HC Deb 08 November 1962 vol 666 cc1301-12

Motion made, and Question proposed.That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. J. E. B. Hill]

10.15 p.m.

Mr. Roy Mason (Barnsley)

I have been prompted to raise again this evening the problem of bringing deceased Service men home for burial because a most distressing case was brought to my attention during the Recess, the case of Private Walton, who was killed in Germany on 31st August. Private Walton left in Germany a wife and a ten-month-old child, and his wife was expecting another child. His mother at home had been widowed earlier in the year, and she had with her five children.

Obviously, no money was immediately available for the mother to fly to her son's funeral in Germany. The relatives inquired, but, of course, they received from the War Office the usual statement that there were no public funds available for the purpose, no funds either to fly the body back from Germany to Britain or to fly any of the immediate relatives from the United Kingdom to be present at the funeral service.

The grief-stricken young widow, with her ten-month-old baby and expecting another child, was left standing virtually alone at the graveside. At home there were distressed relatives aching to be by her side but financially unable to do so.

The Under-Secretary of State for War must know that this question has been raised many times in this House. Indeed, it has been raised in the past few months by my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Mr. Fitch) and St. Helens (Mr. Spriggs), while my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) has a most distressing case to deal with even at this moment. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Short) had another distressing case to deal with a short time ago when Trooper Chambers was killed in Germany. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have also raised the question with the War Office and the other Service Ministries many times. We think that it is time that the policy was changed.

The Under-Secretary will no doubt remember that at the height of this most distressing episode, on 5th September, 1962, one of our local papers in Yorkshire—the Sheffield Telegraph—published what was a memorandum to the War Office. Indeed, it was so entitled, and the other heading was "Try a Little Humanity". I wish to quote the opening paragraphs: This morning the death of a Yorkshire private in Germany once again brings disrepute on the Army, whose hide-bound attitude to the funeral and the man's family must distress servicemen's folk and bring despair to Army recruiting offices everywhere. Let us be frank about it. The case of Private Eric Walton, of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, is just one in a succession that have stirred public shame and indignation. Not only in my opinion, but in the opinion of many hon. Members of this House, this is a policy of meanness and of callous indifference on the part of the War Office. It is a heartbreak policy, and what is more, it is discriminatory, as I hope to prove as I go along.

There are many compassionate cases. Indeed, thousands are brought home from all the various stations abroad, many of whom come here because they are seriously ill or seriously injured. They are flown home and receive treatment and immediately they are better and fit to go back in the line, they do so. The War Office flies them home and gives them treatment when they are seriously ill or seriously injured in order to get them back into the line again; but, immediately they are dead, their numbers are rubbed out in the War Office, which immediately forgets them as if they had never served at all. I think that this is most despicable, and that it is time the policy was changed.

Indeed, the War Office is not only inhuman, but inefficient as well. This accident took place on 31st August, and even today we have not yet received any inquiry report about the accident, in spite of my letter to the War Office. We have not yet received any report on how this accident took place and who was responsible. As I have said, this is nothing new; it has been raised many times in the House. There have been Adjournment debates over the past ten years, and many Questions from both sides of the House. There is growing concern among hon. Members. I could understand that some years ago refusal to alter this system was warranted, but it is not warranted now. The shortage of troopships, transport costs and other things probably made it administratively difficult to make the change, but this is not so now.

My first question is: is it possible to do what I suggest? British United Airways, under contract to the Ministry to carry our troops for trooping purposes, is making 314 flights a month to and from Germany. There are about thirteen other charter flights by independent airlines each month. Therefore, about 327 flights a month are going in and out of Germany. Over 10,000 troops a month are carried.

During the last twelve months, 534 soldiers have been flown from Germany to the United Kingdom because they were ill or injured. Some of them were stretcher cases, so it is obvious that the aircraft are equipped to take either stretchers or coffins. To bring all these people home would cost the War Office about £16,000 a year. During the same period, 2,358 soldiers have been flown home for compassionate reasons. This would cost about £70,000. This is laudable and I applaud the efforts of the War Office for thinking of those seriously ill and those who wish to come home urgently for compassionate reasons.

During 1961, fifty-nine British soldiers died in Germany. To have brought them all home and to have allowed them to be buried in their own country would have cost the War Office £3,500 at the most. This is a trifling sum compared with the annual expenditure on the maintenance of the British Army of the Rhine.

Those of us conversant with these matters know that regular flights of R.A.F. Transport Command go to all the stations of the Middle East and Far East. Twenty-three Britannias, 11 Comets and 48 Hastings are on a regular shuttle service to Cyprus, El Adem, Aden, Gan and Singapore. During the last twelve months 950 Service men have been flown home in R.A.F. aircraft from the Middle East and Far East because of illness or serious injury. During the same period, 35 Service men have died in the Middle East and 31 in the Far East. These, too, could have been flown home in R.A.F. aircraft. The cost could have gone on the Air Ministry Vote, although I appreciate that that Department is not strictly responsible. The responsibility is that of the Secretary of State for War. The cost of this would have been £9,000 at the most.

The Minister has admitted to me in Questions that to have brought all deceased soldiers home from every station in the world would have cost £15,000 in twelve months. The Minister's reply is in my dossier if he wishes to peruse it at the conclusion of the debate. This is a trifling sum compared with the £1,721 million a year spent on defence. All that I wish is that we have a Minister at the War Office who has the guts and courage to effect this change. I submit that it is feasible and cheap.

Secondly, is not this practice discriminatory. My hon. Friend the Member for Small Heath has been finding this out recently. We all know that it is discriminatory. Families of wealth can bring their sons or husbands home. They have the choice of a family grave, a local cemetery or cremation if they wish. In the case of Private Walton's family, because of their circumstances, that was out of the question. This is true of the majority of cases. Discrimination, therefore, results. This kills the principle that the War Office has always enunciated that soldiers all prefer to be buried by their comrades in arms. This is absolute bunkum. The truth is that because families cannot afford to bring their sons and husbands home, there is no choice.

Administrative difficulty is another reason that the War Office has trotted out. On the contrary, it is administratively easier to do what I suggest, because at every station abroad arrangements and procedures are laid down so that as soon as a Service man dies, his body is placed in a coffin. It is just as easy for him to be placed in a coffin prepared for transport. Once the coffin is on the aircraft, the job is completed for the station abroad. The man's family and effects have to come home, so they might as well come at the same time.

That is done by many countries. We lag far behind in this respect. In the United Kingdom, transport to a home town can be just as simply arranged, and it is occasionally done, because every time a family of wealth wishes to bring its son or husband home, it is done. The Minister knows, as do all the Service Ministers, that those who have the cash can get their sons or husbands home. Administratively, therefore, there is no grave digging to arrange, no funeral ceremony, no arrangements for families to worry about, no Questions in the House or Adjournment debates and fewer inquiries. Consequently, for the War Office and other Service Departments it would be administratively easier. I should imagine that civil servants in every Service Ministry hope that the present policy will quickly change. In total, therefore, the present policy is outdated, mean and discriminatory. I have proved that to change it is feasible and cheap.

Many countries are doing what I suggest. They fly all their deceased Service men, their widows and effects home immediately. Belgium does it. France brought home all her Service men who were killed in Algeria. The Netherlands is changing its policy in this way and Portugal does it for most of her Service men abroad. It is an indictment and a shame on this House, and on the War Office in particular, that we are not starting to change our mind.

If the War Office is not prepared to do this, there are other bodies who would shame it into doing so. British United Airways, is doing quite well on the charter operations of trooping between the United Kingdom and Germany. In 1959, its group trading profit was £1,145,369. In 1960, it had nearly doubled, due in the main to trooping, to £2,065,565. The 1961 profits are due to be declared any day and they are bound to show an increase. B.U.A. has a good steady contract, which, obviously, will continue for a number of years. Trooping under the contract from the War Office is mainly responsible for these profits.

What a fine public gesture it would be if British United Airways would bear the cost. The cost to the War Office would be £3,500 a year, but to B.U.A., running its own services, the cost would probably be much less. What a small percentage of the profits it would be. If the company wished to do it, it could. Last year, fifty-nine soldiers died in Germany, or approximately one per week. B.U.A. has 314 flights per month in and out of Germany. What it amounts to is that in those 314 flights, room would be needed for about four coffins per month. Indeed, it is not worth arguing about.

I would also suggest that the arms manufacturers might help if they so wished because of the many Service contracts on which they thrive. If one of them gave £1,500 as a gesture to the Services it would be sufficient to fly home the bodies of all the deceased Service men who had expressed a wish to be buried at home.

The War Office has always argued in the past that soldiers do not wish it, that they prefer to be buried where they have served, near their comrades in arms. I challenge the Minister to hold a referendum among members of Her Majesty's Forces, and, if he wishes, he can include in the referendum the fact that they should pay for it themselves. It would represent the payment of 1d. per month —indeed of only ¾d. per month. It could be done. It would cost the soldier a farthing a week to have this facility. But the War Office in its meanness will not pay that amount.

If the Minister took a referendum among the men in the three Services he would find that the majority would be willing, indeed anxious, even if they had to pay for it themselves, to have their bodies flown home and buried either in family graves or in their local cemeteries. I hope that the War Office will relent. But if no announcement of a complete change is forthcoming, I hope at least that serious and sympathetic consideration will be given to effecting a change in this heartbreaking, miserly and discriminatory policy.

10.32 p.m.

Mr. Clive Bossom (Leominster)

As the practice of long standing is not to bring home a soldier's body in peace time, I suggest that my hon. Friend might consider allowing two relatives to attend a funeral at public expense, especially in a country like Germany.

Having been a Regular soldier after the war and served in the Middle East and Far East, I realise the many problems there are in this matter, especially in tropical climates, and also that the local health authority regulations state that one must bury a body within twenty-four hours. I was stationed in Hong Kong and Singapore and there I know that exhumation is not permitted in one case until after four years and in the other until after five years. In such circumstances, I have always thought that the Government should pay for the cremation of a soldier's body and should return the ashes to the next of kin free of charge.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will look sympathetically into these two suggestions.

10.33 p.m.

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

I realise that other hon. Members have an interest in this subject, but I think that in the time available it would be best if I attempted to state the Government's position in reply to the hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason).

The hon. Member addressed his complaint to me as representing the War Office and he had occasion to accuse the War Office of inhumanity. I think I should point out at the very outset that the practice which we follow in these matters is one common to all three Services and that what I have to say about our policy and the future of our policy in this regard applies equally to all three Service Departments.

Perhaps I had better begin by making clear what happens in the sad event of a Service man dying abroad. When this happens the funeral, according to present arrangements, is carried out at public expense by the Service authority under whom the man in question has come and burial is in a Service cemetery, if there is one there, or, failing that, in a reservation in a civilian cemetery belonging to the Service and set aside for that purpose.

I do not believe that anyone who like myself has attended a military funeral— and I am sure other hon. Members have —would dispute what a moving, impressive and altogether fitting ceremony it can be. The House might wish me to pay tribute to the work of the War Graves Commission, on which hon. Members are represented, for what it does in the way of maintenance of the graves of our soldiers abroad.

I do not dispute that there are strong feelings about this subject on the lines which the hon. Member for Barnsley offered tonight. I do not dispute that these genuinely sincere feelings are held. What we have to consider in the light of those feelings, but equally in the face of the difficulties in satisfying them, is: what is the right course for the Services to pursue in this matter of repatriation? I have been through all this very carefully, not only in the light of the hon. Member's representations but of others made to me orally and in writing; it might help the House if I try to fill in a little of the background, which is complex and not quite so simple as he made out.

I have found that there is quite a different approach in this matter as be-members of the three Services. For example, I am advised toy the Admiralty and the Royal Air Force that few of the next-of-kin of their people ask for repatriation. The War Office gets many more requests, yet if one analyses the requests and the figures one finds that in only a minority of cases do the next-of-kin of those affected as for repatriation; according to the figures I have it is about one-third. It seems that in the 245 cases, which is the extent of this in the three Services in the last year, the majority of next-of-kin accepted the present policy.

Mr. Denis Howell (Birmingham, Small Heath)

They had no choice.

Mr. Ramsden

I have been trying to analyse and think over, so as to explain to the House, the main reason which has been put forward by spokesmen of successive Governments—not all of this party—in favour of this policy of burial abroad. The principal and first argument always offered, on which successive Governments have stood, is that it has been the tradition of the Services that it is in every way a proper and fitting thing that those who have died or been killed in the service of their country abroad should be buried by their fellow Service men near where they have been serving and have died.

I have asked myself: what is the force of this argument on which Governments have successively stood? It seems an argument which gives weight to a tradition and to the sense of corporateness and comradeship in a fighting service. I think that this is an argument which has more force in relation to Regular forces than it has in relation to forces in which there is a large element of National Service. This, perhaps, is the explanation why the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Service, which, for some time now, have had no National Service men have been more prepared to accept this policy than the Army where the National Service element persists. It is reasonable for a Regular soldier and his family to accept this practice as, so to speak, part of his terms of service, part of the professional conditions into Which he enters as part of his Service life, just as civilians in the overseas services—this applies equally to them—accept the fact that if they die abroad they are buried there and do not have the benefit of repatriation.

It is well, when we are thinking about what the future of our policy should be, to bear in mind that soon the Army will be an all-Regular Army again. We should take account of this, and take account of the fact that before the war, when we had an all-Regular Army, complaints of this nature were few, before we make up our minds to consider changing this policy.

Mr. Mason

It was impossible to do it then.

Mr. Ramsden

I will deal with the points made by the hon. Member, the first of which was that owing to the increasing air movement of troops and air trooping it should be much easier now to achieve repatriation. I can only tell him that I have been into this and that it is not as easy as he made it appear in his speech.

Mr. Howell

The Americans do it.

Mr. Ramsden

The Americans use their own freighters, their own Service freighters. We use air trooping companies, and I am advised that there would be considerable difficulty in renegotiating contracts with them to provide for the carriage of freight. Their arrangements with us cover the carriage of personnel and the baggage attending the personnel, and in the case of having to transport coffins the difficulties of making arrangements are considerable.

The hon. Member said that the present policy was discriminatory and that it introduces one law for the rich and one law for the poor. I point out to him that no matter who it is, we are always at pains to discourage the next-of-kin from making any effort in the direction of repatriation and to convince them of the reasonableness of what we advise —that their deceased relatives should be buried abroad. We cannot help it if our advice over what is the sensible course is turned down. We give that advice, and if people neglect it to pay more for that facility we can do nothing about it.

Lady Megan Lloyd George (Carmarthen)

rose—

Mr. Ramsden

The hon. Lady must allow me to conclude my speech.

The hon. Member talked mainly about Germany, but he will accept that whatever we did would have to be fairly applied between one theatre and another, and there are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster said, considerable practical difficulties about trying to implement a policy of repatriation in the Far East and in tropical countries.

Mr. Denis Howell

Everybody else does it.

Mr. Ramsden

Facilities for the treatment of bodies by undertakers, which I need not discuss, are necessary in these hot climates, and such arrangements are beyond the scope of what it is possible for us to achieve with our forces at present.

I believe that for these reasons, and for other very good reasons into which I have not time to go, we ought to stand on our present policy over repatriation. But I have been looking at what it might be possible for us to do to make things easier for relatives. Without giving the House or the hon. Member any commitment—because I must consult my colleagues over this and it has to be examined—I can undertake to look at the possibilities of cremation and the repatriation of ashes.

Mr. Denis Howell

The Minister will get into religious trouble.

Mr. Ramsden

The hon. Member has put his finger on it. All these things have their difficulties. But we will examine this, and I will undertake to look at the possibility of making some arrangements for the next-of-kin to attend funerals in Germany. I have already spoken of the difficulties in tropical countries, where the time factor is the main difficulty. But I undertake to look at the position in Germany.

I hope that the hon. Member is convinced that we have taken this matter seriously and that we shall see what we can do to help. It is a very difficult question. I can make no promise, but on the lines and within the limitations—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half-an-hour, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at a quarter to Eleven o'clock.