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yan pea tng ar Sei ew yomm te eb IAaRet gypne beere no eaipetmtnaer rsemnie— &. . Former For Office 7 NOVEM: TMr. Crossman.) wee tee had to say was re s straight news he would not get the money$- + All that Petrov said was what he picked up in gossip from somebody else. The hearsay blew up into a major scandal and the Petrov case forced publication here. There is reason to believe that we would have had no White Paper if the Petrov case had not forced publication upon the Government. That worries me and makes we wonder a little, and that wonder is increased when } look at the White Paper itself. weunengig The Foreign Secretary very ly said that he believed in tunistenal reepore, sibility. All right. Let him be respon- sible for this. It is easy to talk about ministerial responsibility if it consists only ‘of being noble—and staying in office. Ministerial responsibility to me means taking the punishment if something out- rageous is done. If the Forcign Secre- tary takes responsibility for this, the only decent thing to do is to resign. ~~ The White Paper, as it stands, far from Gefending the Foreign Office, puts it decper into the mire. If, after four years, this tissue of palpable half-truths and contradictions is the best that the Government can produce, the impression of “covering up” is more strongly sub- Stantiated than ever, Those responsible are very highly intelligent people, and if this is the best that they can do there must be some reason for what they are doing being so completely upconvincing. - Paragraphs 10 and 11 of the White Paper give elaborate reasons why these People were allowed to get away. We are told in paragraph 11 that it is possible that Maclean 3% eee ee ©... observed that he was no Fonger receiv: ing certain types of secret papers.’ The Government are now saying, “We were not quite so ham-handed as that in denying secret papers.” But if Maclean had been a spy for 16 years, and if the chief reason for his being a spy was removed from him, I do not see how one could stop his access to top secret materia! without his noticing it. If he was denied the papers that must surely have tipped him off. We are told, by the way, in an earlier paragraph of the White Paper, that he was given a job in the American Department in order to give him an unimportant role where be might rehabilitate himself. But the Head a: Y,. * Offctats 1531 Coppearonce of the American Department seems th have had access to the most secret typec of papers. Anyway. Maclean is tippec off by not having the Papers. ? comes the problem of whether to seard his house or not. We are solemoly tohy that his house cannot be searched, or tha there must be no suggestion of it for fex* he runs away. a Eh (AE ate leg Tt was not uncommon, during the war.: for a man to be suspected. I dare say: that the Prime Minister was responsible for us when we did certain things. Whes we had a person under suspicion and he was denied 8 secret papers al] we did was to say to him, “I warn you that you are under suspicion. Of course, you are nat guilty. We are only investigating. bu one way in which your guilt will be proved will be if you *skedaddle”" We found it a very effective way of keeping People still while investigation was going . Am I now to believe that Maclean could not be detained at the ports if he had been warned that his flight would prove his guilt? Anybody knows tha that could have been done, and we ask ourselves why that was not done in this case. Why. in this case, was there such solicitude about the lady? 1 know that she was going to have a baby, but such solicitude is not always shown. I know of times when people have been treated rather roughly. This was an astonishingly tender treatment. _- . The Prime Minister (Sie Anthony Eden): This is very interesting. The hon. Gentleman is making points to which 1 will try to reply Sater, but the parallel which he is making between wartime and the case of Maclean is not, of course, a true parallel. The control which we had over the is during the war was quite different from the control of the ports under the right hon. Member for Lewis ; ham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), when be was Foreign Secretary.: : .%- . The hon. Member may have other formation, but I believe it to be true, and the legal opinion given to me always been that there has been n0 pow within the Government of this country to stop British people at the docks. was the problem, both in respect of Maclean and of Mrs. Maclean. For the Jater, I take personal responsibility, for it was my own decision in her case. I tae