| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Dalyell: Did the right hon. Gentleman say that there was an Australian observer in 1456?
Sir Peter Emery: I do apologise--I meant to say an Austrian observer. I do not know whether I slipped up or the hon. Gentleman misheard me, but 1456 was a little before the wallabies.
As early as 1899, the Russians proposed a ban on projectiles containing asphyxiating and deleterious gases. The United States opposed it, and it is interesting to consider its reason for doing so. The Americans opposed the ban in the belief that gas was probably a more humane means of warfare than bullets and shells and might be a weapon to achieve decisive results. As a result, the Russian proposal was not adopted.
The widespread use of chemical weapons in the first world war led to the only existing protocol on chemical weapons, created in 1925 in Geneva. It has a long title: the "Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases and all Analogous Liquids, Materials or Devices and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare". That is still an international treaty, but unfortunately it fell short of banning chemical weapons. It represents an international legal position on the first use of chemical weapons, but it does not outlaw the development, production or stockpiling of chemical weapons. The treaty and the Bill that we are now discussing achieve that end. Several
agents were developed at the end of the last war, notably nerve agents in Germany and the even more lethal nerve gases in the United Kingdom.
It was in 1980, at the Geneva conference on disarmament, when negotiations began to produce a more effective arms control agreement governing chemical weapons. It was during the 1980s that many of us--some in the House, some in the North Atlantic Assembly and some in the United Nations--were pressing for efforts to be made to produce a bilateral chemical arms control agreement. It was the United States and the Soviet Union that achieved such an agreement. In 1989, the Soviet Union announced that it would begin destroying its stocks without waiting for a treaty to be signed. The United States then decided to halt production of binary chemical weapons. In the same year, in Paris, 149 nations pledged not to use chemical agents in warfare and called for their eventual elimination.
It is interesting, even before the treaty is in operation, that in 1990 the United States and the Soviet Union reached an agreement on chemical weapons under which they would begin to destroy 80 per cent. of their stocks immediately and would reduce remaining stocks to 1 or 2 per cent. of the existing total after the signing of the convention. There are occasions when the Soviets and the Americans are blamed for whatever, but in this instance it is unfair not to give them some credit.
There are certain problems when it comes to the need in haste to adopt the convention. I understand that we shall consider the Bill on Report, followed by Third Reading, the week after next. I am glad that the Government have responded to those who are urging that we should act quickly. What steps have my hon. Friend the Minister and his Department taken to try to prepare a list of scientists and British civil servants, or business people, who might work in The Hague under the preparatory convention? I agree entirely with Opposition Members and my right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling), who have urged that there should be a British input into the proposed administration. I understand that it is estimated that between 700 and 2,500 persons will be involved. The number will depend on the number of signatories and on the number of sites that will have to be inspected or may be inspected.
No one has talked about money, but we must ensure that there is proper finance, so that the administration at The Hague can inspect fully and properly without having to worry about finance. It should be remembered that the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna has had no increase in funding for seven years, which has led to considerable worries about the way in which it can carry out its operations. I do not want to see the same situation at The Hague.
Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton):
I thank the right hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) for his interesting history lesson. His slip of the tongue enables me to refer to Australia, which is opposed to chemical weapons and
The Minister may have had his tongue in his cheek when he referred to "rapid ratification" by the Government. We should be asking why there has been such delay in introducing the Bill. It is long overdue. The text of the convention was agreed in late 1992. We should examine the reasons for delayed ratification. The Deputy Prime Minister, the then President of the Board of Trade, dragged his feet. Deregulation and privatisation of the Post Office was deemed more important by the right hon. Gentleman than a major international treaty to ban chemical weapons world wide. That is a clear example that members of the Tory party have become little Englanders.
It is vital that the United Kingdom should be among the first 65 to ratify the convention, not least because that will safeguard the jobs of Britons who have already secured employment with the international organisation at The Hague. Early ratification will also give us good standing in the decision-making processes that are being established. It will show additionally that we are keen on controlling chemical weapons.
The convention will come into force 180 days after 65 countries have ratified it. As the Minister said, we look to the United States and the Russian Federation to ratify it. Once the United Kingdom has ratified the convention, we shall be in a better position to urge those two major powers to respond quickly. That is why early ratification is important. The United Kingdom would have been seen as keener if we had ratified the convention earlier. The Government should be criticised for their tardiness.
I have taken a special interest in chemical weapons for many years. It is an interest that was given renewed vigour after the terrible bombing of Halabja by Saddam Hussein in 1988. Soon after that bombing, I went with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) to meet the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave), who was then Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to press for the Government, who had international obligations, to act immediately. History records that no action was forthcoming. That is to the eternal shame of the nation. We remained a full trading partner with Iraq. We did not even impose sanctions. As the Scott inquiry has already revealed, export control guidelines were being slackened. It was a shameful episode as Ministers turned a blind eye to murder by means of chemical weapons.
Under the convention, we shall be obliged not to assist any country to acquire a chemical weapons capability. That means that we need a proper export control regime. The current procedure is a farce because it is subject to the whim of political masters. The Scott inquiry has highlighted nooks and crannies that tell us how the Government view trade with obnoxious regimes. I hope that it will report during the Session. The Government should give an assurance that if the inquiry makes recommendations for changes in the law, they will implement them. There should be no ifs, buts or maybe this or that. It is clear that the export regime needs to be overhauled, and the sooner the better. Transparency must be introduced. That which the Government tell Parliament is the United Kingdom's policy must be seen to be implemented. It must not be subverted by Ministers or anyone else.
There must be transparency and accountability in the approach of the Department of Trade and Industry to the convention. As things stand, little information would be in the public domain on what the DTI was doing to ensure compliance with the convention. The DTI can refuse to disclose the nature of its activities, on the ground that that would jeopardise the commercial confidentiality of the companies providing information. The international co-ordinating body, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at The Hague, cannot make public any information provided to it by the DTI as a national authority. That must be changed, and I shall say a bit more about it in a minute.
Transparency is also needed in the activities of Porton Down, which has been referred to today. I have expressed my outrage at some of the activities there in the past. That is not to say, however, that some of them do not deserve support; I would never want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Porton Down's expertise in physical protection, such as gas masks and suits, is unparalleled, as are the capabilities of its analytical laboratories. My distaste relates primarily to medical counter-measures that require animal tests, especially when many of them could be carried out using alternatives to animals. Truly defensive work could easily be distorted into a potentially offensive capability. Other countries may take the same road using that excuse. I would like to see a tightening of procedures against that get-out.
The Government should consider giving an idea of the quantity of any chemical that is produced at Porton Down, even bearing in mind the 1 tonne limit to which the Minister referred. Under the convention, a certain level of transparency would be required in any case. After all, would we be willing to ratify a treaty that allowed the Iraqis to hide Salman Pak, their Porton Down, behind closed doors? The United Nations special commission on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has complained to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about British companies supplying the Salman Pak and Ad Dwar plants in Iraq. In their Scott mire, the Government just want to forget about it, but at its kindest the United Kingdom's role could be described as ambiguous on supporting Iraq's chemical weapons capability.
It is valuable to look at the Bill in a slightly wider context. It will almost certainly be the model for this country's implementation of any verification regime agreed for the biological weapons convention, which, although agreed more than 20 years ago, currently has no verification arrangements. Despite the other faults--some of which I have mentioned--of its political masters, Britain has been quietly in the forefront on that issue. I welcome that and pay tribute to the Government.
There will be another international meeting on biological weapons next week in Geneva. I hope that when arrangements are finished in the coming years, there will be proper co-ordination between the two verification regimes. I raise that issue now, because it could have implications for the proposed legislation in the relatively near future. There could be some overlap between verification of biological and chemical weapons. It is important to ensure that we do not have a situation where verification does not take place because each regime leaves it to the other. That is an important point and it should be taken on board.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |