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7.19 pm
Mr. Richard Needham (North Wiltshire): I am a non-executive director of the General Electric Company, and I was also the longest-serving Minister for Trade in this Administration.
The right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) knows that if her party were to come to power, it would be her responsibility and that of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell)--if they were so lucky to be appointed--to represent the interests of British industry and to fight for the orders for which British companies compete throughout the world. A large number of the Labour Members seated behind the right hon. Lady do not believe that this country's armaments industry should continue. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield(Mr. Benn) eloquently made that point. The hon. Members for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell) and for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd), who have written to me on numerous occasions, share the same view.
The more disclosure, transparency and discussion there is about the extremely difficult and complicated problems of exporting arms, the less likely it is that the order will be won. The more that British arms exports are undermined, the less this country is able to defend itself. It is impossible to conceive that the British armed services will ever require enough of everything to support an adequate UK defence industry. It will be the job of the right hon. Member for Derby, South and the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, if they have the opportunity, to ensure that this country's national interests are protected.
The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) can wander in and out of the Chamber and box and cox, while having no particular interest in or experience of this nation's defence, which is to the fore of the national policy that the right hon. Lady will have to determine.
If more transparency and openness is wanted, perhaps we should consider the words of Sir Richard Scott,who was careful to examine the options. He questioned whether it was right for foreign policy issues to be criteria in determining export licensing:
I imagine that that is the sort of transparency and openness that the House would seek. If such considerations are to be prescribed in legislation, what will happen if a company asks for an export licence to Taiwan? It would have to be granted. What would be the consequences for the UK if we were to be forced by law to grant export licences for defence materials for Taiwan? What effect would that have on China or Hong Kong? If one goes down that route, it is almost unthinkable that one would
not be confronted with the most appalling problems of national importance, which were never foreseen bySir Richard and could never have been.
Arguing the case for greater openness, Sir Richard, suggests the purposes against which export licences should be judged. They include, at K2.18(iv),
What would that mean? British Aerospace is currently negotiating a Hawk order for India. If the British Government decided to grant that export licence, they would immediately find themselves subject to a judicial review brought by Amnesty International because of the violation of human rights in Kashmir by the Indian Government. That would be a wonderful way to win orders from India. Nobody believes that arms exports could be ring fenced from other types of exports--whether they be of water, telecommunications or electricity generating equipment. If the UK is not prepared to help a country to defend itself, that country will not be interested in placing other types of orders.
The right hon. Member for Chesterfield mentioned Indonesia as an example of a country to which we should not sell arms. What is Labour's policy on selling arms to Indonesia? I was constantly asked that question as Minister for Trade. In May 1994, the hon. Member for Nottingham, East asked whether arms exports to Indonesia should not be stopped. I replied that I thought not. The hon. Member for Livingston said:
There is no evidence from the Ministry of Defence that any Hawks have been seen on bombing runs in East Timor in any year since 1984. Perhaps the hon. Member for Livingston should get his evidence from the Ministry of Defence, rather than from dubious television programmes. Anybody reading the hon. Gentleman's remarks would believe that Labour's policy is not to sell arms to Indonesia. Labour's policy was spelt out by the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) in theNew Statesman in November 1993:
Is that still Labour party policy? Will it be the policy of a Labour Government? If Labour's policy has changed, who changed it? Is that the policy of the hon. Member for Livingston, or should I be generous and say that the hon. Gentleman did not know that it was Labour's policy?The hon. Member for Livingston accused two of my right hon. Friends--two men whom I have known virtually all my life, and who have more integrity than almost any other hon. Members--yet the hon. Gentleman's own policy on Indonesia contradicts that of the hon. Member for South Shields. If that is the case now, what on earth will be the position if the hon. Gentleman and his friends ever get in government? We heard something about Argentina. What about Nigeria? I suspect that that issue would not have been open to close scrutiny in the past.
Mr. Andrew Faulds (Warley, East):
The dissertation of the right hon. Member for North Wiltshire(Mr. Needham) might be more relevant on another occasion, when the House is discussing business ethics. Tonight, we are debating the Scott report--the hon. Gentleman occasionally alluded to it.
Both law officers, the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, according to the definition in the "Oxford Companion to Law"--I always consult the best works of reference--are appointed from supporters of the party in power and are expected to defend the legality of the actions of Government Ministers. That definition could explain the extraordinary record of the present Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned--I have to use these phrases--Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell). Look at that record, which provides the most cogent argument for the depoliticising of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's job.
Look at the Attorney-General's handling of the Asil Nadir case and the Maxwell brothers saga. Then recall the right hon. and learned Gentleman's dismissal of a Serious Fraud Office forged letter as an April fool's joke--until another turned up. This is the right hon. and learned Gentleman who disregarded the insistence of the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) that the judge and the prosecuting counsel in the Matrix Churchill case should be informed of the right hon. Gentleman's reservations about signing public interest immunity certificates. Sir Richard Scott said of the Attorney- General--it is in the report:
He stressed that
That is not what happened. The Attorney-General was prepared to allow three innocent men, of whose activities the Government well knew, to go to prison to save the pelt of his Cabinet colleagues--[Hon. Members: "Rubbish."] That is the fact of the case, however much Conservative Members may disagree with it. They should read the report, because most of them have not.
Mr. David Shaw:
The hon. Gentleman is acting again.
Mr. Faulds:
I make better speeches than pretend parliamentarians with their dishonourable records.
He is an Attorney-General, incidentally, who has never questioned the fact that the Tory party is funded in large part by a crowd of crooks and fraudsters. Any denials? There seem to be none, despite my prompting.
Then there is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a man born to the purple who practises the arrogance of the true aristocrat. His very profile breathes disdain. The House should not misunderstand me: some of my best friends are aristocrats, and I have in my collection of English
pottery a bulbous Staffordshire creamware mug bearing the motto "Chewton and Hay Forever"--perhaps thehon. Gentleman remembers the phrase. It is in delicate pink lettering, surrounded by roseate wreaths--a lovely piece. The motto is the election memento of one of the right hon. Gentleman's parliamentary ancestors of about the year 1780--I stand open to correction on that.
Such fellows--the right hon. Gentleman and his ancestor--assume entry to Parliament to be their birthright. Such as they judge their privy decisions to be beyond question and, of course, above their responsibility to account to Parliament. The Chief Secretary was one of the gang of three--a bunch of somewhat undistinguished junior Ministers--who composed the changes in the guidelines that permitted an increase in the provision to Iraq of weapon-making equipment, and a shift against Iran. The right hon. Gentleman thought the rewording so inconsequential as not to merit mention to the House; and besides, the public might not like it.
So the right hon. Gentleman denied the implications in a couple of dozen letters to Members of Parliament. Had he had my fortunate experience of playing both Falstaff and Mark Anthony--both brilliantly--and had he remembered their dissertations on honour, he might have had more conception of what honour is.
It is stated in the Scott report that the Chief Secretary's responses were "sophistry". That of course is the gentlemanly way of denoting fibbing. Sir Richard also reported that Parliament was "deliberately" and "designedly" misled. If the Chief Secretary was not deliberately and designedly misleading both Sir Richard and the House of Commons, we can only conclude that he is a simpleton. This fellow of All Souls, this scholar of Eton must be a simpleton. He did not understand the implications of the words that he had written into the guidelines.
The Prime Minister has tried to control--it is only too obvious--the Scott report. Last year Sir Richard produced a provisional report so that those criticised could suggest corrections--in other words, could water down the more direct criticisms. Apparently--this is an astonishing fact--more public money has been spent on civil servants monitoring the passage of the report and managing the response to it than was spent on Sir Richard's tribunal costs.
The personae fingered in the report were allowed eight days of pre-publication examination; but Opposition leaders were granted two and a half hours under strict oversight. Back Benchers, the poor bloody infantry, were permitted 10 minutes to collect their lumpy packages,lug them into the Chamber and study them. What a generous gesture--10 minutes to study a 1,800 page document.
Sir Richard stated that the report should simply have been presented to Parliament and then made available to Government, Opposition, media and public, so that we could examine it properly. That is not asking too much.
There followed the original debate. The right hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Lang), who is unfortunately not here now, in a ludicrously aggressive presentation, managed to convince himself that it was all the Opposition's fault and that the Government
were blameless. His performance, perhaps after a little thought, this afternoon was somewhat more plodding and pedestrian.
"Is it acceptable, for example, for a licence to export goods to Country A to be refused for the reason that the export may be objectionable to . . . Country B?"
"the avoidance of assistance to human rights abuses in foreign countries".
"The Minister will appreciate the fact that this is a major humanitarian issue . . . He will be aware that Hawk aircraft have been observed on bombing runs in East Timor in most years since 1984. What assurances did he seek, before giving export licences . . . ?"--[Official Report, 11 May 1994; Vol. 243, c. 308.]
"As for British Aerospace's proposes sale of Hawk ground-attack . . . "trainers" . . . to Indonesia, where the military dictatorship is actively suppressing occupied East Timor, Clark is in favour. South-east Asia needs a stronger security system, he says, and Indonesia must be part of it. This is clearly not the happiest part of the job for Clark. 'I'd like a world where there is no war and no weapons,' he says."
"I do not accept that he was not at fault."
"the public interest dictates that the need for a fair trial outweighs the sensitivity of the documents".
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