HC Deb 23 October 1941 vol 374 cc1882-3
13. Mr. Stokes

asked the Home Secretary whether it is on his instructions that letters sent by persons detained under the Regulations to Members of this House have ports of their content deleted by the censor?

Mr. H. Morrison

No, Sir. It is a standing instruction that letters addressed by persons detained under Defence Regulation I8B to Members of Parliament are not subject to deletion or excision by the censor. I understand from the hon. Member that in one such letter recently received by him certain passages were deleted, and if he will be good enough to send me the letter and the envelope, it will facilitate the inquiries already in hand.

14. Mr. Stokes

asked the Home Secretary whether, in view of the fact that alien husbands and wives, detained for security purposes under the Regulations are living together, similar arrangements can be made for British subjects?

Mr. Morrison

The arrangement for bringing married people together in a camp in the Isle of Man does not apply in every case where an alien and his wife are both interned; it applies only to carefully selected couples; and as has been previously pointed out there is a distinction between persons interned because of their enemy nationality and persons detained because there are grounds for believing that they have been individually involved in such activities that their detention has been thought necessary for purposes of public safety. I cannot, therefore, accept the argument that because this arrangement has been made for some selected aliens a similar arrangement ought therefore to be made for persons detained under Regulation I8B. I am anxious to do all I properly can to ameliorate the conditions of preventive detention, but the difficulties of this proposal are substantial, and I have not hitherto been able to find a way of surmounting them.

Mr. Stokes

Are we to understand that married couples who happen to be in detention at the present time are to be kept separated for the duration of the war?

Mr. Morrison

That depends on the length of the duration, but it may be so. If, on the other hand, I can see a solution to the problem, I will consider it, but there have been incidents in the Isle of Man, including certain escapes, and I must consider the security aspect of the matter; otherwise, in trying to please my hon. Friend, I may get into terrible trouble with the great British public.

Miss Eleanor Rathbone

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if he puts such married couples in the married camp it will be very much resented by the aliens who are genuine refugees?

Mr. Morrison

I was not proposing to add to the excitement by mixing the married couples.