OFFICIAL SECRETS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 July 1938, Page 7

OFFICIAL SECRETS

MR DUNCAN SANDYS BEFORE COMMITTEE EVIDENCE GIVEN FOR 75 MINUTES. SITTING HELD IN CAMERA. By Telegraph.—Press Association, Copyright. (Recd This Day, 9.25 a.m.) LONDON, July 5. Mr Duncan Sandys, M.P., gave evidence privately for 75 minutes before the Select Committee. Following on the presentation in the House of Commons by a Select Committee of a report that a breach of privilege had been committed by a military tribunal which had cited Mr Duncan Sandys, M.P., to appear before it, the Prime Minister (Mr Neville Chamberlain) moved for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the substance of the statement made on June 27 in the House by Mr Sandys and of the action of the Minister concerned, and generally into the question of applicability of the Official Secrets Act to members of the House in the discharge of their Parliamentary duties. The Prime Minister’s motion was carried unopposed. The affair originated from the War Office taking the view that notice of question given by Mr Sandys indicated a disclosure of official and confidential information. Mi- Sandys, who has represented the Norwood division of Lambeth in the House of Commons since 1935, is thirty years of age and was educated at Eton and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took his M.A. degree. Entering the diplomatic service, he was appointed in 1930 to his Majesty’s Embassy in Berlin, studied conditions in Russia and Siberia in 1931 and was attached to the United Kingdom delegation to the Lausanne Conference in 1932. Mr Sandys was transferred to the Foreign Office and was attached to the World Economic Conference, London, in 1'933. He later retired from the diplomatic service. Mr Sandys is a second lieutenant in the 51st (London) Anti-Aircraft Brigade R.A. He is married to the eldest daughter of Mr and Mrs Winston Churchill.