Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR DON
TOUHIG AND
MR JONATHAN
IREMONGER
1 DECEMBER 2005
Q80 David Heyes: It will certainly
be the case that that sense of injustice, which was exacerbated
by the insulting offer of a payment of £500, will be further
exacerbated and there will be a greater sense of injustice if
the result of your review is to endorse the present position and
say "no change".
Mr Touhig: We decided that there
should be some tangible compensation paid in recognition of the
distress caused to many people who thought they would be included
in the scheme and, at the request of the Ombudsman, I have signed
many hundreds of letters in the last few weeks to people. On three
occasions in the letter I express my apologies and regret for
the stress. By the way, three-quarters of the letters have gone
to people who are not resident in the United Kingdom. Some people
believe that it is a derisory amount that they have been offered,
although I do have a beautiful letter here, which I will not read
out, from a lady who was disappointed but touched that she had
received this in recognition of the way that it was handled by
us. There is a very touching bit at the end. For people who have
gone through a hell of a lot, it touches me that somebody should
write in that way, but I recognise that many people do feel that
£500 is not appropriate recognition. I think at this stage
I cannot say more than that I believe at the time, having received
the Ombudsman's report in which she recommended that there should
be some tangible expression of our apology and regret, that that
was the appropriate figure.
Q81 Chairman: You mention letters
like that. Also, you will have had the letters that we have had—Ann
Moxley was here this morning and she is one such person—from
people who have had the payment because they have qualified. These
are the people who feel most incensed that their fellow British
internees have been treated differently.
Mr Touhig: Yes, I am aware of
the evidence given by Mrs Moxley this morning and I can fully
understand her anger because she shared the horrors, the deprivations,
the appalling treatment of so many others who are not included
in the scheme. As I said to you earlier, Chairman and colleagues,
we decided there ought to be a definite link to the United Kingdom.
That was the birth link criteria about which we have spoken. I
do not think anybody can take away the horrors and suffering that
people endured, but I have to say that, so far as Britain is concerned,
we have a duty to accept responsibility for those who clearly
meet the criteria that we set down. Whether this was done properly,
that is arguable and debatable, but we felt that we were responding
in a way whereby people would get some recognition for the suffering
that they had gone through. I fully recognise that because of
the nature of any scheme some people are excluded under the criteria
as they stand.
Q82 Paul Flynn: Why should the Ministry
of Defence expect others to produce the names and examples of
those wrongly paid when it is the Ministry of Defence, and only
the Ministry of Defence, that has the files and the details? Why
are you expecting others to produce the names and details of those
wrongly paid?
Mr Touhig: I am not clear.
Q83 Paul Flynn: You have suggested
that others have not told you about what happened before the criteria
were established. You turned to the Ombudsman and others and said,
"You should tell us about this" but you are the people
who have the files and the detail.
Mr Touhig: Forgive me, perhaps
I did not make myself clear. I was talking in the context that
my understanding was that the Ombudsman might have had some cases
of people where the actual detail was not brought to our attention.
We have no information of any case where somebody was treated
in the way the question was put to me.
Q84 Paul Flynn: If we look back on
this, and you mention the miners' compensation scheme and the
sad story of that, you know as well as all of us from South Wales
that that was something that should have brought great credit
to the Government but in fact has turned sour and is now a subject
of great embarrassment because of, to use your words, the cock-ups
and alleged cock-ups that have occurred, the delays and so on.
Is this not the same thing as happened here? It was a great credit
to the Government that after many years, decades, of unhappiness
about the situation, at least this token payment was going to
be made, but now it has all been poisoned by the ham-fisted way
in which it was administered.
Mr Touhig: I do not accept your
version of how the miners' compensation scheme is now operating.
I do accept there were awful problems when it was first introduced.
Q85 Paul Flynn: Just take the political
side to this. We are in that same party. How on earth could we
have done something, which we all cheered about and we all thought
was entirely justified, about which we now hear people saying
this morning, quite rightly, that the effect is that someone is
being accused of not being British. Is that conduct worthy of
the office that you hold?
Mr Touhig: I think that at the
time we announced the criteria we believed there had to be or
should be a link to being British, to being born or have a parent
or grandparent born in the United Kingdom at the time the person
was interned by the Japanese. People will dispute that that was
the right criteria but that was the criteria we applied at that
time. Those are still the criteria that apply. As I have said
to you, Paul, I confess that some people are excluded from the
scheme because of that. I understand fully their anger at being
thought of as not being British enough to qualify.
Q86 Paul Flynn: Was Mr Burnham one
of the officials who came to you this week with new information?
Mr Touhig: Yes.
Q87 Paul Flynn: Was part of that
information the letter of 20 April 2001?
Mr Touhig: No.
Q88 Paul Flynn: I do not know if
you are embarrassable, Don. Are you not embarrassed by the information
in that which says that the scheme is unfair and indefensible?
Is it not up to the Government now to suggest that something will
be done? The amount of money involved in this is microscopically
small but the sense of injustice is gigantic. Should not the Government
be giving some hope this morning and, instead of appearing as
defensive as you are about a matter which is of very great significance,
be making some statement saying, "Yes, we did get it very
badly wrong and we have unnecessarily upset and insulted people
who have suffered a great deal and it is time for us to say a
few mea culpas"?
Mr Touhig: You and I being papists
have the benefit of confession, Paul. Let me say this to you.
I do not want to repeat the mistake that was made in the past
about speedily coming to some announcement, some decision, at
the end of the day which left a lot of people excluded from a
scheme when they expected to be part of the scheme. I can happily
come here this morning and be all singing and all dancing and
I would be carried shoulder high through the streets for some
announcement that you might want me to make, but in truth I cannot
make that until, or I may not be able to make it at all, I have
examined why we got into this position. That is the purpose behind
the inquiry I have set in train now at the beginning of this week.
You as a committee would surely not publish a report before you
had considered all the aspects of it and reached a consensus and
a conclusion. Please accept that I am not in a position to give
you an answer to some of these points until I have this information.
I am not being defensive about it. I am being truthful and honest
about it. To be absolutely straight, I do not have in my possession
the information at the moment that I require in order to respond
to some of your questions. I do not know how we got into this
position. I want to find out.
Q89 Paul Flynn: I understand the
original application form did not require any details about the
grandparents, so it might not be possible to discern in fact whether
the major errors would recur. Is this not an awful situation where
a scheme is announced—and I do not understand the great
haste for announcing it because the rules were laid down—and
then someone decided to sort out the rules after the announcement
was made?
Mr Touhig: It was clear, and the
Ombudsman recognised it and we accepted it in the report, that
the way we announced it and handled it was badly done. The criteria
had not been properly thought through and appreciated before a
decision on the scheme was announced. It was the way not to do
it, but I cannot change that fact. What I am seeking to do now
is to establish how it was that up until Monday, if I were a Minister
called to the Despatch Box, summoned before this committee, I
would have told you a situation which I now cannot say is accurate
and true, or possibly not true, and I want to get that clear before
I can come to any further conclusions.
Q90 Paul Flynn: Why is it that you
refused to meet the all-party group which is chaired by our colleague
Andrew Dismore on this matter? We were told this morning in the
submission from one of our witnesses that they have asked for
a meeting between the MoD and the organisation called ABCIFER
but the MoD has refused to entertain that suggestion. Andrew Dismore
has given a great deal of evidence to you in committees and elsewhere.
All this has been brought forward. If you have refused to have
that meeting between yourselves and the organisation of veterans,
ABCIFER, which has unique knowledge of this, does it not appear
that you have been a bit ghoulish recently about this?
Mr Touhig: I will go back and
check. I do not refuse meetings with colleagues on matters of
this kind. I have met with my colleague Andrew Dismore who has
been to me and I have responded to matters he raised with me.
If there is in my department a refusal on my part to meet ABCIFER,
and I am not immediately aware of it, I will correct that. Of
course I will meet them.
Q91 Julie Morgan: Don, I accept that
you are going back to look through the documents and you are going
to come back to the House and to the committee we all hope with
the right results, but obviously you are not raising any hopes
about that. Do you not as a minister think that the way the Ministry
of Defence has behaved in this whole situation has been shameful
and a shambles?
Mr Touhig: I would not accept
it has been shameful in the sense that I believe we have acted
along the lines that we understood were the guidelines for the
scheme. Whether it was a shambles, I would have to check on that.
Q92 Julie Morgan: It does seem extraordinary
that the scheme was started and payments were made before the
criteria were properly decided. Do you think this is a normal
process in government?
Mr Touhig: God, I hope not! We
had better give up and go home if it is. I hope you will accept,
though, and in fairness to colleagues, officials and people who
have occupied this job before I had it, that they sought to introduce
the scheme as speedily as possible because they felt a lot of
the people who suffered or were interned were getting older and
we needed to respond very quickly. It is as a result I think of
that speed—and Ann Abraham raises this in her report—that
these things went wrong. We would not be in this position today,
in my view, if we had given more time to clearly defining the
criteria. That might then have been challenged. People might have
said we got it wrong, but at least I could have come here and
made my answers stand up a bit. I cannot in the circumstances
we have at the moment.
Q93 Julie Morgan: Is it normal in
government to start paying out on schemes before you decide the
criteria?
Mr Touhig: I would have thought
it is not normal in anything. Denis Healey once said that there
are two statements to treat with suspicion: "the cheque is
in the post"; and "hello, I am from the Government;
I am here to help". I am genuinely here to help to try to
solve this problem. I would hope that governments do not operate
in this way, but I hope you will accept from me that for the best
of intentions the scheme was introduced as speedily as possible,
but it is not acceptable that the criteria were not properly defined
and made clear at the time. That has allowed a lot of people to
believe they would be compensated when they are not. That has
left people with a lot of stress and distress and the feeling,
as Professor Hayward has articulated, about not being British
enough to be recognised for the suffering they endured.
Q94 Julie Morgan: Do you not think
that those people who to me and colleagues on the committee seem
should be eligible for the scheme were interned because they were
considered to be British?
Mr Touhig: I think it is a proper
assumption that people the Japanese considered were British were
interned because the Japanese believed they were British.
Q95 Julie Morgan: Do you not think
that should be reason enough?
Mr Touhig: I cannot say at this
stage, without raising any false hopes, that I can amend the scheme
or should amend the scheme, but I accept the moral argument that
you have put so far as that is concerned. I really have to be
careful that I do not add any more distress to people who have
suffered enough by leaving them with any impression today that
after this review I will be able to come back or make a statement
in the House in a few weeks' time to say that we are now changing
the whole scheme and everybody is going to be included. I cannot
say that. I do not want to say that, but I am not shutting my
eyes to that if that is something that ought to be examined and
I was not prepared to examine it.
Q96 Paul Flynn: Can I bestow penitential
absolution on the Minister for one thing I accused him of and
it was his predecessor who in fact was refusing to meet ABCIFER
on the grounds that there was not any new argument. This seems
rather ironic now the new argument has appeared because it could
not possibly have come from ABICIFER or anyone else; it comes
from the Ministry itself.
Mr Iremonger: May I make two comments?
One is on the question of whether payments were made without criteria.
I think the issue is not were payments made without criteria in
place; payments were not. It is a question of whether payments
were made with criteria that were consistent with the birth link
criteria that were introduced in March. We were not making payments
just to anybody who came. It is not as loose as that. On the issue
of British, the problem at the beginning of the scheme was that
anybody who was born in the Empire pretty much was British; so
anybody born in India, be they Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian,
whatever, was British; anybody born in Malaya likewise and Australia
and Burma. That is a very large number of people. The view that
the Government took at the time was that a number of these countries
had become independent and it is right that the responsibility
for their people has transferred with independence. The question
was what the UK Government's residual responsibility was. The
UK is a much smaller country with much lesser responsibilities
for its residual people, if you like, whether that was a residence
requirement or a birth link requirement or whatever, but there
had to be a decision there as opposed to paying simply the whole
former Empire.
Q97 Julie Morgan: The number of people
involved we were told today is relatively small.
Mr Iremonger: It is not. The figure
you were given is for civilians. On the military side, if you
take the whole of the Indian Army for example, you would be talking
about a very big sum of money. Hundreds of millions of pounds
is at stake.
Q98 Chairman: The Minister told me
earlier on when I asked him about Professor Hayward that it was
legitimate to think when the scheme was announced that Professor
Hayward was British enough to be part of this scheme. Now you
roll it back and start talking about residuum. As Mr Burnham pointed
out, the spirit or intention of the scheme was quite clear when
it was announced, that the Professor Haywards of this world are
going to be in it. They turned out not to be.
Mr Iremonger: Mr Burnham and his
agency had signed up to an agreement about a month before which
said that a close link to the UK was an inherent part of that
scheme. Mr Burnham, when he saw some of the effects as he saw
claims come through, had reservations about that. Whether those
reservations were reasonable or not is obviously something the
Minister will want to consider.
Q99 Chairman: When he makes this
consideration, the question we want to know the answer to is:
when you have done the reviews and looked at the thing, is Professor
Hayward going to be in this scheme or not?
Mr Touhig: I cannot say.
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