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8.5 pm
Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead): The comments by the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) about working with women automatically leading to sexual intercourse sounded to me like defence of the rapist, and were patently nonsense, as are all such reasons for discrimination.
I want to raise six matters. As I have only 10 minutes, I shall do so quickly. The first is about the United States nuclear programme and follows on from the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis) about the influence of our allies on the strategic defence review. I remember sitting on the Committee on the Arms Control and Disarmament (Privileges and Immunities) Bill in 1987 with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence when the subject of nuclear testing came up. He said in Committee that a comprehensive test ban treaty would be useful as it would form a barrier to further weapons development. Now that my right hon. Friend is in office, will he tell the House whether that remains true? There are disturbing reports from across the Atlantic of new nuclear weapons being developed. In the post-cold war period, that seems unnecessary.
My second point is about Trident. My opposition to its expense, uselessness in practical defence terms and immorality is well recorded. However, in 1995 a commitment was made that, on coming to power, a Labour Government would put no greater a number of warheads on Trident than there were on Polaris. I hope that an announcement that such a policy has been carried out will be made soon. If missiles can be ordered outside the strategic defence review, that commitment can be confirmed.
My third point relates to "suitcase" nuclear bombs. Reports coming out of Russia that suitcase-sized nuclear weapons have gone astray are alarming, even if the source of those allegations has limited credibility. If nuclear weapons are truly the weapons of last resort, as the leaders of the nuclear powers keep telling us, what is the use of such portable weapons? The fact that the weapons are so portable makes them harder to control and easier to steal.
The Americans deployed equivalent weapons inthe 1960s--their atomic demolition munitions--but subsequently withdrew them from service. I understand
that we have never had such weapons. Perhaps it is time to outlaw small nuclear weapons such as those. Britain will be in a good position to promote such a measure; it would remove a significant proliferation threat. The fear that portable nuclear weapons could be stolen and used for terrorist-style operations has been the source of film plots, such as in the film "The Peacemaker", which is showing in cinemas now.
My fourth point also relates to the Committee on which I served with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in 1987. I raised at that time, and have done so often since, the ratification of the 1977 additional protocols to the 1949 Geneva conventions. Those protocols apply the Geneva conventions to civil wars, and they should have applied to the war in Bosnia. I raise the matter in a defence debate as those are important documents on the laws of war and, as such, are in the defence sphere.
In recent years, I have been told repeatedly that we are on the verge of ratifying the protocols. Has anything changed with the new Government? The protocols were signed under a Labour Government, and it would be appropriate for them to be ratified under a Labour Government, but can we do that soon, please?
The fifth point relates to anti-personnel mines. This morning, I spoke at a United Kingdom defence forum meeting on land mines. I learned a lot about the difficulty of clearing mines from other speakers who had experience in the field. The moratorium announced shortly after the election has been widely welcomed. I welcome it, and I also welcome the new mines information and training centre at Minley in Surrey.
I am concerned, however, about the issue of use in "exceptional circumstances", which was suggested to the House by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State before the summer recess. That reservation should be removed once the international treaty on land mines is in force.
Things have moved on. More than 100 states have endorsed the treaty that has resulted from the final meeting in the Ottawa process held last month in Oslo. The treaty is due for signing in December. It will come into force six months after the 40th country ratifies it. That will probably take a couple of years to come about. The Ottawa treaty may not be perfect, but it is a substantial improvement on what was available in the past, and there seems no prospect of achieving anything better in the foreseeable future.
We should be an early ratifier of the treaty. The opt-out on use in exceptional circumstances could be withdrawn as soon as the Ottawa treaty is signed by us. That would send a powerful message around the world that the British Government are serious about the treaty. We have much credibility to rebuild on the international stage, after many years of Tory intransigence on the issue of land mines.
The sixth matter which I shall raise is that of the Fabian Society pamphlet published by Major Eric Joyce, "Arms and the man--Renewing the armed services". Major Joyce has done us and the Army a favour. I shall not refer to the disciplinary action against him, which I do not support, but some of the comments in the pamphlet should be put into the record. He states:
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East):
In the time available, I shall speak about Trident, propaganda and security. I realise that the Government Front-Bench team has no formal responsibility for the security services, but I hope to speak about them nevertheless, because they have implications for the defence of this country. I shall not expect particular answers on the questions that I raise.
In a previous existence, I worked professionally as a counter to the unilateralist propaganda of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the early 1980s, and as the person at Conservative research department who had to investigate the Labour party's position on unilateralism in the early 1990s. It therefore brought a smile to my face to listen to so many hon. Members on the Government Benches saying, "What, us? Unilateralists? Never. Never heard the idea." It seems as hard to find an ex-CND supporter on the Government Benches as it was to find a supporter of Adolf Hitler in Berlin in 1945 or of communist Soviet power in Moscow after 1991.
Some people, however, stick to their former opinions. The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) said that public opinion was in favour of getting rid of the bomb. That is news to many of us. Throughout the second cold war, when it was far more dangerous in nuclear confrontation terms, my colleagues and I commissioned opinion poll after opinion poll to ask whether people thought that Britain should continue to possess nuclear weapons, as long as other countries did so.
"The role played by social class in the way we in the Army recruit and organise ourselves, and the centrality of outmoded Victorian values to our institutional ethos, are now acting as powerful inhibitors in our efforts to deal effectively with our dire 'manning' crisis. We should now take direct action to consign our inefficient and unfair social divisions to history."
28 Oct 1997 : Column 782
Major Joyce goes on to describe "three Victorian-style 'castes'" in the Army, which he calls
"the Posh, an exclusively white, male, privately-educated elite which runs the institution and wholly dominates its culture. . . the Professionals, the middle-classes who provide the technical expertise and 'middle management'; and finally. . . the Plebeians, the working classes. . . the great 'use and discard' rank and file."
Major Joyce states:
"The simple fact is that few school-leavers today wish to join an institution steeped in snobbery and where a glass ceiling will be placed upon their career prospects on account of their social class."
Social class is not the only issue. He continues:
"On gender. . . we enforced unlawful employment policies. . . long after it became clear that they were wrong. On race, we continue to fail those from ethnic minorities in spite of regular and severe warnings from the Commission for Racial Equality; and on sexuality we continue to fight a damaging and pointless rearguard action against homosexuality based more upon the moral views of some senior officers than any meaningful rationale about the impact a change in policy may have upon operational effectiveness."
Those points need to be taken into account in the strategic defence review. They are about modernisation. That was one of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's central themes. We must bring modernisation to bear on those aspects in the strategic defence review.
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