HL Deb 03 December 1963 vol 253 cc901-10

2.48 p.m.

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD DERWENT)

My Lords, the main purpose of this Bill is to enable this country to fulfil our obligations towards our fellow members of NATO; that is to say, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Federal German Republic, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Turkey and the United States of America. An Agreement was signed between the members of NATO in June, 1951, under the title, "Agreement regarding the Status of Forces of Parties to the North Atlantic Treaty". That was Cmd. 9363. This empowers the Service courts and Service authorities of member countries to exercise jurisdiction, in some cases exclusive jurisdiction, over members of their armed forces and the civilian components of those forces when stationed in the territory of other member countries. It also confers on the military authorities of member countries certain privileges and exemptions in relation to these, forces similar to those enjoyed by the military authorities of the host country.

The Visiting Forces Act, 1952, was passed to enable the United Kingdom to ratify the Agreement. The United Kingdom, however, has not yet ratified the Protocol to the Agreement, which was signed in 1952 and is entitled "Protocol on the Status of International Military Headquarters set up Pursuant to the North Atlantic Treaty" that is Cmd. 8687. This Protocol applies the 1951 Agreement to certain Allied headquarters under NATO, and provides for certain other privileges to be conferred on those headquarters. Apart from Canada, which has no NATO headquarters in its territories, and Western Germany, which joined NATO some years after the original members and hopes to accede to the Protocol shortly, we are the only country which has so far not given full effect to its provisions. The Bill will enable us to do so by extending the Visiting Forces Act, 1952, to headquarters and defence organisations to be specified, and for enabling the necessary privileges to be conferred on them by Order in Council. The Bill has been so drawn as largely to confine its scope to the application of the Visiting Forces Act to headquarters and defence organisations designated under the Bill. There are at present no NATO "defence organisations" in being in so far as this Bill is concerned, but Article 14 of the Protocol requires us to be able to designate them should any be established.

There are two preliminary points which might be made. The first is that since the main effect of the Bill is simply to extend to headquarters privileges which Parliament has already agreed to grant to members of visiting forces, the Bill does not raise any new points of principle. Secondly, although the Bill is concerned with headquarters and establishments in United Kingdom territory, the Protocol which we shall be enabled to ratify also affects—and this is important, my Lords—the position of those members of our own forces who are members of NATO headquarters abroad. It must be remembered that the other NATO countries in whose territory international headquarters have been set up afford substantially the same immunities and privileges to members of the United Kingdom forces serving in headquarters in those countries. Thirdly, although the main purpose of the Bill is to enable the United Kingdom to ratify the NATO Protocol, it is so drafted as to be capable of extension to any other international headquarters set up in connection with our defence arrangements should this become desirable.

Clause 2 enables Her Majesty, by Order in Council, to direct that the provisions of the Bill shall extend, subject to modifications, to the Colonies and other Territories. If the Bill is passed it is intended to extend it (provided that the colonial Administrations agree) to Malta and Gibraltar, where NATO headquarters are already in being. Since the principles embodied in the Bill have already been accepted by Parliament in respect of visiting forces, it may not be thought necessary to refer in detail to all the provisions of the Bill. There are, however, certain points to which attention should perhaps be drawn.

First of all, my Lords, as regards immunities and privileges, subsection (1) of Clause 1 empowers the designating Order in Council to confer on a headquarters the legal capacity of a body corporate and certain other immunities and privileges. The wording is similar to that of Section 1, subsection (2), of the International Organisations (Immunities and Privileges) Act, 1950. Mention should also be made, I think, of paragraph 7 of the Schedule, the effect of which is that laws which confer privileges and immunities on the home forces can be applied by Order in Council to Allied headquarters as they can be (and have been) applied to visiting forces in Orders in Council made under Section 8 of the Visiting Forces Act, 1952. Orders in Council under Section 8 of the 1952 Act are subject to Affirmative Resolution, and Orders under paragraph 7 of the Schedule of this Bill will also be so subject.

Now a word about jurisdiction, and about the provisions of this Bill which will probably be of the greatest interest to your Lordships, and to others. These are the provisions of the Bill which relate to the powers of Service courts and Service authorities, and to the restriction of trial by United Kingdom courts. The powers of Service courts and Service authorities are granted and defined in paragraph 3 of the Schedule. The position is that the Service courts and Service authorities of a country to which Section 2 of the Visiting Forces Act, 1952, applies are empowered by that section to exercise their jurisdiction over military members of any visiting force of that country. Paragraph 3 of the Schedule to the Bill provides that the Service courts and authorities of such a country may similarly exercise their jurisdiction over military members of a designated headquarters who belong to that country—that is, who are members of that country's forces and are appointed to serve under the orders of the headquarters.

I turn now to paragraph 4 of the Schedule, and I think that at this stage, perhaps, it may be thought sufficient to explain that, apart from offences arising out of the offender's duty, the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom courts will be excluded only if the offence is committed against the person or property of a person belonging to the same country as the offender, or a dependent of such a person, or against the property of the offender's country or of the headquarters. It will not be excluded if, for example, a Belgian member of a headquarters commits an offence against a Canadian member of a headquarters or of a visiting force; nor if a member of a Belgian visiting force commits an offence against a Canadian member of a headquarters. In other words, the offence must be an offence by a citizen of one visiting country against the headquarters or citizen of the same visiting country. Offences against the person or property of a dependent who is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, or ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom, are not excluded from the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom courts; nor are offences against the person or property of any member of the home forces who may be attached to a visiting force or a headquarters.

There is one other point, my Lords, that I should like to mention. Under paragraph 1 of the Schedule the provisions of the Bill will not apply as regards any members of the home forces who are serving at a headquarters, or as regards any dependants of a member of a headquarters who are citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies or ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom.

The Bill is of a somewhat technical character, and is not very easy to follow. It is, however, essential that it should be enacted so that the United Kingdom can fulfil its obligations as a member of NATO. We are dependent for our defence on the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, and it is an inevitable consequence that Allied headquarters should be established on our territory and that members of our forces should serve on such headquarters abroad. Until the Bill is passed, this country cannot ratify the Protocol and we are not fulfilling our obligations. I hope, therefore, that your Lordships will give this Bill a Second Reading this afternoon. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Derwent.)

2.58 p.m.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I hope that I may be allowed to say a few words about this Bill, because, while we on this side of the House have no objection to it—in fact, we accept the necessity for it—there are one or two points that I think ought to be clarified. The first is: why this delay? Why twelve years' delay in ratification? Why are we the last country to ratify? Apart from Canada and Germany, which came in late, all the other countries, apparently, have ratified—and, I presume, some time ago. Now the noble Lord comes along and tells us that it is urgent. I should think so, after twelve years—which happens to be exactly the time the noble Lord's friends have been in office. So will he explain why there has been this delay?

The second point is this. Of course, we are all interested in the question of diplomatic immunity. We recognise that there must be diplomatic immunity, but to how many people will it apply? The noble Lord did not tell us that. Then, I did not quite follow his explanation as to whom it will apply. I do not know whether he followed it himself, but it was not easy to understand. Let me give one or two examples. Suppose a civilian member of a visiting force commits an offence against a British subject in this country. Will he be dealt with in the British courts, or will he be dealt with by the domestic tribunal, under the Visiting Forces Act? Supposing that the same person commits an offence against a subject of a country which has already ratified the Protocol—say France—in this country; that is to say, commits an offence against a Frenchman in this country. Will he be dealt with under British law, in a British court, or by a visiting court? Perhaps the noble Lord could give us a generally somewhat clearer explanation of how these matters will be dealt with.

Finally, my Lords, I would ask the noble Lord when he anticipates that the Order in Council will be laid. There is some urgency about the matter, and I take it that until the Order in Council has been laid, and the Affirmative Resolution passed, it will not be effective. Can he assure us that if we expedite the passage of this Bill the Order in Council will be laid very quickly? I think that that is all I wish to say on this Bill. We approve it in principle, but I should like to be clear about the various points that I have put.

3.1 p.m.

LORD OGMORE

My Lords, on behalf of myself and my noble friends I, too, agree with this Bill and support it; but, like the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I am very much surprised to find that the Protocol entered into on August 28, 1952, has only now been ratified by the Government of the United Kingdom. This does not seem to me to be particularly strong support of NATO. Unhappily, it is by no means the only case where this sort of luke-warm attitude to NATO is apparent, not only by this Government but by other Governments in NATO. The NATO organisation is supposed to be, to a large extent, a pooling of our resources and a standardisation of those resources; yet we find in NATO constant complaints by the Supreme Commander and others that there has been very little standardisation and very little pooling. I remember that a year or two ago, when I was at NATO, the Supreme Commander said that about the only thing that was standardised in NATO was the air in the tyres of the vehicles. That does not seem to me to show any great desire on the part of Her Majesty's Government, or of other Governments, to create the really international organisation which is what we want. The day of the nation-State in international affairs is almost gone; the day of the nation-State in defence affairs should have gone. It is impossible to-day to try to develop and, pay for these vast defence installations and organisations on a national basis; even the United States of America finds difficulty in that. Certainly no other country can do so.

I am very glad that this Bill has been introduced, because not only does it give status to NATO headquarters here which it renders immune from suit, but it also (and the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, rightly stressed this) affects the status of the members of our forces when they serve abroad—as a number are doing, in France and elsewhere in NATO. At the last meeting of the NATO Parliamentarians' Conference, which was attended by representatives of all the Parliaments of the fifteen NATO countries—and to which, I may say, a strong body of representatives from your Lordships' House goes every year, and where last year we had the signal honour of providing, in the person of the noble Lord, Lord Crathorne, the President of the Conference (and very able he was)—there were made certain recommendations on this very point: the point of the desirability of a unified system. The Political Committee, of which I am the chairman, recommended that there be developed under the NATO Council a unified strategic planning system aimed at the development of a full strategic consensus among the members of the Alliance in order to establish an effective basis for discussion regarding the use of nuclear and non-nuclear forces.

Furthermore, to this end, the NATO Governments should undertake consultations towards the elevation of the NATO Council into a high-level Allied forum for unified strategic planning; membership of such a revised NATO Council should be drawn from the highest levels of Government. Finally they suggested that the revised NATO Council should engage in world-wide strategic planning in the broadest sense, political as well as military, on questions affecting war and peace. The Military Committee recommended that the Alliance should take all possible steps to increase still further the co-ordination of research, development and production within the framework of NATO and to organise an integrated logistics system. If this comes about, as it must if NATO is to be a realistic international defence organisation, this Bill to-day is absolutely essential. For these reasons, my Lords, I welcome it; and I hope that the Government will not in future drag their feet as they have done in the case of NATO and other international organisations of which we are members.

3.5 p.m.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend Lord Derwent would enlighten me on a point when he comes to reply. We in your Lordships' House, after impassioned debate, have passed a number of Orders conferring immunity and privilege on various international bodies—such bodies as Wheat Commissions and coffee organisations and so on. In all these cases I have always understood that we were conferring complete immunity on them; in other words, that they were not subject to our courts at all. I may be wrong about this; but as I understand it from the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, we are here not conferring so great an immunity as that. In other words, these people can be sued in our courts if they wrong some British citizen. I should like to be enlightened as to whether there is, indeed, a difference; and, if so, why. If they will be able to run down in one of their motor cars a British citizen—as I understand members of the Diplomatic Corps can do—without risk of being sued, I should like to know. The other point is that if they have a particular form of immunity, I think there should be some publicity given to it, because it becomes important to tradesmen, in the giving of credit, and so on, to know whether or not debts can be recovered.

3.7 p.m.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, I will try to answer the questions that have been raised. On the legal matters I am subject, of course, to immediate correction as I go along by the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack. The first question was why we had not done this before. I regret that I cannot tell you. There has been a considerable shortage of Parliamentary time, but apart from that I do not know. But that fact, I hope, will not stop noble Lords from giving the Bill a Second Reading.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, surely the noble Lord can find out, perhaps he himself might be interested to know.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, I believe that the official answer is "lack of Parliamentary time"; but if I find out any other reason I will let the noble Lord know. That may be the right answer.

I will deal first with a question put by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. The people with whom we are concerned are not given diplomatic immunity as such. They have immunity in certain circumstances from trial by British courts, which I will explain in a moment; but it is not overall immunity. This Bill applies what is at present in force under the Visiting Forces Act, with certain modifications, to international headquarters. So I had better repeat, in part, what is the case. British courts are excluded from trying a case involving designated headquarters—which we designate, of course—only when a foreign member of that headquarters commits an offence against another member of the headquarters who is of the same nationality as the offender; in cases where the person concerned is a British subject, or a subject of the United Kingdom or Colonies, or a dependent of a United Kingdom subject, then the British courts are not excluded. This is intended to deal only with nationals of a NATO country who commit offences against nationals of the same country. This may not be legal terminology, but I hope that it is clear. The only other question the noble Lord asked was about the date of the Order in Council. It is our intention to issue the Order in Council as soon as possible after the Bill has gone through Parliament.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, the noble Lord did not say how many people this is likely to affect.

LORD DERWENT

I am sorry that I forgot that point. At the moment there are 37 people involved in this country, of whom 11 are civilians.

LORD KILLEARN

My Lords, does this confer immunity from British municipal taxation?

LORD DERWENT

No, my Lords, the Bill certainly does not.

LORD KILLEARN

I ask this question because this immunity is becoming larger and larger. The number of strange bodies who are being given diplomatic immunity has grown year by year and the number of people involved has reached some colossal amount, thousands. I think that immunity would be all right if it were limited to a select number, as it used to be, but when it is granted by and large it is a different story.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE)

My Lords, if my noble friend will look at the Bill he will see that it has nothing to do with immunity from taxation. Indeed, to introduce this concept into diplomatic immunity is somewhat in the nature of a red herring.

LORD KILLEARN

My Lords, I am delighted to hear the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack say that I have started a red herring. I am glad to know that it is a red herring, and am delighted to be "ticked off".

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend. Perhaps this may give my noble friend the information he is seeking. Immunity from taxation is given by Sections 73 and 74 of the Finance Act, 1960, so far as is necessary. I was saying that the Order in Council will be issued immediately this Bill has gone through Parliament. I think that I have answered the question of my noble friend Lord Hawke about those to whom the Act applies.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, I think that my question was the red herring, but my noble friend might answer the point about publicity, because the wretched tradesmen in this country ought to know whether or not they can sue for debt.

LORD DERWENT

My Lords, this again does not come under this Bill, but I think that tradesmen are well aware of the position by now under the Visiting Forces Act, and this Bill is really an extension of that Act. I am particularly grateful to noble Lords for giving the Bill a welcome.

On Question, Bill read 2a and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.