IMMUNITIES AND PRIVILEGES (Hansard, 27 February 1956)

§ Mr. Eric Fletcher (Islington, East)
I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Diplomatic Immunities Restriction Order, 1956 (S.I., 1956, No. 84), dated 25th January, 1956, a copy of winch was laid before this House on 30th January, be annulled. I apologise to the hon. and gallant Member for Buckingham (Sir F. Markham) for having interrupted his speech on the interesting subject of police restrictions, but the fault is not mine. It is due to the Prime Minister finishing his speech a few minutes before ten o'clock. The hon. Member, as, no doubt, he realises, will have an opportunity of concluding his speech after we have disposed of the Prayer.
We have an opportunity this evening of saying something—and, I hope, hearing something—about the precise objects of this Statutory Instrument, which deals with diplomatic immunities and their restriction. The Order is really the first fruits in action of the attempt which was made by the Labour Government some years ago when they set up a Committee under the chairmanship of Lord Justice Somervell for the purpose of overhauling the whole of the law on diplomatic immunities.
Many of us on this side of the House felt that the time had come when a serious attempt should be made to restrict the tendency towards the growth and extension of diplomatic immunities. As the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs knows, there is at all times a certain public impatience and disquiet when one meets instances of unnecessary diplomatic immunity and, sometimes, abuses of that immunity.
From the Order, we learn certain very curious things. First, we are glad to find that the Government have taken advantage of the Act which was passed last year. with the general approval of both 968 parties, giving the Government power, by Order in Council, to restrict diplomatic immunities, not only of certain embassy staffs in this country, but of their families and their servants. When we look at the text and the application of the Order to different countries of the world, hon. Members will, I think, be surprised to find how it operates.
A distinction is, of course, quite properly drawn between the actual staff of a foreign embassy on the one hand and their families and servants on the other. We find that the Government have used their new powers for the purpose of withdrawing entirely the immunities from suit or legal process of all members of the official staff below the rank of attaché of a very curious list of countries which I will read: Argentina, Brazil, Finland, France, Laos, Lebanon, Peru, Poland, Switzerland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and Yugoslavia. It is a very mixed bag. Those countries do not fall into any precise or easy classification.
Then we find what, I think, is even more curious, that the immunities from suit or legal process are not only withdrawn in respect of families of all such persons but, in addition, from the families of the official staff of above the rank of attaché in the case of Argentina and below that rank in the case of the United States of America. I imagine that that includes a very large number of people. I should say that the United States Embassy must be one of the largest, and it is somewhat surprising to find that the families of members of the American Embassy staff in this country below the rank of attaché now have diplomatic immunity withdrawn from them.
The final category is of servants of members of the ambassadorial staff of certain countries, and the list of them is noticeably longer. In addition to the 11 countries singled out for discriminantion—I have no doubt, quite rightly so—there are others, the servants of the members of whose diplomatic staff will no longer enjoy immunity. The countries thus added are: Afghanistan, Bolivia, Colombia, Iceland, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay.
The Joint Under-Secretary of State will correct met if I am wrong, but the result, apart from the countries named, is that the diplomatic immunities of the embassy 969 staffs and their families and servants of all other countries remain intact. Therefore, in future, there will be a good deal of difficulty, without reference to this Order, in knowing whether a person or his family and servants enjoy diplomatic immunity or not. That may be inevitable, and I do not complain of that, but one of the reasons why my hon. Friends and I are moving this Motion is to ask this question before the House passes the subject. We are anxious to know whether it is the policy of the Government to use this machinery for the purpose of inducing other countries where British embassies exist to grant further diplomatic immunities, or whether it is the intention of the Government to try to reduce diplomatic privilege all round.
We on these benches hope that the latter alternative is the policy of the Government, because we believe that the time has arrived when diplomatic privilege as it was known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is very much out of date. We believe that it should be confined to the essential cases of ambassadors and their senior executive staff, merely to enable them to have diplomatic privilege which is essential for their diplomatic missions. We believe that diplomatic immunity should not be extended quite unnecessarily to a miscellaneous number of persons because they happen to be related to an ambassador or to be in his employment in perhaps some quite menial capacity. We think that these people should be amenable to the laws of this country just as much as any British subject.
We do not believe that in those cases diplomatic immunity is necessary to the proper discharge of a diplomatic mission. Therefore, we hope to find that this Order is the first instalment in a plan for a general reduction of diplomatic immunity. If my hon. Friends and myself receive satisfactory assurances on this interpretation of the Order, you will appreciate, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that we will probably not wish to press the matter to a Division.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew)
If the Minister goes as far as that. it will be outside the Order. The Motion also needs a seconder.

§ Mr. Ernest Davies (Enfield, East)
I beg formally to second the Motion.

§ The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Douglas Dodds-Parker)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. E. Fletcher) and his hon. Friends for moving this Prayer, because it gives me an opportunity to answer a point which he has raised. It is, as he has said, a somewhat narrow point. This Order was made on 25th January and laid on 30th January. It carries out powers given under Section 1 (1) of the Diplomatic Immunities Restriction Act, 1955. It might be for the convenience of the House and might make matters rather clearer if I married the Order with the Act, as it were, to show how the four Articles of the Order fit in.
Those hon. Members who are interested in this matter will remember that Section 1 (I) of the Act states: If it appears to Her Majesty that the personal immunities conferred by law on the envoys of foreign sovereign Powers accredited to Her Majesty, their families and servants, and members of the official staff of such envoys and their families, exceed in any respect those accorded in the territory of any such Power to an envoy of Her Majesty and persons similarly connected with him, Her Majesty may by Order in Council withdraw the said personal immunities in the case of that Power, to such extent and in respect of such classes of persons as appears to Her Majesty to be proper. The rubric of the Section reads: Reciprocal withdrawal of personal immunities. This Order is now laid following on that Act, which was passed in December last year. In the 11 countries listed in the First Schedule of the Order, the non-diplomatic staffs of Her Majesty's missions do not have diplomatic immunity and, therefore, we are withdrawing immunity from the corresponding non-diplomatic staffs here in London. Naturally, their families lose immunity as well, and this is taken away by Article 2 (c) of the Order. The second article goes on to provide for loss of immunity of two special categories of families.
In the first instance, in Argentina, the diplomatic staff of Her Majesty's embassy have immunity but their wives and children have not; and, therefore, the Argentine staff here are brought into line. Secondly, under Article 2 (b), in the United States, our diplomatic staff and their wives enjoy immunity, and so do the non-diplomatic staff, but not their wives. 971 Accordingly, under the reciprocal withdrawal of personal immunities, the wives of United States non-diplomatic staff are brought into line.
As regards Article 3, in the twenty-one countries listed in the Second Schedule of the Order, servants of Her Majesty's missions, for example, chancery guards, do not enjoy immunity, and in all of them, except two, personal servants of the heads, do not have immunity. In Switzerland and Finland, the personal staff of the envoy do have immunity, and, therefore, exception is made in their case.
That is the rather narrow point on which this Order is based, but I should like to put the matter into perspective and follow up what the hon. Member for Islington, East has said, because he has shown his interest in this matter when it was before the House on another occasion. I realise that hon. Members opposite probably do not wish to annul the Order, because in that case there would be no reduction at all in the numbers of those enjoying personal immunity. What hon. Members are maintaining, as I understand it, is that this Order does not go far enough. Therefore, I should like to remind the House of the Act which was passed last year with the general support of both sides of the House. That is the Act under which this Order has been brought, and its background and purport were briefly as follows.
It is widely recognised that personal immunity of the staffs of diplomatic missions is required by international law. In certain countries, which I hope the House will agree there is no need for me to mention, this immunity affords an important safeguard to members of our own missions, and I am sure that the House would not wish to deprive them of it. In some countries, however, such as those that are listed in the Schedule to the Order, our own people or some of them do not enjoy such treatment, and it appeared to us quite unreasonable that the staffs of the missions of those countries should enjoy more favourable treatment here in London. Accordingly, the Diplomatic Immunities Restriction Act, 1955, which passed all its stages and was made law in December, introduced the principle of reciprocity.
Some hon. Members would like to go as far as to suggest abolishing immunity 972 altogether, but that cannot be done under this Act, nor is it intended that it should be, so that, in fact, by moving this Motion, hon. Members appear to be calling in question not so much the Order, but the purpose of the Act itself. I must, therefore, emphasise that, under the Act, before immunities are withdrawn we must be satisfied beyond any reasonable doubt that our missions overseas are in a worse position than the members of corresponding missions in London. The Schedules to the present Order list the countries where we are quite satisfied that this is the case. However, the practice of many countries is obscure, and it may well be, therefore, that as the position in some of these countries is clarified, other countries will be added to the list.
Hon. Members have suggested, not on this occasion but elsewhere, and I think it was implicit in what the hon. Member for Islington, East, said, that this Order and the Act from which it is derived have some sinister purpose, and that it is not intended so much to reduce the numbers of those who enjoy personal immunity in London as to increase immunities for our missions abroad.
As I have said already, these immunities are indeed valuable to our representatives, particularly in certain countries, and I cannot rule out the possibility that countries now listed in the Schedules may decide to grant immunity to categories of our staffs from which they are at present withheld. In certain countries, indeed, this might even be a welcome development; but I must emphasise that any such result would be quite incidental. It was not the purpose of the Act, as was made clear at the time by my right hon. Friend who is now Minister of Health, and it was not the purpose of this Order.
Therefore, I cannot accept that the present Order does no more than nibble at this problem. We calculate that as a result of it there will be a reduction of about 500 persons in the United Kingdom who hitherto have been entitled to personal immunity. If the Order were annulled there would be no reduction at all.

§ Mr. E. Fletcher
For the record, that is a reduction of 500 on the present figure of about 2,500?

§ Mr. Dodds-Parker
Yes. As the hon. Member for Islington, East said, this is 973 a first step and we believe an important one. I give no commitment but, as I have foreshadowed, other steps may well follow. I anticipate a considerable reduction under this Order, and I hope that the House will accept it as quick and effective action taken under the Act which was passed into law only two months ago.

§ Mr. Fletcher
May I thank the Minister for his full and satisfactory statement, and may I also congratulate the Government on the rapid action they have taken under the Act? In view of what the Minister has said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.