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Mr. Kaufman: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. As I heard it, the right hon. Gentleman accused my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) of having misled the House. If that is so, surely he is culpable.

Madam Speaker: If there were not so much noise, we could all hear precisely what is being said. Is it a fact that the Secretary of State used those words? [Interruption.] Order. I want to hear the Secretary of State, not the Opposition.

Mr. Lang: Yes it is, Madam Speaker, and if you rule that to be unparliamentary I shall withdraw the words "misled the House", but I shall leave in place the words "misled the country". I shall do so because for three years the hon. Gentleman went around the country accusing the

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Government of secretly arming Saddam Hussein and of attempting to gag the courts. Those two serious charges are completely rejected by the report and the hon. Gentleman now tries, vindictively and contemptibly,to shift his ground in order to continue the odious smear campaign. He shows a standard of behaviour that renders him unfit to be trusted by either the House or any foreign country even in the shadow post of Foreign Secretary. The House continues to await and demand an apology.

The Government welcome their acquittal by the Scott report of the two serious charges that caused the inquiry to be set up. We accept, as I have said today--and, indeed, in my statement 10 days ago--that there have been mistakes. There have been shortcomings and there is a need for improvement in several areas. I have today mapped out a number of ways in which the House can proceed. I have done so in a positive and forward-looking spirit, recognising that long-established conventions and practices of the House and elsewhere need to be looked at in a fresh light. I invite the House to respond in that spirit and to support the Government in the Lobby tonight.

4.22 pm

Mr. Robin Cook (Livingston): I shall respond in a moment to the Secretary of State's purple peroration,but I shall first comment on the announcements that he has made today. That need not detain the House for long, because the length of the passage in the right hon. Gentleman's speech cannot conceal the shortness of the specifics in those proposals.

I shall respond on three counts. First, we welcome the fact that Customs is to have supervision of the prosecuting role. In the light of the grave criticisms by Sir Richard Scott of the conduct of the Matrix Churchill trial, it would have been astonishing if the right hon. Gentleman had not proposed changes to the prosecuting role of Customs.

Secondly, I agree with the Government that we require a review of ministerial accountability. After all, one of the key conclusions in the closing section of the report is that, during the inquiry, example after example has come to light of the failure of ministerial accountability. What I find surprising is that, having had 18 days to study the report, the right hon. Gentleman could still produce no proposal as to what might be done to strengthen ministerial accountability.

Today, the one initiative that the right hon. Gentleman announced was that the Government will give evidence if the Select Committee holds an inquiry into ministerial accountability. I would hope so--after all, it is their duty to give evidence to Select Committees if they are asked to do so. However, the initiative does not shed any light on what single proposal they will make in that evidence to avoid us ever again having to debate a report that,in its closing chapter, details seven specific cases in which ministerial accountability was broken.

Mr. Nicholas Budgen (Wolverhampton, South-West) rose--

Mr. Cook: I shall finish my point, and then give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Thirdly, we shall certainly consider the Government's paper on parliamentary questions on arms exports.

Mr. Budgen rose--

Mr. Cook: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment--he should relax; his time will come.

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I have in front of me the paper that has been deposited in the Library, and I shall share its conclusion with hon. Members:

"This note summarises the position in relation to the release of information on defence related exports and has been prepared in order to assist further discussion on this subject."

Not a single proposal is contained in the document.We shall enter into the spirit of these discussions as fully as possible, but these discussions would have been assisted further if the paper had contained a single idea.

Mr. Budgen: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be extremely difficult to lay down any rules for ministerial accountability, because, essentially, it is a question for the House, and a question as to how much the House wants information? For instance, as far as negotiations with the IRA were concerned before the ceasefire, the House came to a misunderstanding as to the state of discussions between the Government and the IRA. However, when my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland came to this House, it was pleased to accept a slightly changed expression of those relationships. Is that not an example of how the House decides what information it wants?

Mr. Cook: At a later stage in my speech, I shall return to the question whether it is justifiable at any stage not to share information with the House. I cannot accept for one moment the hon. Gentleman's claim that it is impossible to make any rules about ministerial accountability. Indeed, the Government keep issuing rules about ministerial accountability. In relation to those rules, Sir Richard Scott states in chapter 8 of section K:

"Paragraph 27 of Questions of Procedure for Ministers identifies as one of the facets of Ministerial accountability to Parliament'the duty to give Parliament, including its Select Committees, and the public as full information as possible about the policies, decisions and actions of the Government, and not to deceive or mislead Parliament and the public'."

Then Sir Richard Scott--whom the Government appointed to judge on this point; he was their choice--said:

"In the course of the Inquiry example after example has come to light of an apparent failure of Ministers to discharge that obligation."

The right hon. Gentleman' commitment to openness was a lot less convincing when he ruled out a freedom of information Act. Secrecy made this scandal possible. The five volumes of the Scott report provide the firmest foundation yet of a case for a freedom of information Act. There were never better witnesses for a freedom of information Act than the long parade of officials and Ministers who queued up to explain to Sir Richard Scott that the public interest was best served by not letting the public know what they were deciding.

Mr. David Mellor (Putney): Does the hon. Gentleman accept that those who seek to hold Members of the Government accountable must expect to be held accountable themselves? The hon. Gentleman said:

"First, they armed Saddam; secondly, when he used those arms against a British ally, they covered up the fact that they had provided the arms; and thirdly, as the cover-up unravelled, rather than own up, they were willing to see three executives of Matrix Churchill go to prison."--[Official Report, 23 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 638.]

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Is the hon. Gentleman aware that not a word of that is true, and will he now withdraw it?

Mr. Cook: No. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is wrong on every single count, and I shall demonstrate that all those charges were justified.

The right hon. and learned Member for Putney(Mr. Mellor) has echoed the allegation made by the President of the Board of Trade. What made the latter's speech so remarkable was the absence of any acceptance by any Minister of any responsibility for the errors set out in the report.

Confronted with those errors and five volumes of supporting evidence, the President of the Board of Trade and the right hon. and learned Member for Putney have produced the novel constitutional principle that it is the Opposition's duty to accept responsibility and resign. Every time they produce it, a wave of hilarity crosses the nation and drowns them.

Hon. Members: Answer the question.

Mr. Mellor rose--

Mr. Cook: I will answer the question.

The Government are fond of lecturing the rest of the nation on its need to accept responsibility. Parents are held responsible for actions; teachers are held responsible for the performance of their pupils; local councillors are held legally and financially responsible; yet, when it comes to themselves, suddenly, not a single Minister can be found to accept responsibility for what went wrong.

Sir Peter Hordern (Horsham) rose--

Mr. Mellor rose--

Mr. Cook: I will not give way. I shall answer the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and he will not like the answer.

In the past week, several right hon. and hon. Gentleman, of whom he is only the latest, have expressed their version of Labour's charges against the Government. I have no doubt that they are trying to be helpful, and I am grateful for their assistance, but I hope that they will forgive me if I rely on the charges that the Opposition actually made. [Interruption.] Yes, they were all set out in the debate. They were in the motion that I moved three years ago, on the last occasion that the House debated the issue. There were four charges, not three. I shall deal with each of those four charges, and demonstrate howSir Richard Scott's report convicts the Government on every one.

The first charge in the motion was that the Government had acted

"in clear breach of the Howe Guidelines of 1985".--[Official Report, 23 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 631.]

Sir Richard returns a verdict of guilty. You can tell, Madam Speaker, the importance that he attaches to the conclusion, because, like all his key findings, it is expressed as a double negative:

"It is clear that policy and defence sales to Iraq did not remain unchanged."

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Indeed, Sir Richard reserves the most scathing passages in his report for those witnesses who tried to argue that the guidelines had not changed. The Chief Secretary submitted that the guidelines were not changed, but were only interpreted more flexibly. Sir Richard dismisses his view as one that

"does not seem to me to correspond with reality".

For good measure, Sir Richard quotes a minute that says:

"Mr. Waldegrave is content for us to implement a more liberal policy on defence sales".

That minute was from what was then the private office of the Chief Secretary. It was signed by his private secretary. Sir Richard observed:

"Mr. Waldegrave did not find the expression jarring at the time. He did not do so for the reason that the words, 'a more liberal policy', describe in ordinary and simple language the reality of what he and his colleagues were discussing."

When he made his statement to the House, I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether the Government accepted--

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