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Mr. Bermingham : All things are relative.
Mr. Frank Haynes (Ashfield) : I am 65 and I am young.
Mr. Bermingham : My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) has a problem.
What are we talking about in the Bill? We are talking, as was said earlier, about murdered children, and about men and women who committed crimes that none of us can bear or tolerate. By some quirk of law, they were never
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brought to justice. Is it wrong for the House to say that we think that all citizens of the world are equal before the law? That is all we are saying. We are not saying anything novel.My predecessor bar one as Member of Parliament for St. Helens was Lord Shawcross, who prosecuted at Nuremberg. He said recently that he thought that time had gone and that time had somehow forgiven and forgotten. That must be wrong. If I murder somebody today and, by a quirk of fate, avoid prosecution for 20, 30 or 40 years, have I committed any less of a crime after, say, 40 years? Have I somehow, by the passage of time, gained the right not to be prosecuted? We do not have a statute of limitations in this land. Why should we have a statute of limitations for war criminals? We should not, we must not, and I suspect that, after tonight, we will not.
As time goes by, perhaps education improves and we learn how to deal with the sins of the past. Perhaps we should always deal with the sins of the past, but why? In other lands, people can be prosecuted for war crimes committed in Europe. The Bill is too limited because it restricts prosecution to crimes committed in German-occupied territories from 1939 onwards. War crimes are being committed in the name of inhumanity all over the world, all the time--
Mr. Allason : There is a law to cover that.
Mr. Bermingham : Of course there is not. The hon. Gentleman should look at the legislation--
Mr. Allason : What about the 1956 and 1969 Acts?
Mr. Bermingham : With great respect, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. If he wants to intervene, I shall certainly give way to him. By seeking to intervene from a sedentary position, he is perhaps showing the paucity of his cause.
Mr. Allason : Is it not the case that the Geneva Conventions Act 1956 and the Genocide Act 1969 make clear the international law and the law of this country on this issue? Is it not the case that the Bill tackles a small loophole in the jurisdiction, which it aims to close because it is exploited by war criminals?
Mr. Bermingham : If I remember correctly, the Geneva Conventions Act gained Royal Assent in 1957, not 1956--but it matters not. The Bill seeks to plug the loophole for the period 1939-57. Is that wrong? Are we to pass the Billl simply because we wish to close the gap?
Mr. John Browne (Winchester) : Retrospectively.
Mr. Bermingham : Another Conservative Member intervenes from a sedentary position to say, "retrospectively". Murder is murder whether it was committed in 1940 or 1941. There is nothing about retrospective legislation in the Bill. We are not turning what was a legitimate act into an illegitimate act. Quite the contrary--we are saying that what was done in the period from 1939 onwards was illegitimate and illegal. It was murder --it is as blunt as that. If hon. Members say, "We shall use the argument of retrospection as a means of excusing the prosecution of killers", I ask them why there should be a rule for some people in the European continent which does not apply to other people in the European continent. Just because by a quirk of fate and legislation someone moves from, for example, the Ukraine or Latvia to the United
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Kingdom, why should he or she escape prosecution when, if that person were to stay in the first country, he or she would face prosecution? That must be wrong.It is also argued that, because another place argued so eloquently against the Bill, we who are elected by the people have no right to challenge that view. I thought that was what the civil war was all about, back in 1640. I thought that we had solved that problem and decided that the elected House has the right, on certain occasions, to say, "No, we reflect the will of the people, the will of the electorate, and our view must prevail."
The Parliament Acts have been used on only three occasions on major matters --and this is a major matter. If, by luck, someone has left the place in Europe where he or she committed a crime and has taken up residence here and therefore has not been prosecuted, we must say on behalf of the people of the United Kingdom, "That is not good enough."
The tragedy is that we did not have the courage to introduce such legislation 20, 30 or 40 years ago to bring our law into line with the European continent. That is why I ask the House to support the Bill.
Since our previous debate on this matter, I have considered the arguments about identification with great care. As a practising lawyer--I declare that interest--I have always been worried about identification cases because there have been many miscarriages of justice as a result of misidentification. I listened with care to what my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) said earlier, but disagree fundamentally with him. Identification need not be simply a line-up in an identification parade. We have sophisticated techniques that could be used in this case. Provided that we have the safeguards which, as the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) said, are safeguards with which the English courts are well used to dealing--I concede that we do not always get it right--I do not foresee problems with identification.
That was the problem that worried me greatly last time. I have thought about it a great deal since, because it was always apparent that the Bill would return to this House and that this issue would not go away. I therefore asked myself a simple question. If I were a member of the investigating team, would I be satisfied that suitable safeguards could be built into the system to ensure that any identification, if it forms a major part of the case, could be safely relied upon? The provisions of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 crossed my mind and I wondered whether they were enough in themselves.
However, there are records of what happened. There is record on film and there are photographs. There are hundreds of pieces of documentary evidence and there are forensic and other experts who can interpret the films and decide who the people were. I believe that we now have the scientific knowledge to help us with the problem of the aging process. After all, most of us go through it in one form or another as the years go by. I am no longer so worried, therefore, about the identification problem. If any trials involve identification, we must consider making available to the defence the same wide range of forensic skills and experts as are available to the prosecution. That is the one remaining area that causes me a niggling worry, but I believe that it can be overcome.
When people kill, they take the life of another. The millions who were killed did not ask to die. They are the victims. Is it not time that we in this House thought more
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about the victims than about the aggressors? Have not the victims of the holocaust a right to justice no matter how much time has elapsed? Why should those who committed the crimes and who, by a quirk of law, were lucky enough to escape the justice that should have been due to their victims escape it still? Why should those victims continue to be denied their justice? After all, they gave their lives. Those whom we now seek to prosecute took those lives. 8.8 pmMr. Rupert Allason (Torbay) : As a member of the all-party war crimes group, I attended the debate in the other House. I was pretty stunned by what I heard there. There seems to be a tendency in this House to assume some kind of monopoly of wisdom for some of their Lordships, especially Lord Goodman. From my experience, receiving letters which have threatened all kinds of things, Lord Goodman is just a large, big bully and I do not believe that he speaks for anybody and I do not suppose--
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. It is contrary to our conventions to criticise in that fashion members of the other place, who cannot answer back.
Mr. Allason : I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling into question the integrity of a member of the legal profession. When I listened to their Lordships, I noted that they pursued three particular red herrings on which I should like to take them to task. First, the essence of the Bill is a technical change in jurisdiction, rather than the criminal law--or specifically the criminal law relating to murder. When the people committed the offences, they were outside our jurisdiction. They have remained outside that jurisdiction through a loophole in the law. We do not seek to criminalise what they did, but merely to extend the jurisdiction. The unpalatable fact that their Lordships were not prepared to face was that the United Kingdom has become a bolthole for war criminals. Indeed, only one other place in the world offers the same measure of protection to these people and that is Damascus.
Mr. John Browne : My hon. Friend's argument is not quite right. We are seeking to extend the jurisdiction. I believe that that is right and I agreed with much of what the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) said. But in this case we are seeking to extend the jurisdiction retrospectively. That is the crucial issue.
Mr. Allason : If my hon. Friend will give me a moment, I shall come to that point. It was one of the more bogus points raised in another place.
It is not a matter of reviving old memories. The individuals are known. There are no difficulties over identification. They know who they are and, of course, their names have already been published on Scottish Television. Those two issues are complete red herrings. I now come to the business of retrospective legislation. I have rarely heard such utter rot from the other House. We constantly pass retrospective legislation. If anyone challenges that, I simply refer them to the Official Secrets Act 1989, in which we created a new offence. Anyone who has ever served in the security and intelligence services at any time has suddenly been drawn into a brand new Act. They did not sign anything relating to the Act. They may
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have served long before the last world war. The creation of that offence was entirely a retrospective exercise. That the Bill is retrospective does not automatically mean that it is bad. In this case, retrospectively to extend the jurisdiction of the House seems perfectly satisfactory.The third issue that their Lordships appeared to ignore was the whole business of the time limit. It was suggested that, because the events happened an awful long time ago, somehow those responsible should be excused. I am prepared to listen to that line of argument, but there is one logical question to be asked. If one gets away with a murder, at what stage can one stop looking over one's shoulder wondering whether one is going to be arrested? Is it 10, 20 or 40 years? That logical question must be asked of their Lordships. They were not prepared to answer it in the debate. All that they said was that it was an awfully long time ago and it was a great shame to dredge it all up again.
Mention was made of defendants being feeble and senile. Of course, that is not the point. The legislation will allow our legal system to address a particular problem presented by individuals who have sought asylum in this country. We shall not automatically prosecute such individuals. If they are not in any condition to stand trial, of course the judge will sling the case out immediately.
I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) is not in the Chamber. He raised several issues which, again, were red herrings that must be addressed. He wondered why these people had come to this country. More to the point, he said that the British authorities were aware of the background of those individuals when they entered the country. That is a grave allegation. I simply do not believe that that is the case. But if my right hon. Friend persists in making that allegation, there is no clearer argument for ending the secrecy that surrounds all the cases.
I hark back to one of the first questions that I asked in the House. I asked whether it was possible to see the British files--admittedly in Foreign Office archives relating to Klaus Barbie. I was told that because the British Government had employed Klaus Barbie in an intelligence capacity after the war, the information was too terribly secret to be revealed. What could be more preposterous?
I hope that the House will support the Bill. Moreover, if, sadly, the Bill is rejected, I urge the authorities and Sir Thomas Hetherington to publish part two of the report to demonstrate to all hon. Members exactly how overwhelming is the weight of evidence against these individuals. I urge the House to support the Bill. 8.15 pm
Mr. Merlyn Rees (Morley and Leeds, South) : The point that the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) has just made about the information available in part two of the Chalmers-Hetherington report is extremely important. I shall return to it later, if only to argue that, at present, the information is in the hands of the Home Office. Only the Home Secretary and his closest advisers have seen it. I believe that, if the Bill is not passed, that information will not remain secret. Several people who supplied it will make sure that it is made known. That is a factor which we should take into account because it has greatly influenced successive Home Secretaries who have read the report. As is said in the report, the information is horrific. I have
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always felt that that is what influenced the Government and what may well have influenced the new Prime Minister, who previously voted against the Bill.I support the Bill as chairman of the all-party war crimes committee and for myself. Over the weekend, I re-read our debates in the House over the past two years and the White Paper by Hetherington and Chalmers. I have read the papers that were prepared for the use of the war crimes committee, some of them by eminent lawyers explaining--with the aid of the Home Office, I am glad to say, which certainly did not approach our endeavours secretively--why the other approaches, of extradition or altering citizenship, were not the correct avenues to pursue. I must say that the citizenship avenue attracted me at the beginning.
It is good training and concentrates the mind to read the explanatory and financial memorandum, which encapsulates the purpose of the Bill. It says that clause 1 provides that :
"proceedings for murder and manslaughter (or culpable homicide) may be brought against persons who are British citizens or resident in the United Kingdom or the Islands in respect of actions committed in violation of the laws and customs of war in Germany or
German-occupied territory between 1 September 1939 and 5 June 1945." I have had letters asking why Japanese and Russian war crimes have not been included. It is because the Home Office, in its wisdom, with the information available to it, said that it did not know of any Russians or Japanese people who came here to live. Large numbers of people came here from eastern Europe as displaced persons, as is set out in the Hetherington -Chalmers report. The Bill was spawned out of that report.
Referring to a draft convention to which the United Kingdom might have become a signatory and quoting Home Office papers in 1944, the report stated :
"The United Kingdom need not sign this convention because there is little or no likelihood of War Criminals' or Quislings' escaping to this country since for no doubt many years after the war all persons coming here from abroad will require a visa".
In 1944, in its wisdom, the Home Office thought that there was "little or no likelihood" of people with war crime backgrounds coming from mid-Europe to this country, so there was no need to sign the convention. The Home Office was wrong.
For economic reasons, because of work in the textile industry in the north or in the coal mines in south Wales, large numbers of people were brought to the United Kingdom. I invite right hon. and hon. Members to read page 42 of the Hetherington-Chalmers report, which states :
"the existing screening arrangements were as good as could be devised".
A large number of people came to this country for economic reasons. Some had been involved in the commission of war crimes in mid and central Europe. That is the genesis of the Bill.
I am as worried as anyone about the practicalities of any trials. Although I was only marginally involved in the Birmingham case, I was heavily involved in the Guildford case. I am glad that the Government have said that a royal commission will investigate the criminal justice system. It is necessary to investigate the police and forensic evidence. I am sure that the Home Secretary will deal with those matters in the short term, but the problem associated with the Court of Appeal will not be dealt with overnight. The more I become involved and the more I prepare evidence
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for the royal commission--which I was preparing for the May investigation--the more I realise that this is not an easy matter. There are problems in terms of the practicalities of the court. The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) and my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) referred, in a way that I could not, to the way in which courts deal with jurors and witnesses and identification. I am glad that lawyers in another place said that they were concerned about fair trials, but I wish that there had been equal concern about fair trials for those involved in the Guildford case, for example. I hope that there will be a fair trial for anyone who is dealt with under the Bill. It is 17 years since the Birmingham case was first brought up. It may be another 20 years before those who committed those horrors in 1974 are caught. Should we therefore argue that, as nearly 40 years have passed since a crime was committed, it should be forgotten?Mr. Gorst : Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, in relation to much of what he said about the Birmingham and Guildford cases, that what happens depends on the quality of the investigators?
Mr. Rees : I agree. That was to be my next point. Once the Bill is passed, investigation will determine the nature of a trial. I have some sympathy with those members of the judiciary who say that they take what comes in front of them. Investigation is very important. My experience partly explains why I became involved in the war crimes issue. I saw the evidence of war crimes in Lyons in France, the town where Barbie operated, but I do not want to develop that point. I have never forgotten what I saw. Those were not crimes committed in the heat of battle. I have often argued with members of my family, who have now grown up, about how to distinguish between Dresden, the cab-rank operations in which I was involved and the events on the Basra road. When I took my children to France, I saw acre upon acre of graves of the millions of German, French, British and Irish people who died in the first world war--
Sir Nicholas Fairbairn (Perth and Kinross) : And Scots.
Mr. Rees : And Scots. I am not making a silly point. There were large numbers of people from all parts of Europe. The whole thing is an obscenity. The real war crimes involve those who committed the crimes in the cool light of day. Some of the stories told in the Hetherington report reflect the horrifying events.
As a young man, I was astonished to find that the young soldiers who were taken prisoner in the south of France were, we were told, Russians--they were Ukrainians. I do not know whether Germans or Ukrainians committed the crimes in Lyons. The same things happened in Yugoslavia and in Austria- Hungary. Thousands of people poured in. We now read that they were enthusiastically on the side of the Germans. That is as may be--I am not concerned with that after all this time. What is a war crime? In much of the debate, we have gone beyond the Bill. The Hetherington report states :
"It is appropriate to consider the terms war crime' and war criminal' Most of what are termed war crimes' in the Second World War were committed far from the front
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line and have little to do with the actual waging of war. Most of these crimes would be more appropriately termed crimes of occupation".My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Duffy), who served with the Fleet Air Arm during the war, and the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) expressed a view which I understood. Those who have seen war realise how horrific it is and pull back from considering war crimes. I do not pull back from war crimes but am concerned with the horrors that took place in mid-Europe in the cool of the day--not the heat of battle--when thousands of people were done to death for anti- socialism.
Sir Nicholas Fairbairn : That is all right.
Mr. Rees : I am proud to be a socialist. This is not something to be funny about. Good socialists were done to death by communists in central Europe. They had stood up for their cause throughout the war. It is interesting to note who supported the communists when the war was over-- many were slightly to the right of Genghis Khan. They had a home in the communist party. There is a certain circularity in this matter, fascism and communism becoming very much the same. A socialist understands that.
"War crime" is defined in the Hetherington report. What did Governments do in the 1940s? I referred to the Home Office statement in 1944, that quislings and people who committed war crimes would not come to the United Kingdom, but the Home Office was wrong. Many of us get things wrong because we do not comprehend what will happen. The Hetherington report stated :
"War criminals were not given an assurance that they would not be prosecuted here, and we see nothing in the policy or practice of successive British Governments that would prevent the present Government taking whatever action it considers suitable." Similarly, on retrospection, the report stated that
"enactment of legislation in this country to allow the prosecution of war crimes' in British courts would not be retrospective : it would merely empower British courts to utilise a jurisdiction already available to them under international law since before 1939, over crimes which had been internationally recognised as such since 1939 by nations including both the United Kingdom and Germany." The report adds that that argument is not made in respect of offences of genocide, which would be retrospective, and which were not attended to until the 1957 legislation.
I comprehend the need for legislation as a matter of principle. The principle involved was that cited earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker). The Bill really exists to plug a defect in our nationality laws. If I, who was British born, had committed such a crime, I would be brought to trial, but the man or woman living next door to me who did not tell the truth when they were made British citizens or when they completed the forms to enter this country as displaced persons would not be prosecuted.
Ms. Short : As my right hon. Friend knows, if someone lies for the purpose of acquiring British citizenship, they can subsequently be deprived of it. It is not true to say that the Bill provides the only remedy against a liar who wrongly secured British citizenship.
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Mr. Rees : No, but I said earlier, when my hon. Friend was temporarily absent for a spot of dinner--understandably, because she has been present in the Chamber all evening--that that point had been made in the Select Committee and was put to the Home Office. It is not just a matter of depriving a person of his British citizenship. It is not--as I know, as a former Home Secretary--just a matter of making an executive decision, because the case will end up in the courts. My hon. Friend may be concerned about The Sun splashing a particular case over its first and second pages. It would do the same if British citizenship was rescinded, because the case could end up in the courts. There is no way of avoiding court action.
Ms. Short : But it is not the only remedy.
Mr. Rees : No, it is not the only remedy. That point is made in the Hetherington report, as it was in the report published by the appropriate Home Office department some time ago.
Mr. John Browne : The right hon. Gentleman makes an eloquent argument for plugging the gap, with which most right hon. and hon. Members would agree. The question is whether that gap should be plugged retrospectively. It may be convenient and popular to take that action, but would it be just?
Mr. Rees : I quoted earlier the advice offered by Hetherington and Chalmers. One is a former Director of Public Prosecutions and the other held a similar appointment in Scotland, as Crown Agent. They argued that it is not a case of retrospection in relation to the crime itself, but to the jurisdiction.
Mr. Peter Archer (Warley, West) : Does my right hon. Friend agree that the inception of the idea embodied in the Bill was a merciful alternative to extradition?
Mr. Rees : Replying earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short), I said that we had considered the option relating to citizenship, which appealed to me. I wish that we could get around the problem of citizenship in this country, but we are haunted by nationality and British subject status, going back to the days of a British empire on which the sun never set. As to extradition, one thinks of the days to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Duffy) referred, when we were both students. I wonder whether he sat in the Strangers' Gallery when the House debated a famous extradition case involving a Pole, which featured in all the newspapers. Extradition was found to be not as easy as all that.
Mr. Stanbrook : I imagine that the right hon. Gentleman is thinking of the Batory case.
Mr. Rees : The hon. Gentleman is correct. Extradition does not provide an easy solution either. The Government came down on this side--
Mr. Archer : The objection came from them.
Mr. Rees : My right hon. and learned Friend says that the objection came from "them". I take his words in the way that he put them. Plugging the gap of citizenship and of nationality is of the greatest importance. I am old enough to recall that, even in the first year or two of the second world war, many people on the right ignored the reality of Hitler. It was a
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long time before the reality of the concentration camps was accepted. Equally, after the war, many on the left ignored the reality of Soviet Russia. We are back to the circularity that I mentioned earlier--the way in which intelligent men and women can close their eyes and ears to the reality of the world, which is extremely surprising.Sir Alan Glyn (Windsor and Maidenhead) : I recall that a command paper published in 1939 set out all the atrocities that had been committed. I obtained a copy from the Library.
Mr. Rees : The hon. Gentleman is right. I had other things on my mind at the time, but I imagine that many people chose to ignore those facts. Ignoring reality is not a function of academic attainment either.
There is no reason why those who live here as citizens or residents should be treated any differently from the rest of us. I keep saying that I have been a Member of the House for a long time, but it is germane. I have never quite faced up to being a politician, because politicians are great ones for shouting and attracting the attention of the national media when something happens to get coverage of what they intend to do. Not long ago, right hon. and hon. Members were denouncing the way in which RAF pilots were being treated as prisoners of war and saying what they intended to do about it. I will tell the House what will be done about it--nothing. It was good stuff at the time.
I mentioned that because I have been in correspondence with Wing Commander Stapleton as a result of a letter that he wrote to The Times. He pointed out that, in June 1944, following the Gestapo murders of 50 allied air crew officers, the Foreign Minister, Anthony Eden, assured Parliament that the Government were firmly resolved "that these foul criminals shall be tracked down to the last man wherever they may take refuge. When the war is over they will be brought to exemplary justice."--[ Official Report, 23 June 1944 ; Vol. 401, c. 481.]
What was done? They were forgotten. It is easy to forget, but I do not want to forget those who came here to live as British citizens. If they had gone to another country, it would be someone else's responsibility, but as they came here to reside, they are our responsibility.
I commend the Bill to the House, on the basis of both parts of the Hetherington and Chalmers report. I do not believe that the second part will go away. It has affected successive Home Secretaries, and in my view it affected the Prime Minister and led to his change of mind. If the Bill does not die a natural death, I do not believe that many people will be touched by it--and I do not want them to go to prison, to be hanged, or locked up. They will be old men of my age, and older. I want them to face the light of day. In some small way, that will show others that there is no hiding place for those who commit the kind of war crimes that have been listed by Hetherington and Chalmers. If we do not take that action, someone else will, because although that information is privy to the Government--as long as they want to keep it--others provided it, and it will be provided. I would rather that the press dealt with a trial, instead of the untested evidence in part two of the Hetherington-Chalmers report.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : I see that five hon. Members seek to catch my eye and there are 40 minutes left for debate. I think that the arithmetic will be obvious.
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8.39 pmSir Nicholas Fairbairn (Perth and Kinross) : May I respond with care to what the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) has just said, and let me remind him that two of those at Nuremberg were executed because they signed the order for the airmen in question.
Let me also remind the right hon. Gentleman that when the four international judges went out they decided to get the easy cases out first. They said that von Papen, Hjalmar Schacht and Fritsche were guilty, but eventually those three were acquitted. So let us not be too pompous about the certainty of justice in the wake of Birmingham and Guildford.
As a Scots lawyer, what I find most objectionable about the Hetherington- Chalmers report is not that it is retrospective or that it alters the extraditional concepts of the law, but that it alters the evidential concept of the law--the idea that one can be convicted on the hearsay evidence of someone who is dead, when that evidence is not capable of any form of investigation.
My goodness, if we were not able to get a conviction right 17 years ago, are we likely to get it right on hearsay evidence when the crime happened 50 years ago? I find the concept contrary to the theory of justice upon which the law of Scotland is formed, if not the law of England. Uncorroborated hearsay from the dead seems to me to be a strange basis for attempting to try people for crimes, however frightful they were.
Let us not forget that it took this Government to admit that it was the Russians who murdered the Polish officer corps at Katyn. It was this Government who allowed the memorial to be built. It was blown up by Russian agents and then recreated.
I have a great friend called Zoe Polanska-Palmer, who was taken from Russia, at the age of 12, to Auschwitz. She was the principal object of experiments by Dr. Mengele. She was moved to the pleasures of Dachau by a Polish officer. During an air raid she escaped and walked--speaking only Russian--from Dachau over the Alps and was hidden by the partisans. Then she was taken to Klagenfurt and, on the orders of Sir Toby Low, she was loaded at bayonet-point, to be taken back and shot. Because she was only a young girl and she was injured, a British officer pushed her off the lorry and that is why she is still alive, in Tayport in Scotland.
I do not have any sentimentality when it comes to the wrongness or the brutality of those who committed these crimes, but I believe that if we attempt to get these old jellyfish into court now, they would either be wrongly or pointlessly convicted.
Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Russians, Czechoslovakians and Poles--how many thousand war crimes did they each commit? Let us bury the past.
8.45 pm
Mr. Ivor Stanbrook (Orpington) : I can be brief because the contributions against the Bill that we have heard today, especially in the earlier part of the debate, have been first class and extremely persuasive. There is no doubt whatsoever that the balance of the argument is now substantially against the Bill.
Although I have been against the principle of retrospective legislation-- legislation bent for the purpose of establishing cases against alleged war criminals--from
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the very beginning, in view of the speeches that we have heard against the Bill, it is not necessary for me to speak at length. One of the best contributions was that of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) because he demonstrated conclusively to anyone who had not already made up his mind about the Bill- -Mr. Stanbrook : Yes, or had not made up her mind. He showed that it would be wrong to proceed with it. It is certainly a pity for his argument and for his reputation that he rested his opposition to the Bill upon a matter of such little merit, namely, that it is desirable to declare that we are against the holocaust. Of course we are against the holocaust, but that is not part of the argument. The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook put the Home Secretary on the spot by asking whether there will be prosecutions under the Bill if we pass it. The Home Secretary did not answer in a satisfactory manner, and the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook would not allow me to intervene to point that out. The argument, which ought to be pressed home, is that unless the Bill is passed, the people concerned-- three elderly individuals who now live in this country--cannot be prosecuted. The Bill must be passed to enable that. Only one Law Officer can decide that they will not then be prosecuted.
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