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Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Port Glasgow) : I offer my simple tribute to Sean Hughes. He was in every sense a fine, decent and honourable Member of Parliament.
As I mentioned in my intervention, I was a member of the previous Armed Services Bill Select Committee, and I would be most pleased to serve on the next one. On the basis of that experience, I offer a few brief comments on what the Minister said.
For example, the Minister said that the discipline Acts embrace not only the members of the armed services, but the civilian employees and the families of our service men. As a result of my experience, I came to assume that the term discipline includes, for example, redress of grievance procedures as well as disciplinary procedures. It also includes adequate welfare and counselling procedures for service men and their families. That is why I was pleased to hear the Minister acknowledge the need to provide good counselling and guidance to those suffering from alcohol and drug abuse. Many industries now have intelligent, sensible and compassionate alcohol abuse counselling services, and I welcome similar developments in the armed forces.
I also urge upon the Minister--he may argue that this is gratuitous advice- -the need to prepare plans to deal with the distress which must be afflicting many service men now as a result of what may well appear to some of them to be a somewhat uncertain future. I have seen similar distress, leading in some cases to illness, among those facing redundancy and unemployment in industry. I saw
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that particularly when a large shipyard in my constituency collapsed with the loss of more than 4,000 jobs. If regiments are disbanded, or if there is a pretty drastic reduction in certain sectors of the armed services, those who have to leave will require, among other things, intelligent and compassionate counselling. Much can be learned from the counselling services established in large- scale industry in the United Kingdom, where plants--perhaps coal mines, shipyards and other major employers of labour--have had to put people out of work. That is a very serious matter.I must say a few words about the children of service men. Cases of physical and sexual abuse involving such children are fortunately very rare. But, even if there are only a couple of cases a year, the victims and their families have to be treated as carefully and as sensitively as possible.
The Minister may not recall this fact, but during the Report stage of the Armed Services Bill--I think it was in late 1985--I put down a number of amendments that sought to give added protection to children caught up in such distressing circumstances who lived abroad in married quarters where service men were stationed. I am pleased to tell the House that the Minister with responsibility for the Army at that time gave me an assurance --I was perfectly willing to accept it and I withdrew the amendments--that, on the basis of the concerns that I had expressed, a memorandum had been sent to the commanders of all bases overseas and in the United Kingdom outlining the need to give the best advice and counselling available to those involved ; not merely to the children but to the alleged perpetrators and the children's mothers.
It is crucial that developments in child protection legislation in the United Kingdom are matched in armed services legislation. I shall certainly keep a watchful eye on that when we next debate an armed services Bill.
Mr. Brazier : It may be of assistance to the House for it to know that the Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen's Families Association, the services welfare organisation responsible for such work, and its professional staff pride themselves on the fact that they have pioneered some of the developments that are now also taking place in the wider community as a result of new legislation. It operates the type of fully-integrated set-up that we are now trying so hard to encourage in the wider community.
Dr. Godman : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention because I failed to mention SSAFA.
Without wishing to indulge in anecdotal prattle, may I say that the first time that I came across SSAFA was as a young military policeman. I had to attend a fatal traffic accident, in which a Scottish soldier had died in Germany. The representatives of SSAFA were utterly marvellous in the way that they gave guidance and help to the young soldier's family, who lived in the married quarters in Munster, Westphalia. Therefore, I have some experience of SSAFA's work, albeit abysmally dated.
It is a long time since I was in the armed forces--too long, perhaps. Nevertheless, I believe that those are important considerations. A former Army Minister readily acknowledged the concerns that I expressed on that earlier occasion. If I am fortunate enough to be a member
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of the next Select Committee, I shall seek to cross-examine Ministry of Defence representatives on some of the topics that I have barely mentioned tonight.11.30 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) for his fond tribute to my friend and colleague, Sean Hughes.
If I ask that the order should not be considered until the Government are more candid about the case of Colin Wallace, it is because I believe that it involves basic issues of military discipline. It is less an issue of what happened to Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, the then Mr. Edward Short, and the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) because, in general, politicians can look after themselves. The people who cannot look after themselves are those who are in the care of the state, as were those vulnerable boys at Kincora. It is a blemish of discipline that the Government have not been more forthcoming in giving a satisfactory explanation.
In case anyone supposes that just a very few of us are pursuing Colin Wallace's case obsessively, I may point out to the Minister that, together with the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery), I was a speaker at the memorial meeting at the Guards and Cavalry club--not my usual habitat--for the late George Young, deputy head of MI6. On that occasion, and quite unprovoked by me--because I did not raise the subject-- people expressed the view that it was important that the Colin Wallace case was straightened out. I will attempt to do so again tonight.
I refer to the Minister's letter to me of 20 June, in which he says :
"In your speech during the Army Debate on 5 June you asked a number of detailed questions relating broadly to matters which have been the subject of various allegations by Mr. Wallace. Several of your questions relating to Kincora concern matters outside the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence and I will confine my comments on that subject to repeating that I am aware of no substantive evidence that Army personnel knew in the 1970s that homosexual abuse of boys was taking place at Kincora.
Turning to your questions about Clockwork Orange, as my Written Answer to Michael Marshall on 30 January explained, two documents have been found which contain brief references to Clockwork Orange' : both are dated 1975."
Incidentally, I have informed the hon. Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall), who is Colin Wallace's Member of Parliament, of my intention to make this speech, and I believe that I have his approval. The Minister's letter continues :
"No record has been found of any draft document containing the material which Mr. Wallace has described as an early version of Clockwork Orange'. Nor has any material been found which would justify allegations that Crown servants commissioned or authorised Mr. Wallace to create or use material denigratory to MPs, or engaged in such activities themselves. No correspondence between Mr. Broderick and General Leng on that subject has been traced : you will be aware of General Leng's firm assurance to the Government that he recalls no project by the name of Clockwork Orange' and would never have authorised any attempt to smear MPs. You also questioned the Government's position and official statements on this and other matters (including the security exercise near Aldergrove airport) in the light of press suggestions that contrary information may be possessed by former Crown servants who served in Northern Ireland at the same time as Mr. Wallace. I am not prepared to treat uncorroborated reports as being of substantive value. The Government has repeatedly made plain that, if anyone has substantive evidence which corroborates Mr. Wallace's allegations concerning a campaign by Crown servants to
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smear MPs or a cover-up of knowledge of homosexual abuse of boys at Kincora, they should give it to the Government or the Police. To date no one has come forward with such information. Finally, the handling within the Government service of papers relating to Mr. Wallace has been the subject of a very thorough inquiry by a senior civil servant. The results of that inquiry have been reported to Parliament. It has been acknowledged that there were some shortcomings in the way that papers were handled, but the substantive errors of fact which resulted have been corrected by statements subsequently made by Ministers. Any suggestion that officials or Ministers acted in bad faith is wholly unjustified."I think it fair to put that letter from the Minister on the record.
Part of the reason why I raised the issue last week, and am doing so again tonight, is that I shall send the Official Report of these proceedings to the master of Magdalene--as I have sent him previous reports--because David Calcutt should consider these matters as part of his inquiry. So the more formally they are put, the better. On 3 July, Mr. Wallace, having studied the Minister's reply, wrote :
"Thank you very much for sending me a copy of"
the Minister's reply
"of 20 June regarding the questions which you raised during the Army debate. Quite frankly, I was furious when I read it. The letter is a disgraceful and deliberate attempt to evade every question you raised and it is clear from the wording of the reply that the Minister knew he was evading the issues. I don't know how you feel about it, but I think the Government should be told the reply is not acceptable and asked to deal with each one of the questions properly."
That is exactly how I feel.
"For example, on the Kincora issue",
the Minister
"claims that he is aware of no substantive evidence that Army personnel knew in the 1970s that homosexual abuse of boys was taking place at Kincora.'"
I have put this letter in the possession of the Ministry of Defence and it should have reached the Minister's office. "As you know, there is ever growing evidence that what" the Minister
"is saying is completely untrue, and that he knows that it is untrue. On 18 March this year, The Correspondent published a report which included the following comment from Mr. Hugh Mooney, Information Adviser to the General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland from 1971-73 :
Mr. Mooney also admitted that Mr. Wallace had told him about the sex scandal at Kincora boys home in Belfast--casting further doubt on Government claims that the security forces had no knowledge of the long- running rape and buggery of children in care'.
Similarly, in the transcript of the tape-recorded telephone conversations between General Leng and Barrie Penrose, General Leng confirms that he was aware of the homosexual insinuations' relating to Kincora and he also remembers saying this is a police matter, not ours.' "
On a point of journalistic principle, Mr. Penrose has given up his job with The Sunday Times on this very issue.
The letter goes on :
"Mike Taylor has also gone on record saying that he recalls seeing the Kincora file at Army Headquarters and, in particular, the two key documents which I had in my possession and which are referred to in Paul Foot's book, Who Framed Colin Wallace?
In addition, Peter Broderick has confirmed that he recalls seeing the memorandum which bears in his own handwriting the words Clerks IP' and which refers to William McGrath running a home for children on the Upper Newtownards Road. The document also gives the telephone number and full postal address of Kincora.
Lastly, there is the information provided by James', the Army Intelligence Officer who appeared in the BBC Public Eye' programme, and who has since confirmed to other journalists that, not only was he aware of the assaults that were taking place in Kincora, but also that his MI5 superior,
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Ian Cameron, stopped him from taking further action. Worse still, despite negotiations between the RUC and the MOD, MI5 refused to make Ian Cameron available for interview by the police and failed to answer their questions."The letter goes on to say that the Minister's
"reply to you on this issue is, therefore, despicable. The rest of"
the Minister's
"letter is so outrageous that it is difficult to comment on it seriously. However, the following points need to be made : 1. The Minister again avoids facing up to the issues which you raised during the Army Debate by trotting out the Government's standard line of defence : The Government has repeatedly made it plain that, if anyone has substantive evidence which corroborates Mr. Wallace's allegations concerning a campaign by Crown servants to smear MPs or a cover-up of knowledge of homosexual abuse at Kincora, they should give it to the Government or the Police'. That is precisely what I did do in 1984 when I sent a complete dossier of information to the Prime Minister personally, but no action was taken on its contents. Similarly, you will recall that I recently sent to the Prime Minister a selection of documents bearing the handwriting of various Crown servants and containing information smearing political figures. Although the Government does not deny the authenticity of the documents, the Defence Secretary claims there is no evidence to suggest the material was intended for dissemination to anyone. How utterly absurd!"
I say to the Minister that I am not making a party issue of this. I was deeply shocked to see the imprimatur of the Army headquarters at Lisburn on an absolutely disgusting article in relation to the former Conservative Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup.
The letter continues :
"2. The Government has repeatedly assured the House that the fullest inquiries' have been carried out into my allegations. Despite that claim, the Government has refused to arrange for individuals such as Mike Taylor or Peter Broderick to be interviewed about the statements they have made to the press corroborating my allegations. The Goverment has a clear duty to carry our such enquiries and it is no use Ministers claiming that such witnesses should submit their own statements to the authorities. Such claims are totally dishonest, and Ministers know very well they are being dishonest when they refuse to face up to this issue."
Mr. Maginnis : I feel that I have a responsibility to intervene at this stage. No one can fail to admire the hon. Gentleman's tenacity in pursuing the Kincora case, which has disturbed every hon. Member. In so far as he pursues it within the scope of this debate, I hope that he will make it clear that he is not insinuating that the serving forces in Northern Ireland were involved in the Kincora scandal. If I may say so, Mr. Deputy Speaker, one might assert that this is somewhat outside the scope of the debate and could reflect badly on our serving forces. No hon. Member would wish that to happen.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : I have been following the debate carefully, and I understand that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) is asserting that matters of discipline impinged on employees or people responsible to the Ministry of Defence. To that extent, the matter is relevant to the debate.
Mr. Dalyell : I should like to agree strongly with the first point made by my hon. Friend, if I may call him such. It is true that most of the Army were clean, and some of them are very shocked--including some of those whom I met tonight, who were senior officers in Northern Ireland in the 1970s--that this happened. It is no part of my case to denigrate the overwhelming majority of the British Army.
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On the hon. Gentleman's second proposition, I was under the understanding that this is a debate on discipline and those who are answerable to the Ministry of Defence. I hope to heaven that certain sections of the security services in military intelligence are answerable to the Ministry of Defence. One of the worries is that discipline was not nearly tight enough.Mr. Maginnis : That is the point.
Mr. Dalyell : That is very much the point. Indeed, it is the central point.
In all the argument between General Leng and Mr. Penrose, it is difficult to clarify matters. However, the central difficulty is that some of us think that military intelligence was not nearly as responsible to the Ministry of Defence as it jolly well should have been.
The letter continues :
"In paragraph 2 of his letter, Archie Hamilton claims General Leng has given the Government an assurance that he recalls no project by the name of "Clockwork Orange".' That is totally false. In interviews with the press, including the one with Barrie Penrose, the General confirmed that he did recall Clockwork Orange' but, quite rightly, says he did not know about its political content."
That is highly germane to the point on which my hon. Friend the Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) intervened. The letter continues :
"4. Also, in paragraph 2 of his letter, the Minister says : No record has been found of any draft document containing the material which Mr. Wallace has described as an early version of "Clockwork Orange".' The Minister could clear up this issue very easily by asking Lt. Colonel Railton and Penny Sadler, the MI5 officer who typed the document, if they recall it. It is, of course, possible that no record of the document exists because all such records have been destroyed, but the Government could, without much effort, find out if it was produced at Army HQ in 1974 and typed by a member of MI5. That was, after all, what your questions in the Army Debate were designed to establish.
5. Finally, the last paragraph of Mr. Hamilton's letter does not explain how a number of senior MOD officers--General Garrett, General Rous, Mr. Whitehead etc--failed to draw Minister's attention to the fact that Government replies were, from their own personal knowledge of my case, inaccurate. Their failure to advise Ministers accordingly strikes at the very heart of the credibility of the senior civil servant's report' to Parliament."
That is the letter on 3 July.
On 8 July, Mr. Wallace wrote again. I have not yet given this letter to the Ministry of Defence. He says :
"Thank you very much for sending me the copy of Hansard containing your speech during the Northern Ireland (Direct Rule) Debate on 5 July. I think the speech was excellent and, supported by the one made by Ken Livingstone, it brought into focus the Government's failure to address the issues under discussion.
I apologise for returning yet again to the answers provided by Mr. Archie Hamilton"--
who is present tonight--
"but I think they are significant in that they demonstrate in the clearest way possible the fact that, contrary to Government assurances to Parliament, Ministers are not only failing to tell the truth about the overall affair but also are failing to make even the most rudimentary checks into my allegations. In your speech last week, you correctly highlighted the fact that some three weeks after my allegation concerning Mr. Whitehead's role in typing the Haughey document, it would appear that no one had bothered to check the allegation with him."
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It is not so much that the Ministry of Defence is being lazy, but that it has been told to put the shutters down. That is not good enough for the House of Commons.The letter continues :
"With your agreement, I would like to return to one specific matter which the Government could check out very easily if they are genuinely concerned about providing Parliament with accurate information on my case.
You will recall that in a letter dated 30 January this year, Archie Hamilton told Ken Livingstone :
On 6 May 1988 you asked me about the involvement of Army Information Service Staff in the planting of hoax bombs and in the carriage of captured terrorist weapons or explosives. It is now apparant that you were referring to planned security exercises. Mr. Wallace has referred to Mr. CTT Whitehead'"--
who now, incidentally, is the press officer responsible for the prison service department, a highly sensitive department of the Home Office--
" having taken part in a mock raid on Aldergrove Airport ; I understand that he took part in a security exercise in November 1973.' "--
which my hon. Friend the Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) may recall.
" Mr. Wallace has also suggested that fake CIA cards were carried ; and I understand that such cards were carried on that occasion, for exercise purposes only. It is now unclear what was the full scope of the exercises, but they did include a test of vehicle check points en route to Aldergrove Airport. We have found no evidence that arms and ammunition captured from the IRA were carried. Nor have we found any evidence that any real explosives were planted.'
Comment : Why is it now unclear what was the full scope of the exercises'? The officer who planned the exercise was Major (now Major General) the Hon W E Rous. Why cannot the MOD ask the General to explain the details of the exercise?"
Mr. Wallace then states that he
"wrote to the Prime Minister on 6 February pointing out that Mr. Hamilton's reply was inaccurate and saying :
Two of those who took part in the "raid", Mr. Michael Taylor, a former MOD official, and Miss Wendy Austin, a BBC journalist, have confirmed to Paul Foot and other reporters that captured IRA weapons, including rocket launchers, mortars, pistols and explosives were carried on that occasion. Moreover, as the MOD is well aware, we planted a bomb containing real explosive--but without a
detonator--inside the headquarters of the UDR battalion guarding the airport and a "hoax" bomb on the Belfast/Ballymena railway line near Templepatrick. The latter device was blown up by an Army bomb disposal team'.
On 16 February, the Prime Minister's Private Secretary, Mr. Charles Powell, wrote saying :
Statements made by Ministers to the House on these past events are naturally reliant on the material available in departmental records. Mr. Hamilton's letter of 30 January to Mr. Livingstone explained that the scope of the exercise at Aldergrove airport to which you refer is unclear at this distance in time : but that departmental records contain no evidence that captured weapons were carried nor that real explosives were planted.
It is not possible to offer comment on statements said to have been made to the media by Mr. Taylor or Miss Austin about the "mock" raid at Aldergrove airport, in the absence of direct knowledge of them. But if Mr. Taylor and Miss Austin have any information which they consider relevant they should pass it to the Ministry of Defence'." I share Mr. Wallace's view when he comments :
"It is nonsense to say that statements made by Ministers on these past events are naturally reliant on the material available in departmental records.' As I have pointed out above and in earlier correspondence with Ministers, the MOD does not have to rely on departmental records alone, there are
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a number of senior Defence staff who have personal and direct knowledge of the events in question and who could help Ministers with their enquiries, should they wish to do so"or, more precisely, should Ministers wish them to do so. Mr. Wallace again wrote to the Prime Minister on 21 February saying :
" In your reply you attempted to avoid dealing with the fact that you had misled Parliament and claimed that you cannot take notice of comments made in the Press by my former superior officers and colleagues. Such a claim is totally disingenuous because you have repeatedly told the House that there have been "the most thorough investigations" into my allegations. If that is correct, why have those investigations failed to interview those who took part in the raid on Belfast airport'?"
That is a fair question. Time and again, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) and I received answers from the Prime Minister and other Ministers referring to thorough investigations. That really is a load of codswallop.
Mr. Wallace's letter of 8 July continues :
"On 27 March, Ken Livingstone received the following Written Answer (Hansard Column 97) :
Mr. Livingstone : To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will direct his officials to interview Mr. Mike Taylor and Miss Wendy Austin about the full scope of their activities in Army Information Services in Northern Ireland in the 1970s'?"
According to Mr. Wallace's letter, the Minister replied, "No. If Mr. Taylor or Miss Austin has information about activities in Northern Ireland which they feel to be of significance, they should submit it to the RUC or the Ministry of Defence."
In his letter of 20 June to me, the Minister of State for the Armed Forces said :
"You also questioned the Government's position and official statements on this and other matters (including the security exercise at Aldergrove airport) in the light of press suggestions that contrary information may be possessed by former Crown Servants who served in Northern Ireland at the same time as Mr. Wallace. I am not prepared to treat uncorroborated reports as being of substantive value."
Mr. Wallace went on to state that the Minister's replies are, to say the least, a bit on the dishonest side and that there can be no excuse whatsoever for his failure to have the allegations relating to Aldergrove airport checked with those who took part in the raid, particularly when they occupy even more senior positions in the services. He went on to state :
"For example, when the Prime Minister and others were supplying the above replies to Parliament, Mr. Chris Whitehead was Chief Press Officer at the MOD--he is now head of PR for the Prison Service." For a long time at any rate--I do not know whether the position has changed in the past week or two--Mr. Whitehead, according to the press, was not asked. They had not even bothered to ask people to whom it is very easy to put questions. I shall go on taking up the time of the House at awkward moments unless some effort is made on the part of the Ministry of Defence and the Northern Ireland Office to do something to answer questions that can very easily be answered. Mr. Wallace's letter went on to state :
"During the raid, Mr. Whitehead carried a forged CIA identity card and a selection of weapons and explosives in his car. He was accompanied on that occasion by Miss Austin. I spoke to Miss Austin personally about two months ago and she recalls very clearly the details of that raid.
Similarly, the MOD could check with the Commanding Officer of the 9th Battalion, Ulster Defence Regiment, in whose HQ we planted a bomb, and some of whose members found several of the weapons we were carrying.
The officer who organised the exercise and who arranged for captured weapons and explosives to be supplied to my
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