HC Deb 05 June 1951 vol 488 cc968-76

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Royle.]

11.35 p.m.

Mr. George Thomas (Cardiff, West)

On Wednesday, 11th April, the people of Cardiff read a newspaper article headed, "Mother needs £100 to bring her dead son home." The article told of a fatal accident on a German autobahn on Monday, 9th April, in which Trooper Lloyd, a soldier, of 20, St. Peter's Road, Cardiff, who was serving with the Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, was killed when returning in a lorry from Army exercises. The Press article to which I have referred revealed that unless £100 could be raised the body of Trooper Lloyd could not be brought home for burial. I wish to quote briefly two paragraphs from the article: Unless £100 can be raised within the next 24 hours or so, his body will lie in a B.A.O.R. cemetery for a ruling, for a War Office ruling is that the cost of bringing the body home for burial must be borne by the relatives. Robert's mother, who lives in St. Peter's Road, Cardiff, is a widow, and she cannot find the £100 necessary to bring her son's body back to his native city. This widowed mother had one married daughter at home, and as a relative wrote to me: They are not in good circumstances and cannot raise the money themselves. If you can help by seeking a reduction in the cost of bringing home the body, everybody concerned will be grateful. I did my utmost, but the War Office was like a stone. It was hard and resistant to the appeal.

I want to say at once that I join with other hon. Members in welcoming the Parliamentary Secretary to the Front Bench from which he is to reply, tonight, to his first Adjournment debate. This is, of course, by no means a personal issue. I realise that the views he will express will be those of the War Office. But it is an issue on which the War Office itself. I believe, stands open to condemnation. Fortunately, in the case of my constituent, a good citizen of Cardiff, who wishes to remain anonymous, came forward and paid for the lad's body to be brought home.

On 26th April, the Secretary of State for War told me, in answer to Questions, that the policy of the War Office is that the interment of soldiers killed on foreign service in peace-time, as in war, should take place in the country in which death occurs. The War Office, he explained, was unable to bear the cost of bringing bodies home to this country for burial. My right hon. Friend went on to explain the steps taken by his Department to reduce the cost of transport in cases where relatives made arrangements at their own expense.

I realise full well that in the last Parliament we had some bitter discussions about cases similar to this one, but I am so appalled at the complete lack of human feeling which the War Office has revealed in this matter that I cannot forbear from raising this question tonight. Trooper Lloyd was conscripted into the Army. He did not ask to be sent to Germany, and his mother certainly did not want him to go. He was snatched from his home by the powers of conscription passed by Parliament, and there was no question of cost when the Army wanted his services. He was rapidly given a uniform, and a travel voucher, and had he been alive today the War Office would doubtless have found the money to send him to the Far East. But he is not alive now, and when he was killed he was given a coffin but the cost of bringing his body back home was not paid.

The policy of the War Office amounts to the imposition of a means test, even at death. For the wealthy family, there is no trouble; they have simply to decide whether or not the body shall be brought home. Wealthy bereaved persons can comfort the mother of the family by saying, "The boy can be brought home if you wish." The War Office blandly states that the same rule applies equally to all recruits, but to me, that is like saying that the Savoy Hotel is open to anyone—if one can pay for it; and that means the privileged few.

I know that sentiment enters into this case, and I hope that my hon. Friend, when he replies, will not use that argument because life would be squalid indeed if all sentiment was absent. Surely there is nothing more natural than that a mother should want her son's body laid to rest with that of his father. For many people, there is an indefinable comfort in being able to go to that spot of ground which holds the remains of those whom one loves. Those who made this cold, cruel decision on the part of the War Office ought to be made to visit the bereaved parents; and face, as I did, the mother who asks for her son to be returned.

The War Office is even too mean to pay the travelling fare of the mother in order that she might go to Germany for the funeral if she is unable to pay the cost of bringing the body home. Yet, in the War Office, by its very nature, there is squandered in a day more than it would cost in a year to bring home all those accidentally killed in time of peace. I distinguish between burials in time of peace and time of war, because the mass carnage in war conditions the minds of people to prepare themselves for acceptance of the necessity for foreign burial. But that is not so in time of peace, and the War Office is on a sticky wicket indeed if it is going to hold up finance as the obstacle in this matter. It would cost practically nothing; there are transports of many sorts—military aircraft, battleships, and other means of conveyance moving about all the time.

My hon. Friend, in his reply, may well say that his difficulty is to know where to call a halt. For instance, shall we stop in Germany, or bring home those killed in time of peace in the Middle East? What about the lads killed in the Far East under peace conditions? I realise all these difficulties which concern the Department, but inevitably there are matters of finance when the boy is no longer here to be of use. From any country in the world, wherever a British "Tommy" is serving in time of peace, his body should be brought home if the family so desires.

I ask my hon. Friend—and I am sorry that his first job at that Despatch Box is to reply to a debate of this sort—to suggest to the Minister that this shabby policy, for that is all it is, should be reconsidered and that respect for the family unit in time of bereavement is surely the minimum for which we have a right to ask from a Government Department. I believe this is not the sort of decision we expect in a Department with a Labour Government. Undoubtedly, it means that there is a privileged section—good luck to them if they can afford to bring home their boy—but that there is also an unprivileged sec- tion and to the anguish of bereavement is added the further anguish of the knowledge that had they been able to afford it their boy, too, could rest in the family grave. I earnestly hope that my hon. Friend will be a little forthcoming in his reply.

11.46 p.m.

Major Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

I think all of us will understand the considerable indignation over this case of the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas), but I hope he will also understand when I say that I regretted some of the remarks he has made tonight. I think it is unfortunate to talk about conscription snatching men away.

Mr. G. Thomas

What is it doing?

Major Legge-Bourke

It is a matter which has been debated and is a majority decision of the country's representatives in the House. It would seem to me, despite all the hon. Gentleman's natural feelings, which I fully appreciate, to have been a little bit better had he been able to word his remarks a little differently. We have had these cases from time to time. I had one in my own division in the last Parliament. They are highly distressing when they happen and we should be only too glad if all the bodies of men who die abroad while serving in the Forces could be brought home.

There must be some limitation on that and the hon. Member himself, I think, sees the difficulty, certainly so far as the Far East is concerned and in times when there are hostilities in some places and not in others. It seems if one argues logically that it is very unfair on those parents whose boys are killed in Korea that they cannot be brought back and that those who die of natural causes, sometimes in Germany, can be. I would say to the Financial Secretary to the War Office that I do not envy him his task in making this decision, but I cannot believe that people in the War Office do these things out of callousness. I believe they try to be as humane as they can, and some of us ought to be more sympathetic with the very hard decisions they have to take, knowing quite well that they will be misunderstood by somebody.

I think we feel that, as a rule, these decisions are taken without any deliberate callousness and unkindness and that if there is any, it is generally because of the force of circumstances. I hope the hon. Gentleman will be able to tell us that what is being done is the maximum possible. I think that is all we could possibly ask for, and to make sure that in this particular case that everything that could have been done was done.

11.49 p.m.

Mr. Driberg (Maldon)

I am rather sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) saw fit to accuse the War Office of cold-blooded indifference to human feeling. Although it may seem to him in this particular instance that such is the case, those of us who have had dealings with the War Office on matters of compassionate postings home, and many other things, know that they are very far from being callous and indifferent. I have to condense my remarks into a minute or two, to allow time for a reply, so I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me if I seem a little cavalier and brusque in my comments on the speech, in which he so appealingly and eloquently won our sympathy.

There is one danger implicit in what he is asking for. That is what has happened, since the last war, in the United States, of which I know my hon. Friend is aware. It is difficult to distinguish, as he tried to, between peace and war, because if you admit the principle in time of peace, in time of war it is equally true that the cost of such a project is infinitesimal in relation to the total expenditure of warfare. My hon. Friend knows well enough that, as a result of organized commercial pressure in America by what we call undertakers and they call morticians, there was very large-scale and widespread exhumation of men who had died overseas in the last war, so that their bodies could be taken back to America. The feelings of the relatives were played on in a most shameless way, for purely commercial purposes. I do not believe anything of that kind would happen here, but we do not want the risk of its happening. There is just that one word of warning I feel one ought to utter.

Finally, if it is any comfort to the relatives—and I feel that it may be some slight comfort occasionally—anybody who has been overseas, to the Far East or elsewhere, knows that the war cemeteries are cared for most beautifully by the Imperial War Graves Commission, and are usually in surroundings of great natural beauty in which these bereaved people, with whose suffering we all sympathise most deeply, may well feel that their loved ones may rest in peace.

11.52 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for War (Mr. Wyatt)

I am sure the House will agree with me that it was unfortunate that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff. West (Mr. G. Thomas) should have accused the War Office of being like stones, utterly inhuman, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg) has pointed out, I think that the Army takes greater care than anyone else to be fair and compassionate whenever it can be.

I want to assure my hon. Friend right away that this is not merely a matter of finance. It is not merely a matter of paying more, with a few extra pounds enabling him to attain what he wants. I would like to assure him that a great deal of consideration has been given by those responsible in the War Office, and we are very anxious to do the right and the best thing. We realize very deeply the tragedy which is brought into the homes of parents, wives, or near relatives of those who are killed in action or die while serving overseas in the Army, but I am sure my hon. Friend will understand that, although we have the greatest sympathy, we cannot deal with these cases in isolation. We have to consider the principle on which the War Office and the other two Services act on these occasions.

The whole matter was gone into in great detail by the Minister of Defence, when he was Secretary of State for War, in an Adjournment debate in the House on 11th February, 1949. I have very little to add to what he said then, but I will recapitulate the principal points he made then. In the first place, it always has been the practice that those who are killed or die abroad are buried near where they have died by their own comrades. I would like to tell my hon. Friend that the ceremony is both impressive and reverent and is, in fact, a tribute by the Army to the soldier who has just died.

It has always been the policy, and in this the Imperial War Graves Commission agree, not to bring back to this country the bodies of soldiers who have died abroad. There is bound to be a sub- stantial time lag between the death and the arrival of the body at the soldier's home and, apart from any other reason, that is bound to raise once more the most unhappy emotions which may already have subsided. My hon. Friend doubted whether the cost of bringing bodies back from Germany would be a great charge on the War Office should we bear the expense, but if they are to be brought back from Germany, why should they not also be brought back from the furthest parts of the world where British soldiers are called upon to serve?

In that case the expense would be very considerable indeed, because the expense of bringing a body back, perhaps contrary to my hon. Friend's belief, is greater than that of bringing back soldiers in the ordinary trooping way. It would mean not only expense but also that if the Army undertook this responsibility the comrades of the man who had died would be called upon to perform the duties of undertakers in a sense. It is one thing for a man's comrades to bury him in the solemn dignity of a military funeral and quite another to ask them to accept all those functions to which the undertaker is accustomed in his profession. I am sure my hon. Friend would not wish that duty to be added to those of soldiers now serving in the Forces.

There is, of course, the additional factor of the enormous administrative burden on the commanding officers and units and all concerned with this particular task. All these points are not questions of finance at all, but of the way the Army is run. Again, if we are to bring back, at the expense of the Government, men who in peace-time had died or had been killed by accident, what in logic would distinguish between such deaths and those deaths now incurred in action in Korea and Malaya? One cannot possibly make a distinction of the kind my hon. Friend wishes to make. If we are to do it for one we must do it for all, and the expense and the psychological and administrative burdens on the Army would make that impossible.

My hon. Friend suggested that if no free carriage is to be given then people should not be allowed to have the body of a relation brought back at all, even at their own expense. I understand his point, but I cannot agree to that. In this matter there are two completely logical positions. The first is the one I have been outlining—that everyone who dies overseas from whatever cause should be brought home. I have tried to explain why that is not a possible course of action. The second is that no one should be brought home, even at the expense of relations. That second course seems to me to involve an element of inhumanity which I should have thought my hon. Friend would have been the first to reject.

If, despite the fact that the War Office makes provision for burial at the place of death, and if, despite the fact that the grave for ever afterwards should be tended with great sympathy, the relations are still anxious to bring the body home I do not see how, though we think they are mistaken, we can stand in their way if they bear the cost. To do so would be somewhat inhuman on our part. In those cases we give all the assistance we can; we do not bear the expense but we co-operate fully with any agent appointed by the relations. In fact, where relatives ask that bodies be brought back we recommend those who charge as small an agent's fee as possible and who understand the task involved.

My hon. Friend has also complained that the cost of bringing bodies back is excessive. I should like him to know that as a result of War Office representation, instituted by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence when he was Secretary of State for War, the charges for bringing back bodies from Europe, at any rate, have been greatly reduced. This was possible because the nationalised railways agreed that their freight charges from the Hook of Holland to London should be reduced by nearly half in the case of ex-Service men as against that of civilians. It is difficult to see how we can go further. Where, as a Government Department, we have been able to use our influence with a nationalised industry we have done so, but my hon. Friend must appreciate that in all other cases the costs are payable to private firms over which we have no sort of influence.

I hope that after this explanation my hon. Friend will feel that in this matter we are not acting through a cheese-paring motive at all, but in a way which we believe to be in the true interests of the dead soldier, of his comrades, who are often his closest friends and who are called upon to bury him, and of the relations themselves. We cannot offer to bring back all those who die overseas, for whatever reason, or to pay the cost ourselves, and it would be wrong to pay for the transport of some and not for all. Further, I think it would be wrong for us to devote money to a cause of this sort when we believe that if there is such money available it could be better spent on the living. Nevertheless, where relatives do insist on bringing bodies of dead soldiers back, we do our utmost to help them, both administratively and in securing the lowest possible charges from British Railways, in so far as they are concerned.

My hon. Friend mentioned the question of getting assisted passages to attend funerals. It may interest him to know that we have just started discussions, not on this point, but on the possibility of extending into peace-time a system of assisted passages to visit the graves. I do not in any way promise that this will be possible, but we are now exploring the possibilities. I hope that with the explanation I have given my hon. Friend will realise we feel as deeply as he does about these matters.

Mr. G. Thomas

I thank my hon. Friend for his reply. I very much appreciate what he has said about what the War Office are trying to do in such cases. Far be it from me to go too far in my description of the War Office. I am sorry if he thought I did.

Adjourned accordingly at Two Minutes past Twelve o'clock.