House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Apr 1990

Mr. Darling : I made my position on the Bill clear in the debate on amendment No. 2, and I see no point in repeating it. [ Hon. Members : -- "Hear, hear."] I am equally confident in saying that I shall have the support of the majority of the House in following that approach. I dealt with jurisdiction and the definition of Germany and of territory occupied by Germany. I hope that the Government will give further thought to tabling amendments in Committee in the other place. I know that

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the Minister will accept my point in the spirit in which it is made when I say that I remain unconvinced by his preliminary reasoning. He will have to return to this matter.

I am not sure whether we can resolve a further difficulty, which is how on earth we can define the laws and customs of war. They are defined in the 1907 Hague convention and, as one can see from the Hetherington and Chalmers report, the definition is fraught with difficulties. I am content to leave this issue to the Crown, which will have to prove that a killing was such as to render it contrary to the laws and customs of war. Perhaps those in the other place with greater experience and expertise will turn their minds to that difficulty.

This must be one of the few Bills on which it is necessary for a Committee to report to the House that it has been unable to resolve many problems. First, many of the fears that we canvassed in Committee may not arise in any trial, and, secondly, they will be a matter for proof at the trial. If the Crown cannot prove the indictment against any individual, that individual must be acquitted. That seems to be the right solution.

No one should be under any illusion that the prosecution of these cases will be easy, especially given the lapse of time since the events took place. Despite those difficulties, as I said when I spoke on the amendments, I believe that the Bill should proceed. Although it is far from perfect and can never be perfect because of the circumstances in which we have to legislate, it is not so flawed that it is unworkable. Therefore, the House should support it. The Government have taken one welcome step. In Committee, the Opposition moved an amendment to require the Secretary of State to submit an annual report on the progress of the trials, in general rather than specific terms. It would address the problem raised in Committee of an end date for the trials. The Minister of State, Home Office, the right hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Mr. Patten), has been good enough to write to me to say that, although he could not accept our amendment, he accepted the principle that an annual report in general terms should be made available to both Houses and, indeed, to any other interested party. It would report on general progress as well as on the costs incurred.

The explanatory memorandum of the Bill anticipates spending of between £7 million and £9 million in England and Wales and £3.5 million in Scotland. That is a great deal of money and it would be wrong for Parliament to allow the trials to run on without any supervision. As this is a special Bill which deals with a special case, the Minister's solution is welcome. I dare say that he will refer to it again when he replies.

I feel strongly about pre-trial publicity. I know that there was not exactly a meeting of minds on this subject in Committee. If someone in Scotland is accused of committing a war crime, from the moment that he is charged there is almost a total ban on any publicity about events that will be the subject of the trial. Furthermore, during the trial there are strict restrictions on what can be reported. There cannot be speculation about events that are not canvassed in the trial. The position in England is different. Pre-trial publicity is allowed. As we have seen in the past, publicity during the trial is also apparently allowed. I am worried that there will be trial by television or by the media. If that happened, it would be a travesty of justice.

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We cannot afford another Guildford, Birmingham or Broadwater Farm where there is controversy about the circumstances surrounding the trial. If people are to be brought to trial under the Bill, they must be tried before a jury who will hear the facts in the sober silence of the court room. They should not be subject to the influence of newspapers or television. They should not be influenced by consideration of events that took place at the same time but may have had nothing to do with the individual facing trial. I feel strongly that the Government should have done something about pre-trial publicity in this case, just as they will have to tackle the matter generally in the English criminal system.

To show that I am not partisan, let me say that I have a great deal of sympathy with the English system on dock identification. In Scotland we have a problem, in that the witness is invited to identify an accused person in court. There is usually only one person chained up between two policemen, his head hung in shame. If the witness could not identify him or her, it would be very odd. I have been invited to refer to an anecdote that I related in Committee. It would be wrong of me to do so because the hon. Gentleman concerned is not in the Chamber.

We received assurances about legal aid in Committee. They are extremely important. Legal aid must not be a barrier in these cases. Much concern has been and, I expect, will be expressed in another place about retrospection. We should remember that we are not creating a new crime, although I accept that we are extending jurisdiction, and that involves retrospection.

I accept the difficulties of passage of time and proof and the problems that the defence will face. But, on balance, I believe that it would be wrong of the House not to pass this legislation. Such serious allegations have been made that it would be wrong for us to turn our backs on them and ignore them. Therefore, I urge hon. Members to give the Bill a Third Reading.

11.45 pm

Mr. Stanbrook : I have been against the principle of the Bill ever since the request for legislation was made by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in London two or three years ago. I have followed the issue closely ever since, and have been on the Standing Committee considering the Bill. I have no reason to change my view that it is a bad Bill.

It is bad for two main reasons. First, in principle it is wrong to enact retrospective legislation to cover something that happened 50 years ago, 1,000 or more miles away. That cannot be good or in the public interest. It cannot be right for the atrocities and awful events that took place in the last war to be re-enacted and exhumed, to be once again paraded before the people of this country and their children, when the need is for peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. No good will come of the trials that may take place as a result of the legislation.

Secondly, I oppose the Bill because, in practice--quite apart from the principle--it will be impossible to ensure that the people concerned receive a fair trial. In Standing Committee, some of my hon. Friends and I endeavoured to improve the Bill to try to ensure that those who were likely to be defendants were given assurances and the privilege of a fair trial. We were unsuccessful, and the rest of the Committee disagreed with us.

The Bill should not be called a War Crimes Bill. If we know anything of the allegations and evidence, we know

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that these are not war crimes in the proper, even legal, sense of the word. We are talking about murder and the massacre of innocent civilians. It so happens that those events occurred during the war. We are talking about the events and people covered by the Bill. It so happens that the events occurred in Europe, in German-occupied territory. That does not make them war crimes. By any standard, those events, whether or not they occurred during the war, would have constituted murder.

Speaking as a lawyer, may I say that those who devised the Bill made a great mistake in closely defining the offences as crimes committed against the laws and customs of war. When one gets into the nitty-gritty of the laws and customs of war, one gets bogged down--as we did in Standing Committee--over how that phrase is defined. The Hague convention of 1907 specifies what constitutes war crimes. Lo and behold, they do not cover events such as the murder of civilians and innocent people ; by and large, they cover the rights of soldiers. In 1907, before the first world war, there was still a chivalrous notion that the rights of soldiers, especially prisoners of war, had to be protected.

Mr. John Marshall : My hon. Friend said that we were dealing with murder. As he knows, there is no statute of limitations on murders in the United Kingdom, so why is he recommending one for these murders?

Mr. Stanbrook : If only my hon. Friend would listen more carefully, he would find a little more merit in my argument, which has nothing to do with his point.

By describing these outrages as war crimes, we misdescribe them. They were horrific crimes, but they are not to be confined within the definition of war crimes, or to be further narrowed down in this Bill in terms of territorial extent or of acts contrary to the laws and customs of war. All such terms are inappropriate.

If suitable jurisdiction had been in force at the time, it would surely have covered these crimes without the need to refer to them as war crimes ; normal criminal legislation should have covered them. That is the brunt of the arguments advanced earlier--that the jurisdiction of the courts should be extended to include all such crimes, wherever and by whomsoever they are committed. The Government have missed this opportunity to propose that our laws should in future cover all such offences. If they had taken it, it would have constituted a passport to future co-operation in matters of extradition. It would also have avoided the overtones and the narrowing of definitions involved in the description "war crimes". If this legislation designates such crimes as war crimes, that will only make the application of the law more difficult in future. In his wisdom, Mr. Speaker chose not to select for debate the two new clauses to the Bill that I tabled. No doubt he thought I would have the chance to raise the two issues concerned on Third Reading, and I gladly do so now. Nowhere in the Bill is any provision made to enable the defendants to gather evidence on their own behalf. It is a fundamental right of anyone in this country charged with an offence to be able to gather his own evidence and to seek witnesses in his defence to show that he is not guilty of the crime with which he has been charged. In most cases, this right is taken for granted and is available.

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In the natural course of events, a trial will not come on until such an opportunity has been given, but in any case that may arise out of this legislation, the offences having occurred 1,000 or more miles away almost 50 years ago, the defence will face grave difficulties in securing the evidence with which to rebut the charges. The Bill does nothing to help the defence in this respect, which makes it vulnerable to criticism on that ground alone. It is not nearly enough to state that the usual laws of criminal procedure will apply. That will result in all too short a time being allowed, once a defendant has been arrested and charged, before a case comes on for trial.

The chance of a successful application to the trial judge to enable the defence to go to Russia or Israel or to any of the other places to which the Hetherington-Chalmers inquiry travelled, spending £500, 000 and 18 months, will not be available once cases have been initiated in this country.

Mr. Allason : Does my hon. Friend agree that this matter was fully covered in Committee and that the Government gave an undertaking about legal aid?

Mr. Stanbrook : We are not talking about pure financing, although I would be glad to hear that the Government have allowed £500,000 from the legal aid fund and 18 months for any defendant seeking to establish evidence in his own cause. If that is what is meant, I welcome it because it will go some way towards balancing matters between the prosecution and the defence.

In normal cases before criminal courts in Britain, the charge involves events that took place fairly recently. Some 90 per cent. of such cases are about events that happened a matter of days before the arrest. Here we are dealing with events that took place 50 years ago, and 49 years ago in one case that I know. After such a passage of time, is it right that there should be no provision for the defence to be able to say when the case comes before the trial judge that it is impossible for justice to be done?

Let us suppose that the defence said, "We have not been able to gather evidence. We have not been allowed to travel unhindered in Russia. We have not discovered anything that could be of value to us and therefore choose not to offer any sort of evidence." Would the prosecution, the Government and all the people who are prosecuting and persecuting these people be content with the result of such a case? Of course they would not, yet that is the nub of the problem with which we are dealing.

Fifty years make a tremendous difference to the quality of evidence that is available in a case. It is no use people telling me, as they often do during our debates, that the people concerned were not British at the time. That makes not the slightest difference. These events occurred nearly 50 years ago and many miles away. The alleged offences were committed under conditions in which it was impossible for evidence to be gathered. Since then, governmental institutions and well-founded bodies such as the Simon Wiesenthal Centre have campaigned and spent money all over the world in order to produce evidence that might justify the prosecution of these people, and certainly enough to justify our Government initiating legislation to permit that to happen even though it will be ex post facto a retrospective law.

There is a grave danger that prosecutions under this legislation will be oppressive and vindictive and perceived to be inspired by motives of revenge, malice and hatred.

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The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) spoke about the pre-trial publicity, all of it aimed against these people who are already identified by the media and by members of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, one of whom has been marching up and down outside the house of one of the prospective defendants with a banner proclaiming his guilt.

Even in Scotland, where apparently the standards in such matters are somewhat higher than they are in England, what chance have these people of a fair trial? What chance do they have of the application of the normal standards of British justice that would apply to anybody else were it not for the fact that we are passing special retroactive legislation to cover these people? It is nonsense to say that 70 people are involved. There may be a list of names, but the inquiry claimed that there are only three people about whom there is sufficient evidence to justify prosecution. That claim is based on an assumption that the House will change the law--bend it --to make it possible to proceed against them in accordance with the laws of evidence.

It will be impossible for such people to have a fair trial. It will be impossible to stop pre-trial publicity. From the moment that they are identified by name, as they will be shortly, they will be picked out by the legislation as guilty men. Already they are accused of being Nazi war criminals. We are legislating for an injustice. We are deliberately picking on three people.

Despite the fact that, for 40 years or so, they have lived here, apparently honestly and peacefully, as useful citizens, and that the law did not cover the crimes that they are alleged to have committed, we shall finger them and rig the law so that they become guilty. I should not be surprised if, at the end of it all, after the expenditure of millions of pounds and lots of time, a good British jury said, "We are having nothing to do with this," and the whole thing would be aborted. I hope so, but one cannot depend on it. British juries are often unreliable--I speak as a practising barrister- -and I do not want to hide the inherent possibilities. It would be wrong for the House to authorise legislation such as this deliberately directed against three named and identified people. I should always be opposed to such a move.

12.1 am

Sir John Stokes : I am glad to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrooke). Although the events about which we are talking took place nearly 50 years ago, I have some recollection of those times and the unpleasant scenes that I saw.

This is the third occasion on which we have debated this subject. I listened to the two previous debates and followed the excellent debate in the other place, and have listened carefully to what has been said today. All my instincts as an Englishman continue to be against our proceeding any further with this Bill. It contains new and thoroughly unsatisfactory retrospective legislation. It goes against the grain of our history, how we do things and how we introduce our laws. There remain severe practical problems in attempting to give a fair trial to people accused of alleged crimes committed so long ago. There is also the almost impossible problem of physically

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identifying the supposed criminals. There is no public demand for the Bill. I have not received a single letter about it from my constituents.

I dread what will happen if the Bill is passed. We know that long, thorough and expensive inquiries will have to be made. We shall have to rely on testimony from Soviet Russia that is bound to be highly unreliable. We are instituting special forms of trial and production of witnesses will be called for. The defendants are bound to be at a grievous disadvantage, and I shudder to think what the gutter press will make of it. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) spoke of the extremes that there will be in the press, television and the radio, and how these wretched men will be condemned from the word go. People will be found guilty long before the trial, an intolerable strain will be placed on juries, and the trials will be in danger of becoming show trials--all quite unEnglish and foreign.

Above all, the entire procedure is partial. Many of the crimes committed by the Japanese, for instance, are not covered by the Bill. At a time when our legislative process is overloaded and when the Government should be--I hope that they will be--concentrating on good government and good administration, this is an entirely unnecessary and dangerous Bill. If it is enacted--I hope that it will not--I am sure that in time it will be deeply regretted by the Government and all those concerned with it.

12.5 am

Mr. Michael Irvine (Ipswich) : I feel the most profound unease about the passage of the Bill on two principal grounds. First, this is retrospective legislation. Let us have no soft soaping or weasel words about that. It is definitely retrospective legislation. The dreadful deeds to which it is directed were not triable in the British courts in the year after they were committed, and they are not so triable now. The Bill is needed to make them triable.

Mr. John Marshall : Does my hon. Friend agree that if any person who was a British citizen at the time the offences were committed had committed them, he could have been tried under the law of this country?

Mr. Irvine : Yes. He could have been tried under our law. He still could be so tried. Retrospective legislation would not be needed. The fact remains, however, that to deal with the deeds in question and to bring the individuals who were identified by the

Hetherington-Chalmers report to trial, the Bill is necessary. If it is not enacted, those people could not be tried in the courts of Great Britain. It is without doubt retrospective legislation. What is more, it is retrospective criminal legislation.

I have an intense and instinctive dislike for retrospective legislation of any sort. In the hands of an oppressive or unscrupulous Government, it is so easy for retrospective legislation to be used to challenge liberty and justice. The danger is that a Bill such as this will be used in the future as a precedent. That is a great peril and one that the House should consider carefully before giving the Bill a Third Reading.

Mr. James Wallace (Orkney and Shetland) : Will the hon. Gentleman inform the House how many clauses of Finance Bills that have involved retrospective legislation he has supported since becoming a Member of this place?

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Mr. Irvine : Perhaps not surprisingly, I cannot give a precise answer to that question. I merely say that in principle I am very much opposed to retrospective civil legislation. It is true that that is to be found especially in taxation measures. But if retrospective legislation relating to civil matters is dangerous--I believe strongly that it is--retrospective legislation that deals with criminal matters is doubly--indeed, trebly--dangerous.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence (Burton) : Would my hon. Friend say that it was ever all right, ever lawful, to commit mass murder? If it was never right or lawful, what is wrong with retrospective legislation which has the effect of bringing to book those who committed those crimes?

Mr. Irvine : Of course it is never right to commit mass murder. I am horrified that my hon. and learned Friend should think fit to pose that question to me. It is important that I make it clear that nothing that is said in the Chamber can possibly overshadow the fact that the most terrible crimes were committed in central and eastern Europe during the second world war. The most terrible suffering was endured by those who were subjected to those ghastly cruelties. Nothing that I or anyone else says in the Chamber should minimise that. I assure hon. Members who take a different view from me about the merits of the Bill that I share equally their horror at those crimes and deeds. However, the fact remains that this is retrospective criminal legislation, which poses a great danger. I draw the attention of the House to the words of Lord Reid in the case of Waddington--a not unfamiliar name in this House-- v. Miah--1974, 1 Weekly Law Reports, page 683. Lord Reid was, for many years, a distinguished Member of this House. Later he sat as a lord of appeal in ordinary and became one of the most distinguished judges of this century. He said :

"There has for a very long time been a strong feeling against making legislation, and particularly criminal legislation, retrospective It is hardly credible that any government department would promote or that Parliament would pass retrospective criminal legislation."

Yet only 16 years later this Bill is being guided through the House by a Minister. It was given a massive majority on its Second Reading even though it involves retrospective criminal legislation. It is not just the fact that this Bill is retrospective criminal legislation that leads me to feel great unease about it.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop : Can my hon. Friend help me and other hon. Members by telling us whether Lord Reid was referring to the creation of new offences or to the extending of jurisdiction where neither had previously existed?

Mr. Irvine : With great respect to my hon. Friend, Lord Reid was enunciating general principles. Soft soaping will not get the House or my hon. Friend anywhere. The fact is that whether it relates to jurisdiction, territory or citizenship, legislation of this kind represents retrospective criminal legislation.

The second reason for my considerable unease about the Bill is my belief that it will be impossible, at this distance of time, for there to be a fair trial in any contested prosecutions brought under the Bill. The time that has passed since the deeds in question is immense. The further that those deeds pass into time, the more difficult it will be for justice to be done.

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I draw the attention of the House to a passage from a judgment by Lord Justice Diplock in the case of Allen v. Sir Alfred McAlpine and Sons Ltd. (1968) 2 Queen's Bench page 229 which I read out in Committee. It was a case in which the Court of Appeal was deciding whether three civil actions should be dismissed for want of prosecution. One action involved an accident nine years previously, another a different accident that had occurred nine years previously, and the third matters that had arisen 14 years previously. I ask the House to consider Lord Justice Diplock's words at page 255 particularly carefully :

"Where the case is one in which at the trial disputed facts will have to be ascertained from oral testimony of witnesses recounting what they then recall of events which happened in the past, memories grow dim, witnesses may die or disappear. The chances of the courts being able to find out what really happened are progressively reduced as time goes on. This puts justice to the hazard. If the trial is allowed to proceed, this is more likely to operate to the prejudice of the plaintiff on whom the onus of satisfying the court as to what happened generally lies. But there may come a time when the interval between the events alleged to constitute the cause of action and the trial of the action is so prolonged that there is a substantial risk that a fair trial of the issues will be no longer possible. When this stage has been reached, the public interest in the administration of justice demands that the action should not be allowed to proceed." His words related to matters that had taken place not 45 or 48 years previously but only nine to 14 years previously.

Mr. David Sumberg (Bury, South) : Does my hon. Friend recall that very recently an action was brought in the High Court by my noble Friend Lord Aldington relating to events that occurred not 10 or 20 years ago but 40 years ago, just after the second world war? The result was one of the largest libel awards in the history of this country, of more than £1 million. How does my hon. Friend square the success of that action with the quote that he has just given and the views that he advances?

Mr. Irvine : I have no difficulty in squaring that action with the points I make and the passage I quoted from Lord Justice Diplock's remarks. The case to which my hon. Friend refers did not require retrospective legislation. Nor was it a criminal action. In the particular circumstances of that case, the jury may have been able to determine the facts and reach a proper decision, but the longer the time that elapses from the commission of the offence, the more difficult it is to have a fair trial. That is particularly so in war crime cases because of the difficulty of preparing and presenting evidence.

At chapter nine, pargraph 44 of the Hetherington-Chalmers report, the difficulty confronting the prosecution in such cases is detailed. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) referred to the difficulties that the prosecution would face. What was not mentioned in the Hetherington -Chalmers report or in the speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central is the difficulties facing the defence. The desirability of ensuring a fair and proper trial should be at the heart of our considerations.

If it is difficult for the prosecution to bring a satisfactory case, it will be that much more difficult for the defence to refute it. After all, Hetherington and Chalmers employed a team of former Metropolitan police detectives working to amass evidence, and they enjoyed the co-operation of the Soviet authorities. The Soviet authorities may be very willing to grant facilities to the prosecution in a war crimes case, but would they necessarily be so ready to do so to

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assist the defence? Although people living behind what used to be called the iron curtain may volunteer to give evidence for the prosecution, it might be different if they are called upon to give evidence for the defendant.

There is no doubt in my mind that, just as the prosecution will have difficulty, so will the defence, and the difficulties of the defence are likely to be greater. Some of the difficulties that face the prosecution have been made easier by what I regard as the wrongful denial of committal proceedings which are normally available in England to the defence. Anyone who has practised in the criminal courts knows how useful committal proceedings can be to the defendant's lawyers and how they enable the defendant to test the evidence for the prosecution case and to tie down the prosecution witnesses. Yet the defendant's right to committal proceedings is specifically set aside by the schedule to the Bill.

I fear that the defence will find it difficult to prepare its case properly. The question of legal aid is linked with that. My hon. Friend the Minister has said that the legal aid authorities will exercise their discretion generously, but there will be difficulties. Obviously, it would be absurd to allow the Legal Aid Board to grant financial assistance unconditionally to the defendants to enable them to follow up every avenue, but conducting the defence may be a massively expensive exercise, involving a great deal of travel abroad, and the use of interpreters, translators and experts to examine documents. It is important that, if the Bill is enacted, the legal aid authorities are allowed to be generous to ensure that as fair a trial as possible is achieved.

Those are the reasons behind my considerable anxiety and doubts about the Bill. It is a bad Bill. I hope that it runs into trouble in the other place and I hope also that the British jury--in which I have more faith than my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington--will bear in mind the risks involved in trials of this nature at this distance in time.

12.22 am

Mr. Nicholas Bennett : I am not a lawyer like my hon. Friends the Members for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) and for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine), but I recognise certain legal precepts that the Bill does not match up to. The first precept--the danger of retrospective legislation--has been ably dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich and I do not wish to comment further on it. The second is the question of equity. It is inequitable that we should bring forward a Bill which deals with a small, clearly identified group.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) has already drawn attention, in an amendment that was unsuccessful, to the unfairness of producing a law which limits by location the people caught within its ambit.

Let us consider the Baltic states and Poland, which were occupied by both the Russians and the Germans during the last war. The massacre at Katyn, which, until 12 April 1990, when the Russians came clean and admitted their responsibility, would have been within the ambit of the Bill. It is removed from the ambit of the Bill by the Russian statement of 12 April this year. The same is true of other atrocities during that period.

One only has to look at the Hetherington-Chalmers report to see the number of people who were killed by the

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Russians in the Baltic states. Those crimes will not be covered by the Bill. It is repugnant to me that some people will be caught by the provisions of the Bill for crimes committed in the Baltic states while other people, who committed exactly the same kind of crimes a few months later or a few months earlier will be excluded because the Bill refers only to Germany or German-occupied territory. When an alleged crime was committed nearly 50 years ago, it must be right that, if the defendant is to have a fair trial, he should have access to all the evidence. Defendants, however, will be unable to get the kind of help over the evidence that they need.

Since Parliament has spent so much time and money on discussing the issue, I cannot believe that juries will not be influenced by the fact that Parliament had to pass a special law to bring these people to trial. At the back of their minds there will constantly be the thought that these people must be guilty because Parliament went to all this trouble to bring them to trial. That cannot be right. I hope that when the other place considers the Bill it will bear in mind the questions of justice, equity and fair trial. Their Lordships ought to remind themselves of their powerful debate that was held in the other place last December when Law Lord after Law Lord and ex-Lord Chancellor after ex-Lord Chancellor rammed home the fact that the Bill is deficient in terms of equity and fair trial. I hope that it will be defeated in another place, or so changed that this expensive, time-wasting and totally unnecessary Bill is rendered useless.

12.25 am

Mr. John Patten : To respond immediately to the request by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling), I confirm that, on behalf of the Government, I am happy to undertake to arrange for the publication of an annual report on the working of the Bill. I promised during our consideration of the Bill in Committee to consider the matter. On reflection, I believe that the hon. Gentleman's suggestion was correct.

The contents of the report will have to be sufficiently general to ensure that individuals cannot be identified. Subject to that proviso, we should be able to provide an informative text that will be of interest both to right hon. and hon. Members and to the general public. The Government will place copies of the annual report in the Libraries of both Houses. They will also make copies available to the press through the Vote Office and the Printed Paper Office in the normal way.

I listened carefully to the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook), for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Sir J. Stokes), for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine) and for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett). Alas, I cannot agree with the points that they made so forcefully. I respect their point of view, so I am sad that I have to disagree with them. I shall not go into the reasons for that disagreement. I fear that I laboured those reasons in Committee and on Second Reading. All I would add is that the Bill was carefully scrutinised in Committee over a substantial number of hours.

Anyone who cares to read the reports of our Standing Committee proceedings will see that the Bill was scrutinised line by line and that it goes to another place having been properly scrutinised. It also goes to another place having been subject to overwhelming majorities on two occasions : when the report was debated in the House

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on 12 December 1989 and after the Second Reading debate. I am sure that the Bill in its present form will be carefully and properly scrutinised in another place. It is to that other place that I hope the Bill will speedily go, after having obtained its Third Reading. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time : The House divided : Ayes 135, Noes 10.

Division No. 181] [12.29 am

AYES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Allason, Rupert

Amess, David

Arbuthnot, James

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

Baldry, Tony

Batiste, Spencer

Beggs, Roy

Beith, A. J.

Bendall, Vivian

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Bermingham, Gerald

Boateng, Paul

Boswell, Tim

Bradley, Keith

Brandon-Bravo, Martin

Bright, Graham

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)

Burns, Simon

Burt, Alistair

Butterfill, John

Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

Carrington, Matthew

Chope, Christopher

Conway, Derek

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

Cryer, Bob

Cunliffe, Lawrence

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Dalyell, Tam

Darling, Alistair

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

Dixon, Don

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Durant, Tony

Eggar, Tim

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Fallon, Michael

Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Forman, Nigel

Foster, Derek

Freeman, Roger

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Glyn, Dr Sir Alan

Golding, Mrs Llin

Gordon, Mildred

Graham, Thomas

Hanley, Jeremy

Harris, David

Haynes, Frank

Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

Hind, Kenneth

Hood, Jimmy

Howard, Rt Hon Michael

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Jack, Michael

Janner, Greville

Jessel, Toby

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