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the Russians have forged documents for their own purposes in propaganda warfare. It may be that the Russian Government have now changed their tune, but the fact that so many documents have been produced will make it very difficult to determine which are genuine and which are forgeries.Mr. Rooker : Like one or two other hon. Members, I listened to the chief investigators of the Canadian, Australian and American Governments at the conference in London at the end of last year. Those people, who have been at the receiving end of evidence supplied by the Soviet authorities, had never--not once--in the course of their inquiries come across a forged or faked document. All the documents having been tested rigorously in every possible way, there was not a single example of the Russian authorities' having put forged documents up for consideration.
Mr. Bennett : That is, so far as they could tell. We know that there are Russian forgeries.
Mr. Cormack : Does one not have just a few questions to ask when one considers the attitude that, until very recently, the Russians adopted to the Katyn massacre?
Mr. Bennett : My hon. Friend makes a very valid point. There have been many years of misrepresentation about that massacre. Only recently have we been getting the truth about what happened in that Polish wood in 1940.
I want to turn now to the question of identification. I pray in aid the very good debate in another place on 4 December. In that debate, virtually the whole of judicial opinion and the balance of argument was opposed to the introduction of legislation. In column 627 of the Official Report, Lord Walston is reported as having said : "However, against that, there are other arguments. Surely it is"-- Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean) : Order. It is not in order for a Member to quote the Official Report of anyone but a Minister in another place. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be able to paraphrase the noble Lord's remarks.
Mr. Bennett : I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As a fairly new Member, I was unaware of that rule. I shall summarise the noble Lord's remarks. He said that, after 50 years, it must be very difficult for any witness to bring forward, from the back of his memory, proper identification of people who in that 50 years will have changed, possibly beyond recognition. That point must be borne in mind when we consider what trials will take place in this country.
I come now to the question of defence. In the debate to which I have just referred, Lord Hailsham made very clear the problems that the defence will face in trying to bring forward evidence. The defendant will be denied the opportunity to go to the USSR or to the Baltic states, to interview people, to consult the official records, to find the evidence. All these facilities will be available to the prosecuting authorities, but will be denied to the defence, which will therefore be placed in a very difficult position. That matter has not been taken properly into account in considering whether these people will get a proper trial.
Mr. Archer : The hon. Gentleman has made the very definite assertion that the defence will not be able to go to
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the Soviet Union and make these searches. Would he like to give a reason for saying so? what he says is certainly contrary to the views stated by Hetherington-Chalmers.Mr. Bennett : I refer the right hon. and learned Gentleman to the speech of Lord Hailsham--column 631 of the House of Lords Official Report. I am not allowed to quote the noble Lord's remarks, but suffice it to say that he demolished to his own satisfaction--and, as a former Lord Chancellor, he is worth listening to--the argument that it would be possible for the defendant in such a trial to obtain the evidence that would be available to the prosecution.
Mr. William Powell (Corby) : I think that we may assume that any defendant would be on legal aid. Can my hon. Friend confirm that, to enable a legally aided defendant to make inquiries of the sort to which he is referring, it would be necessary not only to change the regulations on legal aid but almost certainly to introduce primary legislation? There is no such power at the moment.
Mr. Bennett : I am afraid that, as I am not a lawyer, I am not able to confirm or deny what my hon. Friend says. I believe that he is a lawyer, and I suspect that he would not have asked the question if he had not known the answer already.
On the question of what would happen should a trial take place, concern has already been expressed about the impact that it would have on public opinion. I believe that it would not be in the interests of British justice or of the good name of our courts if three elderly men were put on trial-- with all the difficulties that they would have in producing evidence, the problems of identification, the time that had elapsed, and the cost of the prosecution. I do not believe that the British public would feel that that was a good use of judicial resources or of the time of the police. It would bring the courts into disrepute.
I want to finish with two quotes. One is from remarks of Lord Shawcross, who has already been quoted in this debate. I refer not to his letter in The Times of last Saturday but to his letter to The Times of 29 July 1989 :
"I cannot believe that a revival of all these sad and terrible matters by sensational trials of a small handful of aged men, which will take years to conduct and which will start with an assumption of guilt, will help to promote understanding and friendship between the different peoples of the world, will help to eliminate the evil of anti-Semitism or--still less-- enhance the respect for British justice."
Lord Shawcross was not only Attorney-General in the Labour Government of 1945-50 but also chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. We ought to remember also the words of Sir Winston Churchill when, as Mr. Churchill, in a speech in Zurich on 19 September 1946, he said :
"There must be an end to retribution. We must turn our backs upon the horrors of the past, and we must look to the future." The men at whom this legislation is directed are near to death. I suggest that we leave it to God to deal with them.
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Mr. Ted Leadbitter (Hartlepool) : This is our second time round the course of the debate on alleged war crimes. In December 1989, the House gave its response to the Hetherington-Chalmers report, and the Home Secretary has now come to the House with a Bill that is not retrospective. I am surprised at the number of hon.
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Members who have sought to defend preconceived notions about its being wrong that this Bill should be retrospective. The title of the Bill exposes the fallacy of their case. In December, I dealt with two aspects of alleged war crimes--morality and retrospectivity--and the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) left the Chamber, as, indeed, he is now doing. I see that he is returning. That is kind of him. He will not learn anything original, but I hope that he will realise that I am trying to be objective about this subject, as he was.An interesting thing about this debate is that there is right in all the arguments. Hon. Members have spoken with sincerity. In December, I said that we should put emotion and feelings of that kind behind us, and that we should not seek retribution. I draw a comparison between the judgments that we make when we are young and those that we make when we are older, with the benefit of experience. There should be no unreasonable criticism of any right hon. or hon. Member's contribution to this debate--certainly not that of the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, whose work in Europe and in this House have been outstanding.
Mr. Beaumont-Dark : How can one put emotion and retribution behind one in the case of crimes that are unique in their enormity? Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that we should put aside emotion and ignore the fact that millions of people died in gas ovens, or were shot and thrown into pits at Minsk in Russia, and in other places? If we are not concerned with retribution and with the emotion that those evil crimes arouse, why are we having this debate? Either we are introducing a unique measure to deal with unique crimes, or we are not.
Mr. Leadbitter : The hon. Gentleman makes a legitimate point. I am not suggesting that emotion and anger do not exist, but that they should be put aside in making judgments on securing a fair trial. That objective will not be achieved if anger and emotion, rather than reason, lie behind the creation of the legislation. Reason must predominate, and that is the test.
I am sure that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Beaumont- Dark) shares the beliefs of most right hon. and hon. Members who visited, and certainly of anyone who experienced, Belsen, who witnessed the dreadful consequences of the invasion at Dieppe, who fought in the north African campaigns and in Italy, or who remembers the dreadful outcome of the Salerno affair. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman shares the views of those who saw what Dunkirk really meant and the feelings of us all when VE day arrived. Yes, they all raised emotions, because we were fighting a war not for territory but for freedom and liberty.
As to the time scale, is there any example in law of a time scale on criminality? There is not. We must set that aspect aside, because if we can establish criminality, there is no justification for attaching a time scale to it. In our debate last December, I said that I was sorry that Sir Anthony Blunt had been exposed only because the Government should have dealt with him earlier and not covered him up for so long. The courts will take the defendant's age into account in any trial, so it is not for this House to decide a time scale on criminality. The Bill makes it clear that it is not retrospective at all. The full title states that its purpose is to
"confer jurisdiction on United Kingdom courts in respect of certain grave violations of the laws and customs of war".
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Anyone who has given service to this country knows that in the 19th century and in the early part of the 20th century-- particularly following the first world war--a series of conventions and treaties was formulated, setting out specific customs and laws of war, to which we were signatories. In addition, the European convention on human rights makes it clear that no one can be charged with a criminal offence that was not an offence at the time that it was committed--excepting that article 7.2 of the convention makes it clear that a person shall be tried and punished for offences that existed in accordance with international law. We are also a signatory to that article.In case any doubt remains on the question of retrospectivity, I quote that article :
"This Article shall not prejudice the trial and punishment of any person for any act or omission which for the time when it was committed, was a criminal offence according to the general principles of law recognised by civilised nations."
The Hetherington report shows that, there is a special distinction to be drawn between that and the conventional caveat of non-criminality, where an offence did not occur in law when it was committed. Article 7.2 allows nations later to take jurisdiction over acts which, at the time of their commission, were regarded already as being criminal by international standards.
It has been established that, in accordance with the laws and customs of war to which we have been signatories for more than 100 years, and in accordance with the European convention on human rights, to which we are also a signatory, the Bill will merely put in place a provision that is already accepted in international jurisprudence. The question arises why it is necessary to establish new paraphernalia to pursue just a few war criminals. Since when did this House decide to enact any law on the basis of the possible number of convictions that it would allow? Since when did any Minister say, "We shall pass a law to make it an offence to do so and so, but not if someone argues that only two or three people might commit that offence"? In terms of time scale, international jurisprudence, existing law, the customs of war, and the numerical justification for law- making, the Home Secretary appears to have produced a wise, short and reasonable Bill that has regard to the argument made by those seeking such legislation--that they want action to be taken only in cases where there is evidence of a war crime.
I concluded my contribution to last December's debate by saying that it is not the business of this House to anticipate the action of the courts. Our function is to fulfil the legislative requirement that will allow the courts to function. I would not be too worried if the courts decided not to imprison or pursue a war criminal for reasons of age. I would be happy to see the mere exposure of such a person.
Hon. Members have been talking about the future. Since the last war we have been living with a fallacy--that we have had peace in Europe for 40 years because of the atom bomb. We have been lulled into thinking that there will be no more wars. Some people say that the time has come when we do not need the atom bomb. They say that we are more civilised and that, because of the new feelings and drives towards unity, co-operation and harmonisation in Europe--as the hon. Member for Old Bexley and
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Sidcup said--there is unlikely to be another war. How foolish. There have been more wars in the world since the second world war than at any time before it.It is a sickening experience to witness international bodies such as the United Nations standing aside and all the paraphernalia of conventions being put aside for political reasons--expediencey and aquiescence--while murder has taken place in the rest of the world. Who lifted a finger to help Cambodia and to stop that happening again? Who worried too much about Vietnam? Who is worried about the misery in the Philippines? Some states, for political reasons, will not even provide aid to the thousands of hungry and pathetic women and children in Ethiopia. Who says that it will not happen again? Our legislation must provide for the future. I agree with the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup that we must look to the future. One cannot be certain of getting rid of the horrifying consequences of criminality, torture, murder and genocide if those who are prepared to carry out such acts know that Great Britain will be a haven for them. We must make it abundantly clear, in the Bill, that we respond to the growing international library of jurisprudence and to all the good sense in the laws and customs of war. We must make it clear that we are not just being retrospective but that our legislation is responding to conventions and treaties. We must ensure that no crime committed against international jurisprudence can escape justice by default in Britain.
In 50 years' time, people may say that it was a good thing that Britain woke up and got into line with America, Australia, Germany and even East Germany. Those countries have put into their legislation the provisions that we are seeking in the Bill. The likelihood is that there will be another maniac. There are always the Idi Amins of this world. There is the beast in Iraq, who is not fit to walk in a pigsty, but is often drinking cocktails with other politicians. We should not be concerned about political expediency while the people whom we represent are at risk. Therefore, we must put something that our children will say is wise into our legislation.
If another dictator arises, if the jackboot is allowed to march again, and if there are other concentration camps with other kinds of brutality, the people who perpetrate such crimes should know that they will not get away with using Britain as a haven.
At present we are prepared to take a British subject to court, if the evidence shows that he committed a war crime, but not an alien, who has perhaps got British nationality by questionable means--as some of the evidence shows--and who might live in the same street. We are prepared to take to court the person who is our true kith and kin but not the other, an alien who has managed to become a naturalised British citizen. The treatment of those two people cannot be fair. More than three people may be convicted because of the Bill and, whatever their age, if they are found to have falsified information to get British naturalisation papers they should be sent back whence they came.
We are trying to comply with good sense and good reason in international law. The war is still very much on our minds and if we cannot understand war and its consequences we will never fully understand peace. Our language is built on opposites to enable us to understand the meaning of the words that we use--such as war and peace, night and day, long and short. Those words have a meaning only if they have an opposite. The consequences
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of war are horrific. They are more dangerous today than before the second world war, as the whole world could now be obliterated without much effort--it needs only one maniac.If we can understand war, we shall have a better understanding of how we can promote peace. As a part of that process we must make it abundantly clear that people who brutalise others or commit offences against human dignity will be prosecuted.
7.28 pm
Mr. William Powell (Corby) : One week before I was born, the then Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs made a statement to the House to the effect that it would no longer be Government policy to seek the extradition of people on British soil or in British-occupied territories for trial here or in other countries. At the time he had all-party support for that. It was decided that we should, to use Sir Winston Churchill's words, draw the sponge over war crimes trials. That was a deliberate, calculated and almost universally approved decision.
The Under-Secretary of State at the time was the Member of Parliament for Norfolk, South. He is now Lord Mayhew. He made a speech about this in the other place when the matter was debated in December. He made it plain that he was aware at the time that thousands of people, possibly tens of thousands of people, who had come to this country from Yugoslavia and all over eastern Europe had not been adequately screened and that a deliberate decision had been made not to investigate and screen them further but to draw the sponge over them.
For the next 41 years, that policy stood : that people who had come unscreened to this country would not be investigated and that all those old matters would not be reopened. We have to ask ourselves in this debate, as in the earlier debate, whether that decision should be revoked. Lord Mayhew said that that should be done only if the 1948 decision were grossly wrong.
We have to ask ourselves a fundamental political question : should we reopen what was deliberately closed in 1948? I approach that question with the same degree of doubt as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) approached it in his speech. There are many arguments on both sides of the question. We should be well advised to pay attention to what is said on both sides. I have read many times every word that was said in the debates in the other place and in this place, and I have come to the view that we should not reopen the decision that was made in July 1948. Are the circumstances surrounding that decision so grossly wrong as to justify us, all these decades later, changing our minds? I do not believe that they are.
I have the honour and privilege to represent many hundreds of people who were born behind what used to be called the iron curtain, rapidly disappearing. The largest number come from Latvia, a country forgotten for decades but now re-emerging in newspapers and on television and radio. I know many of the people who came to this country from Latvia in the years immediately after the second world war. Some of them made their way on foot from Latvia across northern Europe, from the Baltic across the Carpathians and by way of Feluccas through the Greek
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islands to north Africa where they joined Her Majesty's forces in the Eighth Army and fought with distinction with the British forces in both north Africa and Italy.Others had even more extraordinary experiences. They became slaves--there is no other description for it--for the Nazis. In due course, they fell into allied and British hands. Awful things were done in those years. No hon. Member, or anyone who lives in Europe, can forget what happened. The Latvians feel threatened by some of the publicity that is swirling around this matter.
Mr. Powell : My hon. Friend asks why. The popular press in particular has identified groups and individuals as people who were involved in war crimes. However, there is no evidence for that. Not one of those people is named in the report. However, Latvians are undoubtedly being identified as having been involved in war crimes. One of my constituents has been so identified, but I understand that his name does not appear in the report.
Mr. Allason : Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Powell : No. I want my hon. Friend to listen for just a moment.
People who have made an important contribution to this country since the second world war feel that they are threatened. That may seem irrational. However, certain immigrants feel threatened by the publicity that is swirling around them. We know that is true of the Bangladeshis and the Jews --
Mr. Allason : Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Powell : My hon. Friend must please contain himself. All being well, he will have an opportunity to make a contribution in his own way. I am surprised that he has adopted such an attitude. He was the Conservative party's parliamentary candidate for part of my constituency in the 1979 general election. He is as aware as I am of the Latvian community in the constituency.
I have a duty to draw the attention of the House to the fact that hundreds of my constituents have said to me again and again that the ugly, slanderous reports that have appeared in the newspapers in this country are deeply offensive to them.
Mr. Allason : Then they should sue for libel.
Mr. Powell : My hon. Friend knows that that is an utterly unworthy answer. These people are of modest means and outlook. They do not have the resources to take on the giants of Fleet street who are prepared to say almost anything to sell newspapers.
I have a duty on behalf of my constituents to say that some of the publicity has been offensive and wrong and without any foundation. Therefore, the atmosphere in which future trials may take place will not be calm and deliberate. Sensationalism will take its place. I spent some years appearing before British juries--with only, I have to confess, modest success. I do not doubt, though, the ability of an English jury--I use that description deliberately, in deference to my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Sir J. Stokes)--to reach a fair result. If the Bill becomes law, what worries me is that, if old men are brought to court, they may be acquitted because the evidence to convict them will not hold up in court. What could be a greater travesty of
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British justice than for people who may have been involved in the early 1940s in unspeakable crimes to be brought before English courts and then acquitted because of the depressing quality of the evidence?I respect what the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) had to say. He spoke with conviction and with a flavour that did not only him but also his family justice. Nevertheless, he knows, as I know, that when people give evidence in court they can be utterly certain about the identification that they make ; nothing can shake their conviction about the accuracy of their memory, but they are, nevertheless, wrong.
The House is normally concerned with the dangers of evidence about identification. This matter is normally discussed in that context. A witness who is correct is better than any number of witnesses who are incorrect, but no hon. Member has the right to forget, just because we are discussing unspeakable and unforgettable past crimes, the real dangers that arise when witnesses appear to be certain, are convinced that they are right but nevertheless are wrong.
Mr. Carlile : As he would expect, I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the dangers of acting on identification evidence alone. However, does he not accept that in most of the cases which are likely to be brought before the courts there will be plenty of documentary evidence in the archives to show that the people charged were present and participated in the actions in which they are alleged to have taken part? Does he agree, therefore, that there is likely to be very little issue about identification in those cases?
Mr. Powell : Most interventions in the House are not very helpful, but the hon. and learned Gentleman has brought me to my next point. His intervention enables me to say that I accept that the evidence likely to be placed before the courts is unlikely to be confined to the evidence of identification.
That question was addressed directly in a letter that appeared in The Times last Saturday. Below the letter by Lord Shawcross, which has already been mentioned and which was definitive in its terms, was a letter from Sir Frederick Lawton. The hon. and learned Gentleman knows as well as I do that there has been no more distinguished judge in criminal cases than Lord Justice Lawton. He identified the difficulties that would face a judge in summing up fairly so as to give a jury an accurate and fair opportunity of assessing the quality of the evidence before it. What Sir Frederick Lawton had to say should not be brushed aside as of no consequence, as clearly judges would have to face a real difficulty in those circumstances. I hope that the House will not overlook that dimension, which so far has not received much attention.
The speech in the other place which I consider particularly important was made by the Lord Bishop of St. Albans. He spoke, as a bishop and a Churchman with experience of Israel, having taught at the Hebrew university, of his reactions to the proposals before the House. Having concluded that it would be wrong to proceed, as did virtually everyone in the other place--not only the lawyers, but virtually everyone--he then relied upon something which is of personal importance to me, and, I imagine, to a number of right hon. and hon.
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Members. In due course we will all face the ultimate judge of all our actions. It may well be that our criminal justice system will be imperfect for those people who survive and those who did not and for the 42 years between a decision to stop prosecutions and a decision that we may be making to reopen this can of worms. Nevertheless, we will all have to face the ultimate day of judgment, and that judgment will be a great deal more terrible than we earthly men can inflict on their fellow human beings.7.43 pm
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : I should like to re-focus on what the Bill is all about. Like the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile), I declare a personal interest. My father came to Britain as a war refugee in 1940 from his native Holland. In 1945 he returned to Amsterdam to trace his family. Hon. Members can imagine his hurt when he found that, of the descendants of his grandparents and their families, no fewer than 36 men, women and children were torn from their homes, loaded on to trains and transported to the east, never to return.
However, one cousin managed to survive and his case is relevant to the debate. He was two years old and his mother was expecting another child. Mother and child were afflicted by an ailment which took them into hospital where the baby was born. The Germans came for all three. One nurse, on being asked for the little boy, was quick-witted enough to hand over the corpse of another young boy, thus saving my cousin's life. The little boy spent the rest of the war with the nurse's family who were woodcutters in the Dutch countryside, and survived to become an architect and the father of a young family. During my lifetime I have been conscious of my father's great hurt, which he took to his grave. Hon. Members can imagine the shame which I felt when it recently became clear that some of those murderers have long found sanctuary in Britain, free from prosecution because they were not British when they committed the crime.
The survivors, their families and the world look to Britain as a country where justice prevails. It would be to our shame if the situation that we are discussing today were to continue.
The House is being asked to allow those people to be subject to British justice in the same way as all other British residents. Through the Bill we shall ensure that our jurisdiction covers their cases. I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to vote for the Bill, uphold Britain's reputation and let justice be done.
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Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South) : I listened with some interest to the words of the hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Powell) who spoke about the Latvians. There are not many Latvians in my constituency, as far as I know, but there are a considerable number of Ukrainians, who came over after the war to work in the coal mines in south Lancashire. Their land was also overrun during the second world war. Allegations have been made against Ukrainian prison guards and some cases have been proved in countries throughout Europe. However, that does not mean that the Ukrainians in my constituency say to me that there should not be justice for the sins of the past ; on the contrary. I took the trouble to find out as I knew that this debate was forthcoming.
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I declare an interest as a practising barrister, and like any lawyer I have looked at the Bill, questioned the fact that it is retrospective and wondered whether there is a better way. I have also looked at the justice that lies behind the Bill.One can have reservations, and I shall come to those in a moment, but the real question is what is just, not purely in English terms, but in European terms and in terms of humanity. What are we talking about? Relatives of mine were among the first soldiers into Belsen and other concentration camps. The scenes they described to me years later have left me cold ever since. The concept that women and children could be squeezed into a cattle truck, transported across Europe without food and sanitation, bundled out, stripped off and gassed to death is abhorrent. Surely anybody who participated in that bestiality needs to be brought to justice.
My predecessor but one, Lord Shawcross, has changed his view since 1948 when he prosecuted the Nuremberg trials. I say openly that he is wrong. What was a crime in the 1940s is still a crime today. Time does not diminish criminality. Perhaps it is a slur upon us that people have not been brought to justice through the passage of time. Perhaps that is where we were wrong and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter) said, perhaps the time has come for us to bring ourselves into line with other nations and other systems. That is not a large step to take, but it is a proper one. I said earlier that I have two reservations. First, I am concerned about identification evidence. The history of our legal system has taught us time and again that identification is a treacherous area ; mistakes have been made. We all know that a month after an event someone can make a mistaken identification, and one suspects that 50 years later there will be real and grave risks. I understand that up to 75 cases may come before the courts, but identification may not be the major criterion.
When identification is at issue in a trial we should be careful how it is carried out. We should perhaps give some thought to instituting a system-- it may serve us later in cases of another nature--that ensures that we are extremely careful in the identification process. It could be the subject of a preliminary voir dire before the main trial begins. The majority of cases are well documented, so I suspect that identification will not be a problem.
I hope that the Bill will get on to the statute book, because criminality and bestiality are not confined to between 1939 and 1945. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool said only too ably, it exists in the far east, in the middle east and throughout the world. Perhaps one day tyrants will learn that cruelty does not pay because the rest of the family of nations is only too ready to bring them to justice.
The second question raised in my mind is that as we look at the changing face of Europe--politically, it has changed in the past 12 months--we should begin to consider our extradition treaties with other European countries. One of the problems with war criminals has been that we have not had extradition treaties with certain countries. Thus "refugees"--escapees would probably be a better way of describing them--have been able to avoid justice. They were able to lie and cheat their way into not only Britain but other countries. We should consider the extradition treaties that we have, or do not have, with
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countries that we called part of the eastern bloc, because I suspect that before too long they will be part of the European bloc. I said that I would not speak for long because the issue is extremely simple. Either one believes in justice and that it is timeless or one does not. I believe in justice and that it is timeless and that the Bill should receive the support of the House. 7.53 pmMr. David Sumberg (Bury, South) : If there was one remarkable feature of last December's debate on the Hetherington report, which I remind the House concluded with an overwhelming majority in favour of legislation along the lines of the Bill, it was that hon. Members on both sides of the argument drew on their personal experiences. I shall never forget the speech of the hon. Member for
Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding), in which she recalled the experiences of her late father, Ness Edwards, or the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile), whose family were victims of the Nazi holocaust.
I cannot follow that theme because, by the grace of God, my forebears left Europe long before Hitler for the United States. If I cannot make that personal contribution, I can perhaps speak on behalf of those who could if they had the privilege of being a Member of the House.
My constituency, like many others, comprises people of all faiths and backgrounds, but among those who live in it are a substantial number of the Manchester Jewish community. Like many others, they have been the victims of what we have been discussing. Some members of that community came to Britain before the gates closed in 1939. As small children, they were sent here by their parents, who knew what would happen to them. They never saw their parents, friends or homes again. A precious few, by a miracle, survived the camps and made their way to Britain after the war.
I know those people not only as constituents but as clients when I practised as a solicitor in Manchester before becoming a Member. I said to them, "You urged me to vote for the Hetherington report, which I did, and you urged me to vote for the Bill, which I will, but I must tell you that some Members of Parliament say that you want these measures because of a desire for revenge." Without exception, they said, "Even if that were our motivation, the Bill and the prosecutions that may follow will never avenge the loss of our parents, friends or homes and the loss of the innocence and peace of childhood."
What motivates those people to urge me to vote for the Bill? It is not revenge or the need for retribution but the need for justice. Justice means many things to many people and I shall not try to define it, but it is not allowing a group of people who lied and deceived the authorities to obtain residence and British citizenship, and who may have committed the foulest and most awful crimes, to escape being brought before the courts merely because of the jurisdictional quirk that because they were not born here they cannot stand trial, while I and the majority of hon. Members could stand trial. To allow that to happen is not justice, however and whoever defines it.
I shall deal briefly with two of the principal arguments against the Bill. The first, and we have heard it from both sides, is that the evidence given in a trial would be too old
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or too blurred by the passage of time--the phrase used in the other place was "old men forget"--for any prosecution to be brought or any verdict to be given. That is not a matter for Members of Parliament. Whether a prosecution is brought, whether the evidence behind it is sufficient, whether the accused is fit to plead and whether public policy dictates prosecution are decisions for the prosecuting authorities. Whether there is a conviction and whether the evidence can sustain a conviction is a matter for the judge and jury of the court.It would be a bleak day for the country and for the House if ever Members of Parliament decided who should be prosecuted or, worse, who should be guilty and who innocent. The House has a duty to determine the law. Others have a duty to put it into practice.
On the historic nature of the evidence, I remind the House that a few months ago Lord Aldington brought an action for defamation in the civil courts. He was awarded the largest amount of damages for a libel case-- £1.5 million--in the history of the English and, for all I know, the Scottish courts. I shall not go into the facts of that case. Suffice it to say that it revolved around events that occurred immediately after the second world war, just 43 years ago. A similar period has elapsed since the matters that we are discussing took place. As far as I am aware, no one in that trial suggested that the events took place too long ago. Presumably the jury included men and women who were not even born when the events took place. No one suggested that it was too long ago for the courts to come to a proper decision. It has never been part of English law, either in criminal or civil matters, that there is a time bar on bringing cases or prosecutions.
Another argument against action on the lines proposed by the Bill is that we should let sleeping dogs lie. I mentioned earlier that I came from Lancashire. A horrendous crime took place 24 years ago on the Pennines. By dint of good police work the people who committed the moors murders were arrested, brought to trial and convicted. Until this very day they are still in custody. If, instead of being caught, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady had escaped the net and had not been discovered until, say, 24, 34 or 44 years after the crime was committed, no Government whatever their colour would have dared come before the House or the country and suggest that there should be no prosecution and that we should let sleeping dogs lie.
Mr. Bermingham : I entirely endorse the hon. Gentleman's proposition. In a recent case that came before the courts--I cannot remember in which part of England--the body of a wife was found in a lake and the husband was prosecuted for her murder 10, 15 or 20 years after the event. Time has never been a bar.
Mr. Sumberg : I entirely agree. Time has never been and never will be a bar.
In putting the let-sleeping-dogs-lie argument against the Bill, some say, "We know about the holocaust. We know what went on and we condemn the horrors. It was a time that was ghastly and awful. We know that racism, prejudice and intolerance can, if unchecked, lead to Auschwitz, Treblinka and Belsen." One of the most distressing by-products of recent events in eastern Europe,
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of the rebirth of freedom and the re- creation of democratic life and speech, has been well reported by the press and in the House on other occasions. Since that rebirth of freedom there has re-emerged some of the historic anti-semitism that may have been the basis for what took place 50 years ago.As democratic politicians, and because Britain was the beacon of hope throughout the war years as the nation that fought Nazi Germany from beginning to end, we have a duty to make it absolutely clear to the new democracies, which we welcome--
Sir Nicholas Fairbairn (Perth and Kinross) : We are not discussing anti-semitism. We are discussing retrospective prosecution, in which extradition would be available. It is not because of the nature or the race of the victim that prosecutions should be brought. Surely my hon. Friend is not saying that. I have just returned from Auschwitz, where I saw young French Jews throwing stones through the window of a Christian church. We are discussing whether it is right to change the law of England and the law of evidence in Scotland to take revenge against people or convict people, regardless of their race. It is their crime that matters.
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