House of Commons Hansard Debates for 22 Nov 1999 (pt 26)

8.13 pm

Mr. Martin Bell (Tatton): I shall be extremely brief.

I listened to the Queen's Speech with a certain amount of dismay, because some of it sounded to me like a party political broadcast. I felt that whoever had drafted it had not paid enough respect to the Queen's dignity, or to the Queen's English.

I want to concentrate on defence, and to endorse what was said by the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross). A prelude to this debate was a remarkable documentary drama shown on BBC television over the past two nights, called "Warriors". It demonstrated, most powerfully, the new dimension of soldiering--the situations in which our young men find themselves, the horrors that they witness, their courage and their dedication. I walk out of most movies about the wars in which I was involved, but this was exceptional. It was truthful--at least as truthful as any news reports of the time, including my own.

Having seen the real soldiers, I often ask myself, "Where do we find such people?", and beyond that, "How do we treat them?" Do we treat them well enough? Is the duty of care as it should be? My experience, especially in

22 Nov 1999 : Column 417

recent years, suggests that that is not the case, which is why I welcome the legislation concerning military discipline. It is about time that soldiers enjoyed the same human rights, within the military discipline, as civilians. It is about time we ended the situation in which soldiers, especially officers, tend to be arrested in the most high-profile and demeaning circumstances. They are court-martialled, and, following their acquittal, their careers lie in ruins.

I am glad that the Secretary of State for Defence is present, because I want to tell him that he has a problem with his police force. There are more than 30 police forces in the country, and the least accountable is that of the Ministry of Defence. It is not highly regarded by the armed forces, or by other police forces. Its procedures are unjust, and it is apparently unaccountable. I wish the Secretary of State's officials to look at the minutes of the meetings of the Ministry of Defence police board over the past two years, in order to establish which officers did not attend and which officers did not send deputies. I think that these are important matters. I have raised a specific case repeatedly in the House, and I shall raise it again.

Problems of discipline are especially acute at times of severe overstretch, and this is a time of severe overstretch. I suggest to the Secretary of State that a new measure, or index, of that overstretch might well be provided by statistics that he may not have, but should acquire. I refer to the divorce rate among service men and women, particularly soldiers. The right hon. Gentleman will find that the rate is going through the roof, especially in engineering and reconnaissance regiments and medical units, which have had to bear the greatest burden in peacekeeping and peace enforcement. That burden has been increased by the commitment in Kosovo.

A certain theory, or doctrine, seems to have been taking hold. It seems to be believed that there is such a thing as a cost-free military operation--that we can intervene and change circumstances on the ground with no casualties to ourselves. It is true that, between March and June, none of the air crews involved in that aerial bombardment suffered so much as a twisted ankle; but that was at a dreadful cost on the ground. We were bombing from so high up that it was sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a tank and a tractor, and, in some cases, the chosen targets were deliberately civilian. Examples were a television station, a car factory, and bridges. That is against the Geneva conventions.

I commend to the House a remarkable article by a remarkable man in today's Daily Telegraph. The man is Lord Deedes, a front-line journalist 25 years my senior. I was with him in Kosovo in September. We toured the broken villages and the minefields, and we discovered, among other things, that most of the casualties--most of them were civilians at the time--were victims not of Serbian mines, but of NATO cluster bombs. Fourteen thousand of those cluster bombs are lying on the ground in Kosovo. Even the manufacturers admit that there is a 5 per cent. failure rate if they are dropped from the optimal height of 3,000 ft; if they are dropped from 15,000 ft and above, the failure rate is much greater. What those instruments of death and destruction have is the quality of aerially sown anti-personnel mines. Before we become involved in a moral debate about that, perhaps the MOD might ask, "Are we happy about using a weapon that does not work, that kills civilians, and that kills"--in the case of the two Gurkhas--"our own soldiers as well?"

22 Nov 1999 : Column 418

When our weapon systems work, when the duty of care is exercised, when someone has got a grip on the Ministry of Defence, when our soldiers are fairly treated, and when we have a quality of direction of armed forces that matches the quality of the armed forces themselves, I shall believe that we have really made some progress.

Several hon. Members rose--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. I am aware that many hon. Members have been present throughout the debate. If every speaker now takes his full 10-minute allocation, I shall disappoint several others, so I hope that the example shown by the last two speakers will be borne in mind.

8.19 pm

Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford): A third of my constituents have ethnic minority origins, with large populations from the Caribbean, the Indian sub-continent and west Africa. Many seek my help with immigration and nationality problems, but others lobby me about the conditions in the countries from which they came originally. Sade Akinsanya, from the local Oxfam group, came to see me last Friday. Before that, I had representations from the local branch of the World Development Movement.

Also last week, I was privileged to meet a group of Indian farmers who were in the UK courtesy of the ActionAid charity and Iceland, the food retailer. They had come to lobby Ministers about the forthcoming World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle. They were poor farmers practising traditional agriculture and providing much needed food within sustainable local economies. It is they, like many of my constituents' relatives back home, who are on the receiving end of the WTO agreements. What they and their supporters in ActionAid, the World Development Movement, Oxfam and others are saying clearly is that, thus far, trade liberalisation has been the equivalent of an unequal bargain. Many developing countries have undertaken substantial liberalisation under structural adjustment programmes, but developed countries have not reciprocated.

Implementation of the Uruguay round means that the average tariff on imports from the least developed countries into the industrialised countries will be 30 per cent. higher than the average tariff on imports from other industrialised countries. Moreover, specific promises by the developed world have not been kept. Quota restrictions on textiles were supposed to be removed from 33 per cent. of imports by 2001, yet the United States and the European Union are likely to remove restrictions on a mere 5 per cent. of those products of importance to developing countries by that date.

Another specific and vital promise has been entirely forgotten. The 1994 Marrakesh decision recognised that trade liberalisation was likely to increase food import prices for the poorest. Assistance was promised to net food-importing developing countries and to the least developed countries if food price instability and higher food import bills resulted from falls in food aid and subsidised food imports. Yet, even when cereal prices rose by 68 per cent. in 1995-96, no action was taken.

That is the background to the Seattle talks: developing countries are losing up to $700 billion in annual export earnings as a result of trade barriers, while the United

22 Nov 1999 : Column 419

States support for its own agricultural sector alone still runs at about $25 billion, and that of the EU runs at around $85 billion. None of that will be news to Ministers. I welcome the commitment that was made by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary that, if the UK Government were able to determine it, there would be a strong development focus at the talks.

The Government have much of which to be proud, particularly the leadership of Ministers on debt relief to the poorest, but implementing the agreements is costing developing countries dear. As a World bank study for the joint WTO-World bank conference in Geneva this September found:

"implementing WTO agreements could cost more than a year's development budget for the very poorest countries, often for little benefit."

That must give the House cause for concern. Trade is at the heart of our international relations. It is the means by which countries can lift themselves out of poverty and military conflict can be lessened, but trade liberalisation that is carried out too quickly can wreck fragile markets and distort fledgling economies.

The scope of the agenda at Seattle is crucial. The UK position is in favour of a comprehensive round, which Ministers believe will offer the best chance of making progress in sectors such as agriculture. However, development non-governmental organisations argue that WTO members should adopt a much more limited development-focused agenda. I am sure that compromise can be found, but, whatever the agenda, the fundamental imbalances already observed in implementing the Uruguay round must be addressed.

A commitment to review progress on liberalisation of trade in agriculture and services already exists. I urge Ministers to press for such a review of the impact of existing WTO agreements on developing countries before there is further liberalisation. WTO agreements should promote development and poverty reduction. The international development targets that have been fully endorsed by the Government provide us with the key benchmarks on which the efforts of the WTO should be judged.

There is a need to review the trade-related intellectual property rights--TRIPs--agreement. Article 27.3(b) of the agreement requires WTO members to provide intellectual property rights over plants and animal varieties. Developing countries believe that the review of the life patent provisions should be substantive in the light of recent developments.