MEMBERS' RIGHTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 137, 7 December 1938, Page 13

MEMBERS' RIGHTS

OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT

INTERIM REPORT ON SANDYS CASE

ACCEPTED BY HOUSE

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, December 5

The position of members of Parliament in relation to the Official Secrets Act came up for renewed discussion in the House of Commons tonight on two motions, one reconstituting the Select Committee which served last session, and the other receiving the Committee's interim report published last October which dealt chiefly with Mr. Duncan Sandys's case. The Prime Minister said that the questions at issue were of considerable moment to the House, and it was desirable that the matter of the responsibilities of members of Parliament who came into possession of secret information, should be cleared up—as it would be in the final report of the Select Committee. Regarding the interim report, Mr. Chamberlain, thought it had established that there never had been any deliberate intention on the part of any Minister to exercise improper pressure on Mr. Sandys. He urged the House to accept the report. If the Select Committee, in their final report, were able to give the House some general guidance on the questions at issue, it might be hoped for the future that there would be no recurrence of an incident such as Mr. Sandys's case. NOT TO STIFLE CRITICISM. Captain Wedgw,ood Benn (Labour) considered that the essence of the matter was the provision in the Bill of Rights that debates and proceedings of Parliament should not be challenged or impeached in any place outside. Mr. Winston Churchill (Independent Conservative) said he accepted the report with great cordiality. Mr. Dingle Foot (Liberal) stressed the fact that the Official Secrets Act had been passed to strengthen the law against espionage and not to handicap the Opposition in the House of Commons or to stifle criticism and cloak incompetence in high places. Mr. W. J. Anstruther-Gray (Conservative) argued that though the first responsibility in regard to defence rested with the Minister, it was the duty of members to see that he discharged that duty properly. A lively passage then followed, Mr. Churchill criticising speeches to the troops by the Minister of War, Mr. Hore-Belisha, and his answers to questions in the House of Commons as representing that Britain's antiaircraft defences were satisfactory. Mr. Churchill said that it angered the troops when they knew that the position was to the contrary. Mr. Hore-Belisha challenged -Mr. Churchill to point out any .inaccuracy in his answers or speeches, and Mr. j Churchill then read a passage from a speech in which the Minister said that one battery in the recent crisis remained at its war station for a week without a single gun. The House accepted the motions. Mr. Duncan Sandys, who is a member of Parliament and a Territorial officer, was involved in an incident in the House of Commons when, after he had given notice of intention to ask a qujestion which revealed that he possessed confidential information about defences, he had an interview with the Attorney-General in which he detected what he thought a threat to proceed against him under the Official Secrets Act. He then raised the matter in the Hou^e of Commons as affecting the privileges of members and a Select Committee was appointed to inquire into the affair. The Committee stated that there was no doubt that the document from which figures were obtained by Mr. Sandys was secret. The Committee believed that Mr. Sandys knew that he was receiving secret information, but was satisfied that he was unaware that Captain H. T. Hogan, Adjutant of-the 51st (London) Antiaircraft Brigade, in which Mr. Sandys was a 2nd Lieutenant, was acting wrongly in that connection. The Committee considered that no exception could be taken to the action of General Sir Edmund Ironside, G.O.C. of the Eastern Command, in instructing that Mr. Sandys be ordered to attend the Court of Inquiry as a witness.