SUPPLY

HC Deb 01 March 1944 vol 397 cc1476-95

Again considered in Committee.

[MAJOR MILNER in the Chair]

Question again proposed, That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £53,873, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1944, for the expenses in connection with His Majesty's Embassies, Missions and Consular Establishments Abroad, and other expenditure chargeable to the Consular Vote; certain special grants and payments, including grants in aid; and sundry other services.

Mr. Lipson

I should like to make it clear that, in the remarks that I am making, I am not concerned with personalities but with a very great tragic human problem. I have to ask myself whether the machinery and the means we have taken to deal with this problem bear a proper relation to it, and are adequate. This matter of the rescue of refugees is on my conscience, as I believe it is on the conscience of a great many people, and we in this Committee have a very definite responsibility in the matter.

Therefore I would say this. It may be necessary to conceal a great deal of the work of the Committee, but many of us feel that we are not in a position to estimate the value and the importance and the seriousness of the work that this Committee is carrying out, and we would like a complete assurance as to whether the machinery is adequate for its purpose or not and, if it is adequate, that the machinery is being used to the full so that the object in mind may be achieved. We would also like an assurance that the Committee will not hesitate to use, if need be, unorthodox methods to try and save human lives. We would also like it to be considered whether it is advisable to supplement the action taken by the Inter-Governmental Committee by similar action to that which President Roosevelt has found it necessary to take in America—he was apparently so impressed with the urgency of the problem that he thought inter-governmental machinery by itself was not sufficient. I would like further consideration to be given to that matter.

We in this country are engaged in a life and death struggle. That was true when we began the war, it still is true, and we can only hope to succeed in that struggle by God's help. If we go to God and ask Him to help us in our trouble, I think we ought to put ourselves in a position to say to Him that we have helped those we were in a position to help. That is the test which I would apply to the work of this Inter-Governmental Committee. Here are these hapless refugees, for whom we have a special responsibility. Can we honestly say, with a clear conscience, that impressed by the urgency of the problem, by the importance of the time factor, we have done everything that is humanly possible to save human lives? Unless we can give a satisfactory answer to that, I submit we have not done what we ought to have done. To do anything less than the maximum possible in a problem of this kind, is simply not good enough.

Mr. Silverman (Nelson and Colne)

I would like at once to dissociate myself, and any organisation interested in this matter with which I may be concerned, from any kind of criticism, implied or express, direct or indirect, of the Inter-Governmental Committee. So far as I am aware its work is done with efficiency and urgency and in a spirit of co-operation to which no one who speaks with any sense of responsibility, could fail to pay earnest and sincere tribute. Nobody would pretend, however, that the work they are doing is going to rescue all those threatened by the evil thing that stalks throughout Europe to-day. I will have a word or two to say about that a little later on, but I thought it was right to say so much at once, so that there should be no doubt about it.

We are concerned to-day with a Supplementary Estimate and we cannot bring in and debate large issues of general policy. One can only deal with the new circumstances that have necessitated a Supplementary Estimate at all, new circumstances that have arisen since 19th May, I think it was, when last the House or the Committee had any opportunity of discussing these matters. There have been, since 19th May, great changes in Europe in the circumstances that these measures are designed to meet. John Pehle, a member of the executive of the body in America charged with these matters, said the other day, quite rightly, that unless this job were done within the next few months there would be no job left to do. It is in that spirit that the problem has to be approached. I would like to direct the attention of the Committee to some of the things that have in fact been happening since May of last year, because, not merely do things happen, but we get knowledge of them. I have a copy of a document which has reached London. It only concerns Poland and I think it only concerns the Jews. May I, in passing, say that I speak in this matter as a Jew, and as a Jew I would say at once that this is by no means entirely a Jewish problem—not by any means—and no Jew, knowing the facts, would think that it was, or would lose any opportunity of pointing out that it was not.

It remains true, however, what the hon. Lady said, that it is very largely a Jewish question, and that among the refugees the Jews are the only ones against whom the Nazis have declared a policy of complete extermination, regarding them—as they expressly say—as belligerent enemies. I do not quite know what they mean by that because, if the Jews were really belligerent enemies; I suppose the Geneva Convention would apply to them, and certainly no attempt is made to make it apply. But the Nazis regard themselves as making war upon them in the sense of rooting them out utterly, in an endeavour to solve what is sometimes called the Jewish question by the extermination in Europe of any Jews at all. That policy is to be resisted from outside, but it is also resisted from within, and I want to draw the attention of the Committee to some things that are happening. This report comes from the Jewish National Committee, operating somewhere in Poland, and it reached London in February of this year. In this report it is stated: Last month we still reckoned the number of Jews in the whole territory of Poland as 250,000 to 300,000. In a few weeks not more than 50,000 of us will remain. In the last moment before death the remnants of Polish Jewry appeal for help to the whole world. The blood shed by 3,000,000 Jews in Poland will pursue not only the Hitlerite beasts but all those who uttered words but did not act to save a people condemned to extermination by the Hitlerite murderers. May this, perhaps our last voice from the abyss, reach the ears of the whole world. There follow descriptions of mass murders. In the early days of November, 1943, all the Jews in the two large concentration camps in Poland numbering 25,000 people, were completely annihilated. On Wednesday, November 3rd, the 10,000 Jews in the camp of Trawniki were marched out, surrounded and machine-gunned. The women and children were loaded into 50 lorries, transported to the execution place and murdered by machine-gunning. On Friday, November 5th, several thousand Jews were massacred in a similar way in the district of Lublin. I am not going to weary the Committee with a further recital of horrors, but there are others of the same kind. They resist. On the fourth day, the Jewish youth of Bialystok attacked their persecutors with hand-grenades, fire bombs and a couple of machine-guns, killing and wounding several hundred Germans and Ukrainians. The Germans brought up, as in Warsaw, field-artillery and tanks with 1,000 armed policemen and S.S. and many detachments of Ukrainians. They set fire to the Ghetto from all sides. The violent fighting continued for eight days. Afterwards, the Jews set fire to, and destroyed the notorious death-camp of Treblinka … in the region of Chelrn-Lublin. The Jews organised themselves into fighting groups and attacked the Germans and Ukrainians, disarming and killing the majority of them. They burnt the gas-chambers and the crematoria, and the survivors fled to the forests in the neighbourhood. It is against that kind of background that we are considering to-day this Supplementary Estimate. It will grow as military defeat after military defeat is forced upon the Germans. As they retreat, the last retiring German soldier will kill the last available Jew. What proposals have we to make about that? I would like to make one or two practical suggestions. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is going to reply. I cannot ask him to give positive and constructive replies to all the things that I propose to suggest now, but I do hope they will be urgently and sympathetically considered, and that if anything can be done about it, it will be done without undue delay.

When the news first became known of this active initiation of the policy of complete extermination, there was enacted in this Chamber an historic scene, when a declaration was made of the intentions of all the United Nations. That declaration was simultaneously made elsewhere. I would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that the time has come when a new declaration might be made. It is doubtful whether it has very much effect, but it has some. We do know that there are people in Europe who listen. We do know that there are people in Europe who react. We have information about heroic acts done in enemy-occupied countries which have the effect of actual rescue, and many of us think that a new declaration made now, a new joint warning by the heads of the Allied Nations, might be heard. But not only a warning: a declaration, that the satellite States could hear, about the special measures they could take to stop the deportation, persecution and killing of the Jews. A call made in the name of the leaders of the United Nations to the peoples of Europe to do what they could to prevent massacres, and the deportations preliminary to massacres. It is not a thing which requires any expenditure of money, energy or machinery; it is a declaration which, if it succeeded in saving any lives, would be justified. I think it is realised that the declaration that was made before was not altogether without effect. A new one made now might be very opportune indeed. Certainly the neglect of it would be difficult to justify if there was only the remotest prospect that the making of it would succeed in saving any lives at all.

I would like to say something about the particular machinery that this Supplementary Estimate is designed to pay for. I have already said something about the spirit in which the work of this Committee is done, but they are charged with looking after refugees, that is to say, looking after people who have already escaped. It is only when a man, woman or child has succeeded in escaping from somewhere or other that he or she comes under such jurisdiction and powers as the Inter-Governmental Committee possess. Obviously, that cannot be enough, because there ought to be some way of creating refugees, of getting people out so that they could acquire the status of refugees and this machinery become responsible for them. I am inclined to think that it was along those lines that the United States were thinking when they set up the United States War Refugees Board We have been asked not to talk too much about certain matters and nobody would dream of doing so but people can be got out, they are being got out, and some attempt ought to be made at active rescue.

If the United States thought it worth while to set up special Government machinery alongside the Inter-Governmental Committee might it not be worth while to consider whether we, too, ought not to set up parallel machinery in this country? I do not refer to this by way of praise, censure or criticism of the United States at all; I point to it as an example of the way in which one of our principal Allies is attempting to meet their obligations when faced with exactly the same problem. It was not a light thing for the United States to do. They have not set up their Board merely for the sake of adding machinery to machinery. Presumably, there is a practical function which that Board will carry out. If that is so is it not reasonable to inquire whether similar machinery might not be set up here to carry out the same kind of functions, which, I think, are distinguished from the functions of the Inter-Governmental Committee, in the way I have indicated?

May I say, in passing, that I am afraid there is a growing feeling that the initiative in these matters, the active urgency of endeavour, is passing from London to Washington? I think that if there were any justification for such a view it would be a very great pity, because we here have a proud and long record of rescue of the victims of political and religious persecution, extending over many centuries. It is one of our proudest traditions; it is one of the things we stand for in the world. Nobody pretends that we have ceased to stand for it, but there is a tendency to push over the initiative in these matters to the United States of America. I think we ought to be careful of that; we ought to resume the initiative ourselves. It is not merely in accordance with our traditions to do so, but also because we are 3,000 miles nearer the scene. I am not at all sure whether some of the machinery we have here is not a little cumbrous, whether the delay in considering matters, reaching plans and carrying them out is not longer than sometimes it might be. I know that the Minister feels as keenly about these matters as I do, but I would invite him most earnestly to look again at this aspect of the question and make quite certain that our country does not take the second place, instead of the first place, which both practical politics and our traditions would compel us to occupy.

I would like to see created in this country machinery parallel to the United States War Refugees Board. I would like to see lit done in a large way, in such a way as would make it clear to the world that we do recognise the heavy obligations which rest on our shoulders in these matters and that we do not intend to lag behind anybody in the discharge of those obligations. I would like to urge continued and even closer co-operation with those bodies in the world which are charged with the responsibility of practical rescue wherever it is possible. Bodies like the World Jewish Congress and the National Rescue Committee in Palestine are both actively engaged in such rescue work as can be done. I would like to see a method evolved of associating bodies of that kind with the Inter-Governmental Committee, with the State machinery, wherever it may be set up, concerning itself with active rescue and organisation of rescue. A large number of people who are getting out are Stateless. They themselves might be organised and be in some way or other represented on these bodies, because nobody knows more about the means of rescue than they do. I need nor say any more about other matters which have been dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for the Combined English Universities (Miss Rathbone).

In conclusion, may I repeat that the urgency of this matter is extreme, that it is literally true that those you save within the next few months will be the only ones who can be saved, since afterwards none will be left? Do not let us have it on our conscience that there were people who might have been saved but who were not saved because we were not willing to take from our other pressing obligations the time, energy or machinery necessary to save them. If the employment of that time, energy or machinery were to delay victory by a single day none of us would ask for it to be taken, but it is not correct to say that the only way of saving these people is by ensuring a quicker victory. As defeat crowds upon defeat for the enemy so massacre crowds upon massacre. The very coming of victory may mean the extermination of the last remnants of the Jewish people in Europe. Well, if that sacrifice were necessary in order again to bring freedom to the world, let it be made. But no one is certain that it is necessary. At any rate, do not let it be on our conscience that there were any lives at all that might have been saved that we neglected to save.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Walter Smiles (Blackburn)

I intervene in this Debate only after hearing the last two speeches. One would imagine that the only refugees in the world at present were Jews. Great publicity is given to every atrocity against the Jews, and it is the feeling of many people in this country that 10 times the publicity is given to the Jews in this matter as to members of other races who are maltreated or murdered. That feeling is springing up, and it would be just as well for my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Lipson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Silverman) not to forget that.

Mr. Lipson

I did not mention the word "Jew" once in my speech.

Mr. Silverman

Perhaps the hon. and gallant Member opposite would do me the courtesy of remembering that I expressly said in my speech very much what he is saying now.

Sir W. Smiles

I apologise if I am wrong, but we shall see in HANSARD later what was said. At any rate, I think the hon. Member for Nelson and Come mentioned some organisation for rescue work in connection with Jewish refugees.

Mr. Silverman

I expressly said that this problem was not by any means an exclusive Jewish problem and that no Jew thought it was so. I also said that, nevertheless, it was largely a Jewish problem.

Miss Rathbone

I think I know all the organisations working on this problem. We are perpetually stressing that it is not only a Jewish problem. Many non-Jewish people have been, and are being, victimised, but the majority of the victims are Jews. Everybody knows that that is so. Hitler's policy of exterminating a whole people is confined to the Jews. They are the principal victims.

Sir W. Smiles

I expected to have a good many interruptions, because no- body can mention a topic like this without exciting a good deal of feeling. But I always imagined that the Jews were members of a religion and not of a race. For that reason it would surely be better for us to talk about the Poles or the Greeks, or any one else, and include the Jews in that. I have been in touch with some of the Polish organisations during the past week and I have heard something of the terrible atrocities committed and the massacres, and I have heard of the gas chambers. I have believed what I have heard to be true, although when you hear it for the first time you would almost imagine that it was far-fetched. However, after hearing of these things from people's lips one believes them to be true, even in 1944. But these people were talking about the Poles who were massacred; they were not talking about those of one religion. If we are to give relief and help—and I am quite sure that every penny the Foreign Secretary asks for would be agreed to without demur in this House—let us at any rate give to the Belgians and the Greeks also. I get letters from my own constituency, from the Society of Friends I think it is, and they tell me that the Belgians and the Greeks have suffered more than any one else. I suppose nobody really knows, perhaps even the Foreign Secretary himself hardly knows, who has suffered the most, but I am quite sure that when a Debate on this subject takes place it will be very much better for the newspapers to give publicity to the fact that we are voting money for the Greeks, the Poles and the Belgians rather than for those of one religion only.

Mr. Graham White (Birkenhead, East)

Whatever the hon. Member for Nelson and Collie (Mr. Silverman) may or may not have said in the course of his speech, there was one sentence which will dwell in the memory of all who heard it, and that was the striking phrase that if the sacrifice were necessary of all the Jewish lives in order that liberty might come again to the world, then let it be made. Having made that statement, I do not think anyone would want to cavil at anything else he might have said. He expressly said in his opening sentences that he was not speaking for the Jews alone and, indeed, who would propose to limit this discussion to the question of the Jews? We are, in fact, living witnesses of a most repugnant phenomenon in history. We have enemies inspired by a fanaticism which apparently is even stronger than any inspiration and effort which has been hitherto inspired by good purposes. In the last few weeks they have stated their intention to fight to the last man in this fifth year of war and then to commit suicide in large numbers. They are inspired by the same fanaticism to wreak their vengeance on anybody who would prevent them.

I would support the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne in his suggestion that machinery, the counterpart of that which has been set up in Washington, might be set up in this country if I did not believe that the right hon. Gentleman who carries the responsibility in this House had not considered it an unworkable piece of machinery. I hope it might at least go forth from the House of Commons to-day that as we were all of one mind when we passed the original Resolution on this matter so there is no difference of opinion among us to-day. We Members of the House of Commons are aware that there are some aspects of this terrible manifestation that it might be unwise to discuss. We realise that may be so, and we are consequently very guarded in anything we may say.

What we do want from the right hon. Gentleman is an assurance that nothing which could conceivably be done to save even one life will be neglected. My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne said that, as events march on, there may in a few months be no problem of this particular kind to solve, but I am not sure that I am as pessimistic as that. There are events on the horizon which will make the satellite countries reflect very seriously as to their course of action and it may well be, sooner rather than later, that events will take place which will make some of the satellite countries, who are now holding down large populations, consider very seriously whether even at this late stage they cannot do something which can be placed on the credit side of their balance sheet. I do not know what can be done. The right hon. Gentleman may have some means at his disposal, and I emphasise that aspect of the affair. I only intervened because I wanted to express my conviction that we were unanimous in the matter. There has never been any difference of opinion. We, as individual Members, have not the responsibility; it lies upon the shoulders of my right hon. Friend, and he himself must seek the best way out.

Mr. Astor (Fulham, East)

I am going to back up the words spoken with such eloquence by the hon. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. G. White). I am interested in the refugee question, and in the Middle East I actually had to look after a very large refugee camp of Greeks. I want to make one or two points which I think are important. It is very important to keep perfectly separate the refugee question and Palestine. We were able to get enormous help in the Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt from the local inhabitants because there was no question of creating—

The Chairman

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member but we cannot discuss conditions in Palestine on this Vote.

Mr. Astor

With great deference, I will avoid that point. I only wanted to skate over it very briefly, because it has, to some extent, almost prejudiced the possibility of getting Jewish refugees out of Eastern Europe, and I think that, whatever may be people's feeling in the matter, it does not in any way take away from the Christian duty to get as many of these refugees out as we possibly can. If we neglect to do anything now which can possibly be done, we shall curse ourselves later on for our short sightedness. In the recent pamphlet of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health it said there were not enough dentists in this country to provide treatment for all the children in need of it. I wonder how many Jewish dentists before the war—

The Chairman

The hon. Gentleman is now encroaching upon the Home Office. That matter does not arise here.

Mr. Astor

I only wanted to suggest certain considerations which might influence a representative of that Committee in his attitude towards refugees.

Earl Winterton (Horsham and Worthing)

I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that my opinion will not be biased by any of the matters he has mentioned, one way or the other.

Mr. Astor

I very much regret that my noble Friend is not going to be influenced to some extent—

Earl Winterton

My hon. Friend is trenching on a very dangerous form of argument. I have no Ministerial responsibility. Ministerial responsibility rests with my right hon. Friend opposite. I merely represent his views.

Mr. Astor

I am very sorry if anything I say may not be able to sway my noble Friend, but I hope I am still at liberty to mention certain considerations in which he may take an interest on reflection. I hope we shall not follow the American system of setting up a special office, because all my experience is that these new mushroom Government Departments are never strong enough to deal with a really strongly-entrenched Government Department.

The Chairman

The hon. Member is not entitled to discuss the arrangements made by another country. Will he please confine himself to the subject matter of the Estimate.

Mr. Astor

With deference, Major Milner, the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Silverman) mentioned the possibility of having some form of separate office. I do not want to go further than he did. I was only following up what he said on the purely practical point that it is not the best system of organisation to start a special body but to get a really high official in an existing Department specifically charged with this. On the question of what we can say to neutral countries, the principle has been admitted that the satellite Powers can work their passage back. We have definitely made a distinction between the treatment of Germany and the treatment of the satellites. We must make it absolutely clear that one of the factors influencing our treatment of the satellite Powers after the war is their attitude towards the refugees within their borders. There is a wide divergence, and we should make it quite clear and explain to them that in our relief operations immediately after the war, in any sanctions that we may impose, in our general treatment of them politically, this will be a factor which will definitely influence our treatment of them. I want to reiterate what has been said, that this should go out from the House of Commons as having been backed up by representatives of every party.

Mr. David Grenfell (Gower)

I should like to follow in the same direction and in the same tone as the hon. Member for East Fulham (Mr. Astor). If I were not able to convince the Committee that this is a case of exceptional urgency I should not have felt it worth while to listen to the speeches already made. My first reflection is that we are a highly fortunate body of politicians to occupy the only available place in Europe for a discussion on this subject. In this small island we are separated from the mainland of Europe by a very narrow sea, and we have been able to escape the sense of dread, fear and horror which closer acquaintance with the problem has conveyed to people in various parts of Europe. This is not really a Jewish question, though the Jewish people are involved to perhaps a greater extent than anyone else. There are other refugees—Greeks, Yugoslavs, Belgians, French, Norwegians and Danes have been mentioned—many of whom have found a home away from home and many of whom are here enjoying our hospitability, if it can be termed such.

I regard it as a very great privilege for Members of this House to be able to extend this offer and to make this modest provision of £50,000, envisaging a larger expenditure later on, to be applied to what is called operational expenditure. Operational expenditure is very difficult to define, but it certainly means the making of provision for the reception, maintenance, transport and regulation of this very unhappy traffic which is now taking place surreptitiously under clandestine arrangements. Many are escaping. They are leaving the areas of danger and coming within reach of a helping hand and what we are proposing is that at least £50,000 shall be available to extend that and to meet halfway those people who are fleeing from the wrath of their enemies on the Continent and seeking salvation and sanctuary in this very fortunate country and in other parts of the world.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman who is responsible for the Estimate that this is not the end, but the beginning of a very large plan of salvation, in which we are joined directly by the United States, who have committed themselves to the same financial extent as we have done. I should like us not to be too squeamish about the nationality and the religion of the people we are saving. This is the anniversary of the patron saint of my country. His name was David, but David originally was not a Welsh name. David was a Jew, a lovable character, a brave man and a human man, and the David who became the patron saint of our country was equally lovable and equally brave. The oaths that we take, the vows we offer in this House were originally based upon a Jewish institution and a great Jewish character, who lived his life and died equally bravely as he had lived. There is the problem.

I should like us to dismiss the priorities in this matter. A Jew is no more entitled to sympathy in distress than anyone else, and I do not think anyone else says that in the House, but it is a lamentable fact that millions of people are homeless in Europe. No one can predict the proportion of those who can get away from the areas of danger, but certainly there are areas where life is very uncertain, and there is no object more worthy of human sympathy than a hunted human being. I did some work in relation to the Sudeten Germans in the time of Munich and I was privileged to conduct the two first parties from Prague to Gdynia. It was very uncomfortable for me, but I willingly incurred the risks and discomfort and fatigue attendant upon those journeys.

I shall always remember the courtesy of the Foreign Secretary of those days. There was no hesitation at all, and on the direct applications that I made to him sufficient sums were made available to send 400 people who were in immediate danger of their lives. They were German speaking people—there may have been some Jews among them—and they were in danger. On that journey I had occasion to go through Poland and I saw the Polish ghetto. I, who had always been sympathetic with the history of that race, saw in a way I had never previously witnessed the limitations and hardships long ago imposed on the Jewish community. There are people who have escaped from Hungary and other places, and if there is anything we can do in Parliament to help them we should do it.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the sympathy and understanding he has shown. He is a worthy son of a worthy father. This just gives him an opportunity which is natural to him, and I believe that he will avail himself of it. It is an opportunity which will be fully taken by us in this House and shared by our people. Do not let us be afraid to tell our people about these things. In this country 1 per cent. of our population is of the Jewish race. What is wrong with the 99 per cent. that they should not be told? In Germany the percentage is also 1 per cent. We know what was wrong with the German Reich and the German people. We must carry out our work of charity, rescue and salvation regardless of race. I hope that the Committee will dedicate itself to-day, not merely by supporting this Vote, but by doing and preparing to do something much more in the next six or twelve months than we have done in this regard in the last two or three years. If this Vote is only a spur to greater effort to help these people towards personal security, we shall have done a good day's work in this Committee.

Mr. Law

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) truly represented the views of the Committee when he welcomed the payment which it is proposed that we shall make towards the expenses of the Inter-Governmental Committee. I am sure, too, that he represented the views of hon. Members when he urged that the refugee problem should not be left only to the Inter-Governmental Committee, but that we should work at it in other ways ceaselessly until we can get some kind of solution. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Silverman) referred us back to the dark and hideous background against which we have to consider this problem. I think he was quite right to do so. He was right to impress upon us once again, not only the importance of the problem, but its urgency. The hon. Member made what was certainly a dismal prophecy, and what may prove to be a true prophecy, when he said that, as defeat drew nearer Germany, so the excesses against the Jews would increase in intensity. That may be so, but I hope that it will not be so. I am more inclined to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. Graham White) when he reminded us that as defeat drew nearer to Germany, so the satellite countries would attempt to re-insure by treating these unhappy people more decently and giving them the sanctuary which they lack at the present time.

The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne asked me to consider various suggestions he made, and, in particular, the possi- bility of making a new declaration which he described, I think, as a call to the peoples of Europe from the heads of the United Nations. Certainly that will be considered, but in the meantime I would remind the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for East Fulham (Mr. Astor), who also touched upon the necessity of giving warning, particularly to the satellites of Germany, that there has never been any doubt about the attitude of opinion in this country and, indeed, of world opinion, to what has been going on in Europe under German rule and to the persecution of the Jews and the general treatment of minorities and refugees. No one in any of the satellite countries can be in any doubt of the fact that the British attitude and, indeed, the world attitude, towards them after the war is bound to be affected by the way they act in this matter of Jewish persecution. There can be no doubt whatever of that, and, indeed, the satellite countries are now getting very serious warnings through the wireless, to which we must hope they are paying due attention. I have no doubt that the Committee will vote the Supplementary Estimate for this purpose, but more than one of my hon. Friends have expressed their feeling that what we are doing in voting this money, and, indeed, what the Inter-Governmental Committee can do, is not really sufficient for the problem. I was, incidentally, glad that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne dissociated himself from the criticism of the Inter-Governmental Committee which the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Lipson) made earlier. I am sure that that criticism was not in any way justified and that the Members of the Committee are treating this matter with just the seriousness and sincerity which the hon. Gentleman himself would require.

My hon. Friend the Member for the English Universities (Miss Rathbone) took the same point of view as the hon. Member for Cheltenham. She, too, felt that the machinery of the Inter-Governmental Committee was not enough. She compared it to a stage coach when what she wanted was a Rolls Royce. She criticised the smallness of the present office of the Committee in London and deduced from the size of the office and the number of typists the theory that the Inter-Governmental Committee was not up to its job. She, the hon. Member for Cheltenham and the hon. Member for Nelson and Collie stressed the fact, as it seemed to them, that this must be so and that the Inter-Governmental Committee cannot be up to its job because the President of the United States has just recently created the War Refugee Board. I hope that I may be able to persuade my hon. Friends, or to persuade the Committee as a whole, that that is a fallacy, and that the fact that the War Refugee Board has been set up in the United States is not in any sense a criticism of the Inter-Governmental Committee.

Mr. Silverman

No doubt the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that, when I advocated the setting up of machinery in this country parallel to the War Refugee Board of the United States, I was not doing so in any way as a criticism of the Inter-Governmental Committee. The point I was making was, that as the Inter-Governmental Committee was charged with the fate of refugees after they had become such, there ought to be governmental machinery to provide the Committee with the raw material.

Miss Rathbone

I think we all must make it clear that none of us were criticising the Inter-Governmental Committee when speaking of the War Refugee Board. The Inter-Governmental Committee, because it is inter-governmental, must depend upon the actions of the Governments represented upon it, and therefore, both Governments should have their own separate machinery for dealing with the work. Such machinery would supplement and not supersede the Inter-Governmental Committee.

Mr. Law

I am afraid that I must have expressed myself badly, and I apologise to hon. Members and to the Committee for doing so. I did not really mean to imply that they had said that the institution of the War Refugee Board was a criticism of the Inter-Governmental Committee, but I did mean to imply, and I think it is clear that what I am going to say now is a true representation of what they said, that, in their view, the institution of the War Refugee Board showed that there was a gap which had to be filled and which the Inter-Governmental Committee was not filling. I do not think that even that criticism is altogether justified.

Mr. Lipson

Did not the right hon. Gentleman himself say that the work of the Inter-Governmental Committee was not sufficient by itself to deal with this problem?

Mr. Law

Yes, Sir, and if the hon. Member had had a little more patience he would have found that I was going to repeat exactly that argument. I spoke earlier in the Debate about the necessity for international co-operation in these matters. I think every hon. Member would agree that there are some matters which can be handled far better by an inter-governmental body of this kind than by any particular Government, but that does not at all rule out the necessity that, as well as international action, there has to be national action in these matters. For that reason, His Majesty's Government welcomed most heartily the institution of the War Refugee Board in the United States, and we shall be willing, and indeed anxious, to give that War Refugee Board, as a part of the United States administration, our very warmest support and sympathy. We are working on all these matters in the closest relations with the United States administration. I do not know whether it is generally known among hon. Members that we have recently sent instructions to every one of our missions abroad likely to be involved in refugee matters that they should seek out and collaborate with their American opposite numbers on refugee matters to the fullest extent in their power.

I know that I cannot go very far in discussion of the War Refugee Board without transgressing the Ruling which you have given, Major Milner. On the other hand, there has been such a great deal said about the War Refugee Board and so many appeals have been made to the Government here to institute a similar body in this country that I hope I may, without getting into trouble, just touch upon that aspect of the matter. I do not think that hon. Members who have raised the question of the Joint Refugee Board quite realise the constitutional difference between this country and the United States. Under our system of ministerial responsibility it would, in fact, be impossible for us to institute an independent body which would control Ministers and heads of other Departments outside it; in fact, there is not the same need for such a body in this country. There is already a Cabinet Committee concerned with these matters, and that Cabinet Committee has at its disposal an administrative staff in the form of the Refugee Department of the Foreign Office. So we really have the substance of what the President of the United States has just instituted, in the shape of the War Refugee Board. For constitutional reasons, I do not see how we could imitate the structure of that Board, and, for practical reasons, I cannot see that we should gain any advantage from imitating it.

Miss Ratbbone

One thing that struck us very much was that the American Board had a whole-time executive director, who was directly in touch with three Secretaries of State and had direct access to the President. Has the Refugee Department of the Foreign Office access to Ministers and to the Prime Minister in the same way?

The Chairman

We cannot go into the details of this organisation. The right hon. Gentleman has said quite sufficient about it.

Mr. Law

Might I answer, in a sentence, what the hon. Lady has asked? We have really got exactly what she wants. We have a full time administrative staff, not in the persons of single directors, but in the shape of the staff of the Refugee Department of the Foreign Office. That staff is directly responsible to my right hon. Friend and, through him, to the Cabinet Committee. I do not think there really is the practical difference that some hon. Members imagine there to be.

I do not think there were any other points raised in the Debate. I think the Committee has made it abundantly clear that it wants the work of rescue for these unfortunate people to be proceeded with with the utmost possible vigour and dispatch. I can assure the Committee that His Majesty's Government are prepared to do everything they possibly can to find a solution of this problem, in co-operation with other nations where that is necessary, and individually as a Government where that is possible.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved: That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £53,873, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1944, for the expenses in connection with His Majesty's Embassies, Missions and Consular Establishments Abroad, and other expenditure chargeable to the Consular Vote; certain special grants and payments, including grants in aid; and sundry other services.

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