House of Commons Hansard Debates for 15 Feb 1993

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No. 13, in page 52, line 37, leave out from sections' to 13' in line 38.

No. 14, in page 56, line 43, leave out and'.

No. 15, in page 56, line 46, at end insert

and

(d) for the purpose of determining, in the event of his death, the rate of any surviving spouse's or children's pension payable under sections 5 to 8 of that Act in respect of his service as Comptroller and Auditor General, as if references in those sections to the annual rate of the deceased's judicial pension were references

(i) where a pension had commenced to be paid to him by virtue of paragraph (4), to the appropriate annual rate of that pension ; or (ii) where no such pension had commenced to be paid to him, to the rate that would have been the appropriate annual rate of the pension payable to him by virtue of paragraph (4)(b), had he not died, but been disabled by permanent infirmity for the performance of the duties of his office on and after the date of death ;'.

No. 16, in page 56, line 49, leave out from sections' to 13' in line 50.

No. 17, in page 59, line 40, leave out and'.

No. 18, in page 59, line 43, at end insert

and

(d) for the purpose of determining, in the event of his death, the rate of any surviving spouse's or children's pension payable under sections 5 to 8 of that Act in respect of his service as Commissioner, as if references in those sections to the annual rate of the deceased's judicial pension were references--

(i) where a pension had commenced to be paid to him by virtue of sub- paragraph (1), to the appropriate annual rate of that pension ; or

(ii) where no such pension had commenced to be paid to him, to the rate that would have been the appropriate annual rate of the pension payable to him by virtue of sub-paragraph (1)(b), had he not died, but been disabled by permanent infirmity for the performance of the duties of his office on and after the date of death ;'.

No. 19, in page 59, line 46, leave out from sections' to 13' in line 47.-- [Mr. John M. Taylor.]

Schedule 8

Minor and consequential amendments

Amendment made : No. 20, in page 91, line 31, leave out from words' to end of line 33 and insert

" qualifying judicial office, within the meaning of the Judicial Pensions and Retirement Act 1993.".'.-- [Mr. John M. Taylor.] Order for Third Reading read.

8.30 pm

Mr. John M. Taylor : I beg to move, That the Bill now be read the Third time.

I do not wish to speak at any great length at this point in the proceedings, but would like to comment on one or two matters before we bring our consideration of the Bill to a close.

The occasion for the Bill was the change in the tax treatment of pension schemes introduced by the Finance Acts of 1987 and 1989. That legislation provided the means by which the Revenue applied common standards to all modern occupational pension schemes. Those standards were not applied to the judicial pension schemes. However, there was a thorough-going review of those schemes and consultation with the judiciary on the design of improved pension arrangements. The Bill is the product of that review and consultation. Its provisions

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apply the same standards to judicial pension arrangements as the Revenue applies to all other public service and private sector occupational pension schemes. It brings judicial pension arrangements more into line with modern tax law.

The Government have also taken this opportunity to make a number of other significant changes to the judicial pension arrangements. In place of a plethora of judicial pension schemes with different accrual periods, contribution rates and benefit levels, they have created a unified scheme embracing all salaried judicial officers in the United Kingdom. As well as being inherently fairer than the existing position, this will remove the barriers which the current arrangements place in the way of judges moving between the different levels of the judiciary on promotion. Following representations, the Bill was amended by the Government in several important respects in the other place further to improve the level of benefits it provides. The judicial pension arrangements provided by the Bill now constitute an attractive package which compares favourably with other public service and private sector occupational pension schemes.

The Bill also makes provision, following consultation, for setting a new general retirement age of 70 for all judicial officers first appointed after the Bill comes into force. That uniform arrangement will replace the present variety of retirement ages. The choice of the age of 70 instead of another age has not been without its critics. The right retirement age for the judiciary is clearly a matter of judgment. It is the Government's view, however, that 70 is the appropriate age ; it takes account both of the need for experience and maturity of judgment and the fact that the burdens of office can be onerous.

I think that it is right at this stage of the Bill to say a quick word about commencement. If the Bill is given a Third Reading, completes its final stage in the other place and goes on to receive Royal Assent, there will still be a considerable amount of work to be done in the form of regulations--many of an actuarial nature--before it can be fully implemented. It is my noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor's present intention that both the pensions and retirement provisions of the Bill be commenced simultaneously. However, in view of the work I have just mentioned, it is unlikely that the Bill can be brought into force much before the end of 1993.

Finally, I would like to thank all those on both sides of the House who have contributed to our debates on this Bill. It has provided an opportunity for hon. and right hon. Members to raise a wide range of issues relating to the judiciary, many of which have proved of great interest. I commend the Bill to the House.

8.34 pm

Mr. Paul Boateng (Brent, South) : Having given such detailed and lengthy consideration--for which we are indebted to the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir. I. Lawrence)--to the special interests of the judges, it is right that we should spend at least some time considering what is perhaps the most important interest of all in judicial and legal services, the public and consumer interest. I shall address myself to those matters.

The Government have missed an opportunity. We hoped that they would go much further than they did and

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that the House would consider the subject of judicial services. The quality of those services remains high and the intellect of those who work in them is, in the main, without parallel in the jurisdiction of the EEC and further still. We could have examined how judicial services might be improved and enhanced in the interests of the consumer. We hoped that we would address the issue of a younger judiciary and the means by which we could encourage the appointment, at an earlier age, of suitably qualified practitioners, be they barristers, solicitors or academics drawn from either branch, and how we might so arrange pensions to enable that to happen.

The Government missed the opportunity but at the same time increased the required length of service to qualify for a judicial pension and reduced the age of retirement to 70. They failed to incorporate into the Bill any positive measures to encourage the appointment of younger people to the bench. They failed to respond to the desirability of reducing the retirement age still further and making it, as both the Bar and the Law Society and a broad cross-section of consumer interests have suggested, 65 rather than 70. We regret the missed opportunity.

In Committee, we tried to persuade the Government of the wisdom of our case to reduce the retirement age. They failed to be persuaded, and the Bill is flawed. It will remain flawed as a recipe for a judiciary in tune with the times and capable of meeting their challenges. The important issue must be addressed, together with another issue touched on by the hon. and learned Member for Burton, but then drawn away from as if one had spoken of an unpleasant heresy, and that is the notion that it might just be possible to conceive of a judiciary in which there were opportunities for the development of a career. I have in mind a judicial service in which it might be possible to appoint practitioners in their late thirties, or in their forties, to the junior ranks of the judiciary, and then see them advance up the scale to the highest judicial offices. The Bill recognises the importance and possibility of the portability of pensions, and that is to be supported and commended, but it does nothing to recognise and encourage the desirability of appointing practitioners to the bench at a younger age and providing a career structure that will enable them to advance within it.

I do not see why we should accept as holy writ the notion propounded by the hon. and learned Member for Burton that someone at the Bar is automatically qualified for the judiciary when he or she is earning about £200,000 a year. He seemed to suggest that a practitioner should be earning that sort of sum before he or she could be considered qualified for judicial appointment. The hon. and learned Gentleman clearly practises in a different world from that occupied by myself and other humble practitioners. The notion that only when a practitioner earns £200,000 a year is he or she qualified to make the supreme sacrifice of entering the judiciary is palpably absurd. It does not bear examination.

I wish to do nothing at this late stage of our consideration of the Bill to excite the hon. and learned Gentleman. I hope in due course to be able to make much more common cause with him on the issue of legal aid.

Sir Ivan Lawrence : If there is a difference between my earnings at the bar and those of the hon. Gentleman, it is because I have been at it, as it were, a bit longer than he. I have no doubt that in due course he will earn the highest amounts possible under the legal aid system. I can assure

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him that they will not come to anything like £200,000 a year. I quoted that figure as an example of what some of the best practitioners--the most experienced and successful--earn in some branches of the law.

The hon. Gentleman might agree with me that many of those who are appointed to the circuit beench have not been privileged to earn £200,000 a year. Their earnings before appointment have been substantially lower. They have been unable to accumulate a pension outside the judiciary that would enable them to make a substantial enough contribution to make becoming a judge worth while.

Mr. Boateng : Quite so. I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman read the reports of our Committee proceedings. I made that point about earnings then.

It would be dangerous for those who take an interest in our proceedings outside the House and who are not lawyers to gain the impression that only practitioners who earn the sort of sum that the hon. and learned Gentleman has seen fit to quote would be qualified for entry to the judiciary. A progressive approach to judicial appointments must be one that seeks to encourage the broadest possible cross-section of practitioners, people with different skills and experience but suitably qualified. There must be the broadest ranges of ages and gender. In that regard, we cannot afford any complacency.

At a time when there is considerable public interest in the judiciary and legal services generally, it is right that there should be a public debate about the composition of the judiciary, how training might be enhanced and how appointments might be made more transparent. We examined those issues in Committee. We pressed--we shall continue to do so--the value of a lay element. It is a matter of deep regret to Opposition Members that in Committee--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : Order. A debate on Third Reading must be confined to what is in the Bill. It is not the time to talk about what is not in it or what should be in it.

Mr. Boateng : Quite so, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I invite the attention of the House to clause 11.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones) : Must the hon. Gentleman

Mr. Boateng : The right hon. Gentleman has every reason to be tired, given the events of recent months. I have in mind especially his recent exposure to lawyers over international treaty organisations. I well understand why he is reluctant to embark upon a detailed study of the Bill. I must, however, tax him just a little and add to the woes that befall him.

When we consider the clauses that relate to the entitlement to a pension of holders of judicial office, it is interesting to reflect on their impact on the opportunities and entitlements of women who, against the odds, achieve judicial office. There is still an imbalance against women in the appointment of and to the judiciary. The relevant clauses will still further disadvantage women who rise to judicial appointments unless there is a policy that positively seeks out women entrants. I have in mind a policy that encourages practitioners to enter the judiciary at an earlier age, and one that will have more women members. Such a judiciary would be better qualified to

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command the wholehearted confidence of the public. I say that from the point of view of the Lord Chancellor's Department and of those responsible for appointing judges.

Mr. John M. Taylor : I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to know that the Lord Chancellor has stated his policy on judicial appointments in these terms--that while it must be the best who are appointed, none the less he wants more women and representatives of ethnic minorities to be appointed. Optimistically, as more women and people from ethnic minorities are recruited into the legal profession, it will not be long before they are at an age in the recruiting grounds when they can be promoted. I think that the hon. Gentleman will welcome that, as I do.

Mr. Boateng : It is always encouraging to hear such sentiments being expressed by the Minister, echoing what I know to be the Lord Chancellor's sincerely held belief, to which he has sought ably to give effect during recent years. However, there is no room for complacency, which is why we have been concerned to ensure that that matter is taken on board.

It is possible and desirable to have a more ethnic and gender-varied bench which in every way represents the community that it serves not only through talent and intellectual achievement, but through race and gender make-up. It is eminently desirable that we take that into account during our consideration of the Bill. We doubt that the Bill would have come before the House in its present form had it been the subject of consultation with and input from a far broader range of interests. That is why it is so important to take account of consumer interests. Time and again we have spoken about the deficiencies in policy making within the Lord Chancellor's Department--the shapers of the Bill--when there is no involvement, as of right, for the consumers of legal services. The judiciary provides a valuable public service. Although standards of integrity and intellect are of the highest, we shall continue to press for judicial services that are more shaped by lay involvement through appointments, that are enhanced by training opportunities linked to a career structure, and that are underpinned by pension arrangements of the sort outlined in the Bill. At the same time, we want a judiciary that is more diverse and whose members retire earlier than at present. We will not divide the House on Third Reading. We want to extend our thanks to the Minister and those hon. Members on both sides of the House who served on the Committee. We also thank the Chairman and the Officers of the House. We owe them a debt of thanks for a course of deliberation that has been enlightening and entertaining and whose ultimate conclusion, while by no means perfect, is livable with. 8.54 pm

Sir Ivan Lawrence : Unusually, I agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) said. There is obviously a high degree of cross-party unity on the Bill. The fact that we have concentrated on the Bill's drawbacks should not hide from the public the fact that, in general, the Bill has been widely welcomed for its important provisions, which will improve the system.

It is only right to point out--it may not have been apparent from anything said this evening--that some very distinguished and eminent people have opposed certain

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elements of the Bill. The Lord Chief Justice made his maiden speech opposing elements of the Bill. A former Lord Chancellor, some Law Lords and a former Master of the Rolls all made speeches opposing certain elements of the Bill. It has not been widely welcomed in all its features.

The circuit judges have done a great deal to advance the argument for widows' and other pensions, although they were not alone in that. When we stand back and look at the current position it is obvious that the major vice of the Bill is, as was said in another place, the combination of reducing the retiring age for judges and increasing the accrual rate for earning a pension.

The Bill was summed up in the other place by, I think, the Lord Chief Justice--although it may have been one of the other judges--as something that would produce serious problems of recruitment, judicial staleness and injustice, and not a Bill that should command, in all its aspects, universal support--not only among lawyers but among all who consider the logical and reasonable criticisms that have been levelled against it.

It is obvious that young people in their early years of practice at the Bar, who are trying to pay off a mortgage and who have substantial expenses if they are educating their children, cannot build up private pensions that are adequate to supplement the pension that a judge will earn at the end of his long period of accrual. There are distinctive features of practice at the Bar and on the bench that are not wholly comparable with life outside. For someone who becomes a judge, it is a whole new profession begun in late middle age. That is the real anomaly about the judiciary, not the fact that the accrual rates vary from one sort of judge to another. I do not believe that the Government have given enough attention to the judiciary's concern about the future of the judicial profession, and about how much more difficult it will be in the new, hectic litigious world to find judges of calibre and to attract them. If they are of great calibre and are attracted, the calibre of the Bar will be depleted ; if they are of calibre and lose their calibre, they will be encouraged to stay on past their sell- by date--their date of efficiency--to qualify for a pension.

Let me make a point that I did not make in my earlier speech, when I was trying to speak as briefly as possible in order not to weary the House. I was stunned by both the comments of the hon. Member for Brent, South and those of my hon. Friend the Minister about women. How on earth can we pretend that we are creating a system in which women will find it more attractive to be judges, while ensuring that, by the time they get on to the bench and have served a period as judge, they will not be able to earn a full pension unless they stay on for much longer than they need or ought to? In the early stages of their lives, such women may have raised families. They may have been out of Bar practice for years, while others will have been accruing private pensions to be added to the pensions that they will receive as judges.

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What on earth will be the temptation for those women to follow the judicial path later in life, knowing that they will be so much worse off finanically at the end? It is all very well having pious ideas about how, in the future, there will be more women barristers--if they can find chambers and stay at the Bar, and if they have not been channelled into some other occupation, such as the Crown prosecution service or the solicitors' profession, because it is no longer particularly attractive to stay at the Bar--if they are then given a disincentive to follow a judicial career because their incomes will be reduced from the moment that they take a pension.

Actuaries may look at their figures ; Governments, with the help of the Treasury, may examine their financial disbursements. Ultimately, however, we must have a judicial system that contains the best people. We want a judicial system with women--and women will not be encouraged to become judges as a result of proposals such as this. I wish the Bill godspeed, but I wish that my hon. Friend and the Lord Chancellor had given more serious consideration to the criticisms levelled against it by the most senior judges in the land. They were not talking nonsense. I hope that, when we look back on the legislation in a few years' time, we shall have no cause to regret the decisions that my hon. Friend and the Government have made-- quite stubbornly--to proceed with their original plan.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 102(9) (Standing Committees on European Community documents),

Risk prevention officers in the transport industry

That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 8642/92, relating to risk prevention officers in the transport industry ; notes that the proposed draft Directive conflicts with existing national and international legislation in the field of health and safety at work ; and endorses the Government's intention to seek substantial amendments to the wording of the draft Directive with the aim of maintaining existing health and safety levels.-- [Mr. Robert G. Hughes.]

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 102(9) (Standing Committees on European Community documents),

Restructuring of the Spanish Steel industry

That this House takes note of European Community Documents Nos. 9766/92, relating to the restructuring of the Spanish integrated steel company Corporacio n de la Siderurgia Integral (CSI), and 10341/92, relating to the restructuring of the Spanish steel company Sidenor ; and supports the Government's view that the Spanish proposals are inappropriate given the scale and timing of the capacity reductions proposed, the amount of state aid involved and the problems of over-capacity and depressed prices facing the Community steel industry.-- [Mr. Robert G. Hughes.]

Question agreed to.

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Drancy Concentration Camp

Motion made, and Question proposed , That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Robert G. Hughes.]

9.2 pm

Mr. David Alton (Liverpool, Mossley Hill) : I thank the Minister of State for being present. I think that he, like me, will be relieved that the debate is starting an hour earlier than the scheduled time for its commencement ; he is probably also relieved to know that neither the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth)--who hopes to speak in the debate- -nor I intend to detain the House until its possible rising time of 10.30 pm.

It is worth reflecting that, even if the powers of Back Benchers are limited, we at least have the opportunity to be bloody minded and persistent in pursuing issues when we believe that a grave injustice, or even a miscarriage of justice, has been perpetrated. For close on 50 years, the issue that I raise tonight has eaten away at the men whose cases I shall cite. Although they are in no way bitter, they have never accepted, and will never accept, decisions that have compounded their burning sense of injustice and grievance. Appropriately, the debate comes as we prepare to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the battle of the Atlantic, and the deaths of some 39,000 merchant seamen, whose sacrifice in the service of this nation has so often been overlooked. The debate also presents an opportunity for Ministers to conclude, properly and honourably, what I regard as unfinished business.

It was the late Airey Neave, so cruelly assassinated on the day after I was elected to the House in 1979, who on 15 July 1963 raised the treatment of merchant seamen on the Adjournment of the House. He said that the Foreign Office had been dilatory in dealing with these cases. His complaint was that, having raised the issue in 1956, it had taken until July 1963 to get adequate responses out of the Foreign Office. He said :

"I know he is undertaking delicate and difficult negotiations,"-- he was talking about the then Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs--

"but I should like to know how he is getting on with them, because I feel that this really is a deserving case, and one in which people really have received very inadequate treatment from the Foreign Office and who deserve indemnity or compensation for the indignities which they suffered. This is not entirely a question of money. It is also a question of loss of prestige and dignity as a result of being placed in these concentration camps."

Those are sentiments that my constituents whose cases I am raising tonight share, but for them it is not simply a question of money. It is a question of dignity and prestige. During that debate Airey Neave said :

"A number of prisoners-of-war--merchant seamen and others--were moved to concentration camps quite illegally, and it is my view--and, I believe, the view of the Foreign Office--that they should be compensated for what they have suffered."--[ Official Report, 15 July 1963 ; Vol. 681, c. 297- 99.]

During that debate in the 1960s, Airey Neave protested vigorously at that 20-year delay in establishing a compensation fund for victims of Nazi persecution.

It was to take another 12 months before the then Foreign Secretary, R. A. Butler, told the House on 9 June 1964 that a £1 million compensation fund had been established. In answer to the Member of Parliament for

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Huyton--the hon. Member for Knowsley, North now represents much of what was then the constituency of Lord Wilson--he said :

"The term Nazi persecution' is taken to cover any area in which Nazi persecution took place."

In that debate, many hon. Members queried the sum of money made available as inadequate. They said that it was unlikely that it would be sufficient to meet the likely claims. The Foreign Secretary demurred but agreed that

"Reopening the matter is for the House".--[ Official Report, 9 July 1964 ; Vol. 696, c. 244-46.]

On 15 June 1964 he added that

"Claims arising out of contravention of the Geneva Convention as such are not included, and remain for consideration only in the context of a final peace settlement."--[ Official Report, 15 June 1964 ; Vol. 696, c. 123 .]

Any hopes of that happening were dashed, as was explained to me in a letter from the Minister of State on 4 June 1992. He said : "The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, signed at Moscow on 12 September 1990, by the four Wartime Allies and Germany, definitively settled matters arising out the Second World War. There will be no separate peace treaty. I am afraid we see no possibility of a case such as Mr. Roberts' now forming the basis of a successful claim for compensation. Servicemen were, and are, entitled to disability pensions for any illness or disability they suffered as a result of serving with the Forces, and many receive such pensions. It would appear Mr. Roberts' claim for compensation as a victim of Nazi persecution was considered in 1964 and the request turned down, presumably on the grounds that Drancy was not a concentration camp." As that quotation from the Minister of State's letter reveals, one of those who applied for compensation under the scheme which R. A. Butler revealed to the House in 1964 was Mr. Ted Roberts of Aigburth, Liverpool. His compatriots, Mr. Arthur Thomas, also a constituent of mine, of Edge Hill, Liverpool, and Mr. Thomas Roscoe of Allerton, Liverpool, were never even informed of their right to reply, although both Mr. Thomas and Mr. Roscoe have been given small disability entitlements, due to the adverse effects on their health, which doctors confirm are directly attributable to the privations that they suffered during captivity. I know that it is the intention of the hon. Member for Knowsley, North--if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker-- also to raise the case of Stanley Cruces, one of his constituents, who was in the same position as Mr. Roscoe and Mr. Thomas in not knowing of his right to make an application for compensation.

However, Mr. Ted Roberts did apply for compensation and he was refused because, he was told at the time, Drancy was not regarded as a concentration camp. It would be useful for the House to hear directly from Mr. Roberts with whom I have shared the correspondence that I have received and I am grateful to the Minister of State for the trouble that he has taken in respect of the replies that he has sent to me. He certainly cannot be regarded as dilatory in replying to correspondence that I have raised with him over the past several months.

In a letter to me, Mr. Roberts stated :

"Mr. Garel-Jones should realise that we--the merchant seamen--had been up to five months at sea as German prisoners, the conditions were appalling-- lack of water, food, air and light. We were lousy with sores, exhausted and knowing that our very existence could end suddenly, not having a chance to fight the enemy, but entombed in quarters that could be described as a steel coffin that could be pierced by a shell or torpedo, engulfed in fire or flooded with water at any time. In this torrid atmosphere, we had no books or any kind of recreation, anticipating in a state of utter despair the manner of our final exit. I can understand the fear and the

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hopelessness of the Jews, Russians, Poles and others in camps such as those in Poland particularly. The difference between us was that we did survive, to land on terra firma.

We were dumped without ceremony in Drancy in late December 1940. We had air, we saw the sun, we had water (of doubtful purity), but we had no contact with the Red Cross. We never received, nor were we allowed, to send letters to anyone, including parents. The Geneva Convention was not upheld. We were not prisoners of war, but civilian internees. In this camp we were simply scavengers living somehow from day to day, wondering about the next bite, like dogs with a bone. We hid or carried our life sustenance in our pockets."

Mr. Roberts continues :

"Drancy was an unfinished housing complex, no windows were installed and floors were of concrete. Our quarters were on the upper floors. We had straw mattresses on the concrete, few clothes and one thin blanket. On one of the floors above we came across some old French army coats which relieved the cold somewhat. The toilets were in the middle of the square. Behind the toilet seats excrement was piled high to the roof.

We left Drancy for Sandbostel. We travelled in cattle trucks ; food was very short and water was not available. Our latrine bucket was filled once (at Aachen) during our three day journey. Five months in Drancy! Five months at sea, which was worst of all, and then Sandbostel to watch the dying, the dead, the arrogance and the cruelty of our keepers--barracks alive with bugs. Typhus broke out in the Russian section where the French kitchens were. We collected our soap in the Russian sector and the British walked through this sector daily to work near the Russians digging peat. We arrived at Milag Nord, 20 km away, in early 1942. This was a recognised camp." In 1965, Mr. Roberts saw his then Member of Parliament, Mr. Richard Bingham, the then Member for Garston, who received a reply from the then Foreign Office Minister, Walter Padley, who repeated that Drancy was not a concentration camp. He said :

"the question of compensation for internment could be raised only in the context of an eventual Peace Treaty with a united Germany." Reunification in 1990 and the continued failure to address their burning sense of grievance brought Mr. Roberts, Mr. Thomas and Mr. Roscoe to see me last summer. In several exchanges of letters since then, Ministers have doggedly refused to reopen the files or to agree to an independent arbiter to examine the case. Therefore, I tabled a series of questions and sought leave to raise them here tonight. Initially, Ministers refused to accept that Drancy had ever been a concentration camp, saying that it was just a transit camp. It is worth recalling that Belsen was simply described as an infirmary. In setting out tonight a personal and full account of what Mr. Roberts and others experienced at Drancy, I hope that it will lay to rest once and for all the idea that Drancy was anything other than the worst kind of camp that the SS ran.

I wrote to the German Government and received a very interesting reply. Despite all that the British Government had said in maintaining that Drancy was not at any time a concentration camp, in reply to me on 13 August 1992, Helmut Wegner, the Minister Plenipotentiary at the German embassy in London, wrote to me stating that his Government confirmed that in the "Bundegesetzblatt"--the official gazette--Drancy is listed in the published list of concentration camps. The Israeli Government, at the Yad Yashem memorial in Jerusalem, which I visited at the end of last year--the memorial to holocaust victims--also list

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Drancy as a concentration camp. In 1952, President de Gaulle unveiled a plaque commemorating the victims of the Drancy concentration camp.

The Foreign Office, in disputing the classification of Drancy, also says that it consulted the Weiner office library which specialises in the subject of the holocaust and that it claimed that the Weiner library did not classify Drancy as a concentration camp. However, I contacted the library and it denied that. It said that it most certainly did classify it as a concentration camp. Her Majesty's Government alone have never accepted the classification of Drancy as a concentration camp.

By the autumn of last year, the line of argument had begun to change, with Ministers stating that, even if Drancy had been a camp, my constituents had been there several weeks too early. Although that might be the case with Mr. Roberts and with Mr. Thomas, it certainly does not appear to be the case with Mr. Roscoe, who was detained there at a later period. By the winter, in a letter of 22 December last, the Minister of State was adamant that

"severe hardship did not ipso facto qualify. The only tribunal competent to examine such claims was set up between 1964-66, the one which considered Mr. Roberts' case. It no longer exists ; the lists are closed, the money is gone. Cases cannot be re-considered, nor new cases admitted at this late stage."

But surely it is a matter not of late stages but of honour. If there has been an injustice, Ministers have a duty to reconsider that matter at whatever stage it may come. Whatever Drancy's status, the guidance notes issued to claimants said that those detained in concentration camps

"or in any institution where the conditions were comparable with those in a concentration camp"

would qualify.

All the theological arguments about how many angels there might be on the top of a pin are pretty irrelevant when it comes to whether Drancy was a concentration camp during the period when my constituents were there, even though the accounts that I have given the House tonight and the accounts that I have sent to Ministers certainly seem to dispute the advice that Ministers now give and that their predecessors gave. They were victims of Nazi persecution and they clearly languished in the most terrible conditions imaginable. Let me conclude by reminding the House of precisely what happened to those men. Two of them were in their teens and one was in his early 20s when they were taken to Drancy. Mr. Roberts and Mr. Thomas were blown out of the sea in July 1940. They were kept for five months, confined below decks on a German raider ship and on a prison ship, the Rio Grande. They were never allowed on deck. They were kept virtually naked. Their bodies were covererd in sores as they suffered acute hardship and privation. They were then taken in cattle trucks to Drancy with Jewish prisoners destined for the gas chambers. They were given little food, water was polluted, work was arduous and beatings of prisoners were regular. They were then moved to Sandbostel in Germany, where the daily ration of one small loaf was shared between six men and where the death rate was exceptionally high--again, equally terrible conditions.

It is worth drawing to the attention of the Minister of State an obituary of Cary Younghusband in The Daily Telegraph on 5 December 1992. The obituary stated that he

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