| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.23 pm
Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield): I opposed the establishment of the Scott report because I thought it was totally wrong that political matters should be handed to a judge who knew nothing about administration. That had the effect of depriving the House of Commons of its proper function, which is to hold Ministers to account.
Having had some experience of ministerial office, I am also of the view that on matters of arms sales all Ministers know what is happening all the time because they are fully briefed. Whatever Lord Justice Scott might or might not have said, I do not believe for a moment that Ministers were in any doubt as to what they were doing by keeping the House in the dark. I cannot interpret the Attorney-General's motive in seeking public immunity certificates except that it must have been done with a view to putting to the judge the case for suppressing relevant documents.
I want to turn my mind to something else that has hardly been touched on. What would we have achieved if two Ministers resigned? I think that they both should resign, and I think that public opinion is now totally persuaded of the case against them recapitulated so devastatingly by my hon. Friend the Member for
Livingston (Mr. Cook). We should now, however,ask ourselves where those resignations lead us. Whether we call them arms for Iraq or non-lethal equipment, the fact is that the British Government authorised the supply of equipment for Iraq that was designed, ordered and purchased to strengthen Iraq's military machine.
It has been suggested that in a high-tech war the only lethal weapon is a gun that fires a bullet, but everyone knows that is not so. Just look at the list that evenThe Daily Telegraph extracted from the report. The equipment sold included high-tech communications equipment; aircraft engines; flight simulators; armoured vehicles; tank helmets; artillery parts; mortar-locating radar; battlefield surveillance; night vision goggles and laser rangers. Was that not equipment to strengthen Saddam Hussein? What a pretence to argue about non-lethal weapons. Two hundred and seventy export licences were granted, worth £400 million, and the idea of whether the equipment was lethal or not is absolutely irrelevant to the question that the House is considering.
I am sorry that another matter has not been discussed so far in the debate. What else have the Government done to Iraq? What happened throws a completely new light on the Gulf war. During the debate on the Gulf war, in which I participated, having asked for the House to be recalled, I warned that there would be hundreds of thousands of casualties. There were between 200,000 and 250,000 Iraqi casualties in that war caused by the high-tech weapons used by the allies against Iraq. Since then, we have seen the impact of sanctions on Iraq. I cite United Nations figures, which are more important than the future of two Ministers, because I think they will all be out of office soon.
According to the figures published by the UN mission to Iraq, more than 4 million people, a fifth of Iraq's population, are at severe nutritional risk; 2.4 million children under five, some 600,000 women or nursing mothers, and destitute women, as well as hundreds of thousands of elderly, are at risk. The incidence of malnourishment and stunted growth within newborn children has risen by 23 per cent. and 70 per cent. of pregnant women in Iraq suffer from anaemia. The following figures sum it all up: there were 110,000 aerial sorties which dropped 850,000 tonnes of explosives--the equivalent of seven and a half Hiroshimas--on Iraq, and more than half a million Iraqi children have died because of sanctions.
Not only did the Government agree to the sale of equipment to one of the most ruthless dictators in the world, but then, by going along with the sanctions, they have imposed something that I believe makes them almost an accessory to genocide in Iraq. That goes far beyond the future of two Ministers.
I do not want to detain the House, but we should look at another aspect of the matter--the arms trade. If we do not discuss the international arms trade, we will be betraying many people outside the House who are concerned about it. I have looked up the figures, which reveal that, in 1994, $22 billion-worth of arms were sold in the world. The developing world bought $12.5 billion-worth. Britain is the fourth largest supplier of arms--$6 billion-worth--and we subsidise them to the extent of£1 billion a year, which is £12,500 for everyone working in the arms industry.
If we consider the recipients of those arms, we see that, between 1990 and 1994, Saudi Arabia bought £9 billion-worth of weapons. What is the record of human rights in Saudi Arabia? Turkey, with a hideous record of repression against the Kurds, bought £7.8 billion-worth. Iran bought £3.2 billion-worth and Indonesia, where 200,000 people in East Timor have been killed, bought £2.3 billion-worth. We are now selling Hawk aircraft to Indonesia, with the East Timor question still before us.
It is not surprising that the Bishop of Coventry with two other bishops wrote to The Times the other day to point out that 4 million civilians have been killed in conflicts in the past four years, and the world's arms manufacturers very often supply arms to both sides of a conflict. On a religious programme yesterday, it was pointed out that 85 per cent. of all the weapons sold in the world are sold by the five permanent members of the Security Council. I recall, as a young man coming back from the war, reading the first words of the charter of the United Nations:
Eighty-five per cent. of weapons are sold by Security Council members that are supposed to be part of the United Nations to preserve peace.
When these weapons are used, Governments demand a ceasefire. During the ceasefire, the arms manufacturers pour in to find out which weapons worked best so that they can sell more of them. That happened in the Falklands war. As soon as that war was over, the Exocet missile became the most popular missile in the world because it sank HMS Sheffield. The utter hypocrisy of Governments who supply weapons in that way is what is at stake, not just the careers of the Ministers.
I recognise--the point has been made, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) may speak shortly--that all Governments have supplied weapons. During the cold war, those weapons were supplied allegedly to protect us from communism. Now, as in the multiplicity of conflicts that have occurred, the weapons are fuelling world conflicts that are now motivated by nationalism, religious fervour and other factors. There is a terrible danger that those arms supplies will precipitate even more such conflicts.
I believe that those engaged in the arms trade are accessories to genocide. I do not acquit anyone who has been responsible for that. I believe that Parliament has a duty to control the sale of arms. There is nothing more important than that there should be proper supervision by Parliament of what weapons are sold and to whom.
Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater):
It is interesting that I follow a member of a former Government who approved sales of lethal arms to Iran, but we refused to supply lethal arms. That Government also refused to publish guidelines on arms exports, but we supplied such guidelines.
My interest is most marked in the last comments by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), in which he totally undermined the position of the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) by criticising Scott for knowing nothing about politics and government. The hon. Member for Livingston leant heavily on the Scott report as part of his evidence.
My interest in these matters goes back to 1982 when I led a Department of the Environment mission to Baghdad, where I met Saddam Hussein. I saw then the efforts that were being made by all countries to export to Iraq. Many people have forgotten the background to some of these issues. At that time, the Department of Trade and Industry and other trade ministries had identified Iraq as a most interesting trade prospect. There were some question marks about the regime, but the debates and comments on the report have reeked of hindsight. I remember how many British companies were working on sensible, good projects in Baghdad, including attempts to improve the water supply, to tackle sewerage problems and to build decent housing to improve the condition of the people.At that time, there was a major campaign in Iraq to spend the funds from their oil reserves.
I later saw Saddam Hussein in a different light.I witnessed the super-gun affair and the web of deceit that was created, so I found the Scott report very interesting reading. I envied Sir Richard Scott because he was able to freeze the frame and examine every detail of the events of that time. The Government work in real time and have about 400 different problems to deal with at the same time. Before people lampoon hard-working officials and civil servants who gave evidence, they should remember how many other problems and challenges were on officials' plates. Officials were trying to cope with many problems and sometimes they could not give smart and accurate answers to every question. But I have no doubt--from my personal experience, which is all that I can put before the House--about the overwhelming sincerity and commitment of those officials who genuinely try to work as Parliament and the country would wish.
I accept that mistakes were made and I applaud my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade for recognising that. Those mistakes must be addressed, but I must tell the hon. Member for Livingston and his right hon. and hon. Friends that acting like a political lynch-mob does no service whatever to the serious issues that need to be addressed.
I will pass quickly over the issue of public interest immunity certificates--I have signed them in my time in the strong belief that the principles that the Attorney-General laid down were correct. If there are problems with that--and I know that the position has changed--I leave it to the judges, because the law is judge-made, to sort out the fairest basis for the future.I have no doubt that that needs tackling.
I believe that Customs and Excise got off lightly in some aspects of the report. Everybody knows that the Attorney-General was not directly responsible for the prosecutions of Customs and Excise, which has an independent power of prosecution. One does not have to look hard for part of the reasons for the problems that arose.
I turn now to the key issue that affects my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary. The argument hinges on how great was the flexibility and at which moment flexibility
became a change of policy. Of course, there had to be guidelines. One could not handle something as sensitive as defence sales to overseas countries under any other arrangement. There had to be flexibility of interpretation. Ministers could not, every time they exercised that flexibility, come to the House to explain the reason.
One criticism that I have of the Scott report in connection with not making public statements is thatSir Richard picked up too quickly the single point about public reaction feeding overseas to cause embarrassment. The real reason--which was rightly given by Sir Richard Luce in his evidence--and why we did not publish the guidelines for nearly a year after they were made, was concern about the reactions that they might cause and the effects on British interests in the Gulf region.
One has only to stop and think to realise that it would be a lunatic approach to come to the House every time that there was a different interpretation of the guidelines. Ministers would have had to come to the House after the problems with the hostages in Beirut, after the fatwa,the killing of the Kurds, and the execution of Mr. Bazoft, and after the sinking of shipping by the Iranians. It would be lunacy for Ministers to have to come to tell the House that aircraft tyres were off the list and radar equipment was on the list--or vice versa--for supply to one country or another.
I would have been one of the Ministers who would have had to approve a change of policy. It is true, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd)--a former Foreign Secretary--said, that the policy came forward for consideration in July 1990. At that time,we considered whether the policy should be changed.Of course, we sell lethal arms to other countries, but our policy was that we did not sell them to Iraq and Iran.We stuck to that policy and we had guidelines with flexibility to govern how non-lethal defence equipment should be handled.
I do not go as far as the right hon. Member for Chesterfield in his description of Sir Richard Scott's approach. He was rather tough on Sir Richard. I think that Sir Richard tried genuinely to understand the workings of government and of Parliament. Similarly, I do not agree that there was a change of policy. There was proper use of the guidelines. I believe that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary was right. I happen to know quite a bit about the circumstances and the policy to which we were adhering. It was only at a later stage that we considered changing that policy.
Did the policy work? I tell the House again that I saw captured equipment. I was driven up and down row upon row of captured equipment in Al Jubail, which is by the Kuwait border. All the equipment that we had captured from the Iraqis stretched for as far as the eye could see. If anyone is interested, he or she can obtain aerial photographs from the Ministry of Defence. It was only from the air that such a mass of equipment could be photographed.
Among the equipment, I found French Exocets. We all knew about the existence of French Mirage jets. I found a range of Chinese and Russian rocket launchers. There were ranges of artillery, tanks and armoured personnel carriers. There were many types of guns. Among it all I found one Land Rover with a Racal radio. That was the sum total of British equipment. If someone asked me whether the Government kept faith with their policy,I would answer yes. That cost us billions of pounds.
"We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to free humanity from the scourge of war which twice in our generation has brought untold suffering to the peoples of mankind".
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |