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5.32 pm
Mr. Nick Harvey (North Devon): I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in the debate because, like the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), I think that this is one of the most important pieces of legislation that will come before Parliament this Session. I welcome the Bill but share the view of hon. Members who said that it is rather belated. It is none the less welcome that the Government recognise the contribution that the treaty can make to global security. Its ratification is essential. No right hon. or hon. Member can doubt the Bill's validity and we must progress it as quickly as we can. If we fail to pass this primary legislation promptly and by the time the treaty is in force there would be unfortunate consequences throughout the country, as the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) said. There is much of merit in the Bill and I join other hon. Members on both sides of the House in urging that we get on with the job.
There are problems with the Bill as it stands which may cause difficulties in its practical implementation. It would be a shame not to use the limited opportunities at our disposal to address those concerns. Right hon. and hon. Members spoke of how the Bill will impinge on the activities of the scientific community. Clauses 19 and 20 require anyone using, producing or possessing schedule 1 chemicals to obtain a licence first, and I would like to hear how that would work in practice. I presume that the Department of Trade and Industry, as the national authority, will issue licences--but who will decide what is or is not acceptable research? Will there be any form of appeal against licence refusal? Who will advise the DTI? Those questions have no obvious answers in the Bill, but perhaps the Government have replies ready. Many Bills in recent years have given various Secretaries of State sweeping powers. In this instance, hon. Members have not been circulated with the customary tomes of explanatory notes saying how the Bill's powers will be used in practice.
I welcome the fact that the national authority will be given sufficient powers to monitor the data reporting scheme for schedule 2 and 3 chemicals. That system will work well given full co-operation by the industry. There are further powers to implement a full-blown national compliance monitoring system if that is deemed necessary. That would apply to all areas of chemical-related activity, whether or not they are governmental. That measure seems somewhat draconian but presumably it will be used sparingly. The system will rely on close co-operation, which is just as well given that the Bill envisages only seven additional departmental staff in the DTI--presumably in the newly established secretariat. One assumes that other DTI staff will be redeployed on that task.
The hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) rightly referred to as draconian, if they were used inappropriately, some of the powers in clauses 22 and 23. Clause 23 seems to give the Secretary of State the power to make regulations that will require persons to identify themselves to him if it is likely that the Secretary of State will need information from them. That is like the police requiring criminals to make themselves known. If the Secretary of State is unable to identify the persons in question and their activities, there will be a problem. We cannot be sure that persons will know about the legislation and the requirement to make themselves known.
We should be wary of establishing a system that might result in too cosy a relationship between the industry and the DTI as the national authority, if that brought any risk of endangering our international credibility. It is not clear from the Bill how the DTI's strategies for prevention, accountability, parliamentary involvement and statutory independence will work. The solution must be measures to ensure transparency and accountability. I welcome the Minister's announcement today that there will be an annual report, but share the concern of the hon. Member for Linlithgow that it should be statutory. I would like that requirement in the Bill. We accept the sincerity of the Minister's assurances, but there will come a time when he is long gone and forgotten from his current post. It would be preferable to see in the Bill a procedure for ensuring that annual reporting continues indefinitely. The Australian solution for fulfilling the terms of the treaty is to prescribe that an annual report be laid before each House of Parliament.
Transparency in protecting against chemical weapons is specifically covered by the convention. Although one recognises the necessity for continuing research in anti-
chemical protection such as clothing alarms and antidotes, such research may conceal illegal weapons activity, so each country must present its annual report to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Britain's present research, as the hon. Member for Salisbury explained, is undertaken at Porton Down, which already produces an annual report. Will that report continue in its current form?
What will be the relationship between Porton Down's report, that which will be made annually to the OPCW and the report to which the Minister referred at the start of his speech? Who will take responsibility for producing the annual report to the OPCW? Does the Minister believe that the Porton Down report will form the basis and that it will be enough to satisfy the treaty's requirements?
As many hon. Members have said, Porton Down will continue to play an important role in satisfying Britain's obligations when the treaty comes into force. It is crucial to ensure that this country is kept abreast of technological development in the chemical industry so that new and potentially dangerous chemicals or new ways of using existing chemicals can be brought under the remit of the treaty. We cannot rely solely on the OPCW to monitor those developments. Porton Down seems to be the only organisation capable of taking on that responsibility. The DTI appeared to recognise that in the discussion document it produced earlier this year when it called on Porton Down to monitor scientific developments.
At that time, Porton Down was a free-standing next steps agency, with a director general who was accountable to Parliament. It now has a managing director and is simply
one of several components of the Defence Research Agency that operates as a trading fund. How will it effect Porton Down's role in the future when the treaty comes into force? We hope that it will continue to monitor technical changes in the chemical industry as effectively for the purposes of bringing new technology under the terms of the treaty as it will presumably monitor technical change for its military and business customers. We can hope, but we cannot be sure because of the uncertainty about the accountability of Porton Down to Parliament. The only way to guarantee that a blind eye is not turned to potential abuse is to enact statutory legislation to ensure transparency and accountability. It should not be too difficult to adapt the existing advisory committees at Porton Down to the requirements of the treaty.
The fact that, unlike in many other countries the Government here propose to operate the national authority from within the recesses of the DTI, may be seen as exacerbating the problems of transparency. There seems little doubt that a stand-alone agency would have been more easily held to account and its activities could have been more easily scrutinised. If the DTI is to publish an annual report, I hope that it will be regularly debated in Parliament so that the transparency is ensured.
Sir Peter Emery (Honiton):
I can probably claim to be as concerned at an early stage with the need for a chemical weapons treaty as anyone in the House as I am one of Parliament's representatives in the North Atlantic Assembly. Since 1982, the assembly's Science and Technical Committee has been pressing hard for the introduction of a chemical weapons treaty and two of its reports were written by the right hon. Member for Honiton.
The successful negotiation of the chemical weapons convention is a remarkable achievement--perhaps some of us do not underline that enough. The convention is the most ambitious multilateral arms control agreement ever. It seeks a global ban on an entire class of weaponry and will require verification in one of the world's most pervasive industrial sectors.
The entry into force of the convention now seems assured as it has received support from the United Nations and, generally, throughout the world. But there is a need, which has not been emphasised in the debate, to persuade those nations that may covertly possess chemical weapons to join the convention. It may be appropriate for us to examine harshly parties that do not join the convention.
One of the key implementation problems is to ensure that the convention is signed. It is particularly important for nations that are believed to possess chemical weapons to be brought into the convention. Some nations that are unhappy about what they see as excessively intrusive verification may be reluctant to sign the convention. For
example, some Arab nations have suggested on several occasions that they would be reluctant to sign a chemical weapons agreement unless Israel dismantled its nuclear weapons capability. There are various difficulties involved in gaining world acceptance of the convention. That is why I am asking my hon. Friend the Minister whether any consideration has been given to what steps may be taken--even half steps such as trading sanctions--against those who are apparently unwilling to sign the convention once it is in force. The nations that sign the chemical weapons convention should consider that issue. I hope that my hon. Friend is pressing for the relevant sites in this country to be declared as soon as possible, to enable the preparatory commission to determine the scale of the resources needed by the international Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. We should urge all signatories to do that, so that we can proceed quickly.
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