House of Commons Hansard Debates for 15 Oct 1996 (pt 22)

Mr. Soames: Not only is it true, I understand that it is compulsory in the Conservative party today.

Mr. Robathan: I thank my hon. Friend for that. Sadly, it did not work in the Army and nor does it work in the Conservative party, if reports are true. It certainly did not curb the excesses of the rude and licentious soldiery.

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During 15 years in the Army, I was exposed to CS gas at least a dozen times. It was part of training. I am now told that it is terribly dangerous--too dangerous to be sprayed in the face of criminals. It was not too dangerous to be used on soldiers in training. It was not pleasant, but I do not seem to have suffered any ill effects and my eyesight is still relatively good, as I can see all the Liberal Democrats sitting on the Benches opposite. [Hon. Members: "Where are they?"]

During my service, I was subjected to endless injections. Some of them were very painful, especially the gamma globulin injection for hepatitis, which was delivered to the bottom. On exercises abroad, colleagues of mine went down with malaria, leishmaniosis, leptospirosis and other unpleasant diseases. They were real, identified diseases. I fear that that is part of military service and travelling abroad. Those colleagues were extremely well treated and cared for and, when necessary, were given drugs to combat the diseases.

What is Gulf war syndrome? We need to know what it is and whether it really exists. There is a lingering suspicion in my mind that it is a litigious ploy by cynical lawyers in the United States, and some here, using the suffering of others as a means to their own reward.

I welcome the defence estimates, and I particularly welcome the research programme into Gulf health issues, but I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister and others will not be influenced by the high-profile and opportunistic campaign on Gulf war syndrome.

7.12 pm

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): Bromide or not, I believe that we are right in thinking that the wife of the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) is expecting a happy event in the next month or two. We therefore wish them well.

I should like to raise five issues succinctly. Thanks to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, I was able, with a delegation from this House, to visit Nepal in January. We went to see Gurkha training at Pokharra. I was able to raise the subject with Sir Charles Guthrie--as did my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell, North (Dr. Reid)--when we were invited by the Army board to its first meeting in Edinburgh, where it was most welcome.

I should like to ask the same question of the Minister as I asked of Sir Charles Guthrie: what do the Government see as the future of the Gurkhas? The official view in Nepal was that they valued the relationship greatly and wanted it to continue. Given the economic situation in Nepal, there are many reasons why it should be continued. What is the Government's policy?

I also have a sub-question in brackets. In his opening speech yesterday, the Secretary of State for Defence referred to Exercise Flying Fish. I do not say that I am necessarily unhappy about it, but what is the assessment of the effect that it will have on the Chinese? We are told that it is the biggest exercise to be held in Asia for a long time. What precisely is the purpose of it? Is it just all about the Gurkhas in Brunei and our relations with Singapore or Malaysia? How will it be interpreted in Peking? It could be an expensive and provocative exercise in terms of China.

My second question concerns the Ministry's policy on prisons and land. I think that my hon. Friends from Scotland know that all sorts of rumours are flying around

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that Ministry of Defence lands will be made available at relatively cheap prices to those who are to run prisons on a private basis. I refer particularly to the Kirknewton site. I do not know whether the rumours are true, but the question ought to be referred to, possibly by letter. There must be a clear policy on Ministry of Defence lands if they are to be sold off, particularly for private prisons--a concept which some of us find totally wrong.

My third question concerns the case that I raised with the Secretary of State during his opening speech. He gave a serious answer, promising to look into it. I refer to the case of Colin Wallace. The difficulty is that the great great grandfather--ministerially--of the Secretary of State is probably responsible. Present Ministers and civil servants have inherited a problem from long, long ago. But--this is a very big but, and a House of Commons point--how is it that, at this stage, information can come to light which persuades the Court of Appeal to give a judgment which, frankly, bears out what my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) and I were trying to tell the House in 1989 and on 12 February 1990, at column 114?

In an Adjournment debate on 27 June 1989, my hon. Friend and I were savagely rubbished by the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Mr. Patten). One does not object to being criticised in this House, but to be criticised so ferociously and in such a derogatory manner when it turns out that the Court of Appeal is upholding precisely what we were trying to say really is a bit rich. I have with me the wad of questions--heavens, there are more than 200 of them! If hon. Members, asking the right questions--spot-on questions--receive answers which turn out, in the view of the Court of Appeal, to be inadequate, how can we be persuaded that proper attention is given not to the odd buckshee question but to repeated, detailed questioning?

That brings me to my fourth issue, which concerns what happened in the Gulf war.

Mr. Soames: Will the hon. Gentleman forgive me if I see to it that he receives a reply on the matter of Colin Wallace from the Home Secretary? I am not able to deal with the issue. Also, may I reply to him on Kirknewton by letter, because I do not have the facts at my fingertips?

Mr. Dalyell: There ought to be a Government reply. I have never been difficult on the subject of which senior Minister replies. It is an area between the Northern Ireland Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. I would find it totally acceptable if the Home Secretary, as a senior Minister, responded. The matter has reached a stage at which the Government should give an undertaking that the Home Secretary, rather than a junior Minister, will consider it.

On the question of what happened in the Gulf war, I refer to a letter sent to a number of hon. Members on 4 October by the Minister for the Armed Forces, which stated:

"We have now established that certain OP pesticides (other than malathion) were also used in the Gulf: these were dimethyl phosphorthionate, diazinon and azamathiphos. We are conducting urgent investigations into the extent of use of such pesticides and I will write to you once we have a clearer picture on this."

I am loth to criticise what happened in the Gulf, because it may be that everything was done in a hurry. In addition, I do not doubt the good faith of Ministers--other

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than to ask, what on earth were their scientific advisers doing in relation to these questions? Almost anyone with a knowledge of chemistry knows that there should be a red alert as soon as these substances are involved, and people should have been saying, "Hey! What's this?"

I am not being wise after the event, but the chemicals involved ought to have sounded warning signals. Why, after all this time, did they not send such signals, in the light of the questioning on the matter? I return to a point that I made during the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell)--if there had been a hot situation in Iraq in August or September 1996, heaven help us. Are we sure that the same thing would not have happened? It is no good covering over the past, because we want to know what will happen in the future.

Paragraph 7 of the Minister's letter states:

"We are now urgently re-examining the records of those who have attended the medical assessment programme and have exhibited a specific range of symptoms to establish whether or not their health is likely to have been affected".

I think that that re-examination ought to have taken place many moons ago, but I accept that the Minister for the Armed Forces will report in good faith everything that he knows to the House.

I wish to refer to a minority view on what we ought to do about the situation in Iraq, but it would be inappropriate for me to argue the issue in detail as I have in Adjournment and other debates. I think that we ought to remove sanctions forthwith, and talk to them. However, it is legitimate to ask in this debate how long the Tornado patrols will continue. I fear that, sooner or later, there will be an attack from Iraq or--more likely--a malfunction. These things happen, as we know; something similar happened just off Blackpool during the Labour party conference. Heaven help us if there is a malfunction in the desert.

Defence Ministers ought to have listened to what Flight Lieutenant Nicol--a pilot who was shot down in the Gulf--said on Radio Leeds, during a programme on which I and the hon. Member for Pudsey (Sir G. Shaw) were invited. We hope that, if there was a malfunction, pilots would eject. If they eject, we hope that they land without losing their lives. They would then almost certainly be captured, and my fear is that they would be paraded with maximum television coverage, with CNN in attendance, through the streets of downtown Baghdad.

What do we do then? I hope that we will not automatically threaten the kind of missile attack that was talked about in August and September, because that raises all sorts of questions about our obligations to the UN. I register extreme unhappiness about any missile attack on Iraq--let alone those that are not agreed by members of the Security Council.