Crimea conference

Mr. Ivor Thomas (Keighley) 
The figures that my hon. Friend is giving are wholly fictitious.
Mr. Kirkwood (Dumbarton Burghs) 
How does the hon. Member know?
Mr. Thomas 
More than go per cent. of the money advanced to the Polish Government goes for education and to paying the troops who are now fighting for our cause.
Mr. Driberg 
The figures are not fictitious at all. I have checked those figures, which come from an extremely reliable inside source—[HON. MEMBERS: 1343"Name"]—very near to some of my hon. Friend's best friends. I am sorry to have gone on longer than I intended, but I have been interrupted quite a lot. There are one or two figures which I should like to quote, as illustrations, from the Budget of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which for 1942 was £485,000, and by 1944 had gone up to £975,000—nearly £1,000,000. The Minister of Foreign Affairs has an uncontrolled privy purse, which amounted in 1944 to £32,000, in addition, of course, to his tax-free salary. It is from that sum, incidentally, that the lavish entertainments and banquets at luxury hotels, to which some hon. Members of this House have been good enough to go on occasion, are financed. This Ministry, in particular, has built up the most elaborate network of diplomatic and consular representation throughout the world, while it has been in this country. Establishments have been set up in all sorts of countries which never had diplomatic or consular relations with Poland before. In 1942 a Polish chargé d'affaires, with consular officials and clerks and so on, suddenly turned up in Addis Ababa—and all at our expense. They set up a most elaborate organisation at Chungking, too.
I have not time to quote the figures for the Polish Ministry of Information, but they are even more staggering than those for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1944 the sum was getting on for £1,000,000, and there have been large subsidies for all sorts of publications in this country. "Free Europe" got £4,800 from them. Also, an extremely interesting Polish "information" activity is the Soviet Research Centre, which increased—[Interruption]. Yes, the Soviet Research Centre is maintained by the Polish Ministry of Information in London. It cost £5,000 in 1943, and £14,400 in 1944. I do not know what its purpose is, except to put out the usual kind of poisonous propaganda against Soviet Russia which is always circulated by the Polish Ministry of Information. Such a disreputable rag as the "Weekly Review" is another of the publications which have been subsidised in one way or another by the Polish Ministry of Information, in that case by the buying up for free distribution of large quantities of copies of the periodical. I apologise to the House for having taken up so much time. I would only urge that 1344at the earliest possible moment recognition should be withdrawn from this bogus emigré Government, that it should not be allowed to become in future the focus of anti-Soviet propaganda and activities in this country, and that the members of it, now that their country has been liberated by the Red Army, should be invited to repatriate themselves.