HC Deb 12 December 1962 vol 669 cc496-502

7.42 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Peter Thomas)

I beg to move, in page 2, line 15, at the end, to insert: (2) An Order in Council under section 3 of the Foreign Compensation Act 1950 making provision, in relation to sums paid or to be paid under the preceding subsection, for any of the matters specified in the said section 3 shall not be made unless a draft of the Order has been laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament, and accordingly section 8 (2) of that Act (which provides that all Orders in Council made under the Act shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament) shall not apply to Orders in Council making such provision. During our discussion of the Bill in Committee the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) proposed an Amendment to the Clause to the effect that any Order in Council made for the purposes of the Clause should be subject to the affirmative procedure and not to the negative procedure which applies under Section 8 (2) of the Foreign Compensation Act, 1950. I said in Committee that I would accept the Amendment in principle subject to further consideration of the drafting and I undertook that an Amendment would be put down on Report which would have the same purpose as the hon. and learned Member's Amendment. The hon. and learned Member then withdrew his Amendment.

7.45 p.m.

Although my Amendment is worded rather differently from that of the hon. and learned Member, he will, I think, agree that it carries out his intention. It will make the affirmative procedure applicable to all Orders in Council made under Section 3 of the 1950 Act for the purposes of Clause 1. These are the Orders in Council which will govern the distribution of moneys to be provided by Parliament and which will, in particular, establish the rates at which compensation will be paid and the categories of claims to be paid. If the Amendment is agreed to, we expect to lay an Order in Council before the House for these purposes soon after the passage of the Bill. I hope, therefore, that the House will approve the Amendment.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison (Kettering)

I thank the Joint Under-Secretary for meeting the intention of the Amendment which I moved in Committee. All I have to say to the hon. Gentleman is that when Henry VIII took power to govern by Orders in Council, it was unfortunate that there was no effective Parliament before which drafts could be placed at the time. Modern procedure enables that to be done and the Government will, therefore, be compelled to disclose their intentions in what is otherwise a very weak provision.

Amendment agreed to.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

7.47 p.m.

Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

The Bill has had a somewhat unusual passage through the House, not least because its full financial consequences could not be known at the time of Second Reading. It is only as a result of the full statement made yesterday in the House that we now know what will be the real effect of the major Clauses of the Bill. I hope that the House will not let the Bill go by completely undebated, if only to ensure that we are clear about what we are doing.

There is the story which used to be told by Bishop Wilberforce of the greedy curate who, when asked to say grace at a meal, always looked at the table to see whether there wore wine glasses or tumblers. If there happened to be tumblers, die began, "We thank thee, Lord, for these small mercies'. If, however, he saw wine glasses, he would say, "Oh, most bountiful Jehovah". If we look at the Bill and see the effects upon it of the statement made yesterday, we can say that there are wine glasses on some parts of the table and tumblers on other parts.

I certainly welcome very much the fact that under the Bill we are now to be able to compensate to the tune of 100 per cent. about 90 per cent. of the claimants. We ought, however, to recognise that there is a substantial sum which is not accounted for in the claims that have been submitted. The total claims for both Egyptianisation and sequestration of property amounted to over £75 million. The total sum in which we shall be involved here is only £35 million. That sounds a lot of money, but, nevertheless, we must face the fact that the moment we jump down from 100 per cent. to the next step, which is 75 per cent. of the claims, substantial sacrifices will be made.

When the Government declared their policy about this matter, they went out of their way to say—and I think that we all supported the Government when they said it—that we would ask the Egyptian Government for full compensation or complete restoration. I think we must say that the Egyptian Government have completely defaulted on a great dead of that, and we took away the lever which we had over the sterling balances to enforce that, and I think that that is regrettable. But the fact remains. The obligation placed on the Egyptian Government is, I suppose, now on the shoulders of Her Majesty's Government, since they are accepting liability under this Bill.

Because of that it seems to me very important that we should make quite sure whether we are right in approving the use of the word "final" in regard to this settlement. I should like to feel that the House would probably say that this is, in a very substantial measure, a big step in the right direction, but I should not like to feel it is absolutely final. I would still hope that, if the Egyptian Government still continue to default on the very substantial difference which remains between what was the full measure claimed and what in fact is now going to be given to those with claims worth over £10,000, and if they still resist the perfectly reasonable arguments which have been put to them, we shall in the future be prepared to do a little more. That is why I find it regrettable that in the statement made yesterday the word "final" was used.

Much of the sequestrated property is unusable by those for whom it was desequestrated, and they are the biggest sufferers and benefit least. I think that for many people this will be a very big sacrifice indeed. I would not for a moment accept that there is anything less wrong in treating a company worse than an individual. I would say that companies and individuals here are all involved and there is a clear duty upon the Egyptian Government, a duty which has not been fully met.

Her Majesty's Government have in this Bill gone a long way—and I thank them for it—to meet the most needful of all the claimants. For that we are indeed grateful, but I hope that before we part with the Bill on Third Reading my hon. Friend will explain to the House a little more fully than he has what exactly the statement yesterday really means in relation to the terms of this Bull.

7.53 p.m.

Mr. P. Thomas

I apologise to the House and, indeed, to my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) for not having got to my feet sooner. Because of that my hon. Friend got ahead of me, but I should not like him to feel that we were going to part from this Bill without considering exactly what it means and, to use his own words, what we are doing. Therefore, I am pleased to be able to refer to the Bill again and to say to the House exactly what it means.

First of all, I should like to thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for the expeditious but thorough way in which they have dealt with this Bill at all its stages up to now. As I said on the occasion of Second Reading, this Bill is, in essence, a technical, enabling Measure which gives powers in relation to the Foreign Compensation Commission, and so, perhaps, I may start with that preface and by reminding my hon. Friend that that part of the Bill which he has referred to in particular is Clause 1.

What Clause 1, which was unamended in Committee, does is this. It gives power to the Foreign Compensation Commission to administer or distribute money which might in the future be voted by Parliament. And that is all this Bill does. When we had our Second Reading, I was not, unfortunately, in a position—I apologised at the time—to tell the House what proposals the Government had, but yesterday I was able to make a statement giving in some detail what are our proposals. I do not know whether I should be in order on this Bill to refer to the statement I made yesterday, although I am quite prepared to answer some of the questions which my hon. Friend asked, but I am in some difficulty, for this reason.

Because of the Amendment which has just been passed, there will be an opportunity for debate when the Order in Council is laid before the House. That Order in Council is now subject to the affirmative procedure, and, therefore, there will be a debate on the contents of the Order, which will of course be the scales of payment and also the categories of people who will be able to claim. Having said that, I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not go into the details he seeks, in regard to the very full statement which I made yesterday. All I should like to say about the Order is that it is our intention to lay it as soon as this Bill has had its full passage. We hope that will be at the beginning of next term; that will be 22nd January. That is the date that we hope to lay the Order.

Clause 2 of the Bill, as I explained to the House on Second Reading, will enable the Foreign Compensation Commission to be directed to pay into the Exchequer the sums which have been and which in future will be deducted in respect of loans to claimants. There was previously no provision to enable the Foreign Compensation Commission to do this legally, and I think the House accepts that these sums should be paid to the Exchequer. That certainly seems to be the view expressed by hon. Members both on Second Reading and in Committee.

Clause 3 of the Bill, which provides for the payment of pensions and other benefits to members of the Foreign Compensation Commission and to the officers and servants of the Commission in appropriate cases, has been welcomed by both sides, both on Second Reading and in Committee. Indeed, the only criticism which I recall was that these provisions have not been made sooner.

There is something I can say about this. The House might like to know that the recently formed Foreign Compensation Commission Staff Association has been recognised by both the Commission and the Foreign Office and is being consulted about a proposed pension scheme which will enable the persons concerned to be given pensions and other benefits similar to those available to other public service employees.

That is the Bill as amended. I think it is right to say that its purposes and its aims have received general acceptance by the House. Therefore, I commend the Bill to the House, and I hope it will be given its Third Reading. I remind my hon. Friend again that it is an enabling Bill, and unless it is given its Third Reading and unless it is passed no money which this House may vote will be able to be administered by the Commission.

7.59 p.m.

Mr. Mitchison

I would not for one moment suppose that the hon. Member will have to threaten this side of the House in that way. As regards Clause 3, I was extremely glad to hear from him the arrangements which are being made to give full effect to what I am sure are the good intentions of the Foreign Office and the Government in this matter of pensions and other benefits.

As regards Clause 2, if I may take it in reverse order, I would not expect the hon. Gentleman again to confess that the Foreign Office slipped up in the matter. I will not repeat the comments that were made at an earlier stage. In regard to the first Clause, this was, as I had occasion to tell the hon. Gentleman in Committee, a capital instance of what occurred in the case of the South Sea Bubble—an invitation to contribute money for purposes to be disclosed later. The hon. Gentleman has disclosed his purposes in the statement to which he referred, and these purposes will be carried out by Orders in Council. With the exception of one purpose, which is irrelevant to this Bill, the purposes will be carried out by Orders in Council, and we shall then have before us the details of what was set out in the statement but what, perhaps, can hardly be put into a Third Reading debate.

I would merely say to the hon. Gentleman and to the House that I appreciate very much the tale of the cleric who judged the form of his blessing by the appearance of the table, and distinguished between cases where there were wine glasses and cases where there were tumblers. While I think the hon. Gentleman is quite right on the substance of the matter, we might not agree about the cases which were tumblers and the cases which involved wine glasses, and I would also say to him that one cannot always judge beforehand even on this principle. There is a story of a Scotsman who was given a liqueur glass of Curacao, who liked it very much and who said he would have some more in a mug. One never knows where one is getting if one tries to decide on empty glasses, and there are some empty glasses involved here. When I said that the Government were stingy, I mentioned a couple of instances which did not happen to be the same as those to which the hon. Gentleman referred, but if the hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill says, "You really do not know enough to say that", I think I may have to agree with him. We shall, no doubt, see more when the Orders in Council come up.

Lastly, may I say in all sincerity to the hon. Gentleman that I personally feel most grateful to him for the clarity with which he has put the Bill before us and for the courtesy which he has shown to his opponents as well as to his friends in handling it at all stages.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.