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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. The right hon. Gentleman's time has expired.
6.42 pm
Mr. David Mellor (Putney): I am qualified to contribute to this debate because I was the Minister of State at the Foreign Office from June 1987 until July 1988. My immediate successor was my right hon. Friend who is now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave). I shall continue the process begun by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), and try to bring a wider context to bear on some of the things that have been looked at under a microscope in Lord Justice Scott's report. I refer to the pressures that were on Ministers at the time that these decisions--which have been minutely scrutinised by Scott--were taken.
I have no quarrel with Lord Justice Scott. I gave evidence before him, it was an amiable encounter, and I have no quarrel with anything that he attributes to me
during the course of his report; nor does he have any quarrel with me. I do not rise in this debate in the spirit of resentment or against anything that Lord Justice Scott has said about me. The guidelines were set out and publicly promulgated to this House; however, they could not guarantee what view should be taken about quite a number of categories of equipment--they were not self-defining.
The guidelines had four parts--first, that we should maintain our consistent refusal to supply any lethal equipment to either side. That was done, and there was no question of the Government supplying arms to Iraq. The most that it can be said was done was the supply,at certain points, of multi-purpose machine tools that had a variety of possible uses. Secondly, existing contracts and obligations should be honoured.
Thirdly--this clause always caused difficulties--we should not in future sanction new orders for any defence equipment which, in our view, would significantly enhance the capability of either side to prolong or exacerbate the conflict. Fourthly, all applications for export licences should be rigorously scrutinised. That was done. It is understandable, in that context, that there would have been discussions passing back and forth between various Departments to decide into what category certain applications fell.
In paragraphs D2.148 to D2.167, Lord Justice Scott deals with an argument about rubber boats which engaged the Department of Trade and Industry and the Foreign Office for many months. It was determined--this should be a reassurance to hon. Members about the care that was taken--that those rubber boats should not be exported to Iraq, not because they would significantly enhance Iraq's ability to continue the conflict or to enhance its capability to do so, but because it would appear to be a conspicuously unmutual act. That was the Foreign Office view, stated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Renton) and then by me, which won the day.
There was nothing discreditable in the Department of Trade and Industry pressing for that export. When the Labour Government were in office, exports to Iraq increased from £50 million to more than £400 million--and I make no criticism of them for that. If Iraq were a properly run country, it would be the second most potentially prosperous country in the middle east--possibly even more so than Saudi Arabia. Iraq is now in chaos because it has been badly run.
Departments were criticised if manufacturers went out of business or when unemployment increased--within the principles that were laid out in this House to advance British interests--and were put under pressure by manufacturers and by Members of this House in whose constituencies the manufacturers carried on their business. The testing of the evidence, which was the role of the Foreign Office in this matter, was carried on by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. It is sad and tragic that he should now be pilloried for this, and--as a result of outrageous and unsustainable claims by Labour Members--that he should stand in threat of having a forced resignation imposed upon him.
As my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for Defence made clear, the realities of the situation in which Ministers were working at that time were different
from what they are perceived to be now. We need to remember that what is now in the past was once in the future. Saddam Hussein--who was always a nasty piece of work: hence our requirement to put a strong arms embargo on him--had launched an opportunist attack on Iran, thinking that Iran was in such chaos that he would be able to obtain large quantities of territory. He found himself not merely unsuccessful, but on the defensive, running the risk of Iraq being overrun. Today people would say that that was a jolly good thing. However, it did not seem to be a jolly good thing at the time.
Ironically--the history of those days is filled with irony--the people whom Saddam Hussein subsequently invaded and threatened were the people who were saying to us, "You are our friends. Help us to prevent Iraq from establishing hegemony over the whole Gulf region".The Shah--whose reign we now look back on as some kind of golden age--laid claim to the island of Bahrain and to some of the islands that are now part of Abu Dhabi, all countries that we are under defence obligations to defend.
Let us consider the pressure. There was the prospect of an Iranian victory, the Iranians were mining Fujeira harbour, gunboats were being sent out into the Gulf to shoot up the sea lanes, innocent tankers were passing back and forth, mines were placed on the route to Kuwait, British naval vessels were protecting convoys going up, and British merchant seamen were going through the Gulf. The one great thing that can be said about our nation is that we do not get on the first plane out when there is trouble, as some other countries do.
Against that background, the remarkable thing is that we did not loosen the guidelines more than we did. The reason was the reason that the Government are being pilloried--the profound suspicion that Ministers had about Saddam Hussein's motives, long-term interests and concerns.
Miss Emma Nicholson (Torridge and West Devon):
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Mellor:
I would give way, but I have only a few minutes.
My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary was part of a continuum that maintained tight regulations, in a principled way, against a great deal of pressure. It is only when one looks through a microscope that it appears remotely as though the guidelines changed. They did not; the perceptions changed. The test was the ability of one of the combatants significantly to enhance its capability to maintain the fighting. After a ceasefire, that changes, because a war is not then going on.
The efforts of British diplomats in New York, under the guidance of Ministers, persuading the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to work together for the first time, led to resolution 595--the basis on which that terrible war, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives, was finally brought to an end. That is the background and the context.
I listened with interest to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd).I consider much of what he said in the context to be profoundly misconceived, but who can fail to warm to his eloquent statement about Parliament's right to know? What troubles me is that my hon. Friend should be lined
up with the opportunist attack that has been made by the Opposition, and that Opposition Members should nod sagely as those principles, sincerely held by my hon. Friend, rolled forth, when everything that they have done in the debate has been characterised by a lack of principle.
It would be naive to expect any precision from the deputy leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). Earlier this month, on 9 February 1996, he said:
He has never apologised for that disgraceful assertion.
The same is true of the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook). He made three charges in the House in November 1992. [Hon. Members: "Four."] No, it is three, and I have the quotation, and I have read it out for those who were bothered to listen. First, he said that the Government armed Saddam; the Government did not. Secondly, he said that those arms were used against Britain; no arms sold by the Government were used against British service men in Kuwait, but arms sold by a Labour Government were used against British service men in the Falkland islands. That is the difference.
The third and most monstrous accusation was:
That is a disgraceful thing. The whole of the Conservative party--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Time is up.
Mr. Giles Radice (North Durham):
I do not know whether the right hon. and learned Member for Putney(Mr. Mellor) noticed, but during his speech he admitted that the guidelines were loosened. That is an interesting omission. I am not sure that Ministers would thank himfor it.
I have read most of the Scott report, and the one thing that it does not do is give comfort to the Government.It is a devastating indictment of the Government, especially on the issues of ministerial responsibility, the misleading of the House of Commons and the incompetence of the Attorney-General.
Admittedly, the report's use of language is occasionally opaque, and Lord Justice Scott goes in for the double negative too much. The report is certainly too long, and it is wrong that there should not be an executive summary. That was, in a sense, a cop-out, and it allowed the Government to get away with a disgraceful response at the start.
No apologies were made when the Government came before us a week ago. There were no resignations. There was no sign that the Government considered that anything had been done wrong--that any mistakes had been made. They decided to bluff it out, and they did so.
The two-page summary produced by the Government for Members of Parliament, purporting to say what was in the Scott report, was a disgrace. It would have been bad enough for Conservative central office, but I am amazed that civil servants lent their name to it. There are at least four totally misleading statements in it, and it should not have been made available as a Government document.
The disturbing message of Scott is that Ministers and civil servants, while paying lip service to parliamentary accountability and openness, believe in keeping things secret. Whitehall is a world where phrases are used such as
which we have heard so much from so many Ministers; and sentences are used such as:
That was Lord Howe, incidentally, to the Scott inquiry. That type of statement appears to be commonplace.
It is not only Ministers, but civil servants.Mr. Gore-Booth and Sir Robin Butler said:
and Ian McDonald, from the Ministry of Defence, said:
Another civil servant said:
Sir Michael Quinlan said that the process of parliamentary answers was "analogous to a game".
Of course foreign policy, defence and especially security are difficult issues in a democracy, but, having listened to many of the Scott hearings and having read the Scott report, I gain the impression that the Government and civil servants believe that those matters are too serious to be considered by Members of Parliament,the House of Commons or the general public. They appear to assume that we in the House are not capable of weighing and balancing the different factors that go into the making of foreign policy and defence policy decisions.
Sir Richard Scott summed up the secretive Whitehall culture in the following terms:
That, basically, is the report's message.
It is abundantly clear from the report that Ministers consistently misled the House. They withheld information from Members of Parliament, from Select Committees and from the House of Commons regarding the sale of defence equipment to Iraq, in clear breach of conventions laid down for the House.
We do have a set of standards. There is "Questions of Procedure for Ministers", which the Prime Minister is to be congratulated on publishing, because we know what they are now. We have the Osmotherley rules for Select Committees. We have the new civil service code, which was drafted by the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee. Together, they are a mini-constitution, and they stipulate that Ministers have a clear duty to give accurate and truthful information to the House and its Select Committees.
If we do not give that information, we undermine the principle of ministerial responsibility, as Sir Richard Scott rightly says. The Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee defined that principle in our report; we said that ministerial responsibility had two vital elements. First, one must be clear
Secondly, we must have
We certainly did not get that from the Government, although we have got it from Scott. I believe that our formulation was a good one, and it was endorsed bySir Richard Scott.
"Next week, we shall have more evidence with the Scott report, showing how Ministers were prepared to send citizens to jail to cover their own backs."
"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.]
6.52 pm
"flexible interpretation of the guidelines",
"There is nothing necessarily open to criticism in an incompatibility between policy and presentation of policy."
"Half a picture can be accurate";
"Truth is a very difficult concept".
"It is damaging to the public interest to have any decision-making process exposed".
"We know what is good for you. You may not like it, and if you are made aware of it, you might protest, but we know what is best".
"about who can be held to account and held responsible when things go wrong".
26 Feb 1996 : Column 645
I am not sure that we have been able to do that; certainly the Government have not drawn any lessons from it.
"confidence that Parliament is able to gain the accurate information required to hold the Executive to account and to ascertain where responsibility lies".
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