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9.48 am
Mr. David Rendel (Newbury): I am delighted to have this opportunity to support the hon. Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall) in his efforts to ensure that something is done about the injustice that appears to have been perpetrated. I congratulate him on his struggle to bring the matter to the attention of the House and of a wider public, and I hope that his efforts will be successful in the near future. I am happy to say that although this is by no means a party political matter, I am supported by my hon. Friends and certainly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown), the leader of my party, who takes particular interest in such matters because of his background in defence.
It appears that there has been an injustice. I freely confess that I knew little of the matter until recently when I was approached by a constituent, of whom more later, who is himself affected and who has been involved in the Justice for Prisoners of War campaign for some time. He provided me with a considerable file on what has gone before but, not least because we heard much about it in the previous speech, I shall not repeat it. The points have been well made already. One point that has not yet been brought out is that it is hard to find another country that has treated its ex-prisoners of war, at least in respect of deductions from pay, as poorly as we have. That should be reversed.
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It was rightly said that the delays are far too long. The original working party took about six weeks. Perhaps that was too rapid, as some of its conclusions were not fully justified, but it was much quicker than the 15 months that the present inquiry looks like taking. I hope that the Minister will take due note of what the hon. Member for Arundel said about the need to ensure that the matter is brought to a conclusion as rapidly as possible in the best interests of justice. Justice should not be delayed; for the people involved, it has been delayed already for some 50 years. It is never too late to right a wrong, but the wrong should be righted as quickly as possible.
Will the Minister say how much the investigation has cost in terms of time and civil service resources? I imagine that the total costs so far must be considerable, given the time involved. Perhaps it would have been more sensible, and even cheaper, for the Government to have pressed ahead earlier with a fair donation to service charities rather than worrying too much about the degree of investigation necessary to prove the case.
The problem of escaping prisoners of war has not been fully brought out and involves an even greater injustice than those so far mentioned. It is the duty of all officers who are captured to try to escape. Many did so very bravely and some, sadly, lost their lives in the attempt. However, some officers who were recaptured, or who never got away but who had made attempts to escape, were fined for so doing. They never received the pay that was deducted in Britain in return for the pay that they were supposed to have received in their POW camps because they were fined equivalent amounts for trying to escape.
My constituent, Captain Freddie Harris, has a particularly interesting story. He had 832 days of deductions from his pay. During that period, he was a POW in Italy for 588 days. At the end of his time in a POW camp, the Italian Government fell, Italy came out of the war and he escaped. Many of those who escaped with him were recaptured by the Germans and put into other POW camps. Not unnaturally, their deductions continued. My constituent escaped and became a partisan and spent the rest of the war fighting on behalf of the allies. He was no longer a POW. Not unexpectedly, the British Government and his family did not know the full facts at the time. Communications were understandably not fully maintained between partisans and our Government. Fighting as a partisan, he was no longer being paid by enemy forces in the way that POWs were. In spite of that, the deductions in this country continued. He suffered a particular injustice, as did anyone who suffered a similar fate. I suspect that few others are involved; his case may even be unique. The injustice was that the deductions went on when he could not have been paid by the enemy because he was not in their hands and was seeking to evade capture during the whole of that time. Captain Harris is not aware of any return of deductions having been made to him since the war.
Mr. Steve Norris (Epping Forest):
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have many friends in his constituency. I am happy to say that Freddie Harris is one of my oldest friends. I have known him for a great many years. I cannot stay until the end of the debate; I hope that the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friends will forgive me. I want to place on record the extent to which I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I knew little of the matter until it was brought to my attention by Freddie Harris. I associate myself with the hon. Gentleman's concern that a matter involving
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Mr. Rendel:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I was about to expand on my remark that this was not a party political matter and he has demonstrated that. It is best illustrated by paying tribute to my predecessor but one, Sir Michael McNair-Wilson, who was for many years Member of Parliament for Newbury. He raised the matter in an Adjournment debate in 1982 and pressed the point on behalf of Freddie Harris and others. I am delighted to pay tribute to his efforts. Sadly, he died a few years ago. I end by quoting what he said in the House of Commons in that debate. I entirely agree with it and it illustrates that this is not a party political matter, as he was, in other times, an election opponent of mine. He said:
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge):
I, too, am grateful for the opportunity to bring to the House my experience in learning about an issue that many people of my generation could not have begun to imagine would still exist: that 50 years after their service, British service men still have not had their wages and salaries paid. That idea would not occur to one unless one was told the tale in a constituency surgery. It says something about the apolitical nature of the process that hon. Members have come to the House today because of our experiences talking to our constituents.
I was approached by Graham King of the National Ex-Prisoner of War Association. I pay tribute to him for being remorseless in following up the concerns of people in his position. I had no idea that we were dealing with the tip of an iceberg. Numerous issues, specifically those concerning the pay of ex-prisoners of war, could have been brought before the House today.
It is probably helpful if I concentrate on one matter of particular concern to the National Ex-Prisoner of War Association, whose parliamentary representative I am. The position of "normal" officers and non-commissioned officers is relatively straightforward and does not cause a great deal of difficulty in practice. The difficulties arise in the case of protected personnel, whose history and status are strange.
As I understand it, under the Geneva convention, protected personnel were not imprisoned, but detained and, as a result, they were paid the salary of the equivalent rank of somebody working for the detaining power. For example, a corporal in the RAMC would be paid the same as his German equivalent if he was imprisoned in Germany.
The position seems to have changed towards the end of 1940, when the various powers agreed that their obligation under the Geneva convention to repatriate protected personnel would not work in the context of warfare. An agreement was reached that such personnel should no longer be detained, but imprisoned. While they were being detained, deductions were made--because, under the Geneva convention, they were detained personnel. It would seem logical that, when it was agreed that repatriation could not take place and that they would be imprisoned as
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In practice, however, the Germans sometimes, but not always, continued to pay protected personnel. Clearly, the British Government of the day never appreciated the distinction; they did not understand that if the status of protected personnel was changed so that they were no longer being temporarily detained before repatriation, but imprisoned for the duration of the war, certain consequences would follow. The consequence that followed was that those personnel should be dealt with under the normal arrangements, but that never happened. I suspect that the position in relation to protected personnel is relatively clear--it is well worth having clarity on the issue. The details of POWs and their pay are labyrinthine, but the position in relation to protected personnel is pretty clear.
Given the personality of my hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, I know that he will want to be helpful. I am also grateful to Lord Howe for the letters that he has been writing to me. To their credit, Ministers now seem to have a grip on the situation and want to bring about a successful conclusion. I have a little experience of the way in which Whitehall works and I did not always detect that sense of urgency or a commitment to producing a sensible result.
Some years ago, when I was a newly appointed Minister, I turned to my immediate superior for assistance because I could not resolve a certain conundrum. He said, "Let me put it this way: your job in this case is to render as much assistance as possible short of actual help." That principle sometimes serves one well in Government--it certainly did on that occasion--but it does not apply in the case that we are discussing. We must accept that, however the situation arose, however complicated it may be, however many years have passed since the event, it is straightforward: people serving in Her Majesty's armed forces were not paid the money due to them. However it came about, that is the position and it must be resolved.
I have no doubt that if the civil servants who are applying themselves to the task 50 years later wanted to find reasons to justify the status quo, they could easily do so. But those in Whitehall should not approach the issue in that way. However the problem arose and whatever its different complexities, British service men--both commissioned and non-commissioned--were shortchanged. Once that conclusion has been reached, how the problem arose is almost irrelevant to the task of sorting it out. Given the commitment of Ministers to deal with the matter properly, I have no doubt that it can be resolved.
When I first began my correspondence with Lord Howe, the timing of the review's result was open-ended. It was said that it was a difficult and complex matter and it was hard to say when the report would be made. It is a credit to Ministers that that nonsense has now stopped: we have been told that the review will be announced at the end of November. I was slightly nervous when I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall) say that the work was being carried out by two part-timers who doubtless had previously had other duties, but perhaps we need not worry too much about that.
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"I believe that there is a debt of honour that a Government one day must pay to those brave men."--[Official Report, 9 February 1992; Vol. 17, c. 949.]
That debt should now be paid.
9.57 am
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