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8.47 pm
Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk): One reason why I am speaking in the debate is that Mr. Peter Allen, one of the defendants in the Matrix Churchill,was a constituent of mine. He used to work for the firm Cooper Roller Bearings in my constituency.
Two speeches made by Opposition Members in the debate made sense. The hon. Members for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Cunningham) and for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis) spoke at some length about jobs in their constituencies and the role that Customs and Excise obviously played in the destruction of jobs and an excellent company. My former constituent was a victim of all that.
Apart from those two speeches, the attitude of Labour Members has been hysterical. It was summed up by the number of interventions during the speech of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade and the number of totally bogus points of order. That is as sure a sign as anything that they are losing the argument and are worried because the debate is going against them.
The Labour party wanted the Scott report to be devastating and find that at least two Ministers had acted improperly and with impropriety. The report did not find
that. For the past 10 days, Labour Members have been trying to convince themselves that it did find that.We have had nothing more than hysterical interventions.The one that summed them all up was that of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who has made two or three bogus points of order.
Mr. Sheerman:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bellingham:
I shall not give way at the moment.
One of the key aspects of the debate has been the sale of arms.
Mr. Sheerman:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman's previous point of order was out of order.
Mr. Bellingham:
The Opposition were shattered because the report did not contain what they wanted.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot stand up at will and choose what he wants to say. If he wants to apologise to the House, he can do so after the debate.
Mr. Bellingham:
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) summed up extremely well the perspective in which we must place the matter. He said that, throughout the period, countries such as France were exporting Mirage jet fighters and exocets. He also mentioned that a number of other countries were exporting lethal weapons. We could add to his list the fact that the Germans exported a variety of chemicals that were subsequently used in the chemical warfare programme.
Miss Emma Nicholson:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bellingham:
No, I shall not give way as I have only 10 minutes in which to make my speech.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater said that, when he went to look at the captured weapons, the only British item that he could find was a Land Rover. We can categorically say that not a single British-made Iraqi weapon was used to injure or kill a NATO service man. As my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade made clear, that contrasts with the Falklands war.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) asked a question about defence exports. In 1974, the total number of defence exports was £179 million; in 1979, the figure had gone up to £400 million. Many of those exports went to Argentina. As my right hon. Friend said,we are talking about type 42 destroyers, blowpipe missiles and Canberra aircraft--an array of front-line weaponry. Anyone who has been to the Falklands will probably have seen the grave of the first British service man to be killed in that conflict, Flight Lieutenant Nick Taylor, whose Harrier was shot down by a blowpipe missile.
Opposition Members have given a great display of sanctimonious humbug over arms exports. It seems that they have now become little Englanders--they have gone from one extreme to the other. They now say that they do not want defence exports; they are now prepared to put at risk 400,000 jobs and procurement programmes for our armed forces. That point was well made this afternoon by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, who made a very good speech.
When we consider that period of arms exports we see that the Government can hold their head up high.I strongly believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave) can also hold his head high. I have read through the report--it is not a question of trying to select one or two quotations that may benefit our cause or the Opposition's cause. If Sir Richard Scott had found that my right hon. Friend had acted improperly or had deliberately misled Parliament, he would have said so, but he did not. That is why my right hon. Friend should not resign and I am pleased that he has not done so. I hope that he will remain in his job for a long time.
My former constituent, Mr. Peter Allen, was not involved in working for the security services, but the other two defendants were. I have read carefully the part of the report that deals with the Secret Intelligence Service, and I was interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) said. He made it clear that the security services did not stick up for the two defendants.
The press release issued by the Customs and Excise the other day is revealing. It states:
Paul Henderson's--
I find it extraordinary--as did my hon. Friend--that the SIS did not make information available to the Customs and Excise about his involvement in the security services. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay made clear, Paul Henderson risked his life on many occasions--he went to Iraq, served his country and ran the risk that he would be arrested. He would have been given no mercy. It is extraordinary that the information was not disseminated in a better way.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay will vote with the Government this evening. On the basis of what my hon. Friend has said, I believe that the Attorney-General should not resign. If we consider the detail in the report, we see that, although the firstthe Attorney-General's office heard about the involvement of the security services was in July 1991,it is clear that the Attorney-General himself was not informed. I believe that, by calling the meeting in September 1992--when he asked the prosecuting counsel and the head of Customs and Excise to talk to him about the case--he wanted to establish whether there were grounds for the prosecution not to go ahead. If he had been in a different position in relation to Customs and Excise--as he is to the Serious Fraud Office and the Crown Prosecution Service--it would have been different. But he was not in overarching control of that prosecution, and he could not have issued a nolle prosequi
except in extreme circumstances--whereby prosecuting counsel had recommended that action to him. That is why there must be a change in the rules over Customs and Excise prosecutions--they should be put on the same footing as those of the CPS and the SFO. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will address that issue carefully.
I have studied the report carefully and I feel strongly that a speech by one of my hon. Friends sums it up best. My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay has a far greater grasp of the subject than me. He has considered the matter carefully and, on the basis of what he says, I believe that, if Sir Richard Scott had found that the Attorney-General had acted improperly or unwisely, he would have said so and made that crystal clear. But he erred on the side of extreme caution. He did not want to interfere in what he knew to be an independent prosecuting body, Customs and Excise, and he did not have the right information before him, which was the fault of the SIS and, to some extent, Customs and Excise, which by then had much more information. The idea that the Attorney-General should stand down is ridiculous.
Mr. Allan Rogers (Rhondda):
It has been a long time since the events that we are debating took place.As various Conservative Members have said, we should recall the background against which the events took place.
From 1987 until 1992, I was the Opposition spokesman on defence responsible for defence procurement and I had an opportunity to follow this matter quite closely.It should be remembered that at that time the Prime Minister was exhorting everyone to bat for Britain. As a result of her exhortations, we had deals such as Malaysia and Pergau and the involvement of overseas aid to obtain contracts, which has been strongly denied by the Government time and time again; the export of arms to Saudi Arabia, the Al Yamamah deal; and the export of arms to Jordan, which was reneged on--the bill was picked up by the British taxpayer as a result of the funding and support from the Export Credits Guarantee Department. In other words, the Prime Minister turned arms exporting into a virtue. Quite naturally, Government Members were flexible with the regulations, which is perhaps the key to the discussions that have gone on today.
I disagree with the hon. Member for Torbay(Mr. Allason) and with other hon. Members who have said that the Ministers, by withholding public interest immunity certificates, put two innocent men in jeopardy--that they may have had to go to gaol. Quite frankly, in my book, they were guilty: they were senior officers of a company that had been breaking the regulations that were laid down by the Government and they had been conspiring with Ministers to export arms to Iraq. It is beyond me how anyone can claim that they were innocent men who were likely to go to gaol.
Like many other hon. Members, I was disappointed with the Scott report. The report is not clear--which is why there have been so many interpretations of it. However, some fairly basic questions must be asked. The man who, in an odd way, is the most honest in all this has clearly laid out his stall. He was the Minister of State in the Department of Trade and Industry; he then went to the Department of Defence as the Minister of State in charge of defence procurement; and he has been alluded to in other parts of this debate--the right hon. Alan Clark. He pursued with great rigour his Prime Minister's line of batting for Britain.
When the right hon. Member for Hove (Sir T. Sainsbury)was moved from defence procurement to the Department of Trade and Industry and made a statement, I was outside in the Members' Lobby talking to John Sergeant from the BBC. Mr. Clark crossed the Members' Lobby and I asked, "Why aren't you in there making that statement?"He said--I will paraphrase it slightly and leave out his fruity language--"I don't care if those wogs want to kill themselves, as long as I can promote British jobs." That was an honest answer. I asked him, "Why don't you go into the Chamber and say that?" He said, "Because they won't bloody let me." That was the attitude of a Minister of the Crown. We ought to judge the present Chief Secretary and the Attorney-General against that background, because the Government were completely dedicated to developing the arms trade and raising it to the level of a virtue.
A number of simple questions must be asked.Were arms exported against or contravening the guidelines that were laid down? It does not matter whether they were amended or flexible. Did Ministers know that these arms were being exported contrary to the guidelines? Did Ministers deliberately mislead Parliament? The Government are guilty on all these charges. Regardless of how people try to defend them from certain sections of the Scott report, there is absolutely no doubt about it. Government Members are not condemned by the Scott report--although tonight the issue under discussion is the Scott report--they are condemned out of their own mouths: by the answers that they have given to parliamentary questions and by statements that they made at the time.
No one now can deny that arms were exported.The President of the Board of Trade said earlier that we did not export tanks and aeroplanes; as someone said, that is a silly argument. The ex-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), who is Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, said that all he saw was a Land Rover lined up. That did not mean anything except perhaps that the rest of the Land Rovers could go a hell of a lot faster than the Russian tanks when they were fleeing the battlefield. Undoubtedly, battlefield weapons were exported. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) summarised the equipment involved.
We did supply lethal weapons; Scott illustrates that. Although it may appear a small item, it is crucial, and shows that the Government were condemned at that time--not by Scott. All Scott does is to illustrate the condemnation and the action that the Governments took.
On pages 853 and 854, the Scott report states that MI6 had reported in 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987 that Egypt was diverting ammunition to Iraq. On page 858, there is evidence that a company called Allivane had supplied
Egypt with more than 1 million large-calibre artillery ammunition fuses. Why were those going to Egypt--to attack Israel, Jordan or Saddam or to build a pyramid? Of course not. Everyone knew that they were being passed to Iraq.
We go to page 873 of Scott to discover where the problem occurred. Lieutenant-Colonel Glazebrook, the MOD official responsible for vetting lethal weapon export licences, confessed to the Scott inquiry that he had seen
"In particular he gave no hint that these contracts concerned the supply of Matrix Churchill to Iraq of equipment specifically for military production. Against this background, Customs obtained an explicit view from the SIS that his involvement with them"--
"was not a reason for not prosecuting him."
"only 7 of the 26 applications"
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