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Mr. Spellar: What a scandalous suggestion.
Mr. Howarth: Perhaps the men the Minister sees are afraid to tell him. If we cannot discuss these matters openly in the House, it is a great shame. It is one of the men's concerns, and it should be taken into account.
My final point is on the future of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, which is based in my constituency and which my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) mentioned. Indeed, many hon. Members have DERA facilities in their constituencies. It is clear from this debate that there is a serious problem of morale throughout DERA, and that it arises from the Government's failure to decide about DERA's future. The Government are reducing the money for DERA year by year--I understand that this year it will be reduced by a further £56 million.
DERA feels that, if it is to keep ahead of the game, it must have the resources to enable it to invest in the future. If that money does not come from the Government, it must come from elsewhere, particularly industry. That presents DERA with a quandary. DERA at Farnborough has a relationship with the United States Government which it would not have if the United States Government felt that information would seep across to France and other parts of the continent.
Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North):
I welcome the report. It is appropriate that we should have a strategic reappraisal based on foreign policy objectives in the light of the ending of the cold war. By contrast with the shadow Secretary of State's churlish remarks yesterday, I think that it is significant that intelligent, independent and well-informed people have welcomed the review. I refer to defence correspondents, academics and most of the military establishment.
I want to concentrate on one specific aspect of the report. A chapter is devoted to it, but, as the hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) said yesterday, it was decided that the matter should not be subjected to as rigorous a scrutiny as others. I am talking about the subject of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. Obviously, the subject cannot be looked at in isolation but must be seen in a broad context, including foreign and defence policy and the Government's manifesto objectives.
Nuclear weapons in Britain are regarded as being for deterrent purposes. Because of our agreements under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, that specifically means the deterrence of nuclear threats. I wish to discuss some of the possible nuclear threats that this country could face. They probably fall into four broad categories: first, global or large-scale nuclear war; secondly, a direct attack on us by another country; thirdly, nuclear terrorism; and, fourthly, our suffering from fallout from a nuclear conflict in which we were not directly involved. I shall discuss each of those threats in terms of the level of risk, the relevance of a deterrent and how we might reduce the risk. I shall take them in reverse order, recognising in all humility that many wars have been unpredicted and unpredictable.
First, let us look at the possibility of our being a third-party sufferer from a nuclear conflict in which we were not involved. Obviously, that risk becomes much greater if nuclear proliferation continues. We must seek to reduce that risk. It is particularly important to reduce the proliferation of fissile materials and of delivery systems. That may become increasingly difficult if the line between civil and military uses becomes blurred with, for example, the spreading of the civil nuclear industry and satellite rocket technology.
The sort of threat that we could face ranges from radiation and fallout to severe, large-scale climate change. Clearly, a nuclear deterrent can provide no protection from such a threat. Our best protection must be to seek to halt proliferation and, as a nuclear power, to play our part in that by participating seriously in multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations.
On the threat of nuclear terrorism, I remember more than a decade ago, during a general election, seeing Margaret Thatcher interviewed by Robin Day. She said that even if every other country gave up nuclear weapons, we would need to keep them in case a terrorist organisation got hold of them. We could then use our nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Her argument made no
sense to me at the time, and it has made no sense to me since. The whole nature of terrorist organisations is that they do not have a sufficiently defined geographical location to enable us to use a nuclear deterrent to threaten some form of retaliation. The only way to reduce the terrible threat of nuclear terrorism is to try to control both the spread of fissile materials and delivery systems.
The third threat I mentioned was the threat of a direct national attack. That threat has changed massively in the past 50 years. With the growth of the European Union, it is inconceivable that we could be involved in direct conflict with any of our immediate European neighbours. Given our withdrawal from empire, the danger of direct conflict between Britain and other countries not involving our allies has been reduced.
It may be thought that the most likely reason for a country to attack us would be our perceived closeness to the United States--as a surrogate way of attacking that country. I suspect that the greatest deterrent to a country seeking to do that would be our membership of NATO and the likelihood that the United States would become involved either with its conventional or with its nuclear forces. However, this is the circumstance in which a nuclear deterrent could be relevant.
It would be difficult to sustain the view that our present levels or the proposed reduced levels provide a minimum credible deterrent relative to the likely strengths of most of the countries we are talking about, or to the possible level of damage that could be caused. Our best chances of reducing that threat must be to stop proliferation, and to ensure that a multilateral nuclear disarmament process takes place.
The final threat to which I referred was the possibility of global nuclear war. I am sure that we would all agree that that threat has greatly reduced since the ending of the cold war and the halting of the nuclear arms race, which was largely as a result of the initiatives of Mikhail Gorbachev--[Interruption.]--as was recognised by the award to him of the Nobel peace prize and by intelligent members of the Conservative party. Unfortunately, that process seems to have lost impetus since Mr. Gorbachev fell from power. We cannot afford to be complacent.
If there were to be another arms race, the threat of global war could increase. Whether British nuclear weapons would significantly add to the deterrence against that threat is questionable. What is certain is that if the time comes when we get back into an arms race between super-powers or between groups of countries, the prospects for the survival of human civilisation could be gravely endangered. As we approach the new millennium, I contend that the greatest threat to the survival of our species for another full millennium is the use of weapons of mass destruction. For that very reason, our supreme moral imperative must be to try to reduce that threat.
The Prime Minister has recently spoken about a third way to solve problems. I suggest that there is a third way to deal with this particular problem, apart from the sterile talk about unilateralism and multilateralism. It is not a new third way: it was propounded by Mr. Gorbachev five years ago. We could take unilateral initiatives to achieve multilateral disarmament. This report provides a basis for doing that.
I am running out of time, so I shall not quote again the statement of the Secretary General of the United Nations that the Secretary of State quoted when he introduced the
debate. The Secretary General thought that the cuts in nuclear weapons that we were making contributed significantly to the fulfilment of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. We should take that path, and through a new initiative we should try to involve the smaller countries--India, Pakistan, Israel and others--and the larger countries, although that may be difficult given the present reactionary nature of Congress and the Duma. I am optimistic, because just last week the Russian Deputy Prime Minister said that he believed that, to solve its economic problems, Russia would have to endorse START 2 and START 3. As he is part of the communist group that has blocked such a move, his remarks are hopeful.
Mr. Martin Bell (Tatton):
I shall be extremely brief. I have made it my business to stay close to the military, especially the other ranks from which I came a long time ago. I have seen our armed services, especially the British Army, in action these past years in some dangerous places--war zones and elsewhere. I know that they are second to none, just as I am second to none in my admiration for them. I know the risks and the realities, and I know the insecurity that they have felt through successive defence reviews. I very much hope that we can resolve that this will be the last defence review in this Parliament and the next, because our serving men and women are due a period of stability in which to practise their dangerous craft.
This review is wide ranging and well thought out, and I welcome it. A few matters trouble me. I am troubled by the extent of the cuts in the Territorial Army. I am troubled by the effect on certain regions, including the north-west. I am troubled by the numbers. We were given a figure of 40,000, but that includes the 3,500 members of the Officers Training Corps, who are not deployable abroad.
Something else troubles me, too. Over 18 months, the finest minds in the Ministry of Defence--both civilian and military--have been concentrating on this review. I am beginning to think that something may have been slightly disregarded that is more important than any procurement programme, weapons system or order of battle, and that is the duty of care.
Where is the duty of care if the Association of RAF Wives, which helps to bind the RAF together, is wrapped up? Where is the duty of care in the high profile court martial cases, in which officers are held to a moral code that is more appropriate to the priesthood than to an officer corps? Where is the duty of care if a brave soldier
commanding an Army Air Corps unit returns to an airfield in this country and is arrested by the RAF police in the most humiliating circumstances? Above all, where is the duty of care in a case now before the Ministry of Defence police--the Minister will know about it--in which a brave major in the Parachute regiment was arrested by that police service more than a year ago but has not been charged, while his career lies in ruins?
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