House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Mar 1990

Mr. Sumberg : My hon. and learned Friend may not have heard the early part of my speech when I dealt with the legal aspects. I was simply saying that there is a wider context. As politicians and parliamentarians we have a duty to make it clear to the emerging European democracies that such behaviour will not do. If we did not agree to the Bill we should send the wrong signal to the Europe of today and of tomorrow and we should undoubtedly give the wrong epitaph to the Europe of yesterday.

8.7 pm

Mr. Michael Irvine (Ipswich) : Of one thing we can all be sure : hon. Members are united in revulsion at the terrible deeds that were committed in eastern Europe during the second world war.

Sir Nicholas Fairbairn : By whom?

Mr. Irvine : That is another issue, which I shall deal with later. Terrible deeds were committed. I can say with complete confidence that the House is united in its revulsion. The scale of the deeds and crimes committed, and of the suffering of those who were oppressed and the barbarity of the oppressors were terrible. Such matters stir the emotions of us all. It is at this point that we must be cautious. It is precisely when our emotions are stirred and our sensibilities affronted, and we are seized by the feeling that there must be retribution, that emotion takes over and justice is diminished. It is precisely now that the greatest vigilance is necessary to make sure that justice is defended.

Mr. Winnick : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Irvine : No. I wish to press on.

Although the suggestion has been challenged during the debate, we should make no mistake about the fact that this is retrospective legislation. When the crimes were committed in the years between 1938 and 1945, they were not triable in our courts. They are not triable now. We need the legislation in the Bill to make them so triable. That is retrospective legislation. Retrospective legislation

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is always a dangerous enterprise when it relates to civil issues--for exanple, taxation--but it is even more dangerous when it relates to criminal law and when a person's liberty is involved. The fact that legislation is retrospective is not my greatest concern, as there are other, more serious and fundamental, objections to it. The key issue in most war crime trials will be identification. It is likely that it will be proved beyond any question of doubt that the crimes under scrutiny were committed, but by whom? Were they committed by the man in the dock? The issue of identity will be at the heart of that question.

Identity is a dangerous area of criminal law at all times when it is used in evidence. Even when the crime is comparatively recent and the person giving evidence saw the person in question in circumstances reasonably favourable to identification, with every year that passes the greater is the risk that the evidence of identity is wrong. After three to six years, the evidence of identification becomes unlikely, after 45 years it is wholly unreliable, if not impossible.

In a powerful and moving speech, the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) gave examples of how such dreadful crimes had touched members of his family. He told us about members of his family who had managed to survive, who were, on occasions, assaulted or otherwise abused by soldiers. He said that those occasions had been burnt into their minds and that they could remember vividly the look of the soldiers involved.

The problem is that the people in the dock will not be anything like those same soldiers. In the past 45 years, their faces, their bearing, possibly their very characters and attitudes, will have changed immeasurably. It will be virtually impossible to identify them.

Mr. Allason : This point has been covered by the

Hetherington-Chalmers report. The cases studied in that report have no doubts attached to them in terms of individual identification. There is documentary evidence and testimony from the individuals themselves about where they were, what they were doing and to which einsatzgruppe they belonged. All that is beyond doubt.

Mr. Irvine : My hon. Friend's intervention worries me, as it suggests that he, for one, has already jumped the fence and is certain of the nature of the defence. We do not know the nature of that defence until people give evidence in the witness box and the case is presented. It is dangerous to presume that identity will not be an issue--it is overwhelmingly likely that it will be.

That the dreadful crimes were committed will not be at issue, but the question will be whether the individual in the dock was present and what was his precise part in the events. Identity will be at the heart of those cases, but evidence of identification after 45 years or more is a dangerous thing to rely upon.

In chapter 9.44 of their report, Hetherington and Chalmers acknowledged that the difficulties facing the prosecution are not to be under-estimated. They can say that again. Those difficulties are manifest in the report, which records the problems encountered in tracing suspects and witnesses and the problems in relation to the documentation and other evidence. The authors of that report had great support from a skilled team of former Metropolitan police officers and help from a range of specialists. They also enjoyed the co-operation of the

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Soviet authorities. Despite that help and back-up, they still encountered all manner of difficulties in tracing and identifying suspects and witnesses. Well may they say that the difficulties of the prosecution should not be under-estimated.

If the prosecution faces difficulties, they will be nothing to those faced by the defence. I greatly doubt that the defence will have available to it anything like the skilled back-up team available to Hetherington and Chalmers. All the defendants will probably receive legal aid, and they will be subject to the restrictions imposed upon them by that aid.

I have no doubt that the authorities will be as generous as they can in the particular circumstances, but the defence in those cases will not have the resources available to the prosecution. The defence will encounter many more difficulties than the prosecution in preparing its case. I forecast that it is likely to receive much less co-operation from the Soviet authorities. It is less likely that people will be willing to come forward to give evidence on behalf of the defence, especially if they live in the Soviet Union. The defence will be at a disadvantage compared to the prosecution.

Another worrying aspect is the provision in the Bill of a procedure for transfer to the Crown court without committal proceedings. Every lawyer who has practised in the criminal courts knows very well that the skilful use of committal proceedings by the defence can be extremely helpful to it--and furthermore, helpful to the cause of justice. The committal proceedings allow a defendant to test the strength of the evidence against him, to assess the demeanour and credibility of witnesses for the prosecution and to probe, elucidate and tie down the evidence. Those proceedings are especially useful in bringing out errors of recollection.

Apart from that, those proceedings afford the examining magistrate an opportunity to throw out a case at an early stage if, in their view, the evidence is too weak to be satisfactory. Let us make no mistake : the absence of committal proceedings will make things easy for the prosecution and overcome some of the difficulties which stand in its way. Conversely, that absence will make a difficult task more difficult for the defence.

The Bill poses great dangers. Many people feel so strongly that something must be done because of the horrendous nature of the crimes and because of the emotion that understandably wells up.

Sir Nicholas Fairbairn : We want to be extremely careful about this matter, assuming, as I do, that those who might be accused in Scotland are Lithuanians who were invited by the Germans to murder Russians who had just murdered their families. That is a rather different emotional pattern. Are we certain that there are no people residing in this country who were among those who executed 14,000 Polish officers at Katyn? Are we certain, and are we passing the Bill against them? I do not think that we are, but we should be if we are to be even-handed.

Mr. Irvine : I acknowledge the validity of that point. I fear that the Bill is, to a great extent, charged by emotion, which can be the enemy of justice. My fundamental objection to it is my certainty that it will be impossible now for anyone accused under the legislation to have a fair trial. The idea behind the Bill is fundamentally and profoundly mistaken.

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8.21 pm

Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay) : I am grateful for this opportunity to correct an injustice. Many people, including me, were profoundly sceptical and cynical about the Government's intentions. My colleagues who served on the all-party parliamentary war crimes group were worried when the Government announced that there was to be a committee to look at the allegations made by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. It is good "Yes Minister" material to refer difficult problems to a committee and, invariably, it amounts to shelving the matter.

I discussed the issue with Tony Hetherington, and originally he admitted that he was profoundly sceptical about the undertaking, but after he started looking into the problem he became absolutely convinced that legislation was required. He had a distinguished legal background, looked at the problem dispassionately, perhaps even with an element of scepticism and, with his colleagues, came to the conclusion encapsulated in the report. It says nothing about three elderly men. I believe that about 70 people may be caught up in the legislation that we are contemplating.

The legislation will merely close a loophole which has existed in the law and which has been exploited consistently by people not born in this country who have committed crimes overseas. It should be remembered that, if a British subject had committed such a crime while overseas, he would be liable for prosecution for murder in this country. There would be no statute of limitations. He would continue, for the rest of his life, to be vulnerable and susceptible to prosecution.

However, that is not the case with somebody who was born overseas, committed an appalling crime overseas, came to this country and subsequently acquired British nationality, perhaps by deception. Thereafter, he could not be prosecuted for a crime committed while he was a foreign subject. That anomaly is shared by just one other country. Damascus and the United Kingdom are the only two places which offer a safe haven for war criminals so that they can live openly and have their names and addresses in telephone directories. This leads me neatly to the issue of the "problem" and the "solution". There were three possibilities for the Government. First, they could allow those people who had been identified by overseas authorities to be extradited. That option was wholly unacceptable to the Government and I accept that, rightly, they were not prepared to send people to face perhaps the death penalty or uncertain justice in another country.

The second option, which was looked at in considerable detail by the all- party parliamentary war crimes group, was deportation. Those involved had come to this country, probably lied about their background and acquired their naturalisation papers by deception. Might it not be possible, as invariably happens in the United States, to have a judicial review so that the individuals could be stripped of their citizenship and deported to whatever country was prepared to take them? That would be a boost for Syrian airlines but nobody else.

I am disappointed that my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Mr. Powell) has left the Chamber. He did not allow any interventions and spoke about a constituency that I know well because I was a parliamentary candidate there during the 1979 general election. He alleged--I thought it

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rich coming from a lawyer--that there was a community in his constituency that felt vulnerable to the legislation. I find that hard to believe.

My hon. Friend the Member for Corby alleged that there were Latvians in the Corby constituency who were utterly opposed to any delving into the past, had been identified by the newspapers and felt that their goods had been rubbished. There is a civil remedy for that ; it is called the law of defamation. As has already been said, record damages were awarded in a recent libel action.

Out of the last 35 libel actions in this country, 33 have been won by the plaintiff. Those are cases which actually reached the court ; the figure takes no account of the dozens of other cases which never get to court because the newspapers settle out of court. I wish that my hon. Friend were here so that I could remind him that those damages are tax-free and quite attractive. If a lawyer such as he were prepared to offer his services free, I am sure that they would be gratefully accepted by Latvians in his constituency.

There is an element of retrospection in the legislation. I realise that it must have caused lawyers great worry, but it must be accepted that the people who committed those appalling atrocities were not committing crimes which existed only in British law. When they committed those crimes, they were well aware that they were breaking the law. They were breaking the laws of civilisation, the laws laid down in the Wehrmacht military handbook and every kind of law. There should be no pretence that those individuals are suddenly being caught by entrapping, retrospective legislation, deliberately designed to catch people who were, at the time, unaware that they were breaking the law.

One alternative might be to let sleeping dogs lie. There is a certain amount to be said for that option. We have heard about opening old wounds, and the Pandora's boxes which might well reveal some people's pretty ugly pasts. I accept part of that argument, but there is a corollary. What is the time limit on murder? If one is a successful murderer and gets away with it for 10, 20 or 30 years, what is the time limit? The answer must be that there can never be a time limit for murder.

I turn now to the quality of evidence. Based on the criterion that made Tony Hetherington such a respected Director of Public Prosecutions--the strong likelihood of obtaining a conviction based on evidence--Mr. Hetherington is quite satisfied, according to the report, that convictions can be obtained. So the grave difficulties of identification that have preoccupied speakers this afternoon will not exist.

There may well be problems about obtaining evidence in some of the eastern countries, particularly in Latvia and Estonia. However, we originally urged the Government to take action more than a year ago when conditions were quite different in eastern Europe, and some of us who were used to disinformation and black propaganda were a little worried about some of the documentary evidence that might emanate from the east. But as every week goes by--in Lithuania, as every day goes by--the chances of obtaining such documentary evidence and of ensuring its authenticity become much more satisfactory.

Why did these people--especially the Ukrainians--come to this country? I have done a certain amount of research into this, and I assure the House that they did not come here seeking a safe haven. Quite a number of them came at the invitation of the British Government and of

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British intelligence. They went up to RAF Crail, then the language centre operated by most of the services. RAF Crail has now closed and its operations have been transferred to Bodmin. The Ukrainians went to Crail, and I have obtained evidence from people who served there and were taught Russian by people who openly boasted about the atrocities that they had committed against Jews in Baltic countries during the war. Those boasts were known to British national service men going into the Intelligence Corps and they must have been known to the British Government in subsequent years.

Of course, there was insufficient screening of people coming to this country, but the Government have conveniently tended to overlook the motives of these people. They were brought here because they knew Russian and very few people in the immediate post-war period possessed that skill--

Sir Alan Glyn : Does my hon. Friend agree that some of the people who came here were brought over deliberately on a sort of free passport on condition that they provided information, or a language, or something, in exchange for their liberty?

Mr. Allason : My hon. Friend has it in one : he is absolutely correct.

When the police team that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary discussed earlier undertakes its research, it must have access to all documents relating to the suspects, including all documents that are closed off in the Public Record Office. That is not a new plea, but it is an important one.

It was a cause of great embarrassment two years ago that the British Government flatly refused to disclose the contents of the Klaus Barbie file held by the Foreign Office. I went to see the Minister concerned. She said, "Listen, dear boy, this is very grown-up stuff. The Klaus Barbie file is full of terribly sensitive material. It discloses intelligence methodology and techniques, and it could still be significant today." I said, "Hold on a minute, Minister. Do you understand who was head of the British secret intelligence service anti-Soviet section in 1946 when Klaus Barbie was in British hands?" She thought about that for a moment, being reluctant to admit that SIS had ever existed. I asked her who we were trying to keep these matters a secret from--Kim Philby? The Soviets had known all about them for years ; only the great British taxpayer was not allowed to know.

Worse, I brought a certain book to her attention. The United States Government suffered a similar trauma in 1983, when they were appalled to discover, or rather the US Attorney-General was appalled to discover, that Klaus Barbie had been employed by American intelligence. One can adopt either of two attitudes to that. The Americans said that they regretted the facts and were embarrassed by it and would reveal all the documentation by putting it in the public domain. The British Government's attitude was that the affair was terribly secret despite being 40 years old. They said that it might involve intelligence techniques and decided not to say anything about it.

I lent the Minister my book, "Klaus Barbie and the United States Government : The Report, with documentary appendix, to the Attorney-General of the United States" by Allan A. Ryan, Jr. It is a large book, running to 541 pages, of which only 81 are the report itself. The remaining pages are fascinating, however. They comprise

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authentic documents from American intelligence files, in the form of genuine reproductions. Many of them concern the time in 1946 when Barbie was in the hands of the British intelligence.

These documents have been released by the United States but are apparently too secret to be released here. If the Government are determined to allow the Bill to go through and to give full powers to the police officers who will investigate these appalling crimes, it is right that they should be allowed to see all the closed files in the Public Record Office.

I should like to prove the case that these papers exist. Several facsimile documents in the United States Attorney-General report are specifically about the employment of German war criminals by the British Government. One of them, dated 23 June 1947, refers to British special interrogation report number 55, DIC CCG (BE), which stands for the control commission for Germany, British element. Its subject is Operation Dry Martini, and the person involved on that occasion was a war criminal called Kurt Burkhausen.

There is also a reference in the Barbie evaluation, which was declassified in July 1983. It states :

"I spoke to Barbie at length as to his activities during Selection Board and immediately thereafter, to include his arrest by the British."

That is dated 22 November 1948. In the following year we find the following :

"Upon interrogation of Barbie it was discovered that he was very closely tied in with Selection Board personalities ; that he had been arrested by the British and had escaped ; and that he had made overtures to the British to work for them as an informant through one of the Selection Board personalities by the name of Dr. Hoffmann." That is further proof of the material that lies in Foreign Office files and relates to a convicted war criminal about whom the British Government are not prepared to disclose information.

From a French document we learn :

"Lavoie became aware that British intelligence was looking for information on Barbie because they were concerned that Barbie might be organising an effort to eliminate' Germans who spied for the British."

These documents exist in the Foreign Office and they must be made available to the police who are to pursue the allegations. We know from Hetherington and Chalmers that there are substantial allegations against about 70 people. It is vital that the police inquiry should not be hamstrung in any way.

It is marvellous that in the United States there is such a healthy attitude to documents generated by Governments. They take the view that the public have the right to read any document prepared by a publicly paid official unless an independent federal judge can be persuaded by the Government that disclosure is likely to put somebody's life at risk. In Britain we have quite the reverse attitude. We seem to take the view that nothing can be disclosed at any time because civil servants should not be held accountable or subject to ridicule and certainly would not be able to give unbiased advice to Ministers in the frank and candid way that they do if they thought that it would be publicly revealed afterwards.

The material is all in files. We have heard much in the debate about the difficulties that face the prosecuting authorities. I believe that there will be only a minimum of obstacles in the way. We propose to close a loophole that actively discriminates against British passport holders. There is no question of hounding old men, and we are

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closing a loophole that has made Britain an embarrassment. When one goes to a war crimes conference here or overseas and listens to what the Australians, the Americans and Canadians have done, it is embarrassing to know that we have put off taking action for so long. I urge the House to vote in favour of the Bill.

8.41 pm

Sir John Stokes (Halesowen and Stourbridge) : After more than five hours of debate, I will neither titillate nor weary the House with revelations about spies and spying. Like other hon. Members, I served throughout the last war, and I saw some horrors and heard about more. I listened with great feeling to the remarkable accounts by some hon. Members whose families were brutally treated by the Germans and others during the war. Those accounts were very moving.

The question that we have to address is whether we should give the Bill a Second Reading. I studied the matter carefully last December and took part in the debate at that time. I have thought about it since and have not changed my mind. It would not be wise, in the best interests of this country or anybody else, or good for the future, to give this rather special Bill a Second Reading. I agreed with the speech by my hon. Friend the Members for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook), the powerful speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), and the practical speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine), who spoke as a practising lawyer about the difficulties that we all know must occur if the Bill goes through.

I am thought to be a hard man. I believe in capital punishment for murder, and I think that the punishment should fit the crime. The crimes that we are considering in this debate are certainly horrendous and were on a colossal scale quite different from ordinary crime. But again and again, I ask myself whether we are right after nearly 50 years to bring forward special legislation for a special category of people.

That legislation will be retrospective and new and quite different from anything in our legal history. The Bill came before us rather sooner than I had expected. As the Government have put it in with so many other Bills, they must attach great importance to it. We have, of course, far too many Bills anyway and we could have done without this one.

Although the words in the Bill sound bland, they propose a change in our legal procedures and that raises all kinds of questions. Why has the matter suddenly come before us after more than 40 years? What have Governments of both parties been doing on this subject for the past 40 years? Why have other war crimes been allowed to go unpunished? What is the point of the Bill? If we are suddenly to devise a change in our legal procedures, it should concern only matters of the highest importance touching the constitution and our whole system of law. Why is there this particular and somewhat narrow basis for such a fundamental change?

I ask again, what is the point of the Bill? We cannot execute or flog the people whom we find guilty. The only punishment we can find for them is imprisonment. We have heard about four alleged war criminals. One has died and one is ill. If anyone is sentenced to a long term of

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imprisonment at that age, how many years will he serve? Of course, there is always the chance that they can flee the country. The whole matter smacks of special pleading. We know that great wrong was done in the last war. Captured British soldiers and airmen were sometimes shot in cold blood, and since 1948 no attempt has been made to find and try the culprits. Why have these few alleged criminals that we are discussing been singled out for special treatment at this late stage?

Almost everyone has spoke about the severe practical difficulties of trying these people. The normal rules of evidence will be waived. Many of us look with great suspicion at evidence produced by the Soviet Union, but those committed for trial will not be able to go there. They cannot get hold of witnesses.

There were powerful speeches in the other place against the Bill : the speakers included Lord Hailsham and many of our judges. Another speaker was Lord Shawcross, who knows more about this matter than anybody else, and who has recently written another powerful letter to The Times. No one admires the British jury system more than I do, but do we really believe that these trials will be the same as other trials before a British jury? They will be luridly covered in the media, and in the gutter press. Good heavens--we shall read about nothing else for weeks beforehand.

Of course I respect the deep feelings of Jews and others whose families suffered so dreadfully in the last war, but the Bills smacks more of revenge than justice. Jews believe in God, as do we Christians, and we both believe that God may punish. Should we humans now devise a new and special means of bringing to trial and punishing a small number of people in a special category?

When I last spoke on this subject I said :

"To put many great wrongs right, should we commit another wrong?"--[ Official Report, 12 December 1989 ; Vol. 163, c. 911.]

To change the laws of England would be wrong. I have no criticism whatever of those who hold views that are different from mine, and the majority of hon. Members are of that mind. I hope that they will be indulgent to me. When history comes to be written, it will judge these proposals as wrong. I fear that we are sowing dragon's teeth and that we shall regret it bitterly as time goes on.

8.48 pm

Mr. Greville Janner (Leicester, West) : We humans--the phrase used by the hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Sir J. Stokes)--can only administer human justice, and that is what we lawyers try to do. The argument that we can leave the punishment of murderers to some higher being would not find great appeal at the Old Bailey or anywhere else where we to seek to bring to justice those against whom there is adequate evidence of personal involvement in major crime. We deal with this matter according to our own form of justice. It is not perfect, but it has evolved in a way of which we in this land can be proud, a way in which it is rarely administered in other lands. For that reason, the Government have decided that, whatever the evidence against these alleged war criminals, they should be tried here and not deported to the Soviet Union.

I have reservations about that decision. I have felt all along that it would not necessarily be wrong for people to be tried in the land where, if it be correct that they have

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carried out these murders, the victims were to be found. I have even more sympathy with my view now that the scene in eastern Europe has changed. However, it has been decided that that must be avoided, and it can be avoided only through implementation of legislation to allow those who are living here to be tried here, according to our rules of justice.

I have listened throughout almost all the debate, and with great respect, to those who are against the legislation. I feel that they sometimes forget that we are talking about people who are living in this country. We have no evidence, and I doubt whether there will be evidence, of people who, for example, were involved as Japanese soldiers in the murder of people on the railway in Burma. I know one hon. Member who voted against the principle behind the Bill the last time we debated it because he said that he could not see why Nazi war criminals should be prosecuted when Japanese war criminals had got off scot free. I have some sympathy for that point of view--I do not believe that the Duke of Edinburgh should have gone to the funeral of Emperor Hirohito--but as far as we know, no Japanese war criminals live in this country. The Bill deals only with people who are living here.

The hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge is wrong to talk about three people. I fear that he has not read the Hetherington report. He has it in his hand, but that does not mean that he has read it. Perhaps he might like to settle down and look at page 106, where he will find the answer to the point that he raised, which would otherwise be valid. It is not, because he is wrong on his facts. It says :

"Consideration should be given by prosecuting authorities to prosecuting in three cases in which there appears to us to be a realistic prospect of conviction on the evidence already available." That is what the hon. Gentleman was referring to.

The report continues :

"This action should be taken at the earliest opportunity as some preparations for prosecution could precede the enactment of any legislation."

The Home Secretary has said that he wishes to wait until after the legislation is though before setting up the investigating authority, and I understand that. However, for reasons that I shall give a little later, it will not have quite the weight that it might otherwise have done.

I emphasise that these independent inquirers are not members of the all- party parliamentary war crimes group. They are not members of Her Majesty's Government or of the Opposition Front Bench. These are independent, eminent, distinguished lawyers ; more than that, they are people whose training and experience lies in assessing evidence on prosecution. They are a former Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales and his Scottish equivalent.

Sir Thomas Hetherington and William Chalmers are outstanding people and they have said in public since their inquiry that they went into it with some doubt and hesitation and some feeling that it could lead nowhere. They have come out to talk not merely about three people. I draw the attention of the hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge to the bottom of page 106, where they say :

"Further investigation should be undertaken in three cases in which we have carried out detailed investigations, but are not yet satisfied with the available evidence Investigation should also be carried out in 75 cases of allegations which were not being investigated in detail Investigations should

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continue to attempt to trace the 46 suspects remaining untraced All these investigations should commence as soon as possible". We are dealing not with three, six or even 75 people. We are dealing with over 120 people living in this country who, on the evidence of independent investigators given their jobs by the Government, are people against whom there is massive evidence. It is not for the House to decide whether that evidence is sufficient in weight, substance or quality to warrant putting people on trial. That is a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions. That is a matter for the successor or successors of those who produced the report. They will weigh that evidence, and if they believe that justice cannot be done, these people will not be tried. It is not for the House to make that decision.

The hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge spoke about old people. I was a war crimes investigator in Germany. We knew that some of these people had committed offences. Some of them admitted to it. At that time, they were aged anywhere between 18 and 60, and the young ones are still not old. I doubt whether they are any older than the venerable and distinguished knight of the shires, the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen. Nobody would dream of suggesting that he is not fit to stand trial in the unlikely event of there being powerful evidence of his having committed anything other than a political offence. If he can stand trial, why should these other people not stand trial?

I shall now deal with some other fairly venerable people--Lord Shawcross and Lord Mayhew. Why are they so keen to stop this Bill going through? The reason is perfectly plain. They were both members of the Government who, in 1948, decided not to proceed with further war crimes trials. They are engaged, as I suppose must of us would be, if we had made such a horrendous mistake, in trying to justify themselves. It is unlikely that they would say, "We got it wrong." Not all politicians are prepared to admit fault readily and swiftly. These gentlemen have not admitted it and will not admit it. They were wrong when they stopped the prosecutions and they remain wrong now. They will not admit that they were, or are, in error--far from it. Lord Shawcross has produced yet another letter to The Times. It was headed

"Prospect of Nazi War crimes trials From Lord Shawcross QC. " Part of the letter reads :

"By 1947-48 all political parties had concluded that the prosecution of war crimes should be brought to an end."

I have read the papers of that time, not least because my distinguished father, Barnett Janner, was then a Member of the House. I thought it extremely unlikely that he would have maintained silence in the face of such a decision by the House.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten) : You are like him.

Mr. Janner : I would like to be like him. As said in a recent play, we inherit madness from our children and distinction from our forebears.

I could not believe that my father would have sat through a debate on the conclusion of war crimes trials without having denounced the idea as monsstrous, and I can tell the House that there was no such debate. The House did not make such a decision. As far as I can see,

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the House did not come to a decision on the prosecution of the sort of people whom I, as a war crimes investigator, was chasing. There has been talk about manhunts. It is always a manhunt or a witch hunt if someone does not like that which is proposed and a search to bring criminals to justice if someone likes the idea. We were seeking justice. I have in mind the sort of people that we were after at the end of the second world war. We had evidence of their involvement in concentration camp killings. I became a sergeant because I found a man whom it was wished to charge with having killed British prisoners of war who escaped from stalag luft 3--the great escape. He hanged himself the following day. It was the first time that I had seen a dead body. That is something that we do not forget, and I still remember his face well.

These people were criminals ; they were murderers. They did not become any the less criminals or murderers because they managed to sneak into this country. The hon. Member for Windsor and Maidenhead (Sir A. Glyn) intervened and said, in effect, "Surely it is not suggested that these people could have been let into the country because they had information." Come on! There is a book

Sir Alan Glyn : Perhaps I did not make myself clear. I asked whether it was correct that some of these people may well have been let into the country with the connivance of the Government because they had information that was useful.

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