EGYPT: DISTRESS OF EXPELLED BRITISH NATIONALS

HL Deb 12 November 1958 vol 212 cc412-96

3.50 p.m.

Debate resumed.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will allow me to express once more my gratitude to your Lordships for permitting this courtesy and will also show what forbearance your Lordships may should I, as a result of the intermission in my speech, have slightly lost the thread of my argument. During the week-end I have gone over again the catalogue, to me a somewhat melancholy catalogue, the length of which no one can regret more than I do, of the various debates we have held upon this subject. I find that, except on one occasion, which was more than a year ago, my own part has been limited to answering questions or replying at the end of a debate to a number of individual points and arguments. Without any disrespect either to the House or to myself, I think that it is quite inevitable that over such a period of time a certain amount of misunderstanding, both about fact and argument, is likely to accumulate, and I have risen thus early in the debate this afternoon because, after reflection, I thought that it would be more useful, in the hope of clearing away some of this misunderstanding, that I should review the situation from the point of view of the Government, in order to give, so far as I am able to do so, a coherent view of the facts and arguments as we see them. This and what follows will, I hope, help to answer the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who expressed an interest in this part of the subject.

It is estimated that at the time of the events of 1956 there were upwards of 13,000 British subjects resident in Egypt. Of these about 3,000 were of United Kingdom origin, 4,500 were Cypriots, 5,000 were Maltese and 700 were of mixed Commonwealth origin. Of this figure of 13,000, a large number left Egypt, though not (as my noble friend said) all of them, and we estimate that between 7,000 and 8,000 came to this country, of whom about 6,250 are estimated still to be resident here. I may say, in passing, though it is irrelevant to my main theme, that about 1,500 have been assisted to emigrate to various parts of the Commonwealth and of the world, I think mainly to Australia, as a result of schemes which have been in force. Of the 6,250, about 4,000 have been resettled by the Resettlement Board and about 500 remain to be resettled. About 1,000 persons have received ex gratia loans without seeking further aid from the Board. Of the 7,000-odd refugees who came to Britain in this way, it would seem that about two-thirds had few or no tangible assets at all. I would say, again in passing, although I am sure that what he said was textually accurate, that I think the picture which my noble friend managed to paint, at any rate in my mind, of the typical refugee being an elderly executive of sixty or thereabouts is not quite accurate. Only about 2,600 had assets which ranked for the loans scheme, and of these well over half, or just over 1,500 had assets in Egypt amounting to £2,000 or less.

My noble friend's Motion draws the attention of Her Majesty's Government "to the continuing distress of British nationals expelled from Egypt." So far as the majority are concerned—that is, the two-thirds who had no assets—my own view is that they were all treated in a manner far more generous, so far as I know, than any other British subjects who have come to this country as refugees have ever been treated before. I gave your Lordships' House in June, 1957, particulars of what had been, and was then being, done. Apart from early teething troubles, of which, of course, there were some, as those of us who have had experience of administrative problems of this kind must expect, I have not heard a word of criticism about the way in which these persons were treated; and since June, 1957, not one single Question relating to that treatment has been put down in either House of Parliament.

LORD LLOYD

My Lords, I have a good deal of experience of these people as well, and if I have not said much about them to-day, it is because I did not want to confuse two issues. In point of fact, I wish to put down another Motion for a debate on the very question of those who have no assets. I do not agree with the noble Viscount. Many of them may have been resettled in the terms of the Resettlement Board, but from many points of view I should not regard them as being resettled. I think that that is a slight over-statement of the noble Viscount. Many of these people are still in great difficulties.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I do not understand why my noble friend did not raise the position of these people to-day if he wanted to do so. The Motion is not limited to those with assets; it draws attention to the hardship of British nationals expelled from Egypt. I would say that I have every intention of discussing this matter to-day. I must tell my noble friend, because I do not think that he has been quite fair about this that no single Question relating to the general treatment has been put down in either House of Parliament. I have been through the copies of Hansard. There have been two Questions in another place, neither of which, I think—

VISCOUNT STANSGATE

My Lords, may I interrupt?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

Do let me finish the sentence.

VISCOUNT STANSGATE

It is a point of Order.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

If it is a point of Order, I am sorry.

VISCOUNT STANSGATE

My Lords, I understood that it is a well-accepted rule that it is quite impossible to discuss in your. Lordships' House the procedure in another place, except a statement made by a Minister.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I am not going to discuss the procedure in another place. There have been two Questions in another place, neither of which involves any qualification of the remark I was making. There was also a Question about an individual case in which the refugee had taken the somewhat unusual course of going to Cyprus. I am talking not of details but of the general position, and I am perfectly sure that your Lordships' House would want me to do so. Having heard my noble friend's speech, although he did not adequately deal with the two-thirds who had no assets, he did not, at any rate in his speech, address one word of criticism regarding the treatment of this large majority.

LORD LLOYD

My Lords, I really must say a word to the noble Viscount about that. If he will look at the OFFICIAL REPORT, the noble Viscount will see that what I said was that there were a large number of people—I did not say the majority, though that makes no difference—who had no assets. I said that many of these people had no adequate resources and that I was not satisfied that they had been resettled. I said that many details depended upon the Government's future policy in regard to the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board, but that as it would take a long time to go into the details, I preferred not to do so, and that I hoped the Government would make a statement on which we could have a discussion.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, as I understood what the noble Lord said, it was that he was concerned lest those who had no assets were off the books of the Resettlement Board too soon. The point that I am making is that there was not one single point of criticism that the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board were treating those on their books ungenerously—although there may be hereafter some criticism. That seems to me to be a legitimate summary of what my noble friend said. My view is—and I feel bound to tell the House this—that they have not only not been treated ungenerously, but they have been treated generously in the matter of grants for businesses, housing grants, resettlement grants, clothing allowances, maintenance allowances, facilities for education and, where it was desired, emigration.

It is as well, if we are going to consider charges of niggardliness and lack of generosity by the Government, that regard should be had to the almost total lack of criticism on this, the primary function of the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board, financed by the taxpayer, and applying to two-thirds of the cases. And it is as well to remember, before we go on to consider the question of those who had assets (which I promise your Lordships I am not going to forget) that before they came under the loans scheme at all, all of those who had assets were entitled to the full advantage of the activities of the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board just as much as those who had none.

There was a family in which I know my noble friend has taken interest, and as to whom he has been in correspondence with one of my colleagues. I do not intend to specify it as a particularly hard case—it would be invidious to do so—but I will return to it later to illustrate another point. This family not only have benefited by the existing loans scheme to the extent of £4,000, in spite of the assets in Egypt to which they laid claim, but have received another £1,800 by way of grant or maintenance from the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board; so that, in addition to the loans scheme, over the period of two years they received £5,880. I think it is unfair on the part of noble Lords to talk only in terms of the loans scheme, whereas, in fact, in some cases, whether they have substantial assets or whether they have no assets, they may have received sums up to £2,000 by way of grant and not by way of loan.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

We seem to be uncertain about the particular case which the noble and learned Viscount cited, as to whether the £5,000 was by way of loan or by actual grant. He referred to it as if there were other loans besides.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I think the noble Viscount must have misunderstood me. What I said was quite clear: that there were loans of approximately £4,000, and grants and maintenance allowances, which were not loans, of about £1,800, making a total of £5,880.

LORD SILKIN

The noble Viscount said that, in addition to the loans scheme, they had £5.880.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

If I did, I apologise to your Lordships. I intended to say that they had received, in addition to the loans scheme, £1,800 by way of grant or maintenance, so that they received over the period of less than two years £5,880. If I did, by a mistake of the tongue, say the opposite, I apologise. I am anxious not to mislead in any way.

I will come back to the question of those with assets, but before I do so I feel it is necessary—and I am sure the House will agree with me that it is—to discuss a little more in detail the actual physical assets there were, what became of them and to whom they belonged. This may be a long digression, but I must say to the noble Lord and to my noble friend that I do not see how I can present my argument until I make it. If the majority of those who are refugees had no tangible assets, it is equally true, so far as one can judge, that of British assets which were owned in Egypt at the time of the events of 1956 the majority were not owned by those who subsequently became refugees: they were owned by British subjects elsewhere than in Egypt. Here, I am sorry to say, I am not in a position to give exact figures, but it is a fact which from the point of view of the argument I must not pass over.

My noble friend's motion refers only to those who were expelled from Egypt, and draws attention to their hardship, to which in terms the Motion is limited; but, from time to time during your Lordships debates, and, indeed, during my noble friend's speech, there has emerged a quite different proposition, which is a demand for compensation not based on hardship but based on what is alleged to be a legal or moral right to compensation for all sorts of losses. That is quite a different thing from hardship. It is not true that all those who have lost assets are refugees; and it is not true that all those who have lost assets are suffering hardship. You must refuse a claim for compensation, even if there is hardship, if no title to compensation is made; and you must grant a claim for assistance based on hardship, even though a title to compensation is not made out.

I must point out that strictly such a proposition is outside the Motion, to which I am bound, to some extent, to adhere; but I should be surprised if all mention of the subject were excluded from your Lordships' debate this afternoon. For this reason, I cannot avoid observing that, in assessing any question of liability, moral or legal, on the part of the United Kingdom Government to pay compensation for the loss of any of these assets, it is, in my opinion, difficult, and I should have said impossible, to draw any logical distinction between those assets which are and those which are not owned by persons expelled from Egypt. Indeed, in some ways the position of the British resident owners could be argued to be as strong if not stronger. They have at least incurred for many years the obligations which exist in this country.

In any event, neither of the two criteria proposed in this connection at any time by any noble Lord as justification for compensation could be expressed so as to afford any valid distinction between any class of British asset, whether privately owned or owned by a public company of which British subjects are shareholders, whether their owners are refugees or not. The objects of the landings of 1956 included the intention to protect British lives and property but this was not limited to the property which happened to belong to British subjects resident in Egypt at the time.

Before I return to the question of those who had assets in Egypt and who have been expelled, which is the group with whom my noble friend was for one reason or another particularly concerned in his speech, it is important that I should ask your Lordships' indulgence to consider what has happened in the meanwhile to British assets in Egypt whose ownership belongs partly to those expelled and partly to those who resided elsewhere.

Part (I think rather less than half and mainly business assets) were, to use the language of the Egyptian authorities, Egyptianised. This means that businesses built up by the enterprise of British subjects were expropriated and handed over to Egyptian ownership. I am not going to characterise the morality of this procedure, nor must I be taken to accept or endorse its legality. However, it is no good in this connection expostulating about that. The property was seized and expropriated, and whatever else may be true about their procedure the Egyptian authorities have never denied their liability to pay compensation. They admit their liability to pay compensation, though in fact they have never paid. From their point of view—and again I must not be taken as necessarily endorsing it—they regard the property as having been nationalised for social, or, perhaps one might say, socialist, reasons; and the consequence is that they regard themselves as liable to pay compensation for what they have taken, although the property is expropriated. Their failure to pay—which is one of the causes of the delay which we are discussing this afternoon—is certainly not due to any want of anxiety on the part of Her Majesty's Government that they should discharge it, but to other quite different factors which it is probably impossible in the United Kingdom fully to evaluate.

Here I must say something to my noble friend. I do not think he has realised —certainly from the language of his speech he did not indicate that he realised—that the Egyptianised or, shall we say, nationalised property, in respect of which there is an obligation to pay compensation, forms only a part, and probably—I should myself say quite certainly—not the largest part, of British assets in Egypt at the time of the events of 1956. The other and probably—again I would say quite certainly—the biggest part was sequestrated. Again, it is important to recognise the status of this sequestrated property—I am sorry for this discourse, but it is absolutely vital to the understanding of the problem that I should make it—because that, and not the failure of the Egyptian authorities to pay compensation for the Egyptianised or nationalised property, lies very much at the heart of our present practical difficulties. Without going into the question, irrevelant for this purpose, of whether or not a state of war existed, I might say that the process of sequestration in itself does not differ markedly from the process known to the law of this country as the handing over of enemy property to the Custodian of Enemy Property.

The point is that, contrary to what my noble friend said, whatever the merits or demerits of this procedure the essential point is that it is not confiscation, it is not expropriation; and it is not true to say that the sequestrated property has been, in the strict sense, expropriated. The property is held on trust and is administered on trust. I quite recognise that there may be issues between us and the Egyptians as to whether the property has been properly managed. That is a matter for discussion. But the income should be accumulating—and some of it is—subject to whatever administrative charges may ultimately be decided upon. In accordance with ordinary International Law, and at the end of hostilities, the property ought to be handed back to the true owners. This is the essence of the matter, and this is the present position. The sequestrated property is largely there. It is being administered, and the Egyptians, to do them justice, have never once denied their liability to hand it back. It is true that they have not handed it back, but in all the negotiations we have had with them they have fully recognised their obligation to do so. Nor, I think, could any civilised Government do less. Nor is it true to say, as my noble friend appears to think, that most of this property has disappeared into thin air. Of the sequestrated property, which is, I should judge, more than half the whole, 20 per cent. represents bank balances and securities, and 20 per cent, land and buildings, which presumably are bringing in rent.

Here I must put forward one or two contentions. A very large amount of property is at stake on both sides in this matter. It would, at any rate in my opinion, and I believe the House will accept it—but I must at any rate put it forward quite sincerely as my opinion—be utterly wrong for Her Majesty's Government to do any act at the moment which showed that they believed that Colonel Nasser could or should or was likely to retain possession of the sequestrated property or refuse to pay any compensation for the Egyptianised. Such an act would, I believe, be wholly contrary to the interests of this country, because it would practically, if not theoretically, abandon claim to assets amounting, it might be said, to very many millions of pounds, of which most are still in existence and still yielding income, at a time when the Egyptian authorities themselves have never repudiated their liability. It would also mean that, unless we paid out compensation on the basis of the entire claims put forward by the claimants themselves, without further verification, we should have to betray the cause of the same claimants in the negotiations with Egypt when we have hitherto sought steadfastly to maintain their cause.

LORD LLOYD

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Viscount again, but he is dealing with a particular point, and I want to get the facts right. I was perfectly aware of the difference between expropriation and sequestration. The case I have given him—and I believe the facts to be accurate—show that in two years the assets of the business have been dissipated. I venture to think that, from what I have heard through various sources, that is probably true about others. The noble Viscount brushes that point aside, but in point of fact the assets have disappeared: instead of a credit balance, there is a debit balance, an overdraft, of £49,000. That is what I am asking the noble Viscount to deal with, and I should be grateful if he would.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

Nobody is brushing anything aside. The noble Lord has never said, and I do not know, whether this business is alleged to have been nationalised or sequestrated. But on the assumption that it was sequestrated, clearly it is possible for assets to be dissipated, in which case, if they are dissipated as a result of bad management, we are putting forward a claim for compensation. But I have to point out that, speaking in the broad—and we cannot go on discussing individual cases indefinitely—a great number of these assets have either not been dissipated or are not capable of dissipation. Twenty per cent. represents bank balances, some of which are certainly in existence, amounting to millions of pounds, and 20 per cent. represents land and buildings.

I must make this clear. My noble friend says—and I quite accept it—that he understands the difference between sequestration and expropriation. None the less, I think he missed the point of the argument, because he allowed himself to say that the property had all been expropriated, which is not accurate. Moreover, the fact that this large amount of property exists, some of it at any rate in a state to be handed back, is precisely one of the factors one has to take into account in considering what to do.

LORD JESSEL

May I interrupt the noble Viscount? How can he say that bank balances are not capable of being dissipated? I know of a case where a company started with a bank balance which has all been dissipated.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I am afraid that I must have spoken indistinctly, because I said they could be dissipated, though I quoted other things which cannot be. I must apologise for not having said it more clearly. The noble Lord is behind me, and perhaps my voice is not carrying as I was trying to make it do. None the less, we should be doing exactly what I regard as irresponsible and wrong if we either paid out the claimants and took over the claims, or paid out the claimants by satisfying them, in whole or in part, out of the blocked Egyptian balances, which some noble Lords have suggested from time to time. By doing the latter, we should be slamming the door, because the Egyptian sterling balances no more belong to us than the sequestrated property belongs to the Egyptians. We should at the same time be undermining confidence in ourselves as bankers.

Moreover, we should, if we were to take the proceeds of the sterling balances, be betraying the interests of a large class of claimants who are not refugees at all. By taking the other course we should be doing the same thing de facto, because we should be rendering it impossible for the present series of negotiations to continue on their present basis—and that at a time when we do not believe that it is at all out of the question for them to succeed, and when I believe that, on the whole, most people in this House would desire to see them succeed. Moreover, these negotiations are based from one point of view entirely on the separability of individual claims from public claims.

Whilst all this is still unsettled, I would have said, quite sincerely—and again I believe that the House will agree with me on this—that we must cast about for a reasonable and just course of action which is not designed to prejudice the normalisation of relations with Egypt or the ultimate claims of the refugees themselves. This must lead us to look at hardship and again to make loans against claims of assets. This is in fact what we have done, and as I understood it, although I may be wrong, this is exactly what, on March 28. 1957, the noble Lord, Lord Killearn, asked should be done; and I would now wish to discuss with your Lordships the criticisms which are made of it. I am not prepared to admit that in principle, in this conjunction of events, the practice of granting loans was a wrong one, since it was the only way we could find of assisting the refugees which did not at the same time prejudice either the claims or the existence of the negotiations. I am not prepared to admit that the time has yet come for a permanent solution, for to do so would be to abandon hope of very many important advantages which might be obtained. I say this after having carefully studied the state of play in the matter of negotiations.

Here, perhaps it would be fair, if the House would bear with me, if I read out an answer given in another place by the Foreign Secretary this afternoon, because I think it bears on what I am saying. I do not know that it carries it much further, but I think I should, in order to be accurate, refer to it. It was in reply to a Question asking him to make a statement regarding progress towards resumption of diplomatic relations with Egypt. My right honourable friend said: I had a long discussion with the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Republic in New York during the Special Assembly of the United Nations in August. As a result of that we agreed to a speedy resumption of the financial negotiations. There were further discussions in Rome in September which unfortunately did not result in progress. I am considering what can he done to resume the talks with some prospect of a satisfactory solution, but I have nothing further to say publicly at this stage. Noble Lords are, of course, perfectly at liberty to criticise our decision to advance loans, or to make any other criticism on the actual form which the scheme has taken; but since this is the first opportunity I have had since the announcement of the scheme over a year ago to describe it in detail, in answer to some of the criticisms which have been made, I hope that noble Lords on both sides will be extremely slow to make up their minds until they have heard the other side of the case. I do not complain of pressure from noble Lords to increase the scheme. That is what Parliament is for. But I do not regard noble Lords and the Government as being on different sides in this particular matter, and although it may be that we view matters from different points of view—and, indeed, our responsibilities are different, which makes it inevitable that we should do so—I believe that in fact we have the same objects at heart.

No one who knows my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer could conceivably suggest that he was an inhumane or ungenerous man. I hope, though it is not for me to judge, that I am neither inhumane nor ungenerous myself. The fact of the matter is that we have been anxious from the first to do what we could properly do. It may be that we have not had to concern ourselves so much with the plight of the minority of the refugees, as some noble Lords have done. Our concern has had to be equally with those who have had no assets and those who have had only a few. It should not be forgotten that, quite apart from the loans scheme, we have spent £3 million on this group of between 7,000 and 8.000 people, of whom the majority had no tangible assets at all. At the risk of repetition, I draw your Lordships' attention again to the fact that, after the first teething troubles, there has been very little criticism of our treatment of the majority.

I turn back from the assets to the refugees who owned them. I repeat that of the 7,000 to 8,000 refugees we are concerned with not more than about one-third, or about 2,600. More than half of these, about 1,460, had reckonable assets of £2,000 or less. May I say in passing, in reply to my noble friend, that we do not want to get involved in a mass of detail, because I say here and now that any detailed criticisms which have been made will be reported to my right honourable friend, and we can consider them. But I do not think that the criticism that some assets do not reckon for loans at all is quite so solid as my noble friend appeared to think. I do not think that sundry debtors of a business in Egypt or bills receivable by a business in Egypt stand in quite the same position as plant and machinery. Obviously, we must consider these matters of detail. He said that in the one business of which he gave details the debtors had been increased beyond all measure—we do not know their value—and the bills receivable had apparently been dissipated.

In respect of tangible assets of £2,000 or less, the claimants have been paid by way of loan, on their own unverified word, at the rate of no less than 70 per cent. of the amount claimed. No interest has been charged, and it has been expressly stated that no return of the loan will be asked for until something is forthcoming from the Egyptian Government. All these claims are unverified; all of them were expressed in Egyptian pounds or in kind. They included claims at the owners' valuation in respect of furniture, personal effects, vehicles, boats and livestock. I say frankly that I cannot recall any previous instance where public money has been paid out on this scale on the basis of unverified valuation in a foreign currency in respect of matters such as those. I do not call this, and I do not believe the House will call it either, ungenerous or niggardly; and I must say that since the loans scheme has been initiated nobody has put forward a considered suggestion that we could safely have allowed ourselves to advance public money on a much bigger scale.

The original scheme put forward by the Anglo-Egyptian Aid Society itself provided for 80 per cent., which is only a little more, but provided that the claims should first be verified by an impartial body. Since these individual claims are so relatively small, even an increase in the percentage granted would mean no more than a small cash grant, which would make no ultimate difference whatever, however welcome it might be, to the wellbeing of the individual concerned. Yet these claimants amount to no fewer than 1,460, out of a total of 2,600, leaving a group of only 1,160 out of 7,000 persons, or between one in six and one in seven, about whom complaint is now made.

That is the size of the whole problem we are really discussing, or at any rate which my noble friend appeared to be discussing, this afternoon. May I say at once, and absolutely unequivocally, that of course the size of the problem is no measure of its importance. Of course, if this small group of people have, in fact, been the subject of niggardliness, of lack of generosity or of injustice on the part of the Government, it is right for Parliament to insist on a recognition of their claims. It is also right for Parliament, if it be so minded, to say that the fact that they are few in number might make it easier, and not more difficult, for the Treasury to be generous. I would not suggest the contrary. But when we are discussing the somewhat intemperate language which has sometimes been used about these claims, I think it is right that the Government should remind the House that six-sevenths of the problem has been dealt with in a way which has given rise to remarkably little criticism.

I therefore turn to the remaining one-seventh, about 1,160 cases. I am not admitting that there is any legitimate complaint even about them, although of course I will report to my right honourable friend all the criticisms which have been made and ask him to review the situation in the light of those criticisms. Of the 1,160 cases which I have not so far dealt with, 540 are between the £2,000 and £5,000 mark. None of them has received less than £1,500 to date in respect of the loans scheme, alone, apart from what they may have received as resettlement grants from the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board by way of absolute payment. Those with £3,000 and upwards have received £2,000. None of them will have received, by the time the extension I announced the other day has been implemented—less than £1,500, and those with £4,000 and over will have received £2,500.

I personally do not call this particularly ungenerous treatment, in the context which I have been trying to describe. Owing to the fact that these loans go up in steps some of them will have received better treatment even than those with £2,000 and under. Nobody will have received less than half his claim, and all the points which I made in relation to the smaller claims apply equally here, although, of course, the risk to public funds of treating unverified claims in this way is very much greater in any one case.

There remain 620 people or thereabouts with reckonable assets of £5,000 and over of whom 200 have registered £20,000 and over. I should remark at this stage that not by any means all of those who have made claims on the loans are without assets in this country. Some of them are very well off indeed. Moreover, it is true that some of the claims are very large indeed. Out of the 620 individual cases of £5,000 and over, no fewer than 16 form part of a single family unit whose aggregate claims amount to a figure of between £10 million and £20 million—about £1 million each. This single unit has already received £80,000 out of the loans scheme, and will be entitled to receive another £80,000 out of the extension recently announced.

When my noble friend says unequivocally that the time has come to recognise an absolute claim for compensation, which has, as I have pointed out before, not a necessary relationship to hardship at all but is a claim to compensation for assets lost, I should like to inquire what exactly it is that noble Lords are asking us to do to-day. Is it that we should spend between £10 million and £20 million of public money, free of tax, as compensation to a single family? I do not wish to utter one breath of criticism against this single family. I am not going to say that there is the smallest breath of criticism to be uttered against a family that has done so well in the world. But are we really asked to spend money by way of compensation in this way? If we are, I should like to know. I think I am entitled to a constructive answer.

However that may be, because that was an exceptional case, let us look at some of the remaining cases. Not one single person in the group which I am discussing, those with £5,000 or over, has received less than £2,700 under the scheme announced over a year ago. Those with £20,000 and over—remember, this is what they claim—

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Viscount? Does he suggest that these people are making false claims? Because that is the implication.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I certainly neither implied nor intended to imply or suggest it in any way. I only said that this is what they have received in respect of a claim. The noble Marquess is, I think, being unnecessarily critical here. These claims are made in relation to assets at present in Egypt which cannot, in the nature of things, be verified. We all know that if we were claiming a sum of money for a motor car we had lost in those circumstances, we should quite honestly put it down. But public money cannot be paid in full on a claim of that kind, and I am entitled to say that of those who have claimed £5,000 and over nobody at all has received less than £2,700 under the existing scheme, and those with £20,000 and over have received £5,000 on their unverified claims. Under the extension none of them will receive less than £3,200 and the top class will have received £10,000. I do not myself regard such payments as niggardly or ungenerous.

Here, may I again say that I have repeatedly asked noble Lords since I have been handling this question to give me particulars of hard cases. I do so again. In the summer of 1957 I was receiving a regular stream of them—not in excessive numbers, but I was receiving them, and each one was looked into with the greatest care. Some of them I was able to bring within the existing scheme. Some of them I recognised as forming the basis of an extension or modification of the existing scheme. All I tried to help. But I am bound to tell noble Lords that I can recall off-hand only two hard cases of this kind that I have had since the summer of 1957. They came in by way of my noble friend Lord Middleton.

The House will remember that in July we were discussing this subject and the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, asked me whether I was aware that some of the persons concerned had been compelled to seek public assistance. I told him I was not, and that I would be anxious to receive particulars of any cases where that had happened. He sent me two cases. I do not think it was strictly true that they were cases for public assistance, but it so happened that they were both cases where the claimants' assets had been in a business. It is exactly that sort of case which is so helpful, because I was then able to use it as an illustration of the point that business assets ought to be included; and, so far as I know, both of them are covered by the extension which has now been announced. But I must add this. In August the Anglo-Egyptian Aid Society made the suggestion that some of these persons were compelled to seek public assistance. Immediately they were asked for particulars. They have been reminded of that request, but they have not responded to it, and really I must say—

LORD LLOYD

My Lords, is the noble Viscount talking about the Anglo-Egyptian Aid Society or the British Chambers of Commerce in Egypt? We ought to he clear on that.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

The information which I have received indicates the former. But if it is mistaken I would gladly correct it for the latter. The information I have is the former and that is what I said. I should like to make it clear that the fact that we have now announced an extension on this scale does not mean that we shall close our eyes to further hardship, further hard cases or further consideration. I must say that I am not satisfied that we are on the wrong lines as my noble friend suggests.

Let me take the individual case to which I referred some time ago, which is one in which I know my noble friend is personally interested. Again, I do not mention names because I am sure that it is right not to do so. It is the case of a couple who in less than the two years since their arrival have already received £5,880, of which £1,800 has been by way of maintenance and free grant under the resettlement scheme; the remainder has been under the loan scheme—£4,000 or thereabouts. Their total capital in Egypt, or the total claim which they registered, was just over £10,000. Under the extension which I have already announced they will have received about £7,000 out of £10,000. I am not prepared to admit that this is altogether ungenerous treatment as a payment in less than two years.

I know that my noble friend says that if they had been given £10,000 at once in exchange for the Egyptian assets they could have lived on the income of that capital; but, frankly, that is wholly unrealistic. If they were to have spent about £7,000 in two years, which is, so far as I can judge, the situation, including £1,800 of resettlement money, it is evident that they were living at a rate which they certainly could not have got from any income which could have been yielded by £10,000. I am not in the least suggesting that they were spending money improperly. Again, if the noble Marquess suggests that I am uttering a breath of criticism against these people, I indignantly repudiate the suggestion. But it is wholly unrealistic to suggest that had they been given the whole of this claim on the day they landed, it would have yielded an income on which they could spend anything like £7,000.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, in the particular case that my noble friend is talking about, did they spend that money as income or was some of it capital investment?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I cannot say what they have spent; I can only say what they have received.

LORD DERWENT

It makes a difference.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

The proposition which I am putting forward is this. My noble friend spoke as if at some stage they ought to have got their £10,000 of capital in order to allow them to live, as he put it, for the rest of their lives on the investment income. That is the proposition. I am only pointing out that they have received £7,000 which will not be asked for until money is available from the Egyptians in respect of that claim, and it cannot be pretended that if that money was spent over two years it could have been derived from any income which would have been yielded by the capital sum of £10,000. I hope that that is plain. They would have had to dip heavily into their capital in any event, and, in the meantime, I must remind my noble friend, the income on their capital has, one hopes, been accumulating in Cairo and we are trying to get it from the Egyptians—who do not repudiate their liability to account for it.

Let no one suppose that I am speaking of this couple or any other people disrespectfully. I know what they have suffered. I also know the difficulties with which Her Majesty's Government have had to contend. I do not believe that any other class of refugees at any time in our history has been more generously treated than these; but I will not to-day reject out of hand any single criticism that is made. On the contrary, we are anxious for criticism, provided it is constructive criticism.

By the time this extension is in force we shall have dispensed upwards of £10 million on upwards of 7,000 people—£3 million on resettlement, £4 million on the original loans scheme and £3 million more on the extension. I recognise that since I announced the extension in July there has been a considerable delay, but I would say to your Lordships that the reason for that delay is not at all discreditable to Her Majesty's Government. When I made my announcement in July I had reason to hope for an early settlement, and it was in that atmosphere that the discussions were then held. When I returned from Canada in September I immediately resumed my work on this problem, and it seemed to me and my colleagues that as the prospects of a speedy termination to the negotiations were by then less favourable it would be legitimate for Her Majesty's Government to increase the scale of the extension.

The result has been that the limited extension which I promised in July has turned into an extension of 75 per cent. on the whole scheme. Obviously with my right honourable friends at Montreal, Delhi and elsewhere, and also concerned legitimately with other public matters, it was difficult to have the necessary consultations. But I do not think that in the circumstances we wasted any time or failed to consult the parties. I must say I cannot understand the criticism which has been made of the discussions with the parties. If I did, I should be disposed to suggest to your Lordships in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Killearn, that the proof of this particular pudding is in the eating. If the scheme itself is defective in any respect, by all means let it be criticised for its defects; but if it is reasonable, as I have tried to show it is, I should have thought that criticism of the method of discussion was a work of supererogation. But I cannot accept the criticism of the discussion.

In seeking to meet people with financial claims, as the Treasury have to do every day of the week, a long convention has grown up that the Treasury seek to ascertain from them what those claims are and how their grievances are expressed, both in kind and direction, since the Treasury properly wish to use public money to the best advantage and where it will be most appreciated. In dispensing public money there has never been a practice whereby the Treasury enter into a treaty with those who are to receive it; nor has any Treasury official the authority which only a Minister can have in promising disbursement of money. This is the place where schemes have to be announced and that is something for which the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Her Majesty's Government must take responsibility.

We found the discussions extremely valuable to us. We believe that they were in the interests of those whom we seek to serve and in particular of those who were expelled from Egypt. But they could not have taken place at all had we thought that in order to give them reality we were bound to carry with us the agreement on figures of those who were making the claims upon us.

LORD LLOYD

My Lords, the noble and learned Viscount really must not misrepresent what was said. I have never said that in this House. The noble and learned Viscount has already once misrepresented me. I was careful in what I said. I never claimed that Her Majesty's Government should have sought to agree with these people on the figures. I said that it would be advantageous had they had the courtesy to show what was proposed and to invite comments.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, that is exactly what I was saying—that on the whole it was not desirable. What was desirable was to find out where the shoe pinched; and five separate discussions were held with four or five separate organisations. Their view on the question of where they felt the scheme was inadequate was most earnestly solicited, and if my noble friend will do me the courtesy to look at the extension of the scheme I think he will find that almost every legitimate point has been met. It really is not the case that when the Treasury enter into discussions with those claiming money it is their obligation to put to them detailed propositions, with figures, before the discussions can be fruitful or valuable. Nor, had that been the intention, could the discussions have been held at all. I certainly did not intend to misrepresent my noble friend and, so far as I know, I did not do so—certainly not willingly. Certainly those who were in the discussions with us were always eager—and have always been eager—to point out that they have not the right to enter into any such negotiations since they could not, even collectively, represent the whole body of claimants. Their views were of value and were sought, and I believe we have gone a very long way to meet them.

Now I turn to the future. I must say I regret some of the isolated quotations made from time to time, and though I am anxious in no way to misrepresent my noble friend I thought that in the earlier part of his speech it was suggested that Her Majesty's Government do not recognise any obligation to claimants. If such quotations are made they are used out of context. Your Lordships have never heard me say anything of the kind, nor, I think, would any of my colleagues have done so in context. What we have refused to do is to undertake, in advance, to compensate claimants for losses which are not yet fully ascertained in respect of obligations of the Egyptian Government which the Egyptian authorities not only do not repudiate but have accepted in every negotiation we have had with them.

VISCOUNT STANSGATE

My Lords, the noble and learned Viscount is basing his whole case on the fact that it will all be settled up by Colonel Nasser in the end. Can he tell us, on his heart, what amount of money he thinks Colonel Nasser will hand out in compensation for our invasion of Egypt?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I do not think I should be pressed to do so. We have been negotiating and I should not be taxed on figures, for, if so, with all respect to the noble Viscount, I must decline to answer. What I have said is that we cannot undertake in advance to compensate claimants for losses which are not yet fully ascertained in respect of obligations of the Egyptian Government which the Egyptian authorities not only do not repudiate but have accepted in every negotiation we have had them. That is true. We have also refused to accept in principle either of two general propositions which I venture to think no responsible Government can accept. We cannot accept the view that if an expedition has among its objects the protection of British lives and property, that automatically puts upon the British Government an obligation to compensate out of the Consolidated Fund, from the moneys of the taxpayer, anyone who can show that their property was not in fact protected.

LORD KILLEARN

My Lords, is that regardless of the conditions in which the expedition takes place?

VISCOUNT STANSGATE

Hear, hear!

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I have said that we cannot accept the view that the mere circumstance that an expedition has among its objects the protection of British lives and property automatically puts upon the British Government an obligation to compensate out of the Consolidated Fund anyone who can show that their property was not in fact protected.

VISCOUNT STANSGATE

My Lords, even if a British shop was bombed at Port Said we should not pay for it?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I did not say that, and the noble Viscount must not put words into my mouth. Nor, with due respect to the noble Marquess, who I know holds strong views in the matter, which I am sure he knows I respect and to which I give that great weight which we all attach to anything he says, do we accept the general proposition that every time an act of British policy, directly or indirectly, as a result of the violence or lawlessness of a foreign Power, leads to loss on the part of British subjects, there automatically arises a financial obligation on the British taxpayer to make good those losses, whatever happens.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, I understand that the noble and learned Viscount is suggesting that all this arose from the nationalisation of the Suez Canal by Colonel Nasser and that that was a lawless act. In fact it did not arise from that. This action we took in going into Egypt was on our own initiative and that is why we feel that this particular case is sui generis.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I hope that I am not in any way being impatient with the noble Marquess, but I really said not a word about nationalisation of the Suez Canal, nor did I intend a word about nationalisation of the Suez Canal. I am saying that for reasons which I have given, I do not think this is the appropriate moment to discuss the ultimate responsibility in this matter. What I said was (and if the noble Lord will look at it in Hansard he will see my words, and I shall be astonished if the noble Marquess, on reflection, would desire to say the contrary) that we should not accept the general proposition that every time an act of British policy, directly or indirectly, as a result of the violence or lawlessness of a foreign Power, leads to loss on the part of British subjects there automatically arises a financial obligation on the taxpayer.

LORD KILLEARN

My Lords, that is not what we claim at all. We claim that it is sui generis. We are not challenging the general principle; we say that this is quite a special case, as indeed it was.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I am not prepared to agree that it is wholly special, but it may be that there is less between us than appears, and I was about to make that very point. Between that extreme proposition, which we reject, and repudiation of all obligations, which we have never done, there is obviously an immense field for discussion—and, I should have said, for friendly discussion. All I say is that some of that may be premature, and that, at this stage, some is better held in private than in public. I do not believe that the facts I have outlined this afternoon show any want of generosity. Whether expenditure of £10 million of money is the end or whether it is not must depend on what we get from the Egyptian Government, and when. I know that it must be very hard—

LORD KILLEARN

My Lords, is the noble Viscount really contending that until the end of time he is going to shelter behind Nasser—I use that word, which is less offensive than the word I have in mind.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will never use an offensive word in this House. I should have thought that what he put into my mouth is the opposite of what I said. I know that it is very hard for those who have enjoyed much better times to view these matters calmly; I do not even ask that they should. But I hope I am entitled to ask noble Lords to study carefully what I have said before they condemn the Government's policy. I should have thought they would have wanted to consider it. I promise to think about any constructive criticisms made during this afternoon's discussion, and I shall take them back to my right honourable friend and ask him to consider them. In the meantime, I await these arguments, and I can only apologise for the length of time in which this factual statement has led me to indulge.

4.53 p.m.

LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE

My Lords, I am sure that we are grateful to the noble Viscount the Lord President for his full deployment of the Government's case, which I regret I found wholly unconvincing, on the Motion moved by my noble friend Lord Lloyd. The Motion is drawn in general terms, and the Lord President chose, as indeed is his right, to devote a considerable portion of his speech to two-thirds of the British nationals expelled from Egypt who had no assets and who, he claims, have been most generously treated. The previous debates have been concentrated rather upon the case of the British nationals who have been deprived of their livelihood and their possessions, and I propose to devote a few remarks to that particular aspect. If I traverse a few points which were covered by my noble friend Lord Lloyd, and which will no doubt be covered by other noble Lords, it is because I find, in the light of experience, that it never hurts to put the same points three times to any Government in order to make much impression.

Of course, the new scheme announced by the Lord President on October 28 is an improvement on the old, in the form of ex gratia loans. But I would venture to submit that the improved scheme would probably never have seen the light of day had it not been for Parliamentary pressure here and in another place. To me, no scheme of ex gratia loans can be acceptable, on grounds both of practice and of principle, in spite of what the Lord President has said to-day. I shall, in a few moments give my five reasons why the practice is unacceptable. It means that the Government are, in fact, forcing the victims to use the capital for current living. It is no good saying that a man has £7,000 and therefore he is living for two years at the rate of £3,500. That really is not worthy as an argument of the Lord President.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I did not make it.

LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE:

I beg the noble Viscount's pardon.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I said that I did not make it. What I was saying was that it was wholly unrealistic to suppose that if such a man had been paid £10,000 on the day he landed in this country he could have lived on an income at the rate at which he had in fact received money; and that it was absolutely unrealistic to talk in terms of the entire capital being handed over and not being dipped into at all. My point was that it would have to be dipped into.

LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE

My Lords, a large proportion of the capital is probably spent in providing a roof for himself and his family, and that takes a large "bite". You are making the man use an ex gratia loan for his living expenses, be they capital expenditure or on what I would call the monthly house-books. That is wrong. If and when any assets are ever received back in compensation by the man, he will have to repay that particular loan.

The second reason I would submit why the practice of ex gratia loans is quite unacceptable is this. The loan assumes hope of recovery of the security upon which that loan is made. Here I come to what I might term as the glorious optimism of the Lord President in his expectation that in the not distant future everything is going to be quite all right with Colonel Nasser. I was very careful to take down certain of the Lord President's most unconvincing sentences. He regretted that Egypt has not acted according to International Law and returned the property. He was surprised at the delay in doing this by Colonel Nasser. Really! I think he must be about the only noble Lord in this House, apart from perhaps a few very exceptional ones, who has that surprise. He still hopes for normal relations with Egypt. But we all hope for a lot of things we know we are not likely to obtain. He says that in this delay it behoves us all, including the British victims, to display patience. We are, I believe, comparatively fortunate in this House. We are not like these people who have seen the whole of their lives changed, and it is not for us to tell these people to exercise patience. It is rather for us to exercise all the energies and efforts we can to help them.

He said he would condemn Egyptianisation—

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I did not say that. I said that I would not characterise it, and that I must not be taken to endorse its legality or morality.

LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE

My Lords, we will look in Hansard to see what the Lord President said. I took down the words, but I must say at once that I took them down wrongly—my pencil skidded over the paper wrongly. It was said the Egyptians have never denied liability. I really was shocked—I repeat, shocked—at the sort of optimism of the Minister that Colonel Nasser was going to come and "play ball" with us, because in fact I believe that Colonel Nasser has now gone to the Left and, to a large degree, has gone to the Kremlin for his financial assistance. I would also venture the view that Colonel Nasser dare not come to any settlement with us in view of his position with the rest of the more militant Arab national movements

The third reason is that the loan postulates a settlement with the debtors. That is now, I believe, further off than ever, and I do not think that that is a hope which these people should be made to accept. The Rome talks, as was said, broke down in February, and so far as I know there is no immediate sign of any renewal.

The fourth reason is that our past patience has been based on the twin pleas that we must not embarrass the hopeful position with Nasser and we must not press Her Majesty's Government to acknowledge direct obligation to the refugees, because it would weaken Her Majesty's Government's position in current negotiations. These twin arguments are really dead, because what we all hoped, and what the Government hoped, was a temporary position has now become a permanent robbery of British nationals—nothing more and nothing less.

My Lords, there is a fifth, and final, reason why their practice of making ex gratia loans is wrong. The Government are offering ex gratia loans. Thus the money does not become the property of the people; it becomes their own only when certain circumstances which are not likely to come about do come about. I submit that to these nationals the Government should not offer ex gratia loans but, I believe, justice—and here we come straight into conflict with the principle which the Minister has said the Government must stand by. I believe that we now have to leave expediency and get back to face this principle: whether the Government finally accept responsibility for the conditions of these people and their right to compensation for their losses.

The noble Viscount said, of course, that the Government have never denied responsibility. I must say there has been some confusion on this point. I was looking up the statement of the Minister of State in another place, and he said: We do not accept responsibility for this loss. It was the result of the action by the Egyptian Government and not Her Majesty's Government. That is one extreme view: one positive view. There is, of course, the other view, that of the Prime Minister, who said: We fully realise our responsibility and the urgency of the matter for all concerned. That was the Prime Minister speaking, on May 15. I think that we ordinary private Members are quite entitled to have some doubts as to the degree of responsibility which is accepted when we receive two completely opposite statements like that. But, as I have said, we have got to get back to this principle. If the noble Lord looks up the previous debate he will see that on July 16 some noble Lords, including myself, said that we were not debating it that day but that we might have to come back to it, and we have now come back to it.

The Government say that they cannot be responsible for losses to British nationals abroad brought about by the results of war. That sums up the matter in a sentence. That view is, of course, tenaciously held by the Treasury. They fear that if that rule were breached there would be all sorts of repercussions—Malaya, Hong Kong, the citizens who were affected in this war by the bombing, and their claims to compensation for assets. I see all those difficulties confronting the Treasury. They fear that, if this bastion were once breached, all the claimants would try to rush the opening, as it were, and would register their claims. But I say, as my noble friend Lord Salisbury has said, that none of this really applies here. World War I was started because Germany invaded Belgium. World War II was started when Hitler overran Poland. The seizures in the Far East and Malaya have been a result of direct Communist aggression. Our Suez action was deliberate. I am glad that we did it. With most other noble Lords in this House, I supported the policies then, and I still do—though I know that others may not.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I am anxious not to intervene too much, but the noble Lord will agree that I usually give way myself.

LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE

Certainly.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

In point of fact, World War I was started because we declared war on Germany, and that is why our nationals lost their money. World War II was started because we declared war on Germany, and that is why our nationals suffered.

LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE

Yes. With respect, that could be argued, and perhaps my noble friend Lord Salisbury will deal with that. Let us stick to what happened at Suez. The fact is that we took action at Suez in order to protect the lives and property of British nationals and to prevent the spread of the Israeli-Egyptian war in the Middle East. To me, it would be a peculiar anomaly if the protection of the lives and property of British citizens was in fact to be at the cost of depriving those British citizens of their lives and property. That is a very serious contradiction.

My Lords, the argument on admission by Her Majesty's Government is, I believe, one which we must face up to. But, of course, the fact that the principle is admitted does not mean that the Government must pay everybody out at once 100 per cent. The noble Viscount took my noble friend Lord Lloyd rather to task when he quoted individual cases. He said that we must not deal with individual cases. The noble Viscount then dealt with about four individual cases himself, including a family which is supposed to have had £80,000 and which might have another £80,000. That seems to me a peculiar instance of arguing from the particular to the general—a practice which the noble Viscount himself had condemned in Lord Lloyd not a quarter of an hour before.

Once someone is declared responsible for debts it does not necessarily mean that all the debtors will be paid in full. What it means is that the responsibility has been admitted; then such resources as are available are distributed fairly and evenly. Of course, there are big firms like I.C.I. and Shell who have large claims, but one could not really put their claims on the same level, even if the principle be admitted—which the Minister denies—as the claims of the individuals, because the Shell business and the I.C.I. business did not depend entirely upon its Egyptian branches. It was only part of a general picture, where, as regards the British nationals, the whole of their livelihood and the whole of their assets were contained in Egypt. I hope the Minister will accept that some of us take the view that if you admit the principle you do not automatically admit the need to pay 100 per cent., which is one of the strongest grounds upon which he asked us to reject that principle.

I do not want to detain your Lordships any longer. I have tried to show very briefly how, in practice, ex gratia loans are not just or right, and I have tried to advance some arguments against Treasury robustness. This is something much bigger than the Treasury. It is a debt of honour by the Government to the men who have worked hard and contributed to our overseas wealth, and who are now suffering as a result of Her Majesty's Government's correct policy. I would appeal to the Government not to be so resistant to accepting this principle in each individual case. We are not ungrateful for too little given too slowly—not at all.

There are two blots, I think (and I speak now as a Government supporter), upon the Government's admirable work in the country. One of those blots is in the course of being removed—I refer to the injustice of the confiscation of private property, the robbery of owners of private property, which was taken over by the central or the local government. That matter is now being put right. The second blot is this treatment of British nationals who were in Egypt. I would appeal to the Government to think again on this matter. It has a much wider moral aspect than even that of giving the immediate help to those who we feel are entitled to it. Something of this Government's integrity of purpose and integrity of conduct is, I believe, bound up in this question. Far more than money stands on this question, and I hope that before the end of this debate the Government will have thought again and will be more resilient than the speech by the Lord President to which we have listened would suggest.

5.9 p.m.

LORD JEFFREYS

My Lords, the position is that British subjects have been both expelled from Egypt and have been robbed (I do not use any other word but "robbed") of all their possessions. I would say, incidentally, that our country, or individuals in it, helped the Hungarians when they were in trouble, but there has been nothing of the kind in the way of helping British subjects in Egypt. The claims against the Egyptian Government must be enforced, and, I would say, must be strongly enforced; but I admit that there is a question as to how they are to be enforced so long as we admit the authority of the United Nations.

This affects not only businessmen, but also pensioners of the Egyptian Government, ex-officials, ex-policemen and employees of the Suez Canal Company. Any Egyptian Government assets in this country should be detained for use to compensate these people. It has always been the boast of this country that British assets abroad are safe even in the case of war, and in this case Her Majesty's Government should recognise that a very definite obligation rests on them to compensate these people for what they have lost. We ourselves have preserved foreign assets in this country in war time. Is it no longer the case that British interests, British property and British persons are safe abroad in any circumstances? We ought to preserve British lives and property as always. I would say—and I realise that this is a controversial thing to say—that Egypt is not a civilised country. It has not been a civilised country since very ancient times. It was in those days.

VISCOUNT STANSGATE

My Lords, to which dynasty is the noble and gallant Lord referring when he says that the Egyptians were at one time civilised?

LORD JEFFREYS

They have robbed and expelled British subjects. Egypt would not have dared to do so except under the protection of the United Nations. The Government have made grants of £100,000 through the Anglo-Egyptian Aid Society, and so far, I would almost say, so good. They have set up a new Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board. But very much heavier spending is necessary to give these British subjects a fresh start, and some of them are too old to make a fresh start.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, the noble and gallant Lord used the phrase "£100,000" no doubt by inadvertence. The figure, in fact, is £10 million—£7 million already spent and £10 million when the present scheme is fully in effect.

LORD JEFFREYS

My Lords, I can only say that I am very glad to hear from my noble friend that that is the case. The need of these unfortunate British subjects is urgent. In many cases they have little more than what they stand up in. Some time ago we froze, as the expression is, more than £100 million left from the £400 million of so-called war debt, a debt incurred in paying Egypt, who in fact was making vast sums out of the British occupational troops. That debt arose through unnecessary consideration by us; but of it £100 million is available and should be used to compensate some of these expelled Britons.

Prestige is a great thing in the East, and our name is "mud" in the Middle East at present. There is no question about it. It should be made clear to Egypt and to Nasser that it does not pay to be hostile to this country, whether as regards trade, finance or revenue. Success means everything in the East, far more than right or wrong and far more than justice or injustice. There is no question about that, I think, to anybody who knows the East. The Egyptian Government are not a legitimate Government; they are a revolutionary Government. There are many disadvantages and no advantages from membership of the United Nations, which includes many semi-civilised States and which, I would say, is quite discredited in the view of ordinary people. How much, I wonder, would British law be effective if there were no courts, no police and no prisons? No one except Britain takes any notice of the United Nations, if it is inconvenient to do so.

Why should we go on in the United Nations? Because of the United States. The United States are ignorant of the East and they should try to see our point of view and work with us for a change. Had the Suez operation not been started all these dispossessed Britons would still have their homes and assets, so they suffer on account of Government policy and the Government must see that they are not left to suffer at the hands of Egypt. The Government should give the answer that no trade or finance with Nasser or his Government will occur until all claims of loyal, maltreated Britons have been satisfactorily dealt with. The frozen balances should be used for compensation.

Our attitude to Nasser should be hostile, definitely. No frozen sterling should be paid to him or to his Government, but compensation should be paid on these claims. We should act, and act now, and if they do not like our action we should resign from the United Nations. No one except Britain takes any notice of the United Nations. We want to be friends with the United States, but not dependants of the United States, and if they want to be our friends they should try to see our point of view by way of a change. I hope that we shall make a real effort to hurry up with the compensation of these unfortunate Britons who have lost nearly everything they had.

THE EARL OF WOOLTON

My Lords, did I understand my noble friend the Lord President of the Council to say that a sum of £7 million had been given by the Government to the Anglo-Egyptian Aid Society?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

No, my Lords, not to the Anglo-Egyptian Aid Society. I said that £7 million had been spent on the refugees, £3 million by way of resettlement and £4 million under the scheme announced in July, 1957.

THE EARL OF WOOLTON

I will not trouble my noble friend any more, but it sounded over here as though the money had been given to the Anglo-Egyptian Aid Society.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I did not say that, as the OFFICIAL REPORT will show my noble friend. I have been accused of many strange statements this afternoon but I think that this is almost the strangest.

5.20 p.m.

LORD KILLEARN

My Lords, your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that I rise warmly to support the Motion of my noble friend Lord Lloyd. I want to make that perfectly clear. I do not suppose that there is any doubt about it, but, if there were, that is my principal object in rising this afternoon. While the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, was addressing us I took down what I think was almost his first sentence, as to what the policy was. He said it was "to normalise relations with Egypt", and that there had been a good deal of disappointing delay. Did not that let the cat right out of the bag? Of course there has been disappointing delay. Did anybody expect anything else? Negotiating with these people, did you expect to make progress? How are you to normalise relations? I hope that our unfortunate claimants are not going to have their chances prejudiced, or be sacrificed, in this process of normalisation of relations. It seems to me a rather sinister expression, although I may have imputed entirely wrong motives to it.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I should like to reassure the noble Lord about that. So far from being prejudiced in any way, as my noble friend Lord Lloyd said, one of the principal reasons on our side why we have been unable to accept everything which was proposed to us was precisely because we are unwilling to prejudice our nationals and their property. I thought my noble friend Lord Lloyd put that very well.

LORD KILLEARN

I thank the noble Viscount for that explanation, and I am glad that my suspicion has been dissipated. This is not the first time that this matter has been before your Lordships. Yesterday I was trying to make a list of the number of times, and I think that this is the fifth or sixth—certainly the fifth—full debate we have had on the subject. There have been three Government statements at different times and innumerable Parliamentary Questions, the first of which I asked on November 28, 1956. So this matter has certainly been ventilated a number of times. I thought at one moment that the noble and learned Viscount suggested that there had been an absence of Parliamentary Questions at a certain time. I am not sure of the timetable, but it is true that there were moments when we did stop asking Parliamentary Questions; and I will explain why. On several occasions I was asked not to ask Questions because it would prejudice the course of the negotiations in Rome; and, naturally, I complied with that request.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again, but he must get what I said right. What I was referring to was not the absence of Parliamentary Questions, of which, as your Lordships know, there have been a great number. What I said was that in relation to those who had no assets there had been a remarkable absence of Parliamentary criticism.

LORD KILLEARN

I was not sure of which particular period the noble Viscount was speaking. I am probably wrong.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

Since the beginning.

LORD KILLEARN

I am certainly not going to try to cover the ground all over again; it has been covered ad infinitum. But surely the fact is as plain as a pikestaff that the Government are running out on their moral obligations. We have these doles from time to time, but, as has been argued, and will be argued again, this is a case sui generis; there is no normal precedent for it. We took the initiative, and by taking the initiative we provoked retaliation which fell on our unfortunate people in Egypt. Those facts are incontrovertible. Nasser retaliated, and the victims of our policy were our own unfortunate nationals. You cannot get away from that, however you argue. So three things seem to me to be undoubted: first, as I have suggested before and I suggest again, this is not a Party matter—or rather, I should say it is an all-Party matter; secondly, it is a matter of national honour; and thirdly, nobody can possibly argue that our own unfortunate people in Egypt were in any shape or form responsible for what happened; they were completely innocent.

My next point is that this has been too long-drawn-out. It started in November, 1956, and here we are in November, 1958, two years almost to the day. During that interval, has it not been a rather sorry spectacle to have the British Government sheltering behind Nasser as an excuse for not meeting their obligations? Time after time it has been suggested: "Do not say anything, because you will upset the case." Anybody who has any knowledge of Egypt knew that there was not a hope, and yet time and again we have been told not to upset the talks in Rome. We know what happened. It was, as I have said, a sorry spectacle to see the Government shelter behind Nasser; it was unimpressive, unworthy and unprofitable.

There have been two Government schemes, with an interval of almost precisely a year in between—I think July, 1957, and July, 1958—and both were the result of considerable pressure. If I might use a simile, it was like a dentist extracting molars: they were not willing to come out; they were torn out by the roots—and, if I may say so, they were rotten roots, with a nasty smell about them. Those schemes were insufficient, and, what is more important, unjust. There is no doubt that if we had not pressed, we should not have got even that.

I do not want to take up too much of your Lordships' time, but I have here, chosen at random, two extracts from letters, and possibly three, reflecting the matter of hardship. The first is dated April 15, 1958, from a widow, and says: My own case is a particularly unfortunate one. As a widow, I have left everything I possess in Egypt, have no investments or money here or abroad, and am the sole support of my mother, now in her seventy-fourth year. For the last eighteen months my mother and I have been living on £9 a week relief, granted us by the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board, but as that was insufficient for even our most simple needs, my engagement and wedding rings had to be sold. When at last this additional sum had gone, I accepted the Government loan of £5,000, hoping to invest it in a small home and in the meanwhile find work with which to support my mother and myself. But at the age of forty-eight, with no previous experience of earning a living, all I can find is a job as a saleslady, or as a waitress if I work from 10.30 a.m. in the morning till 11.30 at night, week-ends included. The alternative is to live on my capital of £5,000, which at my age appears a reckless thing to do. I believe the majority of refugees from Egypt are pressing the Government to settle their claims over here. My own is only £27,000. I fear that unless I receive it in full, any safe investment would not bring in an income sufficient to live on without hardship. It saddens me to think that after a life of work and devotion to British interests in Egypt, the worth of which our Government recognised to the extent of awarding my husband with a knighthood, his widow should now be faced with such overwhelming anxiety for the future. That is not a nice letter to receive. As it happens, the second letter is also from a widow and is dated June 29 last. She says: It was two years on the 7th June this year that I left Egypt finally to come and take up residence in this country, having completed all the necessary formalities required of me by the Egyptian Government in order to have my capital transferred to Britain. Due to the events which led up to the Suez crisis and since, I still find myself floundering and haplessly wondering if there are such things as British justice or honour left. Who would ever have thought that with a capital of some £36,000 behind me I should two years later find myself in this desperate state of not knowing what to do or what to think, whether to stay in the hope or go and forgo. I have another letter from a business man, not quite so desperate, but the time being short I will spare your Lordships that.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I hope the noble Lord has in fact advised both these people that they are entitled to £10,000.

LORD KILLEARN

They have both been fully in touch with the British Chamber of Commerce, and I presume all action has been taken.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I hope the noble Lord has advised them that on those facts they are both entitled to £10,000.

LORD KILLEARN

I think they both know that, but I do not think they particularly want £10,000. Must we really continue with this system of doles?—because that is all it is. I am reminded here of the simile employed by the noble Viscount himself on July 23, when there was a slight divergence of views as to the length of a piece of string. It was he who related the simile of the piece of string as between "substantial" and "limited". May I perhaps suggest that it would not be strange if the claimants, in the light of what we have heard today, should feel that in fact the Government are "stringing them out". I think they would not be surprised at all, because they are being strung out.

To sum up, I have always held, and I hold just as strongly as ever, that a grave injustice has been done. By going on record to-day, this House, the established bulwark of the rights and liberties of the British subject, can, and I hope will, show the public and the world that your Lordships are greatly shocked at the way in which this matter has been handled, and look to Her Majesty's Government to set matters right without further prevarication.

5.34 p.m.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, I have not spoken in this series of debates before because I had certain doubts. I have had no doubt from the beginning that this country was in honour bound to see that our British nationals in Egypt did not suffer undue loss by the action of the British Government. I do not know whether it would be in order for me, a Back-Bencher, to congratulate the Lord President on a brilliant speech, and it would certainly be out of order, I suppose, if I were to congratulate him on a brilliant Treasury brief. They managed, between them, successfully to get some of us who even know something about this matter pretty confused. But I really think he was going too far (I do not think I am giving the wrong impression) when he conveyed that it was not a question of being morally right or wrong; that the British Government could not accept liability because—and then he made the analogy that in the First World War we declared war on Germany, and in the second war we declared war on Germany.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My noble friend is wrong. I never mentioned the two wars in my speech at all. I did mention them when my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye gave, to my mind, an inaccurate account—he agreed with me that we would not pursue our differences about it—of the origin of those two wars in the course of his speech. I did correct him on what I thought was a matter of fact, but I expressly drew no analogy about it at all. I did not refer to any of the wars.

LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE

And I expressly did not accept the noble Viscount's intervention.

LORD DERWENT

I thought the noble Viscount said the British nationals suffered in the last war and the first war—I think these were his words—because we had declared war.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I stand to be corrected, but I am convinced that there were no such words in my speech at all, and that the only reference to the declaration of war that I made at any stage this afternoon was in an attempt, right or wrong—we agreed to differ about that—to correct what I thought was an inaccurate statement of my noble friend. I think that was the only reference that I made at any time in the afternoon to that subject.

LORD DERWENT

I am sorry. I misunderstood the noble Viscount, and I apologise. But, should anyone wish to make that analogy at any time, I want to emphasise that this is a case on its own. This is not a case of action being taken by the British Government in support of a treaty with somebody or other. This is a case where the initiative was taken by the British Government—I think rightly, but that question we are not arguing this afternoon. These British subjects suffered as a direct result of that action, and, whatever the legal position may be—and who am I to argue with the Lord President on the matter, although I am not sure that he has argued the matter at all to-day—there is a clear obligation on this country to see that these people do not suffer too severely.

The reason why I have not spoken before, and the reason why I had doubt in my mind, was that I thought the Government case in the earlier stages of this matter was a strong one; that it might prejudice the negotiations which were then about to take place, and might prejudice their bargaining power. I think that was a perfectly reasonable argument. But after listening to the Lord President to-day, I must say that he has still not convinced me that there is the slightest chance of this particular section of unfortunate people getting anything out of the Egyptian Government, except possibly, in certain cases, their businesses, now worth nothing, thrown back at them. I do not think that that is a matter of which we can wash our hands. Therefore, whatever my noble friend Lord Lloyd decides to do at the end of this debate, I shall support him.

Before I sit down, may I ask the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack one question, and perhaps, when he comes to reply he will see fit to deal with two other matters. The question is: Can he say how many times in the Treasury minutes since this subject started, the phrase has been used, "It would create a precedent"?—because one has a feeling throughout that there is Treasury resistance owing to the neurosis they have about precedents. I may be wrong, but that is what it appears to be.

The other two things with which I should like the noble and learned Viscount to deal, if he will, is the question of what can be done, or what he thinks could be done, to prevent the Treasury from forcing these people about whom we are talking to spend their capital as income. Suppose a man was given £5,000 or £10,000, and that these negotiations were long drawn out, but that in five years' time there was a settlement and the man was paid in full. Suppose he got £5,000 the first time, and at the settlement is paid £10,000; if he has to repay the £5,000 first, in fact he gets only £5,000. The first £5,000 he will have spent as income. He will have £5,000 capital left, which will again have to be spent as income. Although he has lost his business, he will have spent his capital as income, and he will have no capital left and will be no better off than when he started. It seems to me that if partial payments are going to be made they should be on a much larger proportion of the claim. I am not talking about 100 per cent, claims, but about this frittering away of money. I know the Treasury do not mind individuals spending capital as income—they do it every time death duties are paid. But it is not good business practice, and I think something should be done to overcome this difficulty.

The other point I hope the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor will deal with is this. There have been rather disturbing reports in the Press that it is proposed to use part of the blocked balances to finance new trade with Egypt. I do not know whether these reports are true, but they have been widespread. If that is done, in my submission it will be both unfair and unwise. It is unfair because the balances are not enough to meet existing claims, and if there is any claim on those balances it should be for those people who had their money or property stolen: it should not be used to further trade with Egypt. It will be unwise because, if Egypt is to be given a new credit now, before the debts or thefts have been settled, she is going to default on any new credit we give her. However, I hope and trust that the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor will be able to tell us that these reports in the Press are untrue.

5.42 p.m.

LORD GIFFORD

My Lords, this is a simple issue and I think it has been put most clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, and also by other speakers who followed him. My only excuse for intervening to-day is that I think noble Lords will know that I have consistently fought this battle for two years, both by asking questions of my own and in support of the noble Lord, Lord Killearn, and others. I believe I am right in saying that no matter, so far as I can remember during the time I have been in this House, has been the subject of so many Questions and Motions over a comparatively short period. I think there can be only one reason for this: that we, all the Back-Benchers on this side, feel very strongly in this matter that the people we are fighting for have not had a square deal. In fact, if we had not got a good case we should be in danger of contravening Standing Order 29 by making taxing speeches; but we think we have got a good case and that is why we are going on. The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, will correct me if I am wrong, but I understood him to say that he thought some of us were fighting this case for political reasons and not on its merits.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

The noble Lord said I would correct him if he was wrong, and I think he is wrong.

LORD GIFFORD

That is what I understood him to say, and I assure him that that is not the case.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I accept it absolutely. I never suggested the contrary. I accept it now it is said, and I accepted it before it was said.

LORD GIFFORD

None of us wish to embarrass the Government unduly, but it is fair to say that I, for one, feel so strongly about it that I should be willing to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, into the Division Lobby. What really worries us most is that it seems that throughout the whole of these long, protracted and unfortunate negotiations the Government have been trying to see how little they can do and not really giving as generously as they can. We have been put off for a long time, quite rightly I think at first, because it was said that talks with Egypt were going on and that we ought not to embarrass them. But the days of that are past. The other thing which worries me is that the Treasury and the Government seem terrified of precedent. I believe the circumstances of this particular affair are quite unlike anything that has happened before and I do not believe they are likely to happen again in the future. For this reason what the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, called the neurosis of precedent ought not to be taken very carefully into account on this occasion.

I hope the Government will make a change in policy and accept responsibility for the unfortunate plight in which these people find themselves. The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has said that the Egyptian Government accept responsibility. We have no intention of absolving the Egyptian Government, but we feel that whatever happens these people should be helped by the British Government, while of course the Government will still continue to fight the Egyptian Government by every means in their power. I believe that at one time it appeared that there was a possibility of a settlement with the Egyptian Government, but I have it on very good authority that immediately this seemed likely all the people who were on the hand-waggon, looting—I think that is not too strong a word—these businesses all over Egypt, came to the Government and said, "You cannot do that. My sister is earning £1,000 a year; our family have moved into this house ", and under pressure the Egyptian Government drew back.

If there should be any doubt whether any equitable settlement will ever be reached, I think we might turn our eyes to what happened with the French. An agreement was signed with the French. One French lady went back to Egypt with the assurance that she would be able to claim back her property. What happened? She tried to get back into her house and a levy of £2,000 key money was made upon her. The French Principal of the Lycée went back. What happened to her? She was told, "Our plans for this school are made two years ahead. You had better go back and come back and see how things are in two years' time." Another French subject was told that she could not occupy her business unless she got a particular type of visa to go into that part of the country. She appealed, in accordance with the rules of the agreement, to the Conseil d'Etat, which is a sort of Egypttian Privy Council, and she was upheld. She was told to take her passport to a certain Ministry to get a visa. Not only did she not get the visa but her passport was taken away as well. That is what is happening and that is what would happen to these British subjects about whom we are talking to-day.

I should like to say one brief word about the blocked sterling accounts, in which I understand there is absolutely no change. People cannot touch this capital even though it is in this country; the only thing they are getting is a maintenance allowance. Only to-clay the most extraordinary case came to my notice. A certain British subject who had a business in Egypt was called up as a senior officer in the R.A.F.V.R. at the time of Suez. He was immediately sent to Cyprus and his pay was paid into his account at. Barclay's D.C.O. in London. When he came back from active service and tried to get his pay for his gallant service to this country he was told, "Oh no, your pay has been put into a blocked account and you cannot touch it." It was only later, when he went and lived in Switzerland for a time, that he could even get his R.A.F. pay.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

Does the noble Lord mean he has got it now or he has not got it?

LORD GIFFORD

He has got it now. Incidentally, as a resident of Egypt he was told that the law was that he was liable to the death penalty for fighting against Egypt at that time.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, I want to be fair to the Government. There is no doubt that the measures that they have taken have been most helpful to small people; but they have done little or nothing for those who used to own medium or large businesses. I need hardly remind your Lordships of a certain passage in Her Majesty's gracious Speech, which stated that legislation would be introduced so that people who had their lands expropriated for any reason would be compensated at the proper market value. I think that the same principle should be applied to these nationals. I would conclude by saying that I do not believe that something like fifteen speakers to-day can all be wrong. We believe that we are fighting for a just cause, and we will continue to fight.

5.51 p.m.

LORD GRENFELL

My Lords, I venture to intervene in this debate because two years before what has come to be known as the Suez incident I was on two occasions in Cairo on business and got to know a great many of the business people in that City. Those are the people who have come out with virtually nothing. I can give your Lordships two instances. The first one concerns a gentleman who worked his way up into a high position in a bank in Cairo and had been there for most of his life. Rightly or wrongly when he retired from the bank he had faith in the future of the British in Egypt and, together with his sons, he put a great deal of his money (he had some assets over here) into a large importing business, mainly goods coming from this country. After the Suez crisis he came out as quickly as he could. He had had many friends among the Egyptians in Cairo, and I understand that not long ago he went back. The whole of his business has been completely and utterly sold up. That is the fact, and there is nothing of that business to recover. Even if it were given back to him now, obviously it would be of no value. Naturally, having retired from the bank, he is well over sixty years of age. My second instance—

THE EARL OF HOME

My Lords, may I intervene? I am rather interested in these individual cases. There may be individual cases of hardship, and possibly the scheme ought to be stretched to embrace them. Does the noble Lord know whether this gentleman has actually come under this scheme, and what he has got out of it?

LORD GRENFELL

My Lords, I do not know what he has actually got out of it: I am giving these cases in principle. He could qualify, I quite agree.

The other case of which I know has come under the scheme and has received a certain amount. This was a man of over seventy years of age who was receiving a good salary as a club secretary. Literally, he got out with his life through a back window. I had a letter from him before the Government's loan was announced. He was living in a little back street in Paris, his wife going out to teach English, and his letter concluded with the words "Yours squalidly." I agree that he has now received a certain amount, but he is living in reduced circumstances somewhere in the south of France.

There are many such people who have lost a great deal of their money, and I think the fundamental fact, the fact which must be of paramount importance, is this: whether we were right or wrong to embark on the Suez incident, one thing that is absolutely certain is that those people could not possibly be to blame. There is that paramount and indisputable fact. I would ask the Lord Chancellor if he would consider giving us some idea how long Her Majesty's Government will take the view that they can negotiate with Nasser over this question. There must be some time limit, for these people cannot go on waiting. Most of them are living on capital and we all know that that cannot last for ever. Therefore, it is important that we have some idea of what is to happen in regard to these people. First of all, we want to know whether the principle is accepted that full compensation will be paid; and secondly, we want to know about the principle that full compensation will be paid after a certain time. I and my noble friends here do not for one single minute believe that Nasser has the slightest intention of paying a single shilling. You can keep on saying, "I do not repudiate the debt." We do not want him to say that; what we want him to do is to hand out the money. I will most willingly, if my noble friend wishes, follow him into the Lobby on this question.

5.57 p.m.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

My Lords, I realise that what I am going to say will be slightly out of line with the general trend of the debate this afternoon, so I crave your Lordships' indulgence for a few moments. Ever since the noble Lord, Lord Killearn, first brought before your Lordships the question of the 1956 victims, I have endeavoured to associate with it the somewhat similar problem of the 171 British officials who were thrown out of Egypt in 1951. In this I have not altogether succeeded. Her Majesty's Government have always recognised that their problem stands very much in its own right; but they have considered that it was not altogether on all fours with the present one—indeed, the method they have just adopted in dealing with it is not similar to that which they are applying to the 1956 victims. So I shall this afternoon treat this matter as entirely separate and it shall not prejudice what I think on the 1956 problem.

It must have given your Lordships and a great number of other people, a considerable amount of pleasure to see what the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, announced on October 30 last, that Her Majesty's Government were going to allocate £100,000 on loan to those officials, who now number only about 155. I know that this decision was the result of full and frank discussion between the Association of Former British Officials of the Egyptian Government and various Government Departments, and I feel sure that it will give great satisfaction that Her Majesty's Government have now at last agreed on these loans—it was, in fact, the course which these officials suggested to Her Majesty's Government a considerable length of time before ever the 1956 crisis arose. I realise that that is somewhat irrelevant, but I feel that, as I have raised it on similar debates in the past, it would be improper for me not to take this opportunity of congratulating Her Majesty's Government on what I consider to be a most generous application of the funds to these officials.

On the main point of to-day's debate, I wonder whether the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor could possibly answer a question which arises out of the speech of the noble and learned Viscount the Lord President. The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has asked the House to be patient once more and has said that payment of full compensation to refugees who had assets would also naturally involve payment of compensation to owners of assets in Egypt who were not refugees. As this seems to be at any rate a new point, and one of considerable importance, I wonder whether the noble and learned Viscount could give me and the House any information about the proportions of the assets owned by refugees and non-refugees, since this would seem to have considerable bearing on the subject.

6.2 p.m.

VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD

My Lords, I should like to recall to your Lordships that I spoke on this matter two years ago, and had I then been told that I should again be speaking on this same subject now in an effort to get justice for these British nationals expelled from Egypt I should hardly have believed it. The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has wholly astounded me by saying, as I understood him to say, that if the British Government intervene in a country for the avowed purpose of protecting British lives and property they are not necessarily under an obligation to pay compensation for the loss of that property. To me that appears to be saying that a British Government can break their word. I have no doubt that when history comes to be written our intervention in Egypt will get full marks, in spite of the fact that it was so tragically brought to an end by the Americans and Her Majesty's Opposition; but if Her Majesty's Government do not honour their word to these British nationals—

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I must make it absolutely clear beyond the peradventure of a doubt that whether we ought to compensate these persons or not is obviously what we are discussing. Obviously, however, there has never been any promise. That was the burden of the song of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd. We have never broken a pledge. Had we made a pledge we should have kept it.

VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Viscount for his statement, but I understood that morally the British Government had made a pledge and that if we intervened to protect property and that property was destroyed we were therefore responsible for compensation for the destruction of that property. That would appear to me to be a logical conclusion. We have heard that during the last two years about £10 million has been paid out in compensation in respect of total claims of about £40 million. The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, pointed out that out of 13,000 refugees the majority have been compensated and there was only a total of about 600 now owed the balance of this £30 million. Am I then to understand that we are to have one principle for the poor and one for the rich? If so, I can really express nothing but disgust. It appears to me extremely unfair.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I do not want to interrupt the noble Viscount if he does not wish to be interrupted, but at the moment I cannot see exactly to which part of my speech he is referring.

VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD

My Lords, I understood the noble and learned Viscount to say, in his speech, that if a man had a claim of say £200,000 he would have had £10,000 in any case, and that even if that did not provide the standard to which he had been accustomed, he ought to be satisfied.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, no. I was discussing the merits of the loans scheme and I said that if a man had had £20,000 or upwards he had either received or was entitled to receive under the extension the sum of £10,000 as a loan under the loans scheme and that I thought the receipt of £10,000 could not be criticised as ungenerous. But I was not speaking about compensation in relation to that at all. I thought I had made it abundantly clear that the loans scheme was one thing and compensation was another.

VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD

My Lords, is not the point that where a man is owed a large sum of money, if we are going to pay him in dribs and drabs we are going to force him to spend his capital as income? As my noble friend Lord Lloyd has pointed out, if we give a man £5,000 and he invests that sum it is going to bring him in only an agricultural worker's wage. I cannot understand why Her Majesty's Government has this grudging attitude. It is extraordinary to me. I cannot understand the trust of Her Majesty's Government in President Nasser, because surely he will put in a counter claim—maybe for £500 million. He may say £1,000 million. I understand he is a man of no great principle. Perhaps that is an understatement. But of course I quite agree with the noble and learned Viscount that we ought not to touch the blocked sterling balances of Egypt, because if we do so the Afro-Asian group of nations will have their confidence in us as bankers shaken and may retract out of the sterling area. I am sorry that that has been the only point on which I can agree with the noble and learned Viscount. Does he expect a fairy godmother to descend upon Her Majesty's Government to pay these claims?—because I can assure him that President Nasser will not do so. To me the extraordinary part is that as we have a Goverrnment of extremely honourable men, I can only presume it is the human adding machines in the Treasury who are responsible—

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, let me say to my noble friend quite frankly what I have now said twice: what is said to your Lordships by me is said upon my own responsibility. I am not going to pretend that those in the Civil Service who are advising me are responsible for a single word or syllable of what I utter in this House. What I utter in this House is said as a Member of Parliament. It is well known, of course, that Ministers get advice and help from the Civil Service, but I will not have it said that the Civil Service is responsible for what I say in Parliament. I am responsible.

LORD KILLEARN

My Lords, I presume that the noble Viscount is speaking for the Government. I did not quite understand what he just said.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

Of course I am. That is known. My friend behind said that this was a brilliant Treasury brief. What I say I stand by myself, and there is no other principle of ministerial responsibility. I think it would be contemptible for a Minister to say that civil servants were responsible for what he uttered in Parliament. If there is something wrong in what I say, I am to blame.

LORD KILLEARN

Quite right. But that is as a member of the Government. The noble Viscount is not a private individual sitting on the Front Bench.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I was speaking as a member of the Government, and so will the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor be. I was only making it plain that I shall not try to shelter behind criticisms of what are called "the human adding machines in the Treasury", who are, in fact, extremely honourable men, doing a duty to the Government and to the country. If Ministers are to be blamed for what they say in Parliament it is the Ministers themselves who are to blame and not civil servants.

VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD

My Lords, I quite agree that the men in the Treasury are of the highest standing, and of course it is their duty to keep a tight hold on the purse strings—I understand all that. But perhaps I may be excused if I refer back to my childhood, because I have something in common with these Egyptian refugees, as I have been a refugee. I have had my home blazing about me—I am thinking, of the Irish Rebellion—and it was the only home I then knew. The British Government had told us to disband oar guards, and that if we disbanded them we should have full protection and compensation. Well, we got neither; and within a week of the guards going the place was burnt. So your Lordships will, I think, excuse me if I feel rather strongly on this point. Obviously, my father did not embarrass the British Government by pursuing any claim; but the facts are there.

I have rather strayed from my point, but I implore the Government not to let these people down, because it does leave a nasty taste in their mouths. No doubt we can wriggle out of it by law, but surely moral responsibility and duty go far higher than the law. Let the Government settle these accounts, and I am sure that by so doing they will gain in stature and add to the prestige of this country. They will gain by it far more than the few million pounds spent by the Exchequer.

6.14 p.m.

LORD HAMPTON

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene in this debate, but there are just a few words that I should like to say in support of my noble friend Lord Lloyd. As it happens, I spent some five years of my life, off and on, a good long time ago now, in Egypt. It is true that I was a soldier, but I got to know quite a number of our businessmen there who were in all walks of business, and I had quite a number of Egyptian friends. And I can tell your Lordships, from what I heard during that time, that the Egyptians had a very great respect for the integrity and the fair dealing of their British friends in business. I think that this ought to be said, because long before the Suez crisis was ever heard of our businessmen out there, and of course in many other parts of the world, were serving their country. It is true that they were serving themselves, but they were at the same time serving their country and upholding its prestige. They were in very truth part of our team of Empire builders, bringing out the innate prestige and honesty and fair dealing of our nation.

I do not know that I have much more to say. I am no lawyer and I have no understanding, I am afraid, of the usages and customs of international banking. I realise that, from a Government point of view, the Government are batting on a very difficult wicket, rather a sticky wicket. But I hope, after all I have heard to-day and after all that has been said in answer to so many Questions in this House during the past year or so, that when the extension of the present system of which the Lord President spoke comes to pass, we shall see a far more generous effort on the part of the Government to help these people than we have seen up to date.

6.16 p.m.

THE EARL OF WOOLTON

My Lords, the reason why I rise is because, as chairman of the British Red Cross, I was closely concerned with this problem in its earliest stages, and I have followed it since. I have listened to the debate, frankly, in a state of considerable confusion. I think, if I may say so, that the House is in a very unhappy frame of mind. There are two issues, as I see it. One issue is whether or not, when a Government declare war, they are responsible for the nationals who come, as a consequence of that step, to be damaged. A good deal of the discussion in dealing with the Egyptians has dealt with that issue and the thoughts that flow from it. I cannot accept that. The Suez issue seemed to me to be very much on a par with other issues that have taken place in war, and I cannot accept the idea that the Government have full responsibility for full compensation. If we thought that they have full responsibility, then I should find it very difficult to ascertain where we should draw the line on the measure of compensation: whether it should be full compensation, 80 per cent., or 70 per cent.

I am glad that my noble friend Lord Salisbury is to follow me, because I am sure that he has views on one matter on which I have some fear. I should be glad, if it is decided to go into the Lobby—though I very much hope that my noble friend Lord Lloyd will not so decide—if it could be made quite clear what is the issue on which we are voting. Are we going to be committed in this House to the idea of full Government responsibility, or are we dealing, as I now propose to deal, with the issues that have faced me in another capacity, on the question of the hard cases?

I admit, as I think all of us admit, that we have a debt, whether it be of honour or of practice, to look after our own nationals. I could not follow the Lord President when he was dealing with this subject. It seems to me that it is our business to look after our nationals, and if, as a consequence of the payments that we have had to make, we can make the people who are really responsible for the troubles that have occurred meet those debts, that is a proper thing. But I do not think that the people who have been damaged can wait on diplomacy, and there, with great respect to my old colleagues, I feel the Government has not been very wise.

I remember the question that the noble Lord, Lord Killearn, put as to what was going to happen to these refugees, and the House may or may not remember that the reply that was given by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, was that the Government would provide some funds for the Anglo-Egyptian Society to deal with these issues. I then got up and protested that this was not a matter for charity; this was a matter in which the Government should act itself. I am very glad to say that, I believe as a result of the intervention of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the present Prime Minister, a different attitude was taken. But I think that the trouble is—and it is the thing which has been worrying us, and is what is probably worrying Members of your Lordships' House now—that the Government have proceeded in a rather niggardly manner. They have given a little, and they have then given a little more. There have been two plans at an interval of twelve months—all the time improving. It is the old story of "He gives twice who gives quickly", and I believe it would have been possible to get a very much better settlement and would certainly have made Members of this House very much happier if the Government had been just a little quicker.

I do not know what is going to happen now. I think a clear impression has been given to Her Majesty's Government by noble Lords here that they are not quite happy about the position. It is not enough to say that the poorest people have been dealt with, because the instances that the noble Lord, Lord Killearn, gave, and the instances that came to me this morning, show that same of the people in what is called the lowest income brackets (except that "there ain't any income")—those widows and professional people who have come over here perforce from Egypt—are really finding things rather difficult. I was glad to hear the Lord President say that he would be pleased to look at those instances. I am sure that they arise not from a failure of good intentions on the part of the Government but as a result of some failure of administration.

I wonder whether I may make an appeal to Her Majesty's Government to take on the burden that I think belongs to them—not to wait until Nasser, on whom none of us really can rely, has decided what perforce he will give to us, but to say that they are going to settle this matter? I do not mean by that to give the Egyptian plutocrats that were mentioned by the Lord President still more money to spend, but at any rate to make a reasonable position in which they will say to the people concerned, "This is as far as we are going to go", whether it is 70 per cent. or whether it is 80 per cent. of the amount of the claims that they are making. Let us have at any rate finality in the matter. I appeal, if I may respectfully do so, to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor to see whether he cannot promise us that the Government will at any rate consider bringing this matter to an end; in the words of my noble friend Lord Derwent, "calling it a day" on some figure. Then we shall wish them the best of luck in getting that figure out of Nasser. But at any rate do not let people continue to hope that more and more might come if more and more pressure were brought on to the Government; because that, indeed, is an undignified position.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

Before my noble friend Lord Salisbury speaks there is one correction which I must make. Unfortunately, I read out to your Lordships what I said was an Answer made by the Foreign Secretary to a Question in another place. I find to my considerable dismay that the Question to which it was an Answer was deferred. I can only apologise to your Lordships for the difficult position in which I find myself, and I hope sincerely that it will not be held too much against me.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, might I ask a question? It might be helpful. We have heard a lot about claims. Has any attempt been made to ascertain whether these claims which are being made are completely accurate?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I do not know, but perhaps that question was addressed to me. The answer is that the loan scheme is paid out on the claims unverified. The claims relate to assets in Egypt at the time of the events of 1956, and it was not thought just or indeed practicable to try to verify those claims. It may be that if we did it would lead to very great inequality, because some people who did riot happen to have the evidence to support their claims would lose heavily. Moreover, we are putting these claims forward to the Egyptian Government, and we are bound, as honest negotiators, to put them forward as accurate claims. It would not therefore be appropriate for us to assume the rôle of investigator and to scale the claim down. Therefore, our practice has been to treat the claims at their face value, and the scale on which the loans have been allowed has been on the claim registered by the person himself. I hope that that makes the position plain.

6.29 p.m.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, it falls to me, I think, to say the last word on behalf of the supporters of this Motion which has been proposed by Lord Lloyd—a Motion which to some of us, at any rate, as I think the debate has made clear, is of considerable importance. I will try to be as short as I can, but I think I can say what I have to say at no very great length, especially after all that has passed in the debate to which we have all listened this afternoon.

In my experience there is always a tendency on this question—perhaps on every question in this House—to bring in wider issues, and in this case that includes precedents for compensation in the case of war, of which we have heard something, and similar topics. That tendency, I think, was notable (I hope I am not misrepresenting him) in the speech of the Lord President himself, who raised several points which were no doubt of very great interest but which were, if I may say so, of an extremely complicated character. Indeed they were so complicated that at one time I quite thought that the noble Viscount was speaking for the Egyptian Government rather than for the British Government. But I would say that the approach of most of us to this problem is much simpler than his. We are not concerned with precedents of doubtful relevance to this particular problem which we believe is in some respects sui generis. We are concerned with two things, and with two things alone—the actions of the Government that was in power two years ago, of which I was a member, and what was said by our spokesmen at that time relative to the position of British nationals in Egypt whose situation was inevitably endangered by our action. For it is not merely the general proposition that we have to consider; it is what was actually said in this particular instance to Parliament and to the nation.

It is almost exactly two years ago since British and French troops landed at Port Said to call a halt to the conflict between Egyptians and Israelis, a conflict which we at any rate believed might spread and involve the whole of the Middle East. As we all know, there have been extremely strong differences of view, both at the time and since, as to whether we were right or wrong in the action we took. Personally I continue to believe that we were right, but I do not want to confuse the issue of this debate by embarking on that very controversial topic. I mention it only because I think that it is important that we in this House at the present time should recognise that it was our landings at Port Said, and not the seizure of the Canal by President Nasser, that led to the expulsion of British nationals and the sequestration of their properties. That gives us, I feel, with other noble Lords, a special responsibility for those people. The noble Viscount the Lord President attempted to argue that there was an exact analogy between this case and that of the First and the Second World Wars, where we did not compensate.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

No, my Lords, I did not indeed. The noble Marquess has fallen into the same error as the noble Lord. He will find that in the whole course of my speech, so far as I know, there is no reference to the First or the Second World War.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I do not see why the noble Viscount made his remark at all if it did not have relevance to the present debate.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

It was relevant to what my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye was saying.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

If the noble Viscount will admit that there is no relevance between the two cases, I shall be grateful.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, what one must do when talking about the First and the Second World Wars and their relevance to this particular issue is to have another debate.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, whatever the noble Viscount feels to-day, at any rate the Government of that day were not unconscious of the responsibility which we were then incurring, because at the time of the landings—to be exact, on October 31, 1956—the Foreign Secretary, speaking on behalf of the whole Government, made a special reference to the position of the British community in Egypt. He said that one of our main objects in landing was (to use his own words) "to protect British lives and interests". That statement of my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary was binding, perhaps most of all, on those of us in the Cabinet responsible for the decision to land, and I readily accept that responsibility. But also I feel that it bound to a lesser degree the country as a whole, on whose behalf the Government acknowledged responsibility for these British nationals.

Of course, I fully recognise—and if I did not recognise it my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor would probably point it out—that different interpretations can be put by different people on the words of the Foreign Secretary. That, of course, is clearly true. But, to my mind, it meant, broadly speaking at any rate, one thing: that the Government regarded it as an obligation to do all in their power to see that the British community did not suffer as the result of events in Egypt; that they regarded that as a solemn duty. Nor can I feel (and I think other noble Lords who have spoken agree with me) that we were absolved from that declared duty by the fact that—whether our general policy was right or wrong—as an immediate result of our action the British community in Egypt were driven from their homes and virtually ruined. On the contrary, to my mind our responsibility towards them is all the greater than it was before.

Indeed, I think that that was also the view of the Government and seems to have been confirmed by the even more categoric statement made by the Minister of Labour in another place on January 28, 1957, two or three months after the British nationals had been expelled. He said: I should like to assure the honourable and learned Member "— that was a Member of another place who had asked a question— the House and the country that there is no subject about which we are more anxious at present than to see that full justice is done to all these people who have been driven out of Egypt. The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said that there was never a pledge on this subject. That seems to me pretty near a pledge. I shared strongly the view which the Minister of Labour expressed; and in view of his quotation of some remarks which I made, I think in this House on the very eve of my resignation—I believe it was the day before I resigned—I am sure that the noble Viscount the Lord President will not mind my reminding him that I brought this question of proper reparation to the expelled nationals more than once to the notice of my colleagues while still in the Government, and I have continued to urge it ever since.

I wish very much that I could feel that the policy of ex gratia loans was an adequate implementation of the declarations of the Foreign Secretary and the Minister of Labour, but I simply cannot. The noble Viscount threw great emphasis, and I think rightly, on the valuable work done by the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board in dealing with the immediate difficulties of those who had been expelled, and I entirely agree with him that that Board did very important work. I do riot think that the proposal for ex gratia loans for these unhappy people was unjustifiable as a temporary measure—it was possibly the best that could be done in the circumstances, for many of these people had arrived in this country entirely destitute and something had to be done immediately to give them the means of life. But though ex gratia loans may be all right as a purely temporary measure, it is surely no equitable basis for a long-term policy to implement the assurances given on behalf of the Government.

For this reason, so far from reaffirming obligations, the clear purpose of the use of this phrase "ex gratia loans", is to repudiate an obligation. When one says to a man, "I will give you an ex gratia loan", what in effect you say to him is, "I have no obligation to lend you a penny but out of the kindness of my heart I will make you a loan." To say that, in any case, is a fairly smug attitude to take up, and, if the noble Viscount will forgive my saying so, I did think that he was very smug this afternoon. But when that is said to people whom you have just ruined as the result of actions you have taken, to my mind an attitude of that kind becomes definitely repellant.

The noble Viscount the Lord President was at great pains to explain that the latest offer of the Government was a significant advance on earlier ones that had been made. No doubt that is perfectly true in some respects, though I must say that it has taken a great deal of prodding to get the Government to the point they have now reached. The position of the poorer claimants is, I think, to some extent safeguarded by the allocation to them of 70 per cent. of their claims. That is clearly right, because the need of the poorer claimants is obviously the most immediate and the greatest.

But, even so, as has already been pointed out by other noble Lords who have spoken, there are considerable shortcomings in these new proposals. I do not want to go into details about this; they have already been described by many other noble Peers who have spoken. But all of them, I think, have one thing in common: they are what I might call typical examples of the practical application of the ex gratia mentality; the mentality which says, "I do not owe you anything; you must just take what I choose to make available to you and be thankful for it." The Lord President calls that generous—he said that the treatment was very generous. I do not call it generous at all, and I feel that it is far from the fulfilment of the specific undertaking given by the Foreign Secretary and the Minister of Labour to the British community in Egypt months before. I simply cannot understand why the Government do not appreciate the wide difference between ex gratia loans and absolute personal property. In fact, there is all the difference in the world. I have tried to cut my remarks as short as I can, but I hope that I have at any rate said enough to make it clear to the House, if not, I fear, to the Government, that ex gratia loans cannot lake the place of compensation as a permanent policy.

The noble Earl, Lord Woolton, who has just spoken, expressed the fear that, if the principle of compensation were once admitted, all the great public companies with interests in Egypt—Barclays Bank, the Shell Company and all these other great corporations—would expect to be given compensation in full, and the sum involved would be absolutely astronomical and beyond the power of any Government to pay. He asked me what was my view about that. I can give him only a personal view, and it is this. In my view, the admission of the principle of compensation does not necessarily mean that 100 per cent. compensation must be given to everyone. That must be, as I see it, a matter for discussion and negotiation between all the parties concerned.

Companies such as Barclays Bank and the Shell Company, to which I have already referred, have obviously not suffered to nearly the same extent as these other people we have been discussing; and, so far as I know, the value of their shares has not significantly fallen as the result of the events at Port Said. I hardly feel that they would press for their full pound of flesh if it meant absolute ruin for the others. But, at any rate, I cannot believe that an argument, which is really one, if I may say so, of pure expediency, is an adequate reason for refusing "full justice", to use the Minister of Labour's words, to those who so desperately need it.

THE EARL OF WOOLTON

My Lords, I think the noble Marquess will agree that, while I had this doubt and I asked for his view of it, I did not suggest that anything should be withheld from those who were desperately in need of it because grants were now going to be made to the Shell Company.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

The point I want to make is this. I am pleading for the principle of compensation. If it is said that compensation cannot be granted because of the immense claims by these vast corporations, that would mean that the claimants for whom I am really pleading would suffer as a result. That is the argument I was trying to develop, and I believe it to be a valid one.

My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, who I understand is to reply, may admit all this; he may concede that ex gratia loans are suitable only as a temporary expedient. But he may urge, as the Lord President has also urged, that it is surely too soon for us to abandon hope of a satisfactory settlement with Nasser. The Lord President feels that a settlement may still be reached, and he hopes that we shall feel that it may still be reached. The Government may still harbour hopes of such an agreement, but I must confess that most of us are getting more and more sceptical. Every time we have raised this subject during the last nine months or a year we have been told, as has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, that agreement is just round the corner. But it never comes, and I am beginning to believe that it never will. That is one respect, if I may say so to the Lord President, in which I have profoundly altered my view.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I hope that my noble friend is not suggesting that I said this afternoon that agreement was just round the corner. On the contrary, I thought I said, and I think shall be found to have said, that since July my view has altered, too. That, if your Lordships will remember, I said when I explained that the reason for the delay between the promise in July and the implementation in October was precisely that reason: that without making any speculation as to what would happen, my view had become less favourable about that between July and September.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

That is the point of my argument. Moreover, if this projected settlement, as is most likely, was to be based on the desequestration of the properties and other belongings of the claimants, it is, frankly, not going to be much use to them. Most of these businesses, as has been said already, have been ruined, and the others are probably worth very little. In any case, it is unrealistic to suppose that at any rate elderly people, who are among the large number of the claimants, will be able to go back and settle in Egypt after all that has happened; of course they cannot. I cannot believe, therefore, that it is fair to the claimants to pin all our hopes on an agreement with Nasser. It is not only Nasser but we ourselves who must now do something to remove the present injustices.

Alternatively, the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack may suggest that it is too soon to plump for compensation as the only alternative to ex gratia loans; and he may indicate that there are still other alternatives that might be explored. I am very ready to admit that there may be other alternatives to ex gratia loans—all things are possible in this world. All I can say is that after two years the Treasury—and I hope the Lord President will allow me to say this, because I mean the Ministers and not the officials—have not found an alternative; and I do not believe they have even tried to find one. I am pretty sure that, if they get away with it this time, they will just sit back with a sigh of relief and say no more; and the claimants will just get older and older and more despairing. Years ago, when I was an Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, there was a case which constantly came to our notice, and there was an enormous file about it. It was a case of a Sheikh in the Persian Gulf who had a claim against His Majesty's Government (as it was in those days) over an assurance which had been given to him in 1914. That claim went on and on; it was bandied to and fro, year after year, and eventually (I have been making inquiries about it) compensation was given in either 1940 or 1941. Unfortunately, my Lords, the Sheikh had died in 1936. I do not want that to happen to these claimants.

There is only one thing that is likely to budge the Treasury, and that is a clear and strong expression of Parliamentary and public feeling; and the time to give that expression, I submit, is now. That is exactly why those of us who have been concerned with this particular Motion have brought it to-day, and that is why we are asking your Lordships to support it. And, my Lords, I do not think there has been very much doubt about the views that have been expressed this afternoon. Let us make no mistake about what this Motion means: there is no concealment about it. It means that we ask the Government to discard the basis of ex gratia loans and accept the principle of compensation unless or until some other basis is found which will be satisfactory to the claimants, after consultation with the claimants—and in this case I mean real consultation and not the sort of consultation that has gone on until now.

I hope very much that the Lord Chancellor will be able to say that the Government will accept that principle. If he does—if the Government do accept it—I am quite certain that it will be welcomed by everybody, inside and outside this House, who values the reputation of our country. But if the Government feel they cannot accept it, or will not accept it, we shall have no option, sadly, but without doubt or hesitation, if a Division is called, to go into the Lobby in support of the Motion. For I am profoundly convinced that this is a matter in which my own personal honour, the honour of this House and the honour of our country are engaged.

6.51 p.m.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, before I was called away to a meeting, I listened to a great part of this debate, and especially to the speech of the noble Viscount, the Lord President, and I have listened to several other speeches since I returned to the Chamber. In my approach to this matter I find myself nearer to the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Woolton, than to some of the others to which I have listened. The noble Marquess, who has just spoken with his usual clarity as to his own position (and I quite appreciate the final sentences of his speech, when he said that he feels his own personal honour is engaged in this matter) seems to underline his speech with a conviction that we are committed to full compensation. I hope that I am not misinterpreting him. I seem to read into what I heard from him to-night that he is in favour of full compensation as the principle to be observed in this matter.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I said, "compensation as the principle" and not "full compensation as the principle". I made that clear, I think, in my speech.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER of HILLSBOROUGH

I must say that I felt considerable sympathy with some of the citations made by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, this afternoon. Those of us who have been in Government, and who may be in Government in the near future, need to step quite warily in dealing with points of the kind that were raised by the noble Viscount—and they are important. But the people we on this side are concerned about are those who have suffered poverty, distress and hardship—as was clearly indicated by the noble Marquess—as a result of the action taken by our Government. I am bound to say that I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Woolton, that up to, at any rate, quite recently, the actions by the Government appear to have been stage by stage, little by little, giving Members of your Lordships' House the impression that they have been niggardly in dealing with this present need.

It would seem to me, reading the last Progress Report I have been able to get by the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board, that, even at the present time, some of the steps still to be taken to deal with this matter continue to depend, to a large extent, upon voluntary organisations. Whilst I think the Government are perfectly entitled in such matters to take all the voluntary help offered to them in organising relief, and perhaps to make some grants to those bodies for the expenses of the organisation, I do not think they ought to shed any part of the actual responsibility for the relief that has to be given.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I think the noble Viscount is wrong about that. I do not think we have tried to do that. The funds of the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board are entirely (I speak subject to correction) provided by the Government. Nor is the Board, in the sense in which the noble Viscount is referring to it, a voluntary organisation.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

I am always open to look at the matter again and to study the words of the noble Viscount. I will get the facts quite clarified in my own mind, in case there is any possibility of the matter coming up again. At any rate, if he accepts the principle which I am quite sure was behind the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Woolton, that in regard to these cases of hardship the sole responsibility is that of the Government, then he will have made a great impression on me in my approach to the whole problem.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I speak again subject to correction. I do not think we are far apart here. I think I am right in saying that there is, in relation to the public money which has been spent, a small fund which was raised from the public. That fund is being administered, unless I am mistaken, by the Anglo-Egyptian Aid Society. It runs into £70,000, or something of that order. The relief about which we are talking, and have been talking all the afternoon, is administered by the Anglo-Egyptian Resettlement Board; and the £10 million are Government funds. There is no other source that I am aware of for that channel, which is the only substantial channel, than Government funds.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

I am much obliged.

The other matter in which I have been greatly interested all the way through is the position of the former officials of the Egyptian Government who were dismissed, in my view illegally, in view of their ordinary basis of contract with the Egyptian Government, in 1951. I have received from time to time the case of the Association which looks after, and still looks after, their interests. I have been profoundly interested to try to get their case met. Unfortunately, I was not in the Chamber just now when the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, made a speech in which he made reference to that matter. But if what was said has been given to me correctly, it was that since the last date of their appeal to Members of this House, which was issued at the end of July of this year, something like £800,000 has been allocated.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

£100,000.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

That is a different matter. Something like £60,000 has been set aside for assistance to the 166 persons who were involved, plus the expenses of the Association between 1951 and the present date in trying to help and deal with the matter. If that is so, I approach that particular section of the problem with a modified view. I am not at all sure, unless one could see the details and allocation of the £100,000, whether it is sufficient, or whether it covers every class of case which I should imagine would be likely to arise. For example, what about the families, if there are any, of the people who have died in this long waiting period of nearly seven years while trying to get some decent recognition of their claim?

A good deal of reference has been made in the course of the debates we have had to Government responsibility in relation to the landing of our troops in Port Said. But, of course, there is not the slightest doubt that the action of the Egyptian Government in 1951 was due to what they regarded as British troops' destruction of the Egyptian village of Kafr-el-Abdu. Therefore it seems to me that a claim has been due to be made by the British Government in that matter. It has taken almost seven years to get to the situation which was announced recently—I am told about October 30; I did not know about it; I had no information from the Association—and I am glad that the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, has told the House to-night.

The other thing I want to say is this. I am glad that the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, has corrected me with regard to the degree of compensation, that he does not claim full compensation. But I must say that, when it comes to putting pressure upon the Government, and the taxpayers as a whole, to pay compensation to any considerable extent to very large property or financial interests in Egypt, we should have much more hesitation than we should have had before that became clear to me to-day in going into the Lobby in support of the Motion. That is a very big difference. I gathered from the speech of the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord President, that in the case of some of these direct claims on behalf of financial and property interests some loans have been made. I do not say that they are big ones, but some loans have been made in cases of property and financial interests.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

The noble Viscount is not very specific. Business assets rank for loans. They would normally be limited to private companies. Shares in public companies also rank for loans. In the one instance I gave of one family interest, those sums which I gave have certainly been advanced or will be shortly advanced.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER or HILLSBOROUGH

I can quite see there is a good case, where you are continuing to negotiate with the nation which has been responsible for these claims arising, that the people who are concerned up to any reasonable extent should be assisted by way of loan, and that the matter can be finally adjusted when a final settlement has been reached with the country with whom you are negotiating. But I certainly have a good deal more hesitation now than I should have had before it became clear to me that there were such large corporation and other claims in this matter in going into the Lobby in support of this Motion.

However, I am bound to say that I was very much moved by the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Woolton. I think he had a general case of great power. He made the same kind of reservations that I have in my mind. If, on the basis of the expression of dissatisfaction of the House at the way in which this matter has been drawn out, and the slowness which has seemed to continue in bringing to an end the feeling of loss and hardship to people who really need assistance, he and I see it from the same point of view, I shall be inclined to say to my colleagues "I think we ought to vote for the Motion". I have been perfectly frank with the House. I was quite convinced, when the Motion was put on the Paper, that this was something we ought to vote for. But I want to be quite clear what we are voting for. If it is to express our dissatisfaction with the niggardly manner in which this matter has been dealt with, and to say we want the people in actual need to be relieved as quickly as possible, I must vote for the Motion. But if it means accepting the general principle of compensation for much wider and heavier claims for matters which still, of necessity, must remain in negotiation with the Egyptian Government, that puts another face upon it.

THE EARL OF WOOLTON

My Lords, since I evidently was not clear, I am bound to say that I should find it impossible to vote for this Motion because of the implications behind it. That is why I made the appeal to the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, to deal with the hardship issue, which seems to me the one that is disturbing us more than this question of precedent.

7.5 p.m.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I had not intended to say anything on this subject, because we from this side approached this civil war that is going on on the other side quite objectively, and we felt we should like to hear the case that has been made. I am bound to say that, having heard the case on both sides, I personally feel considerable sympathy with the case that was put by the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord President. I think there is an issue of principle involved: namely, as to whether or not the Government have an obligation, moral or legal, to compensate fully those who have suffered as a result of our intervention. I realise that the noble Marquess says now that he is not asking for full compensation, but practically every speaker who supported the Motion has asked for it, and I feel that the logical implication of the case that has been made must be full compensation. If it means only partial compensation, frankly I do not understand the case that has been made at all.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

There is this difference, if I may explain it. In the case of an ex gratia loan it is not absolute property; it may remain with a man or it may not. If it is compensation it should be his own property: he is given back in compensation for what he has lost. To my mind there is a great difference between the two.

THE EARL OF HOME

May I intervene, because it is an important point? I think the noble Marquess is really saying that if we accept the Motion we include the very large companies, Shell and the others, in the compensation. He is not limiting it to the small claims.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I do not think you are committed to do more than accept the principle of compensation, and then it would be a matter for discussion. But if you do not accept the principle of compensation, really in effect what you are doing is keeping these people still on charity. I do not think, in view of the obligations the Government have undertaken, that that is right or proper.

LORD SILKIN

I really do not understand the noble Marquess at all. He is saying that there is a moral case, and it seems to me that if there is a moral case it must be a case for full compensation. I cannot see that it can be anything less, except as a compromise. I want to say a word about compromise. The conclusion I have come to from the whole of the debate is that both the logic of what is being claimed and, in fact, the statements made by most of the speakers in support of the Motion are in favour of full compensation.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I do not know the answer to the noble Lord's point myself, and he probably does, because he knows much more about the law than I do. Can a man leave an ex gratia loan to his successors? Can a man put in his will, "To my dear wife I bequeath my ex gratia loan of £7,500"? If it is compensation it is money he can leave to his successors. There is a complete difference between the two conceptions.

LORD SILKIN

Obviously, if it is a loan it is a liability against the estate. The man does not bequeath the liability; the liability is there, but so is his claim, and the liability is set off against the claim. The difficulty I find is in accepting the full implications of the case that has been made, that the Government have complete liability for the effect of the landing. On the other hand, they have a moral obligation of some kind. I think one of the difficulties that confront most of us is that the Government have been extremely slow and niggardly in their approach to this question. They have had to be prodded all along the line, although I think to-day that if the Government carry out the terms of their latest offer it is not unreasonable and, I would say, not ungenerous. It is a great pity that this was not offered at the outset and coupled with an offer to deal specially with particularly hard cases. I have listened to some of the hard cases that have been quoted here and I must say at the end of the day that one has asked what is being done about these hard cases and in every case I find they have been met. They may not have been met to the full extent some noble Lords would have liked, but they have been met. No doubt they have been met on a compromise basis, but they have been met, and there is no longer the hardship.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

We do not accept that they have been met. To say to a man, "I give you £10,000", when he has lost perhaps ten times as much as that, is not giving him full justice; and when this has to be used as capital, or should be used as capital, and not as income, leaving him an income which is lower than practically any industrial worker gets at the present time, that does not seem to us to be a case that has been met with justice.

LORD SILKIN

I was referring to the hard cases that have been quoted—the cases that were put forward to wither our hearts, and so on. Those were the cases I was referring to, and I say that those cases of hardship have been met and that hardship is no longer there.

LORD LLOYD

Might I ask the noble Lord a question? Does he consider that a man who has worked all his life and has saved, say, £20,000, because he gets only £10,000 back and has to live on £5 a week for the rest of his life, is a case of hardship or not?

LORD SILKIN

I would say that the hardship has been met if he has been given £10,000. It is hard luck to lose £20,000. Nobody wants to lose £20,000. But, really, is he not expected to do something—to work, perhaps?

LORD KILLEARN

If he is 65 years old he cannot work very well, can he? We are not all so vigorous as the noble Lord.

LORD SILKIN

I do not want to go too far in defence of Her Majesty's Government; that is not my function. I cannot see that a man who has had £10,000 is suffering hardship—and those were the cases that were quoted to us. He is considerably worse off than he was, but he is no longer suffering hardship. I feel that having heard both sides it is the sort of case upon which one would compromise. I do not accept that there is complete liability—there is certainly no legal liability; and I would not accept that there is a moral obligation to make good the loss that has been sustained. On the other hand, there is the hardship which has been caused, and I think it has been met to a considerable degree. I listened to the statement of the noble and learned Viscount the Lord President, that if other cases of hardship are quoted to the Government they will not close their minds to giving further assistance.

I must say that there is one respect in which I agree with noble Lords who have supported this Motion, namely, that I have very little confidence—probably no more than they have—in the ultimate outcome of the conversations with Nasser, and it seems that it would be desirable to try to make a settlement once and for all on this matter and not to make it dependent on the outcome of what most of us fully believe to be negotiations which are not going to result in any satisfaction. It is true that in my own experience as a lawyer I have often met people who do not deny liability, but that is a very different thing from getting them to pay up. I am quite sure that Nasser is not denying liability; but that is a very long way from getting any settlement with him which will result in a payment. Therefore I would suggest that it might be desirable to get a settlement in these matters, once and for all.

But I would certainly not base such a settlement on the principle of liability or full compensation. Probably in the net result the noble Marquess and I are not far part. It may be that if a figure has to be arrived at we shall not quarrel very much on it. But there is a big difference in the approach one has to make to the principle of whether there is an obligation on the Government or not. I should certainly deprecate any acceptance of a legal responsibility. For those reasons, I certainly would not feel justified in supporting the Motion.

7.16 p.m.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR)

My Lords, the debate this afternoon has taken an unusual and rather difficult turn, because we were brought here to discuss a perfectly clear Motion: To draw the attention of Her Majesty's Government to the continuing distress of British nationals expelled from Egypt. That was a perfectly definite Motion. But my noble friend Lord Salisbury has, of course, put an entirely different complexion on it and is asking us, by our vote, as I understand it, to say that the Government should bring to an end the stage of advances by loan, which is all that they have been asked to do up to now by everybody, and accept a position of compensation. The noble Marquess shakes his head. I have not seen in the papers any requests. Certainly the Society put forward a scheme for loans which are not very much greater than the ones which are being given under our scheme. It was that scheme that we considered, and on it we modelled the scheme which we now put forward.

It is true that in his speech to-day the noble Marquess and a number of other noble Lords have said this. But to-day, as I understand it, is the first time that the definite break has been made from the old principle of the procedure into the new. It is difficult to know what one does in a situation like that. While I should be the last to compare my noble friend Lord Salisbury, with Humpty Dumpty, on this occasion he is definitely saying "Words have not their ordinary meaning; they mean what I think they ought to mean, and that is the Resolution on which you ought to vote". That is a most difficult situation and I feel that I ought first to deal with the point which your Lordships were asked to consider—namely, the question: Is there now continuing distress?

Noble Lords have said, "We quite agree with your basic figures; there is no dispute about those". I hope that your Lordships will not be angry with me if I remind your Lordships of what they are. There were 7,000 to 8,000 refugees. Of these, 6,250 remained in this country and 1,500 were helped in order to emigrate. Then with regard to those who are left, 4,000 were resettled, and 500 have not yet been resettled but have every chance of being. The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, said, in his speech, "I am concerned with the remaining one-third—the 2,600 left after that figure." What about the remaining 2,600? Approximately 1,500 of these, as the noble and learned Viscount the Lord President has said, are those who have assets of up to £2,000. I would ask the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, to look at the position clearly. I am sure he will because he always tries to do so—indeed I do not think I am doing much more than echoing his words. They are being paid, on a 70 per cent. basis, the loans of which we have heard. That advance (if I may use a neutral word) is on their own unverified claim. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, appreciates that that is the position. I hope nobody will think I am imputing anything wrong, but, as was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, it has not been possible to verify these claims, and the loans are based on an unverified estimate of the claimant's loss.

No interest has been charged upon the loan. The noble and learned Viscount Lord Hailsham has said, and I repeat, that no return of the loan will be asked for until something is forthcoming from Egypt. The noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, is right in saying that it is a loan; but it is a loan of a very generous character when it is made on an unverified claim, and without interest, with no repayment unless there is something forthcoming from Egypt. I hope that that is a fair point. Believe me, the last things I want to make to your Lordships tonight are debating points—I want your Lordships to look at the actualities. There are 1,460—nearly 1,500—out of the one-third mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, as those for whom he was expressly concerned. I think, again, that that does something to answer the point which the noble Viscount who leads the Opposition has mentioned before—namely, is this matter really dealing with the small man? That has always been the position. That is not the result of the extension of the scheme. That 70 per cent. has been covered by the old scheme and the new.

Let us take the next category. We return to the 1,160 whose claims are over £2,000. If your Lordships will forgive me, I would remind you that of those in the next "slice", those with claims of from £2,000 to £5,000, no one up to now has received less than £1,500 under the loans scheme—again, on the same conditions that I have just mentioned. Those whose claims total from £3,000 to £5,000 have received £2,000; and with the increases through this extension there will still be the lowest limit of £1,500, which, after all, is 75 per cent. of £2,000; while those with claims of £4,000 and over will receive £2,500—that is 62 per cent.—on the same conditions. Again I ask your Lordships to remember the conditions. These are unverified claims. No interest is charged, and there will be no repayment unless something is forthcoming from Egypt. Of the 7,800 with whom we started, that leaves 620 with claims of over £5,000, of whom I believe 200 have claims of over £20,000.

My noble and learned friend referred to one case where a family group has a claim for between £10 million and £20 million. It is true that at the moment they are getting £80,000 under the old and £80,000 under the new arrangements, but I do not think my noble friend Lord Lloyd would describe that as continuing distress.

LORD LLOYD

My Lords, I did not want to interrupt the noble and learned Viscount, but the Lord President, having accused me of taking one case to suit my point, has entirely misled the House on this matter. There is a case of one family of millionaires. That is the only one, and that is the one which the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack is taking now. It is really misleading their Lordships to suggest that what we are fighting for is a family of millionaires. The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, is a lawyer and he is entitled to take these points if he wants to do so; but it is Satan rebuking sin. I have known of only one case involving millionaires, where the claim is between £15 million and £16 million.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I resent the suggestion that I misled the House. I said that it was an extreme case, and I mean what I said.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, my point is still right. What I was challenging the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd upon—and he has refused my challenge—was to say that £160,000, even to a millionaire, is "continuing distress". The noble Lord must remember the point—

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords—

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, this continued interruption makes it very difficult. The noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, has interrupted almost every speaker this afternoon—

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS

No, no!

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

And I really feel—

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, I have always had courtesy from the House until now, and I think it only shows the weakness of the noble and learned Viscount that he should have stooped to that.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I am quite prepared to listen to the noble Marquess. I am sorry if I have urged that he should not interrupt, but he has interrupted quite a lot this afternoon. If he wants to interrupt again I am quite prepared to listen to what he has to say. Would the noble Marquess like me to give way?

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

No, it is too late now.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

The point I was making was that one really comes to a point where we approach the ridiculous if we are going to apply the phrase "continuing distress" to a matter of that kind; and the same applies to the broad position at that range. That is the first point.

I want now just to remind your Lordships that, apart from the improvements which I have mentioned in regard to the amounts, several modifications were made in order to remove anomalies and inequities. In addition, Her Majesty's Government announced that they would make £100,000 available for loans to the British officials whom my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross has mentioned and with regard to whom, I think one may say, after his speech, there has been a reasonable and general satisfaction. Apart from that, the point that has been made by the noble Marquess and the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, is that there is some essential difference between the ex gratia loans and the advances which should not continue at this time. I have tried to deal with the first point: the nature of the claims. I should like to say a word on the other aspect, and that is the effect which that is likely to have on the future position in Egypt.

The noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, asked me whether I would deal with the proportions of assets belonging to residents who had been expelled and to other people. I cannot give him an exact figure. I should think, if anything, that the proportion of the others, apart from those who were expelled, is slightly higher, although it is probably a fairly evenly-balanced matter and therefore it is quite a serious consideration. The position with regard to that is that we are dealing with two sets of property, as the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, indicated. There is the property that has been nationalised and the property that has been sequestrated. I do not think noble Lords have really appreciated the responsibility which lies upon us with regard to the sequestrated property.

In the case of the nationalised property it is a question of getting compensation and getting the figure that will ultimately be agreed; but in the case of the sequestrated property it is a question of the return of the property and, of course, the payment of any revenue that has come from the property in the intervening years. To take the simple case—that is, not money used for business but money in a bank account—there will be the interest on that account. If it is property in land, there will be the rents that come in from the land, less the sequestration charge, which, I suppose, would not be high—perhaps 10 per cent., even if it were a very high charge. As my noble and learned friend the Lord President said, these are considerable sums, and the question is: are we to risk the chance of both classes losing that property? That is the point. I hope I have made it clear to the House that this is not a question of collecting money: this is a question of property which is being kept by the sequestrator in trust for other people.

It seems to me that this is a question which requires very serious consideration. We are asked to say to-day, and to vote on this Motion on the basis of saying, "We are finished with that idea. We are finished with the line of action which may lead to a return of that property, and we are now going to take the line that we should give up all hope of these people getting the return of their own property, whatever position they are in and whatever their industrial responsibilities are", and to assume, as the noble Marquess would have us do, aresponsibility for it. I think that this is something which we should not be asked to do without consideration, and we should certainly not be asked to do that on a Motion which does not mention the fact, and on the speech expressing a great protagonist's point of view coming late in the debate. I hope that the noble Marquess will not hold it against me too long that I resented his interruption. If he does, I am sorry. I should, after twenty-five years, always give way on being interrupted, and I hope that the noble Marquess will not hold it against me for too long.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, my noble and learned friend the Lo-d Chancellor is a very old friend of mine, and of course this shall be forgotten entirely.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I am sorry. I did not hear what the noble Marquess said.

THE EARL OF HOME

He said that it would be forgotten.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I am very glad and I hope that we may argue out this point with all our old gusto and old friendship. But the point I am putting to the noble Marquess now (and I am very anxious that he should consider it) is that it is a really serious position if we are to be asked to-day to change from the position of these loans which are mentioned to a position of compensation.

I should like just to test the matter in one other way. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye has left the Chamber for the moment, because I tried—and again I am not making a debating point—to put in words the principle which Lord Balfour of Inchrye said existed. As I understand it, his principle fell into two parts. The first was that if you intervene to stop a war that is threatening the safety of your nationals you have a special responsibility which does not apply in the ordinary case. My Lords, what it is quite clear was undisputed two years ago was that General Amar was heading a force towards the Israeli border and stated that, if it had not been for our landings, he would have continued his invasion. I am not going to argue the point at the moment; I am taking that as being the admitted situation. But what difference does it make whether you intervene in order to save your nationals from, in your belief, a war, and a spreading war, or from any other form of actions such as those that have been mentioned?

I now take the second part of the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye; that is, that the responsibility of a Government is for the property of individuals, however extensive the individuals' property may be, but not for the property of corporations who also function somewhere else. Your Lordships will remember that the noble Lord said that Imperial Chemical Industries are not entirely dependent on their functioning in Cairo. That is a very odd principle, and it shows—and this is the point I am making to-night—how dangerous it is to depart from the words of a Motion and to read into it something which we cannot really discover at this time.

My Lords, that brings me to the attitude which I feel with regard to this Motion. It is this: had we been asked to vote on the Motion as it stands on the Order Paper, I should not have desired to vote against it; nor should I have advised your Lordships to vote against it, because the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, is quite entitled to his view as to what is "distress", even though I may not share it. I do not think there is distress. I think we have shown now that there is not really distress in any sense, and we are asked to consider only that third of the refugees. But the last thing I want to do (especially after his magnanimity) is to give Lord Salisbury the slightest impression that I am trying to evade the issue which he has raised. Lord Salisbury has said, as I understand it, that he wants the vote to-night to be a vote that ex gratia loans should stop and that compensation should be substituted for them. My Lords, that I cannot accept. I feel that the only honourable course is to vote against it in that case, because I do not believe that we have come to the position when we can, in the interests of all concerned, risk the chance of their regaining their property by abandoning the ex gratia loan foundation and going on to the other one.

Now, my Lords, that is the position, and if the noble Marquess desires the vote in the sense that he indicated then I feel that the answer to it is that I ought to vote against it. I hope he will not think that I am trying to replace the difficulty on to his shoulders. I am not: I am trying to answer his point. I want to make it quite clear—one always has to say what one will do and get rid of the hypothetical and the conditional—that if nothing further is said I shall assume that the noble Marquess wishes this Resolution to contain what he has said—namely, abandoning loans and going on to compensation—and I shall vote against it and will advise my friends to do so.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I hesitate to interrupt the noble and learned Viscount, but it is not my Motion; it is Lord Lloyd's Motion.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

Yes, but I think that there is not only such a geographical proximity between Lord Lloyd and the noble Marquess but obviously such a community of souls on this matter that I was not wrong in interpreting the noble Marquess's intervention in the debate as a true construction of what was wanted by the Resolution; and, as I say, unless that is changed (because I must give a definite view) I shall feel bound to vote against the Resolution and to ask my friends to do so, because this is a Resolution requesting us to move from our present basis of loans to the basis of compensation.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

Might I raise a question?

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

Certainly.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

I have not heard any further comment after the noble and learned Viscount's reply to the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, upon what is the effect of the grant made to the 1951 cases. I have just made a rough calculation, and the average amount, after nearly seven years, is about £106 to professors, lecturers, teachers, nurses, and all professional people. It seems to me almost ludicrous. Might I ask whether that has been finally accepted by their associations as enough?

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

The noble Viscount who leads the Opposition will remember that there was a considerable amount of negotiation on this point with the Egyptian Government. I especially do not want to go into that history at the moment, but I would remind the noble Viscount—and my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross will correct me if I am wrong—of the different position of these claims. They were not claims for a liquidated sum; they were claims in the nature of damages for wrongful dismissal and for being prevented from being able to earn. Therefore, they were claims that would sound in damages, and there was a considerable discussion as to how much they should be, and a great difference of opinion—I mean a difference of opinion not only between the different parties but between the different people who were concerned with it. As I say, if the noble Viscount will take it from me I would rather not go into the details of the history at the moment However, I think I can say this with fairness: that the sum of £100,000 that has been offered to-day is as much as we should have been likely to get out of the Egyptian Government at the end of the previous period, unless there had been a great change from their last point of view.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

If the noble and learned Viscount will forgive my saying so, I do not think the associations will accept that.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I think my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross will remember that what I said was that that was what they would have been likely to get out of the Egyptian Government in the view that they were taking at the time. I am not for a moment suggesting that they did not think they should have got more. Of course they did. But we have given a figure which, in the circumstances, and after the history of the negotiations, is one that at any rate has given some satisfaction, and that is the basis of the figure. I do not think I can help the noble Viscount much further on that point.

LORD LAYTON

Might I ask for the guidance of the noble and learned Viscount? I do not consider—and I think the same applies to many of the noble Lords who sit on these Benches—that there is no continuing distress. I believe that there is continuing distress among many of the refugees from Egypt, and I want to say that very strongly to the Government, because I do not think they have handled the situation very well. But I do not want to express a categorical opinion as to whether all ex gratia payments should stop and as to whether there should be (and, if so, to what degree) compensation. I therefore ask whether the noble and learned Viscount can give me some guidance as to which way I should vote.

LORD LLOYD

Might I say a word to your Lordships as to what I wish to ask your Lordships to vote for? Perhaps that might be simpler. After all, it happens to be my Motion and not the Motion of the noble Marquess. What I am suggesting to your Lordships is this. I drew my Motion in wide terms on purpose. If I may say so, it is perhaps a little naîve of the noble and learned Viscount to plead that he does not know what we have in our minds. We have had discussions about this with the Government—I do not think there is any secret about this—for two years, and they must have some idea of what we have in our minds. I drew my Motion in wide terms for a particular purpose. It was because I wished to give Her Majesty's Government, of which I am a supporter, every opportunity of coming forward with some further constructive offer in this matter which would save me the trouble of having to register an opinion against them in this House. I drew it widely on purpose because I felt that there was always the danger, if one drew it too narrowly, of putting the Government in a position from which they could not withdraw.

What I am asking your Lordships to vote on, in my view and in the view of my noble friends, is whether compensation is the right and full solution. Suppose the Government had come forward with a scheme—just promises after two years are not good enough and the Government had plenty of notice—a practical scheme for a final settlement (because we do not believe there is going to be any settlement with Nasser) to give these people some security in their lives, we would accept it and consider it and I would withdraw my Motion; but there is no scheme before us. I ask your Lordships to say that we are profoundly dissatisfied with the handling of this matter by the Government, that we do not consider that these people so far have had a square deal, and that we feel that something more should be done to deal more satisfactorily and more generously with them. That is what my Motion means, and if I say that to the noble Lord, Lord Layton, it will save my winding up.

THE EARL OF HOME

My Lords, if I may make a long-stop—a very unenviable position and one I have not been in for a long time—I would say that my noble friend Lord Lloyd has said that he had put down his Motion in wide terms; but if he looks at it, he will find that it is extremely narrow. It is confined to the fact that distress is continuing among British nationals. If that is the Motion, like my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor I am perfectly willing to accept it as it is on the Paper. I am perfectly willing to look again at the scheme before the House—the noble Lord said that there was no scheme before us, but of course there is a scheme—to see, if there are cases of distress, whether that scheme could be stretched to embrace them. But we are now being asked to vote on a Motion which does not contain any of the words which my noble friends, Lord Lloyd and Lord Salisbury, have used about the principle and general purpose of compensation.

I do not believe that we ought to vote on this matter to-night as a House. I am going to suggest to my noble friend Lord Lloyd and to the noble Marquess that we should not do so. As I understand it, the general proposition put forward is that if, as a result of an act of foreign policy which was considered by the Government of the day to be in the national interest, damage is done to the property of British nationals, it is an absolute obligation (I am not saying a 100 per cent. Obligation) on the Government of the day to compensate. That is a proposition about which I should want to think a lot and about which I should be bound to advise all noble Lords to think a great deal more before your Lordships accepted it as part of a Motion. Because it leads on to this. The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, and the noble Marquess have talked about the principle. I am a little chary of principles. I want to examine them. I want to think a little more about the principle that has been put forward.

As I understand it, if we apply the principle that we are bound to compensate, then all have to be in it; but the noble Marquess is not saying that. He is saying that we should compensate people who have assets in Egypt and are suffering hardship, but should leave out the banks and Shell and the big companies, or, if we do not leave them out, at least have discussions on how far they should be compensated. The principle then becomes at best half a principle, or perhaps less than half a principle. I suggest to your Lordships that what the community does accept in a case such as this is an obligation, and the Government would accept it on behalf of the community, to try to help people who suffer because of the country's interests and to assist them to avoid hardship. The best way to help is to induce the Egyptians to settle. The second best way is to advance money against the claims of those people who have assets.

All I am saying is that if, within the terms of this Motion, which I am bound to repeat is narrowly drawn, we are going to be asked to accept this general proposition of compensation and this principle, which does not seem to me to be a principle, then I would say to my noble friends that we really ought to be given more time to think it over. We should like to think about the proposition and we ought to think about the full implications of the proposals they are trying to embrace. The Motion names none of these things. I am perfectly willing to take back this scheme to my colleagues to look at it again and, if we find cases of hardship, to see whether the scheme can be stretched to embrace them. But, like my noble and learned friend, I could not advise your Lordships' House to accept these general propositions without much further thought. Therefore I would ask my noble friend Lord Lloyd not to put the House into a position in which your Lordships have to take a decision on this great issue, because if he insists and does so I shall have to suggest to your Lordships that the Motion has ceased to be the Motion on the Order Paper altogether and is something much wider, and that we should have to reject it for the time being so as to think about the great principles which are raised.

LORD LLOYD

My Lords, I have listened with great attention to what the noble Earl the Leader of the House has said. I do not agree that my Motion is narrowly drawn. It draws attention to the distress of the people and moves for Papers. That is the conventional way of saying that we are dissatisfied with the situation of these people and that we want something done. I have always understood that that was the convention we used in your Lordships' House, and therefore I should have thought that it was widely, and not narrowly, drawn. The noble Earl says that he will take this scheme back for consideration. I thought that we had made it plain to the Government that this scheme in principle and essence is something which we do not feel is acceptable, because we do not believe that there are any prospects of settlement. The noble Earl has held out no firm proposition of any kind to meet us for the future.

THE EARL OF HOME

My Lords, may I make just one more attempt to see whether my noble friend will understand the difficulty in which he is putting the House. He has put down one Motion and we find another one. There is an essential difference.

LORD LLOYD

My Lords, I do not agree with the noble Earl. I said that these people are in distress, and I moved for Papers, which means that I am distressed about it and want the Government to do something about it. We are being slightly legalistic, because noble Lords know perfectly well that we have not been satisfied with the scheme from the word "Go". I put down the Motion in this way to give the Government an opportunity of making some further advance, which it might have been possible for us to accept. We all want to compromise, but we have had nothing constructive from the Government this afternoon. We have had the same old scheme and no departure from the principle at all. Therefore I do not think that I can delay things any further. We feel that this is a matter of honour for ourselves and our country, and I would ask your Lordships to express your view on this matter in the Lobby.

LORD LAYTON

My Lords, in that case surely it is necessary to give an explanation for voting. We must vote on the words that appear on the Order Paper. I feel that I cannot vote against those words because I entirely agree with them. I do not wish to abstain because, if I do that, the impression is that we do not feel the sense of those words. Therefore, I only wish to record that I shall vote for the Motion on the Paper in the sense I mentioned just now.

THE EARL OF HOME

My Lords, I must say that the noble Lord is putting the House into an intolerable position. Noble Lords should not put down Motions and then alter the words. However, if the noble Lord must do it, I have given him every chance to alter it.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, it is not my Motion, and I do not want to intervene. But may I say this? The House knows perfectly well what it is voting on. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said that he could not vote for

House adjourned at ten minutes past eight o'clock.

it; the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, as I understood, said that he could not vote for it. They know exactly what is in our minds. They know why the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, put down this Motion, and they know what he hopes to get. They know that this is the alternative to the negative reply that we have had from the Government, I do not think the noble Earl the Leader of the House can say that the House is being asked to vote on something but that they do not know what.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH

My Lords, there are so many explanations going on that I think the House might put up with another one. It is this. I was convinced, when I saw this Motion on the Paper, that it was one that I should vote for. But I am bound to say that, having listened to the speeches in this debate, I should want to know more about the claims, where they go and how they would commit us on certain principles. On that basis, while I certainly will not help the Government, because I think they have been niggardly all along, I shall still go on working to relieve the distress, so far as I can, but I will certainly not vote for the Motion.

On Question, Whether the said Motion shall be agreed to?

Their Lordships divided: Contents, 23; Not-Contents, 26.

CONTENTS
Salisbury, M.	Auckland, L.	Killearn, L.
	Balfour of Inchrye, L.	Kindersley, L.
Albemarle, E.	Deramore, L.	Layton, L.
Buckinghamshire, E.	Derwent, L.	Lloyd, L.
Cork and Orrery, E.	Digby, L.	Newall, L.
	Gifford, L. [Teller.]	Russell of Liverpool, L.
Gage, V.	Grenfell, L.	Sandys, L.
Massereene and Ferrard, V.	Hampton, L.	Teviot, L. [Teller.]
		Windlesham, L.

NOT-CONTENTS
Kilmuir, V. (L. Chancellor.)	Onslow, E. [Teller.]	Chesham, L.
	Perth, E.	Dynevor, L.
Hailsham, V. (L. President.)	St. Aldwyn, E. [Teller.]	Fraser of Lonsdale, L.
Lansdowne M.	Selkirk, E.	Hawke, L.
	Waldegrave, E.	Merrivale, L.
Bathurst, E.	Woolton, E.	Merthyr, L.
Dundee, E.		Mills, L.
Gosford, E.	Aberdare, L.	Sandford, L.
Home, E.	Airedale, L.	Strathclyde, L.
Morley, E.	Amwell, L.

Resolved in the negative, and Motion disagreed to accordingly.