OFFICIAL SECRETS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 December 1938, Page 7

OFFICIAL SECRETS

DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ISSUES RAISED IN SANDYS CASE. RECONSTITUTION OF SELECT COMMITTEE. (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 interim report of the committee published last October which dealt chiefly with Mr Duncan Sandys’s case. . The Prime Minister (Mr Chamberlain) 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 that 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. Mr Wedgwood 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 Winstone Churchill (Independent Conservative) said that he accepted the re-1 port 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 An-struther-Gray (Conservative) argued that though the first responsibility in regard to defence rested with the Minr ister, it was the duty of M.’sP. to see that he discharged that duty properly. A lively passage then followed, Mr Churchill criticising Mr Hore-Belisha’s speeches to the troops and his answers to questions in the House of Commons as representing that Britain’s anti-air-craft 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 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.

An important constitutional question was raised in the House of Commons on June 29 last concerning the privileges of members of Parliament in relation to action under the Official Secrets Act, and a Select Committee was appointed to “inquire into the substance of a statement made on June 27 by the members for Norwood (Mr Duncan Sandys) and the action of the Minister concerned, and generally into the question of the applicability of the Official Secrets Act to members of this. House in the discharge of their parliamentary duties.”

A sequel ocurred in the House on the following day when Mr Sandys announced that, in his capacity as an officer of the Territorial Army, he had received orders to appear before a military court of inquiry to give evidence.

Mr "Sandys appealed to the Speaker and said that the question of how far it was permissible to compel an M.P. to divulge a source of information used by him in the discharge of his parliamentary duties was in process of being considered by the House, and in these circumstances he submitted. thal it was a gross breach of privilage that he should be summoned before a military tribunal.