§ MR. HENNIKEK HEATON (Canterbury)To ask the Postmaster-General whether the British delegates at the Berlin Conference on Wireless Telegraphy have been out-voted on the following points, namely, the compulsory intercommunication of all floating stations on ships on the high seas with no reservations; the adoption of certain regulations containing no satisfactory guarantees 99 against interference with naval messages; the granting to each State of the right to exempt certain wireless stations from compulsory intercommunication with all ships, however fitted; and the proposal that any shore station exchanging messages with a ship carrying apparatus of a system different from that used at the shore station in question should be entitled to receive a higher rate of payment than when exchanging messages with a ship using an apparatus similar to its own; whether the British delegates received instructions from His Majesty's Government to make a stipulation that secret details of working wireless messages shall be safeguarded, and that this proposal has been in the result neglected; whether the representation proposed by the British delegates for British Colonies on future International Commissions on Wireless Telegraphy was also vetoed; and whether the British delegates will be instructed not to sign or ratify the proposals carried by a majority at the Conference.
(Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) If my hon. friend will wait until he has before him the text of the Convention, of the Regulations, and of the Protocol, which will shortly be made public, he will find that the statements which he has seen, and which he has embodied in his Question, are either the reverse of the truth or misleading in their implication. The British delegates were instructed to carry out that which was the policy of the late, as well as of the present, Government in regard to the matter. They were instructed not to agree to the principle of intercommunication, nor to sign the Convention, unless specific and adequate securities for British interests, naval and commercial, were obtained.