carried out on a completely unauthorised, freelance basis. One only has to think of the mechanics of an operation of that kind. To get into a former Prime Minister's residence without authorisation and set up the technical equipment and then to take the tapes away and have them read, analysed and stored at headquarters enters the realms of speculation and fantasy, as does the original allegation. Nevertheless, there is an unanswered question which the right hon. Gentleman exposed in a devastating way and at some stage we need an answer. More interesting about the management of the security services is the issue that we touched on at great length in the debate on 3 December. There is no point in going over the same ground again, but I want to comment on two things that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said in his fine speech on that occasion. First, my right hon. Friend's main objection to the proposal for some sort of oversight body was that such a body would have to be inside the barrier of secrecy. He said that it would be a constitutional contradiction because if it is inside the barrier, it cannot communicate its findings convincingly to those who remain outside." [Official Report, 3 December 1986; Vol. 106, c. 942.] On reflection, I did not find that part of my right hon. Friend's argument convincing simply because the Security Commission frequently goes inside the barrier and then 816 comes out with a report on what has gone on, some of which is put into the public domain in a report to Parliament and parts of which are not. The report on the Bettaney affair is a classic example of

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that. That report took us all well inside the barrier of secrecy, but the published document, which took us some way inside, nevertheless also contained two unpublished annexes which, presumably, took us still further inside. I hope that when we return to the debate on oversight my right hon. Friend will reconsider the views that he expressed on that area. Secondlyhere I have more sympathy with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, particularly as my views on the matter are changingmy right hon. Friend argued convincingly that ultimately the management of the security services must depend on somebody reporting to a Minister. The more one considers the idea of a Select Committee of Privy Councillors, or, in the view of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), non-Privy Councillors as well, reporting to somebody other than the Home Secretary or the responsible Minister, the more doubtful the edifice becomes. If we are to have an efficient oversight body that is surely first prizeit must be a body that reports to Ministers. That is a theme for a future debate on the oversight issue. The motion calls for reform of the law on official secrets and, in particular, for consistency in the application of the law. I can only say "Hear, hear, and amen" to that. Any logical look at the problem shows that the Official Secrets Act is in a mess and the Government's recent efforts to be consistent in their handling of such cases clearly has not succeeded. Ask any man in the street, let alone any Member of this place, and no one will pat the Government on the back for their consistency in handling the Wright case and previous incidents, including the books. In making the simple point that the Government have been inconsistent, instead of waiting for most of us to say, "Hear, hear", the hon. Member for Workington shot off into the realms of the most extraordinary demons, hobgoblins and fantasies. Although one or two of the things that he said may have contained a glimmer of truth, most of them were wildly over the top and should never have been said in a speech in the House. The recent arguments about the security services have done much more harm than good to the morale and efficiency of the services, but at the end of the day perhaps one good thing will emerge. Instead of continuing to rake over the dead leaves of the past, we may start to look to the future to make sure that such blunders, errors and inconsistencies are much less likely to happen again. The service will never be error-proof, but with a greater parliamentary input than we have had so far, with an oversight body which I am sure will come one day, we shall soon have a better and more effective Security Service. 6.13 pm Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) Truth is stranger than fiction and the history of these matters from the Philby case through to the revelations of Mr. Wright provides a mixture of stories better and more fascinating than those in many novels, some of them written, as has been pointed out, by the practitioners of this very activity of security and espionage. The almost Victorian melodramatic tones with which the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) opened the debate were not needed to draw our 817 attention to some of the problems. He sounded as though he could take a good part in a pantomime at this season of the year, given the sheer tone of malignant horror-mongering in which he managed to engage. The truth is serious enough not to need that and I must differ from the hon. Gentleman in some respects, even though I shall say later why I will advise my right hon. and hon. Friends to support the motion.

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First, I did not agree with the conclusion or form of the hon. Gentleman's attack on the Attorney-General, who has succeeded, where others have failed, in distinguishing his position in standing firm for accuracy and honesty at several points in recent events. I might have wished, and indeed have argued, that he should have given up his office in doing so, but the manner of his conduct in no way justifies the tone of what the hon. Gentleman said about him. Secondly, I did not like the way in which the hon. Gentleman has used the Order Paper so indiscriminately to list the names of large numbers of people and, in particular, I did not like the way in which he developed his attack on Mr. Arthur Martin, for whose record of service in the security services Britain has particular reasons to be grateful. Indeed, he was dismissed from the service in circumstances which still give rise to many of the questions at the heart of the debate. The Minister of State's reply held a note of complacency which I thought had begun to be dispelled when the Home Secretary spoke earlier and said that the door was still open to further consideration. Indeed, the Conservative Members who have spoken today have themselves said that they see the door as still open as we look for a way of establishing some decent scrutiny of the security services which can help to deal with some of the problems about which we are all concerned. That same complacency is to be found in the amendment on the Order Paper, welcomed by the Minister, proposed by some Conservative Members, none of whom are present in the Chamber and all of whom have absented themselves during most of the debate. That amendment lays particular stress on the statement made by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan) on 8 December 1977, and it misses the point in two ways: because it does not deal with what the statement fails to talk aboutwhat happened in places other than 10 Downing street and the Prime Minister's room in the House of Commons; and because it fails to recognise that on several occasions in recent history Prime Ministers, including the present one, have appeared at the Dispatch Box and made statements about which there is now every good reason to have considerable doubt. I should say that I do not believe that the Prime Minister was at fault in some of the errors that occurred in her statement at the Dispatch Box at the conclusion of the Blunt affair, or indeed the statement she made after that. In some cases, errors or misleading aspects can be pointed to based on the briefing she was given. I hope that we can get rid of the complacency and recognise on both sides that there is a real problem. If one looks at what can happen to the security services, it is obvious that if there is not some way of intensifying the effectiveness of oversight, a number of different problems can emerge. One is that, in an atmosphere of complacency, treason can flourish. We have had that long list of traitorsPhilby, Blunt, Bettaney and the smaller fry at lower levelsand in every case it is possible to 818 point to extensive complacency without which such people could not have operated and could not have continued to hold the responsible positions that they did. An atmosphere of complacency contributes to outright incompetence in the security services, such as that which allowed an absence of positive vetting in MI5 of the kind to which the Security Commission drew attention after the Bettaney case. That simply could not have gone on if anyone beyond Ministers had been regularly reviewing the effectiveness of the services and questioning Ministers so to encourage them to ask the right questions of those who were responsible to them. Complacency can breed many problems in the security services. Secondly, the absence of scrutiny can preserve a climate of opinion completely divorced from that to be found in the world outside. The hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) pointed out that that may be a greater tendency in MI5 in its particularly enclosed world than in the intelligence services. It is easier to take an older example. It is the kind of climate which allowed Philby just before the war to establish, successfully, cover for being recruited to the

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service on the basis of his pro-Fascist connections, such as his involvement in the AngloGerman Society of that time. Such was the distorted climate of opinion in the service at that time that it proved not only to be an acceptable cover then, but helped to defend him against criticism and suspicion at later stages. It is now contended that during the war a considerable group within the service continued to believe that the real battle they were fighting was against the Soviet Union and they were much distracted from the war against Fascism in which Britain was engaged. Distinct from what was going on in the real world, that climate of opinion was allowed to remain in the security services. One sees the same danger at the time of the alleged events surrounding the Wilson Government, to which I shall refer again, of the possibility that there may have been within the security services people who somehow believed that, because a Labour Government had come to power, the end of the world had arrived. I am opposed to Labour Governments and in favour of preventing them from happening and of making sure that they cannot pursue their more foolish policies by voting those policies downas we were able to do when we had the political power. But Britain is a democracy, and if the people elect a Labour Government, even under our distorted electoral system, it is not the business of those who work for Government to look for ways to get rid of them or to discredit them. The possibility that there may have been a climate of opinion in some quarters in MI5 which held that the presence of a Labour Government justified the taking of illegal actions is extremely worrying. That possibility is generated when there is insufficient scrutiny of the security services. There are other dangers that arise in the absence of scrutiny. They include the possibility that actions approved by the Executive but not by Parliament may be undertaken. That has been a problem in the United States and is now being examined by Congress which has the machinery to do so. Congress is examining the pursuit of a policy in clear defiance of declared Government policy of not supplying arms to Iran. We may imagine that such things cannot happen here, but of course such a thing did happen in the immediate aftermath of the war. It was not public knowledge and was certainly not known in Parliament that British forces were 819 involved in assisting in the parachuting into Albania of supporters of the exiled and deposed king of Albania. Had that been known to anybody, some questions might have been asked about what happened to those people because, of course, when they arrived in Albania the security authorities there knew perfectly well when and where they would land; they had been informed of that by Mr. H. A. R. Philby. He was at the heart of the operation. It was perhaps the least noticed but the most evil of his acts of treachery that he condemned those people to death because he knew about their departure and communicated the information to the Albanian Government, who were and are ruthless. The fate of those people is now well known. That action took place under a Labour Government and was designed deliberately to destabilise a Communist Government in Albania. The Executive approved and undertook that action knowing that it would be unlikely to obtain parliamentary approval. That is a dangerous kind of action to undertake and is one of the reasons why there must be better scrutiny. Equally dangerous in the absence of scrutiny is the possibility that actions not approved by anybody outside the service can more easily take place. That is because no questioning takes place. The Maxwell Fyfe directive rather conveys the flavour, "Don't call us, we'll call you." It gives the impression that Ministers are to be told of things when the service determines that they need to know. Of course Ministers can ask questions, but it has always been my submissionone which the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth accepted when I put it to him during the debate in 1979that Ministers are less likely to ask questions if nobody is asking them questions. That is the danger in the present arrangements.

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If actions are undertaken by the security services without the approval of anybody outside the services, either by the service as a whole engaging in freelance activity or by groups within it doing so, then the horrifying Pandora's box is open and that is where we come to the allegations about what went on in the Wilson Government. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Jenkins) saidhe was the Home Secretary at the timehe was never informed of any such action, and if it took place it must have been illegal because it was not authorised as it should have been. As my right hon. Friend also said, it would have been the product of a diseased mind to imagine that such action was necessary or desirable. It is an utterly monstrous proposition to say that any such action should be undertaken against an elected Government. Of course, there is a world of difference if the security services communicate with the appropriate Minister if they have reason to believe that a member of the Government presents a security risk. That is not impossible: it can happen and there must be a mechanism for dealing with it. But that is a long way from the happenings now being alleged during the years of the Wilson Government. Ms. Clare Short What the hon. Gentleman says has major implications. He says that if a member of the Government is a security risk it is the duty of the security services to communicate that to the Government. The logic of that statement is that if the security services think the Prime Minister is a security risk they should check and 820 communicate. Are the security forces entitled to supervise and check and report on members of the Government? The hon. Gentleman is not entitled to say that somehow they can supervise Ministers but not the Prime Minister, because if he says that he is not consistent. Mr. Beith There are ways in which it could come to the notice of the security services that, heaven forbid, the Prime Minister was an agent of a foreign power. But the proposition is so unlikely because of the many checks and balances in existence that it would require a fairly major effort on the part of any security service to contemplate that it was the case. If it were, it would be their duty to report that to the appropriate authorities. Ms. Clare Short That is what they did. Mr. Beith That is a long way from what is alleged to have happened. It is alleged that Harold Wilson was being framed, that he was being burgled in an attempt to establish incriminating evidence, and that when such evidence was not found it was manufactured and communicated to the outside world by a variety of groups. Those are allegations of monstrous activity and if they have any weight or credibility they deserve to be examined. I do not think that the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth was in possession of the full substance of the allegations when he made his statement to the House. For that reason, the matter must be looked at again, but at this stage we do not know whether it will go to a full judicial inquiry. If the motion goes to a vote, one of the reasons why I shall advise my hon. Friends to vote for it is that I think the matter should be looked at again. Mr. Alan Williams

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I agree with the hon. Gentleman about having to look at it again, but after we have had the result of the court case. That is because the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General will have to account for themselves to the House. My advice to my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) is that we should not have a vote tonight but should wait until we have statements from the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General. Mr. Beith There is wisdom in that advice, that we should come back to this matter as soon as the court case is over. The matter is in the hands of the hon. Member for Workington, but this might not be the occasion to press it to a vote. Mr. Campbell-Savours I accept that. Mr. Beith These issues are so grave that some further attempt must be made to establish whether or not there is any substance in them. That brings me to one aspect of the Wright case about which it would be proper to speak even though the court case is going on. It is that, whatever criticisms we make of Wrightand I make a numberone of his motivations was that he believed things had been brushed under the carpet and he embarked on a crusade. He believed that matters had not been brought to a head and that deception was being allowed to continue. However much we criticise his subsequent actions, we must recall that he sought to interest Conservative Members, including the Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, in his allegations and to try to get them by various routes to the Prime Minister. There is a crusading aspect to all this, and although it does not vindicate his subsequent actions it was serious in itself and leads me to remind the Minister that at the very 821 least there ought to be a proper internal mechanism by which an officer who believes that something is seriously wrong can ventilate his grievance. That was one of the issues discussed by the Security Commission and the Prime Minister spoke about it in her statement to Parliament. I gathered from the Home Secretary when he replied to an intervention by me in the debate on 3 December that it is still under discussion and is one of the aspects of the Security Commission report which has not been fully resolved. Something must be done about that. I see that in the end as linking naturally to some external oversight, because people are likely to have more confidence in an internal inspector-general, or whatever he may be, if he reports, as does the Ombudsman, ultimately to some external or parliamentary body. If there is no internal mechanism, that is yet another reason why people may believe that they have an excuse to go outside. I agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Southport (Sir I. Percival) that no one can be allowed to be the sole judge of whether he has sufficient reason to break the confidence which is enjoined upon him in his position as an officer or former officer of the Security Service. He cannot be the sole judge, but if he has no other recourse and nowhere else to go, he is left in a very unsatisfactory position. I speak not only of Wright, but of very many officers who have found themselves in this position[Interruption.] Sir Ian Percival Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the officer should be his own judge of when to speak? That really is a slippery slope. Mr. Beith

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Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman was unable to hear me because of the noise behind me. I was agreeing with his statement that no security officer should be the sole judge of whether what is on his conscience or mind should be brought into the public domain. That cannot be right. Therefore, we must look for other mechanisms whereby people can ventilate grievances in a proper manner and feel that their case is being heard. There are many things we have discussed today to which we will have to return. The Minister of State said in his speech that the public understand perfectly well what is at stake, and that they know and have a basic feeling about what is right and wrong in these matters. That is so, but the public at large also can see the total inconsistency of the position of the Government. The public can see that there is no distinction, as the Government pretend to draw, between someone who publishes a book in his own name, disclosing secrets learnt in his office, and someone who supplies that information, whether for money or notin this case, it was for moneyto another author to be included in a book which is subsequently described as being co-authored by the two individuals. There is no difference, moral or otherwise, in the importance of confidentiality in those two cases. The Government are right to be concerned about ensuring that the confidentiality of the security services is kept, but they have undermined their case both by their inconsistency and their consistent failure to recognise what really matters. It is absurd that we should go on pretending that we do not have an intelligence service and for Sir Robert Armstrong to be expected to deny in court that there is such a thing as MI6. But there are things which have have to be kept confidential. If the Government were more consistent and offered genuine opportunities for 822 oversight and for the aggrieved officer to raise his grievance in a suitable manner, they would be in a better position to work for the preservation of the confidentiality and day-to-day secrecy on which the security services depend to do their job on our behalf. 6.32 pm Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) First, let me say constructively what I believe should now be done. The Security Commission should be converted into a tribunal of inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921. The Security Commission consists of Lord Griffiths, Sir Anthony Lloyd, the deputy chairman, and Lord Allen of Abbeydale and four others. Therefore, they have the legal firepower and are already in the business of security matters. I have discussed this with two former permanent secretaries of the Home Office and one former permanent secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealh Office and believe that it is a sensible proposition. To save time, I quote the powers. On 23 January 1964, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the Prime Minister, in announcing the setting-up of the Security Commission, said: Exceptionally, the Commission might find that they were unable to make progress without powers to compel evidence. In such a case, Parliament would be asked to pass the necessary Resolution under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, 1921, to vest the Commission with the powers of that Act for that particular inquiry. The Commission would then proceed in all respects as a Tribunal of Inquiry." [Official Report, 23 January 1964; Vol. 687, c. 12723.] I am glad that we are not voting tonight, because I would have been uncomfortable about doing so, believing that these matters are very serious and that we must wait until the end of the court case in Australia. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) for agreeing to this. The Security Commission or tribunal should discuss certain specific matters. The first of them concerns Anthony Blunt. I do not think it edifying for people like me, or most of us in this generation, to try to pass censorious moral judgments on men when in their late teens or early

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twenties in Cambridge or elsewhere in the 1930s. The lines between pro-Communism and passionate, and justified, anti-Fascism were blurred. From 1941 to 1945, Russia was on our side. For my part, I will remember Anthony Blunt as an inspiring lecturer who awakened my interest in the French impressionists. What I am about to say I am perfectly prepared to repeat outside the Chamber. I do not shelter under privilege, but the House of Commons is the right place for a Member of Parliament to make such statements for the first time. I believe that Anthony Blunt left a collection of documents compiled by himself and that those documents were bequeathed to his brother, whom I have not approached. The condition was that the documents should not be made public for 20 years. I do not know whether Mr. Blunt's brother has read them. The papers were transferred to an institution in London for safe keeping. However, I am informed and believe that a Government agency has had a sight of those papers. They revealed to the agency not only who the so-called fifth man was, but many other names and facts. Because the Prime Minister said that there was no proof that Sir Roger Hollis was a Soviet spythat is before the papers being read, 823 so I am sure that the Hollis statement was made in good faith by the Prime Minister on the basis of knowledge available at the timeit is difficult for the Prime Minister to admit any knowledge of who was a spy at this late stage. I take on board what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). This brings me to the subject of burglary. For a Government agency to have read these papers was strictly illegal. Illegal or not, it has now been done. The parallel case is the break-in at Sidgwick and Jackson. That was illegal. That was six weeks before the book "Their Trade is Treachery" was published. I ask the direct question: have Ministers been told about the documents bequeathed by Anthony Blunt? Have they been told whether knowledge that Hollis was positively identified as being a spy has come from these documents? I am not asking that the documents, which are very personal, should be made available, but I am asking that the Security Commission, either itself orbetter stillas a tribunal under the 1921 Act, should have a sight of what the Government agencies know. I am concerned about ministerial control over housebreaking by state agencies, which is akin to the problem of state telephone tapping. Is there effective ministerial control over breaking into and entering houses? This is a legitimate and important question, unless the House of Commons is told that there was no authorised breaking and entering. House breaking is illegal, just as phone tapping is illegal, infringing the right of privacy. A Minister may authorise phone tapping on internal matters. Which Minister is responsible for any rules of breaking into and entering houses, be they private houses or those of publishers? Peter Wright was the senior case officer when Blunt was supposed to have confessed. I understand that it is simply not true that he confessed all. Apparently, there is an affidavit that the Prime Minister misled the Commons on Blunt. Furthermore, parts of Blunt's testimony were kept out. Why? A tribunal should be told. After all, the Prime Minister came in with a great fanfare of trumpets, saying "I am going to get control of the security services", and then did nothing about it. Why have the doubtless good intentions gone astray? As I told him at the Islwyn constituency Labour party Chartist rally in November 1985, I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock), when he becomes Prime Minister, must give his mind to those problems. Does the Blunt testimony reveal who tipped off Burgess and Maclean? The late Colonel Marcus Lipton told me before he died that he believed that Burgess and Maclean had been tipped off by a senior figure of the so-called establishment, who did so out of the kindness

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of his heart on an old-boy network, and not by a spy or agent. This issue should be clarified by a commission or tribunal. Another matter to which a commission or tribunal should turn its attention is a letter from Sir Michael Hanley to Wright, which reads: The firm is doing well and has passed recent examinations. Was this a reference to a private inquiry by Sir Robert Armstrong into MI5's activities against the Wilson Government? If so, on whose initiative and authority does the Security Service investigate some 30 persons such as Lord Kagan? Was it freelance or part of coherent control, 824 and where was the accountability? What could Peter Wright have meant by using the words "deniable, authorised, illegal" when referring to activity in the Wilson years? It is the opinion of Mr. Richard Morton Taylor, who was in court, that he did not make this up. The tribunal must consider the Attorney-General's role. Why did it take 10 days for Sir Robert Armstrong to apologise? The apology came 10 days after my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Oppositionthis is in column 426 of Hansard of 27 Novemberhad asked about the AttorneyGeneral's role. Why was the Attorney-General not consulted about Rupert Allason? Why was he not consulted about Chapman Pincher? These are all questions to which there must be sensible answers. For reasons of time, I shall omit other questions that could be asked about the Attorney-General, save for one. The Government cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that they have MI5 in control and then say at the same time that the Attorney-General did not know. Either the Government are in controlthey are indivisible, are not they?or they are not. When did Sir Robert Armstrong know about "Their Trade is Treachery"? Was it February 1981 or December 1980? How could Mr. Pincher be quoted as saying, "All is well now. All is hunky-dory"? I asked the question of the hon. Member for Stroud (Sir. A. Kershaw) about the time in 1984 that he was sending Clive Ponting's letter to me to the Ministry of Defence. He sent another document to Sir Robert Armstrong, which was a dossier from Wright. Why were Her Majesty's Government not as active about the Wright dossier as they were about the Ponting dossier? It is important that the Labour party is committed to the Cirencester and Tewkesbury amendment of the Bournemouth conference of 1985, when it was promised that we would have some sort of tribunal to which civil servants who felt that they had been abused could go. Did Sir Robert Armstrong hush up the Kershaw note concerning the memorandum from Wright? Were other members of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs told? If so, should a chairman of a Select Committee keep such a matter to himself? Finally, Mr. Deputy Speaker, it may be within your recollection that I raised with Mr. Speaker the issue of Members' telephones. My hon. Friend the Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) has received a letter which I have cross-checked, which I think should be the property of the House. It reads: First of all, let me make it plain that I am not and never have been subject to the Official Secrets Act. This is an anonymous letter. It continues: I will not identify myself because I am apprehensive of the Security Services. For 12 years, from 1968 to 1980, I was associated with the modernisation of the Government's telephone network covering the Whitehall area. The project consisted of eight central branch exchanges, each covering a geographical area of Whitehall, and all included all Government offices and buildings within that area. Each of these CBXs was connected to each other and to the outside public network via a CBX tandem exchange located in the building known as the North Rotunda under the Department of the Environment at the entrance on Great Peter Street. Also in this building were located three of the eight CBXs, the others being located around central London. The Palace of Westminster was served by a CBX located in an underground bunker in Storey's Gate, since modernised, I believe. You will appreciate from the above that the key to the whole network is the CBX tandem access, which would give anyone access to all telephone calls internally and externally, which is open to some 70,000 telephone lines. These included all MPs' telephones, Downing

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Street and any other 825 telephones serving Government Departments for roughly one square mile around Whitehall. Access to the North Rotunda building is via a door to the right of the Great Peter Street entrance of the Department of the Environment, and required a pass issued by the authorities to visitors, who were allowed to fill in a visitor's pass that had to be handed over on leaving the building. On entering the building one is confronted by a flight of steps, opposite which is a glass-fronted office that is manned at all times by uniformed security officers. Over a period of time, mostly outside normal working hours, a room immediately to the left at the bottom of the steps was installed with extensive and very sophisticated equipment. One day two severe-looking men turned up at the site and refused to show either identification passes or to fill in a visitor's document. After being refused admission, uniformed security guards received a telephone call instructing them and their colleagues to give all these men access day and night without question. These men and others manned the equipment in this room 24 hours a day. They never spoke or acknowledged normal greetings and access to the room was barred, of course. I cannot remember when this started, having no access to records, but it was a few weeks after MPs received push-button telephones instead of dial telephones. I am sure that this can soon be ascertained. It soon became accepted by all the Post Office BT staff and the contracting engineers that the only possible purpose for which this equipment could be used was intercepting telephone calls. I am sure that you realise the implications. Imagine the political advantage if you were the Government of the day and you had access to every telephone call made and received by Opposition MPs, every civil servant in Whitehall, not to mention" Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong) Order. I hope that the extract is about to come to an end. The hon. Gentleman should be making a speech rather than reading a letter. Mr. Dalyell I merely say that it is not explained how telephone calls between my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and Australia were intercepted. The answer that Mr. Speaker gave me was to refer the matter to the Prime Minister. Many hon. Members are concerned about what has happened and I believe that the information that came to my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, East rings true. 6.48 pm Mr. David Winnick (Walsall North) I am sure that the concluding point of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) should be taken up by the authorities in the House. It is a serious matter which cannot be dismissed out of hand. The only thing that I would say about the case in Australia, which my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) made much of, and rightly so, is that it was a mistake in the first place for the Government to pursue the case. I doubt whether they will win it, and the Government will be left with much egg on their face. The case has done nothing for the reputation of the Cabinet Secretary, who had an embarrassing brief, to say the least. In the eyes of many in Australia, and perhaps in Britain as well, he made rather an ass of himself. When the Select Committee on Home Affairs decided to look into the activities of the special branch, a number of witnesses came before the Committee to assure us that there was nothing to worry about. We know that the special branch works closely with the Security Service, and we were told that the work being undertaken by the Security Service and by the special branch was legitimate and that there was no question of anyone being inquired into because of his political

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views, that political dissent was 826 legitimate, and that there was little to worry about. The majority of the Committee came to the conclusion that the evidence was sufficient to justify a report which stated that the work being undertaken by the special branch was perfectly in order. Some Labour Members, however, were not convinced. I am sure that much of the work undertaken by the special branch is necessary and justified but many peoplecertainly many people in the Labour movementare concerned that some activities carried out by the special branch have little to do with the security of the state. It was near the end of our inquiry into the special branch that a television film called "MI5's Official Secrets" was shown. Some people have said that we should not take too much notice of what Mr. Wright told the courtthat he has exaggerated, and so on. In the television film, Cathy Massiter, a former official of MI5, stated that a number of people and organisations were the subject of inquiries because of their political views. They are people and organisations who in no way can be described as trying to undermine our democratic institutions. One of the organisations mentioned by Miss Massiter was the National Council for Civil Liberties. She said, as I remarked in an intervention in the speech of the Minister, that anyone who worked for the NCCL, anyone on the executive council and anyone who is active enough to be a branch secretary of that organisation is subject to inquiry, and a file is kept by MI5. One of the people who was the subject of an investigationand certainly a file by MI5was, apparently, my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) when she was the legal officer of that organisation. Is it suggested that my hon. Friend wants to undermine our democratic institutions and that she wants to turn this country into a Soviet republic? Therefore, inevitably, an argument that those activities are going on must give rise to a great deal of anxiety and undermine our confidence in the Security Service. I wish to give another illustration. When a journalist of some 30 years resigned as the editor of the CND journalhe had fallen out, as people tend to do in various organizationshe was subject to several questions from the special branch. It wanted to know who lived with whom, and what was the leadership style of the then general secretary of the CND. What is the purpose of such questions? If it is claimed by Ministers, including the Prime Minister, that it is perfectly legitimate to argue that one can be in favour of nuclear disarmament without being a security risk, why are those questions asked? They must give rise to much concern. From reports in the press and from what Miss Cathy Massiter states, I understand that in MI5 there is what is known as an F branch. It is sub-divided into other branches. For example, F2 investigates trade unions, F7 investigates various political groups, including Members of Parliamentthat is interesting to knowteachers, teachers, lawyers and journalists, F4 is responsible for putting agents into political parties and organisations, and F6 is responsible for trade unions. Mr. Martin M. Brandon-Bravo (Nottingham, South) What a load of crap. Mr. Winnick The hon. Gentleman made a comment that I do not wish to repeat. [Interruption.] One of my hon. Friends says that it is possible that F7 has a file on the hon. Gentleman. If so, I deplore it. 827 The recent allegations arising from the court case regarding a plot against the Labour Prime Minister at the time add further reasons why there should be a Select Committee or some form of parliamentary oversight of the security services. What would be the position if it were stated

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in court by a former MI5 official that certain MI5 officials had plotted to undermine a Conservative Prime Minister? I doubt whether Conservative Members would take such allegations in a light-hearted way. Surely at the end of the day we must persuade the House and the country that MI5 officials act in a politically neutral way. The first requirement of anyone who works in the Security Service is that he is totally committed to parliamentary democracy. Would anyone suggest that Mr. Peter Wright and some of his cronies who carried out what can only be described as subversive and criminal acts in 1974 are dedicated to parliamentary democracy? We know about Mr. Peter Wright. Do some of his colleagues, who worked with him at the time, remain in the Security Service? If so, is it not time that they were thrown out? Is it not time, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), the former leader of the Labour party, stated, for MI5 to be cleansed completely? That we need a Security Service is without doubt, but we need a Security Service that is politically neutral and is determined to defend parliamentary democracy. It is no good talking about fighting subversion while at the same time members of the security services do their utmost to carry out subversive activities. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) has changed his mind about the parliamentary Select Committee. It is essential, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) said, that there should be such a Select Committee to oversee the Security Service. It will not come into being during this Parliament. I hope that, when my party returns to office, such a Select Committee will be set up. 6.55 pm Mr. Waddington With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall speak again. I think that all hon. Members will agree that this has been an interesting debate. We should thank the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) for having selected the subject, even though I do not think that there was much in the content of his speech for which to thank him. I have already commented on his speech, so I shall refer to the remarks by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley). He suggested that the best alternative to the present system was the setting up of a 828 Select Committee which, in some way or another, would survey the work carried out by the Security Service. If that course is suggested, we must face, in the starkest fashion, the difficulty that was posed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House in the debate last weekwhether the body responsible for surveillance will be within or outside the barrier of secrecy. It is difficult to contemplate a Select Committee on which there would be not only Privy Councillors but people who are not Privy Councillors, being privy to operations carried out by the Security Service. If the Select Committee, with that role, is not to go within the barrier of secrecy, it is highly unlikely that it will satisfy the critics of the present system. It is difficult to see how it will be any improvement at all on the present system. I was interested in the remarks made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southport (Sir I. Percival). He pointed to the inconsistency of the case put forward by the hon. Member for Workington, who seemed to say that what Wright did was wrong, yet it was equally wrong to take action to try to prevent him from doing it. One could have understood it if the hon. Gentleman had said that what Wright was doing was wrong, that it was impolitic to do much about it, and that there were more dangers involved in the Government trying to do anything about it than to do nothing. I thought that my right hon. and learned Friend was right. The hon. Member for Workington said that while Wright was doing what was treasonable, we should do nothing about it, and that indeed he was entitled, as an hon. Member, not just to object but to bend all his efforts over the weeks and months to destroy the British case in the

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Australian courts. That strikes me as one of the most bizarre cases to have been but forward by any hon. Member over recent years Mr. Robert Atkins (South Ribble) rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put. Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to. Main Question put and negatived. ***************************************************************************** Security Services: Accountability HL Deb 17 December 1986 vol 483 cc174-209 174 2.58 p.m. Lord Jenkins of Putney rose to call attention to the lack of accountability of the security services; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. Much waternot all of it clean, I am afraidhas passed under several bridges since this Motion was put down. In the other place, debates have tended to concentrate on the mistakes of the Government and on the defence of their actions, as is customary and natural in that House. But perhaps here we may concern ourselves, as the Motion suggests, with the wider question of what ought to be done about the secret services. There are those who will say, "Well, yes, it does seem that all is far from well, but what can be done? How can secret services become accountable and still remain secret?" The Government's position is that nothing needs to be done; but that view is not widely held now outside the Government, and even inside it it is said that it is held with a certain lack of conviction. I can best declare my own position by quoting, if I may, from a letter I wrote to the Cabinet Secretary in 1978. At that time it was Sir John Hunt, now Lord Hunt of Fawley, who is aware of my intention to refer to him. It was about a book I wrote, subtitled An 175 Experience of Government and Arts. Sir John, to whom I had, as instructed, submitted the typescript, had objected, as indeed was his duty, to certain passages. I quote my reply: One of the objects of the book is to show how decisions are made and this cannot be done without demonstrating how advice is given by civil servants and quoting opinions expressed by Ministers. Nevertheless I am very ready to go along with the recommendations of the Committee of Privy Counsellors, whenever I can do so without damage to the public interest. I regard such damage as being done whenever information is concealed without good reason". I went on to say that a junior Minister in an area remote from national security, the arts, was well placed to advance the reality of open government. I added: I consider it wrong to deprive the electorate of information about the processes of government, for where they are bad they remain bad and get worse in the dark". That remains my view. I think it all too clear that the reason why the Government are concerned not only about Mr. Peter Wright but about such smaller fry as Miss Joan Miller and Miss Cathy Massiter, is that the Government still mistakenly hang on to the view that to preserve secrecy everything must be secret. The opposite

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is true. To preserve secrecy only essentials must be secret. The Government must not be economical with the truth. They must be economical with secrecy. As it is, we are the most secret of all those governments who profess to be open. Even the Soviet Union does not pretend to be without secret services. In that closed society the existence of the KGB and of those at the head of it is freely discussed. It is respectable to be a spy. Perhaps our attitude regarding the spy and the counter spy as opposite sides of the same coin, as people doing dirty work which has to be kept under the table, is nearer the truth. But that should not involve carrying it to the point at which we become a laughing stock, to the point at which a senior civil servant is persuaded to behave publicly and privately in a way which demeans a hitherto highly respected man, to the point at which even the word of the Prime Minister in Parliament becomes suspect. That is going too far because by seeking to cover everything up we have made the preservation of secrecy so widespread that its cloak simply will not cover the essentials, and a judge in open court calls the Government's case "baloney". The quality of books about the Secret Service varies considerably. I am not an admirer of Mr. Chapman Pincher, and like Sir William Rees-Mogg, like Mr. Philip Knightwhose impressive book was impressively reviewed, if I may say so, by Lord Annan last Sunday in the Observer and many others indeed, including the Prime Minister, I shall need more than the evidence of Mr. Peter Wright to convince me that Sir Roger Hollis was a Soviet spy. As for Lord Rothschild, the tergiversations of his role in these matters have so far defied rational explanation. If I were the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor I might be tempted to say that the whole lot of them seemed to have gone completely bonkers. As Mr. Knightley shows in his book, the risk of inter-spy lunacy is one of the dangers of a secret service which is not subject to systematic oversight and is not 176 accountable, even indirectly, to the open forum of Parliament. The description by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, of the nature of the British security services in his report on the Profumo affair has stood the test of time in all but one vital respect. The noble and learned Lord says in Cmnd. 2152, paragraph 273, that the security services have no executive powers. That of course is true. But unfortunately Lord Denning goes on to say that the security services have "managed very well" without executive powers. They have not. They have assumed powers they do not legally possess. They regularly break the law. The full examination of the secret services which has taken place in other countries and which must surely now take place here shows that, without exception, secret services commit crimes as a matter of course. I ask you Lordships to see The Ties that Bind by Richardson and Ball, which is available from the Library. I think it is the best comparative book obtainable on this subject. In 1952 the Maxwell Fyfe directive set out for the first time what the general duties of our five secret service agencies are supposed to be. Clause 2 says, inter alia, that the task includes defence against dangers arising: from actions of persons and organisations whether directed from within or without the country which may be judged to be subversive of the state". That judgment is left to the security service itself and, as Mr. Roy Jenkins said on 3rd December in the House of Commons (at col. 959 of Hansard) that spies and counter-spies are, entirely unfitted to judge between what is subversion and what is legitimate dissent.". The record suggests that the security services judge the Conservative Party to be virtually synonymous with the state and the Labour Party to be naturally subversive. This is in spite of the fact that the Maxwell Fyfe directive goes on to say that the security services must keep themselves free from political bias. According to Mr. Andrew Roth, there are a number of exintelligence officers in the House of Commons. All of them are members of the Conservative

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Party. There are a number of Members of Parliament who have been under surveillance from time to time by the security services. All of them are members of the Labour Party. When I was chairman of CND I used to talk frequently on the telephone to Dr. John Cox, who was a vice-chairman. It has since been admitted that Dr. Cox a member of the Communist Partya rather orthodox member of that party: I believe he stood politically somewhat to my rightwas bugged under an authority signed by Mr. Leon Brittan, who was Home Secretary at that time. The flat which my wife and I still occupy in Putney was the subject of a curious unacquisitive burglary about that time, with papers strewn all over the place and all drawers and cupboards open, but nothing much apparently taken. For a time after that our telephone behaved oddly with scraps of conversation heard. The police were baffled and so were my wife and I. Let us hope it was just a coincidence. I am sure no Home Secretary authorised anything. 177 Why have the Government taken action to suppress the book One Girl's War by Joan Miller? Some copies were issued before the suppression came into effect and here is one of them obtained by the House of Lords Library being quick off the mark. There is nothing in this book which could possibly threaten the safety of the realm, for the late Miss Miller's connection and story, as the title, One Girl's War, suggests, was essentially a war-time one. Miss Miller was nave but she was patriotic and, like Miss Cathy Massiter today, she had her own moral standards. Her stomach was turned by some of the things she had to do. Miss Miller quite casually and almost accidentally reveals what a sleazy and irresponsible and occasionally ruthless bunch these spooks were. She worshipped her chief, Maxwell Knight, with whom she lived for some time. She described him as being anti-Semitic and much else. When he decided to drop her she began to fear for her life, for she recalled another member of the staff who: performed some unofficial jobs for M [as he was called] such as getting rid of an unreliable double agent in the middle of the North Sea". Well, it is peacetime now and there could not be any truth in the idea that Miss Hilda Murrell, the antinuclear rose grower, was murdered by accident by an agent of MI5, could there? Surely not! I must leave to others to suggest how this can of worms can be cleansed and prevented from again falling into the smelly decay which seems to be the natural habitat of the spy. There is not time to give details of my own views, but I would suggest an outline. In another place, the committee proposed by the Alliance has been seen in two lights: first, as a committee to examine the situation and to make recommendations; and, secondly, as a permanent oversighting body. That might happen but first must come the examination and the proposals for reform. Personally, for that purpose, I would settle for a committee of Privy Counsellors from both Houses, providing that they were representative of all parties. Second must be the report to Parliamentand there must be an annual reportnot by the director of the security services, for he cannot be exposed, I think, to that. He should report to the committee and the committee should report to Parliament. In this way, accountability and security may both be served without breaching the principle of ministerial responsibility. Finally, I would hope that one of the recommendations of the committee would be the adoption of the proposal of Mr. Roy Jenkinsand on this subject he knows what he is talking about, because he was of course a most distinguished Home Secretarythat MI5 be pulled out of its political surveillance role. It is particularly important that this nonsense should be stopped when we are lumbered with a Prime Minister who talks about "the enemy within" and about "eliminating socialism".

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 If we want to go on settling our differences by discussion and by majority voting, we must not descend to the level at which power is preserved by force and surveillance. It would be better for us all if that kind of talk and that kind of action were to stop 178 on both sidesindeed, on all sides. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers. 3.12 p.m. Lord Dacre of Glanton My Lords, finding myself, to my surprise, the first to follow the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, I am glad to take this opportunity of being the first to congratulate him on introducing a debate on this important subject. I have to be very tentative for we are moving in a world of cloaks and daggers, false names and false identities; but I think that I may be the only person here who has actually worked in both MI5 and MI6. Admittedly, that was a long time ago and in rather special circumstances. But, after all, the skeletons which come tumbling out of our cupboards to enjoy their periodical ritual dance all date from that time. Although there have been many changes in the services since thenmostly, I think, for the bettertime and observation have rather confirmed than refuted the general views which I then formed about the nature and the limitations of the work of the security services. Whatever may be the truth of recent allegations, I think it is clear that they have done great damage to the reputation and to the morale of the services. That, after all, is why we have this debate. The root cause of the damage is, I believe, a lack of control, both external and internal, a lack of consistent policy and excessive secrecy. I find myself, again to my surprise, in agreement with many of the thingsnot everything but many of the thingswhich the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, said. The services need control not only to ensure discipline but also for their own protectionprotection especially from themselves. All professions have their occupational dangers and the occupational danger of enclosed societies is a tendency to live in a private world; hence a loss of balance and of sense of proportion. These dangers are compounded by secrecy. Secrecy takes its toll and needs its psychological compensations. It can lead to fantasy and even occasionally to paranoia. Much of the recent trouble, I believe, has been due to fantasy; uncontrolled conspiracy theories made paranoid by unusual events. The discovery that both MI5 and MI6 had harboured traitors in responsible positions was a traumatic event. But the paranoia, I believe, has been uncontrolled and the question that we have to ask is how it can be brought under control. Obviously, it requires a more consistent discipline, a stricter chain of command, regular accountability; but mere mechanical discipline cannot of itself cure the ailment. It may intensify it and especially, I may add, when it is lifted, for it is then often that the fantasy is released. I have observed that the most advanced cases of it have occurred after such persons have retiredand I am not thinking here of one case only; I can think of severalafter they have returned from the excitement of shared, continuous machination to the vacuum of retirement. What is needed, I believe, is not only the pressure of a consistent discipline but also safety valves for the steam generated under that pressure. The operations of a secret service must necessarily be secret but the 179 services themselves need not be so. At least they need not be so all the time. The days are past when we needif, indeed, we ever neededto pretend that they do not exist. The whole mentality of romantic, puerile amateurism generated by a school of popular novelists, a mentality which was still cultivated, deliberately cultivated, in those services when war descended upon us, is surely out of date.

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Secrecy must be reduced to its necessary minimum or it will take its revenge in a psychosis of suspicion. I believe that what is required is an indivisible package: first, firmer responsibility all the way up, both internal and external; secondly, safety valves for the evacuation of suspicion; and, thirdly, less secrecy in inessentials. On internal discipline I believe that the Government were quite right to make a stand in the case of Mr. Wright, although I believe that they should have done so in the case of Mr. Pincher and I do not understand why they did not. He was, after all, only a pseudonym and a ghostwriter for Mr. Wright. On external discipline, I have come to the view that responsibility to Parliament through an overburdened Cabinet Minister of high rank is not enough. There must also be a body which, though external to it, enjoys the trust of the service, which sits in secret and which can hear confidential complaints, enforce attendance and give advice. I do not think that the Security Commission can fill this role; it is too remote. Such a body would be both a watchdog and a safety valve. If such a body had existed, I think that the scandals and public exposures of recent years could have been avoided. Members of the service who suspected their own chief, or even the Prime Minister, could have gone to it. The problem could then have been either resolved internally or, if that proved impossible, referred to a judicial inquiry. Such a system exists in America in the form of the Senate Intelligence Committee. A close friend of mine, a distinguished former intelligence chief whom I greatly respect, tells me that the intelligence community in America was at first opposed to this innovation but, now that it is reconciled to it, it finds that it is a very valuable institution and wishes to preserve it. I have no doubt that some such body would be equally valuable here. Finally, there is secrecy. Provided that there is internal discipline, and that members of the service are forbidden by enforceable contracts to publish books or to supply matter to writers, or at least cannot do so without express authority, I believe that the fetish of security could be left to wither away. Let journalists speculate; their speculations can be treated as such. Let historians write as they do. The secrecy of the history of the security services, as distinct from their current operations, is not worth protecting. It is already open to those who know where to look. A distinguished historian, the late Sir Lewis Namier, once wrote: most secrets are in print if one knows where to look". He also observed: documents have nine lives, for they have eight carbon copies". My Cambridge colleague, Dr. Christopher Andrew, has recently published an excellent and very readable 180 history of the British Secret Service entirely from public sources, mainly in the Public Record Office. There is now a learned journal with the title, Intelligence and National Security, regularly published in London. I recommend it to your Lordships as a useful work of history and perhaps also of psychological therapy for bringing the intelligence world out of the closed mentality from which the recent traumas have grown. 3.22 p.m. Lord Hutchinson of Lullington My Lords, I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord for initiating so topical a debate. I should like to say at once that I agree with a great deal of the remarkable speech we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Dacre. My justification for speaking is that over 25 years I have had a close professional involvement in court cases involving the security services. Blake, Vassall, Martelli, Roberts and Conway were all my clients, as were the editor of the Sunday Telegraph and Mr. Duncan Campbell in the ABC case. Even Miss Keeler sought my services. It has been my duty to cross-examine a number of security service personnel. Indeed, Mr. Turnbull's role in Sydney has at times seemed curiously familiar; though I must add that if a

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potential Prime Minister had sought to contact me during the currency of a case for purely political reasons and, as it now quite clearly appears, to give succour to the case against the Government, he would have received a massive flea in his presumptuous ear. In the area of defence and terrorism, the security services are essential. Over terrorism their performance, with the special branch, has been brilliant and we all owe them a huge debt of gratitude. But their reputation overall, I suggest, no longer stands where it should in the eyes of the public. A restoration job is plainly necessary. The list of defectors and leakers is astonishing and the accumulation of credible allegations of unauthorised and mischievous operations is substantial. My experience has led me to three conclusions. The first is that the blanket secrecy which smothers the service has become a harmful obsession and has infected responsible civil servants and Ministers in successive governments. I go along with what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, said about that. The Maxwell Fyfe directive of 1952 lays down a far too restrictive obligation on Ministers, I suggest, based as it is on the stifling principle of the need to know. Also, the need for a safety valve for officers to channel complaints and suspicions is surely made out; and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, takes the same view. I will deal with those three headings shortly, but I should like to quote from an article in The Times of 29th November last by the distinguished diplomat Sir Reginald Hibbert, our last ambassador in Paris. He writes. On a strict interpretation of the Official Secrets Act, government in Britain is carried on by a process of leaks. The system depends on everyone knowing and respecting how much they are allowed to leak" my Lords, the authentic voice of the establishment! 181 He then points out, with an exquisite use of words, that the secret and security services have, to endure the full rigours of the Official Secrets Act without ever enjoying the relief of leaking". He adds: The historical convention is that they do not exist and can neither be seen nor heard. He continues: it is not surprising that an elaborate system of controlled leaking from the top has been evolved, leaking to chosen writers and journalists" and, I would add, politicians. In the ABC case, it took us three days of cross-examination to convince a High Court judge that the existence, location and purpose of GCHQ could not be a state secret to be kept from the public as argued passionately by the Crown witnesses. By taking photos from public footpaths, reading unrestricted service magazines and looking at notice boards, anyone could establish which Signals unit was there at Cheltenham, the name of its commanding officer, and indeed, for any radio enthusiast, the frequency on which the station transmitted its messages. The only secret was: what were the messages received and how were they used? My client was charged under Section 1the most serious of all secrecy offences. After a week the judge threatened to summon the Attorney-General to court unless the prosecution withdrew the charge, which he described as oppressive. After two more weeks the judge, unprecedentedly, announced that whatever the verdict on the other charges he had no intention whatever of imposing a custodial sentence. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Silkin, who was the Attorney-General at the time, would agree that he had not been properly briefed by the security services when he pitched the prosecution so high. We see the same thing happening daily in Sydney, Australia. The reason: obsessive secrecy, even in relation to Ministers of the Crown. It is absurd and untenable to forbid any publication by any member of the security services, past or present, in any circumstances, whatever may be the public interest. It is absurd to deny the existence of MI6. Indeed, I am not persuaded that the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, has made what I might call another mistake. What surely is sensible is to admit the existence and location of the

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security services and to allow publications subject only to vetting by the service on clearly stated, sensible grounds, spelt out as a reasoned policy. The Need to Know, the Maxwell Fyfe directive, refers to the convention that Ministers are, furnished with such information only as may be necessary for the determination of an issue on which guidance is sought. In other words, the initiative must come from the Minister. The truth is that the busy Minister does not want to know and the service does not want to tell. Those awkward political birds of passage must only know what they need to know. The Secretary of State says that if the director general's judgment is wrong, he is answerable to the Home Secretary. But that is ex post facto. When Commander Crabbe swam under the Russian cruiser, which was ironically on a goodwill mission at 182 Portsmouth, the Russians found him out and blew the operation. The Prime Minister had to come to the House of Commons and admit, humiliatingly, that he and other Ministers knew nothing whatever about the operation. There must surely be some political oversight, some political guidance and some sharing of responsibility. Sir Robert Armstrong, I suggest, should never have been expected to undergo a political cross-examination. Accountability means neither interference in operations nor sharing secrets; nor does it mean a total crossing of Mr. Hurd's barrier of secrecy. It is the old question that all democracies have had to answer: quis custodet and where lies the public interest. Other democracies have solved these questions, and with some political will we can do the same. What is required is a forum which is not a court of law where these questions can be put. That would provide the watchdog and the safety valve to which the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, referred. That plus the reform of the Official Secrets Act and the passing of a freedom of information Act would restore the reputation of the security services. I ask the Minister: is the time not demonstrably overripe for some inquiry into the whole affair? 3.34 p.m. Lord Denning My Lords, I too wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for raising this topic. In 1963 the then Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, asked me, in the light of the circumstances leading to the resignation of the former Secretary of State for War, Mr. J. D. Profumo, to examine the operation of the security service. I undertook that task. Coming before me to give evidence were not only the Prime Minister but most of the members of the Cabinet, the director general of the security service and many of his staff. I visited MI5 as well. I hope that I performed that examination carefully. The first matter to be observed is the structure of the security service. On this matter, perhaps I may repeat what I said in my report at paragraph 273: The Security Service in this country is not established by Statute nor is it recognised by Common Law. Even the Official Secrets Acts do not acknowledge its existence. The members of the Service are, in the eye of the law, ordinary citizens with no powers greater than anyone else". I had much confidential information given to me and I summarised that in the report. Until 1952 the Prime Minister was responsible for security. In 1951, a proposal was made to the Prime Minister by Sir Norman Brooke, who many of your Lordships will remember as one of our most experienced civil servants. He proposed that responsibility should be transferred to the Home Secretary. Sir David Maxwell Fyfe in 1952 gave an important directive to the director general of the security service which is set out in the report. I also had a great deal of further evidence.

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The general principle, which I ventured to state in paragraph 239, was as follows: (1) The head of the Security Service is responsible directly to the Home Secretary for the efficient and proper working of the Service and not in the ordinary way to the Prime Minister. 183 (2) The Security Service is, however, not a department of the Home Office. It operates independently under its own Director-General, but he can and does seek direction and guidance from the Home Secretary, subject always to the proviso that its activities must be absolutely free from any political bias or influence. (3) The function of the Security Service is to defend the Realm as a whole from dangers which threaten it as a whole, such as espionage on behalf of a foreign Power, or internal organisations subversive of the State. For this purpose it must collect information about individuals, and give it to those concerned. But it must not, even at the behest of a Minister or a Government Department, take part in investigating the private lives of individuals except in a matter bearing on the Defence of the Realm as a whole". The burden of the report is that the security service is not to investigate the private morals or private lives of individuals or their political aspirations. It must be quite independent of any moral or political bias whatsoever. The director general of the service is answerable to the Home Secretary. In matters of prime importance, the last section of paragraph 239 of the report states: The head of the Security Service may approach the Prime Minister himself on matters of supreme importance and delicacy". I venture to think that that report and those recommendations still hold good and that there is no need for a further or more elaborate chain of accountability. I saw all those witnesses in connection with that report, and I saw the director general, Sir Robert Hollis, myself. I saw his staff. They were keeping in touch from the very beginning with the situation involving Stephen Ward and the Russian, Ivanov, and with the happenings in Ward's flat with such people as Christine Keeler and the like. They were reporting on the situation to the proper peopleto the Foreign Office and to Admiralty House, where the Prime Minister then was. They took the line all along that it was not their function to investigate either the private morals or the private lives of any individual. Having regard to the whole of the circumstances, they came to the conclusion that there was no security risk involved in anything that Mr. Profumo did. I hope that all those suspicions were cleared away by that report. Having seen Sir Roger Hollis, his staff and how they worked with him, I have complete confidence in his integrity and uprightness, and indeed in Lord Trend's subsequent vindication of him. So much for that inquiry. As regards the matters which are the subject of controversy today, I shall not go into them. There is undoubtedly unease about disclosures that have been made. Do they require another inquiry? All I would say is that any senior officer of the service who has any doubts about the loyalty of his superiors and others should immediately report them to the Home Secretary or to the Prime Minister, rather than waiting until after people are dead and unable to answer for themselves. That is what anyone who was uneasy about the conduct of persons in office should have done, rather waiting until after such persons were dead and unable to answer for themselves. I hope that the House will accept the importance of people in the security service maintaining complete confidence not only during their period in the service but for their whole lives. In the circumstances, I hope that those principles will be established firmly throughout. 184 To come back to the question of whether there is any need for further accountability, I venture to think that the system I described in my report still holds good. In exceptional cases, there may be need for an inquiry, as there was in the case in question, but as a general rule let the position go on as it is. It is very good on the whole and has withstood the test of time. 3.40 p.m. Lord Campbell of Croy

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My Lords, our gratitude is due to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, for having raised the question of accountability of the security service, which is an important subject. We have to ask ourselves how best to balance the need for some basic secrecy with the proper supervision of such a service in a democracy. The noble Lord in the Motion and in his speech has used the plural, "services". I shall refer to the "security service" in the singular, the organisation concerned with counter-espionage, also known as MI5. As regards any other organisations involved in gathering intelligence, I shall refer simply to the British intelligence system. In the limited time available to each speaker I hope that I can make a thoughtful contribution, because my work in public service has at times brought me in touch with the security service and our intelligence system, in particular when I was Private Secretary to Sir Norman Brooke, then Secretary to the Cabinet. I should make it clear that I have never myself been a member of the organisations concerned. I saw something of their problems and their successes, and I benefited from the products of their work. In speaking today, I am very conscious of being subject to the restraints of the Official Secrets Act, imposed when I entered the Foreign Office in 1946. Since 1970, I have also been bound by the Privy Counsellor's oath. Consequently, your Lordships will understand that I tread with care, and will speak in general, not in detail. Because of the positions that I have held, my interest has been engaged, and continues to be engaged, in the nagging question: how can the activities of the security service and the intelligence system be satisfactorily supervised and accounted for? There is no straight-forward solution of the orthodox kind because we must recognise that there are two special requirements. First, most of their important work must be secret, otherwise they could not carry out their functions. There would be no point in their existence. Secondly, they ought to have discretion to carry out covert activities, and be able to act quickly, in accordance with understood guidelines. Their accountability at present, as in the past, is to certain Ministers through designated officials. The Ministers are of course accountable to Parliament, but they do not discuss the work of the organisations in Parliament, or elsewhere in public, since this would make it impossible to retain the necessary secrecy. That convention has always been accepted by governments and official oppositions. From time to time there have been suggestions for a Select Committee or a parliamentary commission. The same difficulty, I suggest, arises as for the Floor of either House. It is not a suitable place for a discussion 185 of matters most of which are secret and are being ardently sought after by certain hostile organisations and individuals. Another proposal suggested in another place in the debate on 3rd December, and again today the preference of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, is a conference of Privy Counsellors. I happen to be in an excellent position to comment because I was the secretary of the first such body to be appointed at the end of 1955, and so was involved in drafting its report, produced four months later. The conference was on security. It was established after the Soviet Government had suddenly produced in Moscow Burgess and Maclean, who some three years earlier had disappeared. The Russians obviously did this in order to embarrass the West. Their appearance certainly caused headlines, confusion and calls for an inquiry. The problem, however, was how an inquiry could be unbiased, yet consist of people who could be informed about very secret matters. An internal investigation within government was not considered acceptable, though party politics did not arise at that stage because the events to be

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examined occurred during periods in office of different governments. The Privy Counsellors appointed were as follows: three members of the Conservative Government of the day, the Lord President, the Lord Chancellor and the Home Secretary; three former Labour Cabinet Ministers, including Lord Jowitt, a former Lord Chancellor, and Mr. Morrison, a former Foreign Secretary. The seventh Privy Counsellor was Sir Edward Bridges, who was head of the Civil Service as well as Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. One member was Lord Kilmuir, who, as Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, had been the Home Secretary who formulated in 1952 the directive to the security service which I understand still governs its operations today. The report of the conference making recommendations on security in the public service was published as a parliamentary paper, Cmnd. 9715. Incidentally, I had met both Burgess and Maclean in my work in the Foreign Office in the late 1940s. A similar formula was used when another conference of Privy Counsellors was appointed a few years later on telephone tapping. Again, sensitive secret matters were to be looked into. Having had a hand in thinking up this kind of body, the first one in 1955, I favour it as a formula for certain occasions but not as a permanent body. It was clearly suitable as a means of investigating a particular situation or episode, but I believe it is not appropriate as a body attempting permanently to monitor and supervise the security service. It would make little if any addition, I think, to accountability to Parliament. For completeness, I should mention that a similar group of Privy Counsellors was established immediately after the Falklands conflict where an inquiry was clearly needed and defence and security secrets were involved. An internal government inquiry might have been seen as a whitewash. At that time, I was aware of the same climate of concern as in 1955. I am sure that the Government had it in mind, but in case the formula had been overlooked I reminded the appropriate quarter of the 1955 conference. I was therefore gratified to find that 186 this was eventually adopted even to the equivalent of Sir Edward Bridgesfor Sir Patrick Nairne, the civil servant, was appointed a Privy Counsellor and made a member of the committee. I have spoken of secrecy. Your Lordships will know from Question Time that I am one of those who have been trying to get Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act replaced. Indeed, the Government introduced a Bill to do that in 1979. They made a worthy effort, but ran into difficulties. I believe that those who are recruited and work in the security service should not be free to release sensitive information or write memoirs, including such information after retiring. If they have an urge to write about their work they should go into another occupation. I also believe that some blame attaches to publishers if they press for memoirs with the maximum number of names, rumours and allegations. The effect is to reduce to some extent the security of the 55 million people living in this country. The effectiveness of our security service is diminished and other countries will be less willing to share secret information with us. Perhaps I may express a final thought about past relationships with the Soviet Union. During the war, from 1941 to 1945, the Russians were our allies and presumably military intelligence and other useful intelligence was passed to them. Those who worked in our intelligence system had to readjust after 1945. That could be illustrated by my own case because I was an ordinary regimental soldier from the beginning of the war until the end of the war in Europe. I was wounded during the assault across the Elbe on the day before Hitler committed suicide. What was our objective? My division was due to meet the Russians near Lbeck, which happened within two days. I departed with a bullet through my middle which kept me in hospital for more than a year. A year and a half after that sudden departure from the army I entered the Foreign Office, having been successful in the entrance exam, and was immediately

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sent to the Eastern European department where I found myself dealing with the Russians on a quite different basis. They had changed from being wartime allies to being potential enemies with whom we had to be very careful. I accept that there is a place for special inquiries on particular subjects and episodes and that membership can be devised suitable for receiving secret information. But I do not think a workable system can be set up permanently for supervision and accountability which would improve upon the present arrangements for ministerial responsibility. 3.51 p.m. Lord Hooson My Lords, I should like to join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, for initiating this debate. It seems to have come at a particularly appropriate time not so much because of the affair that is going on in Australia but because in the other place there is an early-day motion, headed by the very respected former Home Secretary Mr. Merlyn Rees, calling for an inquiry into the alleged political surveillance of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, when he was Prime Minister of this country. As your 187 Lordships will recollect, Mr. Merlyn Rees was the Home Secretary who reported to the succeeding Prime Minister, Mr. James Callaghan, that everything was all right because it had been reported to Mr. Reesand I have had words with Mr. Rees about thisby the director general of M15 that there was nothing to report. The fact that his name now heads an early-day motion calling for an inquiry into the matter underlines the seriousness of the affair. I found the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, with his excellent knowledge and experience, totally convincing. The Government would do well to heed his very wise words in regard to the security services. I should like to underline the point that has been made that there is excessive secrecy. I was engaged last year in my professional duties, defending in the so-called Cyprus spy trial of young servicemen charged with Section 1 offences. The way senior officials of the intelligence services had to deny the existence of facts that could be simply proved by producing newspaper reports and government announcements over a number of years was ludicrous. The jury and everybody else in the court found it ludicrous. There is excessive secrecy. I should like to make my position clear. I accept of course that the security services must necessarily be properly and effectively secretive about their legitimate operational matters. I totally accept that there must be a binding obligation for life on members of the security services not to disclose what was entrusted to them as confidential in the legitimate pursuit of their duties. But that is not the point that really arises; and we all know this to be true. I want to concentrate on two spheres where difficulties arise. First, if the service under its director general indulges in legal activitesfor example, under the guise of political surveillancegiven its power and expertise, it must be very tempting at times to go beyond the bounds of legitimacy. It would be very dangerous for the country as a whole, as well as being totally and unacceptably unfair to individuals who were selected as targets, if this were allowed to go on uncontrolled. I entirely take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, so convincingly made about the need for tighter internal control. I also accept his view that there should be a measure of external control. Secondly, there is the much more likely scenario of dissident members of the security services indulging in illegal activitiesfor example, if they do not seek warrants to intercept telephone calls but just do it; if they commit burglaries, and so onin pursuit of what they subjectively consider to be acceptable aims. If a part of the service gets out of control, as it has been alleged

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part of the service did for one period, what is the situation of an individual member of the service who is an upright person and is deeply offended by what is going on? What is his duty? Is it to keep silent? The answer is no, it cannot be. Is it to report to his superiors? Clearly, it is. However, what if the superiors pay no attention? Is he to take an active part in a cover-up? Is he to continue making protests when perhaps his superiors do not want to know? What is that officer's duty to the country? I have to remind your Lordships that at 188 Nuremberg, in a different context truly, the defence of superior orders was there held by all the judges to be no answer to a charge of the commission of a war crime. It is not entirely an analogous situation but there are certain situations when even in the security services it is legitimate to say that the defence of superior orders is no defence. The danger is this. The individual involved has to reach a subjective judgment on what is or is not legitimate and on what is or is not proper for him to do. Surely the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, is right that there must be somebody to whom an officer can report, an outside body or at least an outside individual, so that an anxiety can be expressed, guidance sought and advice taken or to whom he can legitimately make a complaint about the running of the service. This appears to be the greatest single problem affecting the security services at the present time. I go back to the allegations concerning the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, of whose political views and political activities I never entirely approved. I am bound to say that the allegations are that there were surveillance, interceptions and burglaries involving the houses of the Prime Minister himself. Did it happen? Surely that can be answered. Why did it happen? Was it authorised? If so, by whom? If it was not authorised, who did it? How many were involved? What disciplinary action was taken in respect of them? Surely these are matters that the public have a right to know. This House and I think the Government owe a duty to the country to make as much information available as possible so that the matter can be fairly judged. I do not have the expertise to suggest what kind of body is appropriate for the external control but I think it should be a permanent body to which any member of the security services with true anxieties and needing real guidance can go. That would perhaps prevent the kind of scene that has presented itself in the court in Sydney, where the Government are quite legitimately trying to prevent the publication of all kinds of disclosed secrets, when if they had provided their own machinery for complaint and guidance they would not be faced with that situation. 3.59 p.m. Lord Beloff My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, because the subject we are discussing is important and one on which I think most people's minds are not closed. We have had a variety of suggestions as to how the situation might be improved. I cannot claim, as have other speakers, to have had any direct involvement in any capacity with any of the security services. As a private citizen and, at the time, a university teacher I was from time to time approached with questions about a pupil or other former acquaintance of mine who was presumably being looked at with a view to confidential employment. My impression on those occasions was that the security service was employing people whose degree of political sensitivity was rather low. I should have thought that the important aspect in a security service must always be the quality of the personnel. 189 I share the admiration for Mr. Christopher Andrew's remarkable History of the Secret Service. If one reads his book one is amazed, at a time when great efforts were made to handle

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recruitment for the Civil Service, the armed forces and the Colonial Service, how haphazard and amateur was the procedure by which people became members of the secret services. Therefore I should have thought that if strengthening is needed that is where the strengthening is required. What I am doubtful aboutapart from this question of appeal by a dissident member, where I think the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, is probably right in saying that there ought to be such machineryis the suggestion of a permanent body of oversight. The noble Lord, Lord Dacre, suggested the parallel of the Senate Intelligence Committee; but in spite of his praise for that institution recent revelations in the United States would not suggest that the activities of the American services are altogether free from blame. Indeed, they seem more bizarre than many of the allegations against our own service. It does not seem to me that parliamentary surveillance is appropriate in this field. It is of course temptingthe noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, referred to thisto make use of the existence of the special status of Privy Counsellors, but I can only refer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington; that is. when the Leader of the Opposition, who is a Privy Counsellor, associates himself and aids the presentation of an anti-government case in a security matter, as Mr. Turnbull made quite clear in court yesterday, that is very damaging to the cause of those Lord Mishcon My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord will give way. So far this debate has taken place without any party political points being set. Will the noble Lord be careful in his language? He said that it was aiding the case against the Crown. Mr. Kinnock, to whom the noble Lord is referring, is an honourable man. He said that he was asking to correct, if necessary, information that he had. He was not giving information. Will the noble Lord please remember that and couch his terms a little more carefully? Lord Beloff My Lords, I am sorry, but I am not referring to what Mr. Kinnock said. I am referring to what Mr. Turnbull said in court yesterday. He said that were it not for the information elicited by Mr. Kinnock in questioning the Prime Minister he would not have been able to present so convincing a case. That is Mr. Turnbull's statement, not mine. I was not using it in a party sense. I was using it in the sense that the Privy Counsellors' oath is perhaps insufficient. Lord Mishcon My Lords, the noble Lord is courteous in giving way but not courteous in his language. He is now referring to what was openly said in Parliament by way of question and answer. That was in public. Lord Beloff My Lords, I never indicated that it was in private. I am sorry, but I never indicated that anything was done in private. I merely said, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, in rather more extreme language than I have used, that this event cast some 190 question over the possibility of using a committee of Privy Counsellors. If it had involved a Conservative, a Liberal or a Social Democrat I should have taken precisely the same view. There are problems in using the Privy Counsellors' oath in matters of this kind. It may be possible to overcome those problems, but it would be idle to pretend that they do not exist.

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Another point which I believe must be made is this. I can quite understand the belief, the wish and the hope that has been expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, that security should be limited, so far as possible, to non-political matters. Of course when it is a question of not allowing a potential enemy to have a picture of some weapon of war everything is very straightforward and few people find that to be a problem. But the history of the secret service has, alas, never been limited to that. The first and great exponent of the British secret service was Sir Francis Walsingham, who, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, spent a great deal of public money and employed a great many perhaps doubtful people in seeking out Catholic priests who were thought to be agents in a plot to dethrone Queen Elizabeth in favour of a Catholic pretender. If one refers to the state papers of William III's reign one finds, again, an enormous amount of secret activity directed towards intercepting communications between this country and foreign courts where the Stuart pretender of the day was residing. Therefore, whenever you have in a country a great gap between what the Government of the day or the state regard as security and some element in the population which directly challenges that view it is difficult to see how the security services can avoid being implicated. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for example, indicated that he thought the service went beyond its brief in looking at or intercepting communications between two prominent members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. However, in view of the fact that persons associated with that campaign have not merely made propagandaas is their rightfor a totally different set-up in our defences but have actually intercepted military convoys and endeavoured to interrupt the ordinary course of military practice, clearly at some point such people will no doubt deserve and receive the attention of the security services. It is a very difficult area, and short of having tight ministerial control, better recruitment and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, said, a proper appeal mechanism for those who feel aggrieved or feel that things are going wrong, I find it hard to see how much progress can be made. 4.9 p.m. Lord Wilson of Langside My Lords, so far we have had an interesting debate. I venture to say that it will probably become even more interesting when the Minister replies to at least half of the very pointed questions put to him by the noble Lord, Lord Hooson. I hope he will have already applied his mind to that. It has been, too, an encouraging and useful debate. Like many others, I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, particularly encouraging and interesting. I think the question to which the House 191 will wish to have an answer, in the context of what he said, is this. Can we take it that, broadly speaking, what he said represents the Government's approach to the problems in this area with which we are concerned this afternoon? Can we take it that the Government have absorbed the lessons of the events which led to such nonsense as the trial in Australia and the various other bits of nonsense which have been visited upon us over the last 40 years? Moreover, can we take it that the Government's approach to that situation is broadly the sensible one which, as I understand it, the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, was advocating? I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, intriguing too because he reminded me of my own experience in the intelligence hierarchy at the very bottom of the ladder of which he was at the top. My experience, which was brief, took place when I was in my mid-20s and took the shape of the lowest form of life in the military field; namely, the regimental intelligence officer.

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As the noble Lord was describing his experience, I wondered what excuse I had for participating in your Lordships' debate this afternoon. At various levels over the last 40 years or so, for my sins I have been involved in prosecuting and trying criminals and that has given me a wide experience. During this time I have often reflected upon the dangers of the establishment coverup, which is an invention neither of the media nor yet of the anti-establishment lobby but is a fact of real life. I feel that my experience has perhaps given me some locus to participate in the debate. More seriously, I am concerned to make only one short point to emphasise the importance of accountability in this sphere. What above all persuaded me that some government action was essential with regard to the accountability of the security services was the granting of immunity from criminal prosecution to the traitors Blunt and Philby. I thought that the circumstances surrounding that grant of immunity to both those rogues were quite outrageous. So far as they are known to the public, the circumstances will be well known to your Lordships and I shall not venture to elaborate upon them, but it is said that the Attorney-General of the day was consulted. I should dearly like to know the form that that consultation took but I know that if I asked him the Minister would not tell me, even if he knew, which I imagine he does not. If that circumstance is true I find it profoundly disturbing that a Law Officer of the Crown should have concurred in such a step. To me it suggests a degree of irresponsibility that sits ill with such an office. In the other place on Monday, after dealing with the statement of 23rd August 1977 made by the then Prime Minister, Mr. Callaghan, a statement of which so much was made by the Government in debates in the other place and outside, the Minister of State at the Home Office said: No one is above the law in this country, and members of the Security Service are no more immune from prosecution than anyone else if they commit criminal offences". That is from the Official Report of the House of Commons, of 15th December 1986, col. 796. The question that I put to the Ministerand I hope that he will attempt to answer it is what warrant there is in 192 the law of any part of the United Kingdom for the grant of that immunity to those two traitors. 4.16 p.m. Lord Annan My Lords, I am very much in agreement with the speakers who have opened this debate and particularly with the noble Lord, Lord Dacre. The problem we are facing stems from the fact that there has been a change in the position of the security services. In the period before 1914 spies were people who were paid by nations to extract information, whereas after 1919 spies were motivated by ideology. One of the greatest disservices done to their country by the Cambridge spies was to create within the security services a profound sense of unease about who was or was not loyal within the service. That is one reason why things have changed. The second reason is that we are no longer living in a society which respects confidentiality in the way that it was once respected. It is no good hoping that those days will return. I know perfectly well from my academic life that if I send a confidential letter about someone's merits or demerits for a particular academic post that letter will be leaked probably right back to the person about whom it was written. Times have changed and we are unlikely to return to a time when one can rely on secrecy and confidentiality being preserved. It is not preserved in Government. We all know the way in which government is conducted by leaks. There is a point on which I slightly dissent from the noble Lord, Lord Dacre. He expressed surprise that Mr. Chapman Pincher had not been prosecuted. I am not a lawyer but I cannot see how he could have been prosecuted, because he has nothing to do with the security services and was merely retailing what he heard. I would guess that one reason why it would have been so

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unwise to prosecute is because the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, might well have been the counsel who would have been briefed for his defence. The noble Lord has had the most astonishing and remarkable forensic successes in security matters. We live in a free country. So when the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Langside, asked why it was that Blunt was not prosecuted, the answer must be that in a court of law Blunt would have won his case with ease because he would have refused to admit anything. It was only by a promise of immunity that information which, in the opinion of the security services was of great value to the state, could have been extracted from him. There is an inconsistency about the way in which confidential material has been regarded by the Crown. The first notable book on secret matters which appeared was that written by the late Sir John Masterman who was a great pillar of the Establishment, the Provost of Worcester and the tutor in history of the noble Lord, Lord Dacre of Glantonfrom whom no doubt, he learned a great deal! Sir John was the person who first revealed the secrets of the double-cross during the warthe use of double agents to deceive the German Army. Then we had the revelations of Group Captain Winterbottom who revealed that there was a place called Bletchley and that the cryptographers who worked there produced the remarkable traffic known today as Ultra. Those of us like myself who did not 193 produce but consumed Ultra knew that its existence was known to hundreds of people, and yet not one of them ever said a word about this. Was the Group Captain Winterbottom told that he might write his book? Was he told that unofficially? I do not think he could have been told it officially because the official history is now being written by Sir Harry Hinsley. There is the case of another person. We all know that many operations of great gallantry were performed during the war by officers in Greece. Mr. Paddy Leigh Fermor is famous for having captured General Kreipe in Crete, and wrote an enthralling book about it. Colonel Monty Woodhouse wrote an extremely good book about his operations with ELAS. Another officer wrote a book about his operations in the Epirus. Why was it that there was an attempt to stop publication of this last book? The reason an attempt was made to stop it was that after the war (not during the war) that officer joined the security services. The book was in no way connected with anything he did while in the service. It really is very strange when there is such inconsistency to know what line is likely to be taken about publication. Mr. Wright is undoubtedly someone who has broken his trust. He is also someone who, as the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, said, is paranoid that his view of what happened in the years between 1950 and 1970 is not accepted by his superiors. So long as we try and maintain, as the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, said, total secrecy about these matters there will be rows and confusion. We must move more towards the American system whereby an officer of the CIA submits any book he wishes to write about his life to the CIA which judges what parts of it, if any, should be excised. If we go on saying that nothing can be published of any kind, we shall have another case like that in Sydney again on our hands. I therefore very much approve of the proposal that there should be a more thorough system of surveillance of security matters than exists today. I should hope to see any such commission headed by one of Her Majesty's judges, perhaps with two Privy Counsellors in attendance, because I think that judicial wisdom is required there. We need someone who can ask the right questions of the security chiefs, and particularly so since it is always difficult to know what the right questions are. There is one last point I should like to make which concerns political surveillance. It is not entirely true that the security services are interested only in Left-wing organisations. In 1939 a former member of the security services, Admiral Sir Barry Domville was interned for the duration of the war, and Joan Miller was used by MI5 to infiltrate a ludicrous fascist cell.

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When one comes to the business of political surveillance, one needs to remember that people come under suspicion very often because of those they associate with. Having associated during my life with disreputable company, I would not be at all surprised if at any time the security services began to investigate me. Lord Dacre of Glanton My Lords, before the noble Lord. Lord Annan, sits down, may I correct a small point? I never suggestedor at least I never meant to 194 suggestthat Mr. Chapman Pincher should have been prosecuted. My point was that his book should have been prevented in the way that an attempt is being made to prevent the publication of Mr. Wright's book; or if that had failed, that Mr. Wright should have been prosecuted then, rather than pursued now. Lord Annan My Lords, I am so sorry if I misunderstood the noble Lord. Thank you so much. 4.26 p.m. Lord Birdwood My Lords, this is not the first time I have had reason to thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, for initiating a topic of exceptional interest, nor is it the first time in which I find myself in profound disagreement with him. The use of the word "accountability" in the Motion before the House is in the height of political fashion. The Left uses is as a petulant taunt to any body which does not go through the Left's own play acting at democracy. It is no surprise that a universal feature of Left-wing totalitarianism is complete, obliterative secrecy in all its actions. But the word "accountability" is scarcely safer in the hands of the Right wing ideologues. This is the accountability of super pragmatism, of any means to achieve ideological ends. There is a popular surge of feeling in our times for openness in all the mechanisms of authority. We are told that public demand will not be served, and cannot be served, until all the levers and cogs of state become public knowledge. Anybody who questions this headlong rush to disclosure is pointed out as a conspirator, a plotter, a concealer, an enemy of the people. Openness has become confused with honour. Discretion has become confused with conspiracy. Let me give your Lordships' House a personal perception of reality not fantasy. To start with, the reality is that we are discussing an arm of state which is properly called the secret services. The Official Secrets Act is an oath of secrecy, openly, willingly taken. It is not some temporary condition of employment such as travel warrants. Your Lordships have heard a lot about "wrestling with conscience" or "deeper loyalties". In the areas of behaviour covered by the Official Secrets Act, breaking that oath is the first step to treason. It is a clear choice between reality and fantasy. It is an oath of secrecy. There are anomalies which make good copybut they are not the anomalies of tyranny. Every so often, a debate in this House allows us to peer briefly into our deeper ideas of values, and one of these ideas is our judgment of what makes tyranny and what makes freedom. Do we seriously believe that accountability of our secret services would somehow promote freedom? I suggest that realityperhaps one should say Realpolitikshows us that invariably these activities go into deeper and ever deeper concealment.

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The Left on this matter likes to play the American card. Its posture is: here is the society you say you want to emulate. Go ahead: show us the British equivalent of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In an outstanding essay in Time Magazine a few days ago this notion is blown out the water. While we are fiddling with schemes of letting light in on our intelligence activities, the Americans are realising that in their maturity of global power there is now an absolute responsibility of secrecy. 195 Another authoritative article in The Times newspaper dissected the issue of secrecy and concluded incontrovertibly that if some regulatory hand is ceaselessly monitoring every action in detail we shall get not better government but worse. I have listened to the argument supporting the Congressional Intelligence Committee system and, closer to home, the Franks Committee remodelling of the Joint Intelligence Organisation. Nowhere do I find an able, cogent case for a permanent programme or accountabilitywhat is sometimes called the "oversight" body. It may come about that there is a need to mount specific ad hoc investigations. We have the capability to do it in the existence of our senior legal voicesthe judges, the inheritors of nine hundred years of holding truth to be important. The reality is that I am a British citizen. This is not the time to talk about all that this means to me. But in my defence of this state of mind are vigilance, subtlety, perseverance and honour. Perhaps, for me, it is part of being British that I trust in the un-elected components of this nation's machinery of state, and trust that its secrets are kept. 4.30 p.m. Lord Gladwyn My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Dacrewhose speech we all so greatly admiredI should perhaps start, even after the lapse of about half a century, and subject, of course to the Official Secrets Act, by declaring a certain limited interest. During 1938, 1939 and the early part of 1940 I was, in fact, as private secretary to the head of the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan, the sole direct link with what is now, I understand, known as MI6, but not with MI5, which was responsible to the Home Secretary. In that capacity, I was assisted by one lady typist and, as war approached, by an elderly retired diplomat. That was all the assistance I had! In those far-off days the relationship of the government with what were then called "the friends" was, on the whole, a happy one. The organisation was perhaps not all that important. Its reports were quite valuable but on the whole they did not add a very great deal to our existing knowledge of what was going on in Nazi Germany. On the other hand, from about the middle of 1940 onwards, as is now common knowledge, their reports became a major importance owing to the organisation's immense success in cracking the German and many other ciphers. Certainly the "friends" were in a general way accountablethat is the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkinsin that we in the Foreign Office were conscious of what we were doing in a general way even though they could rightly be repudiated if anything went seriously wrong which in my time I do not think it did. It never occurred to us that there might be defectors or enemy agents in the ranks of the "friends". In so far as such defectors were at that time, as we now know, pro-Soviet and not pro-Nazi, no doubt their existence did not matter very much until after the war was over. I have no idea what the position now is. In fact, I do not even know for certainapparently with the Governmentthat MI6 exists! But I imagine that by this time all possible 196 precautions have been taken as regards treachery. We must assume that that is so. However, what the Russians gained by the treachery of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and others was probably less important than what we ourselves gained from the intelligence provided over

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the years by the many Soviet defectors. I believe, for instance, that Penkovsky gave us more information regarding Soviet nuclear progress than they ever gleaned from the reports of Fuchs, and even from Maclean himself. Incidentally, it is possible that Maclean was acting in the interests of the Western world by presumably reporting from Washington to Moscow that the Americans were entirely serious about organising NATO and joining the Europeans in a common Atlantic defence. Perhaps that even prevented war. In other words, we should perhaps not be too despondent about the activities of traitors in the Western camp. Some no doubt still exist in Western Germany at the moment. We should not be too despondent. Traitors may always to some extent be with us. I am talking of the Western world. Nor should we get too excited about goings on in our secret services generally. As regards MI5, I have, as I have said, no inside information whatever, but it rather looks as though the allegations that Sir Roger Hollis was a Soviet spy are without foundation and that the exact motives of Mr. Wright in pursuing this vendetta may be open to question. What is certain is that it is quite wrong for an ex-employee of any secret service who has sworn not to talk about his experiences in the service to break his word and do precisely that. That is surely wrong and that must be admitted by everybody. However, there remains this question. How can these secret services best be controlled and prevented from doing anything which might be considered prejudicial to the public interest? In this connection my attention has been drawn to the statement made in 1977 in the House of Commons by Dr. Shirley Summerskill, at that time Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, when the House debated an interview between journalists and the former Prime Minister, Sir Harold Wilson, in which the latter seemed to be accusing MI5 of having insinuated that Members of his Government had had improper relations with the Soviet Union. With the permission of the House I shall quote a few sentences from this statement of Dr. Summerskill, because it seems to me to give an excellent definition of ministerial responsibility. I quote: Whatever may be the inhibitions upon our discussion of these matters in the House, honourable Members are entirely justified in seeking to be assured that Ministers are satisfied of the competence, integrity and loyalty of this service. That more than the accuracy or otherwise of allegations of what happened or did not happen on particular occasions in the past, is the serious point in all this. The House is entitled to look to the Ministers to whom the security service is answerable and accountablethat is, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and in the last resort my right hon. Friend the Prime Ministerto accept responsibility that all is well in this respect As to that, the tradition in this country is that the service is accountable to Ministers. Parliament accepts that the accountability must be to Ministers rather than to Parliament, and trusts Ministers to discharge that responsibility faithfully. My right hon. Friends, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary will continue to undertake a close oversight of the work of 197 the security service and will take any further action that may be required, from time to time, to assure themselves that it is staffed by persons who are competent professionally". It seems to me from this statementwhich I trust is still validthat if there are any abuses in a security service, which there would have been if the allegations regarding improper action against Lord Wilson and some of his colleagues in 1977 were at all truethen these must be rectified in the first instance by direct ministerial action. It has, however, recently been suggestedand suggested by many noble Lords this afternoon that there is a case for some kind of supervision over the secret services being maintained by a committee, perhaps of especially appointed Privy Counsellors, presumably responsible to Parliament. It seems to meand I think one or two noble Lords have said thisthat such a body, if constituted, should not be concerned with the operations of such a service but rather with possible investigations into any alleged misuse of its powers, or with any major defections on

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the part of its staff. In this way the public, and notably Parliament, might be assured that the Government, which would still have the primary responsibility of coping with the incident, were at least taking the matter seriously. It is presumably questionable whether the findings of such a committee should be published in extenso when transmitted to the Government. It must in any case be hoped that they would not be formulated on any party lines. May I therefore suggest that the commission, if it is ever formed, might be composed of Privy Counsellors who are also Cross-Bench Members of your Lordships' House and, after all, Members of Parliament. I think it may also be desirable that such a body, if formed, be composed of not more than possibly three or five members. I am sure that suitable Privy Counsellors of that calibre and in that number could be found among the Cross-Benchers. In this way party politics would not come into the commission's conclusions at all. It is undoubtedly a difficult and perhaps dangerous subject to pursue, so I will conclude my brief remarks with what might perhaps be a constructive idea. It could appeal to the Government if they are going to take the proposal for some body to supervise the secret services at all seriously. ***************************************************************************** Official Secrets Act (Prosecution Policy) HC Deb 06 February 1987 vol 109 cc1291-8 1291 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Peter LLoyd.] 2.41 pm Mr. Ivan Lawrence (Burton) On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) spent 22 minutes of the previous debate on human rights deploying the same arguments as I anticipate he is likely to deploy in the Adjournment debate. Is it possible, in those circumstances, that those of us who were not able to make a speech on the Human Rights Bill because of the hon. Member for Linlithgow's actions should be able to take part in the Adjournment debate and deploy some of the important arguments that we were seeking to deploy on the Human Rights Bill? Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker) The hon. and learned Gentleman knows that I cannot rule or make a judgment on a hypothesis. 2.42 pm Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) The hon. and learned Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) will be disappointed, because there is another, different aspect to the issue. Charmingly, the Solicitor-General began his speech this morning with what he said was a platitude. I should like to start with a non-platitude. While not being his easiest parliamentary colleague, and, trying though he may find me from time to time, being over-inquisitive, I have

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had every courtesy from an approachable and forthcoming Attorney-General. It is no platitude to wish him a speedy return to full health. I heard the Solicitor-General this morning and I thank him for attending the Adjournment debate. In my opinion, in the 1950s he was the most eloquent Oxford president ever to come to the Cambridge Union. He was extremely eloquent this morning. May I say at the outset that I gave the Attorney-General a copy of my speech in relation to the possible prosecution of Lord Rothschild and Mr. Bernard Sheldon on Monday, since it raises issues of byzantine difficulty and daunting delicacy, which should not be sprung out of the blue on any Minister. Knowing the Solicitor-General, I am sure that he will respond to this in the same spirit of considered seriousness. The purpose of the first part of my speech is to give the Law Officers an opportunity to tell Parliamentthese issues are ultra-party what on earth they propose to do to clear up the Augean stables of inconsistency in prosecutions under the Official Secrets Act. The Law Officers will understand that my deep interest in these matters was born during the 11 days that I spent in the Old Bailey, in Mr. Justice Sir Anthony McCowan's court, during the trial of Clive Ponting. Why prosecute Clive Ponting and dither, understandablyI do not use that word in a pejorative senseover prosecuting Victor Rothschild? Why send Sarah Tisdall to prison for months and do nothing about Bernard Sheldon, albeit he is approaching retirement, in relation to Rupert Allason, alias Nigel West? Why fail to prosecute Bernard Ingham for the selective leaking of the Solicitor-General's letter? It looks as if there is one prosecution policy for the influential, the famous and the distinguished and another prosecution policy for the more junior, hitherto less famous, civil servants. 1292 Compared with what Victor Rothschild set in train, with Peter Wright and Harry Chapman Pincher, anything that Clive Ponting put in my way melts into insignificance, in terms of national security, if not political embarrassment. There is an apparent inconsistency of policy, and it would be helpful to the House to know on what principles those discriminating practices are justified and on what basis discrimination is authorised by Ministers. It is to the position of Lord Rothschild that I wish to refer. If, for the first time, I shelter under the cloak of parliamentary privilege, it is because Lord Rothschild can be a litigious man and, secondly, I do not think that what I am saying is to his discredit. I refer to 26 November [Interruption.] Hon. Members had better wait and hear what I shall say. I refer to 26 November, when I asked the Attorney-General what consideration he has given to proceeding against . Mr. Arthur Franks, formerly head of MI6, and . Lord Rothschild for breach of confidence in relation to information on matters of state security given to authors. The Attorney-General replied: I am considering with the Director of Public Prosecutions the allegations made in respect of the two named individuals."[Official Report, 26 November 1986; Vol 106, c. 268.] I returned to the subject on 1 December 1986, and the Attorney-General said: The matter remains under consideration." [Official Report, 1 December 1986; Vol. 106, c. 415.] On 18 December 1986, I asked the Prime Minister whether she will now release Lord Rothschild from his obligations of confidentiality as a former member of the security services; and if she will make a statement. The Prime Minister replied: All present and former members of the security services owe a lifelong duty of confidentiality to the Crown. They may not make unauthorised disclosures of

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information acquired in their work. Any requests for authorised disclosure would be considered in the normal way."[Official Report, 18 December 1986; Vol. 107, c. 613.] Let me offer necessarily truncated points. First, in the 1930s, international Jewry, of which the Rothschilds were one of the leading families, were aghast at the anti-semitism that was then rampant in Germany. Secondly, Victor Rothschild may, as the author Douglas Sutherland suggests, have recruited Guy Burgess for a minor role in one of the Jewish intelligence services. Thirdly, as an understandably passionate anti-Fascist, Victor Rothschild may have had relations with Comintern agents. Talk of spying is jejune nonsense. Anyhow, a good agent is one who gets from foreign powers more than he gives. Fourthly, the events of long ago fade into the past. Sleeping dogs from the 1930s and 1940s were rightly, in my view, allowed to lie. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. But in 1979, Britain gets a new species of Prime Minister. On 15 November 1979, the new Prime Minister makes a statement on Blunt, against advice, with the aplomb of a cow in a china shop. Sir Charles Cunningham tells me that Sir Anthony Blunt's activities as an agent of both sides many years previously were fully known to successive permanent secretaries at the Home Office. Fifthly, I believe that Lord Rothschild was extremely angry about the Prime Minister's reaction on Sir Anthony Blunt. Some of us believe that Sir Anthony Blunt's memoir, given to his brother, and now lodged in an institution in London, will reveal a complex story, part of which is that Sir Anthony Blunt was asked by a former member of the security forces whose name I have given to 1293 the Attorney-General, and by Guy Liddell, to help get Burgess and Maclean, by that time embarrassments both, out of the country. Sixthly, in the summer of 1980, Lord Rothschild had the Prime Minister to his flat in Saint James's. He is subsequently quoted in the press as saying: She does not understand intelligence matters. Seventhly, Lord Rothschild then came to believe that his own reputation was at stake, especially after the Prime Minister's statement on Sir Roger Hollis on 23 March 1981, which appears in the Official Report at column 1079. At his own expense, Lord Rothschild brought Peter Wright from Australia. He discussed with Wright certain material which appeared to constitute a contravention of section 7 of the Official Secrets Act 1920. Section 7 states: Any person who attempts to commit any offence under the principal Act or this Act, or solicits or incites or endeavours to persuade another person to commit an offence, or aids or abets and does any act preparatory to the commission of an offence under the principal Act or this Act, shall be guilty of a felony or a misdemeanour or a summary offence according as the offence in question is a felony, a misdemeanour or a summary offence, and on conviction shall be liable to the same punishment, and to be proceeded against in the same manner, as if he had committed the offence. If the Attorney-General would decide to prosecute Lord Rothschild in open court, it would be possible to ask questions which are causing much public concern and which Lord Rothschild would then have to answer on oath. These are some of the questions that might be asked. First, how does Lord Rothschild explain his involvement with Sidgwick and Jackson over the Pincher-Wright book? While it is possible that Sidgwick and Jackson would consult Sir Arthur Franks about possible breaches of the Official Secrets Act 1911, that would not explain Lord Rothschild's involvement. Secondly, why should Lord Rothschild expose himself by suggesting an unlawful enterprise to Mr. Wright, namely that he should breach the Official Secrets Act and then procure a writer, Mr. Pincher, to act as a channel for royalties? Thirdly, why should Lord Rothschild fly Wright to London if, as has been suggested, all he needed was a testimonial to protect himself against suggestions that he had been a Soviet agent?

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Fourthly, why pay Wright? Why introduce him to Harry Chapman Pincher? Why should Mr. Pincher pay him half the royalties? Only by proceeding in open court on oath can obscurities be made less obscure. Only by proceedings in open court can there be an end to doubt and to the suspicion of discrimination. I ask the Law Officers why they will or why they will not prosecute Victor Rothschild. If they decline to prosecute, apologies should be winging their way to Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting. Even more clearly, the Law Officers owe Miss Tisdall and Mr. Ponting an explanation as to why they take no action against Mr. Bernard Sheldon for briefing Mr. Rupert Allason alias Nigel West who incidentally, and I do not intend to make much of this, is Conservative candidate for Torquay, for his books. I want to make it clear that I do not wish to enter the argument about Mr. Allason being Conservative candidate for Torquay. If I am asked in general terms after my comments this morning about sources, part of my reply would be that 1294 there is an urgent need for an appeal body to which civil servants, policemen, service men or people in the intelligence services can go without jeopardising their careers if they believe that they have been abused. That is the official policy of the Labour party put down by the Cirencester and Tewkesbury amendment at the party conference at Bournemouth on the Sunday. I was interested to hear on the radio that Nigel West alias Rupert Allasonsaid at 8.15 am on 5 February that he supported the idea of such an appeal body. Finally, yesterday my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and I raised with the Leader of the House the question of the Interspace articles with regard to Zircon. The question was whether the knowledge of Zircon or Skynet IV was in the public print at least two years ago. The Leader of the House said that he would draw that matter to the attention of the Solicitor-General. I will leave the matter there, because the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken), the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) have a very serious interest in these matters. ***************************************************************************** Adjournment (Christmas) HC Deb 08 December 1987 vol 124 cc196-235 Mr. Frank Dobson (Holborn and St. Pancras) On these occasions it is customary for us to speak against adjourning for Christmas. I shall not indulge in that hypocrisy. As my hon. Friends have made most effective and succinct cases, I do not propose to comment on what they said, as comment would be superfluous. On behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) who has taken Trappist vows for the evening, I can say that the case of the two other hon. Members from Shropshire can be put exceedingly succinctly. Health care in Shropshire will reach the level that the people of Shropshire deserve, only if more money is provided for the health authority. It is a bit potty for the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Conway) to suggest that the only way to protect health care in Shrewsbury is insufficiently to improve health care in Telford, a little further across the county. I shall concentrate my speech on a major issue which has been before the House for the past few days. This debate has been used, quite rightly, by Mr. Speaker as his reason for rejecting a

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number of applications under Standing Order No. 20 for a debate on the gagging by the Government of the BBC. It is worth putting it on record, that the Government or the Tory party, the Government in their other manifestationhave brought forward a series of measures in an effort to gag the BBC to such an extent that, if it were happening in a foreign country, the BBC overseas service would start referring to itself as the state broadcasting corporation. Mr. Stuart Young was appointed chairman of the governors of the BBC. There was not much coverage of the fact that he was the brother of Lord Young, a Cabinet Minister. Since his death, the chairmanship has been taken on by a Mr. Marmaduke Hussey who is also related to a member of the Government, this time by marriage, and who was a former leading light in the Murdoch operations and the move to Wapping, which is not normally regarded as an indication of any independence of thought or anything else. Mr. Howell James was appointed to a senior post in the corporate affairs department of the BBC. The Young family strikes again, because that man used to work in the private office of Lord Young, advising him on this, that and the other. There has been public pressure from the former chairman of the Tory party, the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit). No one could have brought greater public pressure to bear on the editorial independence of the BBC. We understand from journalists in this place and outside that they have been told by their management that they should go easy when they interview Tory Ministers because of the pressures that they face from the Government. That was followed by the Zircon affair, when the Government carried out an extraordinary police raid on the BBC in Glasgow, taking away crates of material which they eventually had to return, admitting that they had not found a shred of evidence to justify their original action. They also obtained the injunction which they used to stifle the showing of the Zircon film on these premises. Finally I doubt whether it is final; the Government's attempts to gag the BBC and fair comment are growing, so this is their latest attempt, not their last 231 they have obtained an injunction following the intention of the BBC to broadcast the radio programme, "My Country, Right or Wrong." We were led to believe by a preposterous statement from the Attorney-General last week that the Government knew not a thing about the programme until it was mentioned in the "Peterborough" column of The Daily Telegraph. Admirable newspaper though it is, I cannot believe that the Government, and in particular the security services, did not know before they read it in The Daily Telegraph that somebody was making a programme about the security services and was interviewing existing and former members particularly as we know from the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) that one of them had written to the boss of the Security Service to point out that he was to take part in an interview. Yet, for no apparent reason, the Government did not know a thing about it and suddenly said, "Deane me, there is an article in The Daily Telegraph and something must be done about it." The Government obtained an injunction against the BBC. I understand from legal advice I have received that, if the BBC were to report proceedings in Parliament during which hon. Members referred to the names of serving or retired members of the security services, the BBC could potentially be in breach of the injunction. It goes further than that, because of another Court of Appeal ruling which suggests that the court is falling down on its duty to preserve freedom of speech. The Court of Appeal held that an injunction against one newspaper might in certain circumstances be held to cover other newspapers, so the ruling that the Government have obtained against the BBC may very well apply to other news media, including newspapers which attempt to report the House.

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We have the ridiculous situation where members or former members of the security services might be mentioned in the House and, if that were reported by the BBC or a newspaper, they might be held to be in contempt. Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have to issue you with a warning: were you to call the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow), who it is well known is a former member of the security service, and the BBC reported it, it could be held in contempt of court. It might be a bit hard on the hon. Member for Woking not being reported and his constituents not finding out what he had been talking about. The idea that somebody in the House is bleeped out because they mention a former member of the security services is absolutely ludricrous. Does it mean, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that if I mention the words "Graham Greene" or "Malcolm Muggeridge", both acknowledged former members of the security services, those words will be bleeped out for fear that the BBC is held in contempt of court? If the Government are trying to stop people mentioning the name of Mr. Peter Wright, a contemporary spycatcher, is it the case this is how the instrument that the Government put before the court was drawn that we cannot mention Oliver Cromwell's spycatcher, Thurloe, because he was a former member of the security services? We are reaching an absurd situation. I understand from people who were Ministers at the time that the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney) had a hush-hush job in the Foreign Office which might be 232 regarded as part of the security services. Does that mean that we cannot mention him and have his name reported outside the House? BBC Radio Essex, which proposed to review a play featuring acknowledged former members of the security services, Messrs Philby, Burgess and Maclean, was advised that they could not carry that item, except at risk of an action for contempt of court. Does it mean that Kim Philby could appear live on Soviet television last week or the week before, but cannot be mentioned live or otherwise on BBC television or radio? This is the absurd situation into which the ridiculous Government have brought us. The matter is not just ludicrously silly and funny ha-ha: it is funny dangerous, because it shows that the Government are trying to gag the BBC and other newspapers in pursuit of a newly invented principle that people who have worked for the Crown have an absolute duty of lifelong confidentiality. No such duty can be as absolute as that because it would mean, if we take it seriously, that a servant of the Crown who knew of murder, rape or major fraud that no one else was going to talk about, would be under a duty for ever to keep silent about murder, rape or major fraud. That is obviously nonsense. A servant of the Crown, such as Wright, who claims that there was an attempt to overthrow the elected Government of the country, has a duty to speak the truth about that, if it is true and I hold no brief for Mr. Wright, who is obviously a rather dubious character. I put it to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that he has a greater duty to blow the whistle on people attempting to overthrow an elected Government than any duty of confidentiality that the Government may have just invented. ***************************************************************************** The Security Services HL Deb 16 March 1988 vol 494 cc1139-71 (...)Lord Carver My Lords, may I from these Benches add our congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hart of South Lanark, on her very eloquent and thoughtful maiden speech. I am sure that we all look

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forward very much to hearing equally eloquent and thoughtful speeches on other subjects in the future. We are most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for giving us the opportunity to talk about this subject. The difficulty is that if we actually knew what the arrangements for selection and recruitment of officers into those services were, and what their contracts were, we would not be allowed to talk about them. It is true to say that most of us do not in fact know. The result is that we are dependent upon revelations of mistakes that have been made in the past, to which the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, referred. We have recruited people who, as it turned out, should not have been recruited; for example, Philby, Burgess, Blunt and, no doubt, Peter Wright. 1149 My qualifications for speaking on the subject are that I have been a customer of those services over many years in many different places. I must, however, stress that I am very out-of-date. It is 10 years since I had any job which involved dealing with those services. Over that period, on many occasions and in many places, I was a very satisfied customer. I am sure that today the authorities responsible for the affairs in Northern Ireland and Gibraltar are highly satisfied customers. (...)Lord Campbell of Croy My Lords, I rise briefly to reply to the debate although we are well within our time limit. I thank all speakers who have taken part and I particularly congratulate, as others have, the noble Baroness, Lady Hart, on her maiden speech, made with a fluency with which we were all familiar in another place. We look forward to hearing her many times in this House. I should like especially to thank the Minister for imparting to us what he felt he could on this sensitive subject. I understand the difficulty about present legal proceedings to which he referred, and that is one reason why I did not press him for information or replies. I should like to ask one or two questions. First, the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, asked me about the proposal for a contract and its relationship to the coming legislation which aims to replace Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act. My proposal is not intended to be contrary to any Bill that comes before Parliament. I hope that the ideas that I have put forward are in tune with the legislation of which the White Paper will be the forerunner. I should like to point out that the new legislation is likely to cover the whole public service, as did the Official Secrets Act. Therefore, it will be used in many departments where there is very little secret work being carried out. However, the organisations which we have been discussing today operate in complete secrecy so that they are a special group and I hope that arrangements for them will be in tune and within the ambit of the new legislation to replace Section 2. I should say for the record that it was twice suggested that Burgess was a member of one of those organisations. His position was simply that of a temporary employee of the Foreign Office, having come from the wartime Ministry of Information, and at the time the Foreign Office personnel department had for some period been trying to part with his services and terminate his work because he was unsatisfactory in so many ways. Far from being recruited by our service, he must have been recruited by a Soviet service. However, he was not a very good recruit for anybody. ***************************************************************************** Official Secrets HC Deb 22 July 1988 vol 137 cc1426-95 1426

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 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn[Mr. Kenneth Carlisle.] 9.36 am The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Hurd) The House has today an early opportunity to comment on the proposals in our White Paper, which. I laid before the House on 29 June. We promised to bring forward early legislation and in preparing that legislation we shall, of course, want to reflect carefully on what is said today. I believe that the mood of the Houseand, indeed, the mood outsideis that the time has come to settle this question. There has been clear discontent with section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 for at least the past 20 years. Serious proposals for reform were put forward by the Franks committee 16 years ago. Both the previous Labour Government and the present Government set out proposals, drawn from Franks, for reform. Despite that, section 2 is still with us. We cannot simply drift on, relying on legislation that no one considers to be reliable, and trusting in an allembracing definition in which no one has any confidence. I have studied the matter for some time and I am forced reluctantly to the conclusion that it is unlikely that we shall reach total agreement. There is, however, wide acceptance that the proposals contained in the White Paper are a reasonable foundation for the reform of section 2. Now we need to get on with it. Hon. Members will have had the opportunity to read the White Paper. A number of misconceptions have been circulating about the proposals and there have been a number of misrepresentations in the press. I should like to lay some of those misrepresentations to rest. It has, for example, been suggested that we propose that no member of the security and intelligence services should ever be able to talk or write about his work. It has also been suggested that we are applying to members of those services a new regime of criminal restrictions, that no information, whatever its origin, on certain matters can be disclosed and that we propose to remove existing defences of prior publication and public interest. None of those assertions stands up. I should like to set out briefly to the House the basic principles on which the proposals rest. Mr. Roy Hattersley (Birmingham, Sparkbrook) I assume that now that the Home Secretary has asserted that those theories are untrue, he will at some point return to them and explain why he holds that rather strange view. Mr. Hurd Of course. It is sensible to start with the principles, and that is what I intend to do. First, our proposals apply only to official information, by which is meant information that is held by a Crown servant or Government contractor in the course of his duties. If the information disclosed cannot be traced back to a Crown servant or Government contractor, it is not covered by our proposals. It might have come from a completely different source. If, for example, another Government's information was leaked directly by an employee of that Government, it could be published in this country even though it had also been provided to the United Kingdom Government in confidence. Although the information disclosed was identical to the information 1427 held by the Government, it would not be official information and our proposals would not apply to it. Secondly, our proposals apply only to the publication, without authority, of the

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information that we propose to protect. A great deal of information, even in the subjects covered by our proposals, has been and will continue to be made known with authority of Parliament and to the public. Of course it will not be an offence to disclose information in all categories without authority. Our central objective is to narrow the law so that it applies only to disclosure without authority of official information which is likely to give rise to an unacceptable degree of harm to the public interest. The first step towards defining such disclosures is to identify the areas of information in which harmful disclosures might be made. We have identified six in the White Paper. For reasons given in the White Paper, we believe that none of the information in two of the areas can be disclosed without the likelihood of unacceptable harm to the public interest. In a third, information useful in the commission of crime, disclosure is by definition harmful. In proving, as they would have to, that the information is in this category, the prosecution will be proving that its disclosure is harmful. In the remaining three categoriesthe particularly sensitive areas of security and intelligence, of defence and of international relationsa distinction has to be drawn between information which cannot be disclosed without the likelihood of harm to the public interest, and information which canthe test of harm. That distinction can be made only in relation to a particular disclosure. The task of making the distinction we propose to place on the jury. To make that possible, we propose to define clearly the specific forms of harm to the public interest to which the disclosure of information in each category might give rise. This is a considerable change from the proposals that the Government put forward in 1979. Under those proposals as under the Labour Government's proposals the question whether the disclosure of information relating to defence or international relations was harmful to the nation would have been decided by a Minister. Of course, we looked hard at the point and retraced the whole history of the idea of ministerial certificates. We decided, having done that, that ministerial certificates had no future. Some of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I know, fear that we may have gone too far in that direction. It is true that we are setting the prosecution a sizeable task but not one which in normal circumstances should provide insurmountable obstacles. There is always a risk of a jury occasionally bringing in a perverse verdict, but that is true now and it would be true even if we had retained ministerial certificates. The jury will always have the last word. No one is suggesting that Ministers in place of a jury should decide whether an alleged offender is guilty or innocent. Since that is so, it is better that the jury should make up its mind on the basis of all the evidence than that it should feel that certain relevant matters are being withheld from it. We believe that it is right in principle and practice that the question of specified harm to the public interest should be determined by the jury. 1428 Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) Would the Home Secretary place the verdict of the jury in the Ponting case in the category of "perverse"? Mr. Hurd I cannot comment on the verdicts of juries in any recent case. I have not done so and I will not do so. I am simply referring to the future. I am trying to deal with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) that by doing away with the notion of

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ministerial certificates, we are placing too heavy a weight on the jury. I do not think that that is so. Even if the jury decides that a disclosure is likely to cause the specified harm to public interest, the discloser will be convicted only if he knew or had reason to believe that such harm was likely to be caused. It is clearly wrong to penalise somebody who had no way of knowing the harm that he was doing. Our proposals will ensure that such a person is not liable to conviction. Those are the essential elementsthe backboneof our proposals. I hope that most people will accept that they are coherent and reasonable. I want now to address briefly a number of specific anxieties which have been raised. I mentioned earlier the test of harm to be applied to the disclosure of information relating to security or intelligence. We are not proposing that any such test should apply to disclosure of such information by members or former members of the security and intelligence services or certain other people. This is nothing new. The people in these categories cannot now disclose such information without authority, without risking criminal proceedings. We are not making life more difficult or matters worse for them. We are simply leaving them, for the reasons that we have given in the White Paper, essentially as they are. I stress again that I am talking about disclosures without authority. Members and former members of the services have in the past been authorised to talk or write about their work, and they will be so authorised in the future, but for a member to disclose information about security and intelligence without authority is, we believe, a betrayal of the trust that the nation places in those services, for very good reasonsbecause of the nature of the work they do and of the protection they provide for all of us. We propose that certain people should be designated as having the same criminal liability as members or former members of the services, and the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) expressed some concern about this power. Those who are designated will be so told when they are designated, so there is no question of someone being designated because he is thought to be troublesome, or of his being designated retrospectively after an alleged offence. Designation will not be applied to all those who have contact with the security and intelligence services, still less to all those who see the information provided by those services. A certain number of people have duties that involve them working so closely with the security and intelligence services that they acquire an extensive knowledge of their organisation and operations, and we think that these people should share the same liability as members and former members of those services. 1429 Mr. Tim Rathbone (Lewes) Will my right hon. Friend explain in a little more detail whether categories of people or individuals are to be so designated? Mr. Hurd They will be designated individually. We shall need to work out carefully how that is to be done. For example, some of the people in my private office are civil servants and officials in a Government Department, who nevertheless acquire, inevitably, an extensive knowledge of the affairs of the servicesperhaps a more extensive knowledge, in some cases, than most members of the services.

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 Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay) Will my right hon. Friend assure the House, having given that specific analysis of who is or who is not designated, that someone who gave information to the security service on a one-off basis would not be so designated? Mr. Hurd I have given that assurance. There will be no question of designating someone retrospectively because something had been said or done. There has been some anxiety about our proposal that information relating to security or intelligence, defence or international relations that we provide to other Governments or to international organisations should not lose the protection of the criminal law if it is leaked abroad. I recognise that this is controversial. It is one of the few points on which we are strengthening the existing law. We considered it very carefully and I ask the House to do the same. In areas central to the security and well-being of the nation, the most effective means to pursue our interests is through international co-operation, and we find this more and more. If that co-operation is to be effective in, for example, fighting terrorism, we must exchange sensitive information with other countries. As the law stands at present, despite all that another country may do to protect our information if it is leaked abroad by a foreign national, it is not an offence to disclose it in this country, even if such an offence would do serious harm to the public interest and despite the fact that it was official information. We do not think that that is right, so we propose that such disclosure should be an offence in the same way as it would be if the leak had occurred in this country. There would be a test of harm. The prosecution would still have to prove to a jury beyond reasonable doubt that the specified harm was likely to arise and that the discloser knew that it was. The object of the proposal is to protect international cooperation in those vital areas of the nation's interests. Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) Will the Secretary of State tell us what would happen in the case of an MI6, MI5 or other intelligence officer who discovered that his colleagues and perhaps even his superiors were planning to undermine or subvert the Government of the day? Would that official be captured by criminal action or under the provisions of the Bill, or are there other means by which he could bring to light the subversion that might be taking place? Mr. Hurd Indeed, there are. I am about to deal with the public interest defence. The hon. Gentleman is leaping ahead a little. Because of the interest expressed in the notion that lies behind the hon. Gentleman's question, that there should be a general public interest defence in the cases that he has mentioned, I should stress that we are not taking away 1430 anything that now exists in the way of a defence. It is true, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) pointed out, that there are some words of uncertain meaning in section 2, which one or two defendants have claimed allowed the court to consider whether their disclosure was in the public interest, but it is also true to say that the courts have never accepted those words as referring other than to the public interest as decided by the institutions of Government in this country. We have set out in the White Paper why we think that the introduction of a general public interest defence can be no part of the narrowly targeted scheme that we propose. We believe

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that that would bring confusion into the law where we are seeking to achieve certainty. It is not a defence to any other offence that the wider or longer-term effects of the criminal act are beneficial and that that benefit outweighs the harm done. Someone who commits a robbery and spends the proceeds of his crime for the public good is still a robber. The defence that he has used the money for good purpose does not apply. Mr. Alex Carlile (Montgomery) What about a specific defence of public interest? Mr. Hurd I am talking about a general principle which the hon. and learned Gentleman will accept. A person who, by some disclosure, knowingly causes unacceptable harm to the public interest in the hope of doing some wider good is still committing an offence. A person who finds himself in the unlikely position to which the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) referred has a recourse in the first instance to his superiors. He may not want his immediate superiors to know of his anxiety or complaint. To that end, last November we established a staff counsellor system, the first counsellor being Sir Philip Woodfield. Such a person can go to the counsellor, bypassing, if necessary, his immediate superiors and having access to the Secretary of the Cabinet and perhaps, as the Prime Minister's written answer on this point explains, ultimately to the Minister responsible for that service, either my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary or myself, and to the Prime Minister. That recourse was laid down in Parliament, although admittedly, it has only recently been brought into being and is in addition to the ordinary processes of responsibility for the services that we are discussing. It is an additional buttress to meet the point raised by the hon. Gentleman. Mr. Jonathan Aitken (Thanet, South) My right hon. Friend may have been wrongly advised about section 2(1)(a) of the 1911 Act, which he says is not being swept away, because all judicial figures in the past have accepted that the interests of the Government and of the state are one and the same. My right hon. Friend is correct in remembering that the judge in the Ponting case and the judge in the Compton Mackenzie case took that line. However, tracing cases through, including the Sunday Telegraph case of which I have some knowledge, the judicial figures have gone in the opposite direction. Sir Winston Churchill relied on that defence, although he was never prosecuted, and Mr. Duncan-Sandys relied on that defence, when civil servants came to brief them on the lack of preparedness of Britain's military defences, because it was in the interests of the state for someone to go and tell a Privy Councillor that secret. My right hon. Friend is 1431 going down the wrong road when he says that it is of no importance to remove that key defence of the interest of the state. Mr. Hurd Although my hon. Friend may catch your eye later, Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not think that he can show a statement of the court or a judgment of a judge which accepts that those words imply or contain a general public interest defence. In all those matters, under the existing law and under our proposal, a jury will have to make up its mind, but juries do not give reasons and, if my advice is sound, as I believe it is, I do not believe that the courts have established that there is a general public interest defence under the present law. Mr. Alex Carlile

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Does the Secretary of State accept that he has said that, on the one hand, there will be an absolute offence and that, on the other hand, juries may acquit, despite the absence of a public interest defence? Is not the consequence, therefore, that he is inviting juries in a residue of cases to deliver what he would call perverse verdicts on the grounds of the public interest? If that is the logical conclusion, as it surely must be, why does he not write, not a general public interest defence, but a specific public interest defence into the legislation? Mr. Hurd That is a contradiction in terms. I am not inviting a jury to do anything. I am simply observing that, in this country, anyone who faces a charge that might land them a substantial term of punishment, has the right for that to be decided by a jury. That is true under the present law and will be true under our proposals. It is certainly not for a Minister to say what a jury will do. If a future Government were foolish enough to indulge in trivial or vindictive prosecutions, a jury is there as a safeguard. That is why we have a jury. I am not predicting what it would do. I am simply observing that it is the jury that decides. I wish to deal now with the other defence that it has been suggested we should include specifically, that of prior publication. Again, there is no such defence in the existing law. I hope that those who are attracted by the idea of that defence will recognise that, in our proposals, with their central emphasis on harmful disclosure, an absolute defence of that kind does not fit. In relation to the two categories of information where there is no test of harm, we believe, for the reasons that I have given, that any disclosure is harmful. In relation to the other categories, if, despite the fact that the information has previously been published, the prosecution can satisfy a jury beyond reasonable doubt both that the particular disclosure of that information was likely to cause the specified harm to the public interest and that the discloser knew that it was, I do not see what grounds are there for saying he is not culpable. It will be open to the defence to argue that the new disclosure could do no harm because there had been a previous disclosure, the burden will be on the prosecution to prove otherwise, and it would be for the jury to decide whether the fact that there has been prior publication negates the prosecution's claim that a test of harm has been passed. Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) I am not sure how that can be true in relation to information given in confidence by foreign Governments. The White Paper rules out the argument of prior publication abroad, 1432 because that would be damaging in itself, so, for the purposes of the defence, we are dealing with a first publication and there could be no pleading along these lines. Mr. Hurd My hon. Friend is right in the case of information that is supplied in confidence by a foreign Governmentunless, of course, that information had already been published abroad, in which case it would not have been derived in this country and would not be official information. Perhaps my hon. Friend will study what I said at the beginning of my speech as it gives an example of some of the misconceptions which apply. He will find that that covers the point. I turn now to what has been said about the discipline code for Crown servants. I believe that Mr. Des Wilson is the arch-priest of that doctrine. It has been said in some places that, to counteract the narrowing of section 2, which even Mr. Wilson has been forced to agree we are undertaking, we propose to extend discipline so that Crown servants will never be able to say anything about anything without risking dismissal. This is nonsense. As the White Paper explains, it will be necessary to make some changes to conduct rules to reflect the fact that section 2 has been

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replaced by a very much narrower law. In practice, the discipline code will continue to be applied much as it is at present. The clarifying changes that I am talking about, which will be needed, will be discussed in the usual way with the Civil Service trade unions. Although the White Paper does not deal or purport to deal with freedom of information, I want to say a word on that subject. No Government have made so much official information available to the public or Parliament. I shall give one or two examples because at the moment this part of the case has not been brought effectively before the House. Let us take as an example the prison system in my Department, which is possibly the most difficult area with which the Home Office deals. We have opened up the prison system to a far greater extent in recent years than was ever done in the past. The media have been given much greater access to prisons. Although I am not responsible for Scottish prisons, who would have thought it conceivable even a year or so ago that the media would have been admitted to a Scottish prison in the circumstances which enabled both main television news channels to carry extensive coverage last night? That would have been wholly inconceivable, but such things now happen because Government Departments are opening up and are making available to the public, direct and through the media, far greater areas of policy and administration than ever before. We encourage boards of visitors to publish their annual reports, often to our embarrassment, but we specifically encourage it to happen. Every Department has similar initiatives to record. The Department of Education and Science has been publishing the reports of school inspectors since 1983. The Ministry of Defence has invited the press into sensitive establishments at Porton Down and Aldermaston. Who would have thought that that would have been possible under previous Labour and Conservative Governments? The Defence White Paper includes a mass of new information. The Treasury now publishes its economic forecasts. The public expenditure White Paper has grown from a mere 170 pages in 1978 and is now a formidably informative document of 500 pages. To come to what some regard as 1433 the nub of the debate, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has given this House more information about the Security Service than any of her predecessors by far. Perhaps it is inevitable that, like Tantalus, the representatives of the media should always be reaching out for the fruit which is just beyond their reach. I hope that they will accept and not neglect the huge increase in the harvest of information that is now available. Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) What extra information will be made available and accessible by the introduction of this White Paper, apart from the areas to which the right hon. Gentleman might refer, which will begin to be subject, in any case, to the civil law? Mr. Hurd This is not a freedom of information White Paper and we do not propose to introduce a freedom of information Bill. I am simply stating as a matter of fact the outflow and the cornucopia of information from this Government on matters which all our predecessors would have thought should continue to be locked up. I foresee that that flow of increasing information, spreading ever outwards, will continue. Perhaps we should step back from the detail for a moment to consider what difference the White Paper proposals will make. The answer is that almost allthe great bulk orofficial information would cease to be protected by the criminal law. That is a huge change. Any critic

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of our proposals who does not start by recognising that fact is letting prejudice obscure judgment. A great deal of the information which is no longer to be protected by the criminal law is of a minor kind and should never have been brought within the criminal law. However, some of it is highly sensitive material. Some of it, like the Budget proposals or the type of economic information which is protected specifically by the 1978 White Paper cannot be disclosed without the risk of some harm to the public interest, but we have decided that the degree of harm which disclosure of such information may entail is not enough to justify the use of the criminal law. Anyone who has served in Government, and I hope every Member of the House, will accept that that is not and was not an easy decision, nor was it taken lightly. It amounts to an earthquake in Whitehall. We have set the threshold where it seemed to us it ought to be. We are now discussing the boundaries of a small territory within the total empire which needs continued protection. There may be disagreement about how we define that territory and what we call it, but the boundary disputes, important though they are, do not crucially affect the size of the territory or alter the basic fact of the huge change which we propose to bring about. Some people are arguing that we are introducing harsh new powers over the information in this remaining protected territory. There has been some prattle in the press about censorship, and the word "draconian" springs rather too easily to the lips of the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook. Now that he has had time to read the White Paper, as opposed to press accounts of what it was going to contain, he can see that, even in this remaining protected territory, we are removing powers and liberalising definitions. Of course we want the law to protect effectively the territory which we think should still be protected. We want a new law which will work, but we are actually making just two proposals which would extend the present law. The 1434 first is to make it an offence for a member or former member of the security and intelligence services to disclose information which purports to relate to security or intelligence. The reasons for this are set out in paragraphs 43 and 44 of the White Paper and have not drawn a great deal of comment. The second is the proposal which I have already explained, which relates to why we believe that future legislation should protect any information relating to security or intelligence, defence or international relations which we provide in confidence to other Governments or international organisations. Those two minor additions to the present law will apply to particular categories of information in particular circumstances. Every other move, even in the remaining territory which we believe should be protected, is in the direction of openness. I do not believe that anyone could seriously weigh those two marginal additions against the immense reductions which we propose in the scope of the present law. None could conclude that on balance we are extending or stiffening the law. Parliament now has the best chance that it has ever had to put on the statute book a reasonable and effective new provision in place of section 2. I do not underestimate the difficulties, but I believe that success would bring a substantial reduction in the way that the criminal law bears on the media; an improvement in the reputation of the law, therefore better protection for information which has to be protected; and a gain in the quality of the workings of Government. We should not miss this chance. I hope and expect that this debate will take us another significant step towards reform. 10.8 am

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 Mr. Roy Hattersley (Birmingham, Sparkbrook) I have never had the pleasure of reading one of the Home Secretary's spy novels. However, I feel this morning that I have had taste of his style and I think that he created the title for his next work of fiction"An Earthquake in Whitehall". I want to begin with the Home Secretary's analysis of these matters. We cannot discuss the White paper without examining in a little detail the Home Secretary's statement on 29 June. In my 24 years as a Member of this House, I have never known a ministerial statement which was at greater variance with the White Paper that it purported to describe. I must tell the Home Secretary that either by inadvertance or intention he did the same this morning. The hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) asked the Home Secretary specifically about designation. The Home Secretary was explicitly and profoundly reassuring. He told his hon. Friend that designation was to be related to individuals. At which point a sigh of relief went round the Houseat least among those hon. Members who have not read the White Paper, since the White Paper specifies groups. It is not possible to discuss these matters rationally if the Home Secretary does not answer questions with a degree of accuracy. That was the problem that the House faced a month ago. Mr. Hurd rose Mr. Hattersley Just one moment. The word "group" appears in the White Paper. As the Official Report will show, the Home Secretary said that it was limited to individuals. 1435 Mr. Hurd The right hon. Gentleman is making a mountain out of a molehill. It is not possible to designate a group. Individuals must be designated. Individuals will be informed. There will not be a notice saying that that is a group which consists of such and such a category. Individuals will be designated and informed that they have been designated. That is the point. Mr. Hattersley I only wish that the Home Secretary had put that in his White Paper, paragraph 47 of which states: groups whose duties necessarily involve extensive familiarity with the work of the security and intelligence services will be designated. The Home Secretary cannot say that his reply is consistent with what appears in the public text; nor were many of the things that he said in his statement on 29 June. The Home Secretary rather foolishly said a moment ago that now that I have had an opportunity to read the White Paper, I may have a different view from that which I took on the day of the statement. He will recall that, thanks to his courtesy, I had an opportunity to read the White Paper during the morning of 29 June. He will also recall that other hon. Members were given a similar opportunity.

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I hope that the Home Secretary will also recall that, with the exception of the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel), every hon. Member who had read the White Paper disputed the Home Secretary's description of it in his statement to the House. They disputed the notion that the White Paper dispelled the idea that the criminal law is being used to protect information simply because its disclosure would embarrass the Government. The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen)who had read the White Paper referred to paragraph 61 which rejected the idea that Crown servants prosecuted under the new Act could offer public interest as a defence and said that because that idea was not included, the White Paper was crucially flawed. The hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken)who also had read the White Paperurged other hon. Members to read it closely. He said that anyone who had read it would realise that it contained grave defects. The hon. Member for AldridgeBrownhills (Mr. Shepherd)who had read the White Papertold the Home Secretary as I have told him this morning: the balance of his remarks is confounded by any reading of that paper. The hon. Gentleman was referring to the White Paper. All those hon. Members disagreed, as I disagree, with the Home Secretary's key passage then and the tone of his speech today, that The scope of the legislation would be confined to the very small amount of information that it is in the whole nation's interest to keep secret."[Official Report, 29 June 1988; Vol. 136, c. 365 71.] Of course the White Paper proposals will release a huge area of Government information from the absurdities of section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911. However, in the areas where open and honest government are tested, the same old illiberal rules still apply, some with greater force and fewer safeguards. I believe that that can be demonstrated notwithstanding what the Home Secretary has said today. The Home Secretary said that there is no blanket rule which requires any group or individual to remain silent on 1436 whole ranges of subjects. He based that assertion on a new concept which, as far as I can see, does not appear in the White Paper. That concept is "without authority". If the Home Secretary can tell me where that concept applies and where it is specified in the White Paper, I will gladly give way. There are passages in the White Paper which, according to any moderate understanding of the English language, convey the opposite impression. There are categories where a blanket rule applies automatically and where the criminal sanction is automatically triggered simply by the giving out of information. I will help the Home Secretary by quoting from the White Paper. Paragraph 38 states: The Government does not now propose that new legislation should make all such disclosures an offence." Bravo. It continues: It proposes instead that legislation should make a distinction between disclosures by members and former members of the security and intelligence services and disclosures by other persons; and that, in the latter case, the prosecution should have to show that the disclosure was likely to damage the operation of the security or intelligence services. That does not apply in the former case. In that case, when officers or ex-officers of the security services, disclose information, the rule is absolute. The criminal sanction is automatic. There is no discretion or concept of "without authority". Exactly the same rule applies in paragraph 53. I must explain to the Home Secretary, because this is more important than his strange contextual errors, that even were the concept of "without authority" to apply, it would still make the proposed Bill unacceptable. We are arguing against the notion that the Government can decide by certification or other means what should and should not be published. "Without authority" means that it may be done if the Government agree. Mr. Leon Brittan (Richmond, Yorks) Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

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 Mr. Hattersley In a moment. The Home Secretary is nodding. If he means that it may be done if the Government agree, he must understand that that is philosophically no different from certification. It is a negative form of certification and there is no philosophical difference between the two systems. I now give way to the Commissioner. Mr. Brittan The right hon. Gentleman must accept that he is on to a completely false point in suggesting that the concept of a distinction between authorised and unauthorised disclosure has no previous existence and cannot be found here. It has always existed in the law. If the right hon. Gentleman would care, for example, to consider paragraph 14 of the White Paper, he would see that it states: The central concern of any reform of section 2 is to determine in what circumstances the unauthorised disclosure of official information should be criminal. That makes it absolutely clear that the concept of authorisation as limiting the scope of the operation of the criminal law, even where it would otherwise extend, has been part of the law and will continue to be so. Mr. Hattersley The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not follow my point. Perhaps his mind is on other matters. The point is clear. If it is to be said that the security services are allowed to publish information with the Government's authorisation, we cannot rely any 1437 longer on the publicity about juries deciding and the matter not being in the Government's hands. The Government decide on individual cases. They decide yes or no. I do not disagree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that that has been the habit in the past, but the Home Seceretary claims that there should be a different habit in the future based on something more liberal and rational. Based on the Government's agreement and fiat, that makes it a system of certification by another name. The Government cannot deny that and nor has the Home Secretary done anything to disprove it. Under paragraph 43, it is a criminal offence for any member of the security or intelligence services, past or presentor, under paragraph 45, anyone or group designated by a Minister as associated or in frequent contact with the security servicesto say anything about security no matter how trivial, how true or how necessary in the public interest. If we say, "Don't worry about that because things which are right in the public interest, already known abroad or likely to cause no damage and which should be in the public weal, will be authorised," the Minister who replies had better tell me whether, under the new legislation, the publication of "Spycatcher" or Mr. Clive Ponting's revelation of the truth or what Miss Cathy Massiter said about the operation of the service would be authorised. Of course it would not. We are back in the old system under a liberal guise. Many media reports, including a programme broadcast by the BBC at 2 pm yesterday, have announced that the new dawn prepared by the Home Secretary will result in the scrutiny by juries of all information published, if there is any dispute about its propriety. They have suggested that juries will decide whether publication has damaged the public interest. That is clearly not the case in the areas where there are likely to be disputes, where the arguments about publication are most important, and where the Government's illiberality is most often demonstrated. It becomes a criminal offence for intelligence and security personnel to say anything about intelligence or security. The power of ministerial designation, about which the Home Secretary did not reassure me this morning, allows the rule of absolute silence to be extended far beyond the bounds of the security services themselves.

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 Mr. Ted Garrett (Wallsend) I believe that my right hon. Friend was in the House when the former Labour Member for Morpeth was prosecuted. Part of that trial was held in secret and part of it in public. To this day, hon. Members do not know whether he was prosecuted for giving away defence secrets or for disclosing commercial secrets. My suspicion is that his acquittal was due to the fact that there was a commercial issue involved. At that time, we thought that it was a most harsh decision to prosecute him. We never knew, and we still do not know, the facts of the case, which endorses my right hon. Friend's point. There should be more openness in that respect. Mr. Hattersley We all agree with that. Another example that has been brought to the attention of the House is one about which the Home Secretary or his junior Minister may care to speculate when replying to the debate. From time to time, we hear allegationsno morethat illegal phone taps are perpetrated by junior members of the security services. That was alleged in "Spycatcher", and it was alleged by Mr. Anthony Cavendish. It was alleged that some phone taps were 1438 applied to Members of the House. If an honest and honourable member of the security service discovers that that is happening, he is, as the Home Secretary states, entitled to go to his superior and say, "You shouldn't do that." If his superior is a man about whom he has doubts, he is entitled to go to a designated officer and say. "I am very worried about the illegality, criminality and treason that is being committed by the service". However, if he does not trust even the designated officer Mr. Hurd indicated dissent. Mr. Hattersley or whoever it is that the Home Secretary thinks is in that position of trust and responsibility, and who the honourable man may believe is party to the illegality, and if he makes public the fact that the right hon. Mr. A or the hon. Mrs. B has had his or her phone tapped, is he not committing a criminal offence? The Home Secretary seems to be shaking his head. Mr. Hurd I must correct the right hon. Gentleman's confusion about the staff counsellor. He is not of course a member of the security service. Mr. Hattersley I thought that the Home Secretary wanted to make a serious point. Let me ask him again. If the man about whom I have just hypothesised says, "This right hon. Member is having his phone tapped and I propose making that scandal public," will he not automatically be committing a criminal offence, for which there is no defence on grounds of honesty, decency, openness, justice or public interest? The Home Secretary does not answer the serious question. The answer to the serious question shows that in those areas where it ought to be right and proper for a member of the service to expose what is going on, the so-called liberal proposals that the Home Secretary puts before the House will automatically make that officer, without any qualification, subject to criminal prosecution and a period of imprisonment. Mr. John McWilliam (Blandon)

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As a member of the NCU who has worked extensively in telephone exchanges, I can give my right hon. Friend the answer to his question. If an intercept is found, the person finding it will have no knowledge of who put it on. He may take the matter to his superior officer, who if necessary will refer him to the designated officer within the service. That officer is not a staff counsellor in the context given by the Home Secretary. The person finding the tap is not allowed to remove it unless he is instructed to do so. He will have no knowledge of whether a warrant was granted to put that tap on in the first place. Mr. Hattersley I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Although the Home Secretary remains silentI had put to him what I thought was not a rhetorical questionI hope that when the junior Minister replies, he will address that point directly and explicity. That example seems to be at the heart of all that we are complaining about and of all that is wrong with the White Paper. Mr. Allen Will my right hon. Friend give way? Mr. Hattersley Just this once, and then I must make some progress. Mr. Allen Assuming that an officer has taken to the staff counsellor a complaint or a potential allegation that his colleagues or superiors are subverting the elected 1439 Government, what will the staff counsellor do? He will surely attempt to check whether there is any substance to it. If there are people in the security services willing to subvert a duly elected Government, the very life of any individual seeking to expose that particular plot would surely be at risk. There must be a longer stop than the staff counsellor in cases of high treason. Mr. Hattersley The long stop ought to have the right to publish the information and to defend the right to publish it, and the propriety of doing so, in court. I move forward as speedily as I can to allow other hon. Members time to enter the debate. Mr. Hugh Dykes (Harrow, East) Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that particular point? Mr. Hattersley No, I must go on, I have given way too much for the convenience of the House. I reiterate that the two rules of automatic criminal sanction against officers nominated by the Government whenever they speak about matters relating to intelligence or security, and against any civil servant who reveals confidential information to a foreign power, are wrong in principle. They give the Government the right to maintain total silence in areas where more frankness is desperately needed. The Home Secretary misunderstands the whole philosophy of the argument if he imagines that he can defend the Government's position by saying, "See how

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much information of our choice and to our convenience we have chosen to give out." This argument is about whether the people and the courts of this country have the right to decide about disclosure of information that is not to the Government's convenience. That is the real principle, and it is intensely important in the record of this Governmentwhich I thought the Home Secretary was pretty reckless to introduce into the debate. Mr. Ray Whitney (Wycombe) Will the right hon. Gentleman give way? Mr. Hattersley No, I have said that I must make progress. I cannot give way even for the hon. Gentleman. Mr. Whitney The right hon. Gentleman means especially for the hon. Gentleman. Mr. Hattersley Yes, but not for the reason that he thinks. It is particularly necessary to provide the added safeguard and a law that allows for openness to this Government on account of their record of wishing to maintain total secrecy with a determination that amounts to obsession. It is this Government who have unscrupulously used the courts to pursue cases that they knew they could not win, but which they knew that by expending enormous amounts of public money they could keep going for so long that they would damage at least the financial interests of the security officers they wished to pursue. It is this Government who have prosecuted with mixed success civil servants who acted out of conscience in making public information that they knew was of no benefit to an enemy or potential enemy but they thought should not be kept secret. It is this Government who raided the BBC's Scottish studios, confiscated films, and then returned them without prosecution, explanation or 1440 apology. It is this Government who prohibited the publication of Anthony Cavendish's little booklet alleging Security Service treason against the Administration of the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath). I do not believe that the power to control information that is not likely to damage the national interest should be available to any Government, but certainly it ought not to be available to a Government having that sort of record of suppressing inconvenient information and of suppressing information that is in no way damaging to the national interest, but which the Government or the Prime Minister think ought to be suppressed. The heart of the matter and the central issue that we are debating is the need, with any new law concerning official secrets, to take a rational and democratic view of the Security Service's operations. At present, the service acts either like a private army or like the private property of the Prime Minister. In other democracies, the activities of the security services come under the general supervision of Parliament. That rule should apply here. Until it does, the whole nexus between the wrong sort of secrecy and the wrong sort of activity will never be properly exposed. Until that happens, it is intolerable that everything done by the security servicesgood or bad, legal or illegal, trivial or significant, in or against the public interestshould be cloaked in secrecy according to the fiat of the Government. But that is what the White Paper provides, and that is why the editor of The Observerwho knows about such matters, as he has been pursued by the Governmentregards the proposed Act as in many ways worse than what it seeks to

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replace. For it specifically rules outand what the Home Secretary says does not alter my view for a momentsome of the protections provided by the present law. I have no doubt that the defendant's protection of the public interest defence will be removed. The Home Secretary says that no such defence exists. The fact is, however, that juries have acted on the belief that it does, or on the conviction that it should. Men and women have been acquitted on the belief that what they did was in the public interest. Let us assume that all that that reveals is that the present law is ambiguous, and that liberal-minded juries have chosen to interpret it in a certain way. What the Home Secretary now proposes is explicitly to remove that protection, so that juries will have no doubt in their minds in future. They will be directed that there is no such thing as a public interest defence; that loophole will be closed. When I asked the Home Secretary a month ago whether various notorious prosecutions under the present Governmentthat of Mr. Ponting in particularwould have led under the proposed Act to an acquittal or a conviction, there was a roar of "Conviction" from his hon. Friends. Of course Ponting would have been convicted, because the White Paper rules out the concept of public interest and leaves that option no longer open to the Government. Nor do I believe that the protection of prior publication will be protection that it is today. Let us again take the "Spycatcher" case. What would be the application of the new law to that? As I understand it, there is virtually no new information in "Spycatcher". There is certainly none of significance, and none that the Soviet Union does not already possess. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister has said from the Dispatch Box, in all our hearing, that whether the information is known does not matter. Prior publication is 1441 not the issue; it is security information. Would "Spycatcher" be released under the new legislation, as it should be, or would we continue to operate the principle that is so objectionable concerning all illiberal views on information? The Government's objection is not to information being made available to enemies or potential enemies of the state, but to its being made available to the people of this country. Much of the new legislation, like that which it is likely to replace, is intended to keep information not from enemies but from the British people. Let me make it clear that I want to keep secret material that even might be of real benefit to an enemy or potential enemy. The House, I believe, is unanimous in that desire. But the Zircon issue, for instance, was brought to fever pitch and generated ministerial hysteria not because it would reveal anything to the Soviet Union, but because it might lead our friends and allies in the United States to believe that we did not have the grip on the security services that they expected of us. That does not strike me as a justification for an illiberal Official Secrets Act. The proposed Act contains almost all the unhappy and unacceptable ingredients of the old Act, and the Act that the Home Secretary canvassed before his statement and thenconsciously and with dramatic effectannounced that he would not apply: the Act that includes certification. The objection to certification is that it gives Governments and Ministers the right to designate individual pieces of information that can or cannot be published. What the White Paper now proposes is mass certification: the Government have the right to say that a certain category of persons is not allowed to publish. In the White Paper, they specify certain categories of informationinformation obtained in confidence from a foreign power; information related to defence matters, in some cases; and information concerning intelligence security. The Home Secretary saysand his predecessor seemed to support himthat the Government would occasionally allow discretion, and that in his grace and favour a Home Secretary will read a book and then say that he does not mind its being published. I do not see how that can logically be separated from the idea of certification. If a Minister is to say, "This will not be tested in the courts: bring it to me and I will tell you whether it can be published", that is certification in all but name.

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In all the Home Secretary's pronouncementsin his statement on the White Paper and in his speech todayhe has made much of the need to remove from official secrets legislation matters of no danger or strategic significance. He wants us to concede that that has been done. Of course, in a sense I concede it willingly. I recall that in the January debate the Home Secretary scoffed, I thought rather artificially, at the absurdity of prosecutingI quote his words exactly civil servants who disclose the colour of the carpets in their offices or what was on the menu in the staff canteen."[Official Report, 15 January 1988; Vol. 125, c. 581.] Clearly such information is no longer subject to legal prosecution, and it is no doubt enormously gratifying to newspapers that wish to write about ministerial carpets and staff canteen menus that they can now do so with impunity. But, as he scoffed at the idea of such matters being considered under section 2, the Home Secretary went on to say that they are not subject to prosecution now. Many of the categories that he has said will no longer be subject to prosecution have not been subject to it in any case. 1442 The idea that much sensitive Budget information can be published without any prosecution is one of which I need to be convinced. I was looking at the other legislation surrounding such matterslaws regarding trade statistics, confidentiality of business information and the exchange rate, with which I was once concerned in passing. Are we being told that the matters that the Chancellor discusses in purdah, or semi-purdahpurdah apart from information that it is authorised to leakare not protected by any law? Or is it simply that the legal obligation to silence has been removed from the Official Secrets Act and applies with equal force elsewhere? The attitude that has characterised the Opposition throughout the debate is our wish to see a tight, positive and effective control on information which, if published, might damage the interests of the country. But the White Paper goes much further. It suppresses what ought to be in the public domain. That is why we shall vote against the Bill unless it is radically altered. If it were only more like the Bill that the Home Secretary pretended would come about when he introduced the White Paper, and less like the White Paper, we might vote for it. 10.38 am Mr. Leon Brittan (Richmond, Yorks) Listening to the speech of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), I could not help feeling that the disappointment that he showed when the Home Secretary made his statement had spilled over into this debatedisappointment that the draconian measures that he imagined would be introduced were not in the White Paper. Finding that they are not in the White Paper, he has had to spin a spurious web to try to persuade the House that the White Paper is not as it is. He has been wholly unsuccessful, and has simply brought about a series of misconceived red herrings. Take, for example, authorisation, of which the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook has made such heavy weather. He is entirely wrong about that. The object of the exercise, following the recommendations of the Franks committee to reform the official secrets legislation, was to narrow the areas where disclosure would attract the sanctions of the criminal law. Over and above that, any conceivable reform must make it plain that other areas of the law would still be covered by the official secrets legislation and that disclosure would be a criminal offence. The Government must be able to prevent memoirs being published. It is a complete red herring for the right hon. Member to pretend that there is anything novel in that concept. For him to obscure that simple concept with the concept of ministerial certification is, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, something much more serious.

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The ministerial certification concept is wholly different from authorisation. It is that, in the case of a prosecution brought before the courts in the ordinary way, where there is a specific issue that the court has to determine, the existence of a ministerial certificate shall be final and conclusive. That is quite different from the authorisation of material that is outside the realm of what is permitted by the criminal law. The right hon. Gentleman should see that distinction. I am surprised that he does not. The White Paper amounts to a substantial liberalisation of the law. The right hon. Gentleman did less than justice to himself in his concluding remarks about Budget secrets. They were full of dark hints. He suggested that., 1443 although Budget secrets may not be covered by this legislation, something else, somewhere, is being introduced to cover that loophole. There is no truth in that suggestion. This is about the reform of the official secrets legislation. If the right hon. Gentleman has in mind other legislation that he thinks ought to be changed, he owes it to the House to say exactly what it is. But he has done nothing of the kind. Mr. Hattersley I am not talking about new legislation, darkly hinted at, or about Budget secrets that should be made available before the Budget. I am in favour of Budget secrets being kept secret, but I am not in favour of the Home Secretary pretending that they will not be kept secret when I think they will. Mr. Brittan It will not do for the right hon. Gentleman to make dark hints about unspecified legislation. If the right hon. Gentleman is making hints about future legislation, the House is entitled to know what those hints are. If it is existing legislation, it should be identified. The right hon. Gentleman has demeaned himself by doing neither. The legislation envisaged by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary amounts to a substantial liberalisation of the law, but that does not imply that it is perfect, as I shall seek to show. I have criticisms and comments to make. This legisation is well on the way to securing an objective that has been accepted in principle but that has eluded Governments for many years: effective protection for information, the disclosure of which would damage the national interest, while at the same time removing the cloak of the criminal law from a welter of information that might be embarrassing if disclosed but that is not contrary to the national interest. Some of those who opposed suggested reforms in the past were genuinely unhappy with the proposals, but others preferred unworkable legislation. They hoped either that it could not be enforced or that a jury would not convict because the legislation had been discredited. Intellectually, that is a shoddy approach to the problem, although it did much to impede previous attempts at reform. This attempt has deservedly received a better reception than its predecessors. It is a better scheme than that put forward in the 1979 Bill, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on it. The proposals are ingenious and constructive, especially the way in which the problem of ministerial certification has been resolved by abolishing it altogether. The extent of the liberalisation has not been fully appreciated. There has been a reduction in the number of categories covered by the criminal law. Furthermore, the requirement that the specific harm set out in the White Paper has to be proved will not make it at all easy to secure convictions, except in the clearest cases.

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Paragraph 49 of the White Paper deals with defence. It proposes that the prosecution should be obliged to prove that the disclosure was likely either to prejudice the capability of the armed forces to carry out any of their defence tasks, or to lead to a risk of loss of life, injury to personnel or damage to equipment or installations, or to prejudice dealings between the Government and the government of another state or an international organisation. 1444 It is not difficult to see that an ingenious defence would be able to use those words to show that the prosecution had not made out its case, except in the clearest possible cases of damaging disclosure. However, there is still scope for considerable discussion of what the definitions of specific harm in the various areas should be and the circumstances in which it is appropriate for no harm test to be required. I have three points to make about that. The first relates to paragraph 49 on defence and paragraph 50 on international relations. The specific harm that the Government have to prove is that disclosure would prejudice dealings between the Government and the Government of another state or an international organisation. The comparable paragraph in the 1979 Bill used language that required proof of serious injury. The difference is important. Generally, the specific harm that the Government have to prove in this White Paper is meant to be less vague and more specific than the present legislative provisions. The justification of the approach of abandoning specification and setting out, with limited exceptions, the specific harm that has to be proved is to require something more concrete that is fit to come before a jury. I could understand something that was more specific, but to confine the prosecution to having to prove that the material that is disclosed merely prejudices dealings is a test as vague as the requirement of serious harm. It is also more restrictive. It would be easier to prove that the material that is disclosed prejudices something than that it does serious harm. As at present advised, I do not see any justification for what amounts to a tightening up of proposals that were originally put forward in 1979. The second point to which I should like to draw attention relates to an important ambiguity that needs to be cleared up about paragraphs 41 and 42 of the White Paper, in which it is said that in the case of disclosure by members or former members of the security and intelligence services there will be no need to prove any specific harm. That is the distinction between disclosures by members or former members of the security and intelligence services and disclosures by others. But what about disclosures by newspapers of material emanating from members of the security and intelligence services? If the harm test were required in such a case, the law would undoubtedly be tighter, if enacted on the lines of the White Paper, than might have seemed apparent from a cursory reading of the White Paper. The paragraph refers simply to disclosure of information by members or former members of those services. It does not refer to information derived from disclosure by members or former members of those services. That is an important matter which needs to be clarified. If no harm test is required, the law is tighter than it might have seemed. If the harm test is required, the total ban on the disclosure by officers of the security and intelligence services is considerably diluted. I have an open mind about what is right, but I think that it should be clarified before the House is invited to consider the matter further. My third point relates to paragraph 51, which provides the blanket coverage of the criminal law on information obtained in confidence from other Governments or international organisations. In the case of such disclosure, the White Paper proposes that there should be no requirement for any specific harm test to be covered. I should be very surprised if the House were ultimately to be 1445 persuaded of the need for any such category, and certainly of the need for it to be covered by a blanket ban, there being no need to prove any harm.

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Some of the information derived from other Governments and international organisations is, frankly, highly trivial. Some of the information derived from other Governments and international organisations in confidence is material which, under the law of those countries, it is not a crime to publish abroad. It seems to me excessively sweeping and unnecessary to contain paragraph 51, particularly when it is read in conjunction with paragraph 50the paragraph on international relationswhich already provides that it shall be a criminal offence if the Government can prove that disclosure of information relating to international relations will prejudice dealings between the Government and the Government of another state or an international organisation. If the disclosure of information communicated in confidence by such a Government or international organisation does any harm at all, it will not be difficult to prove that prejudice, and it is quite unnecessary to have the category in paragraph 51. Those seem to be the real questions which must be asked and the potential blemishes which must be considered, rather than the spurious smokescreen which the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook erected. As for general public interest defence, I find myself persuaded by what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary says. It seems to me irrelevant, with all due respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken), to say what the precise state of the law is as to the existence or otherwise of a public interest defence. It is plainly fairly ambiguous and uncertain. The right question to ask is whether such a defence is necessary and desirable. The question has been circumvented by the Government's approach. They have said that they will require the prosecution to prove a specific harm except in certain other limited cases, and they will define that harm. The nature of the argument about public interest is circumscribed by the definition. The proper question is whether the definition is right or wrong. I have expressed, with regard to the use of the word "prejudice", my reservations about one respect of the definition. That seems to be the proper area for debate, rather than the general question whether public interest defences should apply. That seems to be addressing a question which has been removed by the wholly different intellectual concept of the White Paper. The Government have made out their case in regard to the prior publication of disclosure. They have arguedin my view rightlythat whereas in many cases the fact that there has already been publication would enable the defence to show that the prosecution has not discharged the burden of establishing specific harm, there may be circumstances in which obscure, partial publication elsewhere does not mean that there is no harm by a more substantial or authoritative disclosure identified as coming from the intelligence services. The balance is right. The most difficult question is whether there is justification for members of the intelligence and security services being under an absolute and lifelong ban from making disclosures without authority. I have come to the conclusion that that general principleI stress the words "general principle"is unexceptionable and correct. People who take on the job of working in the security and intelligence services know exactly what they are doing and 1446 the nature of the work they are undertaking. I think that it is reasonable that they should not generally be allowed to publish material without the risk of criminal prosecution. If we are talking about historical material, there is and always has been provision for authorisation, contrary to the impression given by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook. There is, however, something to be said for introducing an independent element in the procedure of vetting material for publication. There is also something to be said for no longer confining that process to the service. That is no reason why there should not be people of responsibility and authority from outside the service who could be involved in vetting material for publication. Mr. Richard Shepherd

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Would my right hon. and learned Friend care to comment on whether former or serving intelligence service officers should have the right to plead inequity as a defence? Mr. Brittan I was coming to that. Finally, but most important, is the question what should happen if an intelligence officer discovers, or thinks that he has discovered, serious misconduct. Attention has been drawn to the fact that such a person can go to his superior, but attention has also been drawn to the existence of Sir Philip Woodfield's position as staff counsellor, to whom a person in such circumstances can turn. The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook has not given sufficient weight to the novelty of this departure from previous practice and the importance of there being someone completely outside the service to whom an officer can turn. It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to say that an officer may not have confidence in such a person, but it is possible for an officer to have confidence in nobody. No Government can do more than provide a person of repute and integrity such as all who know him would testify Sir Philip Woodfield to be. Mr. Hattersley rose Mr. Brittan Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would care to listen for a moment before intervening. I regard the present arrangement for a staff counsellor as something to be built on, not something that is wholly sufficient. It is essential that there should be something rather more substantial than this informal, ad hoc appointment. There should be a formally established and publicly announcedand explainedindependent system within the public service for examining allegations of impropriety. Although such a system would have to operate in private, its existence could be announced publicly, as could details about it. That would do more than anything else to persuade Parliament that it is right to impose the sanctions of the criminal law for life on people in the security and intelligence services who are found guilty of unauthorised disclosure of material, whatever their motives and whatever the circumstances. 10.59 am Mr. Michael Foot (Blaenau Gwent) I am very glad to have the chance of following the right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan). Many of us must have noted, particularly in view of the rumours published in the newspapers recently, how passionately he opposed the particular part of the Government's proposed 1447 legislation which might interfere with international communications. I hope that that does not mean that he has accepted the new job. Some of us consider that he was most ill-used during the Westland affair. I do not know whether he will take any advice from me on these matters, but my advice is: stick it out; she will not be there for ever. One of the most excruciating moments ever reported to the House was when Sir Robert Armstrong allegedly went to the Prime Minister and reported, under the inquiry that he carried out, that someone in the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Department had been responsible for the leak. I have always thought that that must have been an amazing moment. The Prime

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Minister must have said, "No, not our Leon. He would not do anything without consulting me." I have always thought that we should have heard such a response from the Prime Minister at the time. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not depart, as we value his contribution to ensuring that we get a better Bill than the White Paper. It would be a special irony indeed if at the end of this week, when, quite properly in my opinion, we have been asserting the supremacy of Parliament as vindicated and established in the 1688 and 1689 revolution, which I still believe was a glorious revolution, we should support a White Paper which involves the derogation from that supremacy of Parliament, particularly in the light of the large-scale misdemeanours of the secret service which have been revealed in recent years. If anyone claims that I am exaggerating, I commend them to the excellent article by Lord Hailsham, written soon after he left the position of Lord Chancellor. A few months ago, he wrote an article for The Independent, entitled How the security services are bound by the rule of law. I think that the headline may have been written by the excellent sub-editors of The Independent, but the article was written by the Lord Chancellor himself. In that article he wrote that one of the reasons why the Bill of Rights had been passed and approved on such a scaleand one of the reasons why I am in favour of celebrating these matterswas the antics of James II, which he described as: The ill-advised and illegal attempts by James II to evade the contraints of the doctrine. In other words, James II was engaged in what might be described in modern times as spycatcher activities. In those days the very proper remedy of 1688 and 1689 was to reassert the power, authority and control of Parliament, in particular the House of Commons. That is what we should be doing this week, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) said at the end of his notable speech today. We really need to bring back the influence and the control of Parliament. I presume that it is not discussed or even mentioned in the White Paper because the Prime Minister always lays down the rule that we cannot discuss the possibilities of parliamentary control, which is the normal way in which this country deals with grave misdemeanors. It cannot be applied here because, as the Prime Minister often says, the secret service must be kept secret, and that is the end of the matter. I imagine that if any Minister were to dare to go along to any of the discussions on the Bill and say, "What about establishing some parliamentary control over this matter?" the whole question would be ruled out from the beginning. 1448 Some may say that it is because of the tradition of this country, although, as I said, Lord Hailsham accepts a different doctrine, announced in the article, that Parliament does have some control, and that when a Minister, an Attorney-General or a Home Secretary comes to the House and speaks from the Dispatch Box about how the secret service is operating, that in itself is an admission of parliamentary control. Even when in the usual circumstances, the Prime Minister, the Attorney-General or the Home Secretary says, "We cannot answer these questions because we do not answer security questions in public", Lord Hailsham's doctrine is different. He says that the fact that the Ministers have to come to the House means that they are answerable to the House, and therefore the House has the right and the duty to press the matter further so that we have some proper parliamentary control. If it is said in 1988, of all years, that we cannot have proper parliamentary control, we should consider what happens in the United States of America. After the earth-shattering experiences on the other side of the Atlantic, I have not heard that the President of the United States is proposing to give up his secret service or to abandon having a secret servicenothing of the kind. However, in the past year, the affairs of the American secret service have been ransacked by Congress in more detail than almost ever before in history. There have been previous occasions, but on this occasion its investigations went further than ever before on a matter of

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supreme importance about which the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister ought to be paramountly concerned. International terrorism is one of the appalling horrors of the modern age and how to deal with it is one of the questions that affects the operation of the secret service. That is one reason why Congress has insisted on all these matters being dragged out in public. They discovered that the secret agents of the American Government were engaged in actions with terrorists and were trying to make deals with terrorists quite contrary to all the professions that they had made to the world and which had been supported strongly by our own Prime Minister. Indeed, no one has been more passionate than she in saying how strongly she agrees with President Reagan when he denounces terrorism. But when the agents of President Reagan engage in activities to sell arms or to assist terrorists or terrorists regimes, and when all that is dragged out in the sight of the world, as it has been during the past few months, the Prime Minister is a little more reticent, and we have not heard exactly what she thinks about it. I believe, and most sensible people would believe, that whatever it may mean to the American security servicesalthough I think that it is better for them toofor American democracy and for the free world of which we are members, it is a very good thing it has all been brought out and that those infamies have not been tolerated. I do not know whether other hon. Members feel as strongly as I do, but if it is true that it was absolutely essential for these misdemeanours, horrors, misdeeds and contemplated misdeeds to be brought out into the open by the action of the American Congress, I consider that a British parliamentary committee of some sort should have the power to do something similar. I am not saying that we should mimick or adopt the American methods. We have our own methods of establishing a parliamentary Committee to survey these matters. 1449 In the light of all that has happened and all that has been revealed during the past few months, it is monstrous that today we should be presented with a White Paper which does not contain any proposal whatsoever for extending parliamentary control over such matters. I now turn to a question about which I have had quite a lot of correspondence with the Prime Ministerthe revelations in the book "Spycatcher". I am not saying that "Spycatcher" is a great book or a work of art. In many ways, I consider that it is a work of infamy and I certainly do not believe that many parts of it can be believed unless some corroborative evidence can be produced. I certainly think that the person responsible for writing that book was guilty of a gross breach of faith. not only to his obligations but to many of the people he attacked. It is scandalous that Sir Roger Hollis should be denounced, defamed and held up in history as a man who was a traitor to his country on evidence that has not been sifted at all. I know that we cannot protect the dead, but it is pretty thick that that should have happened. On one occasion the Prime Minister tried to repudiate it, but she should have carried it a bit further. If I had been a relation of Sir Roger Hollis I would have been outraged at what was done. A former prominent Conservative Member was the brother of Sir Roger Hollis and if he had been here he would have raised a storm about what was permitted by the Government. Under the present arrangements there are listed leakages to particular journaliststo Chapman Pincher in particular. I do not know whether there will be a special Chapman Pincher clause in the Bill. Such a clause may say that as long as material is leaked to Chapman Pincher it will be all right and there will be no prosecution. Would the Chapman Pincher clause include a few other journalists as well because there seems to be some discrimination? I am sorry that none of the Law Officers are present because they are the people who are supposed to pick and choose between the Cavendishes and the Chapman Pinchers and would have to say who was to be prosecuted. This is an important matter.

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I shall now come to what has been revealed and about which I had correspondence with the Prime Minister. I wrote to her about the so-called revelations in "Spycatcher" about the attempts to destabilise the Wilson Government, which was obviously the major matter, and asked if they were true or had any basis. But there was another series of revelations. If they are correct they raise questions of first-class importance to the existence and continuance of our democracy. They are questions about the allegations that the British secret service was preparing for the assassination of President Nasser. If it so engaged, that was serious, because if the attempt had succeeded the consequences for our country because of the reactions throughout the whole of the middle east would have been grave. Anybody who knows anything about the middle east knows the reputation that President Nasser had. I took that view about the consequences when I first read this tale about the British secret service having been engaged in these activities. John Donaldson, now Lord Donaldson of Lymington, was not my favourite judge because I had a few brushes with him in times gone by. However, what he said about this matter is of great importance. He said that the so-called plan to assassinate President Nasser was iniquity of a high ordera monstrous thing and a stain on this country's honour. 1450 If somebody discovers that our secret service has engaged in such activities, what would be his obligation to reveal it under the present proposals? If there is a stain on our country's honour is some member of the secret service to say, "I must not take any steps to reveal that because I am bound by the same provision." In the same discussion on these matters Lord Donaldson went on to speak about the absurdity of the doctrine that if the secret service was engaged in acts of such gross iniquity, that was all the more reason for matters to be suppressed. That is a very strange doctrine. Some of us take a simpler view. To introduce the idea that one must never reveal what would involve a stain on our country's honour is almost to introduce the Nuremburg concept that one must not reveal anything and does not have any obligation apart from a signed obligation to the state. As some hon. Members have said, juries have taken a similar view in previous cases. If Ministers have their way, that loophole will be closed. Juries have a somewhat different view from that of the Government about what is right and proper for the country to do, and this case is a clear example of that. I wrote to the Prime Minister on two or three occasions asking whether she would be good enough to tell me whether she ever inquired into the accuracy of this case. I did that because she told the House on one occasion that she had had a new inquiry into the so-called destabilisation of the Wilson Government. On many occasions she spoke about the investigation initiated by my right hon. Friend who was the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth. He did have an investigation, but I do not know whether it covered all these matters. The Prime Minister said in the letter to me, and told the House, that she had carried out a fresh investigation into these matters. Is that the case? Perhaps the Minister will tell us, but I doubt it because he would have to go and ask the Prime Minister and she would not be in too good a temper if the question were put to her point blank. If an investigation was carried out, did it cover the question which Lord Donaldson said: involved iniquity of a high ordera monstrous thing"? Will we be told by the Prime Minister that it happened a long time ago and we do not need inquiries into such things? Will she say that these are ancient matters, all gone and finished? Will she say that we must restore confidence in the present secret service and that those matters have nothing to do with today's affairs? Things are very different with this Government. These matters are not out of date and are not ancient questions. They are as up to date, shall we say, as the shootings in Gibraltar. The secret service is involved in that. One of the most extraordinary developments in that connection was the precipitant way in which the Prime Minister told the House that she would not have any special inquiry and certainly no parliamentary inquiry. Right at the beginning my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition sand that we must have an investigation because that was

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the best thing for Parliament, democracy and the secret service. The Prime Minister brushed all that aside. She said that she would not have an inquiry. She did not want Parliament interfering in any shape or form. She was landed with the much more difficult situation. There will be an inquest at which nobody knows exactly who will appear or even how the evidence is to be taken. However the inquest goes, it will be very difficult for it to establish in the eyes of the world a full and proper judgment on the whole affair. That is especially so because 1451 one of the most scandalous aspects of the Gibraltar affair was what happened a few days later when the news was coming out. What happened a few days later can all be checked from the newspapers. Witnesses were brought forward as if they were witnesses of the event. When matters of that importance were published in the newspapers, a deluge of vilification and defamation was dished out against those witnesses or possible witnesses. Some of that deluge came from No. 10 Downing street. If the Home Secretary disputes what I say he can look it up in the Sunday Times which, I suppose, is the most elevated section of the Murdoch press. The newspaper said that the material came from "higher sources". I do not think that it mentioned the No. 10 Downing street machine in that case, but that certainly came out. I do not know whether libel actions will be taken by those witnesses or about the chances that they would have in such actions. We have the combination of a Prime Minister who says, "We will not have any investigation whatever on any parliamentary judgment on these events", and a highly suspicious Downing street machine that pours out material suitable to the Prime Minister. If it was poured out a way that was unsuitable to the Prime Minister its author would be unlikely to last very long. I have no hesitation in sayingneither did my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrookthat the problems derive from the Government's behaviour. We know that there are many problems that are not simple to solve. The Home Secretary said that he will settle the problems, but I do not believe that he has a chance of doing so if he does not secure the support of the House. If the right hon. Gentleman had wanted a settlement he should have given a much better welcome to the Protection of Official Information Bill introduced by his hon. Friend the minister for AldridgeBrownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and to all the work that he has done since. The House and all those who believe in freedom of information owe the hon. Gentleman a debt of gratitude for the way in which he pursued his campaign. If the Government had any sense, they would have consulted him so as to achieve a Bill that would command the attention of the House. They will not do so by the proposals that they have presented. I have no doubt that the relationship between the Prime Minister's Office and the nation isI use the word deliberatelycorrupt. I do not mean corrupt in the way that Malcolm Muggeridge used it. His definition of the word "corrupt" was when money passed. Favours pass between the Government machine, the No. 10 Downing street machine and the hugely elaborate Murdoch press, the power of which is far greater than that which a single newspaper proprietor should hold in a democratic society. The relationship between the Prime Minister's Office and those newspapers is evil and corrupt and the many problems will not be solved until the House has the courage to establish its own authority. It would be the best way of celebrating the revolution of 1688, which was important in the history of our country. Even what Lord Hailsham wrote about it was quite correct. It is necessary that the rule of law is established. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the Home Secretary or anybody else could not deny that over the past weeks and months we have heard accumulated evidence about how the secret services have 1452 defied and broken the rule of law with impunity. The Prime Minister has said, "There will be no parliamentary inquiry and we shall introduce a Bill

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that takes no account of these questions". If the Home Secretary makes himself a party to that, the Bill should be treated not only with opposition but derision. 11.22 am Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) The House holds that there are certain important liberties and rights consonant with democracy. Among them are freedom of speech and of the press. A democracy cannot identify itself as such without them. The protection of certain information in the interests of all our citizens is important. When we consider a change in the law about the protection of official information, we must try to strike a balance between those competing interests. It must be a substantial argument that gainsays freedom of speech or of the press. We need freedom of speech and of the press to identify the activities of Government. That is the only way in which we can hold them accountable. If we do not know what they are doing, how do we hold them accountable? In that spirit, one approaches the White Paper. I have some sympathy with the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), who said he found it difficult to reconcile the words of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in his original introduction of the White Paper with some of the words that he used today. I shall give the reasons why I also have difficulty in that regard. If the Home Secretary were saying, "I shall approach the appropriate bull points as I can identify them, but nevertheless, caveat emptor," that would be perfectly reasonable. My right hon. Friend, however, went further than that, and I shall try to diagnose why we should be wary of any salesmanwhether it be an insurance salesman or any otherwho wants to identify the most marketable aspects of his proposals. It is my job, as the prospective purchaser of the White Paper, to identify omissions, absences or matters that are not in my interest. The matter is approached by trying to identify two classes of information: those that are absoluteI know that my right hon. Friend backed away from the concept of absolute defencesand those that have a limited damage test, over which the prosecution would merely have to skip. I take to heart the remarks of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan) that "prejudice" and "damage" are low-level words that do not pose a serious test to the prosecution when a penalty of up to two years' imprisonment is involved. The first absolute category is paragraph 51 of the White Paper, which refers to paragraph 28 and makes slight reference to paragraphs 26 and 27. It relates to information obtained in confidence from Governments and international organisations. When the Home Secretary originally introduced this paragraph, he said that he did not expect to carry me with him and that I had raised an important but limited point. How limited or small is this point? There is little argument about why paragraph 51 is necessary. In that paragraph, the Government say: There is a wider damage to the standing of the United Kingdom in relation to all governments and international 1453 organisations. For that reason any unauthorised disclosure is harmful, and the Government sees no purpose in setting a test of harm which is bound to be satisfied in every instance. The sheer assertiveness of that is breathtaking. It lacks rational justification, or an attempt to discover in what way it should be limited or whether it is compatible with the rights of hon. Members, representing their constituents, to be able to hold the Government to account for proposals, measures or actions that they take in the name of the British people. That is what we are trying to examine. The introduction of international organisations makes the scope of paragraph 51 enormous. No serious injury or damage test is to be applied. There is a pure assertion that everything

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nominated in this category is an absolute offence. I cannot understand the need for the comprehensiveness of the paragraph, and if one asks the Foreign Office to list or identify international organisations or activities that might lead to a punishment of up to two years' imprisonment, it grandly replies that it would "not be practicable" to tell the House of Commons. "Not be practicable" to tell us what is a criminal offence or what may give rise to criminal behaviour? That is irresponsible, and if that is the spirit in which Whitehall approaches the matterby announcing nostrums of such breathtaking wideness and saying that it cannot identify offences because it is not practicableit is absurd. I agree entirely with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks that paragraph 51 should be dropped. What does the paragraph do to journalists. It makes that which is lawful to report today unlawful to report after this measure is passed by the House. That aspect needs careful scrutiny. In a White Paper, I look for a balance between the overriding considerations of the need to protect certain information and the rights of free expression, for people to know information and for the press to print it. There is no balance. Journalists are referred to in paragraphs 54 and 64, and there is almost no way out of the liability of disclosure of provisions. In paragraph 54, the Government assert: The Government accordingly proposes that the unauthorised disclosure by any person of information in the specified categories" hon. Members should remember that the specified categories contain no damage test in circumstances where harm is likely to be caused should be an offence. Paragraph 55 says: it would not be right to make disclosure criminal except where the discloser knows or can reasonably be expected to know that the disclosure would be likely to cause harm. That might sound like a let-out, but the press cannot argue that it does not know that it is an absolute category. It is the law of the land and the press must be informed. It says, absolutely, that damage has taken place. Therefore, what argument can there be as to whether it has or has not taken place? It is an absolute assertion in law. That is why there is some merit in what the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook said, in that one does not need ministerial certificates. We have done away with them. We have instructed the court that any release of information under that category is a crime. I am not legally qualified like the former Home Secretary, but a judge can instruct a jury as to the law. The question can be asked, "Did the offence take place within the category of information given 1454 in confidence by a foreign Government?" The answer is yes. The question then is, "What pleadings can be made?" The answer -is none. It is yes or no. Where is the defence? We have ruled out the defence of prior publication, the fact that it has been previously available, and we have ruled out an iniquity defence. We do not need a ministerial certificate, because it has been asserted before a court. One cannot even look at the contention that there is damage, because no damage is required under that category. It has to be treated cautiously because it is closing down information that may be available to us today. Let us look at the most sensitive type of information that the Government have a duty to protect and about which they are anxious. The Trevi agreement was leaked in The Independent. There was nothing outrageous in the document. It seems fairly sensible and contains nothing that one could not second-guess if one were a terrorist. I suppose it was information given in confidence between intergovernmental organisationsa phrase that would cover the Ghana cocoa marketing board. The information may have been leaked by an Italian or German Minister. I am not trying to say that a particular country is prone to such leaks. The information may be reported in Corriere Della Sera, Il Tempo or a Belgian newspaper, and a British journalist based in Milan may be asked to provide information on that for his newspaper. As I read the White Paper, he has no defence if he does so. He has committed an offence. It was information improperly disclosed, given in confidence between intergovernmental organisations, not necessarily Governments.

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It is an outrageous category and it shows the spirit of those behind it, who did not try to weigh up what is appropriate in the great contest between our right to be able to express ourselves freely and the need to protect what we accept needs to be protected. The second all-embracing category deals with security and intelligence matters and it is linked to interception. I want to deal with the quality of the arguments. There is an extraordinary argument in paragraph 53. I ask the House to reflect on the nature of people who put together arguments such as that. It makes its assertions, as we have come to expect from the White Paper and it says that no information obtained by means of interception can be disclosed without assisting terrorism or crime, damaging national security or seriously breaching the privacy of private citizens. What happens is that someone says, "My phone has been tapped. I am outraged and I want to tell the world." He would be told, "Oh no, you would commit an absolute offence because you would be invading your own privacy." The argument is contorted. Perhaps I have misread it and I am happy to give way to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary if he will explain how I would breach my own privacy. That is one of the assertions made in the White Paper. That is why I ask the House to look cautiously at everything. The section dealing with security services affects every Government because they are responsible for them. The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten) If an individual thinks that his telephone is being tapped and wishes to make use of the Interception of Communications Act 1985, that could not be an offence under any circumstances because it does not involve official information. 1455 Mr. Shepherd If that is true, why does the White Paper make the assertion that to reveal such a thing would be damaging or would seriously breach the privacy of a private citizen? Perhaps I am misreading the White Paper? The Government propose to make disclosure by members and former members of the security and intelligence services an absolute offence. That was a contention fought for by Sir Robert Armstrong in the High Court. It is worth remembering the words of Mr. Justice Scott in dealing with it: Sir Robert would not accept that any freedom of speech or of publication should be permitted so as to allow any information about the Security Service to be discussed publicly by an insider. No question of balance between the proper requirements of national security, on the one hand, and of freedom of speech or of the press on the other hand, arose. I found myself unable to escape the reflection that the absolute protection of the Security Services that Sir Robert was contending for could not be achieved this side of the Iron Curtain. That is what the Government propose to legislate to accomplish. We should see it off. We have to look carefully at the relationship between the duties. The right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) identified that when dealing with iniquity. The learned judge went on: It is not in dispute that Mr. Wright was under a duty of confidence by reason of his employment in MI5; nor is it in dispute that his duty continued after his resignation. The duty, if not contractual, is a duty recognised and imposed by equity, co-extensive with the duty that would have been imposed by implied term had the relationship been contractual. The breadth and duration of the duty that binds ex officers of MI5 depends, in my judgment, as does the breadth and duration of the duty of confidence in any other context, on all the circumstances of the case. The requirements of national security and the need for secrecy about the affairs of

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personnel of MI5 are of great weight indeed. But the breadth and duration of the duty cannot, nonetheless, be divorced from the circumstances of the particular case. Mr. Alexander" counsel representing the Government submitted that there was, where the duty of confidence of an ex-MI5 officer was concerned, no balance to be struck. The duty of confidence applied, he said, to all information, however apparently trivial and however much, by reason of disclosures made by others, the information might have become publicly known. I am unable to accept that such an extreme, absolute approach is correct. This is the Government's extreme and absolute approach. Mr. Justice Scott continued: The proposition may be tested by a number of examples, some more fanciful than others. Sir Percy Sillitoe's autobiography was published with the permission of the authorities. It contained information about the workings of MI5. Could it be argued that, notwithstanding the publication of the autobiography, other MI5 officers were under a duty not to disclose the information therein contained? I think not. I accept that those are the personal views of a judge, expressed obiter dicta in court. If the authorities refuse to draw any line, they mistake the nature of the duty of confidence they seek to enforce. That says it all about the Government's approach. They do not try to draw any line, they include everythingthe gold watch presented, the high crime of iniquity. What were the challenges of iniquity? They were the destabilisation of a legitimately elected British Government. That concerns every citizen. Every court that it has come before has accepted that that is so primary in a democracy that it could never be suppressed. In the Government's White Paper there is no intention that any such challenge should ever emerge into the public arena. There is also the contention that we tried 1456 to assassinate the Head of another state. That was referred to by the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent. That would be a crime of infamy that would bring great shame upon this country. Those are matters of major public policy, but the White Paper asserts that they should not be matters for us to discuss. It says that it would be improper and could cause damage. Damage to whom? The White Paper will damage us as a public forum and as a nation that is wedded to democracy. From 1688 to 1889, we required no official secrets Acts in the form we have and we rose to a great empire. In 1889 we introduced a public interest defence that information could be communicated to the authorities. In 1911 that was considerably watered down but still existed. In 1988 we are proposing that the public interest defence should go out of the window. We are proposing that prior publication should not be available. The courts also had a view about prior publication, but I shall first quote again from Mr. Justice Scott: Mr. Alexander submitted that the Government ought not to be exposed to the pressure and embarrassment that mischievous and untrue allegations by insiders might produce. I accept that pressure and embarrassment might follow upon the reporting of allegations of the sort I am considering. But there are two answers, in my view, to Mr. Alexander's point. The first is that the legitimate purpose of the duty of confidence imposed on members and ex-members of MI5 is to preserve the secrecy of MI5's affairs and thereby to enable it to operate efficiently. The purpose is not to save the Government of the day from pressure or embarrassment. Second, and more important, the ability of the press freely to report allegations of scandals in government is one of the bulwarks of our democratic society. It could not happen in totalitarian countries. If the price that has to be paid is the exposure of the government of the day to pressure or embarrassment when mischievous of false allegations are made, then, in my opinion, that price must be paid. That is my opinion as well. We suffer some loss of confidentiality and of security because we are a democracy, but this is a very small price to pay when one weighs up the great splendour of the fact that we are a democracy. The White Paper makes no reference to the lawful or proper duties of the security services and the intelligence gatherers at GCHQ. Those were set down in the Maxwell Fyfe declaration, and were clearly identified and big enough topics. The White Paper does not even try to focus an absolute form of protection onto those necessary activities that are lawfully identified by a former Home Secretary. I would have thought that that may have been a starting point, but if the Government's position is that, at the end of the day, there is a class of information, that, through

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understandable difficulties in proving the damage in court, would expose us to the risk of greater damage, perhaps the answer to that is the contrived one that came from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn), a former Solicitor-General for Scotland. It is that, before a prosecution goes forward, where there is any suggestion that there is an abolute areathat is, no defence such as public interest, or prior publication can be raisedthat should be looked at by an independent body. In one respect, I do not go along with the argument of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan), the former Home Secretary. That body could give the public the confidence that this is not a wilful, capricious or politically motivated or directed prosecution but one that has satisfied people of experience, who are independent of the Executive and 1457 secure, and who are confident, that the case has met what was originally in Franks, the serious injury testnot just no injury or an assumption of injury. This whole measure should be informed with the concept, right through it, that where we are proposing to send fellow citizens to prison, they must have caused a serious injury. I genuinely believe, along the lines adopted by the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) that this White Paper is fatally flawed in the absence of the public interest defence. It is counter-productive to argue that information that is freely available around the world could lead to criminal prosecution and the possibility of imprisonment here in our country. Several Hon. Members rose Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd) Order. Difficult as it may be to limit the time taken by speeches on a subject such as this, I make a strong appeal to hon. Members. There is a great deal of interest, and I hope to be able to call all hon. Members who wish to speak. 11.43 am Mr. Alex Carlile (Montgomery) Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 deserves no more than a rapid cremation. Instead, we are having a requiem in which we are seeing created, as the section is laid to rest, a new and harsh successor to it. It is one that was falsely trailed by the Home Secretary in his statement, which bears little relation to the White Paper. The grief that we feel is not at the passing of section 2 but that what is offered is, first, so harsh and, secondly, so limited. It is limited in that it plays no part in the creation of a code of freedom of information. If there is one thing that could improve the image of our democracy for the public it would be to see through such a code that the Government are, at last, being made accountable and are being seen to be accountable. The legislation that will repeal and replace section 2 should be no more than part of a much wider package. The motto of that package should be "Government are accountable". The Government have had nine years in which to produce new legislation. They have produced a reform so limited that they have wasted an opportunity. If Governments arc to be accountable, we must accept that the whistle must be blown and it should be heard to be blown when there is a scandal in Government that should be exposed in the public interest. The words of Mr. Justice Scott, quoted by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) at great length, are words that demonstrate that members of the judiciary, at the highest level, believe that there must be room for the whistle to be blown on Government. Mr. Justice Scott would notit would not be his styleuse words such as "whistle-blowing", but he meant the same thing

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when he said that the press has a legitimate role in disclosing scandals in Government, and that open democratic society requires that that should be so. He said: the ability of the press freely to report allegations of scandals in government is one of the bulwarks of our democratic society. For that bulwark to mean anything, as Mr. Justice Scott pointed out, the press must be free and it must be free sometimes to report what are no more than allegations based upon reasonable suspicion and evidence. In that context, I shall return later to the question whether there 1458 should be a public interest defence or what the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills calls an "iniquity defence" which may be more accurate. Some of the proposals are welcome. I welcome the restriction to six of the categories of protected information. I welcome anything that draws some of the draconian breath of a section 2 that was enacted in a panic and has been repented at great length. It is welcome that ministerial certificates are not to be the determining factor. However, we are presented with a new and insidious alternative to such certificates. It is described as designation. Designation wall be a flexible weapon in the hands of a Government. If we are ever unfortunate enough to have a truly unscrupulous Government, it will be an exceedingly flexible weapon. It is clearly open to abuse, as the very fact of designation will be protected, too. Therefore, the designated person will not be able to blow the whistle even to the extent of saying that he has been designated and, therefore, what comes from his category of work is designated. I suspect that the time may well come when every tight corner will be a designated area. The House should not be prepared to accept that when we come to scrutinise and debate the legislation. With your injunction in mind, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall now deal briefly with a number of the specifics in the White Paper. I agree with the proposition that there ought to be an obligation of absolute secrecy on public servants in the unusual category that has been discussed at great length in recent months. However, we must not simply close the door on public interest by such a categorisation. As to security and intelligence disclosures by persons who are not members of the security services nor so designated, the White Paper says that the prosecution should have to prove either that disclosure was likely to damage the operation of the security or intelligence servicesperhaps that is fair enoughor that the information concerned was of a class or description the disclosure of which would be likely to damage the operation of the services. I invite the Minister and his officials to look carefully at all the difficulties that class immunity has caused in the ordinary civil law, in tort actions, in actions under order 53 of the rules of the supreme court for judicial reviewthe fastest growing area of law in this country. It seems to me that to create a classification of that type is unduly harsh and will breed uncertainty. It is a classification that may well affect the freedom of the media and of authors such as Chapman Pincher and the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) when the plume of his nom is in his hand. As regards the disclosure of information relating to defence, it seems to me to be remarkably harsh and restrictive that the Government seek virtually to proscribe information that may prejudice dealings between the Government and Governments of another state or an international organisation. For example, if a British Government official came into possession of evidence in relation to the Iran-Contra scandal, surely it would be in the public interest that he should be able to reveal that information to a responsible journalist. That will not be possible if the proposals are enacted. As for information obtained in confidencenot relating to security or defence mattersfrom other Governments or from international organisations, the consequences of that classification are quite absurd. It will be an offence if a Government official discloses anything 1459 about, for example, negotiations regarding air routes or international air travel insurance obligations, or even about consumer safety and matters such as the labelling of foodstuffs in Europe. Surely the

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Government cannot really mean to proscribe the revelation of such information. The White Paper appears to suggest that they do. It is to be yet another absolute offence to disclose information whose disclosure would be likely to be useful in the commission of offences or to terrorists or in helping a prisoner to escape from custody. That would mean, for example, that the disclosure of certain details of a layout of a prison in the context of criticism of the conditions in hat establishment could be included, as those details might be likely to help an astute observer or reader of what is revealed to assist a prisoner to escape from that prison. Surely the Government cannot really be intending to enact legislation which would close down the legitimate comments of the press on such issues? The provision is absurdly wide. I give the Minister credit, and say no more than that the Government have simply not thought about such issues in the drafting of the White Paper. I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills when he refers to the fearsome nature of the proposals relating to the interception of cummunications. They mean that, although the Government chose not to prosecute Cathy Massiter, because they were rightly afraid of the reaction of the jury, she would now be prosecuted by the Government because she was committing an absolute offence. In the case, of an absolute offence, the judge might well be in a position actually to direct the jury to convict. There is an important difference between section 2, which did not enable the judge to direct the jury to convict in the Ponting case, and the proposals in the White Paper which, in my view, would enable the judge to direct and order the jury to convict. That would apply to someone such as Cathy Massiter. That brings me directly to the public interest or iniquity defence. We have heard a most extraordinary new constitutional doctrine this morning which can be summarised in six words, "A perverse jury is your safeguard." The Government say, "We will not introduce an iniquity or public interest defence because we think it is inappropriate. We think that there is no need for it because of the liberalism of this White Paper", but, at the same time, the Home Secretary says, "We are leaving it to juries to decide." This contradiction is extraordinary. Let us think for a moment of what happened in the Ponting case. The trial judge gave his directions on the law to the jury. He did not accept the proposition of the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) that there was a public interest defence. His directions to the jury were unequivocal. He told it that, in law, Mr. Ponting did not have a defence, but he was not able to go so far as to direct the jury to convict. The jury went out. It considered the judge's directions and what Mr. Ponting had done and said, "Not guilty." It said, "Not guilty" on one ground alone. It believed that it would be a monstrous injustice against the public interest to find Mr. Ponting guilty. Such matters are to be left in the hands of juries, boasts the Home Secretary, but what will happen now? The judge may well have the power to direct the jury to convict, so it may not even retire to its room. It may sit in the courtI have seen juries directed to convict in much more 1460 trivial casesand the court clerk will stand up and say, "Mr. foreman, on the direction of my Lord, do you find the defendent guilty?" On that occasion, the jury will have to show a new moral robustness and say, "No, we ignore the direction of the judge and we do not convict." What will happen then? As a matter of jurisprudence and history, the jury's verdict is not binding. It is always accepted as binding, but, as a matter of strict law, it is a recommendation. Under the Government's proposals, what will happen? Will they expect the judge to say, "Thank you very much, members of the jury. I do not accept your verdict. This defendant is found guilty because that is the law." We are entering a new area where the Government are making themselves a hostage of the most extraordinary kind to a fortune upon which no citizen in a free and democratic society should have to relythe fortune of having a robust and perverse jury.

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There will always be a public interest defence, whether the Government like it or not, because the citizens of this country, even if they are vetted jurors, as in the Ponting case, will ensure that there is a public interest defence. It is absurd, stupid, unrealistic and self-demeaning of any Government of the United Kingdom not to recognise in legislation that that is so. 11.57 am Mr. John Wheeler (Westminster, North) It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) who is always robust in his contributions to these debates. I wish to take up the central theme of his speech and of the speech of the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot)the question of accountability. The right hon. Gentleman said that Parliament must have influence in these matters. He is absolutely right. The question is how that influence may be attained. I am firmly of the opinion that that accountability arises, as it has always done in this Chamber, through the ministerial accountability of the Minister of the Crown to this Chamber and the duty to answer the questions that are put to him or her by the House. That is the accountability in which this country and this Parliament have traditionally believed. Whatever the interesting merits of the United States, or any other Western liberal democracy, the machinery of government in the United States is very different from that in the United Kingdom and the firmness of the accountability to this Chamber is the most desirable route. Mr. Dykes rose Mr. Richard Shepherd rose Mr. Wheeler Perhaps my hon. Friends will allow me to develop my theme a little further. In the accountability argument, reference has been made to the possible involvement of a Select Committee of this House or to some special Select Committee procedure which could intervene between the role of the Minister and that of this House. I disagree with that and say so with the authority of having been the Chairmanindeed, I still amof a Select Committee. I do not believe that the Select Committee procedure is the correct or proper vehicle for dealing with such matters. Accessibility to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who has a particular responsibility in these matters, which is open to every right 1461 hon. and hon. Member, is the preferred route of accountability to that of the imprecise route of a Select Committee seeking to call evidence and examine issues of great complexity which go beyond the responsibility or role of a Select Committee. Mr. Dykes How can my hon. Friend refer to the absolute high quality of accountability which reassures all hon. Members, when on 11 July an hon. Member asked an innocent and innocuous question of the Home Secretary, whether he will issue a directive to the director general of MI6 setting out the parameters of lawful activity, along the lines of the Maxwell Fyfe directive of 24 September

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1952, and if he will make a statement. I would have thought that that was an innocent and innocuous question, but the standard answer came out: It has been the long-established practice of this and previous Governments not to comment on such matters."[Official Report, 11 July 1988; Vol. 137, c. 74.] Is that really the accountability that we are asking for in this tercentenary year of 1988? Mr. Wheeler My hon. Friend knows perfectly well that that is not what I meant, nor is it what I said. I said that the form of accountability is through the Minister of the Crown to the Floor of the House. At the risk of taking more time than I should, I repeat that other methods are open to right hon. and hon. Members in the pursuance of their parliamentary duties. There is no finer or better method than that which this House has practised now for many centuries than the method of talking to the Minister who is responsible for those services and their day-to-day activities. We all know that that method is open to all of us. It is a most acceptable form of accountability and a most desirable way of dealing with these issues. Mr. Alex Carlile rose Mr. Wheeler If the hon. and learned Gentleman will allow me, I must press on. Time is pressing and other hon. Members wish to speak and I wish to go on to other aspects of the White Paper. There is no doubt that the 77-year-old section 2 of the Official Secrets Act has now outlived its time. It is right that the House should have the opportunity to replace it and generally to reform the law relating to official secrets. Had the former Labour Government introduced their proposals in 1978 and had those proposals become law, it is likely that today we would have been saying that the enactments of 1978 had proved totally unacceptable and that we want to repeal those measures. There is no doubt that we have advanced considerably since 1978. I daresay that we have advanced still further than the proposals of 1979 when this Government first began to tackle the nettle of how to reform the Official Secrets Act. Without any hesitation, I can say that I believe that my right hon. Friend and the Government have produced a most acceptable set of proposals. Indeed, the fact that some of my hon. Friends are critical of them for being too liberal is perhaps an indication of how sucessful my right hon. Friend has been. Even those outside this place, in the media industry, who have the greatest financial and vested interest in seeking these matters viewed somewhat differently, have given the White Paper a generous and positive reception, while reserving some elements of criticism, which I may touch on in a moment. It is right to sweep away the measure that we are discussing. Instead, 1462 we want to introduce a tough but tightly defined law and it is that concept of definition that we should seek to achieve. The White Paper proposals will cover six areas of information which it is in all our interests as a country to keep secret. As we know, those areas include defence, security and intelligence, diplomacy and information given in confidence by other Governments, official information helpful to criminals and the interception of telecommunications. All those areas of information will get legal protection. The White Paper will define those categories as strictly and accurately as possible. With regard to the disclosures of information given in confidence to the United Kingdom by foreign Governments, I recognise the strength of the case put by my right hon. and learned

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Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan). That very issue goes to the heart of our relationships as a country with other countries, and especially with our allies. It is a difficult concept to get right. I advise my hon. Friend the Minister of State that, as we continue to contemplate the White Paper and prepare the Bill, which I hope will be introduced in the next Session, we should see whether it is possible to define the nature of that relationship a bit further. I suspect that we could do so without in any way damaging the importance of the relationship with our allies and other countries. If we could do so, we would in large measure reach an agreement across the House on a matter which is of great importance to the House. When a case comes to court, the prosecution will inevitably have to prove to the jury not just that information in one of the special categories has been disclosed, but that that disclosure is actually damaging our national interests. It is important to prove that before a jury. It will be for the courts to decide whether the damage test has been met, not for a Minister. We have dropped the idea which was advocated in previous proposals that a certificate signed by a Minister, thus acting as judge, should be enough to prove that damage has been caused. The special duty of lifelong confidentiality will continue to apply to members of the security services. People who join those services do so voluntarily. They do not have to seek employment within them. Even those rare and special members of the Civil Service, such as my right hon. Friend's principal private secretary who, by the very nature of the special duties that he has to perform with my right hon. Friend becomes privy to the work of the security and intelligence services, could, if he so wished, say to the establishments division of his Department prior to the appointment, "I would rather not take that office because of the binding obligation which will thus devolve upon me." There is a clear and positive statement of obligation. It is absolutely right that people who volunteer to serve the British Crown, the British state and the British people in those services should understand from the outset precisely what those obligations are. What could be clearer or better than that? I am sure that it makes sense. It is as well to pay some sort of tribute to the work of those services. We have been debating the content of the White Paper, but we should remember that the work done by the people in those services is of exceptional value and that the very nature of it precludes it from being proclaimed from the front pages of the newspapers or on television programmes. Those services help and protect us daily from terrorism and foreign espionage. 1463 Mr. Allason Is it not extraordinary that we are unique in the world in that nothing may be written about security and intelligence yet last week Comte Alexandre de Marenches, who ran the French intelligence service for 11 years, published a book, and two CIA chiefs stationed in London have published books? There is a perfectly respectable mechanism in most other countries which allows such books to be written. Is my hon. Friend really saying that it is absolutely forbidden for everyone in this country to write about the security services and intelligence? Mr. Wheeler As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has already said, the publishers of memoirs or an academic in one of our universities who wants to write a book about the history of a recent international or military event may have access to material through a procedure which is well understood by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) and by hon. Members on both sides of the House. That procedure remains in place.

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I want to comment briefly on the public interest defence, which has been discussed today. I do not believe that we should try to include the public interest defence in this legislation. That would create confusion rather than certainty in the law. The criminal law defines an offence in terms of an individual's actions, not his motives, for carrying them out. The latter may be taken into account by the judge in his summing up or when passing sentence and that may well affect the decision of the jury, but it should not be included in the law. I have already dealt with special duties on the part of those who serve in the security and intelligence services. With regard to prior publication and the position of newspapers and the media industry, as I understand the White Paper, no one can be convicted of revealing information relating to security intelligence, defence or international relations unless the prosecution can prove that disclosure was likely to cause a specified harm to the public interest and that he or she who proclaimed it knew that. Nor can someone be convicted for disclosing information useful to criminals unless the prosecution could show that the information was still likely to be useful despite its prior publication. The defence of prior publication is therefore subsumed within the test of harm. I also commend my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on having the courage in the White Paper to drop the offence of receiving unauthorised information that is contained in the Official Secrets Act 1911. That point alone is a sign of the liberalisation of the proposal and is why the package as a whole, perhaps with that one area to deal with international affairs upon which I have but briefly touched, deserves the support of the House when a Bill is presented perhaps in the next Session of Parliament. 12.13 pm Mr. Merlyn Rees (Morley and Leeds, South) The debate has been valuable. The hon. Member for Westminster, North (Mr. Wheeler) referred to prior publication. I do not think that the paragraph in the White Paper about that is good enough. It states that the present position would not have existed in the Government's Freedom of Information Bill in 1979. There is no time to develop that argument. I raise the matter simply because I believe that the House needs more time to discuss this White Paper. Of course, Friday is a business day and we 1464 all know that hon. Members have engagements on Fridays. I have to attend a public meeting with my constituents on the Housing Bill later this afternoon. However, so many of the points that I have heard today from the hon. Members for AldridgeBrownhills (Mr. Shepherd), and for Westminster, North, and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) need to be taken further if the Minister and the Government, when they produce legislation, want to get it right. Otherwise, they will not get it right. I believe that the hon. Member for Westminster, North said that if a Labour Government had legislated, there would be complaints now. I am sure that he is right. The White Paper for which I was responsible does not meet all the points about which I am concerned now. To some degree that is inevitable. We should at least have a good shot at it this time and not leave all the bits hanging around in future. We should let more of our colleagues participate. With regard to parliamentary accountability the time has come to have some way in which the Maxwell Fyfe ruleswhich are now well out of datecan be assessed. Are those rules, or something like them, the basis on which our security services work now? If there is anything in half the allegations that we hear, that cannot be true. I do not know whether those allegations are right. I have my opinions about Mr. Wright. I have no time for him; a great deal of what he has written is infamy and it was wrong that it should have been published. In that I agree with my

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right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). However, parts of what Mr. Wright revealed should have been published. However, parliamentary accountability on the way in which the security services work is important. The time has come to consider the legalisation of the security services. They have no legal basis. In other countries, the services have such a basis, which I had not realised. That should be considered. The role of the Attorney-General, and the public interest, should also be considered. There are proposals to cover that in the new legislation. As I understand it, the Attorney-General must decide on prosecution and whether that is in the public interest. There have been excellent Attorneys-General in all Governments over the years. However, the security side of things is not their strength. There is a tendency to believe too easily that it is in the public interest to do something or other. We need more time to consider these matters. Unlike the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery, I am glad that we have not got a freedom of information Bill. Such a Bill would be far too long. We must make clear what will be prosecutable under the criminal law. Once that is clear, freedom of information will fall into place. To break the Official Secrets Act 1911 for a moment, I must state that I had a slight problem when in government. It is quite simple. We might have produced a Bill that was a hundred miles long, and it was not easy to operate with a minority of three, on the Franks committee. It is very important to clarify issues under the Official Secrets Act 1911, and it would help the new procedures. Mr. Dykes The right hon. Gentleman asked for clarification about what is prosecutable. Does he not agree that that should be supplemented by the vital urgency of increased accountability by this place? That might lead him to agree that that means putting the specific contents 1465 of the Maxwell Fyfe directive into the new Bill as the parameter for the security services, coupled with the creation of a Select Committee consisting of Privy councillors on the supervision of the security services. Mr. Rees I am not sure about the Maxwell Fyfe rules. They do not stand up 30 years on. Something beyond them is necessary. We must discuss what a Select Committee would do and the nature of its report. I was a member of the Franks committee. It produced a good report largely because of the experience and background of Lord Franks. That does not mean that everything that it said was right. I made changes in a White Paper in 1978 and this Government have made others. There is nothing wrong with the principle of change. I had doubts about ministerial certificates. After I had held high office, I was absolutely sure that I had doubts about the accuracy and classification of a document. On the Franks committee, we questioned civil servants about the basis of the classification of documents and we were not much the wiser at the end of the day. The White Paper states: Classification is still necessary for administrative purposes but is not relevant to any prosecutions. I doubt that. Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent) My experience in the Civil Service clearly showed me that classification is a function of the length of time since the last time that classifications were reviewed. What happens is that a civil

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servant thinking that there might be the slightest embarrassment as a result of marking a document "Confidential" will mark it "Highly confidential", and so on. Classification must be reviewed every two years; otherwise, everything is marked "Secret". Mr. Rees That is an interesting point, and it leads me to my next remark. If there were to be a jury trial, any perceptive lawyer would raise during the course of the proceedings the documents' classification. Time is of the greatest importance. I have some classified documents of no great importance, although I suppose they break some rule or another. After the lapse of all this time, they are not worth a light to anybody, but they were classified at the time. Anyway, I leave it alonethey are not frightfully important. Mr. John Patten Perhaps we ought to see them. Mr. Rees I shall show them to the hon. Gentleman, if only to convince him that his comments about classification are incorrect. My documents would be proof of that. The same applies to some of the documents about individuals that the security services have, concerning things that those individuals allegedly did 20 or 30 years ago, which places a question mark over them for the rest of their lives. If there is a case for reclassifying documents, there is a case for going through some of those lists and records of what somebody might have said in 1938. Mr. Patten From his reading of the White Paper, does the right hon. Gentleman not realise that the concept of classification plays no part in my right hon. Friend's proposals? Mr. Rees I did not say that. I said that I bet that any good lawyer would bring the question of the documents' classification into a trial, and for good reason. Mine was a sideways view, that in any event classification needs to be 1466 reviewed because it colours the situation in terms of the groups that the Home Secretary has dreamt up, which may have a lifelong application. If documents are to be classified "UK eyes only", and so on, that will colour the grouping in which they are placed. It is important to get the classification right. The basis of my support for change is to be found in volume 1, section 119, of the Franks report, which stated: We believe that most of those who have given evidence to us, and most reasonable people, would accept as a proper basis for the employment of criminal sanctions the unauthorised disclosure of official information which would be likely to cause serious injury to the security of the nation or the safety of the people. that was the basis of the Franks report. Nobodyand I am not suggesting that the Government have done aught elsecan call in aid the Franks report without having that at the top of the page serious injury to the security of the nation or the safety of the people. The report goes on: If criminal sanctions are justified at all, they are justified for this purpose. If they are to be reserved for what is most important, they should not go any wider. We are therefore adopting this as our touchstone. We were not interested in anything that caused some injury but only that which was likely to cause "serious injury."

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As to authorisation, I hope the Home Secretary will study chapter 2 of the Franks report. It was a very curious time of questioning when we dealt, for example, with self-authorisation by civil servants, which is to continue. Because it was not clear what self-authorisation meant, it was clear to the Franks committee that there was a great deal of power in the hands of senior civil servants as to what they might say. The question of self-authorisation by politicians must be taken into account in any legislation. Most of the Prime Ministers of the past 30 years have authorised themselves, in writing books, to reveal matters which, if they were revealed by the group of people with whom the White Paper deals, could subject them to criminal proceedings under the new Act. Are Ministers included in that grouping or are they outside it? Will they have to sign a document when they become a Cabinet Minister as opposed to being a junior Minister? Will there be a difference between the two? The doctrine of self-authorisation is not clearly described in the White Paper. I wanted the heading of authorisation to lead me to another point, and if I make it in a blunt way, it is to save time. No Official Secrets Act will stop me from pursuing the matter of dirty tricks by the secret services against Governments of any persuasion. It cannot be in the public interest, and cannot come under any classification, that one should not talk about such matters. That cannot be a secret that must be protected. I have brought along one of the documents that I have collected, which is all about Ireland, and at the bottom of which appears my name and "Stan Orme" and "David Owen"a trio of likely lads to have written such a document. It was put out by people working in the Government service, in league to some degreenot just. in Ireland but over here. Here is the document, and hon. Members may by all means take a look at it. Mr. McWilliam rose Mr. Rees I would rather hang on to it for a moment. 1467 The content of that document, with which my name and "David Owen" are associated, is absolute rubbish. That was done to denigrate members of Her Majesty's Opposition. I have more. The stuff must have been written by people with an honours CSE in politics. It is elemental rubbish, but somebody put it out to denigrate politicians. It was part of the dirty tricks set-up. I have two or three such documents. I have said that I think I know where they emanated from. What will be the situation under the new legislation? If I were to pursue that matter and try to get to the bottom of it, would I be breaking the law? I hope not, because it is not in the public interest to keep quiet about that sort of rubbish. I may tell the House, in terms of one's own patriotism, that my father died a member of the Labour party as a result of the first world war. He would have been regarded as some kind of radical. I do not know that he read The Guardian, but he read things that, in the eyes of some people, were even worse. Yet such rubbish is written about us. I want to be absolutely sure that the new law will not prevent one from pursuing such matters. Mr. John Patten The piece of paper that the right hon. Gentleman has been waving around so teasingly, but has not yet given to his hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam) or to me, does not on

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the face of it purport to be official information; it is information that has been circulated by someone who the right hon. Gentleman suspects may have been some kind of forger. Mr. Rees No. It is rubbish, but it is not a forgery. It was written and put out by people in the Government service, and it is a serious allegation. On Saturday night I went on a programmeI did not know when I went that it would go on for half the night, but that is another matterin which a man told us that he was a private investigator employed by MI5. I have obtained the film from the Library, and my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has seen it. What the man said was incredible. He alleged that people in the security services were no longer concernedas they should bewith spying and terrorism, but were concerned with people who were protesting about the building of atomic power stations. Would that man, who assured meI shall pursue the matterthat he was employed by the security services, be breaking the new laws by revealing such information publicly? Mr. Dykes Presumably he would have to give it to a parliamentarian, who could read the entire document in the House. It would then be covered by parliamentary privilegewhich shows again how nonsensical the position would be. Mr. Rees I think that I have raised a good point. It is for the Government to answer. As the man was not a full-time employee, has he the right to go to the staff counsellor? He was paid on a contract basis; he has now been paid off with money in a brown envelope. It had to be money in a brown envelope, did it not? I hope that we shall have time to discuss the major issues, such as accountability, that have been mentioned today. We need an Official Secrets Act to protect the 1468 nation's secrets, but we do not need to protect the secrecy of the Government. We need to replace section 2 on the basis of the principle laid down in the Franks report. Unless they are careful, the Government will make the mistake that I suspect we were making in government. There needs to be much wider discussion than a White Paper, a Bill and discussions in Cabinet Sub-Committees. I do not believe that the White Paper in its present form will be the end of the story, and I hope that the Government will think again about a number of fundamental issues. The principle is absolutely right. Far fewer criminal charges will arise than in the existing circumstances, but that of itself is not enough. I want to see the Franks principle in legislation. Serious injury to the nation is all that matters, and if what is revealed leads to a Government being uncomfortable, so be it. Half a dozen points in the White Paper need to be rethought, and I hope that the House can play a part in that. 12.32 pm Mr. Jonathan Aitken (Thanet, South)

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I wholeheartedly agree with the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) that the White Paper should not be the end of the story, and that we should try to get closer to the Franks principle than at least some parts of the White Paper. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary struck a somewhat grandiose note in his opening speech when he described his White Paper as having the effect of an earthquake in Whitehall. The phrase reminded me of the award-winning entry for the world's dullest journalistic headline, "Small earthquake in Chile: not many dead". I think that this is a case of "Small earthquake in Whitehall: not many secrets liberalised". I say that because many of the liberalisation proposals do no more than cut away the dead wood of catch-all secrets legislation in Government Departments whose secrets presented no threat to security in any event. Although we welcome the degree of liberalisation that has come about for I do not wish to sound too churlishit is very much an instance of mandarins yielding to the inevitable after some 20 years of pressures, proposals and counter-proposals. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary no doubt has had a difficult job in corralling all the permanent secretaries and persuading them that they must give up the handcuffs of the criminal law placed on their Departments' areas of so-called secrecy. I give him two cheers for doing a competent job, but at least three should be directed to my hon. Friend the Member for AldridgeBrownhills (Mr. Shepherd), whose pioneering Private Member's Bill made it all possible. That small earthquake in Whitehall is unsatisfactory. It has left at least two major citadels of unnecessary secrecy not merely standing but strengthened in a completely unacceptable way. The first of these citadels relates to paragraph 51 of the White Paper. It has already been savagely criticised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan), by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills and others. The paragraph proposes an absolute criminal offence for disclosures relating to information obtained in confidence from other Governments or international organisations. I go further in my criticism than anybody 1469 else has yet gone and say that this paragraph of the White Paper is plain daft. Paragraph 51 could have been drawn up only by some old-fashioned, myopic, Carlton-Browne of the Foreign Office-type character who has spent so much of his life overseas that he seriously believes that foreigners' confidences need a higher degree of protection by our criminal law than Britain's own Budget secrets. That element of Foreign Office farce has been heightened by the risible reply given to the parliamentary question tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills. He asked for a list of the international organisations covered by paragraph 51 that creates all these new criminal offences, and he received the amazing answer on 12 July that it was not practicable to provide such a list. The answer did not go on to say whether it was not practicable because the list was too long, or too secret, or too ridiculous. Probably it was all three. It will not do. I urge the Government to drop this paragraph from the White Paper. To be personal for a moment, if paragraph 51 were to become law it would represent the ultimate futility and failure of nearly 20 years of campaigning for section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 to be reformed. The House may remember that when I was a young journalist I spent six weeks in the dock at the Old Bailey alongside the editor of the Sunday Telegraph. Our case had nothing to do with national security. It was about information that had been given in confidence to one of our diplomats by members of the then Nigerian military junta, although the most sensitive part of the information given in confidence related to the Nigerian army's inability to shoot straight or to fight battles after 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

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According to paragraph 51 as it stands, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph and I would have committed an absolute criminal offence against which there would have been no defence, and we would still be languishing in Wormwood Scrubs. As I have criticised my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary so much, there may be moments when he thinks that that might not have been such a bad idea. In all seriousness, however, I hope that this paragraph will be thrown out of the window. I am also worried about paragraphs 38 to 44 of the White Paper that deal with security and intelligence matters. Like all sensible people, I accept that there are some security and intelligence secrets, such as anti-terrorist operations, that must rightly be stringently protected by these legislative proposals and by section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911a tough provision that is to be left completely intact by the new legislation. Certain paragraphs in the White Paper are completely over the top, and I think that I know the reason why. This is the first ever Government White Paper that might be said to be haunted. The ghost of Peter Wright stalks through several of its pages and paragraphs. It has evidently frightened its authors into a veritable seizure of over-reaction and excessive authoritarianism. Whatever view one might take of the "Spycatcher" saga, we must remember that Parliament passes laws not just to crack hard cases or to take revenge for past events but to be fair to future generations and to the overwhelming majority of loyal and responsible security service employees. Like any other citizens, those who work in the secret world are entitled to some civil rights. Parliament cannot pass a law that effectively suspends Magna Carta for a certain 1470 category of Crown servants, just because Peter Wright once caused some embarrassment to Whitehall and Government Ministers. Let me give some specific examples of how the proposals in paragraphs 38 to 44 of the White Paper make it an absolute offence for Government security officers, past or present, ever to say anything about their work. Let us consider, for example, the position of a current security service employee who is dissatisfied with an administrative ruling that affects his conditions of service, such as his pension, or an allegation of racial discrimination. Having gone through all the approved channels, including the staff counsellor, an employee may still feel that he has been treated unjustly and wants to see his Member of Parliament. The right of access to a Member of Parliament is important for any citizen, but it is exceptionally important for people such as those who are employed in the security services, who are prohibited from joining a trade union. Under the White Paper, it is a criminal offence for a security service employee to go to his constituency Member of Parliament, because, when discussing his grievance, the officer will have to disclose to some limited information about his security service employment. I argue that the doctrine of absolute confidentiality for lifea new-fangled invention by the Governmentdoes not extinguish all civil rights such as the right to access to parliamentary representatives. We should reflect for a moment on the extraordinary brouhaha created by the Government about the BBC's series "My Country, Right or Wrong". It is a very good example of how the White Paper would work in practice, although the legal sanctions would be criminal and not civil. The House will recall that the BBC invited several former members of the security services, such as Lord Dacre and Mr. John Day, to contribute to its series of programmes, which they did. They recorded a number of comments, which were so anodyne as to be bordering on the tedious, as it turned out, on matters such as parliamentary accountability, management and how the service works with Ministers. The Attorney-General took the view, which is repeated in the White Paper, that those contributions, irrespective of their content, were a breach of the life-long obligation of absolute confidentiality and had to be hit with the law. It was a very odd view, bearing in mind the fact

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that the Director-General of MI5 had known all about his former employees' contributions and had sent round an internal circular to his officers saying that they had nothing to fear from the programmes. The Attorney-General evidently took a different view. He hurled writs and injunctions at the BBC more in the manner of an exuberant wedding guest throwing confetti than a Law Officer of the Crown. When the confetti settled, not a comma was changed in the programmes. Every legal action was withdrawn. Not one word was struck out, and all three programmes went out intact. Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington) The hon. Gentleman is too kind about "My Country, Right or Wrong". He will recall that he Government first tried to insist on seeing transcripts of the programmes before they were broadcast and that only when the BBC properly stood its ground did the Government do the proper thing and go to the courts. 1471 Mr. Aitken That is a perfectly fair and valid point. Why should responsible former security service personnel have to face criminal prosecution and certain conviction for talking about nonoperational, non-secret aspects of their service on a topic which is already a matter of public debate? Retired military officers are able to do that all the time, often it might be said, to the benefit of the subject under discussion. Why does Britain need to create a stockaded, barricaded leper colony of Crown servants, who have such different rules of secrecy on them that they are silenced from all communications in a far stricter way than are their equivalents in West Germany, France, Israel, Canada, the United States, Australia and all other democracies? I fear that the combination of moral indignation and legal incompetence in the Peter Wright saga has given birth to an almost totalitarian set of proposals for this narrow group of Crown servants. Some rethinking is needed. It is no use saying that the machinery exists for security service officers to have their memoirs vetted. Peter Wright tried to get his memoirs vetted so that a deal could be struck but the Treasury solicitor refused any such deal. Mr. Anthony Cavendish sent in his memoirs and was told that five chapters had to come out. That is not reasonable machinery for dealing with memoirs or reminiscences. We should consider what happens in other countries. The former director-general of the Australian secret service has just published his memoirs, the book having been vetted perfectly responsibly. Sir Percy Sillitoe and Sir William Stephenson produced memoirs. Ministers do it all the time in their privileged capacity. I urge the Home Secretary to insert into a Bill some proper machinery for authorising memoirs and responsible communication on radio or in discussion. The hon. Member for Westminster, North (Mr. Wheeler) is chairman of a Committee and invited a security services official to talk to the Committee. That had to be cancelled because it was suddenly realised that the absolute doctrine of confidentiality might apply. Therefore, there is a lot of rethinking to be done on that section. Finally, on the subject of defences, I wish to record my dismay that that is no prior publication defence, no iniquity defence and that the interests of state defence has been removed. Those matters have been covered by other speeches so as time is short I simply place on record that, above all, the section 2(1)(a) defence should be reinserted. We shall return to those matters in Committeeincidentally, I sincerely hope that it will be a Committee of the whole House.

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We must remember that we are legislating for succeeding generations. The little local difficulties of Peter Wright are small beer when compared with the need to draw for the future the boundaries between the individual's right to speak and the Government's right to keep secrets. That boundary needs to be drawn in a better and less authoritarian place than the one where the White Paper draws it. 12.46 pm Mr. John McWilliam (Blaydon) First, I declare an interest as a sponsored member of the National Communications Union, which represents some 200,000 trade unionists in British Telecom and the Post Office, many of whom, past and present, will be badly affected by the Home Secretary's proposals. 1472 Last night, when I was looking at my notes for this debate, it occurred to me, suddenly and shockingly, that it is some 31 years since I signed a document which reminded me that I was subject to all provisions of the Official Secrets Act. Some five years ago I signed another document that said that I was still subject to the provisions of the Official Secrets Act. On the advice of the then Clerk of the House, I endorsed the document subject to my privileges as a Member of Parliament and signed it. No one said anything to me about it, therefore I am probably entitled to tell the House about it. In all the time that I have been involved in trying to deal sensibly with the interception of communications and other aspects of the Official Secrets Act, I have determinedly not broken the law save in one respect. I have always accepted prior publication. If something was common knowledge in the public domain and was in circulation, I could see no reason why I should not refer to it in the same way as any other hon. Member if it assisted in our debates. Perhaps it will assist the House if I put on record my union's general view on the reform of the Official Secrets Act. We accept that certain categories of information in the Post Office and British Telecom ought to be protected by criminal sanctions but that those categories should be as few as possible, compatible with the interests of the security of the nation and individual privacy. We support the Government's broad approach of replacing the catch-all section 2 of the 1911 Act by more specific sanctions. We believe that criminal sanctions should apply only to security and intelligence information if its disclosure would cause serious injury to the interests of the nation. We believe that classification should be determined by the courts, or at least by an independent committee, and that there should be a statutory right of access to official information in all Government Departments on the lines of the American Freedom of Information Act. Therefore, the Government should not proceed with legislation on the reform of the Official Secrets Act at least until the proposed study of overseas experience of open government has been completed, published and evaluated by the House. That demonstrates to the House that we take these matters seriously, we do not take lightly our responsibilities, and that we always try to be as sensitive and sensible as possible when dealing with these matters. I shall now return to the White Paper that exists rather than the one that we should like to see. Ours would be rather more on the lines of the one published by the hon. Member for AldridgeBrownhills (Mr. Shepherd) who is entitled to be disappointed with what is before the House. Paragraph 53 on interception is gibberish. The Minister should not rely on the Interception of Communications Act 1985 because that introduced an even more oppressive regime than that which existed when it was not clear whether intercepting communications was legal. The

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paragraph says: no information obtained by means of interception can be disclosed without assisting terrorism or crime, damaging national security or seriously breaching the privacy of private citizens. That is clearly nonsense. What about the many private citizens whose telephones and mail are intercepted and who are entirely innocent? Their privacy has been seriously breached by the state and they have no effective 1473 safeguards. There is no point in the Minister diving for the 1985 Act. I know that it contains safeguards but they are not good enough. It is pointless for a citizen to say, "I think that my telephone is being illegally tapped." By the time anybody comes to investigate it, the illegal tap will have been lifted and the people who investigate are qualified only to look at the paperwork. They are not qualified to go into the telephone exchange to look at the main frame to determine whether the line contains a connection additional to those that should he there. They have no expertise in doing that and could not do it. In such a case, surely the least to which a citizen should be entitled is the sight of what had been obtained from his telephone line or from his post, and he should also have sight of that information being destroyed. Hon. Members should remember that I am talking about an innocent British citizen, guilty of no crime whatever because the legal intercept has failed to turn one up. The Minister cannot tell the House that there is not continued abuse by the security services and the police of their powers to intercept, because that abuse continues. There are no fewer intercepts than there were before and a high proportion were not properly authorised. The Minister would not know that. I have discussed the matter with previous Home Secretaries. Mr. Allason The hon. Gentleman is making an extraordinary allegation. Is he seriously saying that many illegal intercepts have been conducted by the police and the security services? Has he made that same allegation to the judge who, under the 1985 Act, is responsible for supervision? I presume that the hon. Gentleman has done that. Mr. Mc William Over the years the allegation has been made repeatedly by me and by other hon. Members. It has been made specifically to the bodies responsible and information has been supplied to them, but no effective action has been taken because it is quite convenient to leave the situation as it exists. Mr. Dykes Is the hon. Gentleman anxious about the telephone of any hon. Member being tapped either at home or in the office? Mr. McWilliam No, I am not. If the hon. Gentleman casts his memory back to 1964 he will recollect that the then Prime Minister, now Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, said that when he assumed office he discovered that intercepts of mail and communications had been in existence for Members of Parliament and that he had had the practice stopped. In response to questions the Prime Minister has repeatedly told the House that that practice no longer continues. I have no proof that since 1964 any hon. Member has been or is being intercepted. That is not to say that it cannot happen because of another matter that I am about to deal with, but it would be accidental rather than deliberate.

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I shall now deal with international relations. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills wondered what kind of organisation would be caused problems. A problem occurred five or six years ago when it transpired in evidence before the American congressional armed forces committee that the supreme allied commander in Europe had applied for an upgrade in nuclear shells with screw-on adaptors that would convert them to neutron weaponsthere had been discussion about that in NATOand 1474 that that highly confidential, highly classified information had appeared in American papers. We will not be able to discuss that. Paragraph 50 of the White Paper says or to endanger the safety of a British citizen. Were an update to take place, it would endanger the lives of members of the British Army of the Rhine because the only way in which artillery can be used is close up. I am deeply disappointed with the White Paper. The opportunity to do something constructive has been lost. Many hon. Members had high hopes for the Protection of Official Information Bill. I am not sure how members of my trade union will be affected by the proposed reform. Are those employed by the Post Office covered because they are still public servants but those employed by British Telecom covered differently because they are not. or will an additional section be passed that will again whip us all in? I very much suspect that one will be, but I look forward to finding out. I draw hon. Members' attention to paragraph 17, which deals with ministerial certificates. It contains a sentenceif I take it out of context, hon. Members will understandthat underlines the Government's thinking behind the White Paper. It says: But no other body or individual shares the Minister's responsibility for safeguarding the interest of the nation I remind the Minister that a countryman of mine called Charlie Stuart once thought that and lost his head because of it. We also had the deposition of James II and the glorious revolution. The House is not always so supine as to accept ministerial diktat over the rights of individual citizens, and I am afraid that those rights are not being extended by the White Paper. 12.58 pm Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent) In his concluding remarks, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that he saw the White Paper as a "significant step towards reform." Section 2 has stood for a long time and, as it has been through a bruising history of disagreement, there is a tendency to regard this reform as the only chance to effect the legislation for many years ahead. My hope and expectation is that when this legislation is passedI have no doubt that it will be amendedit will create, as experience of it grows, a platform from which we can advance further. The White Paper explicitly has a limited objectiveto make it simpler to enforce section 2 and make it narrow in scope. Perhaps it goes nearer than the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook. (Mr. Hattersley) thinks to his aim of positive, tight and effective control. It is not a freedom of information proposal. I share the schizophrenia of the publicand, I suspect of hon. Membersabout the secret services. Part of me recoils from the spectacle of society being permeated by large numbers of anonymous, perpetual schoolchildren, fascinated for life by dungeons and dragons games played by real people and increasingly persuaded that everything that happens does so because of a malign, conspiratorial intent. The idea that my telephone might be tapped without the knowledge and consent of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary or of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, that information derived from the tap might be entered into records of whose existence I shall for ever remain ignorant and that it might be seen by people of whom I am ignorant and who will make what

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use they 1475 choose of it, sends a frisson down my spine. I long at such moments for tighter and more open control. That is why we should consider carefully, on another occasion, the suggestions made by many hon. Members and also the suggestion made by the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) that we should have much tighter parliamentary control of the security service machine to provide an effective recourse for individuals who may be damaged by improper and oppressive activity by the secret services. However, when I learn that a 1,700lb bomb has been placed in a shopping centretimed to go off to create the maximum civilian casualtiesand has been reached by brave security men less than five minutes before it was set to explode, I realise how much we owe to the security services. I then recoil from measures that might destroy their effectiveness or diminish their protection against injury from our country's enemies. In that sense I am schizophrenic as, I am sure, are many other hon. Members. The issues raised go wider than today's debate. I have made clear my support for a degree of parliamentary control over the security services, if only over their budget. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) remarked in an earlier debate on the subject, we do not even have that degree of control. My right hon. Friend the Home Security has advanced the position considerably and should be congratulated on listening so carefully to what was said when the House debated the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd). I welcome the assertion in the White Paper that Cabinet documents as a class are not to be protected under section 2. Policy-making in this country is too secretive, partly because we have so much legislation in each parliamentary Session that speed rather than thoroughness becomes the touchstone of ministerial effectiveness. I welcome the fact that section 2 will no longer cover the majority of Cabinet papers, although, of course, internal discipline will still afford them some protection. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary explained that he was determined to reduce the material covered by section 2. He will do so against the background of a massive reduction in the number of subjects to whom section 2 applies. In the teeth of vigorous opposition from Labour Members, who are now so keen to denigrate the White Paper, the Government have hugely reduced the size of the public sector and hence the scope of the Official Secrets Act. I also welcome the change that removes the offence of receiving information, and I welcome enormously the policy of leaving decisions to juries. It is highly probable that that decision will lead to a progressive narrowing of the categories of case brought by Governments, as juries tend, over time, to be more sensible than Governments. That is what Governments mean when they talk about perverse juries. However, it is more appropriate to handle such matters through juries than to leave it to Ministers to decide matters in their own cause. The campaign for fewer secrets and less protection for certain categories of secret would be greatly enhanced if we had a higher quality of journalism in this country. There are still too many journalists who find it easier to titilate 1476 their readership with scabrous details of the family lives of public servants who are sometimes thrust into the limelight unnecessarily than to collect and painstakingly to distil the mass of public informattion that is available. If journalists were seriously concerned to press to the limit the information that is already available to them, we would be better placed to argue for the next stage of openness. It is because I have no doubt that we need more openness that I welcome what my right hon. Friend and his colleagues have done to open up the sources of information that we have, and the journalists, use so little.

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It is essential to have some mechanism to prevent the treacherous, the unbalanced, the disgruntled or the venal from betraying their colleagues and/or the Government. In the time of the former Conservative Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), the then Prime Minister, sought the views of editors on what should replace section 2, and the only reply that he received was that section 2 should be wiped out, nothing should be put in its place and everybody should be free to publish everything except information controlled by section 1. That was not acceptable then, and I suspect that it would not be acceptable to any subsequent Prime Minister, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend on advancing the matter since then. Progress will depend on a combination of experience and trust. I am hopeful that experience will show the Government that they can go further towards trusting the people, and I trust my right hon. Friend, who said that these proposals are a "significant step towards reform". 1.6 pm Mr. Ted Garrett (Wallsend) I hold a quiet view of my own that far too much of the time of the Chamber in the past three or four years has been spent on official secrecy. The Government, the Opposition and the media have got into a hyperactive state over what is meant by official secrets. We should recognise that, by and large, we are damn lucky that we live in a comparatively open and free country. I wish that the House would spend more time looking at the confidential information about the nation's economy, industry, commerce and business. Grave matters arise in these important sectors, but we do not seem to have got our legislation correct in dealing with those who have done more damage to our economy than ever Peter Wright or any other alleged malefactor has done. I have spent much of my life in industry or dealing with matters relating to industry. It is sad to think of the vast amount of time that is spent by companies, whether multinational or mediumsized, on protecting their vital interests. It may interest the House to know that for a number of years I have had links with the CIA. I refer, of course, to the Chemical Industries Association. This organisation, which represents virtually every chemical company in the United Kingdom, is disappointed, as I am, that nothing in the White Paper gives any information about the Government's thinking on this important sector. However, from time to time these companies voluntarily hand over information to the Government, directly or through Government agencies. That information is often requested by the Government. It is often information of an economic or business nature. It might 1477 concern sales, production volumes or trade secrets. Many of the trade secrets in the chemical industry concern chemical formulas. A great deal of the information that companies hand over to the Government or to Government agencies is often not patentable and is given to the Government on a strict commercial confidential basis. The White Paper does not recognise the commercial value of that information if it should fall into the hands of competitors. It does not take a very bright person to realise that most of the industrial nations with embassies in the United Kingdom employ a person who is soley engaged in what we would call industrial espionage. We have seen the damage that has been done by Third-world countries emerging into industrial states and blatently taking away many of our long-established patents and much of our technology. I am not suggesting that, because information is given to a civil servant on a commercial basis and that civil servant inadvertently discloses some of the information, he should be subjected to criminal sanctions, but, if companies have to proceed through the present civil system, there are

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often long and difficult legal delays in providing them with adequate compensation if they win their cases. It is sad to think that, while legislation is pending, the advantages of technology could be frittered away. That means loss of profit for a company and, in the long run, damage to shareholders. More importantly, from my political stance as a trade unionist, it means a loss of job prospects for employees. I hope that the Minister will pursue the issue of commercial confidentiality and the damage that can he done to this country's interests with the same vigour with which he has pursued matters concerning official secrecy, at his next Cabinet meeting or when he and his colleagues consider the preparation of the Queen's Speech, and bring forward appropriate legislation. I am sure that the Minister will find much more detailed information by contacting the organisations that represent industry, trade and commerce, and I hope that he will recognise the need to strengthen the law regarding the breach of commercial secrets. In the long run, that is more damaging to the nation and to our industrial base. High technology has been developed in some of our companies with national household names, yet the rewards are not being given to the nation and to those who are employed, either directly or indirectly, by those organisations. I have listened to the debate with great interest. I am surprised that so many hon. Members are so knowledgeable about matters of secrecy. I am pleased that I am ignorant about them. I have never signed the Official Secrets Act and I do not see any need to do so. The House should not get too hetup about the matter. We should direct our attention to matters of real substance, such as the well-being of the industrial base of our nation. 1.14 pm Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay) I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I waited for five hours to speak during the debate on the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) but alas, was not called. I am grateful for the opportunity to bring the House back to the subject of official secrets. The hon. Member for Wallsend (Mr. Garrett) should be reassured because although he may 1478 never have signed the Official Secrets Act, he and everybody else in this country is covered by it, whether they like it or not. Signing the document simply means that in the event of being convicted, one would not have the excuse of saying, "I did not really know what I was doing your lordship." The prosecution would say that the gravity of one's offence had been brought to one's attention. I am also grateful to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary because he has answered a couple of the points that have caused me considerable concern. If I understood him correctly, he seemed to be saying that although there was not a defence of public interest, a defence of prior publication or a defence of iniquity in the White Paper, juries would take such matters into account. Unfortunately, I did not really appreciate my right hon. Friend's attitude of "We know best" and his statement that there is a mechanism whereby people can publish and former members of the security and intelligence services can write and get authority to publish material. Because so much depends on the three magic words, "disclosure without authority", we should try to look at the mechanism of "authority". I had some first-hand experience of that in the late 1970s. I approached the then secretary of the D notice committee. I said that I had been commissioned to write a history of the security service and that although I had never been employed by the security service, I wanted to be able to ensure that I was not damaging national

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security and that I should like to be able to submit my manuscript. I was treated with something close to contempt. In the following year, when I did submit my manuscript, a look of horror came over the secretary's face. At our third meeting he said that he had been instructed to request the deletion of 194 names, plus two chapters relating to the security service's wartime work in Ireland. We negotiated. Some chapters were deleted and a large number of names removed. Nevertheless, the book got through. The system seemed to be working at that stage. However, by the following year things had gone badly wrong. I telephoned the D notice secretary and said that I had written another book about the security service called "A Matter of Trust", and that I would like to submit it. He said, "Splendid, send it round." I was never able to send it round because within a day and a half of making that telephone call, I received an injunction preventing me from taking any step towards the further publication of my manuscript. It turned out that the D notice secretary was also covered by that injunction. Things do not seem to have changed very much since those days. It is extraordinary that just a few years later, with the BBC undergoing exactly the same experience, we do not seem to have learnt a great deal. Mr. Garrett Who issued the injunction? Mr. Allason The injunction was issued by the Attorney-General and the case was dealt with in 1982. Is the D notice committee really a sensible mechanism for allowing and studying publication? I do not think that it is. The present secretary of the D notice committee is frank about his views. He says that nothing on this subject should ever be written and that, given the opportunity, he would stop all publications of this kind even if they were historical in nature. He is really a glorified photocopier. He receives a manuscript, photocopies it and sends one copy 1479 to the relevant departmentthe security service, the intelligence service or Government communications headquarters, Cheltenham. They then produce comments. The point is that the department's serving officers look through the manuscripts to decide what should and should not be published or what should be deleted. That is absolutely crazy. For example, I was asked to remove dozens of names from the most recent book that I delivered to the D notice secretary, including names which appear in Kim Philby's book in 1968. In the face of that kind of obstruction, can my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State really claim that the system works well? I do not believe that it does. Why was my book in 1982 called "A Matter of Trust"? It was so titled because I believed that that was the essence of the relationship between the director-general of the security service and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. Even with the Maxwell Fyfe directives, there was no other formal relationship between the two. A Prime Minister must have confidence in his or her director-general. However, looking back over my experience, what material was deleted from "A Matter of Trust" when it was eventually published? What were the Government so concerned about? The deletions involved examples in which the director-general of the security service had deliberately mislead the Prime Minister of the day. I am not referring to current events or events about which this Government have any reason to be embarrassed. The events date way back to when the director-general of the

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secretary service deliberately mislead Prime Minister Attlee over whether Klaus Fuchs had already been investigated and whether there had been a recommendation for Fuchs to be subject to an inquiry because of his probable espionage. That was a major mistake. The director-general at the time, Sir Percy Sillitoe, was persuaded, against his better judgment and very reluctantly, to protect his organisation. He was told by three senior members of the security service that if he went to the Prime Minister and told the truth, it would be damaging to the morale of the security service. That happened in 1949, but there have been other cases, including, for example, the Bruno Pontecorvo case and the astonishing Burgess and Maclean White Paper. I do not want to delve into history. My point is that the Government cannot claim that everything in the garden is rosy. Whatever one's perspective when we look back at these events, the fact is that things have gone very badly wrong. There is no reason to believe that anything has changed. Very recently the all-party parliamentary war crimes group tried to obtain from the Foreign Office a file which the Foreign Office admits exists on Klaus Barbie. I suggested to the Minister concerned at the Foreign Office that presumably the reluctance to release the file stemmed from the fact that the Foreign Office wanted to ensure that Barbie received a fair trial in France and now that he has been convicted that excuse no longer existed. I was told that because the file, dated 194546, contained intelligence information, it might be of use to an enemy and could not be released because there was established precedent. I asked the Minister of State at the time, "Are you aware that the person who was head of the anti-Soviet section within the secret intelligence service in 19451946 was Kim 1480 Philby, and from whom are we trying to keep that fact secret?" That is the attitude today. More recently, I have tried to obtain access to wartime decrypts of signals that passed between the Japanese naval attach in Berlin and Tokyo, which are in the Foreign Office's possession, in the Public Record Office. Those same decrypts are available in Tokyo and in the Washington national archives. However, the Foreign Office refuses to allow those files to be available in the Public Record Office and to explain its actions. That is an appalling state of affairs, and it is a direct reflection of Whitehall's attitude to this very sensitive subject. The Government have not had an easy ride over secrecy. If the House will bear with me, I shall mention a few of the cases we heard about this morning. Some will be familiar to many people and some will not. Since 1979, there has been the Tisdall case; the Ponting case; the Belgrano affair, which was intelligence orientated; the Cathy Massiter case; telephone tapping scandals; the "Spycatcher" fiasco; the BBC programme "My Country, Right or Wrong"; the conviction of Michael Bettaney; the injunction on Anthony Cavendish; the GCHQ union saga; the GCHQ scandal of leakages in Hong Kong; the Zircon satellite affair; the Cyprus signals case; the Rothschild statement; and Geoffrey Prime. My reason for mentioning them all is to demonstrate that they are not passing issues or banana skins that are special to this Government. They are banana skins that will blight all Governments of all complexions in the future. It is an occupational hazard that there will be leakages of information and security cock-ups, and it is important that we should get these matters right. I revert to 1979, and to a case that I did not mention but which was probably the most significantthat of Anthony Blunt. It was significant because, as was previously stated, the Prime Minister, to her credit, was very frank about the security service's role and made a candid statement. She was more frank than any previous Prime Minister on the subject. That was in 1979. It is not so much that we should commend her for her frankness, but that we should examine what was the advice of the security service in 1979. I can tell the House what it was.

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Sir John Jones, who was then director-general of the security service, said, "You must not expose Sir Anthony Blunt. He must be protected at all costs, because if he is publicly exposed as a spy, we shall all be in trouble. It will mean that we shall never be able to offer credible immunity from prosecution to others of his ilk." The Prime Minister considered that advice, and I imagine that because she is a barrister, she considered also that she might have had to stand by and watch Sir Anthony Blunt perjure himself, as he was going to do by bringing an action for defamation against an author. The Prime Minister decided, rightly in my view, that the security service's advice was wrong and that here was an opportunity for her to be frank. That is exactly what happened. Alas, circumstances have changed since 1979. How are hon. Members ever to be educated about and to acquaint themselves with the conduct of the security service and related matters unless they are instructed in broad terms, on matters of principle, by people who have experience of them? My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) mentioned the case of John Day, who was injuncted when he wished to discuss not operational details or matters relating to his work in the security service that were definitely secret but broad principles of 1481 accountability. That was banned, and would have been banned under the measures proposed in the White Paper it would also have been banned. He might even be serving the first year of a two-year prison sentence by now. Michael McCaul is another former member of the security service, someone with wide experience whom the nation trusted to work in a most sensitive area for more than 30 years. If he cannot be trusted to come to the House and brief Back Benchers on the principles of accountability and the problems of supervision, on whom are we to rely? According to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Mr. Wheeler), we are supposed to rely on the present system of accountability, which involves the Secretary of State coming to the House and answering questions. That sounds splendid; the trouble is that it does not happen. When my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills asked a relevant question, he was denied the information that he sought because, by convention, the Secretary of State does not answer questions on this sensitive issue. I do not consider that that is accountability. I am focusing my remarks particularly on the paragraph relating to the duties of confidentiality of members of the security service. It is important to get this right in the legislation, because it will not go away. During the appeal that was heard in the other place, counsel for the plaintiff -the Governmentsaid that he knew of 10 books that were to be written or had already been embarked upon by former members of the security and intelligence services, some of them recently retired. He was classically misinformed. By my reckoning the number is nearer 15 or 16, and I hope that the Government are rather better informed than I am. Those proposing to write such books include John Day, Nicholas Elliott, Jock Kanewho has been injunctedAnthony Cavendishwho has been injuncted but has a contract to write a biography of Maurice Oldfieldthe Seymours, the late Jack Mortonwhose diaries are to be publishedDick White and Desmond Bristow, who is in Madrid and, like Peter Wright, is out of jurisdiction, as the law that we are discussing will not remotely affect people abroad. Fred Winterbottom is embarking on his fourth volume. Leo Marks has already run into some trouble. Anthony Simpkins has been authorised by the Government, but the historical section of the Cabinet Office has got cold feet and the book does not seem likely to be published in the near future. David Smiley has announced his intention of writing a book. George Blake has published one in the Soviet Union, and another is due out shortly. Even Greville Wynne, God bless him, is writing yet another book from Majorca. It is all very well to say that there is a mechanism for such people to write their memoirs. There is a mechanism, but it has never worked, it is not working now and there is not the slightest

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chance of its working in the future. There are possibilities of finding one that would work. Could we, for example, use the Security Commission? Somehow I doubt it. It may have lost a bit of credibility following its recent reports, and no one took any notice of its strong recommendation some years ago for the introduction of polygraphs. One wonders, too, whether people living abroad will have a duty to submit their manuscripts to the authorities in this country. We know of many cases where they have not bothered. We know also that when they have triedas did Gordon Welchman, who wrote about his wartime 1482 experiences at Bletchley parkthey have been threatened with prosecution if ever they returned to this country. GCHQ was so vindictive towards that man that he became an American citizen. He was literally hounded to his death by GCHQ in America. That is no exaggeration. His only job was with the Mitre Corporation in the United States. On GCHQ's recommendation his security clearance was withdrawn. Because he could not work and because he tried to fight that ban in America, he eventually succumbed to a coronary. We do not want that to happen again. We must not create a leper colony. I am all in favour of confidentiality and of secrets being kept, but I believe that these individuals can be trusted to give us the benefit of their experience without jeopardising national security every time they write or say anything on the subject. We heard about what happened in Australia: the director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation wrote a book that has been cleared. We heard about the Comte de Marenche in France. There is scarcely a CIA officer in the United States who has not written a book. There are 14,000 volumes on espionage in the CIA library. A considerable number of those volumes were written by members of the CIA who used the publication review board as an effective mechanism for getting clearance and avoiding the problem of jeopardising national security. I have long advocated not parliamentary control over the supervision of the security service but the introduction of non-executive directors who would have the confidence of the House. They would be inside my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's wall of secrecy. They would be able to supervise and provide a safety valve for members of the Security Service, who would, be able to go to the directors and explain in confidence that they believed that there had been some kind of an inequity. Sir Philip Woodfield has been appointed as staff counsellor, not just for the security service but for the Secret Intelligence Service and for GCHQ. Those latter organisations do not really need a staff counsellor, but the security service needs one. He must not, however, be stuck in the Cabinet Office. It would be impossible for him to work efficiently inside the Cabinet Office. Nine buildings in London are used by the security service. Security service officers who are unhappy about their duties have to ring the Cabinet Office to make an appointment to see Sir Philip. That is not the best system. He ought to have an office inside central security service headquarters so that people could slip in to see him and explain their grievances. I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan) for suggesting that we should look again at this matter. The 1911 Act, which was supposed to have been a temporary law, has been with us for 77 years. It was passed by a Liberal Administration. Now is our opportunity to make sure that we get it right for future generations. It is vital that a law that will be on the statute book for many years should be the best that we can devise. I urge my right. hon. Friend the Secretary of State to look again at the possibility of establishing a mechanism whereby members of the so-called leper colony will have an opportunity to publish. Several Hon. Members rose 1483

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 Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean) Order. The winding-up speeches are expected to begin at about 2 pm. Three hon. Members still wish to speak. I hope that they will divide the time between them. 1.39 pm Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason). Before he came to the House, I thought that he was so well informed that he must be a creature of Government. In the past year, to his credit, I have become somewhat disabused of that view. I agree with him about D-notices. My right hon. Friends the Members for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) and for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) will remember that ever since Harold Wilson got into a terrible fandango with Sammy Lohan, it has been thought that D-notices should be reformed. For more than 26 years, I have listened to almost every statement made at the Dispatch Box. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), I can recall no occasion on which a senior Minister managed to make a statement about something which, on examination, turned out to be so very different from what it purported to be. To save time, I shall refer the Home Secretary to my question asked on 29 June 1988 at column 374 about paragraph 47 of the White Paper. Also to save time, I shall merely endorse the description of the Ponting trial set out by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile). Under the proposed dispensation, Clive Ponting would clearly have been sent to prison. Paragraph 47 of the White Paper is designed to stymie people who are awkward to the Government and to make jolly sure that there is never a repeat of behaviour towards authority such as that of the Ponting jury. If the Ponting jury was not in the Home Secretary's mind when he made his remark about juries being perverse, what jury did he have in mind? Paragraph 47 is the precursor of a clause in a Bill which would protect Ministers from being found out if they misbehaved towards Parliament and misled the House of Commons. It is about putting the frighteners on potential deep throats, without whom it is exceedingly difficult for Members of Parliament to call Governments to proper account. Paragraph 47 makes no distinction between what Sir Frank Cooper has described as genuine security, and political security, but then political embarrassment has always been a far greater spur to actionwitness the Zircon casethan the real security interests of our country. The Home Secretary talks about a cornucopia of information coming forward, and a definition of disclosure that is harmfulharmful to whom? The disclosures that seem in the Government's imagination to be harmful are disclosures which embarrass politicians. I thank the Home Secretary for his letter of 21 July. I realise what he is saying about paragraph 47 It is certainly not our view that anyone who might come into contact with members of the services in the course of their duties, still less anyone who might simply see, as part of their work, information emanating from the services, should have the same liability. I accept that, but designation would be resorted to when Ministers got into a tight cornerwhen it mattered; when the chips were down. There are Conservative Members, although they are not present today, who use unparliamentary language 1484 about Mr. Ponting. That is their scale of values, but on my scale of values, the most serious crime in public life is direct and calculated lying to the House of Commons to protect a Minister's position. The White Paper protects Ministers from the consequences of lying to the House.

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What we now have before us is a charter to help Ministers who need to lie to the House to protect their position and to get away with it. From parliamentary references such as question No. 1 on 23 June 1988 at column 1253, it is widely accepted in the House that the Prime Minister did know about the role of the then Trade Secretary when she set up an inquiry into the leaking of the Law Officer's letter in the Westland affair. There is a resigned shrug of shoulders and an observation that, after all, "she got away with it". After a quarter of a century in this place, I am not prepared to shrug my shoulders. Deception of the House of Commons is unacceptable behaviour. Would the Prime Minister have dreamed of not designating in the Westland affair Mr. Charles Powell, Mr. Bernard Ingham or Sir Robert Armstrong? If Colette Bowe, John Michell, John Mogg and Sir Brian Hayes had all gone to Sir Philip Woodfield, would they have been designated, and what would have happened to their careers had they done so? We can only speculate on what would have occurred. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent that perhaps the right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan) is not primarily to blame. However, it is quite wrong that he should go to Brussels while the stigma of blame and deceit and responsibility for the leaking of the Law Officer's letter is attached to him. He should not go if he is not exonerated. This matter concerns the integrity of our public life. The hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) said, "I think I know why the White Paper is over the top. I say bluntly that it has an allpervasive influencethe malign influence of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has got away with something elsegross abuse of the Civil Service and the powers of deceit which led through Westland, her role in the miners' strike, the Libyan bombing and the raid on the BBC in Glasgow referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook. It began with a series of events which culminated in the 11 days at the Old Bailey. The Ponting trial, and the White Paper in its present form, would never have come about had not the Prime Minister, in order to protect her position as Prime Minister, insistedI choose my words extremely carefullyon sustaining a lie to Parliament and not correcting parliamentary answers. Because a particular Prime Minister is an habitual liar to Parliament Mr. Deputy Speaker Order. The hon. Gentleman has used an unparliamentary expression. He knows that it is out of order and he must withdraw it. Mr. Dalyell I chose the words to get over this extremely carefully. I believe that it is central to the White Paper. I do not want to take up the time of my hon. Friends, so I willingly withdraw if you say Mr. Deputy Speaker The hon. Gentleman must not argue with the Chair. He has used an unparliamentary expression and he must withdraw it. Mr. Dalyell It is better that I withdraw.

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1485 Mr Deputy Speaker I instruct the hon. Gentleman to withdraw from the Chamber. 1.47 pm Ms. Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington) In his written evidence to the Franks Committee in 1971, Mr. Justice Caulfield, the judge in the Daily Telegraph secrets case said: I think the section" that is section 2 in its present form could be viciously or capriciously used by an embarrassed Executive. That is the objection to the package in the current White Paper. When I listened to the Secretary of State earlier, I was struck by what was almost a tone of vainglorious boasting in his speech. He spoke about an earthquake in Whitehall. I looked at the civil servants behind him and they looked distinctly unquaked. He talked about the information that the Government give out. The point is not the information that the Government want to give out but the information that they do not want to give out, and the extent to which the public should have access to that. Above all, he talked about the White Paper not widening the law. It could scarcely do that. Under the present section 2, there are no fewer than 2,314 listed offences. It will not do for the Secretary of State to boast that the package in the White Paper does not widen the law. That would be scarcely possible. The question of interception has been thoroughly dealt with by some of my hon. Friends. However, it is worth asking why an exception is made for phone tapping and opening people's letters. No other western country needs such a provision. The White Paper talks rather hypocritically about the importance of not breaching the privacy of private citizens. If phones are being tapped by the Government it ill-behoves them to say that they do not want information given out because they are worried about the privacy of private citizens. The Government justify making a blanket exception of phone tapping and mail opening on the grounds of terrorism, crime and national security. I suggest that the phone tapping and mail opening is done not because they are worried about those things, but because they are worried about exposure of phone tapping that has nothing to do with national security, crime or terrorism. I shall now turn to the absence of a public interest defence in the White Paper. The Government justify the absence of such a defence by saying that it is not the practice to take motive into account in matters of law. That is a perverse statement because section 1 of the Official Secrets Act, which is not to be abolished, explicitly takes motive into account. It is surely perverse to say that the motive for passing on secrets is admissible if a person will be proved guilty but inadmissible if someone is trying to prove himself innocent. Conservative Members know perfectly well that there is a long standing common law defence against actions for breach of confidence on the grounds of public interest. In the discredited section 2 of the Official Secrets Act there is even an implicit defence in terms of the public interest. This is what the Government seek explicitly to rule out. Conservative Members talk about civil servants who are worried about what they will be asked to do and say that all they have to do is to refer things up the ladder. That is nonsense. If a hapless higher executive officer or Home 1486 Office principal is instructed to do things that are against the public interest, his instructions will have to come down the chain from, perhaps, a permanent secretary or an

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assistant secretary. It is absurd to say that the matter can be referred back up the chain and to say so shows a lack of understanding of the realities of life for the groundlings in the Civil Service. Behind the public interest matter is the shadow of what some of us thought was the most serious aspect of the Ponting casethe Government's assumption that there is no distinction between the interest of the state and the interests of the Government. That is what the judgment showed in the Ponting case and it is dangerous. That assumption is the reason for the Government not allowing a public interest defence. That is contrary to traditions of common law and fairness and to the interests of the nation as a whole. I shall now deal with the blanket exclusion for life of members of the security services who will be deprived of their ordinary civil liberty to speak about things that they know. It is worth reading the White Paper closely on this matter. It says that members of the security services are to lose all their civil rights because any allegations by them carry credibility. What are the Government saying? Are they saying that it is acceptable to leak false secrets but not to talk about things that may be true? They say that they will withdraw civil liberties from members of the security services because otherwise public confidence in the secret services may be reduced. If the Government are interested in building public confidence in the secret services the way forward for them is not to reduce civil liberties but to recruit and manage properly and, possibly, give members of the security services proper pensions. Far from being worried that disclosures by the security services will reduce public confidence in those services, the Government are worried that past and future disclosures by the security services might reduce public confidence in the Government. I should like to quote no less an authority than Chapman Pincher whom E. P. Thompson called that conduit into which the establishment leaks. In his evidence to the Franks Committee, he said: In my experience, which as I say is a long one, 'politically embarrassing' is always a much higher security classification than 'top secret'. The Government should spare us the cant of being worried about public confidence in the security services. They are worried about what present or ex-Security Service members might say that would damage confidence in the Government. The life-long duty of confidentiality that the Government are trying to impose on Security Service members cannot truly be achieved this side of the iron curtain. The Government are trying to impose an iron curtain on past and present members of the security services, and that is what makes their behaviour so deplorable. The right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan) said it was an ingenious White Paper. It is ingenious because the hapless draftsmen have gone through every embarrassing security incident of the past 10 years and tried to draw up a White Paper to ensure that they will never happen again. That is why the White Paper is so incoherent and why it bears no references to the carefully worked out arguments of the 1971 Franks report. In its opening chapter, the Franks report said: 1487 A government which pursues secret aims, or which operates in greater secrecy than the effective conduct of its proper functions requires or which turns information services into propaganda agencies, will lose the trust of the people. Nothing in the White Paper will enhance the trust of the people in the Government. It is an illargued and incoherent White Paper. Labour Members sincerely hope that when legislation is brought forward the issues that we have raised, especially the public interest defence, will be considered carefully by the Government. 1.56 pm Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East)

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I shall be brief because of the pressure of time. I shall not refer to the detail of the White Paper because it has been dealt with excellently by my hon. Friends. The Secretary of State gave a lyrical presentation about the Government opening doors and unleashing information. In an intervention, I asked what new information would be revealed by the White Paper. His reply was that it was not a Freedom of Information Act. I suspect that means that there are no significant libertarian elements included in it. The state and its corporate control have grown alarmingly in the past year, as we saw in the measures with which we dealt in the past week. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) mentioned the 1688 tercentenary celebrations, a Bill of Rights and the checks, balances and liberty of the constitution. This week, we have dealt with the final stages of the Education Reform Bill and the poll tax legislation and are now discussing this White Paper. There could be no more sinister combination of elements that reveal the degree of state centralisation that has taken place. The hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) said that there was less state control and less scope for state secrecies because of the privatisation programme. Under the Education Reform Bill, the power of the Secretary of State for Education and Science is considerably expanded. The poll tax legislation contains a sinister set of measures that will affect civil liberties and democratic rights. Local government will finally become a creature of the state and will have little scope to take measures of its own. Civil liberties will be attacked considerably by the poll tax registrar, who will be able to raid all types of sensitive information. Even the right of petition, which the House of Commons enjoys without duress, is under threat because it has been said in the House that petitions about the poll tax could be used against the petitioners because their names could be entered in the poll tax register. There is also the threat of national identity cards, which was suggested during the debate on the poll tax and a number of Government Members in Committee were adamant that they were in favour of such a card. The poll tax Bill also fixes the franchise by affecting registration and it will affect the fate of local election results. People will have to pay poll tax to qualify to vote. Those measures and the White Paper will give such authority to the state that we shall be in a very sinister position. This has been a dangerous week. We have been celebrating the events of 1688, but we may not be able to do that in future. 1488 2.2 pm Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington) It will have been noticed that the previous three speakers have been Opposition Members. On this occasion, the Government have run out of enemies to the White Paper. Congratulations for the debate and for the White Paper rest not with the Government but with the hon. MemberI am tempted to say hon. Friend in this contextfor Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd). He, more than any other Member in the House through his effort and determination, has provoked the Government into publishing the White Paper. The debate has demonstrated yet again that behind the honeyed words of the Home Secretary and his public relations staff is the reality of a White Paper that, in many senses, is as harsh and illiberal as the Act it seeks to replace. In essence, it proposes to replace a large net with large holes with a smaller net with smaller holes more effectively to catch and silence those who cause the Government embarrassment. The White Paper rejects the idea of a ministerial certificate and says loftily that such matters will be left to the courts.

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Would that that were true. The courts will not be allowed to decide whether large areas of information can be made known. The Government are putting a stronger fence around six broad areas of information and will leave the courts to decide simply on the extent of any damage that the release of information may cause, or is likely to cause. The White Paper is repressive in its denial of any public interest defence. What possible harm to security did Clive Ponting do when he told my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) that the Government had misled the House over the sinking of the Belgrano? Did that damage security? He caused embarrassment to the Government and the Prime Minister but that is no reason to deny people who act in good faith a public interest defence. Surely the public, as represented by a jury, is a better judge of public interest than any Government. That is what the Home Secretary should have meant when he spoke of leaving it to the courts. It was a serving officer who leaked secret information about the run-down state of our defences in the 1930s to a Member of Parliament called Winston Churchill. Did not he and the people of this country have a right to know that? That officer did no more than Clive Ponting did 50 years later. That illustrates the need for a better definition of exclusion of defence, security and intelligence information. Ministers refused to confirm or deny the arrival of American cruise missiles at Greenham Common and Molesworth on security grounds. When Sarah Tisdall bravely made that known, she was convicted for her pains and the Government still refused to give that information or any information about the numbers involved. It took the arrival here this week of 20 inspectors from the Soviet Union, under the terms of an intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty signed between two foreign powers, to let the people of Britain know that the number of operational missiles at Greenham is 96 and at Molesworth 18. Fancy thatthe Russians can know how many American missiles are down the road from the House but we cannot, and nothing in the White Paper will assist us in getting such information in the future. 1489 The mind boggles at the blanket cover of information given in confidence by foreign Governments and international organisations. What happens when a draft directive on potato sizes is sent from Brussels? Usually, the Departments concerned with such directives consult the trade and other interests on these matters. Under the terms of the White Paper, that passing round of bits of paper with a still secret draft directive would be illegal. Or would it? At the back of this is a collossal uncertainty, because the Attorney-General stands in the wings and he decides, on behalf of the Government, whether to prosecute. This is not clearing up the catch-all mess of section 2it is nonsensically compounding it. Let us take the example of information useful to criminals, dealt with in paragraph 52 of the White Paper. Yesterday, a newspaper rang me to ask me to comment on news that the Bromsgrove and Redditch police force, in the west midlands, was restricting panda patrols to no more than 25 miles a day because it is denied the money that it needs to give the service that it would like to give to the public. Is that information useful to criminals? It could be held to be so. What about the number of police in a division? I expect that the criminals would love to know that. Again, who would be caught? The White Paper gives us no clues about this, because it says in paragraph 71 that it is for the Minister to decide what information is to be revealed. Another example is interception or phone tapping. What damage to our security did Cathy Massister, a former MI5 agent, do when she revealed that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had had its phones illegally tapped and its offices burgled? That did not damage securityIt damaged a Government who are careless of their control over the security services. The matter is even worse, because under the White Paper anyone publishing this information would have no public interest defence, although one clearly exists.

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Comedy becomes farce when we get to the denial of the prior publication defence. The world may know, but we cannot. The Home Secretary has forgotten his excitement for the fastdeveloping wizardry that whisks news and information round this planet in a twinkling. How does he propose to stop that publication by satellite? How is he to decide who published first, second or third, and where? If a news bulletin goes out by a satellite as it spins around aloft, there are time zone differences that will get the Government into trouble. The decision is not just wrong. It is impracticable and that is why, in the end, he will have to drop it and allow for a prior publication defence. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) that this is a matter that should be judged by Parliament as the elected voice of the people, because it is we who stand on the side of the people against the Government. At the heart of the debate is a simple issuethe right of free people in a free society to know what an elected Government are doing in their name. That is the essence of democracy. It will not do for the Government to say, as they do, "This is a secret because we say that it is a secret." That is what undemocratic Governments around the world do. We should state and assert that a free people in a democratic society have a right to know what is going on, save only about those specialist matters that touch upon our proper security. This is where the White Paper fails. There is its coy admission in paragraph 5 that 1490 It does no0t address such matters as the question of access to official information not covered by the Government's proposals. That is what is missing and that is what is wrong. It is not about widening access to information so that the governed can know more about what those who govern are up to. The Government do not trust the people, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms. Abbott) said. Information released from the ambit of the criminal law will not become more accessible. There will simply be different penalties for its release, such as the loss of jobs and pension rights for those in the Civil Service who release it. That is not progress. It is simply a change of direction to serve the same prohibitive purposes. When the Bill comes before us, we shall seek to amend the proposals substantially. In Government, we shall review them in the context of a Freedom of Information Act to which we shall give priority and which is the proper setting in which to consider guarding our legitimate secrets. 2.10 pm The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten) I recall that a previous Labour Administration made such pledges, but did not keep them. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) was extremely generous in foreshortening the time that he had to make his wind-up speech in the interests of letting everyone who wanted to speak in the debate do so. I have done the same regarding the length of time for my wind-up speech. It must have been that extremely short period of time that accounted for the fact that the hon. Member for Erdington did not have the time to compare and contrast the excellent advances made by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary's White Paper with anything that was put forward by the Labour Government between 1974 and 1979. I wish to make two quick reflections regarding matters outside this Chamber. FirstI exonerate any hon. Member who has spoken today from thissome people outside the Chamber, particularly newspaper commentators, still appear to be breaking their lances on the fears and rumours in print and on television about what the White Paper might have contained, rather than addressing what it says. Today, the proposals have been examined in great detail by all hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. Alas, that is not the case with so many commentators who mould public opinion.

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Secondly, many hon. Members are passionately, rightly and deeply concerned about the issue, including the right hon. Members for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) and for Morly and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), who has now left to fulfil a constituency engagement, as he courteously told us, and my hon. Friends the Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken). We in Government are deeply concerned and fascinated by all the ins and outs and nuances. I represent a constituency that contains a university, and it strikes me as extraordinary that neither I nor my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary or other Ministers have received any letters from people outside. That may also be true of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James). We must, therefore, keep our debates in the House in perspective. I do not think that my speech deserves to be called a peroration. I should like, however, to make immediately 1491 the points that I would normally make at about 2.29 pm, because it is important that I should tell the House what will happen next before I respond in detail to as many of the points as possible. Not every dot and comma of the proposals for the Bill has been set in concrete. The debate would have served no purpose if we had taken that view. There is ample scope for discussion of the proposals and my right hon. Friend and I have listened with great care and interest to all the comments and suggestions that have been made today. We have not agreed with them all, but guided by many of them. They will inform the way in which the future legislation is drafted. We shall have to consider a number of ideas. Next Friday, there will be a debate in the other place on exactly this issue. We would then wish to have some time to reflect on what has been said in this House and in the other place and to consider other comments that have been put to us by interested bodies and individuals although, as I have said, the weight of correspondence coming in to the Home Office on this issue is tiny. We do not intend to let the matter rest. When my right hon. Friend first announced our intention last December to produce the White Paper, he said that it would be followed by early legislation, and his White Paper repeats that undertaking. Once we have had that timeI dare say that it will not be too longwe shall set to work to prepare legislation with the intention of laying it before Parliament as soon as possible. The White Paper contains the Government's proposals, but we must rememberthe Government will rememberthat it is Parliament which will decide whether these or other proposals flowing from them should be translated into the law of the United Kingdom. We shall certainly not forget that. The debate has taken us an important step nearer the reform of something that we all agree needs pressing reform. In the remaining 15 minutes, I shall reply to the comments that have been made although inevitably in this short time, I shall be unable to reply to every point. I turn first to the extraordinary speech of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley). I shall try to pick up five of the points that he made. I turn first to his point about designation, which was a point which also concerned my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) in an early intervention and in his speech Mr. Deputy Speaker Order. the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) was ordered to withdraw from the Chamber. That means for the remainder of this day's sitting Mr. Dalyell On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This is a matter of great concern to the House. Now that the information has come through about the appointment of the right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Britian) Mr. Deputy Speaker

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Order. The hon. Gentleman was instructed to withdraw from the Chamber because he refused to withdraw an unparliamentary remark. That means that he must withdraw for the remainder of this day's sitting. I must instruct the hon. Gentleman to withdraw from the Chamber for the remainder of this day's sitting. Mr. Dalyell rose 1492 Mr. Deputy Speaker Order. The hon. Gentleman is an experienced parliamentarian. I repeat that I instructed him to withdraw an unparliamentary expression. He refused to do so and he was instructed to withdraw from the Chamber. That means for the remainder of this day's sitting. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw. Mr. Dalyell Parliament has been so affronted by the appointment of the right hon. and learned Member Mr. Deputy Speaker Order. I give the hon. Gentleman one further chance, otherwise I shall have to take further action. Mr. Dalyell In that case, I must withdraw. The affront to Parliament of the appointment of the right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks who took part in the debate without being exonerated in relation to Mr. Deputy Speaker Order. The hon. Member then withdrew. Mr. Patten As it happens, when the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) appeared in the Chamber I was about to mention his name because he, too, was interested in the issue of designation. Perhaps I should take this opportunity to condemn in the strongest words available to me the monstrous attack that was made by the hon. Member for Linlithgow on my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. To call my right hon. Friend "a habitual liar" without any signs of protest from those behind him is an utter disgrace. It is an abuse of the House and I am afraid that it is an abuse of the House that is repeated consistently by the hon. Member for Linlithow. Time and again he accuses my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister of the things of which he has accused her today and then, under some guise or another, withdraws. It is time that that was stopped. Mr. Ted Garrett

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On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. With respect, you have made a ruling and in my judgment and that of my colleagues, that is the end of that particular episode this morning. You should not allow the Minister to continue in that way. Mr. Deputy Speaker Order. That is wise advice I am sure that the Minister is moving on. Mr. Patten Indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Member or Sparkbrook was concerned about designation. He was worried about paragraph 47 in the White Paper where he spotted the words "groups" and "list". He thought that that would mean that there would be universal classification of people according to their category of job. However, he did not read on through paragraph 48. I will quote less selectively than the right hon. Gentleman from paragraph 48 which states: But the persons concerned would be notified individually; and criminal liability would attach only after the individual officer concerned had received notification of his liability. Each individual will be designated individually. I suppose that from time to time there are expressions for a group of people. I suggest that a group of principal private secretaries might be called a discretion of principal private secretaries. Perhaps we may refer to them as a group, but each of them acts as a conduit of information from the services to their Secretaries of State and they will be designated individually if that is the decision of the Minister as set out in the White Paper. 1493 The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook was also concerned about certain earlier cases. I do not remember them all as I did not write them down, but they will be on the record. He asked whether the revelations would be authorised in the different cases to which he referred. I cannot give a clear answer to that because I cannot speculate on exactly what legislation the White Paper will lead to because the Bill is not drafted. Therefore, I cannot speculate on the decisions that will be taken by the responsible Ministers. However, I can speculate to the extent that I suspect that bits would have been authorised, but other bits would not. [Interruption.] The interesting bits. Mr. Alex Carlile That exposes the whole fallacy. Mr. Patten The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) says from a sedentary position that that somehow exposes matters. It has been the practice for many years for decent people who have been in the services who want to write to seek authority to do so. They have been given authority for some things and denied it for others. That was the only point that I wanted to make. The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook referred to the role of the staff counsellor. Sir Philip Woodfield is not a member of the service. His successors will not be members of the service. They are independent and act as a conduit to Ministers.

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The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam) was concerned about telephone tapping. In his interesting speech based on personal experience he admitted that there is protection in the Interception of Communications Act 1985. The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook forcefully raised the issue of "Spycatcher". That was also referred to by the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Mr. Wheeler) and other right hon. and hon. Members that a former member of the services should keep his or her counsel. Members should not break a lifelong duty of confidentiality without authorisation. That is a clear principle which underlies the White Paper. Finally, the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook was charmingly concerned about the welfare of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and about what happened when he went into purdah each year to discuss business concerned with the Budget. I do not believe that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will ever need the protection of criminal law under any circumstances. However, Budget leaks about alleged changes in tax codes, and so on, are not protected by criminal law. The only matters that will be are items of information coming from a source connected with my right hon. Friend and falling within one of the categories covered by the Bill, such as international relations. Mr. Hattersley As the Minister and others questioned the rule of confidentiality and its legal back-up in respect of Budget matters, I had inquiries made, and I am advised there are so many laws covering that aspect that, were Ito list them all, the Minister would not be able to rise to his feet again before four o'clock. Perhaps the Minister will look at the Taxes Management Act 1970, the Finance Act 1972 and the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1970-all of which require certain aspects of Budget policy to 1494 be maintained in secrecy. There are many more examples, covering almost every aspect of the Chancellor's day-to-day activities. Mr. Patten The right hon. Gentleman has clearly been doing his research, because earlier in the debate he was challenged to name all the laws to which he was referring but failed to do so. I turn to points raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills. I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on his extremely distinguished speechit was exactly the kind of speech one would expect from someone who was such a distinguished Home Secretary. I welcome the warm reception he gave to my right hon. Friend's White Paper, which was reflected by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminister, North. I welcome also the sentiment of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks, based on deep experience, that there is no longer any need for a public interest defence because the Government have circumvented that by the White Paper's proposals. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills disagrees, but I much agree with that argument. I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend's reaffirmation of the lifelong duty of those in the services, though I differ from him in the need that he sees for expressing decisions on whether a publication should be allowed through a mechanism involving independent persons or an independent body. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks and my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills raised points concerning media reporting of disclosure by members of the services and the question whether the test of harm applies. There may be circumstancesand I choose my words carefullywhere, for example, there is collusion between a member or former member of the security and intelligence services and a newspaper, where the newspaper could be an accessory to an offence committed by that member or former

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security services memberand "could" is the operative word. However, if the newspaper simply reported a disclosure that had been made on a separate occasion, the prosecution would have to prove that it was the newspaper's disclosure, and not that made by the member or former member of the services, that was likely to damage the operation of the security and intelligence services. Mr. Richard Shepherd What about television? Mr. Patten I am reminded by my hon Friend that I forgot the broadcasting media. There would be a test of harm, and it would be that the journalistwhether he worked in broadcasting or in newspapersknew or had reasonable cause to believe that his disclosure was likely to cause harm. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills expressed concern that the Government have not yet provided a list of international organisations that require information in confidence. A large number of organisations have an international dimension, and in the past many of them have supplied in confidence certain details to this or previous Governments. I dare say that they include the Ghana cocoa marketing board, which was the particular example given by my hon. Friend. 1495 It would be difficult at this stage to drag out all the names from files going back many years, and I do not believe that it would serve any useful purpose. We must address the issue when we translate the White Paper concept into legislation. We are debating a White Paper; we are not at the end of a Second Reading debate on a Bill. All will be revealed on its publication, which I hope will be as soon as possible. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills It being half past Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put. *****************************************************************************

Security Service Bill HC Deb 15 December 1988 vol 143 cc1104-8 Ms. Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington) The Secretary of State described the Bill as a big step forward for the Security Service. Having read the 1145 Bill and listened carefully to his remarks, I would argue that rather than a big step forward it is something of a sideways shuffle. I have read the Bill carefully. Since it comes from a Government who pride themselves on cutting legislation to a minimum, the question that comes to someone such as me, unversed in security matters, is, what is it for? The Bill provides for no improvements in the effectiveness, efficiency or management of the service. Above all, it says nothing about parliamentary oversight. Who, among Conservative Members, can seriously say that there is no need for improvement in the management and efficiency of the security services? To show the need for improvement, I have only to reel off the names of past scandals such as those involving Maclean, Burgess, Philby and Blunt. I remind

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Conservative Members, that the case of Blunt was kept secret from the Government and the House for 15 years. The recurrent history of appalling scandals of KGB infiltration of the service ought to make responsible Members consider the need for improvements in management and efficiency. In addition, one senses from reading a number of different accounts that at any given time there will be elements in the service who do not consider themselves accountable to the Government. One does not have to believe a fraction of what Wright had to say, either to Chapman Pincher or in the book, against which an unsuccessful prosecution was brought in Australia, to know that there were elements, even if only half a dozen people, who did not consider themselves accountable to Wilson's Government. How could a Security Service that was serious about being accountable to the Government of the day keep the details of the Hollis investigation from the Prime Minister for as long as it did? There have been recurrent scandals, and a lack of a sense throughout the service of being accountable to the Government rather than a notional accountability to the Crown. There is an anti-Labour theme running through the activities of some of the members of the security services. When Sir John Hunt, the Cabinet Secretary, was asked to examine the Security Service's activities, one of his suggestions was that the recruitment system needed to be reformed to prevent anti-Labour factions from forming. Do we know what reforms were carried out or how effective they were? Leonard McCoy, an ex-deputy head of the CIA, when interviewed, said that, when briefed by James Angleton, head of CIA, he was told that Harold Wilson was a Soviet Agent. I am not a 100 per cent. unreconstructed admirer of Harold Wilson, but it is an extraordinary way to describe a sturdy west Yorkshire patriot. How can one take the activities and the loyalty of the security services seriously when remarks such as that come from foreign security agents that work hand in glove with them? I shall touch lightly on the question of madness in the security services. Sir Martin Furnival, an ex-head of MI5, said, and he should know, that possibly four or five years in counter-espionage is too long because it causes insanity. I shall not pursue the matter further. The hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) talked about the bad drafting of the Bill. That is cruel to the civil servants in the Box. I am obliged, as an ex-Home Office administration trainee, to stand up for my one-time colleagues and remind hon. Members that drafting can only be as clear and elegant as the political intentions 1146 behind the legislation. The Opposition believe that the political intentions behind the legislation are neither clear, elegant nor coherent. It will not do for hon. Members to criticise hard-working, underpaid members of the Home Office by talking about poor drafting. The drafting, including that of clause 1(2). is quite extraordinary. It says: The function of the Service shall be protection against threats from espionage, terrorism and sabotage from the activities of agents of foreign powers". That is fine. However, it goes on to refer subjectively to undermining parliamentary democracy by political, industrial

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or violent means. Some Opposition Members might say that by abolishing tiers of local government the Government are seriously undermining our system of democracy. The clause continues by saying that the function of the service is to safeguard the economic well-being of the United Kingdom against threats posed by the actions or intentions of persons outside the British Islands. What does that mean? Is the Security Service licensed to bug and burgle innocent New York stockbrokers who may be engaged in speculation against our short-term economic interest? The drafting is extraordinary, but I blame the politicians. Schedule 1, which deal with the working of the tribunal, is equally strange. Paragraph 2(4) contains a circular argument. The service can investigate someone because he or she is part of a category of persons regarded by the Service as requiring investigation". Under paragraph 2(4) that is acceptable to the tribunal. There is no provision for an appeal to find out what categories of person the service deems to be worthy of investigation. It is as if the service is judge and jury. For example, if the service found a category such as ex-general secretaries of the National Council for Civil Liberties worthy of investigation, that would be acceptable under the terms of the schedule. Therefore, as I have said, the drafting is extraordinary, but I blame the politicians. There has been much talk by Conservative Members about what Labour Governments did or did not do when they had the chance. As somebody who was not horn when some of those Labour Governments were in power, I cannot take seriously Conservative Members' claim that what Labour Governments did not do is an infallible guide to what the Government should do. The Bill and speeches made by Conservative Members refer to fears about the undermining of parliamentary democracy. I am sure that I speak for all my right hon. and hon. Friends when I say that we all take that seriously. What more serious threat is there to the respect and esteem in which parliamentary democracy is held than for the Government to say that Members of Parliament cannot be trusted with scrutiny or oversight of the Security Service? That has been requested by three ex-directors of the Security Service and is found in every English-speaking democracy. The Secretary of State has undermined parliamentary democracy by saying that elected Members of Parliament, the heart of our parliamentary system, cannot be trusted with what every other English-speaking democracy has. That is an unfounded smear. The Bill represents no great leap forward but a crab-like shuffle sideways. I hope that, even at this late stage. the Government will reconsider. (...)Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay) Although by the Home Secretary's admission, the Bill is some 79 years late, I welcome it enormously. I should like, however, to know the Government's motiviation. Is it the impending judgment in the European Court? Alternatively, is it the controversy earlier this year relating to the royal prerogative? Since its inception in 1909, members of the Security Service have been told that their work is covered not by statute but by the royal prerogative, but earlier this year that plank was well and truly demolished legally. One 1152 of the Bill's advantages is that it will give a boost to morale in the Security Service, which for years has in effect been working without strict legal backing.

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Although a good deal of both optimism and pessimism has been expressed here today, we have not heard much realism. I want to examine a little of the background to the secrecy of the Security Service. The service has not always been cloaked in secrecy. Before the war Colonel Edward Hinchley-Cooke was a regular figure in the media as the representative of the service, and after the war Jim Skardon would give evidence on its behalf without having to be described as witness A, B, or C. Similarly, in the early 1950s the director-general of the Security Service, Sir Percy Sillitoe, was given official permission to write his memoirs. I do not want to get involved in the business of accountability; I have never believed that the Security Service has been truly accountable to the House. I would, however, like to congratulate the Home Secretary on constructing a bridge over the barrier of secrecy. Last year he told me that it was impossible to bridge. I gave him various ideas then about the introduction of two people whom I described as "non-executive directors" who could be involved in the work of the Security Service, on its directorate, and at the same time could write a report each year that could be supplied to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister. I very much regret that instead of two non-executive directors we appear to be getting just one commissioner, but I hope that that omission will be rectified in Committee. From whom, though, is any oversight committee to hear evidence? If the suggestions that have been made today are followed, evidence will be heard from the directorgeneral, but I feel that that suggestion is fatally flawed, because experience tells us that the word of individual directors-general simply cannot be relied on. Let me cite two examples. In 1949 Klaus Fuchs was arrested in an espionage case. At the time the director-general of the Security Service was prevailed upon by senior officers to lie to the Prime Minister, because it was believed that if it was revealed that there had been a major blunder and that Fuchs could have been arrested in 1944 or 1945, the morale of the service would be undermined. That is a clear example of the Prime Minister being misled. I might add that the director-general at that time had severe reservations about what happened. Another much later case is on the public record. It is one of the most disgraceful documents to be publicly available, and was written by the Security Service. I refer to the White Paper on Burgess and Maclean. I urge hon. Members to read it if they believe that advice from the Security Service can always be relied on. It details no fewer than 17 major instances of deception. Let me explain why I feel that two commissioners are needed. I have described how reports from the director-general cannot always be relied upon, and I do not believe that we can necessarily rely on reports from a single commissioner working alone. Lord Denning, for instance, was taken for a ride by the Security Service. That was the view of many senior officers at the time. A little pantomime was prepareda completely bogus operation for him to witness, which he describes in the report in glowing detail. That is another example of a single person being duped by the Security Service. What about the judicial qualification suggested in clause 4(1)? While I believe that it is a good old-fashioned 1153 British tradition to rely on a judge in such matters, I am not

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as sanguine as that, or as confident in judges. I would much rather have two commissioners, and I would not restrict their qualification to the lawwith the greatest respect to hon. and learned Members on both sides of the House. I should like the role of commissioner to be greatly widened. It seems to me from reading the Bill that that role will be limited to dealing with the supervision of warrants and with complaints brought by the tribunal. I should like to return to the idea of two non-executive directors who would be involved not in operational matters but certainly in matters of policy judgment, and I hope that that suggestion will be considered in Committee. The Bill says nothing about what could go into the annual report of the commissioner or commissioners. We know from our experience of the Interception of Communications Act 1985 that the reports by the commissioner under the Act supply less information than we had before. I should like certain detailed questions to be answered on an annual basis in the report. Again, that could be considered in Committee. There is, for example, the marvellous euphemism "interference with property". I think that it should be a statutory responsibility of the commissioner to mention in his report every year exactly how many warrants have been issued. I do not think that the disclosure of that detail would necessarily undermine operational prowess. It would, however, be of great reassurance to the public to know that there will he rather more in the report than the view across Gower street and the Euston road. Let me now deal with the Security Service itself. Many reforms have been introduced by Sir Antony Duff in the wake of the Bettaney affair. I remind hon Members who are not aware of quite how appalling that case was that this was a senior Security Service officer operating in the most senior branch of the service, who was promoted although he had two criminal convictions for deceptionhaving also been convicted of drunkennessand who consumed a bottle of whisky a day. I urge hon. Members to read the Security Commission report on that, because it is utterly damning. The Security Commission has often been mentioned as having some kind of oversight role, yet within the Security Service it has been suggested that the commission is nothing more than a stable-locking operation. I suggest that anyone who does not agree with that reads the Security Commission report on Michael Bettaney, which illustrates one of the dilemmas placed before the commission. The report contains the statement that Bettaney's erratic behaviour drew attention to him and he was therefore denounced by colleagues, and that that was how the investigation was pursued. What seems odd about that is that we now know in the light of subsequent events that it was Oleg Gordievsky in the Soviet embassy, the KGB resident in London, who tipped off the security authorities to the existence of a traitor in their midst. That prompts the following question: did the Security Commission lie when it stated that Bettaney's investigation had been initiated as a consequence of the diligence and vigilance of his colleagues? Alternatively, were they lied to, with the best of motives, because the Security Service wished to protect a source? That is a very difficult operational dilemma, but again it calls into question the system of reporting and the difficulties of oversight.

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1154 The United States has recently been subjected to the Iran-Contra scandal. What is so odd about that incident is that, although the law, as supplied by the Senate, was broken, there were no penalties for Oliver North or for John Poindexter. I hope that in Committee penal ties will be incorporated in the Bill. I warmly welcome the Bill. At long last it provides the Security Service with a legal status. It provides for the appointment of a commissioner, which I welcome, although I hope that in Committee we can add a second commissioner. The Bill provides for the creation of a tribunal, which is also warmly to be welcomed. Therefore, I urge the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

***************************************************************************** SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE HC Deb 25 January 1989 vol 145 cc1047-142 1047 Mr. Roy Hattersley (Birmingham, Sparkbrook) I beg to move amendment No. 71, in page I, line 5, leave out 'or has been'. The Chairman With this we may take the following amendments: No. 14, in page 1, line 9, leave out 'discloses' and insert `makes a damaging disclosure of'. No. 69, in page 1, line 19, leave out 'or has been'. No. 70, in page 1, line 22, leave out 'or has been'. No. 16, in page 1, line 25, leave out 'subsection (3) above' and insert 'this section'. No. 67, in clause 7, page 7, line 7, at end insert `or it has been authorised by the Publications Review Board set up under this Act'. New clause 6Publications Review Board 1048 '(1) There shall be a body, called the Publications Review Body, which shall authorise the public disclosure of information by former members of the security and intelligence services. (2) No information shall be disclosed, whether in books, articles or other media, by former members of the security and intelligence services without the approval of the Board. (3) The Board shall consist of a Chairman and three members appointed by the Secretary of State. (4) The Board shall notify its decision as to the granting of permission for disclosure to applicants within six months of application being made to it.' Mr. Hattersley No doubt the first debate in Committee of the Official Secrets Bill will demonstrate the way in which the Committee intends to do its work. I hope that it will demonstrate that although the Committee is divided on the need to change the Bill's contents, it is unanimous in its belief that the Bill must be debated in great detail and, therefore, at great length. It is not the Opposition's intention to be either fractious or obstructive, but I hope that the Government will understand that we expect sufficient time for every clause to be given the scrutiny it deserves. There are many long days and nights ahead of us and we had better acknowledge that at the start.

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This first debate concerns the absolute obligation to secrecy that the Bill places on members of the security and intelligence services and on other persons associated with those services and nominated by the Secretary of State about every aspect and detail of their work for their entire lifetime. Amendment No. 71 was intended to probe that concept and to provide an opportunity for the Secretary of State to justify the notion that total and permanent secrecy save only for those occasions when he lifts the interdict is a reasonable obligation to place on members of the Security Service and those associated with them. We do not propose to press the amendment to a vote, but I suspect that the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), whose amendments are grouped with amendment No. 71 will wish the Committee to divide and we shall support him in that case. The amendments that the hon. Member has tabled, to which he will, no doubt, speak, limit action under clause 1 to disclosures that do damage, and the principle inherent in the limitation of prosecutions or successful prosecutionsto the publication of items that do damage to the interests of the country lies at the heart of most of our objections to the Bill. We believe that information should be suppressed only when suppression is necessary. That is clearly not the intention of clause 1 in the particulars that relate to the security services, those who work in them and those associated with them because they make the ban on publication absolute and for ever. 4.45 pm Amendment No. 67 and new clause 6 deal with the concept of absolute and permanent secrecy in a rather different way. They propose a publications review board, which will decide whether information that an ex-member of the security services wishes to publish is appropriate for publication. At this stage, I shall say no more on those amendments except that they are an improvement. However, as such a review board would consist of Government nominees, it would not be much of an improvement. Before we debate the principle that I have described, it is important to recall some of the background to the Bill. Some cynics suggest that one reason why the Prime Minister allowed the Bill to be introduced at all was her 1049 obsessive determination to vindicate her paranoid behaviour in the case of Mr. Peter Wright and "Spycatcher". It is important to remember specifically in the context of the "Spycatcher" case that other relevations that in any normal and reasonable judgment were at least as damaging to the interests of the state appeared in a book by Mr. Chapman Pincher, which the Government either approved or took no steps to prohibit. To avoid future misinterpretationor at least, as it is the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Mr. Patten) who is to reply later to the debate, to ensure that he has to misinterpret me intentionally rather than by mistakelet me say again that I have no time at all for Mr. Peter Wright. What is more, if one considers the way in which he was prepared to profane the dead, I do not have much time for Mr. Chapman Pincher either, but personal opinions of those two gentlemen are neither here nor there. The question to which the amendments relate is whether it is reasonable for all memoirs of the secret service to be prohibited unlessthe word "unless" is importantthey are published with Government approvalthat is, with the lawful authority of the Government, as stipulated in clause 1. If clause 1 is agreed unamended, the Government will have the right to prohibit any secret service revelations of which they disapprove, no matter how ancient, trivial or important to democratic debate. On the other hand, the Government will have the right to authorise any revelations that they find convenient. In future, as in the past, a group of Ministers will be able to agree that one memoir may be published because its contents support their interests but suppress another that they find politically embarrassing. That seems an arbitrary power that should not be allowed to the Government of a democracy.

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As the debate continues, it will revolve increasingly around two concepts. One is the belief that it should be possible to mount a defence against the disclosure of classified information with a claim that its publication was justified in the public interest. We shall debate that concept specifically in the third group of amendments. The second argument around which all the other propositions will be built is the contention that before a prosecution can succeed, it must be demonstrated that publication harmed the interests of the state. On Second Reading, the Home Secretary made great play of the test of damage that would be inserted into prosecutions, and the right of juries to decide whether damage had been done. Indeed, a Home Office press release referred to "a public interest defence" although neither the concept nor the words appear in the Bill. In the terms of this, our first debate, it is essential to remember that none of the protections of which the Home Secretary made such play on Second Readingirrespective of whether they are regarded as adequate or inadequateapply to the clause that we are debating or to the revelations by members of the security services or those designated by the Government as being associated with the security services. Clause 1 is comprehensive and arbitrary in the area that it covers. There is no need to demonstrate damage to the national interest. In fact, the fact of disclosureand the fact alone is all that is necessary for conviction, no matter how inconsequential the published information. 1050 The White Paper, with which this exercise began, demonstrates in paragraph 42 exactly how arbitrary arid unreasonable such a ban would be, boldly stating that it should not be necessary for the prosecution to adduce evidence of the likely damage to the operation of the security or intelligence service when information relating to security or intelligence has been disclosed by a member or former member of one of the services. That is the simple assertion that the Government and Home Secretary seem to believe is enough to carry the argument. On the other hand, the Franks committee recommendations of 1972, which the Home Secretary is always saying have been improved upon by the Bill were absolutely explicit on that point. The Franks committee recommended that the harm test should be applied to the security service as to any other category of official secrets. It cannot be necessary or right to make every item connected with securityno matter how loosely connected, no matter how unimportantsubject to that restriction. It is intolerable in a free society that the Government alone should be the sole arbiter of what is covered by this ban and of the occasions when the ban should be lifted. Amendments Nos. 14 and 60 do no more than limit the ban to the publication of information which would be positively damaging. By resisting the amendments, if the Government do soI have no doubtthat they willthe Minister of State will be asserting that he wishes the ban to apply to information that can be published without damage. That is the only logical conclusion that could be drawn from the recommendation to vote against the two amendments. On Second Reading, the Home Secretary made no attempt to justify a blanket prohibition. He merely asserted its necessity. He then went on to list examples of secret service activities which nobody in their right minds would want to see revealed. When cornered, the Home Secretary always argues in that waytaking absurd examples of what might be revealed and implying that those who want a more acceptable system want to reveal everything. The question that must be addressed in this amendment is not whether or not everything the secret service does should be made public, it is whether nothing that the secret service does

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should ever become public but should remain secretimportant or trivial, damaging to the national interest or of help to the national interest, legal or illegal. I shall conclude on that point about illegality. The fact that the ban on secret service information covers illegal as well as legal activities is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the blanket prohibition. On Monday, the Home Secretary told us once again that he had brought the security services into a legal framework. If it operates outside the boundaries which the Home Secretary is so proud to have drawn, it will still be an offence under this Bill for a member of the service to reveal the illegality, and it will still be an offence for a newspaper to print the revelation. When we debated the Security Service Billwhich cannot be separated from what we now debatethe Home Secretary conceded, after some wriggling, that under the provisions of this Bill were I to be told by a member of the Security Service that my telephone was being tapped or that my premises had been burgled, it would be an offence for me to make that information public. I hope that the 1051 Minister of State will confirm today that, were Ito be told by a member of the security services that my telephone had been tapped or my property burgled without proper warrantthat is to say, illegallyit would still be illegal for me to make that information public. The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten) Under those circumstances, the right hon. Gentleman should take his complaint directly to the tribunal that is to be set up under the Security Service Bill. Mr. Hattersley I am always grateful for the Minister of State's advice, but having given it me, perhaps he will now answer my question. I shall put it to him again. If a member of the security services tells me that my telephone is being tapped without warrant and therefore illegally, or that my house has been burgled without warrant and therefore illegally, is it or is it not a criminal offence for me to make that information public? Mr. Patten It would be a criminal offence for the right hon. Gentleman to make that public, and quite rightly so because he has an avenue of redress. He can go to the tribunal set up under the Security Service Bill. Mr. Hattersley I do not want to begin the Committee stage on an acrimonious note, but that reply reveals something not only about the Government, but about the Minister of State. He can apparently say with conviction that if I have been told that I have been the subject of illegal Government action, it is a criminal offence for me to reveal that and that he approves of it being a criminal offence for me to reveal it. Sir Ian Gilmour (Cheshunt and Amersham) Surely, in those circumstances, it would be the right hon. Gentleman's positive duty to reveal such information? Mr. Hattersley

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I certainly believe that, but as I also believe that it is my positive duty to remain within the rules of order, the case that the right hon. Gentleman tempts me to develop is one which I propose to develop in the discussions on the third group of amendments when the public interest criteria is the crucial issue. The idea that the Government might suggestthe Minister of State did suggestthat it is supportable to argue that a man or woman who has been subject to an illegal act by the Government should be sent to prison for making that public, is a view that is inconsistent with the traditions of this country. As I do not want to overstate the case, I shall not tell the Committee those countries in eastern Europe and south America with which it is consistent. Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish) My right hon. Friend obviously knows the legislation, but what about the ordinary citizen who does not know the legislation and who needs to seek advice, as my hon. Friend did on this point from the Minister of State? What is the position if such a person goes around saying that he has discovered that that has happened and asking what he should do about it? Presumably every time that he asks for advice he is committing an offence. That means that every citizen must know that the way to proceed if he hears such information is to go to the tribunal, and surely that is an utter farce. 1052 Mr. Hattersley Yes, and the case gets worse. I shall pursue my hon. Friend's example of an ordinary citizen being told by a member of the security services that his house has been burgled illegally. As I understand it, the Minister of State who has not been tardy in confirming my judgments on the Bill, will say that, if that individual goes to the citizens advice bureau saying, "My house has been burgled illegally, what shall I do about it?", he is committing a criminal offence by telling the person in the citizens advice bureau what has happened. If the individual goes to a solicitor there is, as I understand it, no legal protection and no rule that says that the matter is so privileged that he may discuss it with a solicitor. So if a person goes to his solicitor and says, "I am assured that I have been illegally burgled," or "I have had my telephone tapped illegally, oh solicitor, what am I to do?", that person is committing a criminal offence, and the Minister is defending that proposition. Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Minister of state's extraordinary intervention shows that he has failed to recognise that the commission of an offence is not something between the person who commits the offence and the victim of that offence alone, which may or may not be remedied by appeal to a tribunal, but something that touches society at large, for which the tribunal offers no remedy at all? Mr. Hattersley As the debate progresses, not only today but in the future, for the sake of clarity and intellectual accuracy it will be important to comment, not on the Minister, but on the Bill. The Minister's answers have revealed that the Government misunderstand two matters. First, they do not realise the relationship between the state and the citizen, described by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). Secondly, the Government believe that the state and the Government cannot be distinguished. What the Government believe is right, is right for the state. What is in the public interest is what the Government think is in the public interest and a

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test of harm is what the Government think is harmful. I shall repeatI hope not pompously or pretentiouslythat those views are not consistent with a free society. 5 pm Mr. John Gorst (Hendon, North) As a newcomer to the subject, I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman will answer a point that has puzzled me about his recent exchange with his hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett). Let us suppose that a member of the Security Service approaches the right hon. Gentleman in his capacity as a Member of Parliament and informs him about a case of telephone tapping. If the right hon. Gentleman revealed the matter on the Floor of the House would he, according to his investigations, be subject to prosecution? What would his position be as a Member of Parliament? Mr. Hattersley I am not sure whether I, as a Member of Parliament, revealing the information in the House, would be guilty and subject to criminal prosecution. I know that my constituent, in telling me, in order that I might reveal the information on the Floor of the House, would certainly be subject to criminal prosecution. Having tried valiantly, but failed, to find anyone other than the Minister who supports the authoritarian 1053 nonsense he is about to defend, I shall conclude. It is not inappropriate for me to repeat the point, even though it has been made time and time again. One has only to describe the circumstances in which an innocent person is prosecuted for revealing that the state has operated unlawfully against him or her, to realise how unacceptable the proposition is. Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) Is it not right that if any Security Service officer were to approach a Member of Parliament, that would be a criminal offence under the Bill? That is what many of us find offensive. Has not the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) heard that many Conservative Members have maintained that it is possible for former or present members of the Security Service to raise such matters with their Members of Parliament? Can the right hon. Gentleman identify anywhere in the Bill where that possibility arises in law? Mr. Hattersley The answer, as the hon. Gentleman knows better than me, is that it does not appear. I look forward to supporting his positive and detailed amendments as one way that this arbitrary absurdity can be overcome. I shall certainly support his amendments as will my right hon. and hon. Friends. All we askand we are grateful that the hon, Gentleman asks for itis that a system be provided which avoids the arbitrary nature of the prohibition and enables the state and the courts, which represent the national interest, to distinguish between those matters which it is possible and safe to reveal, and those which it is wrong and dangerous to reveal. I have no strong feelings about how that proper division is obtained. It may beI suspect that we shall hear this time after time in Committeethat the amendments are inadequate in some detail to achieve that purpose. That is not the issue. The issue is the principle and the test of principle. If the Government believe that the principle is right but the application of it is wrong, we shall gladly accept that, in some future debate, the Government will provide a better mechanism of their own. That is the nature of the Committee stage of a Bill.

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We seek to establish in this first debate that it is wholly unacceptable for the Government of the day to be the sole arbiter of what security information should or should not be published and what security information should or should not lead to prosecution. Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay) I beg to draw the House's attention to new clause 6 and amendment No. 67. The issue of the duty of confidentiality is central to the Bill. I shall take the Committee back to the history of the duty of confidentiality. An important judgment was given in the House of Lords some time ago which knocked a major hole in the Government's interpretation of the duty of confidentiality. As I understand it, the duty of confidentiality is straightforward in civil lawit is the duty of a servant to an employer to protect trade secrets. An example would be where an employee of the CocaCola company moved to PepsiCola and took the magic formula with him or her. Under those circumstances, there is a remedy in law for the employer to protect his secrets. The key word in the duty of confidentiality issue is "confidentiality". It assumes that the magic formula is a secret. 1054 Up to the time of the House of Lords judgment, the Government interpreted the duty of confidentiality as a duty of lifelong secrecy. That was rightly rejected by their Lordships. Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington) The hon. Gentleman gave us an analogy involving Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Colaboth of which are best avoided in my experiencebut surely in that case the secret formula would be guarded by patent law. Mr. Allason Indeed, but that is also civil law. It would not be a criminal offence if somebody tried to trade a secret that they had acquired from a former employer. In the case of Peter Wright, it did not matter whether he worked for the Security Service or for British Rail. The principle over which the Government prosecuted him was whether a breach of confidentiality had occurred. The case was defeated because, to be frank, there were no secrets in the Wright book. In Australia the book was examined line by line and no great disclosures were found, although there was a certain amount of new material. However, the plank on which the defence rested was that there was nothing new in the book and that most of the information had been published elsewhere. My amendment and new clause seek to introduce yet another check and balance. When the Security Service Bill was in Committee the Government rejected all the checks and balances proposedincluding judicial review, Committees of Privy Councillors and parliamentary oversight. I seek to persuade the Committee today that my amendment and new clause would provide a check or balance. At the heart of this matter is the sanguine attitude of the Secretary of State and the Minister. In the other place, the Benches have edges so that bishops who have enjoyed heavy lunches are prevented from falling off. I nearly fell off my Bench when I heard the Secretary of State wax lyrical about the post-war record of the Security Service. I wonder who advised him on that. Did the advice come from Home Office officials or from the Security Service? I shall give one or two straightforward facts to illustrate the post-war record of the Security Service. The Committee may be surprised to learn that between 1945 and 1972the period the Secretary of State was talking aboutnot one Soviet spy was arrested in this country on the initiative of the Security Service. During that period, all the famous spiesincluding Fuchs,

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Nunn May, Vassall, the Portland spy, Harry Houghton, Ethel Gee and Gordon Lonsdalewere identified by defectors who arrived not in this country but in the United States and pinpointed those leaks of security in the British establishment. There was, however, one case between 1945 and 1972, and it is trotted out by the Security Service as the classic example of its counter-intelligence prowess. It is the case of William Martin Marshall, who was arrested for passing secrets to a Soviet intelligence officer. How was he caught? The Committee will be interested to know that a Security Service watcher got off a bus at Kingston when going home for lunch one day and saw a Soviet intelligence officer lurking in a doorway. Interested to know why this individual, on whom he had been targeted for surveillance six months earlier, was in Kingston, he hung around. He waited and saw Sergei Kuznetsov meet William Martin Marshall, who was a member of the diplomatic wireless 1055 service and who was subsequently convicted. So between 1945 and 1972, the period about which the Secretary of State waxed so lyrical, the splendid record of the Security Service was that of having caught just one Soviet spyand that by mistake. Mr. Gorst Does my hon. Friend agree that what he has just recounted is presumably the reason why memoirs that reveal that sort of fact would be regarded as harmful to the nation because they would reveal the extent of the inadequacy of our Security Service? Mr. Allason That is an interesting route to followthat if we have a useless Security Service we should keep that a secret because it may well be damaging. I agree entirely, but I want an efficient service. If the Secretary of State takes advice on this matter, he may like to turn his attention to the undeniable fact Mr. Hattersley May I put to the hon. Gentleman the opposite, or perhaps complementary, argument to that which he has offered us? Some of us believe that if a draught of exposure of information were to blow through the Security Service and it became accountable, it might become more efficient. Instead of wasting its time tapping trade unionists' telephones, it might catch some spies another argument in favour of what the hon. Gentleman proposes. Mr. Allason The record in Australia, Canada and the United States shows that in spite of the worst fears about oversight the intelligence communities there accept and live with the new mechanisms, and in Canada the system has been used to the advantage of the Security Service. The report that I mentioned in Committee during discussion of the Security Service Bill is illuminating and instructive to the public and shows the importance of the work of the security service. Some of the details are deleted from the case histories, but three or four case histories from the various branches of the Canadian security service are there, and the report has done a tremendous public relations job for the organisation. That is one of the reasons why I tabled an amendment to that Bill. I come now to the idea of greater efficiency on the part of the Security Service. It is not widely known that there are not just one or two establishments in London but that, at any given time, between eight and 11 large buildings are being used by the service. Is it not extraordinary that a counter-espionage and counter-intelligence organisation should locate its establishment in the

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only geographical region in the United Kingdom that is freely available to Soviet intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover? I am not recommending privatisation of the Security Service, but I certainly recommend moving it out of Londonperhaps even to Torbay. If the Security Service remains in London it will be within a couple of miles of Soviet diplomatic missions and therefore a target. Perhaps that aspect of efficiency should also be considered. 5.15 pm The real substance of my amendment and new clause is to allow Security Service officers and intelligence officers of all sorts to write their memoirs. There is nothing staggering about that the practice has been going on for years. I shall give a few examples from the Security Service. No fewer than two directors-general of the Security 1056 Service have written their memoirs. Sir Percy Sillitoe's memoirs, "Cloak Without Dagger", were written in office time, ghosted by his personal assistant, and published with the consent of the Home Office. Sir Percy Sillitoe retired from the Security Service and went to run a sweet shop in Eastbourne. The book supplemented his income from selling fruit bonbons. Sir Vernon Kell, the first director-general of the Security Service, left a large memoir which his wife subsequently passed to the author, John Bullock, and which was the basis of a book published in 1963 and entitled "MI5". Since then there have been several other books, two of which were written by the Security Service. In the wake of the Klaus Fuchs, Nunn May and Bruno Pontecorvo cases the Security Service decided that it was time to do a little public relations exercise. One of my constituents was authorised to talk to an author, Alan Moorehead who subsequently wrote a book called "The Traitors". It came directly from the files of the Security Service. Another book, "Handbook for Spies" by Alexander Foote, was ghosted by a Security Service officer, so there is nothing new about the Security Service sponsoring or writing books. Memoirs are interesting. Two wartime officers, Derek Tangye and Stephen Watts, wrote memoirs of their work in the Security Service. Neither of them, and certainly not Derek Tangye, sought permission to do so and nothing was done about them. In the postwar period three wartime double agents wrote their memoirs. Lily Sergueir wrote her account of being a double agent during the war, as did Dusko Popov. Neither sought permission and the Government took no action against them. Eddie Chapman, on the other hand, who has had a colourful career as a safe cracker and who parachuted twice into this country, was prosecuted immediately after the war for selling his story to a newspaper. The newspaper, the journalist who received his information and Eddie Chapman himself were prosecuted at the Old Bailey. When the judge had heard the evidence of Eddie Chapman's MI5 case officer, he said that although he had to find Chapman guilty he regarded him as the bravest man that he was ever likely to meet, and fined him a nominal sum. In more recent years there have been two other major contributions to literature on the Security Service. One was authorizedthe memoirs of Lord Rothschild. The other was not, initially, authorised and was an important precedent for my amendment and new clause. It was the case of J. C. Masterman in 1972. He had retained a copy of the wartime history of his XX committee, on which he had served from January 1941 through to the end of the war. At the end of the war, he was commissioned by the director-general of the Security Service to write a detailed account of the work of the XX committee and the double agents that it had run. J. C. Masterman attempted fairly continuously from the 1950s to 1972 to have the book published. In his dotage, and having taught a large proportion of the Cabinet of that time, including the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, he announced that he was definitely going to publish because he had made an agreement with the Yale University Press and, come

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hell or high water, he intended to go ahead with it. On that basis, the Government caved in and came to an arrangement with him which is well worth looking at because it is a fascinating precedent in the matter of copyright. Because 1057 of the bust-up between Masterman and the British Government, the Government imposed Crown copyright 1972 on the book and shared the royalties, as they do to this day, with J. C. Masterman. As for the Peter Wright book, whatever one says about books of this kind, they will continue to be written in future. The only question is whether this country and the security authorities will have any influence over their contents. Peter Wright exempted himself from the strictures of the Official Secrets Acts, not merely by moving abroad but by taking Australian citizenship. So the British taxpayer had to endure the spectacle of the Cabinet Secretary going to Australiaclub classwith a team of lawyers and had to watch every day what was or was not in the British national interest being fought out in an Australian court before an Australian judge with an Australian defendant. There were no surprises about the outcome of that particular issue. I do not seek to defend what Peter Wright did, but I draw the attention of the Committee to the effort that he made in offering to delete any material that the authorities regarded as sensitive. Individuals who have served their country well for many years can be trusted in very large measure not to spill the beans and give away secrets that jeopardise current operations and put people's lives at risk. That really does not happen. I speak for one or two other Back Benchers when I say that when hon. Members have tried to acquaint themselves with the details of the work of the Security Servicenot operational details, but the policy and principles behind the workto he stopped dead in their tracks when told that a person of enormous experience, having served in the Security Service, should not be allowed to come to the House to explain and to answer questions is profoundly offensive not only to hon. Members but to the former member of the Security Service involved. I have described some of the precedents relating to the Security Service. I seek the indulgence of the Committee to turn to a few of the precedents set by the secret intelligence service because that, too, has a rich literary history. Mr. Gorst Does my hon. Friend agree that another consequence of what is now happening is that the more one restricts the availability of something, whether it be alcohol or information, the more one increases its price? If it is necessary to sell information or alcohol to people abroad because it is impossible to sell it at home, I suspect that in both cases the price will go up rather than down and although the supply is restricted it will remain available. Mr. Allason I recognise what my hon. Friend says. This is no new phenomenonit is steeped in time. Nor is it actually a matter of price. Going back to the principle of the duty of confidentiality and its role in the civil law, my hon. Friend will be aware of the case of Anthony Cavendish, who was threatened with civil proceedings under the duty of confidentiality and who, to circumvent that, decided to give away copies of his book because the Treasury Solicitor could take absolutely no action against that unless there were to be an Official Secrets prosecutionwhich, as we all know, is somewhat unlikely. The literary background of the secret intelligence service is worth going into. The first major books written on the secret intelligence service immediately after the first world war were written by Henry Landau. They were 1058 published in America, only one volume being published in this country. Henry Landau was a South African living in America and he started

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the ball rolling. There was very little after his revelations of the Secret Intelligence Service's operations in the first world war until shortly before the second world war, when Sir Compton Mackenzie was prosecuted for revealing various desperately secret details such as the fact that the chief of the secret intelligence service was known by the letter "C". As was pointed out in Committee when the Security Service Bill was being debated, the judge observed that if it was so deadly secret that the chief of the secret intelligence service was known as "C", why had he not changed it to "D" or "E" and had there not been some 20 years for him to do that? The key to the Compton Mackenzie prosecution, however, is the little-known fact that the deputy director-general of the Security Service at that time not only authorised publication of the bookhe was a great friend of Compton Mackenziebut was himself a somewhat vain individual and was terribly flattered by the references to himself. This was part of the reason, I suspect, why the prosecution did not press the case very hard and why Compton Mackenzie, although convicted, was given a very small fine. Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) I may have misunderstood the hon. Gentleman but I hope that he was not calling Compton Mackenzie a vain individual. I knew him very well and he was not vain. Mr. Allason No, I was not suggesting that. The then deputy director-general of the Security Service was a very vain individual and he was terribly flattered by what Compton Mackenzie had written, hence his motive in authorising this particular disclosure and hence the appalling mess that the Government got themselves into at the time. Mr. Dalyell The hon. Gentleman must be a little careful in going into this particular example because Compton Mackenzie used to hold court in his house in Drummond place in Edinburgh and told, at some length, all who would listen that he felt that he was being got at on personal grounds, and that much of the case was connected with issues of personality rather than with the prosecution of the law. Mr. Allason That may be so. The fact remains that he was convicted and fined. Since the second world war there has been a rich history of literary endeavour by former secret intelligence service officers. I mention in passing Hugh Trevor Roper, Professor A. J. Ayer, Graham Greene and Malcolm Muggeridge. I do not believe that any of those people ever sought permission to write about their experience in the secret intelligence service. Two others wrote about their experiencesPhilip Johns and Professor R. V. Jones. Professor Jones was given clearance to write his contribution. Perhaps the most remarkable oneand this has echoes of Peter Wrightis the experience of Leslie Nicholson. He applied to his chief, when he discovered that his wife was dying of cancer, for financial support in order to hospitalise her in America. The chief at that time declined his application and said, in effect, "The best that we can do is to commute your pension"a remark which will have a familiar ring to hon.

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1059 Membersso his pension was commuted and the book was published under the pseudonym John Whitwell. That book was not prosecuted in 1967 because the Government had advance warning that another senior British secret intelligence service officerthe former head of station in Washington, H. A. R. Philbywas about to put pen to paper with "My Silent War". That is part of MI6's experience. In short, there is nothing new about intelligence officers writing their memoirs, and I believe I am right in saying that at the launch party of "The UltraSecret" by Fred Winterbotham, almost the entire membership of the D-Notice committee was there. They may have looked glum, but they were there. 5.30 pm The issue of intelligence officers writing books will not go away. It will be with us for a long time and if the Secretary of State believes that people can be deterred from writing legitimately about their experiences by threats of prosecution, I do not believe that to be the case. Indeed, my understanding of the vibes in the publishing business is that publishers are anxious to get their authors prosecuted because that seems to be one way to assure a world-wide best seller. In America, a body known as the publications review board has worked extremely well. Most former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency have written their memoirs. The sky has not fallen in on north America in consequence. Recently, the Comte de Marenches, who was the head of the French secret intelligence service, wrote his book and, so far as I know, the sky has not fallen in on Paris. It is a legitimate exercise. I would take the argument a step further. Is it not worth while, as we have public servants who develop considerable talents in their subjects and gain great experience, for the taxpayer and the public to gain some of that experience? After all, they have subsidised those people for many years. The best example of that must be the recent book "Lust for Knowledge" written by Mr. Roosevelt, who spent about 30 years in the middle east as a CIA officer, who has gained a great wealth of experience and who has a particular perception of events in the Lebanon. The world is a richer place for his book. There are no damaging disclosures in it. Apart from the integrity of the individual, he had a publications review board to which to submit his manuscript. There are a few minor interesting details, such as the fact that he is the third CIA chief of station in London successfully to write his memoirs. But apart from those details, there is nothing of operational significance and nothing to put lives at risk. In my view, the United States was wise to take advantage of that system. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State discussed the background to the post-war history of the Security Service, there was one case on everybody's lips. We resisted going into that case because of the passage of time. But it is a key to what is before us today because only one document has ever been written officially and placed on the public record by the Security Service. It is a document which can be used as a sort of acid test for the integrity of the Security Service. I refer to the White Paper on the Burgess and Maclean defections. I will not go into the details of the problems that were involved in that case, but the official version said 1060 basically that Burgess and Maclean disappeared and were not noticed missing until a Monday morning. The reality is that Burgess was spotted on a Saturday night leaving this country and that an immigration officer, having seen Burgess get on the SS Falaise, telephoned Leconfield House, the headquarters of the Security Service, where a conference was then under way on the fifth floor at which the case officers involved were discussing how they would develop the interrogation of Maclean on the Monday morning. When the telephone call was received, a senior officer was dispatched to go home, collect his passport, go to the airport and fly to France, and intercept Burgess as he got off the ship. The

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ship was not due to dock until midday, so there was every opportunity to stop Burgess in his tracks. The senior officer went home, got his passport went to the airport, realised that his passport was out of date and went back to Security Service headquarters. Frantic telephone calls were made to try to revalidate the passportand we know what happened to Burgess and Maclean. I relate that story not to pour scorn on the Security Service. Many of us have had small problems with our passports and with validating documents and so on. The significance of the story is that the Burgess and Maclean White Paper is one of the most disgraceful documents ever to have been put on the public record, and it was penned from start to finish by the Security Service. It contains no fewer than 17 direct errors of fact. Hon. Members will not be surprised to learn that the officer who went home and whose passport was in a mess was subsequently made the head of MI5, went on to head another organisation and later received a knighthood. Mr. Eric S. Heifer (Liverpool, Walton) The hon. Gentleman has a great deal of information which he could not have come by out of the blue. God did not send a message to him. He obviously spoke to certain people. So detailed is his information that the people with whom he spoke must have been near to or in, or surrounded by people involved in, the Security Service. That is fine. But is he aware that each one of those peoplebecause the information might be considered damaging, certainly to the Security Servicecould find themselves under the Bill being prosecuted and then perhaps in prison? Indeed, I am not certain that the hon. Gentleman is not in that position himself. I fear that under the Bill, by disclosing such matters in this Chamber, he could find himself in real difficulty. I am fascinated by his speech. It is marvellous stuff. I have read his books and I have always thought that he had close connections with certain people. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with that. Mr. Allason I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman does not think anything is wrong and I do not want to feed his paranoia. An enormous amount of information is available from public sources. I find it somewhat distressing, as an amateur historian who has spent some years researching these mattersmuch of it from open sources and a lot of it abroadthat the hon. Gentleman should have made that sort of intervention. The fact that one has taken trouble to research a subject should not be interpreted as sinister. I shall not make the argument for ignorance, but Mr. Heffer It is the hon. Gentleman who is suffering from paranoia. 1061 Mr. Allason I am not paranoid. I believe that there is too much secrecy in this country. Only last week I received a letter from the Ministry of Defence informing me of the factas yet undisclosed that two members of the armed services had defected from this country. The letter said that further details of the cases of Major Richard Squires and Robert Patchett could not be disclosed for reasons of confidentiality, although they are now listed as defectors. I despair of the attitude of secrecy in this country. There is one acid test of the integrity of a security or intelligence service which I do not believe that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made clear. From 1945 to 1972 the United

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Kingdom did not receive any defectors. The acid test of the integrity of a security service is that if we do not receive Soviet defectors there is something wrong with the system. Thereafter we received Oleg Lyalin. Members of this Committee, I am sure, will be reassured to know that the ability to run a successful case, such as the defection of Oleg Gordievsky, is an indication that all is wellit could be a lot betterwithin the security and intelligence community. My amendment and new clause will end the practice of the D notice committee of restricting the rights of authors, which in my experience is long overdue. For anyone who says that the D notice committee protects security, I will end with the following anecdote. Peter Laurie, who wrote a book entitled "Beneath the City Streets", submitted his book to the D notice committee in the hope that material that jeopardised security would be deleted. The manuscript, however was returned to him without any changes. When he asked why no changes had been recommended, it was explained to him that to point out to a journalist where the breaches of security lay would itself be a breach of security. Peter Laurie is no off-the-wall hack or reptile. He is a distinguished journalist who became an editor of several magazines, including a computer magazine. That surely makes the case for a publications review board. Such a system works everywhere else in the world and it is high time that we had one in this country. (...) ********************************************************************** DEFENCE HC Deb 15 February 1989 vol 147 cc358-99 Mr. Allason The hon. Gentleman will be amused to know that the first three heads of the NKVD, the MVD and the KGB all came to a sticky end. They were all executed for exactly the same reasonthat they were members of the British intelligence service. Taking up the hon. Gentleman's point about Sir Roger Hollis, I was not making an accusation, and I apologise if that was not clear. I was making the specific point that people within the intelligence community knew for an absolute fact that there was Soviet penetration of the Security Service in 1963. That caused considerable anxiety when the House was assured that the evidence of Soviet penetration could be explained by Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby and Guy Burgess. That was blatantly untrue because the proof related to 1963, not prior to 1945. ********************************************************************** Security Service Bill HL Deb 21 March 1989 vol 505 cc581-648 581

Lord Thorneycroft While there are differences which may divide us in this debateand there are manyI believe that we are united in our desire to see a strong security service. As to the methods, this is a sufficiently complicated matter to warrant good men holding different views about it. There were marked differences between the solution given by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, and the solution given by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. In another place the Opposition were arguing for a supervisory service, but of an utterly different sort to that proposed either by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, or the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan. Indeed, the solution argued here was much condemned by Mr. Roy Hattersley when speaking in the other place.

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The part of the Bill that we are now dealing with relates to the operations of the security service. It is the heart of the Bill; Clauses 1 and 2. Later on we come to other matterswhether warrants are issued rightly; commissioners dealing with whether telephones have been tapped or whether the wrong house has been burgled; tribunals, and so on. There are amendments covering all those suggestions. However, this part of the Bill is far more important and goes to the very root of what the security service is about. The security service is about the kind of war that is being fought todaythe secret war. Secrecy is the name of the game. Yesterday two police officers died on a road in Ireland through a lack of secrecy. Secrecy is the one central point that has to be safeguarded. It is the job of the security service to search and find out where these dangers arise and how this secrecy can possibly be secured. I believe that we have to consider here what it would have been like in the security service if the committee, or one of them, had actually existed; what difference would it have made? Philby would have still have been here; I believe that Maclean would not have been sacked. I knew Guy Burgess very well. When I was a young man he was with the BBC. He was employed to collect young men from both parties in Parliament to do the programme called "A Week in Westminster". He knew everyone very well. Guy Burgess would certainly have still been there and he would probably have been secretary to the committee. He was considered ideal in that particular world. Lord Hutchinson of Lullington I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Anyone who knew Guy Burgess knew that he was a drunk. The first thing that anyone would have done would have been to go to the commitee and say "This is my suspicion and a lot of other people have the same suspicion. Can you find out whether that suspicion is justified or not?" All that could have been done that could not be done in the other place or anywhere else because the answer is always, "No reply to matters of security". (...) Lord Campbell of Croy (...)However that is a separate subject from the one that we are discussing in the amendment. I venture to offer an opinion for one main reason. I happened to be involved in the invention of the original concept of the Conference of Privy Counsellors. It was called a conference then. In 1954 the first such conference was brought into existence to deal with the situation arising from the sudden appearance in Moscow of Burgess and Maclean who had disappeared three years earlier. I was also made the secretary of that conference in addition to the job I was doing. I therefore drafted the report. At the time I was seconded from the Foreign Office for two years to be private secretary to the Secretary of the Cabinet, then Sir Norman Brook, later Lord Normanbrook. Incidentally, I was succeeded in that position in 1956 by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Tanworth, to whom I handed over. (...)I am sure that many noble Lords will remember, particularly if they were in the other place at the time, that in 1954 there was great concern about the appearance of Burgess and Maclean in Moscow. There were demands that there should be an investigation, but no one could think what was the appropriate means. Three or more weeks passed while that went on. An internal inquiry would clearly not be good enough because it would be suspected of producing a whitewash. However, very secret 620 matters had to be investigated. Therefore the notion of a group of Privy Counsellors who had themselves been in positions in government, from both the government of the day and the opposition, was adopted. They had all sworn the Privy Counsellors' oath. That first conference was called the Privy Counsellors' Conference on Security. It might be of interest to remind noble Lords that it consisted of seven persons including the Lord Chancellor of the day, Lord Kilmuir, formerly Sir David Maxwell Fyfe who was in the Chair. There were:

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Lord Jowitt, a former Lord Chancellor; Lord Morrison, formerly Herbert Morrison who had been the Foreign Secretary at the time when Burgess and Maclean disappeared; Major Gwilym Lloyd George, later Viscount Tenby, who was then Home Secretary; Mr George Strauss, later Lord Strauss; and Sir Edward Bridges who was already a Privy Counsellor, head of the Civil Service and head of the Treasury. As secretary, I was bound by the Official Secrets Act as a Foreign Office official. **********************************************************************

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