House of Commons Hansard Debates for 1 Feb 1995

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My hon. Friend the Minster has to say two things today to reassure my constituents--and I hope those of many other hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South in relation to the Broadway bypass. First, he should confirm that recent apparent changes in the Government's policy on road building have not changed the case for the Wyre Piddle bypass in any respect, and that the Wyre Piddle bypass and others like it will not generate new traffic, but rather relieve intolerable situations for the communities through which the traffic currently passes.

Secondly, I hope that my hon. Friend will confirm that the Wyre Piddle northern bypass remains eligible for transport supplementary grant. Its £4 million cost is not large compared with the cost of major motorway schemes, but the benefits that it will bring will be enormous. I hope that the Minister will recognise that county councils have quite a backlog of such schemes, which are widely supported by the public.

As massive spending on motorways seems set to be scaled down, perhaps the Minister can tell me that not all the money saved will go back to the Chief Secretary but that some of it will go to small schemes such as the Wyre Piddle bypass. In other words, far from threatening Wyre Piddle, perhaps SACTRA and the rest will advance such schemes.

This debate has provided an opportunity for the Government to reassure many thousands of our fellow citizens who are crying out for bypasses that they need not despair: that the Government are still on their side. I hope that my hon. Friend will seize it when he replies.

1.49 pm

The Minister for Transport in London (Mr. Steve Norris): My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Luff) will understand that, by the very nature of these debates, the more he talks, the less I am able to answer. If I cannot cover all his points in the time available, I shall write to him about them.

My hon. Friend spoke of Wyre Piddle moving up the national agenda. That, like the phrase about the Minister being a part-time dentist, struck me as the sort of remark that will go down in history as one of the least apt ever.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester has pursued this bypass assiduously. He came to see me last October to discuss chiefly the Worcester western bypass but he also mentioned the virtues of this scheme. I took careful note of what he had to say, as I have on this occasion.

I welcome my hon. Friend's explanation of the value of the scheme. He ably demonstrated that it is one of those bypass projects that it is universally accepted we should undertake.

My hon. Friend asked whether the recent royal commission or SACTRA reports would impinge on the scheme. There are of course many ways of dealing with the problems of congestion and pollution on our roads. There is much to be said for integrating transport solutions, centred on the provision of good public transport as well as the use of the private car. There may be alternatives to transporting goods by road--rail and water, where appropriate. But there will always remain traffic problems of this sort, which can be dealt with only by means of a bypass.

A cursory look at the map will show why the Wyre Piddle proposition is perfectly robust. I should like to say a word about the transport supplementary grant system

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first, however. It is the Department's main grant towards the cost of capital expenditure on local authority roads. Every July, local highway authorities make their bids for this capital expenditure for the following year. The Secretary of State then considers those plans and makes his announcement in December.

In determining how much of an authority's proposed expenditure to accept, the Secretary of State has to consider the extent to which the roads that would benefit are of more than local importance, and the extent to which people living or working in an authority's area would be relieved of the effects of heavy through traffic. There is no upper financial limit for TSG, but the scope for funding more than a few very large schemes is restricted by the availability of resources and the need for a balanced national distribution. Grant is not paid for schemes that cost less, individually, than £2 million. These will be included in programmes of work funded with block allocations of credit approvals, covering all forms of transport infrastructure.

Schemes are not usually accepted for TSG until the settlement for the year in which their main works contract is due to start. Neither is TSG usually intended to be paid in support of expenditure on design costs, land acquisition or advanced works. For large schemes of great strategic importance with particularly high expenditure in advance of their main works, however, the Department has the option of providing support by means of credit approval.

It is obviously not possible to pay all the TSG for which local authorities bid. Whether a scheme is accepted in a particular year depends on the extent to which it would help to meet the Secretary of State's objectives, on its economic and environmental benefits, and on its merits compared with those of all the other schemes proposed for acceptance by the 108 highway authorities in the same settlement.

Authorities do not receive a fixed share of TSG each year and there is no such thing as a minimum amount that can be guaranteed. However, contractual commitments on previously accepted schemes have a first call--provided any cost increases have been justified and satisfactory progress has been maintained.

I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that the Wyre Piddle scheme is eligible for TSG. As he amply demonstrated, it would bring much needed relief to a community suffering from the unwelcome impact of traffic that is not, in the main, locally generated. I shall not, however, be able to take a fully informed view before the county council submits a detailed bid for TSG. Despite the now familiar anti-road hysteria, often stoked up by people who appear to have little else to contribute, I am well aware that many communities are only too glad to have a bypass to make their lives safer and more peaceful.

I should give my hon. Friend some idea of the difficulties that we face. This year, we received bids from highway authorities for TSG for about 80 eligible major schemes--seven times more than we could afford. As ever, many good candidates have had to be left out, and it was impossible to avoid disappointing several highway authorities. In each of the past three years, we have made it clear in the annual guidance that we issue to local authorities that in view of the scarcity of public resources it would

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be exceptional for any authority to have more than one new major scheme accepted for TSG in a single settlement. That is why, in a year when only 25 new schemes succeeded in getting TSG, I was pleased that we could give approval for the Worcester western bypass scheme, the county's top priority.

I come next to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South (Mr. Spicer). It is correct that one of the important considerations that we shall have to take into account will be the county council's priorities in respect of TSG approvals. I note what my hon. Friend said about Broadway. I was grateful to him for acknowledging, in that context, that Wyre Piddle may not be top of the county's list. That is, however, a matter for the county itself.

Mr. Luff: May I urge my hon. Friend to negotiate robustly with the Treasury this time around? If there is to be a reduction in motorway building, perhaps a few more bids from county councils will succeed instead.

Mr. Norris: I have promised my hon. Friend that, in my negotiations with the Treasury, Wyre Piddle will never be far from my mind. No doubt he will be able to make his own representations to my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor in due course. Another factor that my hon. Friend should bear in mind is the forecast date for the start of construction. I am advised that planning permission has not yet been secured for the scheme, and the necessary draft orders under the Highways Act have not yet been published. To consider the scheme for TSG in 1996-97 we would have to be confident that a start to construction in that year was likely. The county council will need to make good progress on the statutory procedures if that goal is to be achieved.

As my hon. Friend knows, we carefully considered the case for grant for the western bypass, but we concluded that it was not a road of more than local importance and hence did not qualify. The Department does not support expenditure on local roads generally; they are the responsibility of local highway authorities, which receive funding from the Department of the Environment for the upkeep of such roads. Hereford and Worcester county council may, if it wants to, use some of the resources that we allocate for minor works under the local transport capital settlement for the western bypass, but the money is unlikely to be sufficient for the purpose.

I quite understand the concern that my hon. Friend has expressed. I hope that he will appreciate that his representations have been listened to sympathetically and have borne fruit. We are prepared to consider the scheme for transport supplementary grant. It meets our criteria, and nothing in recent reports has rendered it less likely to be eligible. There are real questions about the extent to which bids for grant exceed the grants that are available. Indeed, it was ever thus. Financing is, therefore, by no means automatic. Approvals are generally granted only in the year in which the scheme is likely to start. There is some further work to be done in that regard in relation to the scheme.

I hope that my reply has been helpful to my hon. Friend. Given the crucial role of the county council in determining what should be its priorities for expenditure, it might be useful if my hon. Friends the Members for

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Worcester and for Worcestershire, South and their constituents direct their principal concerns to the county council. It is the council which--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. We must move on to the next debate.

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Lockerbie

2 pm

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): My concerns about Lockerbie have been set out in Adjournment debates, foreign affairs debates and endless parliamentary questions over six years, most recently on 13 December in the Scottish Grand Committee at column 40, so I invite the Foreign Secretary to address the following questions, of which the Foreign Office has had 26 hours' notice.

Did the Scottish police request interviews with Ghadanfar and Dalkoumani? If not, why not? If so, were they denied access to the two men? Will the British Government object if Dalkoumani is released later this year? Did the British authorities ever interview Marwan Khreesat, briefly detained and then released in Neuss, Germany? Considering two Libyans have been indicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence, would the Foreign Secretary acknowledge contrary circumstantial evidence set out in recent days by Alan Francovitch, Con Coughlin and John Arlidge, and in their seminal, if derided, book "Trail of the Octopus" by Don Goddard and Lester Coleman? In particular, is the Foreign Secretary at ease, in the light of the "File on Four" programme, in respect of the pivotal witness, Toni Gauci, clothing shopkeeper from Malta?

If the Foreign Secretary is so sure about the Malta connection, how does he explain that Air Malta won an out-of-court settlement against Granada and The Independent , neither of which could substantiate its story of Maltese involvement?

Is the Foreign Secretary any more at ease in respect of another crucial witness, Edwin Bollier? Did he not sign a statement to the effect that his timing device had been sold only to the Libyans? But does not interrogation of Bollier's Stasi control reveal that that was a lie, as he had sold the same device to the Stasi?

What is the Foreign Secretary's assessment of the report of the air intelligence unit of the United States air force that Ali Akbar Motashemi paid the Al Abas and Abu Nidal groups $10 million in cash and gold to bomb Pan Am flight 103, in retaliation for the US "shoot-down" of the Iranian airbus?

Is the Foreign Secretary aware that the Crown Office received crucial American intelligence implicating Libya from Mr. Vincent Cannistraro of the CIA, who, by his own admission in the mid-1980s, ran a programme at the US National Security Council designed to destabilise and topple the regime of Colonel Gaddafi, and that one of the methods used in the campaign was the spreading of disinformation about Libya?

How can seemingly eternal United Nations sanctions against Libya be justified? Is the Foreign Secretary sure that the Crown Office "certainties" are not constructed on the quicksand of CIA disinformation?

How much reliance does the Crown Office put on the so-called testimony of Abdu Maged Jiacha, who worked at Luqa airport, who has received a $4 million reward and a new identity, and the benefits of the US federal witness protection programme? Apart from anything else, he seems to have quarrelled with the one of the two accused Libyans over a girl. That is about the level of it.

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Is the Foreign Secretary aware that after Lockerbie all the Drug Enforcement Agency chiefs in Europe were ordered to Washington, and told that there were DEA agents and a drug courier on flight 103, and that all DEA officers received a cable informing all agents that they were in no circumstances to talk to anyone about the DEA people on that plane, including Khalid Jaafar?

Were drugs found among the debris near Lockerbie, and were Americans involved in concealing the discovery of drugs?

Hansard records in column 522 on 21 December 1988 that at 8.30 pm I intervened on the suject of the crash. My concerns about Lockerbie became acute when a West Lothian police officer--a friend of mine and a constituent--observed to me on new year's eve, 1988 that he did not know how so many Americans could be on such a gruesome scene messing around with the evidence.

Why has the Crown Office not talked properly to Dr. David Fieldhouse, the distinguished Bradford police surgeon, especially to correlate his body count with its count?

Will the Foreign Secretary explain why the German authorities did not join their US and UK colleagues in indicting the two Libyans for a crime committed on German soil, at the Rhein-Main airport, where by any account the bomb went on board?

Is it not the case that, shortly after the Anglo-American indictment, the German public prosecutor, Volke Rath, was quoted as stating that the Federal Republic of Germany had declined to join the US and UK indictment on the ground, as he put it, "of lack of evidence"?

In the investigation of a crime, the police in Scotland act, and must act, on the directions and instructions of the procurator fiscal and the Crown Office. Have the Crown Office and the procurator fiscal given the police directions or instructions to investigate recent allegations of Iranian and Syrian involvement in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103? Again, if not, why not?

In deciding whether charges should be brought and in preparing a case for trial, it is the duty of the prosecuting authorities in Scotland to consider and investigate evidence which tends to exculpate a suspect or an accused as well as evidence which tends to incriminate the suspect. Have the prosecuting authorities complied with that duty in the case of the two Libyan suspects, and are they currently complying?

A petition charging named individuals with the Lockerbie bombing having been presented to the sheriff of Dumfries, presumably on evidence regarded by the Lord Advocate as sufficient at the time to justify that step, and arrest warrants having been granted, do the prosecuting authorities in Scotland regard their investigating functions as being at an end?

Should they not, for example, seek to interview officials of the US embassy in Nicosia who were there in 1988 to determine what they knew of the events leading up to the Lockerbie disaster? In particular, should they not seek to interview the 1988 CIA station chief and the DEA country attache , both now retired from Government service?

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Have the Crown Office and the Scottish police investigated the possibility that the terrorists responsible took advantage of an American law enforcement operation to smuggle the bomb aboard flight 103?

Do the prosecuting authorities regard themselves as being free now to close their eyes to any new leads and decline to investigate any potential evidence which go counter to the allegations narrated in the petition or which appear to cast doubt thereon?

Do the prosecuting authorities really assert that the sole responsibility for investigating any such evidence rests on those entrusted with the task of representing the relatives if and when a trial takes place?

Ending with the relatives, six long years later, they want to know exactly why US personnel were withdrawn from flight 103, and exactly what US Government officials knew which was not made available to the youngsters going to their death.

2.7 pm

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Douglas Hurd): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr.Dalyell) because, as he said, he gave notice to my office of his line of questioning. He gave me plenty of time, but he has asked many detailed questions. If there are gaps between his questions and the fullness of my answers, I shall write to him to fill the gaps. I shall certainly deal with the main points that he raised. I thought that it was right to reply to the debate myself for three reasons: first, because of my respect for the hon. Gentleman and for his integrity in this and other matters; secondly, because of the enormity of the crime at Lockerbie and the suffering which it caused and is causing; thirdly, because I wish to deal plainly and lay to rest certain suspicions and accusations which have arisen not so much from the hon. Gentleman's speech as from what he has copiously written in newspapers.

The Lockerbie investigation has been the most extensive ever carried out into one crime in Britain. On the basis of that criminal investigation and the vast amount of evidence uncovered, my noble and learned Friend the then Lord Advocate sought and was granted warrants for the arrest of two Libyan nationals accused of having carried out the bombing.

I must stress the total independence from Government of the investigation of the Lord Advocate in his responsibility for criminal prosecutions. Neither he nor his predecessor would have brooked any attempt to influence them in exercising their independent judgment. It is not the job of Ministers or the Foreign Office to decide who should be prosecuted for a crime. It is not the job of Ministers or the Foreign Office to pronounce opinions as to who is guilty. There is no place in the matter for diplomatic or political considerations, and we have not at any time allowed such considerations any place in our actions.

Neither the Foreign Office nor any agency for which I am responsible has attempted to steer the Lockerbie investigation or to shield any individual or state who may have been responsible. There is no hidden political influence behind the investigation, and there has been no censorship by the Foreign Office. All significant information relevant to Lockerbie obtained by the intelligence agencies--or anyone else, to my

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knowledge--is invariably and as a matter of course provided to those who are responsible for the investigation. It is for the prosecuting authorities and, ultimately, we hope, for the courts, not the Government, to weigh the evidence; so when the hon. Gentleman asks whether I am at ease with that, or whether I am satisfied with that, those are not questions for me. It is not for me to weigh or ponder the evidence or to allow those under my control to do so. There have been many debates on this matter, and the hon. Gentleman has asked many questions. Most recently, there was a discussion in the Scottish Grand Committee on 13 December last year. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland explained why no Minister could discuss the detail of evidence into the Lockerbie bombing or, indeed, any other criminal case, because once we began to do that, it would jeopardise the prospect of a fair criminal trial and render worthless the painstaking work of the investigators.

Of course--this is one of the hon. Gentleman's main concerns--the books can never be closed. The Dumfries and Galloway constabulary must remain, and does remain, ready to consider any new evidence that might be relevant to the case. The investigation remains open. If anyone has any new information that he or she considers relevant to the case, he or she should give it to the police without delay. Minds cannot be closed to fresh evidence, even if it were to open up new ideas on who carried out the bombing or backed the bombers.

Sir Teddy Taylor (Southend, East): Can my right hon. Friend say, therefore, who has been responsible for denying Mr. Bollier the right to see the evidence about the timing devices? It is a very important part of the evidence. He has been denied the right to see it, because he believes that he could decide whether it was sold to the Libyans or others. Who makes that kind of decision? Is it political, judicial or made by the police?

Mr. Hurd: It is certainly not political. It is certainly not made by me or any other Minister. Let me inquire into that aspect of the case. I shall write to my hon. Friend. It is certainly not me who would have taken any such decision, or could have done so. The Lord Advocate--this is on a point that the hon. Member for Linlithgow raised--has always been at pains to make it clear that he is not in a position to exonerate other nations or their nationals. He simply has not seen, in his judgment, credible evidence to implicate them.

Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan): The Foreign Secretary has seen the replies to me in Hansard today from the Secretary of State for Scotland, which, briefly, say that the Crown authorities were not aware of the existence of the US air intelligence report until 23 January this year. The replies discount the report and say that it has no relevance to the inquiry. I ask a simple question: given that the Crown authorities were co- operating so closely with the American authorities, why were they not aware of the existence of that report? Can the Foreign Secretary offer an explanation?

Mr. Hurd: I shall come to that report in a minute.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow asked a number of detailed questions. I can reply to some of them. He spoke of the Palestinian terrorists who were arrested in Germany in October 1988. It is the firm policy of the Lord

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Advocate not to give details of what inquiries have or have not been carried out, but it is necessary to make an exception in this case. In the case of Dalkoumani and Ghadanfar, I can confirm that requests were made for both men to be interviewed, that those requests were granted and that Scottish police officers were present at the interviews.

The hon. Gentleman also asked me to acknowledge what he described as contrary circumstantial evidence put forward by various individuals. We all know that there are a host of alternative theories on the subject. It is not for me, I repeat, to assess those theories. That is and must be a matter for the prosecuting authorities and the Lord Advocate. It is clear that such theories can be based only on an incomplete knowledge and understanding of the mass of evidence that is available to the Lord Advocate, who remains in no doubt that the charges against the two Libyan accused are justified.

That covers the reliability and significance of any particular piece of evidence put before a criminal court by the prosecution, including such matters, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, as the sale of clothing in Malta, the testimony of Edwin Bollier and evidence obtained from staff at Luqa airport. Those are matters which, eventually, we hope, a jury will consider once it has heard all the evidence.

I now deal with the American document, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Linlithgow and the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond). It was released by the US Government under the Freedom of Information Act. It contains, as both hon. Members have said, the allegation that former Iranian Interior Minister, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, paid the sum of $10 million to have the Lockerbie bombing carried out. I make two points on the report. The document, as the hon. Member for Banfford Buchan said and as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told him, was available to the Crown Office on 24 January, but the allegation in it circulated well before that as a well-publicised rumour during the early stages of the investigation. It appeared in The Sunday Times in the second half of 1989. It appeared later in a book by David Leppard, "On The Trail of Terror", published in 1991.

As anyone who follows the case knows--certainly the two hon. Members do-- during the early stages of the investigation, the possibility that Palestinian extremist groups might be responsible was extensively investigated, as were reports of Iranian involvement. No credible evidence- -the assessment of the prosecuting authorities--has been found to substantiate either theory.

The document is not, as is sometimes made out, a statement of the views of the American authorities. It is a report of the views of an American intelligence agency source--in fact, an Iranian defector. He or she was reporting second or third-hand information. The source was untried and its reliability could not have been assessed. During the investigation, literally thousands of pieces of raw intelligence, often contradictory, were seen. When the document in question was assessed, as a US Government spokesman made clear last week, it was discarded as a "dud".

The hon. Member for Linlithgow asked a number of questions about the US Drug Enforcement Agency. I am assured that no DEA chiefs in Europe were recalled to Washington in the wake of the Lockerbie disaster. As regards the allegation that it was running an anti-narcotics

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operation, which went wrong, a copy of the film by Mr. Alan Francovitch, which contains those allegations, has been sent--I think by the hon. Gentleman--to the Crown Office. The matter was considered by the US House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations, Government Information Justice and Agriculture Sub-Committee in December 1990. I am arranging for a copy of the statement to that sub- committee by the assistant administrator of the DEA to be placed in the Library of the House.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the discovery of drugs. I think that the Lord Advocate wrote to him on 3 July 1992, saying that the only discovery of drugs at the Lockerbie site was a small quantity of cannabis.

The hon. Gentleman asked about Mr. David Fieldhouse. My understanding is that he has been interviewed several times by the Scottish police and that he gave evidence at the fatal accident inquiry.

The hon. Gentleman asked me to explain why the German authorities have not indicted the two Libyan accused. That clearly is a matter for the German prosecuting judicial authorities. It is not something that I can comment on, except to make the obvious point. Given that the bulk of the evidence is in the hands of the Scottish and American authorities, it seems clear to us that the trial should take place in one of those two countries. The German Government agree, as does the Security Council.

Incidentally, I understand that the comments that the hon. Member for Linlithgow attributed to the German state prosecutor were misquoted. The state prosecutor was referring not to the case brought by the Lord Advocate and the American authorities, but to the question of proceedings in Germany based on the evidence held there. The German state prosecutor is not familiar with the full details of the prosecution case.

Let me deal with a point of principle that I consider to be at the heart of the hon. Gentleman's remarks. I can confirm to him that the prosecuting authorities would take any evidence that tended to exculpate the accused just as seriously as any further evidence that tended to incriminate them. The hon. Gentleman said that that was the authorities' duty, and they see it as their duty.

The hon. Gentleman talked about American personnel being withdrawn from flight 103. I understand that one American Government employee who was booked on the flight missed it because of traffic congestion at Frankfurt, but it is true that a further 23, sadly, were victims of the disaster.

Let me return to the central question of where we stand now. The hon. Gentleman asked how the United Nations sanctions against Libya could be justified. We have asked ourselves repeatedly how best to proceed. The painstaking work of the Scottish police and the Crown Office has led to charges being brought against two Libyan individuals; the case against them stands. It is not a case constructed by me, or by the Foreign Office, and it owes nothing to diplomatic or political considerations. It was put together after the most massive investigation ever to take place in respect of any crime in Britain, and sustained by the Lord Advocate in the warrants that he issued. In his judgment, the case stands.

Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Port Glasgow): Is it the Government's view that one day the

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perpetrators of this terrible mass murder will stand trial in the High Court in Edinburgh--or a similar court elsewhere--or does the Foreign Secretary genuinely believe that they will never be brought to trial?

Mr. Hurd: I do not know the answer to that question, but I believe that it is our job to do our utmost to ensure that they do come to trial. They are outside our reach at present; we are making every effort to bring them within the reach of the court, but matters are not entirely under our control.

We and the American and French Governments--the French are currently concerned with another terrorist crime--have gone to unprecedented lengths to put diplomatic pressure on Libya to surrender the two Libyan citizens who are alleged to have carried out the bombing, and to satisfy the requirements of French justice over the bombing of flight UTA772 in September 1989.

Sir David Steel (Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale): Why do the British and French Governments set their faces so determinedly against the idea of trying the two individuals in some other place, such as The Hague, in the absence of an international criminal court?

Mr. Hurd: There are several answers to that. Primary legislation would be required in this country. I am not sure of the grounds on which a Minister would tell the House, "The instruments of justice in Scotland are inadequate for this purpose," but that would have to be the case. Nor, after all that has occurred, could we conceivably feel confident--whatever assurances were given in advance--that the Libyans would hand over those concerned to a court. We would go to the infinite trouble of constructing such a court, in the face of difficulty and controversy, when there could be no guarantee that those concerned would appear before it. We have considered the question, because--as the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Sir D. Steel) is aware--people have urged us in good faith to take such a course; but I do not think that it is a tenable answer.

Sanctions were imposed on Libya by the Security Council because of Libya's refusal to comply with resolution 731. We do not believe that they should or could be lifted until Libya has complied in full with Security Council resolutions. Let me explain the broader picture, to clear away any misunderstanding of what is involved on the part of the Libyan Government. In pursuing the sanctions and taking the view that I have just expressed, we have no hidden agenda; we are not involved in any vindictive campaign against either the Libyan people or their Government. Provided that Libya shows by concrete means that she has renounced all support for terrorism, we have no desire for sanctions to remain in force any longer than is necessary. On the contrary--I am not sure whether the House knows this--in an attempt to establish that the renunciation of terrorism is real, we have engaged in a number of meetings, at official level, with Libyan representatives to discuss their past links with the Provisional IRA. Although those discussions have not led to a fully satisfactory conclusion, they are evidence of our efforts to show that Libyan assurances in this matter are real.

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Once the Libyan Government have arranged for the two Lockerbie suspects to appear for trial in Scotland or the United States and have satisfied French justice over the UTA bombing, we stand ready to see the sanctions suspended immediately. Once Libya has complied with the other requirements of the Security Council resolutions, we expect the sanctions to be lifted without delay. Those who argue that sanctions should be lifted now would do better to help us to persuade the Libyan Government to comply with the Security Council resolutions without further delay.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow asked whether I entertained any serious hope about the outcome. There have been times over the past two years when, on the basis of the information that I had, I thought that we were quite close to the possibility that the Libyans would comply with the resolution and that the two accused would come forward. I have taken great trouble to explain to various intermediaries how Scottish law functions: I have been fully briefed on that--on the safeguards, the legal precautions, the rights of representation and the nature of evidence required. We have repeatedly given those assurances to the Libyans. Although I have sometimes felt that we are close to the possibility that I have described, we have never actually reached that point; instead, there have been numerous side proposals which I fear were designed simply to prolong delay and throw dust in the eyes of all concerned. Nevertheless, I do not think that we should despair. I should be reluctant--as, I am sure, the Lord Advocate would be-- ever to say, "We give up." I repeat, however, that this is not a political or diplomatic exercise on our part: the crime committed was unique in the history of crime in this country, and our concern is that justice should be done. We shall continue to pursue that objective, and the fewer ramifications or complications are introduced into that simple story, the better will be our chances of success. There may be some points of

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detail that I have not picked up from the hon. Gentleman, but I hope that I have managed to deal with the gravamen of his case. Some people are worried that there has been political interference in this case. The hon. Gentleman has been worried that the Crown Office may not be taking account of all the evidence and all the information that is available. I hope that I have dealt from my own knowledge with the first point and, from the knowledge that has been made available to me, I hope that I have dealt with the second. I thank the House.

Mr. Dalyell: The Foreign Secretary refers to points of detail. The trouble is that it is not a detail that Toni Gauci, the owner of this clothing shop in Malta, on whom the whole case rests, is an exceedingly unreliable witness. Since Scots Members of Parliament cannot get at the Lord Advocate, I do not know what more we can do. The fact remains that what the Foreign Secretary says are details brought up by Mr. Francovitch and others are absolutely crucial to any kind of respectable case, and respectable case there is none. [Interruption.]

The professor of Scots law at the university of Edinburgh has publicly said not only does he think that a jury would not convict but that a judge in Scotland might well throw the case out on the ground that there is no case to answer. That is the situation that we have reached. I do not think that senior Cabinet Ministers can pass everything to the Lord Advocate in such a case.

Dr. Godman: Or worse, pass it to Washington.

Mr. Dalyell: Nor, as my hon. Friend says, can they pass it to Washington.

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his courtesy, but in a sense the gravamen of the case has not been responded to. I beg the Government to go to the Lord Advocate and ask him whether he is at ease-- It being half-past Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, pursuant to Order [19 December].

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Northern Ireland (Framework Document)

3.30 pm

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Sir Patrick Mayhew): With permission, I will make a statement concerning the lead story in The Times today. First, the background.

The House knows that, for a considerable time, Her Majesty's Government and the Irish Government have been engaged in discussing a joint framework document. It has long been recognised in Northern Ireland and further afield that political progress can be achieved only by dialogue and agreement among all who are properly concerned. The purpose of the two Governments has therefore been to help the main constitutional parties get into inclusive political talks again.

How? In two ways: first, by offering the British Government's own suggestions for new democratic arrangements for the internal government of Northern Ireland; and, secondly, by jointly offering the parties, as we were requested to do, the two Governments' shared ideas about a possible basis for the other parts of a comprehensive political settlement. We are seeking a basis that might have the best chance of getting the wide support that will be needed in Northern Ireland, so that further talks will be seen to be worth while. That document, if we could agree it, would simply be offered to the Northern Ireland parties, not as some blueprint to be imposed--time and again, we have made that clear--but for the parties to examine it. They could accept it; they could reject it; they could amend it; they could adapt it. But at least we would hope that they would sit down again together and discuss the issues in it. That has been our purpose. It remains our purpose. Far from imposing it, the Prime Minister made it clear that, once agreed, it will be immediately published, so that not only the parties but all the people of Northern Ireland can consider it.

If, as we hope, the parties resume discussions and reach the wide agreement that would be necessary, the people of Northern Ireland will have their direct and decisive say on the outcome. Any agreement that the parties may come to must be put to them in a referendum--for them to show whether they agree or not.

Lastly, it goes without saying that the consent of Parliament would be required. That is the triple lock--parties, people, Parliament--the triple lock against imposition upon the people of Northern Ireland that the Prime Minister has so often spoken of.

We have not yet reached agreement on a framework document to the parties. Last Thursday, Mr. Spring and I met in London, and afterwards we both said that work on important matters remained to be done. That is still the position.

Both Governments hope, and earnestly hope, that we can reach agreement, but consent will be the key, and the Prime Minister has made it clear that, because consent would be absent, we could not, for example, propose arrangements providing for joint authority over Northern Ireland--that is to say, the British and Irish Governments jointly running the affairs of Northern Ireland over the heads of its people. Nor, for the same reason, could we agree to propose any north-south body that was autonomous. A body accountable to a Northern Ireland

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