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i RAI Cried sd © eee i Fs. 4 1487 Former Le, Office” J NOVEMBER 195$ Officials —Diseppearance 1488 e of t . eos . ' . \ . . . i ; t st pit eb atlattcay du. furs ot Foreign Service at home and abroad.: I oe fb, _ Vella’ Bee ant te bh © know they will agree with me when 1 & rts : FORMER FOREIGN OFFICE say how fortunate we are in this country cee nee eee OFFICIALS (DISAPPEARANCE) .., to have a Foreign Service of the highest ” quality, giving the: most loyal ap de- « Me wins : i i Oucsti posed, voted service to the Crown and fo the en i eise do Now adjourn, _” fation. I think that all of us today are . wept et [Mr Buchan-Hepburn © 2 4-0e = feeling how severe is the blow that has | _. Te. ° oe ‘been struck against its reputation, Our | : ° 3346 pm 7 ttt ot ts Foreign Service regards this case as & - Foye oe The Secretary of State for Foreign rsonal wound, as whea something of the poe, Affairs (Me. Harold Macmillan}: 1 kind strikes at a family, or a ship, or a can rarely bave happened in our long Parliamentary history that the political romeo head of a Department should have had Fee ow to unfold to the House of Commons so ne painful a story as that which it is our eS old. duty to consider today. To understand— . 7 though not, of course, to excuse —this net story it is necessary to cast our minds _ ; back to the 1930s and to recall the kind PRO ES of background against which the two *. principal characters grew up. woes At that time all kinds of violent brogbo opinions were being expressed. The io. . ao circumstances of the Spanish Civil War, Be pai with Fascists and Communists backing s the rival forces, divided British and, i- deed, European opinion acutely. This had a particularly disturbing effect upon oung people, many of whom, we remem- , thought it their duty actually to take part in these Gerce revolutionary siruggles. . _t. hasti a a eet wk a When Hitler had made his pact with Stalin and the Second World War began, some of those who had espoused extremist views found that their ideological beliefs exerted a pull which was to prove stronger than their patriotism. is clash of loyalties -was buried in 1941 by our alliance with Russia. But, wheo the war ended and there came an estrange- "meat between this county and Com __ sounist Russia, it revived. 2... “Thus it was that men could be foun - “jn Britain who could put the interests of another country befote those of their own, and could commit the horribie crime of treachery. This occurred not only among criminals and degenerates, but in ae Sritti ne wile biter ~ x nenr Co ee oor LF ath “ae {¥ whee -- -ancn holding bigh technical and scientific > i ve hing sts, among men of philosophic and pn ans eee ilerary attainments, and, finally, in these t. eta. - | gwo cases, the subject of this debate, ia the rn eee Foreign Service. = ee 2 ae at. "There are many on both sides of th House who, as Ministers of as private Rs rin 0: fli oa%-- Members, ave seen the work of the ee at C 20 ne wo tou pit het he Ste et eet .c 2 lite oe regiment. We must recognise, too, that this case has caused a profound shock to Parliament and to the genera} public, both . at home and abroad. 4j oa bp ead Wefaes deating atth the ac , : Deore Gcanig with the actual handlisg of this affair, I want to say a few wor on the subject of ministerial responsi bitity. When what is known as the Maclean and Burgess case was entering its final phase, with ihe findings of the Aus- © tralian Royal Commission and the publi- cation of the White Paper, I made it clear * that full ministerial responsibility must be taken by those Ministers, past and present, who presided over ot were connected with the Foreign Office during all this period. - This was not a mere act of quixotism or chivalry; it is a plain constitutional ~ truth. it will be a sorry day when we try to elevate something called the Foreign Office or the Treasury of any - other Department of State into a separate - entity enjoying a kind of life, respon- sibility and power of its own, not con- trolied by Ministers and not subject to full Parliamentary authority.) 7-3. - PAINS. BDO miihisicis aici, sues bear the -responsibility for. what gots. wrong. . Alter all. they are not slow to -; take credit for anything that goes right This does not mean that they have to accept responsibility for wrongful acts on _ } the part of their officials of which they .. have no prior knowledge. But in dis- =} cussing this case it is quite wrong to 4 assert that the Foreign Office, if by that is meant “ officials” made decisions of ~4 their own. Ministers are responsible and, = in fact, took all the important decisions. ~ * Moreover, they took those decisions in: full knowledge of aff the refevant facts ~7 so far as they were koown al the time... ; The House will realise that both the Opposition and the preseot Government share thé responsibility. The main acts in the drama took place while the Oppo- ~ sition were in power. The investigation - fa mai Nee ¢ Aes ME Sh Bar tte ene en re oman eae tit ee ae Fm Mik ‘ab cy eet we le ee been die REE be = - ne