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House of Commons
Wednesday 15 January 1997
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
British Prisoners of War
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Wells.]
9.34 am
Sir Michael Marshall (Arundel): I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important subject and I appreciate the support of many hon. Members who have been active in the matter.
My concern about deductions from British prisoners of war in Germany and Italy between 1939 and 1945 arises from the evidence that I have received over many years from my constituent, a former Royal Air Force officer, Group Captain Alec Ingle. His complaint to the Secretary of State for Defence was put in formal terms in December 1995 and is based on the experience of RAF officers who were prisoners of war.
Group Captain Ingle also reflects the views of the Justice for Prisoners of War campaign, known as JPOW, which, having started with 30 members in the early 1980s, has now spread to cover the interests of several thousand British ex-prisoners of war in all three services in all parts of the United Kingdom.
I am drawing most especially on evidence from Group Captain Ingle and from several others in the campaign, including most notably Captain Hugo Bracken RN (retd.), a constituent of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Sir P. Mayhew).
The scale of the officers' complaints can perhaps best be related to the number of prisoners of war in German hands in May 1945: 6,000 Army, 2,500 Royal Air Force and 400 Royal Navy and Royal Marines. I am also aware of the parallel complaints relating to more than 4,000 protected personnel, including officers and men of the Royal Army Medical Corps, chaplains, ambulance drivers, stretcher bearers and others who were protected under the terms of the 1929 Geneva International Red Cross convention.
The main research efforts in the early 1980s, referred to in the letter, relate to the report prepared under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chertsey and Walton (Sir G. Pattie), in his then capacity as Under-Secretary of State for Defence, for the Royal Air Force. My right hon. Friend outlined the Ministry's findings in a statement and a report laid before the House on 31 October 1980--and I am glad to see him here today.
I need not dwell on the report at this stage, because it is currently the subject of a wholesale review, and I recognise that there were genuine difficulties at the time at which it was prepared, in the lack of complete information and in the nature of a report prepared in only six weeks, which obviously imposed limitations. I am also aware of the evidence that has been produced since that time and that has led my right hon. Friend the Member for Chertsey and Walton to make submissions to Ministers.
There are, however, one or two aspects of the Pattie report that usefully summarise the nature of the problem. It was correct in identifying the central complaint as relating to the money withheld in the United Kingdom on account of pay that former British prisoners of war were supposed to have received from the detaining authorities in Germany and Italy when, for long periods, they either received nothing or were paid in effectively worthless currency.
Moreover, many former prisoners of war contended that they had not been given an opportunity to reclaim those moneys on repatriation. Perhaps the unkindest cut of all was the fact that the vast majority of them had to pay income tax on money that was never received.
In rejecting the case for further repayments of deductions, the Pattie report concluded:
Since that statement and the publication of the report, substantial detailed evidence has been submitted to the Ministry of Defence and to others--to whom I shall refer--which shows the scale of the deductions and the limited nature of refunds. Global figures are available for the amounts deducted and the amounts refunded. The scale of those deductions came as a surprise to me as I began to examine these matters. For those in Germany, the average deduction was about 30 per cent. of net pay, and for those in Italy 65 per cent.
Years of wrangling following the publication of the Pattie report ensued before the MOD accepted that only
Even accepting the MOD's one third estimate, that puts the shortfall at more than £1 million in 1945 money, which would be more than £20 million today--a sum which,
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It was against that background that I and other Members of both Houses of Parliament took up these issues on behalf of the JPOW campaign. Given the lack of progress in dealings with the Ministry of Defence, I approached the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, who ruled that he was unable to consider these matters because his remit excluded Her Majesty's forces. Similarly, approaches to the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration produced the response that it was unable to pursue this anomaly, despite what was being put about at that time in the report on the civil service and in the Bett report. On the detail of the arguments about deductions and repayments, the Select Committee for Defence felt unable to make this problem a subject for inquiry.
In pursuing some method of appeal, I eventually approached the Prime Minister, who advised me and my constituent that the only way in which an ex-service man could effectively pursue such matters was by formal request for redress of grievance to the Air Force Board of the Defence Council. Accordingly, on 11 December 1995, my constituent wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, who is the head of the Air Force Board, asking him to authorise the setting up of an inquiry. With that letter, he submitted considerable detail on behalf of the JPOW campaign. The evidence submitted not only highlighted some of the shortcomings of previous studies, but went into great detail. It covered matters such as the relevance of the Geneva convention, arrangements for receiving returning prisoners of war, communal funding--which was gathered voluntarily, although it was, in effect, compulsory--within prisoner of war camps, rates of reimbursement of pay, MOD gifts to relevant charities, rates of exchange used to calculate pay deductions and many other matters. I take it--indeed, I earnestly hope--that these matters will be covered in the full review promised in the letter to the National Ex-Prisoner of War Association last December.
I must, however, voice my concern about the time taken to complete the present inquiry. Following my constituent's formal complaint in December 1995, it was not until spring last year that the general inquiry was authorised. Since then, inquiries by written parliamentary question and informal contact have given little indication of how long the current inquiry will take. Naturally, I fully support the need for a thorough inquiry. I know of the personal interest of the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, with his background as an ex-regular Army officer. I know, too, of the personal interest of my noble Friend Lord Howe, who chairs the current inquiry. However, I must repeat my concern about a process that looks likely to take the best part of a year. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister understands the feelings of all the prisoners of war who have pursued these matters since 1945, and in detail since the Pattie report was published more than 16 years ago.
I ask my hon. Friend the Minister for assurances on a number of points. Will he confirm that sufficient resources have been made available to ensure the early completion of the review? My understanding is that two senior civil servants have been charged with this task under the general
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May I also ask my hon. Friend to tell us whether the working party intends to take up the repeated offers from some of those involved in the JPOW group, who have carried out detailed research on the records at Kew and elsewhere? They have offered to meet officials. Surely their input could help to expedite the completion of this work.
Will my hon. Friend give some hope and reassurance regarding the future arrangements for handling the complaints of ex-service men? He will be aware that this matter runs wider than the problems of former prisoners of war, and he must realise that in the current climate of opinion--in which strong cases are advanced for an independent mechanism to review the affairs of public officials--it is difficult, in cases such as the one that I am raising today, to justify the activities of a Department acting as judge and jury in its own court. I acknowledge the special needs of serving personnel, but these cases of ex-service men require urgent attention.
Naturally, I welcome the commitment to a fundamental review that I believe is suggested by the terms of that letter, but it is right to remind the House of some of the difficulties and unfairnesses that have led to the Secretary of State's decision to reopen those matters.
"On the basis of the evidence before it, the Study Group had little alternative but to reach the conclusions it did. That is not to say, however, the Government are in any way unsympathetic to the problems of former POWs. The Government feel, therefore, that rather than continue to rake over the remaining evidence from 1945, a more constructive response would be to consider whether additional assistance could be made available. These possibilities are now being studied and will be the subject of a further statement."
That was the 1980 statement. That brings me the nub of the argument that I believe it is right to deploy today.
"approaching two-thirds of the deductions had been refunded".
I must add that my constituent and others in the JPOW campaign believe that a more realistic estimate would be between 50 per cent. and 60 per cent.
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