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‘ ' . 4 | { | age nem oe SEIT ee mete te me: rt cae we wes PT RR TPR tN Gy 1559 Former Fortign Office” “ (Mr. RawLtnson.} cotte is, of course. vitally important—but not the extent. Surely, # inevitably we com- promised the source by revealing the ex- tent, that would be dangerous; but what danger was there in telling the House or the country immediately after the flight all the matters that have now been told Us $0 very much later om, 6. TL: The inadequacy of the White Paper has filso been discussed. Mention has been made of how in paragraph 3 it talks about Maclean being the head of the American Department and says that it does not deal with major problems of Anglo-American felations. Paragraph 11 says that one explanation may be that- Maclean ob- served that he was no Songer receiving Certain types of secret papers 27 22. Tt appears, once again, to hon. Mem- bers on both sides of the House and to the people in the clubs and pubs that here there has been some covering up by bureaucracy. The story has been heai and read of, of Departments where the buseaucrats have attempted w “cover up” after initial mistakes have been made, and it has been suggested that there is a feeling among the people who are in the same Service that they must assist those who have made the error to prevent them being entirely shown up. - -_ - LT agree that we cannot have, and would Rot want to have. in this country a secret service having any executive power. Must rest upon the criminal law and the executive power of the police. UM we had &@ secret service which had full executive Power obviously it would degenerate into something which nobody in this country would want. Security is the real part of the problem, and this is a matter in which security was bad. J have listened to what most bon. Members have said about the Foreign Service and these people who are members of it. 1 do not agree with much that has been-said.--- occ. BD ..4t appears to me that security. is he failure bere, In secarity it is not s0 much Money -or measures that matter. What matiers is having the right maa st the bead of the security service to ensure that the besi socurity this country can bave is provided, -. y et 9S pw. rew tote “Me “"Mr. Malcolm MacPherson (Stirling aad Falkirk Burghs): 7 must say that afier a beginning with which 3 4id aot agree 3 found much in what the bon. Member for " J NOVEMBER 1959 Offictats—-Disappeciance 1560 Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson) said Tater with which I did agree. 1 thought that the statement by the Foreign etary on the rights of a person ef suspicion was much preferable to the ppening State. ments in the speech of the hon. Member.’ However, my remarks will be concerned Rot with the security side of the matter . but with the question of the. nel with whom we are ‘con in the | Foreign Office. -. 7 Tt has already been Foreign Office ought to Srouped to- gether with the Civil Service as 2 whole. As a matter of principle, I am inclined to « agree with that suggestion. 1 take roughly ¢ same line about the wartime reforms * as that taken by my hon. Friend the Mem? } ber for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman). } In principle, it is s sound idea that the : Foreign Service should be part of the : Civil Service as a whole: but there will be practical difficulties. One of the diff- culties which has faced the Civil Service ; as a whole in recent years has been that of getting the right people for the admin- istrative class, which corresponds to the branch in the Forcign Service—Branch “A“—to which Maclean belonged. The situation ‘has already been stated by the Civil Service Commissioners to be one of considerable difficulty, but if I can believe’ recent reports it has this year become ex- tremely bad, so bad that the number of candidates acceptable has not been equal fo the number of vacancies... 4 “4 In the Foreign Service, on the other hand, if one can take the evidence of an article in the Observer yesterday, there _ seem 10 have been this: year - quite sufficient candidates for the vacancies. Even if one skims away half of them with the first qualifying examination and assumes that they were not serious candi- dates, there were stil! ample to fill the, vacancies. Mf we merge the Foreign Ser, vice with the Civil Service as 8 whole, let, us make no mistake that very sbortly we shall ruc into an acute problem of staffing the upper branches of the Foreiga Service. - This difficulty is not confined to the | Civil Service. “ It is one that-concems | all, or nearly all, the public services. ; There are just a few exceptions. Whea business is booming and attracting ; People with the offer of high salaries and . extraordinarily good pros we find : difficulty in attracting scientists to the : public services and aé ministrative people;