THE BUDGET LEAKAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 137, 11 June 1936, Page 9

THE BUDGET LEAKAGE

ATTORNEY-GENERAL DECIDES ME. THOMAS'S SEAT (British Official Wireless.) (Received June 11. 11.20 a.m.) RUGBY, June 10. The Attorney General (Sir Donald Somervell) stated today at question time in the House of Commons that he had considered taking proceedings against all or some of the persons affected by the findings of the tribunal of inquiry into the Budget leakage. He had decided, he said, not to institute criminal proceedings in any case. He explained to the House considerations which had led him to this decision. He had had to consider what evidence would be available in a criminal trial involving difficult questions of admissibility and the effect of statements taken by the tribunal, which possessed and exercised wide powers of compulsory interrogation and access to documents, tl would be foreign to the spirit and method of British law to make such evidence a basis of a subsequent criminal charge, and there was the additional point that it would be impossible to obtain a jury who were not already familiar with the facts and findings of the inquiry. The Attorney General also mentioned that the offence of. receiving information under the Official Secrets Act required that an unauthorised communication must have been deliberate. FORMAL MOTION TODAY. After the Attorney-General's statement the Prime Minister (Mr. Baldwin) announced that the Government would table a formal motion for tomorrow that the tribunal's report "be now considered." This would not prejudice the course of discussion.

Opposition members, 'in supplementary questions suggested tfcat the Government, and the Prime Minister, as Leader of the House, in particular, had a responsibility to make recommendations arising out of the report, but Mr. Baldwin refused to anticipate the course of the debate. He informed the House that Mr. J. H. Thomas and Sir Alfred Butt had expressed the intention of being in their places to make personal statements at the end of questions tomorrow. The statements are expected to be brief and the two members will then withdraw from the House.