EMERGENCY POWERS (DEFENCE) ACT, 1939. (Hansard, 31 October 1939)

§ Mr. Dingle Foot
I beg to move: That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Order-in-Council amending the Defence Regulations dated the 1st day of September, 1939, made under Section 1 of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1939, a copy of which was presented to this House on the 5th day of September last, be annulled. In these days when we are governed almost entirely by Orders-in-Council, all that Members of Parliament can do is to exercise such vigilance as they can, and to move a Prayer when the occasion offers. In other words, the main function of this House nowadays is to watch and pray. We in this part of the House have considered very carefully this amending Order-in-Council and we feel that it would not be a good advertisement for our Parliamentary system if regulations of this character, going a good deal further in some respects than any regulations which we have ever had before in this country, should pass without any comment in this House. We on these benches have for a long time past held the view that this country is threatened with a twofold danger—the danger of Nazi aggression abroad, and the danger of Nazi tendencies at home. These tendencies have certainly not come to an end with the outbreak of the war, and I think some of them are 1830 clearly apparent in parts of these regulations.
First of all, may I make one thing quite clear? Anyone, of course, appreciates that when we are at war it is unavoidable that the Government of the day should be entrusted with extraordinary powers, and I do not suppose that anyone will dispute that proposition in the course of this Debate. There are many provisions in this amending Order with which nobody is going seriously to disagree, but that is no reason why the House should cease to be vigilant or why we should grant to the Government powers which are even greater than the emergency can possibly demand. I submit to the House that some of these regulations are without precedent and that some of them go far wider than anything the Government can legitimately need. May I refer first to 18 (b), in paragraph 5, on page 4 of the amending Order, where it is provided that: The Secretary of State, if satisfied, with respect to any particular person, that with a view to preventing him acting in any manner prejudicial to the public safety or the Defence of the Realm, it is necessary so to do, may make an Order. Then follow the purposes for which the Order may be made. In the first place, the suspect may be prohibited from the possession or use of any specified articles. That is a curious provision. One can think of all kinds of possibilities, but that is not the most serious part of the Order. There is a provision that the suspect may be restricted just as the Secretary of State wishes in respect of his employment or business. Again, it would be interesting to know exactly what kind of restriction is visualised. One can well see that in time of war it might even be necessary to put some restriction upon a whole class of traders, but here it is proposed to pick out a particular man and place upon him some restriction or disability which is not going to apply to his competitors.
Then there follows one of the most remarkable provisions of all, and that is that the Secretary of State may make an Order in respect of the suspect's association or communication with other persons. The right hon. Gentleman may, apparently, if he disapproves of him in any way, order that he is not to associate either with a particular person or with any classes of persons. Apparently, in future, the Secretary of State is going to choose 1831 our associates for us, or, at any rate, he will be able to prevent us from keeping what he regards as bad company. That seems to me to be a provision which is capable of endless abuses. I wonder how an Order of this sort is to be enforced. If you want to prevent a man communicating with others you have not only to put restrictions upon him but you will have to inform the others and to take steps to prevent them from communicating with him. How does the Secretary of State imagine that this is to be carried out? Is the suspect to carry a scarlet letter, like the heroine in Nathaniel Hawthorne snovel, showing that he has been branded under these powers, or is a notice to be set up outside the premises he occupies, saying: "Sent to Coventry for the duration of the war, by order of the Secretary of State"? It is exceedingly difficult to see how that provision is going to operate, but it is obvious that it may cause very great hardship and abuse.
What follows is even more serious, because the Secretary of State may make an Order restricting the suspect in the dissemination of news or the propagation of views. That is, I think, the most dangerous Clause of all. It is a most amazing thing that in a war into which we have entered, as we are told from every hoarding and by every Minister, in order to defend freedom, we should start by seeking to fetter the free expression of opinion. It is interesting to look back to 1915, when there was a Debate on certain Defence regulations, and to see what was said by the right hon. Gentleman the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman was then Attorney-General in a Liberal Government, and we all know that the views he then held are no guide to the views he holds to-day, but I think one passage in the speech that he delivered on that occasion is singularly appropriate to these regulations because he drew a very clear distinction between misstatements of facts and expression of opinion. He said: To prevent mis-statements of facts which are prejudicial and injurious to our cause is a thing about which nobody will dispute, but statements of opinion, however foolish they may be and however far from wise in judgment, are a very different thing from misstatements of facts, and I hope that in any regulations we make and in any administration of them we shall always draw that distinction most sharply.…So far as I have 1832 had anything to do with it, or those with whom I am working, we have always had that distinction in mind."—[OFFICIAL REPORT; 2nd March, 1915, col. 758, Vol. 70.] It is only fair to say that although the regulations in the last war went a long way, that distinction was maintained throughout, instead of being blurred as it is in these regulations. I do not see the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his place, but it would be interesting to know whether he still retains his belief in the virtue of the free expression of opinion, or whether that belief has been consigned to the same grave as his other buried loyalties.
I come now to the detention of suspects. Nobody can dispute that in these regulations the suspect may be imprisoned without trial for an indefinite time. It is true that there is an advisory committee before whom he can state his objections, but I do not think any hon. Member, certainly no hon. or right hon. Member from the Treasury Bench, will say that that is a proper substitute for trial in a court of law. In the first place, the man who is committed will have no opportunity to cross-examine his accusers. Everyone knows that evidence which cannot be tested by cross-examination is worthless. Secondly, there is no provision that he will even know the cause of his detention or the case that he has to meet. I hope the Secretary of State will explain the procedure that is contemplated. Will he, in particular, answer this question—will the committee have available to it all the information that is available to the Secretary of State himself? As I understand the regulations, the final responsibility rests with the Secretary of State. He may, but he is not bound to, act on the advice of the advisory committee, and it is a matter of the utmost importance that the advisory committee should have the same facts available to them as induced him to make the original order for detention.
Then will he tell the House what instructions he has given to the advisory committee with regard to the procedure that they are to adopt. Will he also undertake to release the suspect in every case where the advisory committee recommends his release? After all, there is no provision here that the man shall know even the case that he has to meet. He 1833 may not know why he is confined to prison or is kept in prison. We are imprisoning a man under this regulation not because he has been tried and found guilty of any offence known to the law, not indeed because he has committed any offence of any kind, but simply because the Minister considers it desirable that he should be detained. I suppose that is what is meant by the posters which tell us so frequently that our freedom is imperilled.
I pass to 39A, in paragraph 10, where it is laid down that: No person shall endeavour to cause dis-afiection among any persons engaged (whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) in His Majesty's service. Disaffecion, as it seems to me, is in this connection an extremely wide term. As I understand it, it means something much wider than mere disloyalty. It may mean simply discontent with the conditions in which you have to work, or with the wages that you are earning, provided that you are in the service of the Government. This word "disaffection" was very carefully considered in the last war. It was considered on one of the early Defence of the Realm Bills. It was pointed out by eminent members of the Conservative party of that time that it was a very dangerous word to use without qualification, so that it was amended by consent of all parties, and the corresponding words which appear in the D.O.R.A. Regulations are "disaffection towards His Majesty," an entirely different thing from disaffection as the word is used in this particular relation.
I pass to 39B, which contains one of the most remarkable regulations that can ever have been laid on the Table of the House. It states: No person shall endeavour whether orally or otherwise to influence public opinion (whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) in a manner likely to be prejudicial to the Defence of the Realm or the efficient prosecution of war. On the following page is laid down: The expression 'public opinion' includes the opinion of any section of the public. How very wide these words are, and how widely they can be interpreted, has already appeared. I am told that in one part of the country members of the Peace Pledge Union have been told that they 1834 may be proceeded against under this Section and that some of their propaganda has been banned under it. Perhaps the Secretary of State can tell us whether that is correct. I have no sympathy whatever with the Peace Pledge Union or with those who advocate any similar policy, but in reading the history of the last war I have always thought it was one of the most remarkable testimonies to the genuine political freedom which exists in this country that at a time when we were at death grips with Germany, when feeling was running very high, all the time pacifist meetings and pacifist propaganda were able to go on. I have always thought that that provided one of the most complete answers to those who say that, after all, liberty in this country is merely a sham. But here is something which, it seems to me, may result in completely suppressing any propaganda of the kind that I have described. Only the other day there was an election in Clackmannan which resulted in an overwhelming defeat for those who wanted to make immediate peace on any terms. Most of us very much welcomed that result but how much less impressive it would have been if those who were in the minority had been prevented from putting their views before the electorate. In justice let it be said that this regulation was in existence and it might have been employed in this by-election but, if it remains, can we be certain that the Secretary of State and the police in every area are going to exercise a similar forbearance in future?
On the following page there is a regulation dealing with publication and there is a remarkable paragraph which provides that: Where any person is convicted on indictment of an offence against this regulation by reason of his having published a newspaper, the court may by order direct that during such period as may be specified in the Order that person shall not publish any newspaper in the United Kingdom. Admittedly that power is to be exercised by the court, which will show considerably more impartiality than the Minister, but, even so, it seems to me a very wide discretion to give. It seems remarkable that, because a man has offended against these regulations it may be once or twice, he should be prohibited from publishing any newspaper or periodical in future during the duration of the war. There are a number of other regulations that one could mention but these are the ones 1835 which appeal to me as particularly requiring explanation. I think they are without any precedent in the regulations made under the Defence of the Realm Act in the last war.
There are, of course, others in respect of which the Minister can plead that he has precedents, but I have yet to learn that regulations made under D.O.R.A. in the last war were regarded as a model for all time. The mere fact that a regulation was made then is not a sufficient excuse for making it now unless the Minister can show that it was definitely found to be necessary at that time. Take the regulation, which attracted a good deal of attention in the Press; it enables the Minister to impose a curfew in any area where he thinks fit. That is open to very obvious objections. I think that was rarely, if ever, found necessary in the last war and, if that is so, why should the Minister repeat it in this one? Of course, there are other regulations which enable not only the Minister but a great many other people to suppress processions, public meetings and demonstrations of all kinds. I understand that already demonstrations have been banned, as well as outdoor and indoor meetings under these regulations. Perhaps the Minister will explain on what principle these regulations are applied in the suppression of demonstrations.
These are the main points to which my hon. Friends and I take objection. In our view it is not sufficient to answer, on an occasion like this, that we must leave the exercise of these powers to the wise discretion of the Department concerned. Of course, if anyone in any part of the House feels that that discretion is always wisely exercised, especially in the light of the experience of the last few weeks, he will oppose this Motion. If any hon. Member feels that the fish scheme, for example, was a masterpiece of constructive statesmanship, that the evacuation of school children was worked in all areas without a hitch, that the requisitioning of hotels was carried through with perfect efficiency, or that all the rationing and control schemes have failed to reveal a single flaw, then, of course, he may still subscribe to the doctrine of departmental infallibility.
That is not a view which, I think, is now held very widely in any part of the House. We all know that during the last 1836 few weeks there have been errors and blunders on a very considerable scale. A great many of those errors have been put right, but they have not been put right because of action taken inside the Departments; they have been put right because of the criticism from this House, from the Press and from the public as a whole. One wonders what would have happened if a large part of that criticism had been suppressed, as a great deal of it could be under the powers contained in these Regulations. It seems to us that the events of the last six or seven weeks have served to show that free discussion and criticism are not a source of weakness in an emergency, but a source of strength. When the war began, one of the first things which the Prime Minister did was to summon to his Cabinet, at long last, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), who is, I believe, a descendant of the great Duke of Marlborough. A few days ago, I was looking up the history of Marlborough's life and times, and I came across this passage about the victories he won. Professor G. M. Trevelyan says—and I think this is singularly applicable to the situation to-day: But the victory of the English— I make an apology to the hon. Member for Dumbarton Burghs (Mr. Kirk-wood)—

§ Mr. Kirkwood
It is time somebody apologised for it.

§ Mr. Foot
It is the historian's word, and not mine. The quotation reads: But the victory of the English had not been due merely to the chance of good leadership. It was due also to their naval and economic strength, and to a system of free but efficient government, that the national genius had almost unconsciously evolved from the struggle of its sects and factions. The possibility that Parliamentary government might be superior to despotism, as a system of finance and national efficiency, had been demonstrated in the 20 years' contest which the events of 1706 decided. It was a result that contradicted the world's expectations and established theories. That was true in 1706, and there are many of us who believe it will be equally true to-day. We think that once again, by the same methods and along the same lines, we can contradict the expectations of many people on the Continent of Europe, but it seems to many of us—and certainly to hon. Members who sit in this part of the House—that this can 1837 be achieved only if, at a time of emergency and war, instead of trying to suspend our free institutions, we jealously preserve them.

§ Mr. K. Griffith
I beg to second the Motion moved so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot). I think that in this matter there will be two strands in the feelings of every hon. Member. On the one hand, there will be a full realisation that none of us can expect in time of war to preserve unimpaired in detail all the liberties that we enjoyed in peace, and on the other hand, there will be a corresponding eagerness, not confined to any one part of the House, that those liberties shall not be unnecessarily sacrificed. My own feeling with regard to these Regulations as a whole, though it may seem an unlikely source in the case of any Liberal at the present time, may be found in an article by Mr. J. A. Spender, in the "Sunday Times," where he likened these expedients to the various devices which the White Knight had collected upon his horse. He had them all there because he was afraid of leaving any out; the precise application of many of them was not obvious, but he wished to be prepared; and so there were beehives and spikes round the horse's ankles, and all the rest of the things we were familiar with at one time. I think there is a great deal of that atmosphere about these regulations. I am saved from the task of following them in any detail by the speech of my hon. Friend, but I think everybody must be disconcerted by the absoluteness of the terms of Regulation I8B—"Restriction orders and detention orders." It is obvious that the Secretary of State himself felt a certain anxiety about this, because there, and there alone, does one get any kind of appellate tribunal. It is not really an appellate tribunal, but only an advisory committee to which objections can be made, but at any rate, that is something. I think that by setting up that committee, the Minister shows his anxiety regarding this regulation, which is one of the most dangerous of all. It would be easy to caricature these prohibitions—for instance: Prohibiting or restricting the possession or use by that person of any specified articles. If one pushes that to the extreme, the right hon. Gentleman might seize upon 1838 any hon. or right hon. Member of the House and deprive him of the use of a tooth brush, or even more intimate toilet necessities. It is no answer to say that no sensible Minister would be likely to propose such a prohibition. If the powers are not necessary, why are they put in? They are put in with such breadth that I think of the old tag in Shakespeare, which goes: How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds. Makes ill deeds done! I suggest that with these powers lying about in the Department, some one will pick hold of them and say, "I wonder how this one will work." We know of the ways of the bureaucracy, and this Order, in a literal sense of the word, is a panoply of bureaucracy. It contains all the instruments and weapons that could possibly be devised. I pass over the employment sub-paragraph, with which my hon. Friend has dealt, but the powers of detention are really terrifying. We have here the complete abolition of habeas corpus, as one sees in the last words on page 4 of the Order: While so detained, be deemed to be in legal custody. Therefore, there is no habeas corpus left. I draw attention particularly to the following words in regulation 180: So long as there is in force in respect of any person such an Order as aforesaid directing that he be detained, he shall be liable to be detained in such place, and under such conditions, as the Secretary of State may from time to time determine. The words "under such conditions," in my respectful submission, give to the Secretary of State the power to produce in this country all the conditions of the German concentration camp, and let me observe that this particular part of regulation 18B is not, in my reading, at any rate, subject to any reference to the advisory committee. I regard this as being extremely important. The provision with regard to reference to the advisory committee is that any person in respect of whom an order is made may make objections against the Order. The orders are under (a), (b) and (c). All that the aggrieved person can say is: "I am not a person against whom this order ought to have been made." If he is turned down on that—if he is turned down rightly, and is a person who ought to be detained—and he is thereafter 1839 ordered to be detained under such conditions that he is subjected to solitary confinement, fed upon bread and water only, and beaten at six o'clock every morning, those are conditions of which he could not complain to the advisory committee—at any rate, as I read the provisions. As far as I know, there is no arrangement whereby visiting justices or any tribunal of that kind could visit such a camp in order to discover what the grievances were. I have no doubt that any such practices as I have indicated are very far from the mind of the right hon. Gentleman, but let us realise not only what is likely to be done but what is possible to be done under these regulations.
I pass almost with relief to the very sportsmanlike provision which I find in Regulation 18C. It provides that nobody may knowingly assist a prisoner of war to escape but adds that no proceedings shall be taken against a person in respect of any act done by him when he is himself a prisoner of war. One realises that there is a sort of "old school tie" sentiment among prisoners of war and that they are allowed to assist one another, and for that I am grateful. I do not propose to make any comment on Regulation 39A in relation to disaffection. Perhaps this minor disagreement may be allowed between my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee and myself. I have no objection to that part of the regulations which deals with causing disaffection among persons engaged in His Majesty's Forces. That is bound to be a matter in which very stringent regulations will have to be made. Other Members may think the language too wide, but I prefer only to raise objections where I think they are sustainable.
Regulation 39B which deals with propaganda, I regard as one of the most menacing of all the regulations. I am not a pacifist but I receive and I have received from my constituency a certain number of pacifist communications. They have been remarkably few. They have not reached double figures yet. I do not agree with them. I think some of the arguments are silly, but I have no doubt whatever that they are sincere. Those arguments having been put forward to me, I ask whether those who write them to me are not committing an offence under Regulation 39B. Under 1840 this regulation, the expression "public opinion" includes the opinion of any section of the public. We Members of this House are a section of the public—perhaps not such an important section as we sometimes imagine but at any rate a section—and if anybody addresses himself to us saying that this is a bad war or that all wars are bad, he is probably acting, within his limits, in a manner prejudicial to the Defence of the Realm. Is that the case? I only ask for information. Are we seriously trying to bring such action within our penal code. If one of my constituents sends me a quotation from the Bible such as: They that take the sword shall perish with the sword"— My answer is that he is misinterpreting the text. I think it is Herr Hitler who is taking the sword and that I hope he is destined to perish by our sword. But the other man does not interpret it like that and he is entitled to put his own view. Is he committing an offence under this regulation?
I take it that the defence of these regulations, as a whole, will be that they are necessary for the safety of the realm and the efficient prosecution of the war. I do not think it will be denied that if they were not so necessary nobody would support them. But if they are so necessary, anybody who attacks them is acting in a manner likely to be prejudicial to the defence of the realm or the efficient prosecution of the war and my hon. Friend and I, in making these speeches to-night, are only protected from prosecution by the absolute privilege of Parliament. If we were to go outside and make the same speeches in our constituencies, we should not be so protected. But we do not matter so much. What is a Member of Parliament anyway? Take the ordinary man in a bus or tram. If he says to his mates, "I think this ere black-out is being overdone," he is offending against the regulations. It is propaganda to that particular section of public opinion which is riding in the same vehicle. Where are you to put the limit? I am not assuming that these provisions are going to be misused, but I do not want them to be capable of being misused and I think they ought to be limited.
I am aware that the provisions in regulation 39E dealing with processions and meetings, have been, in some respects.
1841 anticipated by measures which we deliberately took in time of peace, in the Public Order Act. The part of the regulations which I regard with much alarm is that which gives the Secretary of State power to delegate his functions to any mayor, justice of the peace or chief officer of police. Secretaries of State are, on the whole, a type. There is a certain lowest common denominator among them so that you know, more or less, what to expect. But mayors, justices of the peace and chief constables differ almost infinitely. Some chief constables are civil. Others are merely military. I have been rather fortunate in my acquaintance with chief constables, but there is a great deal of difference between them. As for magistrates, the class is so large that there are bound to be enormous differences, and to leave the question of whether a particular procession or meeting can properly be held or not, to what I may almost describe as a casual decision of that kind, is hardly to be desired.
With regard to all these regulations I am bound to take up the point made by my hon. Friend that it is not sufficient for the Minister to say, amidst considerable approval from the House for himself personally, "I am not the sort of person who would use these powers badly." We cannot have any such confidence. Everyone knows that Ministers are not eternal. A Minister may be succeeded by somebody who holds other views. One Secretary of State may use his powers to restrain the Fascists and the next may be more inclined to restrain the Communists. You may be fortunate enough to get one who will hold the balance evenly between the two but you cannot bet on it, if I may put it that way. In any event it seems a vicious principle to justify unsound legislation by a blind confidence that it will not be used in the sense in which it has been put on the Statute Book. I heard exactly the same defence put up by the Minister of Pensions recently when defending what appeared to many of us a harsh document. He merely said, "You all know me and I am not likely to use this wrongly." The Home Secretary cannot say to us, "It is true that I am asking you to give me a cat-o'-nine-tails but you know I have no liking for corporal punishment; it hurts me more than it hurts you, and I am not likely to use it unnecessarily." That is not an assur- 1842 ance which, in the end, can convince the House that it is necessary to have such regulations.
I am inclined myself to prefer powers accurately limited and defined, even though the administrator may not be altogether sympathetic, to powers of almost universal application administered by some kind old gentleman who would not do anything wrong. Who of us, if we were being interrogated for some supposed mistake, would not prefer to be interrogated by a perhaps unsympathetic police inspector, acting under judges' rules, than to be handed over to the most kind-hearted inquisitor that ever came out of Spain? I should prefer to have the rules defined, in order that I should not have to depend on the individual, and I do ask the Home Secretary not to overdo these regulations, not to believe that we are content just to leave them to the Government.
There is here a provision with regard to the curfew, a provision with regard to bringing people in certain areas into their houses at certain hours unless they have a written permit to stay out, when there is already a curfew issued in the form of the Early Closing Order with regard to shops, and I do assure the Home Secretary that that is regarded with absolute terror by a great many people. I cannot help feeling that this Measure was taken, perhaps, after consulting large interests, but without considering the small people who do most of their business in the later hours of the day. I cannot pursue that matter, because it is only an instance of action which has been taken, but I ask the Government not to overdo the view that everything has got to be absolutely different in war time from what it was in peace time. "Business as usual" was overdone in the last war, but let us not go to the other extreme now. It is a time of great strain for everybody, all the more so because the severest strain of war is, as it were, hanging fire. It is a strain similar, if I may say so, to that of a boy who is accidentally delayed at the door of the headmaster's study. The strain is still to come, but it is still wearing upon the nerves. At any such time the discipline of routine is of enormous value. If people can go on, as far as possible, talking to the people they used to talk to, enjoying the freedom they used to enjoy, doing the accustomed actions, they will be all the better for it when the actual 1843 snapping strain may come upon them. It is all very well to tell us, as a thousand posters do, that it is upon our cheerfulness that victory will depend. It is almost impossible to be cheerful in a vacuum, and I want the Government to enable us to enjoy enough of our ordinary liberties to have that real cheerfulness, that real and willing obedience to discipline, which can only come in a free nation.

§ Mr. Pickthorn
I have very deep sympathy with the last two speakers, and in the main I agree with most of what they have said. I think at the same time there is an excessive inclination to use the argument that if you are fighting for freedom, you must not begin by taking it away. If that argument is pressed too far, it gets to the point where it resembles saying that if what you are setting out to do is to enable a man to walk, you ought not to begin by tying a stick round his leg. If the man has just broken his leg, that is the proper way to begin, but I do not think it is by any means an inexpungable argument to say, when something is limiting liberty in the normal sense, that therefore it is not proper as part of a war one of whose purposes is to uphold liberty.
I have no doubt that the most serious of these regulations, as has been indicated by the two previous speakers, is 18B, and I wish to begin—it is perhaps a minor point—by inquiring whether it has any possible relation to regulation 80A, which is the one authorising administrators to demand information from people. That seems to me to be in many respects more objectionable even than authorising administrators to prevent people from giving each other information. As far as I can read the Order-in-Council, regulation 8oA has no specific tribunal and sanction attached to it, but comes under the omnibus regulation, and, therefore, you cannot be punished under it except under summary jurisdiction, which may mean imprisonment for three months and, after indictment, imprisonment for two years. But the question that I wish to put—and perhaps it is one which a lawyer would not need to put—is this: Could the administrators, in fact, instead of proceeding under that omnibus regulation, intern the person refusing in formation on the ground that his refusal was action prejudicial to the public safety, or perhaps, even more 1844 specifically under 18B, on the ground of his association with some other person? I ask, because in general I take it that the information required from somebody would be information about somebody else.
That is a minor point, in connection with regulation 18B, which I hope may be cleared up, but to come back to the major point on 18B, it is, in the words which the Lord Privy Seal, then Home Secretary, used about the Bill under which all these regulations are issued, "no doubt wide, drastic, and comprehensive," and, in words which he went on to use: No doubt the best I can hope is that it shall be used with moderation, tolerance, and common sense. But the Lord Privy Seal did on that occasion, or, rather, on the Committee stage, use some other words too. An Amendment was moved, the effect of which would have been that the chairman of the advisory committee should be a Judge of the High Court. The words moved to be inserted were, "to the satisfaction of a Judge of the High Court," and the present Lord Privy Seal then said that he could not accept the words of that Amendment, but that he did definitely intend to have a check. Along with what he said, I would invite the attention of the House to some other words that he used, namely, "the right to make objections." It is true that under this Order-in-Council an internee has a right to make objections. It is not, however, a statutory right, but merely a right under the Order-in-Council itself and could, I suppose, be removed by a later regulation. I know that we cannot move Amendments upon this occasion, and I would not, therefore, criticise the two previous speakers for not having indicated how they proposed that these regulations should be improved. It seems to me quite clear that the mere simple solution of withdrawing the regulations would not be a right or proper one, but if we cannot move Amendments, I might at least suggest one or two possible additional safeguards.
The Lord Privy Seal told us he definitely intended to have a check. Would it not be possible that that check should be what I may call the Judge-of-the-High-Court check? It was discussed on the I.R-.A. Bill, and the main objections to such a proposal then were, first 1845 of all, the objection about judges being overworked and that they ought not to be taken away from their proper stuff. To that argument I do not know the answer, because I do not know whether or not there are judges available at the present time. But the second and the main objection to any such suggestion was this, that it would be constitutionally improper and unadvisable to mix up a judicial character with an action of a purely administrative nature. That second objection would be unanswerable if the Government accepted the suggestion of the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) that the Home Secretary should always be bound to follow the advice of the advisory committee. I should regret that, for the effect of it would be that the advisory committee would take full responsibility for an administrative act. It is the business of the Home Secretary to say, if necessary, "In spite of my advisory committee, although they think this man ought to be let out I am sure he ought not to be let out."
If that is to be the practice and if we have Home Secretaries who will take that kind of line, there is much less argument against the proposal that the advisory committee should be presided over by a High Court judge. For all I have to say to the contrary, the eminent lawyers who perform that function do so at least as well as a High Court judge, but I am persuaded that the great mass of the dubiety about this Order-in-Council in the country generally, among people who are not constitutional pedants and are not looking for ways of sticking spokes in the Government's wheel, would be largely removed if there were some such alteration as that; and if also it were made clear that the right of an internee to object was a right not merely to object to being interned, but also to the manner of his internment. I have heard it said, although I have no evidence I could produce in a court of law, that some of the internees are not being very well treated and that the conditions of living, especially in regard to exercise, are not as good as they should be. If objections of that sort could also be raised I believe that the main doubts about this Order-in-Council in the minds of people who are not predisposed to be tiresome, would be removed.

§ Mr. Herbert Morrison
The House and the country are indebted to the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) for bringing before the House the question of these regulations and drawing attention to the terms of a series of them. I am not going to dissent from the view that in time of war, when the security of the country is imperilled by an important struggle with a great foreign Power, it is inevitable and proper that the executive, subject to proper checks, should be endowed with exceptional powers. I do not think there is any dispute about that in any part of the House. I freely admit, as I think will be admitted generally, that in the wording of these regulations we may have to give an even wider form of words than we really like upon the merits of the case, because we know that the executive cannot have that overriding power which is essential to the safety of the State unless it has a wide field of discretion and is not unduly tied down. That is a different story from the actual wording of a number of these regulations, which give really extraordinarily sweeping powers under which, it seems to me, anybody whom the Home Secretary did not like could be hanged, drawn and quartered almost without any reasonable or proper means of defending himself.
I am not going to use the argument usually put forward as a matter of courtesy that we do not believe the present Minister would be wicked but that we are afraid his successors might be. I think that any Minister is capable of being wicked when he has a body of regulations like this to administer. I have a recollection some years ago that one exceedingly benevolent, kindly and gentlemanly Home Secretary, Mr. Bridgeman, got into no end of trouble about some Irish citizens. I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman the present Home Secretary in another capacity did not get into trouble himself. At any rate, I think that a prima facie case within the meaning of the regulations was made for the action taken. Nobody would say that Mr. Bridgeman was a tyrannical or an unkindly or intolerant person. I should put him eminently into that category of Ministers of whom the Prime Minister would say that they were chosen on the basis of character and experience. Nevertheless, this case of the Irish citizens 1847 happened under Mr. Bridgeman's jurisdiction at the Home Office, and I am not sure whether Lord Hailsham, then Sir Douglas Hogg, was not Attorney-General at the time. He is a horse of another colour and a different type. He was in trouble, too. Behind them all were the civil servants, who, no doubt quite properly, thought that this action should be taken. Therefore, let us put aside the cant in which we engage that we are sure the present Home Secretary would not do wrong, but that we are not so sure of his successors. We believe that the present Home Secretary is capable of being wicked, and, therefore, the House should be guarded and careful as to the powers which they give to him.
Ministers make all sorts of regulations. In the short 2¼ years I was at the Ministry of Transport I made a lot of regulations, a pile of them. I remember that there were some regulations which were brought to me—and I commend this to the right hon. Gentleman—and I was advised that it was really necessary that they should be made. It was true that if the regulations were not made some people might break their necks, but the number of people who would break their necks as against the number of people to whom the regulations would be a considerable inconvenience was a case of de minimis. Therefore, I said, "Take the regulations away. We ought not and are not going to make regulations for the sake of making them." I am not joining in the cry that the Civil Service have a great desire to enslave everybody and are an evil-minded set of people. We owe a great deal to the civil servants of this country. When, however, the civil servant sees the danger of something happening that ought not to happen he has an instinct, which is not an improper one for such a man to have, that the danger must be prevented, and that a regulation or a law must be framed with a view to preventing it. That is a proper attitude for the civil servant to take because, if the Minister gets into trouble, the Minister will go for him.
It is for the Minister to exercise his discretion whether he will make a regulation which does not need to be made. Some Ministers really seem to like making regulations for the sake of making them. Sometimes they make regulations 1848 and conduct administration not so much in the public interest, but sometimes, as far as I can see, with a view to preserving the rights and particularly the profits of certain elements in industry who have really become economically redundant under war conditions, including middlemen. The wording of the regulations is important. What is said by the Home Secretary in reply to this Debate will also be important. He may be able to give us assurances, and he certainly ought to give us very firm assurances, about the administration of some of these regulations. On the face of it I am bound to express my own feeling that, whatever assurances he gives, the wording of some of the regulations is so wide and sweeping that the House ought not to contemplate them lightly. I admit that if the Minister does something wrong Parliament can jump in at any point and stop him, subject to the matter not being of such a judicial character that Mr. Speaker would hold, or it might be held, that the House could not intervene. I know that check exists as long as Parliament meets. Nevertheless, we must still watch the wording and put some restriction, if we can, on the rather sweeping provisions which are made.
I do not want to deal with detailed points in the regulations, because they have been so ably dealt with by the two hon. Members on the Liberal benches, but take the question of propagation of opinion which is liable to weaken the country in the successful prosecution of the war. There may be other people who will be a nuisance, but the three principal groups which the House has in mind are the pacifists of the Peace Pledge: Union type, the Communists and the Fascists. It is a curious thing but it so happens that these three grades of opinion have, for the time being, come to a fairly common conclusion as to what they want to be done, and if I were some people I should feel a bit uncomfortable about it.

§ Mr. Maxton
But look at the other allies.

§ Mr. McGovern
You and the Prime Minister.

§ Mr. Morrison
I should have thought the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern) had more reason to regard himself as an ally of the Prime Minister

§ Mr. McGovern
I do not dispute that I was an ally of the Prime Minister, and a willing ally, for good; but for evil, you are his ally.

§ Mr. Morrison
That is a matter of opinion.

§ Mr. Maxton
And that is something for which you could be prosecuted under these regulations.

§ Mr. Morrison
I am not, and never have been, an ally of the Prime Minister, and fortunately I am not an ally of the hon. Member for Shettleston.

§ Mr. McGovern
I am glad of that.

§ Mr. Morrison
Well, we are both glad, and that is all right. What is the point of getting nerves about the minority, I believe the sincere minority, of pacifist opinion in the country? They are a much smaller minority than they were in the last war, so far as one can tell.

§ Mr. Sloan
That is only a matter of opinion also.

§ Mr. Morrison
They are the holders of a point of view in which they believe. There are two things which can be done. To seek powers whereby you can suppress truth as various people see it will be doing harm and not good. If we leave them free to express their opinion, which sometimes is alarmingly similar to the propaganda which Dr. Goebbels himself puts out, nobody is going to be harmed. They will have the satisfaction of expressing their point of view, which I honestly think they ought to be entitled to express, and the country will not be harmed in the process. After all, the British people are not sheep. They do not need to be told what they are to believe. They are capable of forming their own judgment in the light of debate and discussion.
Then there are the Fascists. There is only this to be said about the Fascists. In so far as they deliberately take action with a view to stimulating disturbances and racial hatred within the ranks of the British people, it is perfectly proper that they should be stopped from doing so. In so far as it can be proved, if it can be proved—and it was asserted by a Home Secretary earlier—that the Fascists are the instruments of a foreign Government and financed by a foreign Government I would not worry about stopping 1850 their meetings in time of war. If we find a political party which is the paid instrument of a foreign Government with whom this country is at war it is perfectly legitimate to suppress the organisation altogether. That is my view and I think it is the proper thing to do. And similarly with any other political party. If it is in the pay of a foreign Government, is the agent of a foreign Government, it may in a different category from the Fascists if they are the instruments of an enemy Government; but, still, there is a legitimate field for public inquiry. Subject to those considerations, however, it is really better that these people should have the opportunity of putting their point of view, letting public opinion settle what is right and what is wrong. If we try at the beginning of this war to control opinion meticulously we shall be doing wrong, not only acting contrary to the principles upon which the war is supposed to be fought, but bringing ourselves into contempt among many other nations of the world.
There is the other regulation about curfew. I honestly cannot see on the face of it, though I am willing to listen to the right hon. Gentleman, why he wants this complete power of keeping people off the highways and making them stay at home. I can follow it in the narrow field of a military objective, a dockyard, a military centre, but he has powers to do that under another regulation and does not need it here. That curfew indirectly gives him the power to stop people from going to the pictures, or to chapel or to places of refreshment, public meetings and the theatre. What is the purpose of it? If it is to keep people off the streets because there may be an air raid, it seems to me to be ridiculous. People will get off the streets when the bombs begin to fall and if, as is probable, there will be a minority of our people who want to stay out and watch the excitement, it will be their funeral if they do so, and it seems to me that on the whole it is their business whether they stay out or go under shelter. I cannot see why the right hon. Gentleman wants these particular powers and we ought to have a statement from him.
Reference has been made to 39B which gives the Minister the most sweeping powers in relation to propaganda, and I need not repeat what has been said oh that point; but I would refer to 39E, 1851 which gives powers as to the prohibition of public meetings, and I agree with the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, West (Mr. K. Griffith) that to contemplate the delegation of those powers to mayors and justices of the peace is bad administration. They will come to all sorts of different decisions. Some mayors will prohibit the meetings of Fascists and other mayors of another colour will prohibit meetings of Communists or, possibly, the Labour party. It is a power that we should not delegate to a wide variety of local people who may take differing points of view.
Under 39B not only are the subject and the Press interfered with but the cinema as well. The right hon. Gentleman takes power to appoint people to conduct a censorship of films. Who are they to be? If it is a question of sheer security, a question of a military or a naval character, I think, on the whole, subject to ministerial control, the military and naval people will have to work this. An outsider cannot too easily work to the narrower issue of military and naval strategy, but under the censorship will come the question of whether the film is likely to be prejudicial to the Defence of the Realm or the efficient prosecution of the war, and we may get the most wide variety of considerations. Are the Board of Film Censors to be in this? Are they to be among the people whom the right hon. Gentleman will appoint? They are accustomed to dealing with moral and political issues in the exercise of the censorship and there is an appeal from them to the local authority. Is this regulation to be used to deal with the censorship of films from the point of view of morals and politics? Are the Board of Film Censors to be used, and if so, is there to be an appeal to the local authorities? Although, broadly speaking, the Board of Film Censors have, in the majority of cases, done their work with smoothness and capacity, in a very substantial minority of cases public opinion has held that they have gone wrong. I say that on the field of sheer military and naval strategy Ministers and their representatives should be supreme in that matter of security. Within the field of ordinary morals, and even of political judgment, I would prefer the existing system whereby there is an appeal to the local authority.
1852 As an instance of how this matter of judgment goes wrong and how we have to be careful in delegating this power, I would mention the film "Professor Mamlock." The film censors made a clean prohibition. They probably did it on advice. There was an appeal to a local authority, who passed it subject to certain cuts. When the war came, the Board of Film Censors, who had prohibited the whole film, proposed, I understand, to pass the whole film and to restore the cuts which the local authority had wisely made. The original judgment of the Board of Film Censors, and I suspect of somebody behind them, was all wrong. It was given in the days when it was thought that you must not do anything offensive to Herr Hitler or to the German Government. This matter impressed itself upon my mind as showing that the delegation of film censorship and its general administration to a body of censors appointed by the Minister would be wrong. The case has been put regarding the particular regulations. I said at the beginning that the wording of these regulations was exceedingly serious. I think the House is entitled to a statement from the Home Secretary indicating the reasons why he thinks the regulations are essential. It will then be for the House to decide whether we shall agree to them or not. On the face of the matter I am bound to say that I am exceedingly apprehensive. So are hon. Members who sit with me on these benches.

§ The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir John Anderson)
I intervene at this stage not with any idea of trying to curtail the Debate, but because a number of points have been raised of great importance and interest and it seems desirable that I should now give some explanation. By way of preliminary, I would say that the regulations in this volume, together with the regulations previously issued, are a code which has been prepared on behalf of the Government upon a very careful and systematic review of the regulations which were in force during the last war. In the course of that review, regulations which had grown up in a rather topsy-turvy way were brought into close relationship with one another. The drafting was looked at and polished and the general scope of the regulations was considered from the standpoint of 1853 modern conditions. It would be quite wrong to suppose that, in general, the regulations now before the House are more drastic or sweeping in character than those which were in force during the last war, though there are certain regulations and provisions of a novel character which the House will expect me to endeavour to justify.
In preparing this code of regulations an endeavour was made to make the code complete and ready to meet all contingencies which might reasonably be foreseen. In that fact hon. Members may find explanation for the presence, in this code, of regulations of which so far no use has been made and for which, so far as present conditions go, one cannot see any immediate necessity. The first of the regulations more particularly selected for criticism by previous speakers is 18B. This regulation has been criticised by most of those speakers, and the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) referred in detail to its provisions. He commented on paragraphs 1 (a) and 1 (b) He suggested that those provisions were capable of endless abuse in practice and he referred to the words which appear at the end of sub-paragraph (6) in relation to a possible restriction of the activities of a person dealt with under the regulation, in relation to the dissemination of news or the propagation of opinions.
Let me now deal with paragraphs (a) and (b) as distinct from the provision in paragraph (c), which deals with detention. These provisions were inserted for the purpose of providing a less drastic remedy in a case which might possibly have been properly dealt with under (c), which provides for detention. There is no intention of taking the provisions of (a) and (b) and of imposing the restrictions to which they refer wantonly or unnecessarily upon people who may be considered to have come within the ambit of the regulation; but, as an alternative to the drastic steps of ordering detention, such restriction might be imposed. I shall give the House at once the assurance that, so far as I can see—

§ Mr. Bevan
Would the right hon. Gentleman at the beginning of this reply please try to give us his reasons? The House is really not interested in what his intentions are but in what the powers are. Will the right hon. Gentleman exempt us from what is redundant and tell us what he intends to do?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I am tring to explain the circumstances—[HON. MEMBERS: "No, you are not."]—in which these provisions appear in the regulations. I am merely saying that the provisions which were criticised in the first instance by the hon. Member for Dundee are incidental to the major provisions of regulation (c), with which I shall now proceed to deal.

§ Mr. Lansbury
Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us to whom (c) directing that he be detained is intended to refer?

§ Sir J. Anderson
The regulation reads: The Secretary of State, if satisfied, with respect to any particular person, that with a view to preventing him acting in any manner prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of the realm, it is necessary so to do, may make an order"— imposing the restrictions set out in this regulation under paragraphs (a), (b) or (c). I do not think they are cumulative because if paragraph (c) were invoked in relation to a particular person the necessity for paragraphs (a) and (b) would seem to disappear. He would become subject to restraint and there would be no occasion to use paragraphs (a)or (b).

§ Mr. K. Griffith
I do not think these can really be intended as mutually exclusive, because if a man was directed to be detained under paragraph (c) you could still deprive him of his toothbrush under (a) Those things could go together easily. There are many things which would be required by people who were detained. A person may require his daily copy of "Action," or the "Daily Worker," or he might require to write letters.

§ Sir J. Anderson
Where orders have been made requiring that a person shall be detained they have been confined to that purpose. It may be that, as far as the wording of the regulation goes, it could be used for the purpose of requiring that the person in question should be detained, and also that certain further restrictions should be imposed. Now may I come to the main provisions in this regulation—paragraph (c) of Regulation 18B (1). It is admittedly a provision of a drastic character giving the Executive power to order that a person should be detained if in the opinion of the Secretary of State the conditions set 1855 out in the regulation have been fulfilled. The House is not taken by surprise in the production of this regulation. The point was dealt with, as hon. Members will recollect, during the Debate on the Emergency Powers Bill under which these regulations were made, and my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal made it perfectly clear that it was in the contemplation of the Government that such a regulation would be made and he gave at the same time an assurance that safeguards would be provided. That assurance has been carried out by the provisions made by the regulation under which a person detained under a regulation may make objections to an advisory committee. This regulation follows provisions that appeared in the Defence of the Realm Regulations, 1914, without any substantial difference; I think I am right in saying that there is no substantial difference.

§ Mr. Foot
To which regulation in 1914 is the right hon. Gentleman referring?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I will give the hon. Gentleman the reference in a moment. There was a provision which enabled the Secretary of State, on representations by the advisory committee, to detain a person or persons who were suspected of acting or being about to act in a prejudicial manner. The cases come before the advisory committee with very little delay. Under the regulation made during the last war the initiative could be taken by any competent military authority. This whole question was argued at length during the Second Reading of the Bill and the Second Reading was passed, as hon. Members will recall, without a Division.
The House would probably like me to say a word about the advisory committee which has been set up to deal with representations from persons against whom orders of detention have been made. Six persons have been appointed members of the advisory committee. Sir Walter Monckton and Mr. Norman Birkett are available to act as chairmen alternately. The other members are Professor Collinson, Sir Arthur Hazlerigg, Mr. J. J. Mallon and Miss Violet Mark-ham. It is hoped that delay in considering representations will be reduced to a minimum.

§ Mr. Gallacher
Can the Secretary of State say why there is never any attempt 1856 to bring workers from the factories on to a body of this sort?

§ Sir J. Anderson
My predecessor constituted this committee in the manner which he thought best suited to the circumstances. It seems to me that the members are—

§ Sir Stafford Cripps
Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that Sir Walter is now chief censor and cannot sit upon this committee?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I believe he has a certain amount of time to spare for that work. In any case, Mr. Norman Birkett was appointed as soon as it was apparent that I should not be in a position to rely upon Sir Walter Moncktons full-time services. I was asked a question in regard to the procedure of the advisory committee. No directions whatsoever have been given by the Secretary of State to the advisory committee as to their procedure.

§ Miss Wilkinson
That is not necessary.

§ Sir J. Anderson
The advisory committee have been left entirely, free, but I do know that the normal practice is to send to the objector before the hearing a short statement giving in outline the reasons why an order has been made against him. May I say at this point, in reply to a question put to me by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee, that the advisory committee have before them all the evidence which is in the possession of the Secretary of State.

§ Mr. Silverman
Has the detainee the same information?

§ Sir J. Anderson
The person detained is given in outline the reason why the order has been made against him, and he is then given an opportunity of attending for examination. Witnesses are not called while the detained person is before the committee but the advisory committee call in any person who, in their opinion, may be able to assist in elucidating the matter with which the committee have to deal. The committee give the objector every opportunity to make whatever statement he wishes, and give him all possible assistance in clearing up any matters which may appear prejudicial to his case.

§ Miss Wilkinson
Is this done in public or in camera?

§ Sir J. Anderson
It is done in camera.

§ Sir S. Cripps
I suggest that it is entirely wrong to say that the detainee has the right to meet every point that is made against him. In fact, I know, having gone into this carefully, that all the matters connected with his detention are not disclosed. All he is told is the general case against him, and after he is interviewed the last word is with the representatives of M.I.5, or the C.I.D., or whoever is dealing with the case on behalf of the Government.

§ Sir J. Anderson
Surely the hon. and learned Member will appreciate that I am doing my best to convey to the House the information that has been given to me.

§ Mr. Lansbury
On a point of Order. The Minister has made a statement. That statement has been challenged by the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps), and then the right hon. Gentleman has told us that he is making the statement as it is given to him. Surely the House is entitled to have a statement that the right hon. Gentleman knows is correct?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Colonel Clifton Brown)
There is no point of Order there. The Minister must make his statement in his own way, and it would be better if the House would listen to his statement.

§ Mr. Bevan
As it is improper for Members of this House to question any statement made by a civil servant, how is it possible for us to consider any matter represented to us, not on the authority of a Minister, but on the authority of a servant whom we cannot question?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
It is perfectly absurd to suggest that a Minister can know everything about every subject with which he has to deal. Hon. Members should hear the whole story, and then the House can come to a decision.

§ Mr. Bevan
The right hon. Gentleman has not, in the hearing of the House, accepted responsibility for the statements made by him, but has said that he has conveyed to the House a statement made to him by a servant, whom we cannot question. In my respectful submission, the Minister must either make the statement upon his own authority, in which case we can question him, or upon the authority of a servant whom you must permit us to question. At the moment, we cannot question the civil servant and 1858 we cannot question the right hon. Gentleman. Therefore, I respectfully submit that an important constitutional point is involved: whom can we question?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
There is no constitutional point involved. These are matters for debate. If hon. Members are not satisfied they can record their dissatisfaction in the Division Lobby.

§ Sir J. Anderson
When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) rose I did not know what he was going to say, and I had, in fact, not finished what I was going to say in reply to the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps). I was going on to say that I was giving the House information conveyed to me by the tribunal in regard to the procedure followed by them. The members of the tribunal are not my servants: it is very important that they should not be; they are fully independent of the Home Secretary. Mr. Norman Birkett has authorised me to say this: that it has been the earnest endeavour of himself and his colleagues to give every possible opportunity to the internee to state his case and answer any of the points which can be alleged against him.

§ Sir S. Cripps
On a point of Order. The right hon. Gentleman is now referring to some document. I suggest that as he is referring to a document containing a statement by Mr. Norman Birkett the House is entitled to see the document.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I am not clear what it is that the hon. and learned Gentleman is calling a document. I think it is the notes of the right hon. Gentleman's speech.

§ Sir S. Cripps
Is not something which is given to the Minister and from which he can read in a Debate a document within the meaning of the Rules of this House?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That constitutes what one might consider rather full notes, from which an hon. Member may quote.

§ Mr. Attlee
May I submit to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that where a Minister does not merely give a resume of a document, but reads from the document the whole of the actual words, he must lay the whole of the document before this House?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
We might leave it to the Minister to explain what the document is.

§ Sir S. Cripps
We are asking for your Ruling, Sir; not the Minister's. The Minister has quoted a document verbatim, and has said from that document what Mr. Norman Birkett has authorised him to say, which is in writing. I can see the document from here. I ask you to give a Ruling.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I cannot give a Ruling without having heard both sides.

§ Sir S. Cripps
I suggest that you ask the Minister for the document, in order that you may see it. May I again ask the right hon. Gentleman for the document, in order that you may judge whether it is one that he should produce?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That is not a matter for me to judge. I am not clear what the document is.

§ Mr. Stephen
A document has been quoted by the Minister, and whenever a document is quoted by a Minister that document may be asked for, and must then be produced. It is in the Rules of the House; and I ask you to rule according to the Rules of the House on this matter.

§ Mr. Attlee
May I draw attention to a precedent which I remember very well? It was in the 1924 Parliament. The then Under-Secretary of State for Air quoted verbatim from a document—I think it was from the Air Commander in Iraq. The then Member for West Birmingham, Sir A. Chamberlain, put the point that it was a document which had been quoted, and immediately it was stated that if that document were quoted it must be laid before the House. Since then there have been several other cases. It did not depend on the document, but on the fact that a Minister was quoting from a document.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Hon. Members should hear what the Minister has to say. I have not satisfied myself that it comes within the meaning of the term "document."

§ Mr. Neil Maclean
Is it not a fact that the Minister has quoted from the document? Consequently, the document is the property of the House and not of you, Sir.

§ Sir J. Anderson
Perhaps I can throw some light on this question. It is not for me to say whether it is technically a document or not, but the so-called document from which I was quoting was a record, made for the purpose of greater accuracy, of a statement made by Mr. Norman Birkett. [An HON. MEMBER: "Made to whom?"] I should have committed the words to memory, but I thought that it was better to have the exact words recorded in a departmental note, and these are the words which I have read out to the House.

§ Mr. Maxton
Is that the whole of it?

§ Sir S. Cripps
I submit, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that what the right hon. Gentleman has said shows quite clearly that he was reading or quoting from a document. He has said already that he could not trust his memory and that he had to have it put in the form of a document, and if that is the document recording the communication from Mr. Norman Birkett to himself, then, in my submission, it falls within the meaning of a document which must be disclosed to this House, and is exactly in accordance with the precedent already quoted by my right hon. Friend of the document received by the Under-Secretary of State for Air from the Air Commander.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
If the hon. and learned Gentleman will turn to Rule 154, he will notice there, that if a document is quoted as a despatch or other State paper it ought to be laid on the Table. It goes on to say that this Rule is analogous to the Rule observed in the courts of law.

§ Sir S. Cripps
Surely a private document means a document which is not a State document. Every document which the Minister holds by virtue of his position must be a State document and protected by the Official Secrets Act. The analogy which you stated in Rule 154 is an accurate one when it is an analogy to the rule observed in courts of law against quoting documents which are not produced in evidence. Certainly you would not be allowed to make the quotation which the right hon. Gentleman has made from a document if you were not prepared to produce it in a court of law. Therefore I ask you to rule that this is a case where this document must be produced.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
It is very difficult for an hon. Member who is not a judge or is not trained in the law, but it seems to me that this document was one given by Mr. Norman Birkett to the Home Secretary, and as such is a private document. I am afraid I must rule against the hon. and learned Member.

§ Mr. Attlee
Is it relevant for the private guidance of the Minister when, as a matter of fact, the Minister has said that he is going to give it to the House? Thereby it is a public document? It has not been for private guidance. It is now before the House, and I submit that you cannot hold now that it is a private document, because the Minister expressly said that he wanted to quote from it to this House.

§ Sir J. Anderson
With great respect, what I said was that I wanted to quote the exact terms of the assurance that had been given. I did not wish to misrepresent what I had been told, and the paper that I have before me is nothing more than a departmental note.

§ Miss Wilkinson
On a point of Order. Seeing that the document to which the Minister has referred is apparently going to be the key document with regard to this unfortunate matter, surely from the point of view of importance as well as of fact that it is a State document, this House ought to have Mr. Norman Birketts ruling before it.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That seems to me to be a point which the hon. Lady could make later in the Debate.

§ Mr. Gallacher
May I rise to a point of Order? In view of the statement made by the Minister that this tribunal was outside his control and the members were not his servants, surely that must mean that he would not be responsible for the tribunal in this House. That seems to be a complete confusion as far as the Minister is concerned, and would it not be better to report Progress so that the Minister could consider exactly what his position is in relation to this point?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That is not a point of Order.

§ Sir J. Anderson
In regard to this regulation, I think it may be for the convenience of the House if I give, very 1862 briefly, some particulars of what has happened hitherto under the regulation and the nature of the cases that have had to be dealt with.

§ Sir S. Cripps
In view of the interruption would the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to tell us again exactly what the procedure was—he had not finished—which he was going to state in answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury)?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I thought I had finished. When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) rose in his place to put a point, I was about to state what, according to Mr. Norman Birkett, who is in the best position to know, the procedure of the tribunal is, and the important communication I wished to make to the House on that subject is the one I have just made.

§ Mr. Gallacher
And you are not responsible. On a point of Order. This is a very important point. Are we to understand that the Minister is not now prepared to repeat what he said when referring to the right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury), that these are not his servants and he is not responsible?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I am prepared to repeat what I said. I do not wish any misunderstanding on the point. I am responsible for the advisory committee in the sense that it is a body set up by the Home Secretary, but it is set up in order to discharge a function independently, without any interference by the Home Secretary.

§ Mr. Bevan
And can be dismissed by you?

§ Sir J. Anderson
That question has not arisen.

§ Mr. Silverman
Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether—

§ Sir J. Anderson
I really cannot give way.

§ Mr. Jagger
One a point of Order. When the Home Secretary declares that he is not responsible for these people and yet he appoints them, surely we are entitled to know whether he has the power to remove them and terminate their employment.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Any hon. Member has a right to stand up, but the Home Secretary is in possession of the House and need not give way.

§ Mr. Maclean
May I ask the Home Secretary whether this House has any right to review any decision come to by the advisory committee which he sets up?

§ Sir J. Anderson
The advisory committee is set up to advise the Home Secretary, who is responsible for the action that he takes on the advice of that committee, but the committee in the discharge of its duty—and this is the only point I wish to make clear to the House—is not subject to detailed interference by the Secretary of State. It was in that sense that I wished the House to understand that the committee is entirely independent. In regard to the class of case with which this regulation is intended to deal, hon. Members will realise that where an enemy alien is concerned there is a prerogative power to order detention and no regulation need be invoked at all-The Regulation 18B is designed to enable the Secretary of State to take action which is essential in the public interest in regard to persons who are not technically enemy aliens. There are many such persons, British subjects, who are entirely alien in sentiment and are British subjects only by reason of a technicality. There are persons of dual nationality, persons who are alien enemies, but at the same time British subjects, who cannot be dealt with under the prerogative because they have the status of a British subject, but have been brought up entirely in Germany and whose associations are entirely with Germany. The regulation gives power to deal with such cases. There is, for example, a German-born woman who went through the form of marriage with a British subject a few days before the outbreak of war. Is that woman, believed to be dangerous, to be immune from detention because she has married a British subject? Is she to be immune from the liability of being interned as an enemy alien because of the fact that she acquired the status of a British subject a few days before the outbreak of the war?

§ Mr. Silverman
That is not the definition of an enemy alien.

§ Mr. Holdsworth
Is it not a fact that without this regulation there would be power to deal with that woman now?

§ Sir J. Anderson
Apart from this regulation we have not the power to intern her that we should have had had she not been married to a British subject a few days before the outbreak of the war. The Secretary of State would not have the power to exercise what is known as preventive arrest. These are drastic powers, but I would point out that they are powers which the House knew that it was entrusting to the Secretary of State when it passed the Act without a Division.

Hon. Members
No.

§ Mr. Stephen
I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be fair. If he will refer to my speech on the Second Reading he will see that it was stated definitely that we did not claim a Division because we were accepting the previous decision on the question as to the introduction of the Measure as expressing our opposition to the whole thing. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not go on repeating that statement and involve us in having to claim a Division on every occasion.

§ Mr. Bevan
The right hon. Gentleman is now suggesting that all these regulations were implied when we passed the original Measure, and that therefore the regulations are not entirely new. This regulation is entirely new. The right hon. Gentleman cannot plead the general powers in the Act in explanation of these detailed regulations.

§ Mr. Lansbury
I hope the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I am extremely interested in this particular set of provisions. Am I to understand him to say that this provision applies only to persons of the kind that he has just mentioned, and do not apply to a person like myself?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I was merely giving illustrations of the cases in regard to which the power has been used. May I call attention to the terms of the Emergency Powers Act? I was not in the House during the Second Reading Debate, but the main point which I wish to make now is that in the Bill as introduced and in the Act as passed these words appear: Defence regulations may, so far as appears to His Majesty in Council to be necessary or expedient for any of the purposes mentioned in the sub-section, make provision for the detention of persons whose detention appears to the Secretary of State to be expedient in the interests of the public safety or the defence of the realm. 1865 There could have been no clearer indication to the House of the intention to follow the passing of the Act by the making of such a regulation as this.

§ Mr. Foot
I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but he has referred to the words which were passed by the House at a time when we were informed that it was vitally urgent that the whole Bill should be passed through all its stages in one day. Therefore, it was not possible to have a Committee stage of the usual length. He says that these words are similar to the words in the Defence of the Realm Act. Contrary to what the right hon. Gentleman says now, the corresponding regulation under the Defence of the Realm Act in the last war was substantially different from this regulation. Regulation 14B in the Defence of the Realm Act was specifically and in terms confined to people of hostile origin or association. There is no such word of limitation in this regulation.

§ Sir J. Anderson
It is perfectly true that the words "of hostile origin or association" appear in the Defence of the Realm regulations, and that they do not appear here. The reason for that is that there has been a change of circumstances in the meantime and that we have had to consider, not only people who are directly of hostile origin or association, but for example, members of the I.R.A.—

§ Mr. Foot
You said it was the same.

§ Sir J. Anderson
I say it is substantially the same.

Mr. Jaggr
You are affecting 42,000,000 people by that change.

§ Sir J. Anderson
It is a power no more drastic in relation to the persons to whom it refers than the power in the Defence of the Realm regulations.

§ Mr. Jagger
It might be applied to 42,000,000 people.

§ Sir J. Anderson
It is not being applied to great numbers of people. There are important safeguards. I only wish further, in regard to this regulation, to give the House some particulars of the action that has been taken so far under it. The number of persons who have been detained so far is 35. Of these, 29 persons made objection to the advisory 1866 committee, and the committee have already examined 24 cases. They have recommended the continued detention of 13 of the persons on whom they were reporting; they have recommended the release, subject to restriction, of four persons, and they have recommended release, free from any restrictions, of two persons. That is the complete information so far as I have it up to date.

§ Captain Ramsay
Is it proposed to compensate the people who have been wrongfully detained?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I do not think any question arises of people having been wrongfully detained.

§ Mr. McGovern
Was there not one man in Edinburgh, 35 years of age, who died, and whose case is the subject of investigation?

§ Sir J. Anderson
He was not dealt with under this regulation.

§ Mr. Gallacher
Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us how many have been threatened?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I am not aware of any being threatened. No question arises of anyone being wrongfully detained. The two persons who have been released without restrictions were detained as a measure of precaution. This regulation is entirely precautionary. It is designed to protect this country against what might be a grave menace at a time when we are engaged in a grave struggle. I can well understand the anxiety of hon. Members lest these drastic powers should be abused, and I wish to give the House the best assurance I can that the powers will not be abused. The safeguards provided are effective. As regards the two persons who were released, free from all restrictions, they were persons of dual nationality. They entered this country very shortly before the war. Although they were British by birth they had been brought up in Germany and can speak only German. On examination, the advisory committee accepted the representations they made that they had come to this country in order to escape from Germany, although they had not been in touch with any refugee organisation. Those are the facts in regard to the two persons in question. It will be seen that no question of compensation could arise.
1867 The next regulation which has been criticised is that giving power to the Secretary of State to impose a curfew. A similar regulation—I will not say in exactly the same terms—was in force during the last war, but I do not know if it was ever used. It was included for the sake of completeness in the code of regulations prepared, as I have explained. The question of omitting it and introducing it if circumstances should arise in which it might be thought necessary was duly considered, but it was thought by those responsible for the drafting of the regulations better that it should be included so that the House might have an opportunity of criticising it. I do not wish to offer any very spirited criticism of it. I confess that I should not shed tears if it dropped out, but it has not been included as a sort of further supplement to the black-out. I can very readily explain the particular circumstances in which a curfew regulation is of great value to the executive in the process of restoring order. If you have in any part of the country serious disturbances, from which this country has been fortunately very free in recent years, disturbances which might impose a very heavy tax on the police and other authorities responsible for the maintenance of order, the imposition of a curfew temporarily might be of considerable value. [HON. MEMBERS: "What disturbances?"] Disturbances of a sectarian character—disturbances which unhappily used to occur in Ireland. I have known the imposition of a curfew in Northern Ireland. I can give the House one other illustration of a state of affairs in which a curfew might be of great value. If there were very intensive bombing and serious destruction of property in a certain part of the country where there was valuable property, and grave danger of looting arose, the imposition of a curfew might well be an ordinary measure of precaution. That is the justification that I offer for this regulation. I have no reason to think that an occasion will arise in the near future for it being put into operation. It does not operate automatically, but only if an order is made by the Secretary of State.

§ Mr. Jagger
I am worried about this curfew in the event of serious air raids. Would it be an offence to go out of this place if it was blown down?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I am giving the House a perfectly frank explanation of the circumstances which govern the situation and of the kind of action that could be taken under it.
The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dundee took exception to the use of the word "disaffection" in Regulation 39A. I do not think that objection was very well-founded. The term occurs in many Statutes. It was thought to be more suitable than the expression "seducing from allegiance," which appeared in an earlier regulation, and it is in fact an expression which is used in the Police Act in the same sort of connection.

§ Sir S. Cripps
It would be creating disaffection to tell soldiers that the allowance for their families was not sufficient, but that would not be seducing them from their allegiance. Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree?

§ Sir J. Anderson
It might be so.

§ Mr. Foot
Will the right hon. Gentleman deal with this point, which I put to him, that the word "disaffection" occurred in the original drafting of the Defence of the Realm Act in the last war and was cut out at the request of the party to which he belongs, because they thought the word, without any qualification, was far too wide.

§ Sir J. Anderson
May I now pass to the next regulation?

§ Mr. Gallacher
rose—

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman has not given way.

§ Dr. Edith Summerskill
Is it in order for the Home Secretary to treat this as though we were natives in Bengal?

§ Sir J. Anderson
If it is suggested that the word "disaffection" was cut out of the Defence of the Realm Regulations, that is not so. Regulation 42 refers to any person attempting, or doing any act likely, to cause disaffection among any of His Majesty's Forces or among the civilian population.

§ Mr. Foot
When the right hon. Gentleman reads a regulation he might read it correctly. It reads: If any person attempts or does any act calculated or likely to cause mutiny, sedition or disaffection among any of His Majesty's 1869 Forces or any of the Forces of any of His Majesty's allies, or among the civil population. the word "disaffection" in that connection is limited by the words "mutiny" and "sedition" which go before it. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] The word "disaffection"—[Interruption.]

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
The hon. Member rose to ask a question. His question seems to be a long one. I would remind him that he may speak a second time only by leave of the House.

§ Mr. Foot
The Minister has given way. Is it not a fact also that in an earlier regulation, which is the one to which I was referring, the word "disaffection," without any qualification, was cut out, and the words "disaffection to His Majesty" were inserted?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I have no reference to the previous case cited by the hon. Member, but I must repeat, on the point that has been raised, that the use of the expression "cause disaffection" instead of the expression "seduce from his duty or allegiance to His Majesty," was thought to be more appropriate in a regulation applying, not merely to members of disciplined and Armed Forces, but also to Crown servants in general.

§ Mr. Holdsworth
The right hon. Gentleman, almost in an aside in answer to the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps), confessed that "disaffection" might mean even a speech saying that dependants' allowances were not enough. Surely, that is wider than anything in the regulations in the last war. That is the point we want to make, that this really applies to something that is seditious and mutinous, and not to what we think is a perfectly legitimate criticism.

§ Sir J. Anderson
That is a point of interpretation which I suggest ought not to be put to me.

§ Mr. Silverman
On a point of Order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. In a matter of this importance, may I ask whether there is any method whereby the right hon. Gentleman, when he quotes a regulation, authority, or document, shall quote it completely and accurately?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That is not a point of Order, but a point which should be raised in argument afterwards. Hon. 1870 Members are entitled to make their speeches in their own way, and criticisms of those speeches should be made afterwards.

§ Mr. Attlee
I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has quite realised what is our criticism. It is a criticism of the generality of these regulations. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman quite realises that, because he has gone on to the next point without dealing with it. Our point is that these things are so extensive and general. Will the right hon. Gentleman defend that point?

§ Mr. Gallacher
Will the Minister tell us whether to advocate democracy in the Army would be considered as creating disaffection?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I am perfectly willing to consult my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General with regard to the interpretation that might be placed on the use of the word "disaffection," but I would point out that there is ample precedent for the use of the word "disaffection" both in Defence of the Realm Regulations and in Acts on the Statute Book. I quoted the case of the Police Act, 1919, where it is made an offence to cause disaffection.

§ Mr. Attlee
Is that disaffection generally?

§ Sir J. Anderson
It is in relation to a particular class of public servants.

§ Mr. Attlee
That is the point I made. The right hon. Gentleman quotes precedents, but they always turn out to be limited precedents. Our criticism is of the generality of this regulation.

§ Sir J. Anderson
I have done my best to explain to the House the purpose for which these Regulations were made. I pass now to Regulation 39B. That regulation has been criticised by a number of hon. Members, and in regard to it I am bound to say at once that it does contain a novel provision, a provision for which I can quote no precedent from the Defence of the Realm Regulations. The corresponding Defence of the Realm Regulations were in some respects actually wider than the regulation which the House is considering to-night. I will quote the exact terms of those regulations. They made it an offence to spread false reports or make false statements; 1871 to spread reports or make statements intended or likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty, or to interfere with the success of His Majesty's Forces; to spread reports or make statements intended or likely to prejudice the success of any arrangements made by His Majesty with a view to the prosecution of the war. Those are wide words. The corresponding words in the present regulation are not quite so wide, but the regulation, unlike its predecessor in the last war, is, quite frankly, directed against propaganda.

§ Mr. Foot
Will the right hon. Gentleman read again the last part of what he quoted?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I did not quote it in extenso because it is very long. What I quoted was complete in itself.

§ Mr. Foot
The right hon. Gentleman did not quote (d).

§ Sir J. Anderson
It refers to spreading reports or making statements intended to undermine public confidence, or prejudice any financial measures taken, or arrangements made, with a view to the prosecution of the war. The present regulation has been drawn to deal with propaganda, a new instrument which since the last war has been brought to a high pitch of efficiency. It was considered essential that power should be taken to deal with propaganda which might be gravely detrimental to this country's effort. Whether the words that have been chosen in this regulation are those which are best adapted to carry out that purpose I do not know. The regulation was drafted before I became Home Secretary. Naturally, I take full responsibility for it, and I know the great care that was devoted to the framing of the regulation. I was going to say to the House that, if it should be the view of hon. Members that the regulation is drawn in terms so wide that it would give a greater feeling of reassurance to the House if some limiting words could be found, I am perfectly willing to look into the matter very carefully and see whether our purpose can be secured by words that are less wide in their scope and less general than those which appear in the regulation. I say that because I recognise fully that this is a novel regulation for which there is no precedent.

§ Mr. Bevan
Before the right hon. Gentleman proceeds—

§ Sir J. Anderson
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would allow me to develop my argument in my own way. I had not finished what I have to say on this regulation. As I say, I am prepared to consider the wording but, as regards the purpose of the regulation, I must make it clear to the House that it is the view of the Government that a regulation for this purpose is absolutely essential. Let me point out one respect in which this regulation contains safeguards which were not present in the corresponding regulation of 1914. Under those regulations, a prosecution could be started by any police constable and a person against whom proceedings were taken could be tried by court-martial.

§ Mr. Foot
Not against his will.

§ Sir J. Anderson
Under this regulation no proceedings at all can be taken without the consent of the Attorney-General—a very important safeguard. What I put to the House is this. We have all had some evidence of the power and effect of Nazi propaganda. There are in this country propagandists for the Nazi cause, some of them, no doubt, conscious propagandists, but a larger number perhaps unconscious propagandists. Let me give an illustration of the sort of thing which is going on. A certain organisation has issued a memorandum of advice to its followers who may wish to appear before the tribunal for conscientious objectors, endeavouring to show its members how they can take advantage of provisions under the law which relate to persons who have conscientious objection or pacifist views. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] It shows under what cover action which is, apparently, perfectly innocent, the sort of action which we might not wish to restrict, may be taken for purposes which gravely imperil the interests of this country.

§ Mr. Bevan
Under legal cover?

§ Sir J. Anderson
Let me give another illustration. A certain body which is well known to be anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi has given instructions to its members that each is to turn himself into a rumour-monger and a channel for verbal propaganda. Measures considered necessary for the defence of the population are to be 1873 made fun of, and people who have evacuated their children are to be encouraged to think that evacuation is unnecessary. If only this propaganda could be put about, it is suggested, then people would come back to London and an important measure taken in the interests of the civil population would be defeated. Finally, it is said in these instructions, once this happens, a surprise attack on London might bring the Jews to their knees. That is the sort of thing that is going on and that is the sort of thing against which these regulations are directed.

§ Mr. Bevan
On a point of Order. The right hon. Gentleman has instanced the kind of cases against which it is proposed to use these powers and the reasons why these powers are being sought. Last night we heard a broadcast by the Archbishop of Canterbury in which he inveighed against evacuation. Is that an offence under this regulation?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I would ask hon. Members to listen to the speech of the Home Secretary, and not to interrupt him so much.

§ Mr. Montague
What is this society? We ought to know.

Hon. Members
Give us the name.

§ Sir J. Anderson
I do not intend to do so at this stage but the House may take it from me that activity of that sort is being carried on, against which it may be necessary to take drastic action. Reference has been made to leaflets and it has been suggested that police constables have been given authority to report people who have taken part in the dissemination of leaflets. I wish to say at once that no such action has been taken by or under the authority of my Department.

§ Mr. Lansbury
I had intended raising a number of these cases, but I hope the right hon. Gentleman will allow some of my friends and myself to see him about this particular issue. If I remain quiescent to-night, however, do not let him say afterwards, "Well, you did not say anything about it when the matter was discussed in the House."

§ Sir J. Anderson
I shall be glad to consider any communication which the right hon. Gentleman may wish to make to 1874 me on that subject. With regard to leaflets, obviously leaflets of a kind with which all of us are now familiar might be thought to come within this regulation. I want to say, frankly, that I can. conceive leaflets of a sort in respect of which no action under this regulation should properly be taken. There are leaflets couched in dignified language, seeking to make an appeal to reason. I think it would be outrageous if action were taken in respect of leaflets of that sort. On the other hand, there are leaflets of which I have seen a few examples, which are crudely got up and make an appeal not so much to reason as to passion and prejudice—leaflets in which the facts leading up to the declaration of war are distorted and the aims of the Allies in carrying on the war are misrepresented. Such leaflets if they were distributed in large numbers and in such a way as to prejudice in any real, sense the defence of the realm or the successful prosecution of the war, might, I say at once, properly be made the subject of proceedings under this regulation. These would be summary proceedings no doubt.
In that connection, may I say that what matters is not merely the substance of the document but the circumstances in which it is produced. On the other hand. it may be said or it may be in the minds of hon. Members that action would be taken under this regulation in respect of a serious appeal by persons disagreeing with the present Government and desiring to make their influence felt, without any intention whatever of impeding the prosecution of the war. No action could be taken under this regulation in such a case except with the consent and authority of my right hon and learned Friend the Attorney-General. Any such proceedings would undoubtedly be taken on indictment before a jury and that is a further safeguard; and when the proceedings were over it would be open to any hon. Member of this House to challenge the action that had been taken.

§ Mr. Stephen
On a point of Order. Would it be in order to challenge in this. House a decision by a judge and jury?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
If the decision of any judge were challenged and adverse comments were made, it would not be in order. It is not in order to utter derogatory remarks about our judiciary.

§ Sir J. Anderson
I said nothing about challenging the decision of a judge. What I said was that, after a case had been disposed of, it would be in order for any hon. Member to challenge the responsible Members of the Government for the action that had been taken either in respect of their interpretation of the regulations or with a view to getting the regulations amended. I do suggest that, wide though the terms of this regulation are, it is a regulation that is absolutely necessary under the conditions in which the war is being carried on, and that the safeguards which are provided are ample and sufficient.

§ Mr. Attlee
Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the danger is not merely in the possibility of a prosecution initiated by the Attorney-General, but in the police using this as a weapon in terrorem against all sorts of people who are engaged in perfectly innocent propaganda?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I realise that danger, and I am prepared to do anything that I can to ensure that the police do not take any such action.

§ Mr. Silverman
On a point of Order. The right hon. Gentleman has said that he would do something to control the acts of policemen. As a matter of order, has he any right at all to control the acts of policemen who are not members of the Metropolitan Force?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
The hon. Member is not entitled to put an argumentative point as a point of order.

§ Mr. Silverman
I do not think I was putting an argumentative point. Let me put it in this way, whether a question addressed to the Minister about the action of a policeman outside the Metropolitan area would be accepted?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That is not a point of Order.

§ Sir J. Anderson
What I said was that I was prepared to do what I could to ensure that the police should not take any such action. There is a danger that the scope of regulations may not be understood, and it is common practice for the Home Secretary to send advice with regard to the action that should be taken 1876 under regulations, and from my knowledge of the police they invariably pay full regard to advice so issued from the Home Office. One final word on these regulations. The hon. Member for Dundee commented on what seemed to him to be a paradox, that, engaged as we are in a war for the preservation of liberty, we should appear by regulations such as these to be curtailing liberty. Surely the truth is this, that liberty of speech, liberty of thought and discussion, liberty to influence public opinion with a view to effecting, by constitutional means, changes in the laws and policies of a community, depends on the preservation of the ordered framework of society within which alone such liberty can be enjoyed. For that reason the common laws provide a limit to freedom of speech by the law of sedition, and my submission must be that the reasons which make it necessary at all times to have a law prohibiting seditious propaganda make it necessary, in a war such as we are now waging, to have regulations such as these. It is because the efficient prosecution of the war is in fact a necessary condition of freedom that these regulations are required.

§ Mr. Maxton
I am sorry that the fears which were aroused in my mind on the publication of these regulations have not been allayed in any way by the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, and, irrespective of what anyone else does, I certainly propose to divide against them. The right hon. Gentleman was scarcely fair to my hon. Friends and myself when he said that the House did not divide against the Second Reading. My hon. Friends and I divided against the First Reading, and we explained on the Second Reading that it was only because we recognised that we should be in a small minority that we did not carry our opposition to other stages of the Bill. If our desire to meet the convenience of the House is to be misused by Ministers, we can very easily make ourselves, and any two or three hon. Members of this House can very easily make themselves, a great nuisance to the vast majority, and if it is necessary for the sake of one's Parliamentary reputation to do it, I have no doubt we shall have to do it.
1877 I feel that the right hon. Gentleman would feel that any criticism that I might make of these regulations would perhaps be out of court because I am the type of person whom he visualises as a possible victim of this type of regulation; and you cannot be too sure about it. A lot of funny things happen in a war, and one of the things that nearly always happens is that the people who lead the nation into it are not the people who lead the nation out of it. Even in a neutral country like Italy, which is only very secondarily associated with the war, more sweeping changes have taken place in their governmental control in the last 24 hours than have taken place since the dictatorship came into power. I understand that even in Nazi Germany itself some of the people who were in high command have been vacating their positions in the last few days. So that it may not be the critics of to-day who will be the people to come under the operation of these regulations. I have brought with me witnesses to whom the right hon. Gentleman might pay a little more attention and who cannot be suspected of the same things as he may suspect me of. I have here a quotation from a leading article in the "Glasgow Herald," a journal of which the right hon. Gentleman might have heard, which circulates freely among his constituents. They regard it as their political bible. It circulates more freely among his constituents than among mine, and, what is more to the point, his constituents believe what is says, whereas mine would be critical. The leading article states: The Government already possess very wide discretionary powers in addition to the ordinary law of the land. But they will be making a grave, perhaps even fatal, mistake if they interpret the tolerance with which the British people have accepted the many restrictions and regulations imposed upon them as signifying unconditional approval of further bureaucratic action. Liberty is no less cherished in war than in peace. Freedom, we are informed by the official posters, is in peril, and we must defend it with all our might. Some threats to freedom seem now to be coming from a good way nearer home than Berlin, and the people will look to their representatives in Parliament to put up a most resolute defence. That is from a sound Conservative organ circulating in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency. It is not from some document of the Metropolitan Police, nor yet of the Bengal Government, but it is right in Glasgow. I want to give another 1878 quotation from the "Sunday Mail," which was also in its general political outlook staunchly in support of His Majesty's Government up to now. It has an article headed, "Your danger," which says: Liberty! What else do we fight for? The people are united. We march shoulder to shoulder to defend our liberty against attack from abroad. What about the home front—it looks secure, but is it? The new Defence regulations smack of Gestapo methods which the British public will not tolerate in war or in peace. That is why the House of Commons must be strictly on its guard this week when the Government asks its approval of these further regulations. They involve our personal liberties in a marked degree. In the hands of stupid administrators they may easily be used to the prejudice and even to the persecution of innocent citizens. You who read this might be arrested any moment. Do not let us forget that even in our own seats of authority we have big pots and little pots imbued with the spirit of the Gestapo. if they could get away with it. That is how these regulations appear to ordinary people who are not antagonistic to the prosecution of the war or to His Majesty's Government. That is the view expressed by two responsible journals in the West of Scotland, and I do not think that the editors of those papers will be the least bit soothed by anything the Home Secretary has said to-night. Indeed, his explanation of what it is intended to do and of the type of people it is intended should be attacked by his regulations makes one even more alarmed than the wording of those articles. There is the anonymous persons whom he cited who are doing this, that and the other thing, with the general suggestion at the beginning about an organisation which advises its members how to go to a tribunal to plead their cases as conscientious objectors, a right that has been given by this House. If a young fellow in my organisation, the Independent Labour party, came to me and said, "Will you advise me how to state my case at the tribunal" the right hon. Gentleman suggests that I am doing something illegal.

§ Sir J. Anderson
The hon. Gentleman has unconsciously misrepresented me. The point which I tried to make, and which I obviously failed to make, is that you have organisations whose purposes are wholly mischievous, such as nobody in this country or the House would sympathise with, which are using rights that are properly given to people to claim exemption on grounds of conscience in 1879 order to get cover for activities which are nothing to do with those conscientious objections, but are propaganda of a wholly mischievous character.

§ Mr. Maxton
I accept that explanation as making the case slightly better from one point of view, but making it worse from another point of view, because as I listened to the Minister I was misled into believing that he thought that anybody who went to a conscientious objectors' tribunal was in the same category as a person who was doing Nazi propaganda. He quoted three or four different types, and among them were those who advised people how they should conduct themselves at a tribunal; and although this is not a matter immediately under discussion, since he has raised it I would add that he might have said a word about the people who are sitting on those tribunals and the Nazi propaganda they are doing by the way they deal with the young men in front of them.
I am not going into the various detailed points so ably raised by the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot), but I can see that if I pursue the normal course of my political life as I have pursued it for 30 odd years, decently, cleanly, honestly and, as I believe, in the best interests of the population of this country, the House will miss my presence by about the end of next week. [HON. MEMBERS: "Make it a little longer."] You see, that is the evil of this legislation. An hon. Member opposite seems to think my liberty is at his disposal. [HON. MEMBERS: "We want you here."] The evil of this legislation is that it gives a Government power to put into prison any person who is politically objectionable to them, and certainly it can prohibit any public expression of political views that are antagonistic to the view of the Government at the moment. It can suppress public meetings and prohibit the publication of every single bit of literature. The daily paper which speaks for the party above the Gangway—the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) says that it is safe because it has a fair number of representatives in the House, but is it? For some weeks that paper has been publishing a series of articles in parallel columns, one stating the case pro-war and the other case antiwar, but the man who writes the antiwar article is liable to arrest under these 1880 regulations, and the newspaper which has given space to his view is also liable, and there is nothing but the good will of the right hon. Gentleman to safeguard them, because we have still got to be satisfied that this House has the right to raise questions on the subject to a responsible Minister of the Crown. [Interruption.] Let me proceed, because I do not want to help to detain the House to what is, in these days, a late hour.
One or two minor points have not been dealt with by previous speakers. For example, I find tremendous powers being given to constables. I sat upon the Select Committee that dealt with official secrets and upon the Grand Committee that dealt with the spreading of disaffection. On both those bodies, one thing that impressed me was that we were very careful to see that the power to take effective action against a citizen should not lie in irresponsible hands. On many occasions I have seen this House insist that no officer of lower grade than an inspector of police should be allowed to take decisive action; yet here an ordinary constable is to do so. Imagine this—it is a small point, but it shows the type of mind that is functioning in the Department that produced these Regulations—and listen to Regulation 88B, which is on page 24. The Minister is not listening to a word I am saying, but I will read the Regulation to the House. I am one of the few Members of the House who listened absolutely silently during the whole of the provocative address of the right hon. Gentleman, and I flatter myself that I am not so provocative as he was. I also know that I shall not speak for such a long period. Listen to Regulation 88B: The person driving, or in control of, any road vehicle in motion shall stop the vehicle on being required to do so by any constable"— one constable— in uniform, or by any member of His Majesty's Forces, being in uniform and on duty. That is to say, I am driving along a road quite peacably in a motor car, or some lady is driving a motor car. Some fellow in a soldier's uniform—

§ Commander Sir Archibald Southby
It may be a woman.

§ Mr. Maxton
—a Militia uniform or the uniform of the Defence Corps—

§ Sir A. Southby
If he is on duty.

§ Mr. Maxton
How does the motorist know? The hon. and gallant Gentleman probably knows the difference between a soldier on duty and a soldier off duty.

An Hon. Member
It may be a woman.

§ Mr. Maxton
If a woman stops me when I am in a motor car it is not so bad, but if a man stops a woman in a motor car it may be just too bad.

§ Dr. Summerskill
He would not stop her.

§ Mr. Maxton
There is nothing that I know of to indicate to the ordinary civilian citizen when. a soldier is on duty and when he is not on duty. I remember something about it from the time when I was acquainted with these matters, but it is very vague, yet the little knowledge I have is, I am sure, greater than the knowledge among ordinary citizens. Under these regulations, any constable, any special constable, whose knowledge of the law may be small—I do not know what steps are taken to test it—or any private soldier, can step out and stop citizens on the public highway, pursue them if they refuse to stop, and arrest them. I do not know the law precisely, but I have been stopped by policemen; never by one policeman, and the policemen were always able to give authority for it. In this case, one soldier in uniform can stop any vehicle and can pursue and arrest the person driving it. The next regulation says that he can: arrest without warrant any person whom he has reasonable ground for suspecting to have committed an offence. He, some boy of 18, may have reason to suspect that I have been committing an offence. I may have come from a meeting or from addressing a meeting at which I made a speech that he did not like. He has got authority to arrest me. Yet we talk about fighting for liberty.
I am not saying that treason should not be punished, that sedition should not be punished; I do not say if I utter things that are objectionable and wrong that I should be immune from arrest, but I do say that the normal law of the land has within its boundaries now all the necessary powers and machinery to deal with me or anybody else who has committed a really serious offence. All this does is to give power to irresponsible people to make 1882 the lives of respectable, innocent citizens impossible. I hope the whole of the House will reject this for the sake of the good name of this House and for the sake of the so-called liberties of this country.

§ Mr. Holdsworth
I wish to make an appeal to the Home Secretary that he should take a little further what he promised to do with regard to one regulation. He promised that he would reconsider one regulation, and I would like him to go a little further and promise the House that he will give reconsideration to what has been said with regard to Regulation 18A, 18B, and one or two others. I do not believe there is a person in this House who desires to discourage anything that would help in any way to win this war. I would not say one word which would stop us from prosecuting the war to its end, a purpose with regard to which I think we are all unanimous, but we are concerned that in the prosecution of the war, which we claim to be on behalf of liberty, we should not sacrifice our liberties.
In these regulations I find there is a restriction on freedom of movement, freedom of enterprise, on the possession of one's own body, on communications between one person and another and on freedom of speech. If I could be convinced that all those things were necessary for the proper prosecution of the war I would agree with every one of them, but I cannot say that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman has convinced me that all those particular points are necessary with regard to these regulations. With regard to 18B the right hon. Gentleman did not deal with a point which was raised, namely, whether, when the advisory committee are listening to a case, the right hon. Gentleman would take notice of the decision to which they had come. The right hon. Gentleman never made a reply to that particular point, and it seems to me to be purposeless to set up an advisory committee in order to convince this House and the country generally that there shall be an impartial body when, having got the impartial verdict, the Home Secretary should have the power to say, "I shall not take the slightest notice of the decision to which the advisory committee have come." Before the Debate has closed to-night we ought to have some promise that the decision of the advisory com- 1883 mittee will be taken. There will be no point if no notice is to be taken of their decision.
Another point which arises is the extreme power which seems to reside in the Secretary of State as to where a man should be detained and the conditions he should have during detention. It seems to me almost a Gestapo power. [Interruption.] Oh, yes, if he likes to exercise it. I would trust the right hon. Gentleman to do the right thing, but we are not discussing what the right hon. Gentleman should do. These regulations would become the law of the land. The Secretary of State would have to delegate his powers to other people, and we should be dependent, not on the humanitarian feelings of the right hon. Gentleman but on the principles, or prejudices, of the people to whom his powers are delegated. We make a great mistake when we assume that because there is a decent Minister a regulation will be decently carried out. The powers of the Secretary of State under that regulation should be circumscribed, and brought within our own ideas' of civilisation.
The hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) have made speeches in this House since the war began with which most Members of the House have disagreed; but hon. Members have listened to them very courteously, acknowledging the sincerity of the two Members. They are protected in this House by privilege, but, so far as I can see, under Regulation 39B if they went outside and made those speeches they could be not only stopped but charged with an offence. During the last war I listened to the speeches of a gentleman who subsequently became Prime Minister, and I listened to the speeches of members of the Union of Democratic Control—some of those members now sit on the benches opposite, and have very different views. Freedom was given for those speeches to be made. Is that same sort of freedom to? be given this time? [An HON. MEMBER: "Yes."] I want the right hon. Gentleman to answer it. That is an assumption; I want him to make a definite statement. When a man has a point of view to put is he still to have liberty to make a speech, provided that he does not talk sedition and alienate 1884 people from their loyalty to the Crown, even though the Government of the day disagree with him—is he to be still in the same position as he was in the last war?
The hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. K. Griffith) made a point which I think wants clearing up. He asked whether a constituent who asked him to try to persuade the Government of the day to bring this war to an end would be breaking Regulation 39B. Such a person would be trying to influence public opinion. He would be trying to influence his representatives here to put his views to the House of Commons, in order that certain action might be taken which would be contrary to what the Government of the day thought should be taken. It is all very well to say that these powers will not be used in that way. It seems to me that, within the regulations, there resides the power to do that very kind of thing.
The right hon. Gentleman made a very striking slip—I do not say that in an insulting way. He said that it might be undesirable for people to propagate views having for their purpose an increase in dependants' allowances. I am not trying to misrepresent, and I do not think that I am doing so. It is within the memory of the House, and I want to ask this question. Suppose a newspaper tomorrow morning publishes a leader—take even the "Times" leader of this morning which criticised these regulations-saying that dependants' allowances are not sufficient, can it be said that that would be undermining the morale of the troops, because nothing would undermine the morale of the troops more than the knowledge that soldiers' wives and families at home were not getting sufficient? I am not a lawyer, but I think I could put up a very good case indeed that a man would be breaking the regulations in making that particular point.

§ Mr. George Griffiths
I shall be making it next Sunday morning.

§ Mr. Holdsworth
Suppose I made a speech of that kind outside this House, could it be said that I was interfering with the prosecution of the war? I would like the Government to give an answer to that point. Newspapers under these regulations can have their publication stopped. There is ho halfway house or saying that they shall not repeat that particular 1885 offence; publication can be taken away from them within the terms of that regulation. If a newspaper, putting its opinion before its readers, says that we are not treating soldiers' wives and dependants, and old age pensioners as we ought to do, can that be treated as an offence under these regulations, and can publication of a newspaper be stopped because of that particular propaganda? The right hon. Gentleman should reconsider this particular regulation. If the powers within the regulation are used arbitrarily they can stop every form of justifiable criticism. I do not want to hamper the Government in what they want to do for the proper prosecution of the war, but I wish the Parliamentary Secretary would get up in this House and say that due notice would be taken of the honest criticisms—I am certain they are honest criticisms—from all parts of the House, and that reconsideration will be given to the particular regulations which have been criticised.
I do not want to see the growth of bureaucracy extended. I am absolutely unconvinced that we need all these controls and restrictions. While I do not want to criticise the Civil Service, I am certain that the right hon. Gentleman would bear the responsibility for these regulations. Without wanting to hurt his feelings, it was evident to me that, when he was making his speech, he did not know many of the regulations from A to Z, and I would like him to reconsider them and come back to the House and say that he is only asking for the things that are essential for his legitimate needs for the prosecution of the war, and that there will be no unnecessary restriction upon that freedom which we all praise so deeply.

§ Mr. Kirkwood
I have sat and listened to this Debate throughout, and I believe that every Member of this House, irrespective of party, was depressed from eight o'clock to 20 minutes past nine, when we had the Home Secretary before us. The Home Secretary, who is highly respected in this House and a man of outstanding ability, stood at that Box, before a House which is anxious to support the Government, more anxious than any House that I have ever known. Never was the party to which I belong so unanimous in supporting the Government of the day. The Opposition have 1886 surrendered the right to contest any seat that may be vacant in the country. Yet that same House to-night was in open rebellion, not against the Home Secretary, but against what the Home Secretary is bringing before the House. He is trying to introduce a Measure against which the whole country is practically in revolt. There is not an outstanding personality in the country, who is any leader of opinion, but is averse to the proposals that the Home Secretary is putting before us to-day. No matter where you go in Britain, not simply England, that is the feeling. In Britain we stand by the idea of being free men. It has been inculcated into us from our boyhood, that for peace or war free men are better than slaves. Yet the Home Secretary is going to reduce us now to the condition which is being held up to scorn as the condition in Germany to-day.
I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should take the regulations back in their entirety. When we were discussing regulation 18 (b) he said that there was no thought of taking drastic action such as was described in that regulation. When he said that, I was nearly swearing. If that is the case, why put the regulation in? On whom had the Home Secretary his mind's eye when he framed the regulation? It has been stated in the House and by individuals who have written on the regulations, that in the last war under the Defence of the Realm Act no individual could be arrested and thrown into prison without trial. That is not true. I was arrested and thrown into prison. I was deported without a trial, and I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, after being 16 months deported, that I was innocent. I was brought home by the hon. Member for the Drake Division (Lieut.-Colonel H. Guest), who was then the Commander of the Forces in Scotland. I was brought home in the middle of the night, in a special train, and liberated, a free man. That was done under the Defence of the Realm Act.
We shall be in the same position again, because there is no power, either in the Home Secretary or in his party, which will prevent me from saying what I believe to be true. I believe that the truth will ultimately prevail. If that is the case, we should be prepared to pay the price for liberty, and that price is eternal vigilance. I hope the Government will 1887 take note that this is not going to be a servile party. Here you have the Liberal party, who initiated this Debate, with great credit to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) for standing up for the liberty of the people. The country will not stand for these regulations. The Deputy-Leader of our party stated that the Government could not continue for one day unless they had the support of the Labour party. It is not merely the Labour Members, it is the outside workers, on whom you depend to produce munitions of war, who are up against these regulations, and they will not tolerate them. They are not going to be treated as if they were criminals. They demand to be treated with respect, and we were sent here to see that they are so treated. They are not going to be treated as poor relations. It is treating them worse than poor relations. What has my party got for surrendering all its activities, not only in the House but in the country, giving up all at the behest of the Government? Yet this is the way the Government treats us. Here is the whole of the party in open revolt, the party on which the Government depend. That is what my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) said when he was leading us, and it is true. I ask the Government seriously to consider what they are doing. They have raised a hornets nest about their ears. I am not speaking for my party but for myself, and I shall vote against the Government.

Lieut.-Colonel H. Guest
The hon. Member for Dumbarton Burghs (Mr. Kirkwood) mentioned me in connection with this matter, and perhaps I may be allowed briefly to address the House on this most difficult and delicate subject. During the last war, I had a great deal to do with the administration of the Defence of the Realm, and I know the feelings that are raised with regard to this matter. There are two sides to it, and one of them is the protection of the country. In every one of these regulations, the question of the safety of the Realm is brought in. To take one regulation, that which refers to detention, which the Home Secretary mentioned in his speech, I assure hon. Members that if the Order were annulled, it would mean that those persons who are 1888 now in detention would not be there legally. Those persons who are in detention now are probably persons who would do more harm to this country and to its people than almost anybody else. During the last war, I had experience in this matter in Scotland, as the hon. Member for Dumbarton said, and I had to do with the detention of certain persons. Those persons were spies in this country on behalf of Germany, and I was very glad that they were detained, for they were a real menace and danger to the country.

§ Mr. McGovern
Were they aliens?

Lieut.-Colonel Guest
Detention may cover people who may even be connected with British nationality; if anything, such people are the more dangerous people. I assure hon. Members that the things we had to contend with during the last war with regard to the Defence of the Realm were not matters which one would think are covered by these open regulations, but something hidden away in the regulations that gives the State power to deal with such persons. There are people who are covered by these regulations who could not be covered in any other way. For instance, there are people who have certain articles or specified equipment. During the last war, we had experience in connection with signalling apparatus on the coast of Scotland. All those matters are of vital importance from the point of view of the protection of the country. I beg hon. Members not to think of annulling these regulations, which are for the safety of the country and for the protection of the Realm. There is no question of using the regulations against individuals. [Interruption.] I had to adminster such regulations during the last war, and I can assure hon. Members that they Were administered with generosity and kindness by those who had that responsibility. The defence, protection, and safety of this country are so important that, when one is fighting against a ruthless enemy, as we have in Germany, it is essential that these powers should be enforced.

§ Sir S. Cripps
I have no doubt that the matter which the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Drake Division of Plymouth (Lieut.-Colonel Guest) has 1889 mentioned is a matter that all of us must take into account, the vital interests of the country in a very difficult situation. I think it is necessary that we should clarify our minds calmly as to what exactly it is that we are attempting to examine to-night. Every hon. Member who has spoken so far has admitted that it is essential to have adequate protection against treason and sedition, and to prevent persons giving assistance to the enemy in such times as the present; and exceptional circumstances, I admit, may need exceptional regulations, something which may possibly go beyond the ordinary law as it exists in times of peace. What we must bear in mind is that it is far easier to throw away liberty casually than it is to get it back again afterwards, once it has been destroyed.
The question we have to consider tonight is: What is the minimum of special regulation which will accomplish the legitimate purpose of protecting the country against its enemies? Anything that goes beyond that is an unnecessary attack upon the liberty of the subject and ought not to be tolerated by those who should specially be the guardians of the liberties of the people. There is a very different problem which has been dealt with by the right hon. Gentleman—not what is the minimum necessary, but what is convenient for the administrator and the bureaucrat who promises not to misuse the powers, even though they are, admittedly, too wide. I venture to think that the right hon. Gentleman's statement proved conclusively that the attack so ably launched by the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) upon these regulations was entirely justified. You cannot get out of it by citing instances in which the regulations might be used to good purpose and without doing harm. I readily admit that anyone can think of instances in which the regulations could be used quite properly and without doing harm to any person who ought not to suffer. What one can equally show is that they are, in their wording, wide enough to cover a multitude of instances, in which they could be misused to the great detriment of the freedom of the people of this country. The vital question is whether they do not take away the liberty of any class or party of people in this country, to oppose the Government up to the hilt, if they want to do so. It is very dangerous when governments start to 1890 identify themselves completely with the national interest. There is grave danger that they may take the view that everything the Government does is in the national interest and, therefore, anyone who opposes the Government is opposing the national interest. If we arrive at this stage, as well we may under these regulations, then we shall have completely wiped out all political liberty in this country.
I want to examine for a moment or two, some of these regulations from that aspect to see whether they go further than is absolutely necessary, in order to protect the country from enemies or from people who are taking the side of or taking part with enemies in the times through which we are passing. There is one regulation which has not been mentioned yet and which I regard as being, from the point of view of the working-class population of this country, more dangerous and more damaging than any other. That is regulation 2B, the side-note to which is the word "Sabotage." Of course, people want to stop sabotage, which means action taken in order to assist the enemy by putting the industries of this country out of action. Let us examine what the regulation says. I leave out unnecessary words: no person shall do any act with intent to …impede the … movement of any … vehicle … used … in the performance of essential services. That covers substantially everything during a war, and that regulation applies to any omission on the part of a person to do anything which he is under a duty, either to the public or to any person, to do. That means that if there is a row going on, in some business, say, the transport side of some big business which is an essential business, and the foreman goes to a man and says, "You've got to drive that motor," and the man replies, "I'm blowed if I'm going to," because they have had some row, he is thereupon liable to 14 years penal servitude. That is literally true. He has omitted to do an action which he was under a duty to his employer to do, and it has impeded the movement of a vehicle which was used in the performance of an essential service, as, for instance, the distribution of food. Clearly, drawn as that is drawn, it is much too wide. There may be cases in which it would cover an act done, not 1891 to impede the moving of a vehicle, but to destroy the output of a factory, and it may be necessary to cover that; but it cannot be necessary to have a provision in words so wide that it would stop any protest whatsoever of an active kind by any worker, whatever the conditions imposed upon him may be. It takes away every liberty of active protest and makes it a criminal offence to make that active protest. There could be nothing more damaging to the liberty of the common people of this country than an enactment of that kind. There is a typical instance where, by the judgment of the minimum that is necessary in order to give the essential protection, these regulations are drawn far too widely and need to be entirely recast.
If one goes on to 18B, which has been dealt with already, I would like to ask, when it says in any manner prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of the realm, do the Government consider that it is thus prejudicial to try and do everything that is possible to displace the Government that is carrying on the war? Is that something which they would consider—because, after all, it is for them to consider—would be likely to prejudice the defence of the realm or, to use a phrase that is used in another regulation, "sufficient prosecution of the war"? I can well imagine that the Government, who think themselves efficient, though they have no basis for doing so, may also think that an attempt to displace them in the middle of a war is something which would interfere with "the efficient prosecution of the war," and if there is a chance of that view being taken, there is within these regulations an opportunity for the Government to destroy any political opposition that arises in the country. That, of course, destroys the whole political liberty of the people.
There is another phrase which, under 39A, covers disaffection. It is said that that is justified by the use of a similar phrase in the regulations of 1914. I do not accept the argument that because something was in the regulations in 1914, therefore it is right to put it in a regulation made 25 years later by another generation. There is every argument for reconsidering the matter. When one comes to examine the quotation which 1892 the right hon. Gentleman has made, in my view—I may be right or wrong—the context in which the word "disaffection" there is used gives it a perfectly clear meaning. "Mutiny, sedition or disaffection" give the key to the meaning of "disaffection." When the right hon. Gentleman says that it might be stirring up or causing disaffection if people were to suggest to soldiers—and this covers civil servants—that their pay and allowances were not adequate, it can be stopped. It is being suggested now to the civil servants that their billeting money is not adequate, and it is stirring up a lot of disaffection. These things can be stopped and prevented, on the right hon. Gentleman's own admission, if this regulation goes through unaltered. What hon. Member can for a moment say that, judging it from the minimum that is necessary, this regulation is needed? It cannot be necessary to have a regulation to stop civil servants organising and protesting against grossly unfair conditions, or to stop soldiers' and sailors' wives protesting against unfair conditions. If they had not been able to protest during the last few months questions could never have been raised in the House and they could not have been remedied. These protests and their acceptance by the House are vital to the efficient carrying on of the war, and to suppress them would be a disastrous thing.
The right hon. Gentleman admits that 39B is an entirely new thing. For the purpose of suppressing propaganda it is difficult to distinguish between different forms of propaganda, for what one person regards as good propaganda another regards as bad. The right hon. Gentleman and I would not agree what was desirable and undesirable propaganda. I should consider it highly desirable if as many people as possible would go about the country urging the rejection of this Government by the people of the country. I do not suppose that the right hon. Gentleman would, and in these circumstances unfortunately he is to be the judge, and I am not.

§ Sir J. Anderson
Not me.

§ Sir S. Cripps
Who is to be, then? Will the right hon. Gentleman tell me who is responsible for judging this matter under 39B?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I do not see any reference to the Home Secretary.

§ Mr. Ede
The first words of Subsection (2).

§ Sir J. Anderson
Surely the hon. and learned Gentleman is talking about another regulation. There is no reference to the Secretary of State in 39B. It seems to me that the only person who can be a judge in that matter is the Attorney-General.

§ Sir S. Cripps
I am sure that must be wrong. The Attorney-General does not judge a political matter. He is not supposed to. There was a great deal of trouble over a certain Mr. Campbell because the question was the very point whether the Attorney-General should take into account political matters in deciding upon a prosecution. What is a manner likely to be prejudicial to the defence of the realm? Somebody has to judge politically. In the case of Mr. Campbell someone had to judge politically. That was not a case under the Defence of the Realm regulations but under other legislation. Someone has to make the political judgment in this matter. Who is to make it except the right hon. Gentleman?

§ Sir J. Anderson
I have a clear recollection of that particular case. I think it was clearly established that while the view of the Government in regard to what was expedient and what was not expedient was an ingredient in the discussion, the Attorney-General, in deciding whether or not to institute proceedings, could, as the hon. and learned Gentleman said, take into account the view of the Government; but he had to form his own judgment.

§ Sir S. Cripps
Of course he has to form his own judgment on the legal question. The Attorney-General has to decide every day of the week whether a criminal of one sort or another is to be prosecuted. But this question as to what is likely to be prejudicial to the defence of the realm is not one for the Attorney-General to decide, it is a political question. That is the question which the right hon. Gentleman will have to decide as a political matter. Having decided as a political matter that, say, Fascist propaganda or Communist propaganda is, broadly speaking, prejudicial to the safety of the realm, then it would be for the Attorney-General to decide whether the action of A, who has 1894 done or said something, falls within that particular definition; but the political decision will have been taken by a political and not by a legal officer.
Regulation 39E, again, includes the words "to promote disaffection," and gives power to the Secretary of State to give directions prohibiting the holding of a meeting if he is satisfied that it is likely to promote disaffection. Here, clearly, the right hon. Gentleman is to be the judge of what disaffection means. When you come to a meeting to promote disaffection—not disaffection in the armed forces, but disaffection among the employes of a particular industry—what does that mean? Surely the most common meaning of it, the meaning which is certainly being applied now in Colonies where there is similar legislation, is bringing the Government into hatred or contempt. I hope that a great many meetings will be held for that purpose in future. No Government can survive in a healthy state without them. Therefore, it seems to me that this Section goes infinitely further than is necessary to protect the people in this country against enemy aliens and others who are hoping to help the enemy. Disaffection, left absolutely at large in that way, opens the door to every sort of misuse from bureaucrats who are looking for something which they can use against the ordinary person.
In paragraph 3 we find that that enormously wide power can be handed over to any justice of the peace in the country. Take some colliery villages, where the justice of the peace is the manager or one of the owners or directors of the colliery. You give him the power to prohibit every meeting because it may cause disaffection. What chance will there be of holding pit-head meetings or any other kind of meetings if there is trouble in the colliery? There is absolute power to prohibit it entirely and completely and to take away all right of meeting, in a completely unnecessary way.
I should like to refer to one other regulation, 88C. Again, this is one that has not been referred to. It says: Any constable, any member of His Majesty's Forces, acting in the course of his duty as such … It has already been pointed out that it is difficult for ordinary persons to know when a member of His Majesty's Forces is acting in the course of his duty as such. 1895 If he is marching along the road I suppose he is acting in the course of his duty as such. This regulation goes on to say: and any person authorised by the Secretary of State to act under this regulation may arrest without warrant any persan whom he has reasonable ground for suspecting to have committed an offence to which this Part of these regulations applies. One has to look and see what that means. If one looks at Number 100 of the old regulations, one finds a special definition of the phrase: offence to which this Part of these regulations applies. It is a very wide range of offences. To give a soldier on duty power to arrest without warrant any person whom he has reasonable ground for suspecting may have assisted someone to commit one of those offences seems to me to be something completely unnecessary, far wider than is necessary. It is a very dangerous power to put into the hands of constables generally or into the hands of any soldier on duty.
As regards many of the offences, it has always been held in the past that these arrests must not be made without warrant, and very often must only be made by special warrant, and by an officer of the police, not an ordinary constable. Yet here, the whole of that is wiped out and this extraordinarily wide power is given to any police constable or special constable in any part of the country.
I have made these observations in order to show that, by the only test which, in my submission, is relevant, namely, whether this is the minimum necessary to provide for the safety of the country, these regulations are clearly too broad and they ought, therefore, to be withdrawn and, if necessary, a new set be presented, which can be examined to see whether they adequately cover the necessities and do not endanger the liberty and freedom of the people.

§ Sir A. Southby
The hon. and learned Gentleman addresses this House with all the force of one of the most distinguished and able lawyers in this country. Therefore, whatever his political persuasion may be, this House listens to him as to one qualified to speak on legal matters. He cited an instance of what might happen to an individual under Regulation 2B. Far be it from me to cross 1896 swords with him on a legal matter, but I should have thought that the case he had in mind would have come under Regulation 1A, where No person shall— (a) do any act having reasonable cause to believe that it will be likely to prevent or interfere with the performance of their duties by persons in His Majesty's service or the carrying on of their work by persons engaged in the performance of essential services. If the hon. and learned Gentleman looks further down he will see: Provided that a person shall not be guilty of an offence against this Regulation by reason only of his taking part in. or peacefully persuading any other person to take part in, a strike. I speak as a layman, but it seems to me that the hon. and learned Gentleman did not apprehend the reserved powers of regulation 1A which seem to me to embody safeguards for the ordinary citizen in this country and to reserve to him, quite properly, the right to strike, in reasonable circumstances.

§ Sir S. Cripps
I am obliged to the hon. Baronet. That is why I did not quote 1A, which does preserve it, but when you come to 2A it is not preserved. That is the danger.

§ Sir A. Southby
I do not wish to enter into a legal argument—I am not qualified to do so—but it seems to me that the right hon. Gentleman perhaps falls into error in supposing that the individual whose case he quoted would have been proceeded against under 2B when he would not have been proceeded against under 1A. However, the right to strike is properly preserved. When this Debate began I felt sorry for the right hon. Gentleman the Minister because it seemed to me that he had inherited these rgulations and that possibly had he drawn thm up himself they might have been drawn up a little differently. I am more sorry still for the right hon. Gentleman since the Debate has proceeded because he has been subjected to an exceedingly heavy fire from all sides of the House. It is, I think, obvious to all of us, on whichever side of the House we sit, that wide powers are essential at the present time. Unfortunately it is impossible to define the limits of those powers too exactly because nobody knows what circumstances will eventuate which will necessitate the application of those powers. That is the difficulty.
1897 Under ordinary peace-time circumstances it is fairly easy to limit powers but in the conduct of a war when the interests of the community are at stake it is hard to take into consideration all the possible circumstances which may arise. We all know that in this country there exist individuals, forces and organisations which are a danger to the community and the liberties of all of us, whatever our political opinions may be. I think we are also agreed that it is essential that the Government should be given adequate powers. I believe that if the House votes in favour of the Prayer which was so ably moved by the Member for one of the Dundee Divisions the only effect that will have will be to prevent the regulations coming into force, and there are many regulations in this Order with which we are in entire agreement.
We did not enter into this war in order to make a field-day and fiesta for Government Departments. A certain amount of interference with individual liberty is, unfortunately, necessary if a country is to conduct a war satisfactorily and successfully, but there is—and the Government must realise it—a very real and growing feeling in the country that interference is tending to run riot. I think it will be agreed that we are all getting indications from those whom we represent that there is a feeling of uneasiness. Trade, industry and amusement—all three are essential if we are to win the war—have been subjected to grave interference. There has been interference with the liberty of home life, liberty with what we are to do with our possessions, our communications, and our thoughts almost. Indeed, if the hon. Lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) had her way—and so fantastic are the days in which we live that it is not out of the bounds of possibility—that she might one day be sitting where the Minister is sitting—everyone knows that if that dreadful thing occurred every pub in this country would be closed and no man would be allowed to have a drink.
There is a feeling in the country that there is too much interference with the free enjoyment of business and home life. All of this may be necessary, but I cannot help feeling that the criticisms which have been voiced so forcibly in the Debate to-day have really been concerned with the growing feeling of uneasiness in 1898 the country, and with the necessity for calling some halt to the power of Government Departments. Interference is undoubtedly necessary, and it can be shown to be necessary and essential, if we are to prosecute the war to a successful conclusion; but do let the Government realise that there is still a red light in public opinion, to which their attention has been drawn by hon. Members, and which warns them when they are going too far. I appeal to the Home Secretary and the Government to reconsider those regulations to which attention has been called and which have been criticised to-night. I do not think it would be right, wise or in the public interest. particularly in view of the effect that it would have abroad, that a Division should take place and that the Prayer moved by the hon. Member should be carried. I do not believe that anybody desires that; but what many hon. Members want is that there should be reconsideration, to see whether safeguards can be put in to meet legitimate criticism, while not in the least surrendering one jot or tittle of the proper powers which it is essential the Government should have. There is no doubt that there are and there will be circumstances which make the use of these powers essential. Cannot the Government devise means for preserving the power of this House to criticise and of safeguarding the liberties of the subject, while at the same time taking proper powers to enable the war to be prosecuted. The safety of the community can be preserved and at the same time the wishes of the House and the outside public given the fullest consideration.

§ The Lord Privy Seal (Sir Samuel Hoare)
I think the House at the end of this Debate would like a word from the Minister who was responsible for the Emergency Powers Act, under which these regulations have been issued. Hon. Members will recollect the conditions under which the Emergency Powers Act was passed. It was passed without a Division. I make an exception in regard to the three hon. Members below the Gangway, the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton), the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern) and the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen). Apart from them, the House was unanimous. I made it very clear in the Debate that the powers under the Bill would have 1899 to be very comprehensive and that it would depend entirely how those powers were administered whether or not we were sacrificing essential liberties. I could not have made the position clearer.
After eight weeks since the outbreak of the war, it is obvious to hon. Members that there are anxieties about certain of these regulations lest they should be abused and lest they might go too far. That being so, it is the duty of any Government—determined as any Government should be to keep a common and a united front in this House, and not to give any appearance that there are differences between us about essential matters connected with the conduct of the war—to take into account the kind of criticism that has been made in the Debate this evening. Accordingly, I have risen to make this proposition to the House.
I say, first of all, to all hon. Members on all sides of the House, that it is essential that the regulations should remain in existence. We could not contemplate for a moment the withdrawal of these regulations to-night, however objectionable some hon. Members may think them in certain details. The effect of that would be to leave a vacuum, and the result would be, to take a single instance, that the enemy aliens who at the moment are interned under these regulations would have to be released to-morrow morning. I hope that hon. Members will realise that we must keep these regulations in being until and unless new regulations take their place.
That brings me to the second point which I would bring to the attention of hon. Members. It is that I am very anxious that these regulations should have behind them general assent and on that account I am ready to offer to hon. Gentlemen opposite and the hon. Member below the Gangway an opportunity of consultation with the Government.

§ Mr. Holdsworth
And on this side as well.

§ Sir S. Hoare
Yes, and hon. Gentlemen on this side as well. We want general agreement upon these regulations and, as a result of these consultations, to see whether we can obtain general agreement. I am further ready to give an undertaking that whether or not we reach 1900 general agreement—I think we shall—we shall then introduce the whole body of regulations again, amended as I have just suggested to the House. Those regulations will then run for another period of 28 days during which any hon. Member can move a Prayer against them. That will mean that, by this arrangement, we shall not withdraw from the purview of the House the regulations as they are to-day or the proposed amendments. I am inclined to think that a proposal of this kind will meet with the general approval of the House, and that it will give hon. Members on all sides of the House the opportunity of bringing their views to the attention of the Government, and I hope that as a result we shall now obtain general agreement, and feel that we have behind us the whole body of the support of the House.

§ Mr. Attlee
Within what time?

§ Sir S. Hoare
I cannot give particular dates, but I think that in the course of the next two or three weeks we ought to be able to carry through this procedure.

§ Sir Archibald Sinclair
I would like to say on behalf of my hon. Friends and myself that we feel the Government have made a very real offer to meet the criticisms that have been directed against these Regulations from all sides of the House, and we are very much obliged to the Lord Privy Seal for the suggestion he has made. There is one point in the Lord Privy Seal's speech upon which I would like to comment. He referred to the unanimous Second Reading which we gave to the original Bill. I agree with him that that unanimous Second Reading undoubtedly committed us to the acceptance of certain regulations broadly on the grounds we have been discussing this afternoon, but it did not commit us to some very important features of these Regulations, which we have discovered since they came out. In particular, I would remind the Lord Privy Seal that in that Debate he himself, replying to a speech which had been made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. K. Griffith), said, as to the powers in the Bill, that someone suggested they were greater than the powers used in the last war, but that that was not so; and yet, in the course of the 1901 Debate to-day, it has come out clearly that some of the powers contained in these amended Regulations were greater than those which were in the Defence of the Realm Regulations during the last war.
We are grateful to the Lord Privy Seal for the proposal. We attach particular importance to the fact that he has undertaken that the new and revised regulations—revised in consultation with leaders of parties and those who have taken a prominent part in the Debate from all sides of the House—shall cover all the points on which criticism has been directed against these amended regulations. That is to say, the House will not find itself confronted in two or three weeks' time with a body of revised regulations which meet some of the points on which criticism has been expressed, but do not mention other points on which criticism has been expressed; and that, therefore, we shall have an opportunity of raising all these points again.

§ Mr. Bevan
I understood from the right hon. Gentleman that the whole body of the regulations will be made available to us, and brought alive again.

§ Sir A. Sinclair
That is exactly what I was saying. What the Lord Privy Seal has stated meets that point. There will be an opportunity of meeting other points, and it will not be a selected number of points which will be brought before us in the revised regulations. We do not propose to ask the House to divide on this Prayer. We are grateful for the opportunity which the Government have provided in this way for Parliament to prove that it is in fact in war as in peace the bulwark of the liberties of the people.

§ Mr. Attlee
I think the Lord Privy Seal has taken a very wise course in consulting the feelings of the House. As I understand it, in the present proposal we are not losing our locus in regard to these regulations. They will be kept alive; they will come before us again in a short time; between now and the time of their reintroduction the Minister will consult Members of all parties in the House, and we shall get the full mind of the House. We cannot, of course, say that there will be agreement—we must reserve our judgment—but it seems to me that 1902 this proposal meets the very serious difficulty which existed.

§ Mr. Maxton
I should like to associate myself with what has been said. I had every intention of voting against the Regulations to-night—and I still have every intention of voting against the next Regulations, because our opposition to the whole method of procedure is fundamental, and I do not expect that any emendations will make the regulations more acceptable to us. But certainly the Government are meeting the House very fairly, and it would be preposterous for us to dream of dividing at this stage. I hope that in the interval before the new regulations appear the Minister and the War Cabinet will exercise the greatest restraint in the use of the existing regulations.

§ Mr. Foot
I rise to ask leave to withdraw the Motion, but before I do so, I should like to ask one question of the right hon. Gentleman, who has gone a long way to meet us. He has said that very careful consideration would be given to the various matters raised in the Debate. The right hon. Gentleman said there would be consultations between those responsible for the regulations and various schools of thought in the House. May we take it that we shall in those consultations not be confined to the particular regulation which has been mentioned, but that, if those who are consulting members of the Government wish to do so, they can bring to their attention other points which may occur to them in the interval?

§ Sir S. Hoare
I can give the hon. Gentleman, with the assent of my right hon. Friend, that assurance at once.