House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Jun 1990

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reason to disbelieve the report--there are too many direct quotations for it to be entirely the meanderings of a drunken journalist.

It seems that the Minister of State has some difficulties in his Department, as has the Secretary of State--they seem to be pitted against each other. I suggest that they discuss among themselves who has set them up for this, as I suspect that it may well have been the Prime Minister, deep in her bunker in Downing street.

I have some time for the Minister of State for Defence Procurement. He has a fight on his hands. He has said that he is looking for substantial reductions in arms expenditure--I heard him say that in a good interview on the Radio 4 programme "Today" a week or so ago. Judging by the quotations in the article that I have mentioned, it is clear that he is not very popular at the Ministry of Defence, so I suggest that he does not go walking around the building late at night on his own.

The Minister of State for Defence Procurement is going for things that we support. He said in the Radio 4 interview that there was something called a peace dividend which made substantial cuts possible. He also said rather touchingly yesterday--I seem to have been the first casualty of the defence review by failing to get into the debate--that he had missed a contribution from me. He is missing it again today, so it must be deliberate on his part. He also said that I had done critical damage to his career by the praise that I had heaped on him during the Air Force debate. Actually, it was an Army debate--the changes these days are so rapid that I am not surprised that he became confused.

I intend to heap still more praise on the Minister's head. He has my total support, although I appreciate that that is not worth a great deal. Given the fight with defence chiefs that the Minister has on his hands, having my support is rather like declaring war simultaneously on the Soviet Union and the United States of America, only to discover that one's only ally is San Marino. But the Minister is still welcome to my support, and I hope that he will wear it as lightly as he can.

As I said, the Minister of State spoke in the interview of a peace dividend. That is what the people of this country want, and it has seeped into the consciousness of enough people to bring great pressure to bear on the Government. The Prime Minister recognises it by trying to get the Minister of State to create enough flexibility of manoeuvre for her to be able to deliver some of the goodies of which she has deprived the people of this country for so long--and to deliver them just before calling a general election.

We want the peace dividend. The people of Newham want it desperately. It will mean that we can do something about the £21 billion defence expenditure, using it for schools, homes and transport--the areas of social expenditure so desperately in need of it.

I heard the Prime Minister talking to Jimmy Young, who was asking her those searing questions of his. I am not surprised that he happens to be her favourite political interviewer. She was very angry about local authorities overspending. When did she ever talk about the overspending on all the defence contracts for which the Minister of State for Defence Procurement is responsible and which Sir Peter Levene has been brought in to deal with? My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers) made a good point about that.

There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy from the Prime Minister when she talks about overspending councils

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because local authorities have been given more and more responsibilities and have had more and more funds taken away from them by the Government. Those authorities are doing the important things that are needed in our society. We need to arm ourselves not with the weapons of death and destruction but with knowledge and skills because they can best defend a united country. That would give us a country in which there is greater equality of opportunity and in which social service provisions would be spread in a way that matches Britain's desperate needs. When reductions in arms expenditure are mentioned some Conservative Members, and also some of my hon. Friends, defend constituency interests in the way that the hon. Member for Aldershot has done. [Interruption.] I thought that the hon. Gentleman would enter a plea on behalf of his constituents, but if I have got that wrong I apologise to him.

No one in the Opposition wants to see indiscriminate cuts affecting our defence industries and our armed forces. Cuts should not be made in an unplanned and indiscriminate fashion. That was why at Question Time I asked the Secretary of State for Defence what his Department was doing about arms conversion work. I did not ask about what firms were doing, but about what studies the Ministry of Defence has carried out because the Ministry will ultimately be responsible for cuts in arms expenditure. The Minister dismissed my question, saying that it was being done outside and that I was concerned only about a central, planned economy. I am in favour of planning which makes sure that decisions made in one Ministry do not have all sorts of repercussions throughout the country.

What is the Ministry of Defence doing about arms conversion to make sure that members of our armed forces who might be declared redundant and who find themselves on the dole do not have to wait around like so many industrial workers who have been pitched out of their jobs as a result of the Government's economic ineptitude? The Government have a responsibility to the armed services to make sure that there is work that people can take up.

The Minister of State for Defence Procurement said something that I have never heard from a Conservative Member in all my time in the House--which goes back only to 1983 but seems much longer. The Minister said that there was a correlation between economic success and low defence expenditure. The Opposition have always said that, but it is the first time that I have heard it said by a Conservative Member, and especially by a Minister. I applaud the Minister again for his honesty and economic intelligence. He deserves more support than he seems to be getting from his own side. In the meantime, for what it is worth, we will give him some support.

6.22 pm

Mr. Cecil Franks (Barrow and Furness) : It is entertaining and sometimes instructive to listen to the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks). Later in my speech I shall deal with some of his comments, but initially I should like to concentrate on the need for Britain to have an independent nuclear deterrent. There has been a deafening silence from Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen on that subject. Yesterday they contributed 54 minutes to the debate and did not make a single reference, favourable or unfavourable, to the nuclear deterrent

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policy. In today's debate, we heard a meandering speech from the Opposition Front Bench that was totally lacking in substance and again made no such reference.

It is incomprehensible that in a two-day debate on the defence estimates and national defence policy the official Opposition party which would seek to form a Government cannot bring itself even to refer to the nuclear deterrent. The hon. Member for Newham, North-West made a fair comment when he said that he and, as he would have us believe, his colleagues wished to have a robust debate. How can there be a robust debate when, as a matter of policy, the Opposition choose to remain silent on such a central feature of our defence policy?

The arguments for a fourth Trident submarine have been well rehearsed. Nothing has changed and the arguments remain exactly the same as they were 30 or 40 years ago when the Polaris programme was introduced and the submarines first commissioned. It is worth reminding the House that the French, who have their own independent nuclear capability, have a fleet of six submarines and the French are by no means bad judges.

Although Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen will not comment on the independent nuclear deterrent, at least yesterday a former Labour Minister of State spoke about it, and his words echo mine. He said : "It is absolutely essential that we keep a minimum of four submarines."

In a telling comment, he said :

"I do not believe that the British people would agree to a nuclear deterrent that could be activated at only a fortnight's notice."--[ Official Report, 18 June 1990 ; Vol. 174, c. 731.]

In a nutshell, that is the essence of the nuclear deterrent and of our need for the fourth submarine.

Ironically one of the matters that was not touched on, except briefly by the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. Cartwright), is that as the so-called peace dividend becomes a reality, and it should, the need for the nuclear deterrent becomes that much greater. As we prepare to take the first risks on the ground with conventional forces, the nuclear deterrent, which has kept the peace in Europe for the past 45 years, must remain.

The difficulty about having a robust debate is that we just do not know Labour's policy. If we believe the Labour party, it intends to cancel the fourth submarine and to negotiate away our existing capability in return for precious little. That would mean that ultimately we would have no independent deterrent of any kind while the Soviet Union would retain a large part of its enormous nuclear arsenal.

Whose is the authentic voice of the Opposition? I have posed that question before in the House. Is it that of the right hon. Member for Dudley, East (Dr. Gilbert) or of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Duffy), or is it the voice of those whom the hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) referred to yesterday as being on the "exotic fringes of the Labour party?" Perhaps I could remind the House of those who form that fringe. There is the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), a former leader of the Labour party, and the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), a would-be contestant for the leadership. There are the hon. Members for Newham, North-West, for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) and for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone). I could continue the list, but those were the Opposition Members who spoke in yesterday's debate and in essence their speeches were totally against the nuclear deterrent in any

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shape or form. We do not know whether the hon. Member for Clackmannan is the authentic voice of the Labour party because he chose to remain silent on the issue. I hope that whichever Opposition Member replies to the debate he will make some reference to the nuclear deterrent.

The cancellation of the fourth Trident submarine would, in defence terms, be a disaster. But in economic terms it would be an utter disaster for my constituency. It would destroy the local economy. Nationally, 27,000 jobs depend on the nuclear deterrent, and in the shipyards thousands of people would lose their jobs overnight. It is a cruel deception for Opposition spokesmen to say when they visit the shipyards every two or three years that they will cancel the Trident submarines and switch to building surface vessels or more conventional submarines as though that could happen overnight. When the Opposition defence spokesman visits Barrow and Furness and tells the people in the shipyards there that they need not worry because the Labour party will cancel the fourth submarine on a Saturday morning and on a Monday morning they will all be building new submarines or new surface vessels, let him explain how, with a snap of the fingers, all the design work can be done, all the materials can be ordered and all the negotiations carried out with the Ministry of Defence. The reality is that the Opposition's policies mean utter disaster for my constituency.

Only three or four years ago the Opposition told us that the cost of Trident had risen to £13 billion. When the hon. Member for Clackmannan became the Opposition's defence spokesman, he gave a figure of £14 billion. The figure given in the estimates is £9.38 billion. This is the fourth successive year in which the cost of the programme has been reduced. It represents a mere 3 per cent. of the defence budget for the next 20 years. It is probably the most cost-effective weapon that Britain has ever had for preserving the peace.

I close by picking up a previous comment. NATO has surely been the most successful defensive alliance in history. It has preserved the peace without ever having to fire a single shot. I am proud that my constituency has been able to play its part and make a contribution to the preservation of peace for so many years.

6.32 pm

Mr. John McFall (Dumbarton) : It is a pleasure to speak in today's debate. Like other hon. Members, I noted from the front page of the Observer on Sunday that the service chiefs do not have confidence in the Ministers at the Ministry of Defence, and in that they are two short steps behind the British public.

If Ministers are organising a debate with political overtones, I congratulate them. Defence, like all other aspects of Government, requires political decision-making. However, I am sceptical about that. That is not because the Minister of State wants a peace dividend--far from it. This is another exercise in saving money to save the Government's neck on the poll tax. The Government have to find money in any way possible before the next election, and all Departments are included.

Like other hon. Members, I warn the Government that in paragraph 2.6 of its latest report the Select Committee on Defence said :

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"It is essential that any changes in defence expenditure reflect a planned and orderly process of matching commitments and resources." Service personnel and everyone else are owed that. Ministers should go about their review on that basis, not simply to save a few bob to save their necks at the general election.

The White Paper fails to appreciate the scale of the changes and the challenges involved. I was unable to be present yesterday, but I saw from Hansard that hon. Members said that we should have another White Paper in the autumn to reflect the prevailing situation. I heartily endorse such comments.

At the weekend I was reading a book by Robert McNamara, a former American Defence Secretary, entitled "Out of the Cold". I recommend it to the Secretary of State and his Ministers. He referred to a time in June 1963, which is relevant to today, when President Kennedy delivered an address at the American university in Washington DC when he said :

"History teaches that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors We are both"--

east and west--

"devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other and new weapons beget counterweapons We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace."

Six weeks later, on 25 July 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain signed the limited test ban treaty and agreed not to test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, under water or in space. That historic speech by the President of America set the climate for change and for progress in the arms race. We are at the same stage today. Such a climate could be set by the Secretary of State for Defence and the Government. But instead we get the same old rhetoric, chewed up, and we get the sort of abuse--that is all that I can call it--that we heard from the Minister of State at the Dispatch Box today. At a time of great historic change the Minister can do no more than abuse the Labour party. The defence estimates are the Government's responsibility, but they have done nothing to create a climate for change.

There may be a similarity between the Government's approach and that of President Reagan in 1980-88. During those eight years, $2.4 trillion was spent on defence. Notwithstanding the comments of three or four former Secretaries for Defence, including McNamara, McGeorge Bundy and others, President Reagan decided to go ahead and spend that massive sum. What did he do? Some may say that he brought the cold war to an end. Why? Because he brought the Russians to their knees. It took a leader such as Gorbachev to say, "Wait a minute. Where are we going from here? Can we afford to go further?" When Gorbachev witnessed his people in poverty and despair he said that enough was enough. That is where President Reagan and the other cold war warriors have got us to today.

Mr. Michael Jack (Flyde) : Will the hon. Gentleman respond to the comment of my right hon. Friend the

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Secretary of State for Defence yesterday when he pointed out to the House that one new nuclear submarine was being launched every six weeks in the Soviet Union and two aircraft, six tanks and one missile are produced every day?

Mr. McFall : I do not want to take up too much time by replying to the hon. Gentleman ; I am told that he has only just come into the Chamber.

I remember the evidence that was given many months ago to the United States Senate concerning increased expenditure in the Soviet Union. Five months later, the CIA admitted that that information was wrong and that Soviet military expenditure was decreasing. We are talking about a climate for change ; perhaps if the hon. Gentleman listens he will learn something.

In the Soviet Union in the 1960s the growth rate was 6 per cent. ; in the 1970s it was 4 per cent. ; in the early 1980s, it was 2 per cent. However, in the last few years it has been stagnant. I understand that next year economic Ministers in the Soviet Union are budgeting for famine in some areas. Do the hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) and his hon. Friends think that the Soviet Union is genuine in its attempts to demilitarise and reduce its expenditure budget? If not, they are out of step with public opinion, as most people believe that the Soviet Union is making genuine attempts-- President Gorbachev has certainly done so. The Prime Minister says that Gorbachev is genuine, but one is entitled to ask whether the Prime Minister is genuine.

In "Perestroika," Gorbachev spoke of a society in crisis. In Paul Kennedy's book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", his thesis was that, as the security commitments and economic strengths of the great powers move out of balance, those powers fall into decline. We must recognise that that is what is happening in the Soviet Union today, and adopt a magnanimous and generous approach. Although it is difficult to conceive of new patterns of relations, there is no doubt that the old threat structure is gone. Hardliners such as Richard Perle can now go to the Senate's armed services committee and say that there is no longer such a thing as the Warsaw pact.

As a member of the Defence Select Committee, I was in Vienna at the conventional forces in Europe talks only a month ago. We spoke to representatives of the eastern European countries--from the Warsaw pact. After speaking to them, I am in no doubt that there is no such thing as concerted action from the Warsaw pact countries. East Germany is the strongest force in those countries. It once had a standing army of 170,000, but that has now been reduced to 70,000, and it is witnessing daily desertions.

If, as some Conservative Members have suggested, a hardline authority could depose President Gorbachev, where does that leave us? In March 1990, the director of the CIA told the Senate's armed services committee that there was little chance that the Soviet hegemony would be restored in eastern Europe. It would be preoccupied with its own internal problems.

In his opening remarks, the Minister of State for the Armed Forces said that much had changed, but much was yet to change. What is yet to change is the Government's attitude. I hope that we can look forward to a Defence White Paper in the autumn that will show that their attitude has changed, and that they have caught up with reality.

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6.43 pm

Sir Michael Marshall (Arundel) : I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall), who I know takes a keen interest in these matters in the Select Committee on Defence.

I wish not only to recognise the opportunities that the defence review provides, but to turn to the problems--and, hopefully, some of the solutions--that we can explore. I have a background and an interest in industry and I take this opportunity to remind the House of my long- standing interest in British Aerospace. With the convergence of civil and military matters, further opportunities are being opened up for companies with which I am associated, if only on the fringe. Those companies are listed in the Register of Members' Interests.

Clearly, the British Aerospace decision on Tornadoes overshadowed yesterday's speeches. It is unnecessary for me to produce further arguments today--the existing arguments speak for themselves, and the problem relating to jobs at Wharton is plain. I do not speak only for British Aerospace--the problem goes far wider. As my hon. Friends will recognise, avionics manufacturers all over the country will now face severe difficulties. For instance, the hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) was right to point out yesterday that the decision on Challenger 2 had important long-term implications for Leeds and Newcastle. I wonder how much my hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces can tell us--his reply may have been foreshadowed by the Secretary of State--about the thinking process that must be involved in further decisions. Many hon. Members will no doubt pursue points of detail because of their various constituency interests. One of the most obvious needs is the need to reflect the current inflation position. I pay tribute to the Defence Select Committee--on which I had the privilege to serve for five years--for rightly putting that in a context that causes continuing concern. The Secretary of State was right to emphasise in his opening remarks that there should be no turning on or off of the defence tap. The 10 to 15-year cycle for high technology equipment is, I think, well understood by all hon. Members participating in the debate. I express my appreciation to my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Defence Procurement for what I took to be reaffirmation of the long-term future of the European fighter aircraft, both in his comments in the House and in his talk to the Royal Aeronautical Society.

We should remind ourselves of the substantial level of research and development commitment throughout the defence industrial structure. That has an impact on jobs, training and, above all, education. British Aerospace, for example, is recruiting 1,000 graduates a year. Much of that is predicated on what has previously been seen as a long-term, relatively stable programme of defence commitment. All hon. Members must recognise the challenges presented to British Aerospace, and to other companies seeking to diversify. Huge investments are involved--for example, £500 million in the Honda-Rover partnership. There are cumulative pressures, not only on defence, but in other areas, which could have a vital effect on the country's largest exporter.

There will also be an effect on British service personnel and those working within the Ministry of Defence. I pay tribute, as others have done, to the great dedication of those who serve us, and who embark on their careers

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assuming that they have a long-term future. A defence review means uncertainty and worry about their own long-term plans.

Will my hon. Friend the Minister and his Department bend their collective mind to the privatisation of a whole range of services currently carried out within the armed services and the Ministry of Defence? I remind my hon. Friend of the contacts that I have had in the past as the chairman of the information technology committee, and draw a comparison with the Defence Department in the United States, which contracts out substantial amounts of in-service activity within military units. The reaction from within the traditional structure of the Ministry of Defence has not been encouraging and there has been a tendency to use security as an excuse for not pursuing further developments. I hope that Ministers will give serious thought to that as the American experience shows that contracting out brings greater flexibility. A substantial defence establishment creates special difficulties in the process of change. Nimrod and other long-term procurement programmes often experience difficulties because they seem to become locked in to reinforcing their own failures. That could be tackled if much of the procurement process was contracted out. I therefore ask Ministers to be bold and imaginative. We must examine the political dimensions in the context of the Inter-Parliamentary Union's links with parliamentarians from the Soviet Union, and from central and eastern Europe. Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends have been involved in that process in recent weeks. Some of our thinking on these matters was perhaps brought to a head at the IPU conference on disarmament held in Bonn last month, which was attended by the hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill). I am bound to say, if it does not embarrass him unduly, that he gave a sparkling performance which was in some contrast to the inhibitions that he feels when he gets back home. He was ably supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Bruce) who acted as rapporteur. Many important considerations were discussed at that conference, at which 61 countries were represented.

My overwhelming impression was how much the issue with which we are now concerned has become a common problem throughout the European family. One of the highlights of that gathering was hearing the views of Colonel General Chervov, the head of the directorate of Soviet chiefs of staff, and Mr. Novozhilov, the deputy on the Supreme Soviet committee who also happens to be head of Ilyushin aircraft, who made the same point about the time lag of decades in the so-called peace dividend and said that they would need to think about the manpower implications for the Russian forces in East Germany and throughout Russia, the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.

I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to take every opportunity to seek international agreement in trying to resolve those problems. I highlight only the confidence and security building measures such as the opening up of military budgets to wider scrutiny. I emphasise the real opportunity that verification provides, with converging civil and military technology, to use space activities through the European Space Agency and through our own expertise in remote sensing at RAE Farnborough to bring together shared information, technology and job creation.

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I urge my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Defence Procurement, when he speaks to the parliamentary space committee tomorrow on defence aspects of space, to bend his mind seriously to those problems. I know that there are difficulties about resolution, but there are ways ahead.

That brings me to my final suggestion for international agreement on military redeployment. We should examine the way which we can use our military for international disaster relief activities. I remind the House that this is the United Nations decade of international disaster relief. The estimates before us remind us of the work done by our own military in relation to the storms in Britain earlier this year and the activities that our forces have undertaken overseas in many challenging situations. I do not in any way sell those achievements short, but with the perennial problems of flooding in Bangladesh and the famines in vast drought-affected areas of Africa, surely the coming together of international military resources, communications, transport and medical supply provide a real chance for us to share that knowledge and expertise. If we can begin to work in that direction--a conference in London on 13 July will seek to take the matter further, and many right hon. and hon. Members are involved--we can look for genuine peace dividends from which we can all benefit.

6.52 pm

Mr. Frank Cook (Stockton, North) : I have now been in the House for seven years, and in that time I have listened to most of the defence debates and taken part in at least half of them. From that standpoint I must express my regret that I missed yesterday's debate. I tried to make up for that involuntary absence by reading the Official Report today.

My second regret is what I have heard this afternoon. I regret that we are wasting an opportunity and that so much time should have been frittered away on old, partisan, party political bickering among hon. Members on both sides of the House, but principally from the Government, who cannot find the old hacking horses that they have used in previous debates. It was quite pathetic to hear it today in technicolour, panoramic and melodramatic form from the Minister of State for the Armed Forces. The Minister displayed the degree to which the Government are bereft of any insight into the current situation.

As I tried to point out to the Minister, circumstances have changed so dramatically and rapidly in the 12 months that no one anywhere knows exactly where we stand. We would be spending our time better trying to collect our wisdom and analysing collectively, not only in the interests of our nation and in the European interests, but in the broader interest of humanity, how best to resolve the situation. The current instability gives us an opportunity that we should be seizing with both hands. We have the opportunity to extend the hand of assistance, which I have mentioned on more than one occasion. I referred to it on the occasion when I spoke from the Dispatch Box. If we do not extend the hand of support and help to Mikhail Gorbachev, we must take the consequences that must follow that denial. My time is limited, so I shall confine myself to two aspects of our present stance. The Minister made a sideways and somewhat disparaging reference to the Labour party's references to flexible response. Let me explain the situation as I see it as a humble Back-Bench

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Labour Member. What is a flexible response? For those who are uninitiated in the jargon of NATO, "flexible response" is a euphemism for fighting a conventional war for about five days and then, finding oneself losing, claiming the right to nuke the attacker. In other words, we can say to an aggressor, "If you are beating us with conventional weapons, we can nuke you." Of course I do not mean you, Mr. Speaker : I mean the Soviet bloc.

How has flexible response changed in the past 12 months? We have had negotiations on reductions in conventional weaponry. The agreed levels of conventional arms established ceilings that we could not reach, so we do not have to make any reductions. If we had met all our NATO commitments to the full, we should now be in a position of great strength. We are in a measurably stronger position now than we have been in the past. According to current assessments, we could withstand conventional attack for much longer than five days, so why do we need a flexible response?

I recently had the privilege of visiting the United States and attending talks with representatives of their Defence Department, their Foreign Affairs Department and their National Security Council. It appears that the United States no longer believes that "flexible response" means what it meant in the past. It was stated by those agencies and by the think tank known as the Rand Corporation that the United States will have to find another definition of "flexible response". Possibly they will retain the same expression but work out a different definition. They are already thinking along lines that are not yet being considered by our own Government, as appeared from the Minister's speech today.

I want now to move from the questions that surround that flexible response and what the Government may have in mind, remembering that they will shortly be meeting senior American representatives, and to go on to the concept of first use. Behind the flexible response there has always been NATO's position that, despite commitments from the Soviet bloc that it would not engage in the first use of nuclear weapons, we reserve the right, in answer to conventional, biochemical or chemical supremacy or to nuclear attack, to choose the time to use our nuclear weapons.

I see that the Minister is listening carefully and I thank him for that. I want to point out to him the danger of holding on to the first use concept. At this time, above all, for us to retain the concept of first use in the prospect of any kind of supremacy, whether biological, conventional or chemical, opens the door--and other speakers have said this, but I want to emphasise it--for any international headbanger to justify the possession of nuclear weapons. We should be creating a climate in which--to use an Americanism which I do not like but which is commonly used--we burn down nuclear stockpiles, provide a reason for the non-possession of nuclear weapons and remove any kind of justifiable excuse on which anyone may seize to persuade an electorate that their country should acquire nuclear weapons in the future.

At a time when the Soviet bloc, which has always been held up as a great threat, is gladly, willingly and, in some instances, unilaterally throwing its weapons away at a rate of knots and reducing its nuclear stockpile at a speed that is positively dazzling, how can the Government justify to the British electorate considering increasing our nuclear weaponry and improving the means of delivery? How can the British electorate understand that and, which is more

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important, how can the electorates of the nations that are our allies on the continent accept that when we enter the present round of disarmament? I shall be looking for the answers to those questions in the Minister's winding-up speech tonight.

7.2 pm

Mr. Gerald Howarth (Cannock and Burntwood) : It was 50 years ago yesterday in this place that Winston Churchill, referring to Adolf Hitler, said :

"If we are to stand up to him all Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands".--[ Official Report, 18 June 1940 ; Vol. 362, c. 60.]

That was a famous speech by Winston Churchill and it has some relevance to our debate today on these important defence estimates. In many respects, we have been standing up to the Soviet bear for the past 40 years.

For the first time in a generation, we are beginning to see the peace dividend. That dividend is the reduction in tension, which has been brought about not by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but by the tough stand taken by successive Conservative Governments in Britain and by the NATO alliance. That dividend has been achieved despite the unremitting hostility of the Labour party to all this Government's tough policies. I make no apology to the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) in saying that. There is a difference of view between the Government and the Opposition and it is important that such differences are thrashed out.

Yesterday the hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) was frank enough to admit that the attractiveness of past calls for defence cuts may have been exaggerated and that the Opposition's posture then was unsustainable. However, he seemed to say, "Don't worry, chaps. It is a sustainable posture now." The Labour party has continually resisted the tough measures that have brought about the peace dividend.

It can reasonably be said that investment by the countries of the NATO alliance in the defence of those countries has led to the "broad, sunlit" conditions that are beginning to be experienced in Europe. That is an exciting prospect. I rejoice wholeheartedly in the rejection of socialism everywhere in Europe, except in Bulgaria and on the Opposition Benches. However, it is important that we are not lulled into a false sense of security.

Throughout my lifetime I have lived with one certainty--the certainty of the iron curtain. To the left wasgood--that was us--and on the other side were the baddies--the communists. That balance of terror and that certainty have, in many respects, kept the peace in Europe for the past 40 years. As a child, I lived in Germany and I lived nearer the iron curtain than, I suspect, most hon. Members have done. I spent eight years in Germany and I was there as a child when the Berlin wall was built. I shall never forget the building of that wall, nor the dramatic division between our two systems which the wall exemplified. Equally, its destruction exemplified the removal in part of the tyranny that has been exercised over the peoples of eastern Europe for the past 45 years.

I welcome the collapse of the communist system, but we are undoubtedly moving into uncertain times. The balance of terror, which undoubtedly caused tension, nevertheless kept the peace. We are now moving into a period of great uncertainty. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Duffy) hit the nail on the head when he referred to the myriad changes taking place and the dangers that they

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represent. We need think only of events in Romania and the collapse of the Soviet empire. The real question is how long-standing are the changes now taking place in eastern Europe. I do not believe that we can yet determine what the pattern of eastern Europe will be, let alone how long Mr. Gorbachev will last and whether he will be replaced by Mr. Yeltsin or someone else. Ultimately, it is capabilities and not intentions that count.

As we know, the capabilities of the Soviet Union are substantially greater than ours. Their main battle tanks outnumber ours by 49,500 to 24,000-- twice as many. It has 42,500 artillery pieces against 18, 000 in NATO. It has 11,600 combat aircraft against 6,000. There are 4 million in the armed forces in the Warsaw pact countries and 3 million in NATO. Those are the facts of the capabilities. The hon. Member for Stockton, North is entitled to feel a certain degree of euphoria, which is felt by all of us in the nation, about the changes taking place. However, in the face of the evidence of the capabilities, we are simply not in a position to beat all our swords into ploughshares. As Lieutenant General Horst Jungkurth, the Luftwaffe chief of staff, has said :

"Even after the force reductions, the Soviet Union will remain the strongest military power in Europe."

Forty per cent. of all expenditure on defence goes on procurement. I welcome the decision to proceed with the EH101 Merlin with the Rolls-Royce RTM322 engine. That is excellent news not only for that company, but for the prospects for anti-submarine warfare operations. I hope that consideration will be given to looking at the versatile air mobile variant for the battlefield.

On the European fighter aircraft, we need a new replacement aircraft for the aging F4J Phantoms and for the Jaguars. There are a number of reasons why the European fighter aircraft should go ahead. First, we would be building on a most successful collaboration with our European partners, notably the Tornado. Secondly, Soviet capabilities warrant our adoption of the EFA. The SU27 and the Mig 29 have taken the west by surprise by their sophistication and their capabilities. That point was made by a number of Opposition Members. The Soviet Union has much more sophisticated kit than hitherto. It is vital, if taxpayers' money is to be spent on the defence of the realm, to make sure that we do not play at it but that we provide our services with the appropriate equipment to meet the threat. The EFA meets that requirement. In the strategic sense, in this of all years--the 50th anniversary of the battle of Britain--we must not forget the lesson of the importance of air superiority. The EFA will serve that purpose.

Many hon. Members have paid tribute to the many and various roles which service personnel perform while defending our nation, this Parliament, free speech, all our institutions and everything that we stand for, but nobody has yet paid tribute to British industry. I pay tribute to those who build the equipment that provides the wherewithal to enable our forces to defend us and to ensure that we enjoy the peace. The defence estimates are presented in an admirable form ; they can be easily understood not just by aficionados of military matters but by the general public. They illustrate the enormous success of British industry.

Military imports amounted to £672 million last year compared with exports of £2,408 million. The nation can

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take pride in British manufacturing industry's proud record. The efforts of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister are to be commended.

There is a window at the Rolls-Royce factory in Derby that is an admirable illustration of the point. It is dedicated to the battle of Britain pilots who turned the work of our hands into the salvation of our country. The performance of British industry has done that in the past 40 years.

I conclude--

Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd) : Order. Regrettably, the hon. Gentleman has had his time. He must bring his speech to a close.

7.13 pm

Mr. Dick Douglas (Dunfermline, West) : It is not my intention to follow the line taken by the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Mr. Howarth). I was most intrigued by the remarks of the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Franks). He wanted a vigorous debate but he did not stay long enough to participate in it. I intended to take up some of the points that he made on the strategic deterrent. There is a maternity hospital in my constituency. It is not very often that male Members of Parliament visit such establishments, but I had the opportunity to do so last week. I reflected on the great advances that have been made in medical science, yet it is still a struggle for a baby to be born. That has to be contrasted with all the effort and energy that is devoted to killing human beings. We cannot anticipate what will happen tomorrow, or even today. The hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Critchley) summed it up by saying that as we have lost an enemy we are now struggling to find a role for all the military equipment that we have marshalled over the years in anticipation of the monolithic structure of the Warsaw pact breaking through in central Europe and NATO having to deploy inadequate conventional forces, resulting in our acceptance of the doctrine of flexible response, so characteristically described by the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook). That threat no longer exists. With hindsight, we can analyse the reasons why this is happening. We do not hear a great deal about the strategic defence initiative, or about Chernobyl. One of the most significant features in President Gorbachev's altered attitude is the fact that acres and acres of the Soviet union's soil are still unusable. Scotland and Wales also have acres and acres of soil that are still unusable. President Gorbachev saw the futility of embarking on a nuclear war that could not be won. That was a breakthrough in Soviet mentality--no longer the arrogance of, "We will bury you", because a nuclear war would kill us all. Competition in arms procurement and arms producion between the United States and the Soviet Union has ceased ; if not reversed, it has certainly been halted. That is significant because those two super-powers have realised the stupidity of continuing to compete and produce weaponry so preposterous in its magnitude as to annihilate the whole human race.

I am not being nasty when I challenge the Ministry of Defence to explain what is meant by "Options for Change". The Minister of State for the Armed Forces explained the background to his thinking which seems to be that the Warsaw pact is disintegrating. There are real prospects of no role for CFE. Should we deploy

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short-range nuclear weapons and not give them up? Some think that air-launched nuclear missiles should no longer be deployed in Germany. We want to keep NATO in place for stability, but it will be a different NATO with a political, not necessarily a military, thrust.

The one certainty, it is argued, is that we must remain a strategic nuclear power. I cannot grasp that. The argument is that Britain must remain a strategic nuclear power because we have unique responsibilities in the world. Many hon. Members have made that point, but I fail to grasp it. I accepted, perhaps naively or wrongly, up to Polaris that we should continue to be a nuclear power because it was there and would be difficult to get rid of. When I stood as a Labour candidate in the election campaign I said that we should decommission Polaris. We now have a unique opportunity to say that enough is enough, because the first Trident will not be commissioned and in service until the mid-1990s, or late 1994. We do not know the exact terminology--perhaps the Minister will make it clearer in his reply--but we know that President Bush has said, "Whatever you do, do not say anything in your discussions with the Soviet Union about our commitment' to provide the D5 missiles because we do not want that muddying the waters." It is extremely doubtful whether, in the context of strategic arms reductions, the United States would feel obliged to continue the Polaris-type arrangements and agreements and to give the United Kingdom D5s --either to use in future discussions or at all.

That would pose a particular problem for an incoming Labour Government. I am not now privy to the Labour party's defence proposals ; the House may be surprised to learn that I was never really privy to them. But, as I understand the Labour party's policy, it is proposed that we should have only three Trident-type boats, despite the view expressed yesterday by the right hon. Member for Dudley, East (Dr. Gilbert) that four was the minimum. But the Labour party, in its wisdom, now says that we should have three. In mid-1994--perhaps at the end of 1993--the boats will be sailed over and the Labour Government will say to the United States Government, "Please can we now have 16 D5s?" The Labour party thinks that the United States will give us those D5s for use in the negotiations. That is an absurd proposition, and it will not hold water. I have a constituency interest in the matter. I welcome the great breakthrough--perhaps not as great as all that--that the proposal to establish a defence diversification agency represents. I do not know what the blazes that means in terms of the new-found supply-side socialist economics of the Labour party ; perhaps someone will tell me. But I welcome the thought process, and I will tell the Government why : the market does not apply in the procurement of defence equipment. The Government call defence equipment into being because of their strategic tactical requirements. They cannot then say, "Let the market solve the problem" when they cancel orders or hold up repayments. That cannot be done, and it certainly cannot be done in the dockyards. It could not be done at Vickers, which is essentially a one-product yard. If anyone--even Lord Chalfont--thinks that they are going to build frigates and destroyers at Vickers, he must be stoned out of his tiny head because the overheads would kill it. They might be built at Cammell's, although I do not have time to go into the details.

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The Government cannot stand back from this one. Whatever emerges from "Options for Change", those who have been praised by the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood--or Cannock and British industry--are entitled to know what the Government propose to do to support them, particularly in Scotland. What discussions will they have with Scottish Enterprise? I do not think very much of that organisation, but it is a Government organisation. In Fife, in particular, where we depend heavily on the defence industry, it is essential that the Government should not stand back and say, "Let the market solve the problem." That will not be good enough. If they say that, all hell will be let loose. We have a fight on for Ravenscraig just now. And what a fight the Government will have on their hands if they stand back and let the dockyards and other defence-related industries in Fife go to the wall because of their incompetence.

7.23 pm

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