HL Deb 31 January 1945 vol 134 cc846-57

4.35 p.m.

LORD DERWENT asked His Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the fact that many of the buildings in which His Majesty's Embassies and Legations abroad are housed are generally admitted to fall short of a suitable standard; and whether His Majesty's Government will consider the provision, where necessary, of more suitable accommodation. The noble Lord said: My Lords, if I say, as I do, that I have no intention of detaining your Lordships unduly long this afternoon, it is not because I have arrived at the conclusion that my Motion is lacking in interest or importance. On the contrary, if I may parody the Roman playwright, I am an Englishman, I consider that everything English is my concern, and my subject is intimately connected with what is becoming not of diminishing but of daily increasing importance—namely, British prestige or what the Chinese call "face," in front of a world no longer unduly impressed with our power when there are already other constellations rising—a phenomenon which has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Winster, on the earlier Motion—a world that will more and more judge us, not on the past or on our built-up reputation, but on present-day results; in other words, a world that is now like the man from Missouri who does not want to be told, he wants to be shown.

No; my Lords, it is because the answer to my question is already partially to be found in the Government Report of 1943 on the proposals for the reform of the Foreign Service and my question should really, therefore, take the form of a desire to have your Lordships informed of what, so far as they can at present be revealed, are His Majesty's Government's intentions with regard to what they state in their Report. This is what they state. It is to be found in paragraph 10 of the White Paper, where the position of members of the Foreign Service when posted abroad is being described: The effective representation of this country abroad will, moreover, involve the provision of adequate Government buildings for Missions and Consulates, as well as adequate staffs, and it will be essential, alter the war, to remember that economies on buildings and staffs are false economies if they result in impaired efficiency or in reduced security for confidential papers. This is clearly an earnest of the Government's good intentions. But what exactly do they and what will the Treasury, that ever-watchful Cerberus, consider as "effective" and as "adequate"?

The proper manner in which our representatives abroad should be lodged is theoretically, I imagine, not in dispute. The Embassy or Legation should be a comfortable lodging for the Ambassador, contain reception rooms which really are fit for receptions and, last but far from least, be visibly worthy of a country with a great tradition and history like our own. The Chancery and other offices should be sufficiently large, modern and well arranged for people to be able to work properly in them. At present of how many that we now possess could this be said? Perhaps I may for the moment draw on my own personal experience, a limited one, it is true, but a varied one all the same, for I have been on five separate occasions on the fringes of the Diplomatic Service. I take care to use this phrase, for I remember that once when quitting one of my posts I asked a somewhat dehydrated gentleman who was at that time one of the private secretaries if he would give me a paper declaring that I had for such and such a period been a member of the Diplomatic Service, and he answered me in the sort of tone that icebergs must use towards each other in the Northern Atlantic: "You have not been a member of the Diplomatic Service, you have been attached to it," to which lapidary statement I had little to answer because, of course, it was indeed the truth.

The building we used in Warsaw in the Nowy Swiat, the main street—poor, stricken Warsaw—as a Legation may have cut a sufficient figure for a Legation; it was certainly not worthy to be an Embassy, as it became later, in a town where fine palaces and houses in spacious grounds existed, one of which could, sooner or later, have certainly been secured as the Americans secured the Raczynski palace, the former home of the present Polish Ambassador in London. The Brussels Embassy, situated in a noisy, tram-infested street, was retrospectively condemned out of hand in my hearing the other day by two heads of Missions who had successively occupied it, on account of the complete inadequacy of its general and entertainment Lebensraum. As for the Madrid Embassy, I have the noble Viscount, Lord Temple-wood's authority to say that he, as it were, took one look at it and ran round the corner, to a house in the spacious main avenue of Madrid, the Castellana.

The Berne Legation, where I spent two years of this war, has, at least, the advantage of being situated in a pleasant quarter of the town, but then, Berne is such a lovely place that this is not difficult. Apart from that it is simply an undersized, though not unattractive villa, with no grounds at all and no privacy, for it stands at the cross roads at the edge of an open space. Some years ago a superb old house in the old town was going begging, the Hotel d'Erlach, which obviously either we or the French Embassy ought to have taken. Now it is too late, because the Swiss Government have taken it over themselves. The Moscow Embassy, which I came to know in 1943, is hideous outside and decorated inside in so preposterous a manner as hardly to bear thinking of, a ghastly pastiche of one of the Loire castles alternating with bogus Louis Quinze.

Of these I can speak from an experience of months. Others are familiar to me from visits paid as a private person. How we can bear to maintain the Embassy at the Porta Pia in Rome when the French there are housed in the sumptuous Palazzo Farnese, I cannot imagine. I am told there is a possibility that His Majesty's Government may purchase the Palazzo Aldobrandini, where I believe Sir Noel Charles is now living. I hope this is true. Against the noble mansion of Pauline Borghese that is now our Paris Embassy there seems little to say. There would be a goad deal to say against its Chancery accommodation, which I know is far too small and which has been described to me by someone who worked there for years as "positively unhygienic." I have said little about this important question, being anxious not to lengthen your afternoon, but the problem will come on the tapis with increased urgency after the war if only for the reason given in the Government statement, that in any case it will be necessary to increase the size of diplomatic: staffs abroad if we are to make our influence more widely felt. There seem to be, so far as I know, few criticisms to be levelled at the Cairo Embassy in its pretty position on the edge of the Nile, or that at Teheran with its beautiful gardens, or that at Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris. Our Lisbon Embassy, on the other hand, is far too small, attractive though it be, and I trust that the story that we are going to retain the fascinating eighteenth century palace that we have been obliged to take over as well for war purposes, is an accurate one.

Amongst others, since I have now come to an end of the ones I know personally, there are several that will come within the scope of the same new problem. I refer to the Embassies and Legations in towns like The Hague, Athens, Bucharest, Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna and Berlin, which may have suffered, or may still suffer, war damage, which will therefore have to be repaired or replaced. Of the Berlin one I gather we should be well rid, and with regard to the Vienna one I should like to urge strongly that when the times comes for a reconstituted Austria we make a special effort, in view of what cannot fail to be the enhanced and indeed eternal importance of Vienna as a centre of gravity for middle and south-eastern Europe. So far as I know we have only had a hired house there since the thirties, when the former Legation was sold. The Scandinavian Legations appear to be satisfactory. In the Baltic States, in view of what I hope will continue to be our dose collaboration with Russia, I express the hope that we shall take particular trouble to see that they are brought and kept up to standard. I have said nothing of Washington or of Ankara because the former is newly built and the latter is, I gather, going to be built shortly.

There remains for the only to say a word about South America, an area of the world's surface which will long be one of the international battlegrounds for influence and commercial advantage. I am told on good authority that in the cases of Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, the two most important capitals, we have a really shocking house in the former, built in what can only be called purest Pont Street style, and in the latter we have none at all of our own but that at least we intend to build one. Santiago is the best of the others, Montevideo is quite good and the Ministry of Works' new one at Lima is adequate; but in none of the other South American States have we anything but hired houses, and I am all through what I am saying going on the assumption that it is desirable that we should own the houses ourselves. I am prepared to be contradicted on this point, but most of the diplomats I have talked to seem to be agreed that I am right.

This question of finance brings me to the main commentary I have to make on what I think will be admitted to be a not very attractive picture. The Ministry of Works has always seemed to be hampered by the illusion that it would be imprudent to press a rightly cautious Treasury to increase its expenditure for the acquisition of suitable houses because Parliament in particular, and the country in general, would consider such expenditure as unjustifiable. My answer is that I do not believe either Parliament or the public ever think about it at all because the question is never brought to their notice; for unless something sensational happens I ant afraid a gentleman sent to lie abroad for his country is most of the time out of sight, out of mind, as are the conditions under which he and his staff are living and working. This is ungrateful and unfair, but only human. If and when the question is brought up I have no reason at all to believe that what is a mere drop in the ocean in relation to the vast State expenditure to which recent years have accustomed us, would be begrudged for so visibly worthy an end. I might even be cynical and suggest that it would not even be noticed.

My second comment concerns something I have not yet mentioned which causes many people besides myself both surprise and irritation. Why are the interiors of the houses our heads of Missions are granted, so completely, so hopelessly unrepresentative of their country of origin? Apart from the usual dull and forbidding pictures of Their Majesties that have to be hung as a sort of desiccated symbol there is usually nothing to show that British art, ancient or modern, exists at all. There is nothing to show that British furniture, in particular that of the eighteenth century, is some of the most charming in the world. Even if samples of secondary importance were chosen they could still be both delightful and representative and the initial expenditure, no more than the insurance premiums, need not be anything alarming. Such an innovation would relieve the unfortunate heads of Missions from being obliged to transport van loads of their own furniture all over the world and thus relieve the public purse on that side. They could perfectly well have enough furniture for their own private rooms in the Embassies and Legations, and I have no doubt that most of them would be well satisfied to be saddled only with that. The one hundred pictures which a gracious gesture of his late Majesty—I am not sure whether it was his late Majesty or his present Majesty—released from Hampton Court were a beginning, but a small one, almost as small as the £200 a year that I think the Treasury allocated at one period for this purpose.

Finally, my Lords, to return to what I said at the outset, we are faced in this century with a highly competitive and a highly critical world, with new competitors and heightened criticism. The days have gone by when a Minister to a South American State could be seen in full view of the public, as one has been known to be seen, walking about his garden in close conversation, a tarpaulin draped over his shoulder and a parrot perched on the tarpaulin, and the only result would be a slight shrug of the onlookers at British eccentricity, since cur power and riches enabled us to get away with anything; the present-day reaction would, I do not doubt, be more sarcastic and more impertinent. To keep our foreign representation up to a standard worthy of our best traditions is no longer something that can be left to the dream of a few serious and conscienious people. We cannot afford, in the modern phrase, to let our back hair down any longer. The personnel is no doubt there and if it is not the Government's statement shows at least that it is alive to the urgent necessity of finding it. If we were in any doubt about the necessity of lodging them suitably, we have had proofs under our very nose here in London of the feelings that other countries in recent years—the totalitarian countries not less but more than others—have cherished about it. I need only instance the trouble both Italy and Germany took about their Embassies, and France, Spain and Portugal—to quote only a few examples—have been but a very short distance behind them. I cannot, therefore, help feeling that I shall be interpreting the general attitude of your Lordships' House if I take it upon myself to say to His Majesty's Government: "Go thou and do likewise."

4.51 p.m.

VISCOUNT MERSEY

My Lords, I do not propose to follow my noble friend in any detail, though I do, as a matter of fact, know a good many of the Embassies and Legations to which he has referred. I do not think that they are, perhaps, all quite so bad. There is one point he has mentioned which I hope the Government will consider. It was the very strong wish of the late Earl of Crawford, whom some of your Lordships will remember—he was First Commissioner of Works and a really admirable judge of decoration—that we should have in this country a garde-meuble, as they have in Paris, in which a collection of furniture, china and decorations of various kinds could be kept, so that it would be available not only for official banquets and functions in London but also to be sent to Embassies abroad for special occasions. I remember that when the French Embassy in London was once entertaining the King, the Paris garde-meuble sent over specially some very fine Sevres dinner services and tapestry. I believe that if we could gradually get together, while there is yet time—for it will not be easy in the future—what my noble friend called a "representative collection" of English Chippendale and Sheraton furniture, or even good copies, which are rarely seen abroad, it would put us on the map a little more than if we merely tie ourselves down to the old plush and gilt decorations with which a great many of our Embassies are furn- ished. I think that this is a matter that might be brought to the notice of the Minister to consider when opportunity arises.

4.54 P.m.

THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (THE EARL OF MUNSTER)

My Lords, I have been asked by my right honourable friend the Minister of Works to reply. The question which has been raised by the noble Lord opposite is born of personal experience for he has had, as he has told the House, the opportunity of studying at first-hand the conditions prevailing in many of the Embassies and Legations abroad to which he was attached during his period in the Diplomatic Service. My noble friend will forgive me if I do not travel the world with rapidity, and deal individually with each case he mentioned where he thought that Embassies should be improved, The noble Lord emphasized, in the course of his very interesting speech, the need for the provision of good buildings not only from the point of view of prestige—or, as he perhaps better describes it, face— valuable as that may be, but also as places in which suitable functions could be held. Finally, I think, he stressed the need for satisfactory office accommodation in the Chancery. The noble Lord instanced certain capital cities where the accommodation provided for British Ambassadors or Ministers was what I may describe as satisfactory, less satisfactory or even poor, and he went on to indicate how and where improvements should be made.

I do not think that my right honourable friend the Minister of Works would find it easy to devise a standard which would meet the many and varied needs of any particular Embassy or Legation abroad. It is true that it might be easy to lay down scales of accomodation which might serve as a general guide, but, in the end, it is the particular needs of the individual post which must determine the character or feature of the building and the extent of the accommodation which is particularly required. I, therefore, think—and I feel sure that my noble friend will agree with me in this—that it would be difficult to have a uniform or ideal type of building for every Embassy or Legation. In point of fact, they must differ widely. In the first instance, the climatic condi- Lions in Europe are, as we know, quite different from those prevailing in the Far East or in South America. Again, the standard of entertainment expected from British representatives differs considerably in various parts of the world; and, finally, we must not forget the idiosyncracies of the people of foreign lands. In some capitals a town house might be the appropriate residence for the Minister; in others it might be a question of erecting a house on a site on the outskirts of the city; and in some places, such as Teheran and Addis Ababa, the provision of buildings within a compound may be most suitable. But taking all the British Embassies which the noble Lord mentioned, I hardly think it is possible to condemn all the existing buildings any more than it is, in fact, possible to praise them.

Your Lordships know very well, and certainly the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, will know better than I, that over a period of years the work entailed in an Embassy or Legation overseas has literally increased by leaps and bounds, and, in most places, extra accommodation has had to be obtained. In some places, this has been done by hiring, but in others new building schemes have become necessary. Now how different, therefore, is the position today from what it was in the days when the Duke of Wellington advised His Majesty's Government to buy the Embassy in Paris in 1814, or, again, when the Embassy in Brussels was purchased in 1887, or, lastly, when the Embassy in Washington, which was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, was built in 1930 at a cost of something like £200,000. At those times, all those buildings were suitable for the representatives of His Majesty's Government overseas, and indeed the office accommodation was amply sufficient for the small staffs which were employed. But it is not in any way disputed by His Majesty's Government that although some of the existing Embassies have been enlarged or adapted—and the process has been going on continually—some of them are still insufficient for their present purposes, or, in point of fact, need replacement.

I need not refer to the special difficulties which are being encountered at the present time. The reasons for them, I think, will be obvious to everyone, but it is really to the future that we must look, and it is to the future that I shall address my remaining remarks. In 1943, as the noble Lord pointed out, the Foreign Secretary issued a White Paper giving the Government's proposals for the reform of the Diplomatic Service. Your Lordships will recollect that the basis of recruitment was to be broadened so as to include candidates with little or no private means of their own. It was quite clear that if this scheme was to be brought about it would be necessary for the State to provide adequate and adequately equipped houses and offices in which to accommodate them; and indeed that was fully recognized in that part of the White Paper which my noble friend read to your Lordships.

The times have considerably changed, as I say, from the days when these Embassies were purchased, and except for a few isolated cases I do not think that it will be possible for British representatives abroad in the years that lie ahead to be rich men such as we knew in the past, or the owners of rare and beautiful works with which they decorated the buildings in which they were housed. Other provisions, I think, must be made if the new scheme to which the noble Lord and I have drawn attention is to become effective. It was some years ago that I piloted through this House a Government Bill which enabled pictures to be lent to Embassies and Legations abroad. If my recollection serves me, the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, took part in the debate on that occasion. Following the publication of this White Paper, the Ministry of Works together with the Foreign Office considered the measures which would be necessary to supplement and generally to improve the buildings and furnishings of diplomatic residences in the light of the proposals which the Foreign Secretary had made. The measures which they advocated have received the approval in principle of His Majesty's Government, for we recognize that there is a necessity for providing His Majesty's representatives abroad with buildings which are suitably designed, dignified in appearance, and adequately equipped for their purpose.

Perhaps I may very briefly give the House some indication of what we have at the back of our minds for the future. The situation of the residency and of the office building clearly has to be chosen in the light of various considerations which may apply to different countries and different cities, but generally speaking it is intended that the Ambassador's house should be situated in the best residential quarter. The office building, on the other hand, will be more often than not in the business quarter of the city. My noble friend will see, therefore, that the need of good buildings from the point of view of prestige is fully recognized and indeed accepted by the Government. In the future planning of Embassies and Legations it is our intention that the representatives whom we send abroad should be provided with easily run and economical living accommodation for their everyday use, in addition to the larger State rooms which will be provided for hospitality to be shown. I need not go into further details of the accommodation which will be provided, but my noble friend will observe at once that we do appreciate the need for buildings specially designed for entertainment purposes.

I agree also with the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, that it is equally desirable to provide satisfactory office accommodation for the Chancery, and in fact plans to provide the requisite office accommodation in the most satisfactory manner have already been considered. In most cases I am told that these offices will be situated in one building away from the residence, so as to make easily available for the visitor the various office staffs. At the same time we intend to provide a large conference room and other suitable accommodation for meetings of the British community. Lastly, I should like to deal with the special case of South America, which was mentioned by my noble friend. I am happy to say that it is the intention of the Government to acquire this year a new and better Embassy in Buenos Aires, and to start building a new Embassy in Rio de Janeiro. Plans are also in hand to acquire a site in Bogota. In all these three cities our aim will be to provide a dignified and efficient residence such as the noble Lord advocated. I think he will agree with me that all this will increase considerably the expenditure on British residences abroad, and I hope that he will be prepared to admit that my right honourable friend is now ready to spend money on useful purposes. With regard to the question addressed to me by my noble friend Lord Mersey, I will certainly communicate that to my right honourable friend. It is true, as he says, that it was always in the heart of the late Lord Crawford, who was very anxious for many years to start such a garde-meuble in this country.