DIPLOMATIC PRIVILEGES (Hansard, 26 January 1966)

§ Commander Anthony Courtney (Harrow, East)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make further provision with regard to diplomatic privileges and immunities. My Bill would amend the law relating to the diplomatic immunities and privileges granted to representatives of foreign States here in London. The House will recollect that I have on a number of occasions in the past drawn the attention of hon. Members to the abuse of diplomatic immunity and privilege, a continuing and calculated abuse, which is carried out by the representatives of a small minority of foreign embassies in London. In particular, in the debate on the Diplomatic Privileges Bill, in July, 1964, I endeavoured unsuccessfully, with the co-operation of some of my hon. Friends, to bring to an end certain special arrangements existing between Her Majesty's Government and four particular Governments in respect of diplomatic immunity.

356 There have been certain developments since then which, I submit, strengthen the arguments which I put forward on that occasion. First, in company with about 100 other nations, the United Kingdom has ratified the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. This, as the House knows, gives a generally accepted and almost universally well-received framework for the conduct of diplomatic exchanges. In addition to Her Majesty's Government, the Governments of the four countries to whom I have previously drawn attention have also ratified the Vienna convention.

Secondly, we owe a debt to the Americans for the recent publication of the Penkovsky papers, which give evidence from internal Soviet sources of the activities of two powerful intelligence organisations operating from within the Soviet Embassy in London. I refer to the K.G.B. and the G.R.U. K.G.B. can be loosely translated as the State Security Organisation and G.R.U. can again be loosely referred to as a National Intelligence Directorate. We have, in Penkovsky's own words, the story of the continuing activities of these two organisations from within the Soviet Embassy in London.

Thirdly, there is the now well-known technique which is applied by the K.G.B. here in this country against individuals whom it considers to stand in its way. I refer to the methods by which the Russians attempt to remove political opponents from public life by defamation of character. For this they find the free institutions of this country especially suitable for their malignant purposes.

Fourthly, I would mention the Bossard affair. This, which is in the recent memory of all hon. Members, was a clear illustration on our very doorstep of the continuing activities of Soviet espionage here in this country operating with the connivance and assistance of the Soviet Embassy in London under the cloak of diplomatic immunity.

Finally—this is the only welcome development to which I can point—we have the first timid reaction by Her Majesty's Government to this what some of us would describe as an intolerable state of affairs.

We have an excellent booklet to which I have previously drawn attention— 357 "Their Trade is Treachery"—a booklet which has been given a limited circulation and which describes in detail, with factual personal cases, the medieval methods of blackmail and subversion carried out by the representatives of Communist embassies in this country. In particular, this booklet refers in the main to the activities of the two Russian intelligence services which I have mentioned, operating from within the Soviet Embassy.

I should like to ask the Government three questions here. Why is this booklet not available to the public? It is important, it is factual, and it is of the greatest interest to national security. Why do the Government refuse to put it in the Library of the House so that it can be looked at by hon. Members? What are they afraid of?

I believe that my Bill would go a little way towards neutralising the threat to national security of which I believe we have abundant evidence before us today, evidence which has been greatly added to since our discussion of the Diplomatic Privileges Bill in July, 1964. On the one hand, the Bill would seek to ensure that legitimate diplomatic machinery should continue to operate without let or hindrance. On the other, it would attempt to see that abuses of the diplomatic machinery can be kept within hounds which can be dealt with by our small but efficient Security Services.

The Bill would attempt, I hope successfully, to draw a distinction between two clear categories of diplomatic representation, which I call for the moment categories A and B. Category A consists of the vast majority of normal foreign embassies which we are glad to welcome and give hospitality to in this country and which conduct normal diplomacy by normal means. These are the great majority of bona fide diplomatic representatives. I would put into category B, however, the small minority which demand and which are accorded privileges and immunities greater than those laid down in the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations to which they and we and the vast majority of States have subscribed.

It is no coincidence that the principal country which demands these extraordinary degrees of diplomatic immunity—the Soviet Union—is precisely that 358 which is the greatest offender against the laws of diplomatic hospitality. I have endeavoured, in the Bill, to provide a separate scale of representation in the case of category B nations, as allowed for by the terms of the Vienna convention. I believe that this scale of representation, with certain conditions which I have added—I am not an expert on these matters and this can be considered only as a first tentative draft of the Bill—should take into consideration primarily the interests of national security. This is contained in Schedule 1 to the Bill.

It was argued in July, 1964, by the Government of that day, that special immunities were necessary in the cases of the four nations to which I have referred because of the urgency of safeguarding the interests of our own diplomatic representatives in the capitals of those four countries.

If this is true—and I myself do not accept it—I ask, and I think that the House should ask, why it is not necessary to have similar special arrangements in the case of countries such as Poland and Roumania? This booklet contains references to both Poland and Roumania in the conduct of espionage in this country, but, apparently, it is not necessary to make any special arrangements such as those which exist for the other four Communist countries to which I have referred, and it does not seem that ordinary diplomatic procedures are in any way handicapped by the lack of such special arrangements.

If we think of the appalling 20-year security record in this country, and we think, again, of the Soviet Union as the main recipient of these extraordinary immunities, is there anyone in the House so naïve as to believe that it is not at least possible that it is deliberate Soviet policy to make the lives of our representatives in Moscow sufficiently intolerable for special immunities to be asked for by us and for the corresponding reciprocal extraordinary immunities to be demanded and accorded in this country?

It is a curious historical fact that the first statutory mention of diplomatic privilege and immunity comes in an Act in the reign of Queen Anne, introduced because of the action of certain turbulent and disorderly persons who insulted the person of Andrei Artamanovich Matveev, 359 the Ambassador Extraordinary of His Tsarist Majesty, Emperor of Great Russia, by taking him by violence out of his coach in the public street. The wheel has turned full circle since those days, and it is a sad commentary on the present state of our relations with the Soviet Union in particular that an attempt to introduce this Bill should be made by a Member of the House of Commons who has spent many years of his working life attempting to improve Anglo-Soviet relations.

The Bill would go some way towards remedying a situation which, surely, we should no longer tolerate. There is a continuing abuse of our hospitality which cannot go on much longer without action by this House of Commons.