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Mr. Bill Walker (North Tayside): Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House, on which weapons sales--and I mean weapons sales, including the destroyers sold by the former Labour Government--were debts not paid? Can the hon. Gentleman answer that? He should think very carefully before he does so.
Mr. Cook: As Ministers are for ever saying, not without notice. But one cannot find any example in the history of export credit guarantees of such a vast debt with one country. That debt was the direct result of ministerial decisions to increase export credit guarantees to Iraq, and to allocate one fifth of the total for defence sales.
The last of those decisions was in September 1988, when export credits to Iraq were increased by £340 million, despite mounting evidence that Iraq did not have the cash to service existing credits. Sir Richard notes:
The Chief Secretary in question is, of course, the current Prime Minister.
When Lord Howe gave evidence to the Scott inquiry, he explained that the decision to give no publicity to the change in guidelines was that the decision might appear cynical to the public. For once, I must defend Ministers. I would acquit them of the charge of cynicism. What I find striking about their attitude is its naivety and the innocence with which they believed that if they armed a brutal dictator, he would use his military capacity in manner consistent with HMG's foreign policy and would pay all invoices on time. Their policy was both a strategic blunder and commercial disaster. It is no wonder they wanted to keep it quiet.
Mr. Richard Needham (North Wiltshire):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Cook:
I shall return to the points raised by the right hon. Member for Hove (Sir T. Sainsbury), as I have another of his charges to answer. I am glad that I have his support.
I come to the third charge that we laid against Ministers three years ago--that
Sir Richard's conclusion is set out at the end of600 pages in which he examines the Government's conduct of arms exports to Iraq. The final sentence records:
In short, Parliament was misled, and was designedly misled.
Mr. Mellor:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover):
Is he still here?
Mr. Mellor:
I am still here, and I will be here for a long time yet.
The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) has invented the third point. He has dealt with the question--typical of him--that arms are to be equated with multi-use machine tools. The third charge that I quoted from the hon. Gentleman's speech on 23 November 1992 was:
That is an outrageous slur, and nothing in Scott gives the hon. Gentleman the right to maintain that accusation.He should withdraw it.
Mr. Cook:
I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not be stretched too far if I ask him to count up to four. I said that there were four charges in our motion, and I will come to that charge. The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not do our charge sheet sufficient justice when he left out this charge, so let us make sure that we get it on the record.
Sir Richard concluded that the failure to inform Parliament of the truth was deliberate, and was the inevitable result of the agreement among three junior
Ministers that no publicity would be given to the decision. Let us try them out again. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether the Government accept that conclusion?
Perhaps the Prime Minister would like to answer. Three years ago, the Prime Minister told the House:
The suggestion does have a firm basis, in the five volumes beside me. I agree with the Prime Minister that it was a serious charge. Will he now accept that, far from being scurrilous, it was entirely accurate? [Hon. Members: "Answer."] Suddenly, we have a row of limpets stuck to the Treasury Bench.
Where does that leave the Chief Secretary? In the six months after the guidelines were changed, the Chief Secretary signed not one or two, but 30, letters to Members of Parliament denying any change in the guidelines. The matter should concern not only Opposition Members, because 23 of those letters went to the Chief Secretary's colleagues on the Tory Benches--to each of them he refused to admit any change in the guidelines.
Sir Richard observed that the Chief Secretary
Of course the right hon. Gentleman was in a position to know at first hand--he was at the meetings at which the changes in the guidelines were changed.
Sir Richard's summing up is damning. He concluded:
The desk officer for Iraq who drafted those letters for the Chief Secretary knew that they were untrue, and he said so to the Scott inquiry. That desk officer resigned from the foreign service, rather than be obliged to continue drafting them. Tonight, the House must judge whether he is the only person who should resign over the misleading of Parliament.
I come to the last of the four charges in our motion of three years ago. We said that the Government were willing
Section G, in which Sir Richard considers the conduct of the Matrix Churchill case, is one of the longest in his report. Anyone who has read it in its entirety will know that it is not we who should apologise in the light ofSir Richard's conclusions.
He concluded that the Matrix Churchill case should never have been brought to court, and that the claims of public interest immunity that were made in the course of it ought to have had no place in a criminal trial.Sir Richard sums up that the Government's attitude
Not every means by which refusal was justified appears to have impressed Sir Richard. The claim by the then Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office,in his PII certificate that disclosure would cause "unquantifiable damage" to the public interest is dismissed by Sir Richard as "risible". Perhaps that is not surprising, as the Minister hardly helped himself at the inquiry by claiming that the word "unquantifiable" could have meant unquantifiably small, not necessarily unquantifiably large.
Mr. Donald Anderson:
Does my hon. Friend agree that not only could the Attorney-General have stopped the prosecution at any time in the light of his knowledge of all the facts, but that the Government were quite prepared effectively to leave the guilt or innocence of the three Matrix Churchill executives to the robustness or otherwise of the trial judge? It happened that Judge Smedley was a robust judge and stood for justice. Another judge might have been less strong.
Mr. Cook:
My hon. Friend draws attention to one of the Government's defences--that, in laying the public interest immunity certificates, they were only bringing the documents to the attention of the trial judge. However, there is the awkward matter of the second certificate, signed by the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. His first certificate contained a list of the documents covered by it. The second certificate, which was used at the trial, omitted that list. The minute to the Secretary of State that accompanied the doctored certificate stated that to retain the words
Having seen those documents, Sir Richard observed that it was "very obvious" that any defence counsel
"The Chief Secretary endorsed the proposed new offer".
"hon. Members were persistently misled by assurances that the Guidelines were being observed".
"Parliament and the public were designedly led to believe that a stricter policy . . . was being applied than was in fact the case."
"as the cover-up unravelled, rather than own up, they were willing to see the three executives of Matrix Churchill go to prison."--[Official Report, 23 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 638.]
"The suggestion that Ministers misled the House is a serious and scurrilous charge and has no basis whatsoever in fact."--[Official Report, 17 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 136.]
"knew, first hand, the facts that . . . rendered the 'no change in policy' statement untrue."
"Government statements . . . consistently failed . . . to comply with the . . . Questions of Procedure for Ministers and, more important, failed to discharge the obligations imposed by the constitutional principle of Ministerial accountability."
"to see citizens put on trial for exports at which Ministers had connived and to put their liberty at risk by attempting to prevent the disclosure of documents crucial to their defence".--[Official Report, 23 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 631.]
"to disclosure of documents to the defence was consistently grudging. The approach ought to have been to consider what documents the defence might reasonably need and then to consider whether there was any good reason why the defence should not have them. The actual approach . . . seems to have been to seek some means by which refusal to disclose could be justified."
26 Feb 1996 : Column 613
"might increase the risk that the judge will call for copies of the documents."
"would give his (or her) eye teeth for them."
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