HC Deb 27 July 1959 vol 610 c10
15. Mr. Bevan

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps the Government are taking to ensure early compensation from the Federal German Government for British citizens who suffered persecution by the Nazi régime and to secure compensation for those concentration camp survivors who are now political refugees and who, in defiance of undertakings given by the Federal German Government in the Bonn Convention, are being denied compensation under the Federal German Compensation Law.

Mr. Profumo

Her Majesty's Government have opened discussions with the Federal German Government on this subject.

Mr. Bevan

Have not these discussions been going on for some time and have not these people been very hardly treated indeed? Many years have gone by. Was there not a strict undertaking in the Bonn Convention of 1952, repeated in 1955, that this category of refugees should be sympathetically considered, and so far they have not been so considered?

Mr. Profumo

I agree that a settlement is taking a long time. I hope that these negotiations will now achieve a settlement. The Federal German Government are in no doubt about the importance which we attach to the matter.

Mr. John Hall

Is my hon. Friend aware that certain German doctors who were debarred by the German medical profession because of the part they played in carrying out experiments on prisoners during the war are now coming back into practice, with the permission of the German medical authorities?

Mr. Profumo

That is a much wider question. I should prefer not to answer my hon. Friend until I have seen it on the Paper.