COMMUNITY OFFENCES

HC Deb 04 July 1972 vol 840 cc333-73

Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn (Bristol, South-East)

I beg to move Amendment No. 408, in page 18, line 1, leave out subsection (2).

The Temporary Chairman

With this Amendment we are to take Amendment No. 455, in line 13, leave out from 'it' to end of line 18 and insert 'in the United Kingdom'.

Mr. Benn

Though it comes late in the day, this is one of the most important debates on the Bill. It is curious that the points I want to raise arise out of a Clause dealing with Community offences, but this is the only occasion we have had during the whole of our consideration of the Bill to debate Euratom. Our accession to Euratom, as part of the proposed accession to the Community Treaties, is a major policy act.

Subsection (2) is, on the face of it, totally innocuous. Everybody knows that in atomic energy there are sensitive and valuable technologies, and so the Government have provided in the Clause that those who have to give information must tell the truth—that is the extension of the Perjury Act—and that when the information is conveyed it must be protected. If that is the basis on which the Government hope to resist the Amendments and carry the Clause, it is time the Committee looked more deeply at what is involved.

I should like quickly to take hon. Members through some of the implications of the Euratom Treaty. Article 5 innocuously makes it clear that to co-ordinate and complement research undertaken in Member States, the Commission shall, either by a specific request addressed to a recipient and conveyed to the Government concerned, or by a general published request, call upon Member States, persons or undertakings to communicate to it their programmes relating to the research which it specifies in the request. I turn now to Article 16, because we are dealing with the passage of information. It says: As soon as an application for a patent or a utility model relating to a specifically nuclear subject is filed with a Member State, that State shall ask the applicant to agree that the contents of the application be communicated to the Commission forthwith. I remind hon. Members that we are dealing with nuclear technology. Article 17 provides that, if there is any difficulty about the right of the Commission to license this technology, Failing amicable agreement, non-exclusive licences may be granted either by arbitration or under compulsory powers in accordance with Articles 18 to 23". Here we have a treaty to provide for co-ordination of research, a requirement to submit patents to the Community and a right of the Commission to license by compulsory powers the nuclear technology that has been developed.

Article 19 states: Where, failing amicable agreement, the Commission intends to secure the granting of licences in one of the cases provided for in Article 17, it shall give notice of its intention to the proprietor of the patent… Article 21 states: If it refuses to grant the licence… or … no information is forthcoming … the Commission shall have two months in which to bring the matter before the Court of Justice. If there is argument about the payment, then it is subjected to arbitration. Article 24 states: Information which the Community acquires as a result of carrying out its research programme, and the disclosure of which is liable to harm the defence interests of one or more Member States, shall be subject to a security system … Here we are begining to move into the central area of nuclear security. Then, rather charmingly, it goes on to say that if damage is done as a result of patents classified for defence reasons being improperly used, …the Community shall make good the damage suffered by the party concerned. We are dealing with the most sensitive central nuclear technology which we have acquired in this country. The provisions of the Treaty are absolutely specific as to how this is to be handled. But the matter has never been debated by the House or the Committee throughout the whole episode of this legislation.

The Chancellor of The Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Geoffrey Rippon)

The right hon. Gentleman, as Minister of Technology, was a member of the Labour Government who made the application. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the Labour Government sought no amendment whatever to the Euratom Treaty and only a 12-months' initial period?

Mr. Benn

The right hon. and learned Gentleman had better listen to what I am about to say. I will draw attention to the magnitude of the changes involved and to the scandal that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is denying Parliament and the public an opportunity of knowing the magnitude of the changes which have been made. As to the way the matter should be handled, the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows my view, which I have never concealed. Nothing the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said in his intervention derogates from my explanation of the Treaty. Had I been the Minister at the time, and had the matter been debated under the circumstances he visualises, it would certainly have been presented under different arrangements to the House.

Article 25 provides that there shall be an exclusive right in Euratom to get ores from outside the Community. Article 65 provides that the geographic origin of supplies of ores for Euratom will be determined by the agency to be set up. Article 67 provides that the prices should be specified. Article 81 provides the power to send inspectors to inspect nuclear plants. Article 96 abolishes all restrictions on the nationality of those involved in nuclear work to promote the free movement of nationals of any Member State. Article 5 of Regulation 3 provides that, for the purpose of security, there shall be a screening system under which every member of the Community will have the right to join in the screening of anyone who is allowed under the Euratom Treaty to deal with sensitive material. Article 1 of Regulation 4 provides that all investment is to be reported to Euratom. On page 37 of the White Book, it is provided that a monthly return is to be made of the movement of ores and provisions for safety regulations.

8.15 p.m.

All that provides virtually total supervision of our nuclear effort under the Treaty, yet the Treaty has never been debated in the House. The charge which the right hon. and learned Gentleman faces is that at no time did he provide the information I have just given to the House, which is culled from the published documents. The House and the country have never known what is involved in joining Euratom. That is the whole basis of the criticism of the guillotine procedure. The Treaty of Accession, having been signed without being published, is part and parcel of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's policy of getting the country into the Community without proper discussion or consent.

Mr. Rippon

Surely the right hon. Gentleman must acknowledge that ever since the Labour Government made their application and published their White Paper in 1967, it has been perfectly clear that both Governments accepted the Euratom Treaty without amendment. There has been an opportunity for it to be debated every time we have debated the question of applying to join the Community. There have been days and days of opportunity.

Mr. Benn

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has made his position much worse. Even if what he says is true, he is saying that if two Ministers agree about something there is no need for Parliament to debate the matter. If two Governments agree, even if there is agreement between the right hon. Gentlemen and I, as successive Ministers of Technology, does that mean it is not necessary to have a debate?

Mr. Rippon

Two Governments agreed.

Mr. Benn

At no stage have the Government presented to the House the significance of Euratom in such a way as to allow Parliament and the country to understand its significance. [Interruption.] The Treaty of Accession was signed before it was published. The criticism we make is that the basis upon which the Government believe they have the best chance of getting the country into the Common Market is to conceal the implications. This is our central complaint of their handling of the matter.

I invite the House to see what the right hon. and learned Gentleman found it necessary to say upon Euratom in the White Paper of July, 1971. Paragraph 160 said that Euratom: …is concerned with the peaceful uses of atomic energy, promotes nuclear research and ensures the dissemination of technical information. Paragraph 161 says: We have agreed to accept this Treaty and the rules made under it without any transitional period… Paragraph 163 states: Euratom operates a system of control and inspection of civil nuclear installations…we have agreed to accept the Euratom control system. At this moment we do not know the extent, since we have never been told by the Government, to which this question will involve our military installations.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Geoffrey Howe)

I should just like to ask the right hon. Gentleman to take account, as anyone making an exposition of this subject must take account, of the fact that the sentences he has just read from the 1971 White Paper are three times as long as those contained in the 1967 White Paper published by his Government. In a statement to Western European Union, Lord George-Brown said: In the case of Euratom we seek nothing more than this twelve-month initial period. As the right hon. Gentleman has stated, with fervour but without force in complaining of the absence of debate even years ago, when the Labour Government were making that proposition, his right hon. Friend Lord George-Brown said: The processes of argument and debate in Britain which led to our decision were long and arduous. The issues have been carefully weighed in full realisation of what is at stake…We accept all three Treaties…and will implement them. The Treaty now is exactly the same as it was then.

Mr. Benn

The hon. and learned Gentleman and his right hon. and learned Friend reveal by every intervention their attitude to the parliamentary process. It is an attitude of utter contempt. It is true that when we considered the application in 1967, the Labour Government saw no obstacle in Euratom and conveyed that view in their White Paper. What the Solicitor-General is saying, and what I know to be in his mind, is that if a Minister is satisfied that one does not have to debate the matter in Parliament, then one does not have to allow any Amendment, and one does not have to present the facts to the public. If that is an indication of how the British Ministers will behave when they are in the Community, this place will be utterly shut out from any effective control over executive power.

The Solicitor-General

The right hon. Gentleman misses the point. I am asserting that if parliamentary government means anything, if the sovereignty and reality of the House of Commons are meant to mean anything, one can surely take account of the fact to some extent that two successive Governments charged with responsibility for the affairs of the country—and including, still, Her Majesty's Opposition—remain willing in principle to accept this Treaty amongst the three and have had days upon days of debate. Successive Governments have had the application repeatedly endorsed by successive Houses of Commons, as Lord George-Brown pointed out in his statement.

Mr. Benn

If that is the hon. and learned Gentleman's conception of parliamentary government, no wonder he is prepared to scrap it for the sort of system now working in the Community. If he believes that the public support Parliament on the basis that, if a Government and an ex-Government or future Government, at ministerial and ex-ministerial level, agree, then there is no need to present to the House of Commons the facts and to give it the chance to debate them, he misunderstands the whole history of parliamentary government, which is that we are here to represent the public interest when the Government of the day propose an alternative course of action.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis (Rutland and Stamford) rose——

Mr. Benn

I have a lot to say yet, and I have had a number of interventions. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could come in later.

Mr. Lewis

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Benn

Very well.

Mr. Lewis

I appreciate the fact that the right hon. Gentleman has given way because I was about to remind him that he has been complaining about the two Front Benches getting together, yet he was at first refusing to give way to a back bencher. In both this Parliament and the last, every Thursday back benchers have been able to ask the Leader of the House for debates on various subjects. In addition, Motions are frequently put down on the Order Paper asking for debates. Were Motions about the Euratom Treaty ever put on the Order Paper? Were representations made to the Leader of the House that we should debate Euratom in either this Parliament or the last?

Mr. Benn

The hon. Gentleman misunderstands the purpose of parliamentary scrutiny through the legislative process. This BUI, which provides for our adherence to Euratom, provides not a single opportunity for any debate on Euratom, save on a Clause which deals with the Official Secrets Act. The complaint we make is that Parliament is being invited to discuss Euratom as a by-product of an examination of security, of screening, of the extension of the Perjury Act and of other devices which allow us to discuss it but make it exceptionally hard, as we are under a guillotine, to come to grips with the major changes of policy to which I now wish to turn if the Committee will allow me to do so.

Mr. Rippon

I think the right hon. Gentleman must acknowledge that these propositions were put forward first by the Labour Government and then by this Government to Parliament. Their White Papers were debated. The Labour Government's White Paper was approved by a massive majority and ours was approved by a considerable majority. We know that certain people have changed their views for reasons that we also appreciate.

Mr. Benn

The right hon. and learned Gentleman's intervention should be studied by the political scientists. He is now saying that if there is a debate on the principle of something, there is no need for debate on the detail. We have never debated Euratom at all at any stage. Nor would the Government have allowed a debate on Euratom to come up now if they had not had to provide in the Bill a short Clause dealing with security. That is the criticism we make.

It may be that as Minister of Technology I examined this matter and saw no obstacle, but if a Minister sees no obstacle, no intractable difficulty, in a Treaty to which his country might adhere, that does not absolve him or his successor from having the matter properly and fully debated in Parliament. That is the lesson which the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who is the most arrogant Minister I have ever heard in the House of Commons, might well learn from the debates we have had.

Let us consider the implications of joining Euratom. However much the right hon. and learned Gentleman may dissent from my view, these are major issues about which the public should be informed. The first point is, that unlike any of the six members of the present Community, Britain has over 25 years concentrated her efforts on nuclear research. We did our wartime work with the Americans. We set up the Atomic Energy Authority in 1955; in 1956 came the first settled programme of nuclear research; the first generation of reactors produced in this country—Magnox reactors—have generated more electricity by nuclear means than the rest of the world, including the United States, put together; we have advanced gas-cooled reactors now going into service; we have at Dounreay the first fast breeder reactor in the world coming forward.

This British investment over 25 years has to be set against a far smaller investment by the Six. The two are to be put together without the Government candidly describing the implications of what is being done. If one wants to get an account of how much has been spent on nuclear research since the war, probably the best thing to do is to look at the published figures. I have access to other figures but I will not give them to the Committee. Mr. Duncan Burn in 1967 estimated that Britain had spent £950 million on nuclear research, and in an article in the Sunday Times last December, Mr. K. Richardson estimated that we had spent by then £1,500 million on nuclear research. This is the dowry we have built up by our efforts and skill since 1945.

It is true that the French, for military purposes, and the Germans now, for civil purposes, are spending a great deal of money on nuclear research, but the point is that in the case of atomic energy what this country will take into Euratom is worth infinitely more than it can get out of it by the association. This is something which the public is entitled to know and we shall find some vague confirmation of it when the right hon. and learned Gentleman replies.

The second point about nuclear energy and atomic secrets is that a secret in atomic energy is not very complicated. The definition of a nuclear secret is that if one knows something can be done, then one knows the only secret worth knowing because one then concentrates one's effort upon it. If one knows that something cannot be done, then one does not bother spending resources on it. I recall being told by a distinguished French nuclear scientist, when I met him for one of the talks we had regularly on this matter, that the greatest leakage of nuclear information ever to come out of the United States was not through the spy net worth but through the report, published by the Americans after the war, giving an account of which projects they had attempted and in which they had succeeded and in which they had not. If one has the mass transfer, provided by the Euratom Treaty, of nuclear information, then of course one is conveying by that fact the most important nuclear secrets. 8.30 p.m.

The centrifuge project is no longer secret. We agreed to join with the Dutch and Germans. I was responsible for that project. The only secret about that project was the knowledge that it could be done. As Minister I found myself in an astonishing position. The contents of top security papers one saw were being published as speculation in the New Scientist at the same time, the difference was that we knew it could be done, while the New Scientist was describing a process and did not know whether it could be done. When we decided to go in with the Dutch and Germans and said, "We know from our experience that the centrifuge works" that was the only secret. One could have written it in capitals on the back of a postage stamp. Those secrets were disseminated by the transfer of information under the Euratom Treaty.

A provision in one of the articles to which I have referred said there must be a report on all investment projects. Let me return to the centrifuge project because that bears directly on what happened then. When this country decided that it would move to the centrifuge from the gas diffusion process, all now published, the information was conveyed when we joined the Dutch and the Germans. We decided at the same time that it would not be necessary to expand the Capenhurst Works, which were constructed on the gas diffusion principle. The knowledge that we were not expanding Capenhurst—had that been known through an investment report—would have conveyed to anybody else that we must have discovered another way of doing it. That secret would have become generally available.

In the nuclear field it is not the passing of blue-prints, such as occurs in pre-war spy stories, which is vital. The secret is the knowledge that a country with a capability can succeed in moving in a certain area. When the United States said at the end of the war, "We have tried this and we did not find our way forward", that told the Russians not to bother and saved them thousands of rubles and man-hours of skilled work, because they got that information from an unclassified United States report.

Let no one in Parliament try to brush this off by an exchange of 1967 quotations. We are dealing—as the right hon. Gentleman knows better than anyone else, because he had this responsibility—with the central area in which this country has put its money and skilled manpower ever since the war-time arrangement with the United States.

I come to the impact on our relations with the United States. The war-time collaboration with the Americans was the basis upon which the special relationship rested. When the McMahon Act was published and passed by Congress at the end of the war, it provided the first limitation on what had been a free exchange under the wartime agreements between American and British atomic scientists.

The links between the Atomic Energy Commission in the United States and this country have always been close. Since the McMahon Act they have been subject to the very close scrutiny and careful watching of the joint congressional committee. In all the contacts that the British have ever had—I was involved in one dealing with the centrifuge process—it has been the relationship, the umbilical cord, that has linked us to the United States that has been the most important consideration of national policy.

I recall one debate in which the Foreign Secretary was speaking, before Christmas. One of his hon. Friends interrupted and asked, "What about the amendment of the McMahon Act?" The Foreign Secretary said that this was a matter of great importance because in this Clause lies the heart of the special relationship. That has great political importance.

It was the re-assertion of the special relationship in the Nassau Agreement in 1962—when Mr. Macmillan decided to take the Polaris from the United States—that produced the first French veto. Mr. Macmillan had been to Colombeyles Deux Eglises for one of those grand reunions. There were the old men standing together waiting for the application to be accepted by the French. Then he went to Nassau and received the Polaris from the young President Kennedy without telling the French. Shortly afterwards President de Gaulle vetoed the application.

It was at that moment that the present Prime Minister, whose work had been frustrated because of the nuclear relationship with America, decided that when it came to his turn to re-negotiate he would ensure that that special relationship never intervened to produce a third French veto. That is the importance which must be brought out if Parliament and the country are to be truthfully informed about what is passing through Parliament this evening.

Mr. Rippon

What the right hon. Gentleman has to say is of interest and importance. Is the right hon. Gentleman advising the Committee—as he did in 1967 and in 1970—that we ought to accept and join the Euratom Treaty without amendment?

Mr. Benn

If the right hon. and learned Gentleman will allow me to develop my speech to its conclusion he will hear what I have to say. The fact that he is waiting for what I will say at the end is flattering. But that does not allow him to avoid confronting my arguments. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is attempting to get a simple Clause through Parliament phrased in such a way as to conceal from the public the magnitude of the change involved.

I come to another major political question and that is the extent to which what is now contemplated marries up with what we believe to be a private arrangement between the Prime Minister and M. Pompidou that there should be some joint military arrangements in an area which admittedly is not covered by the Euratom Treaty. It is impossible to know exactly, because these matters are concealed behind a very tight security screen, but my own view is that one of the aspects of the deal that withdrew and cancelled the French veto was an agreement by the Prime Minister that this should be the beginning of some entente cordiale, some special relationship with some nuclear overtones. I attach great importance to the transfer of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston from the Department of Trade and Industry to the Ministry of Defence. One of the issues we had to consider when we looked at the future of Aldermaston was whether it was right, as we believed, as I strongly believed, that nuclear weapons should be under a civil Minister, as they are in America, under the Atomic Energy Commission, rather than being transferred to a Defence Ministry where they become part and parcel of a defence policy, without reference to their political implications. We shall return to that when the much-promised legislation comes before the House in the new Session.

I come to the military side. Euratom is a civil treaty, but we are told that inspectors can present themselves with their credentials and inspect our nuclear establishments. I have asked the Minister, and I expect a reply, whether there is to be inspection of British military establishments. Is there to be inspection of the French nuclear establishment at Pier-relatte? We do not know. The Committee is entitled to know whether this is the case, because the Minister knows very well that one of the things that held up the non-proliferation treaty for a long time was the extent to which other members of the International Atomic Authority were ready to accept Euratom safeguards and inspectors as a substitute for the inspections that would take place under the IAEA.

Another aspect of the problem has to do with the sources of supply of ore. I have drawn attention to Articles 25 and 65 and I now bring to the attention of the Committee an aspect of this which has never been adequately discussed. It is that in the choice of the sources of supply of uranium it is possible to move into a highly political area. Let me take the case, which has been very much discussed outside the House, of the Atomic Energy Authority and the RTZ Rossing mine—bringing uranium from Namibia or South-West Africa. I will not go into the background because much of it has been published but I am glad to have the opportunity to say something about this.

The proposal was that RTZ would supply the Atomic Energy Authority with uranium, first from Canada, with a capacity to switch to South Africa. It was switched to Rossing in Namibia and—I do not in any way wish to escape my responsibilities in these matters—there is no doubt that in the information made available the authorities were less than forthcoming. I would go further and say that the decision to acquire it from Namibia should not have been taken. I say this as someone who was at the time the responsible Minister. The point is that the political control of what appear to be technical decisions is at the heart of the atomic energy business.

If uranium is obtained from one country as against another, there will be different safeguarding provisions. If it is obtained from Namibia instead of from Canada, there are enormous political implications vis-à-vis the United Nations and the possibility of enforcing United Nations resolutions. If a Minister, dealing with the Atomic Energy Authority, as I was, with an international company under British control, RTZ, as I was, can enter into a relationship of that kind, which should not have happened, how much more could this happen if Euratom controlled the source of supply?

I do not believe that the Committee should pass over this matter of the control of nuclear energy, the supply of ores and the distribution of information, without trying to reassert what is the most important point that there should always be, at all times, political control of what may otherwise appear to be purely technical decisions. If the world loses control of its destiny it will be more because politicians were not strong enough, or not sufficiently well informed to control scientists than because of almost any other consideration. What I have just said is self-criticism, and I say that lest the committee should misunderstand me, but I believe that the task would have been wholly impossible if one had been dealing with Euratom, which apparently authorised the Germans to get their uranium from the Rossing mine in Namibia without any sort of political discussion at all.

Now I come to the question of price control because it is one thing to say that one wants a free market in order to prevent distortion of the market when one is talking about ordinary products, but when a country has poured £1,500 million, to use the Sunday Times figure, into nuclear research, is it not to be allowed to fix prices so as to get the benefit of its own research? In the case of the Concorde, the Government have so fixed the price as to allow us to be sure that the aircraft does not run foul of international market difficulties, and this is done by a levy on sales adjusted to bring the money back as the aircraft goes into service.

In the case of nuclear energy also this has been done. Nobody has asked the CEGB to pay back in royalties from the use of nuclear power stations sums sufficient to pay the cost of nuclear research. That is something the miners have always complained about. They say "You subsidise nuclear energy by research but you will not subsidise the miners although we are more economic until that research pays off". If the Euratom powers give the Commission the power to control the price of uranium, then of course this capacity to adjust the royalty rate so as to feed one's technology into one's industry will be under some sort of supervision.

Now I come to the point which confirms what I have been saying about the British nuclear capacity being so much better than that of any other member of the Six. This is shown in some splendid words in the Government's own White Paper. Paragraph 165 of the July, 1971, White Paper says: It has also been agreed that we shall pay no entry fee in return for our access to the capital assets and scientific information held by the Community. "We shall pay no entry fee": why this sudden generosity when they were so tough on their own resources, so tough on CAP? We shall pay no entrance fee because what we are conveying under the Euratom arrangement is worth infinitely more than we shall be getting out of it. That is why in this field nobody had the effrontery to say that we should pay.

I should like to quote the New Scientist for 22nd July last year: An incredible story was told recently by British negotiators returning from the Brussels Common Market headquarters: Britain had been asked by the Six actually to pay an entrance fee for joining Euratom! Scientists and engineers on both sides of the Channel acquainted with the atomic scene in Europe knew that this could only be suggested by politicians who had failed to contact their scientific advisers. Of course the Government had been ready to pay to get in, but the reality is that our investment in nuclear know-how is infinitely greater than that of any of our partners among the Six.

Mr. Emery

The right hon. Gentleman is not one to mislead the Committee, so I think it would be fair if he would read to the end of paragraph 165, because there we make it quite clear that we have agreed to deposit knowledge of equivalent value with Euratom immediately after our accession. This does not mean to say that there is imbalance in the deal, as the right hon. Gentleman has suggested, and I am certain he would not want to give that impression.

Mr. Benn

I am flattered by the hon. Gentleman's anticipating my speech. I am coming on to the second part of paragraph 165.

I am simply saying that to say we shall pay no entrance fee, to give the impression that we are getting something for nothing, is an absolute joke in the circles in which the position is known.

Now we come to the second part of paragraph 165. In recognition of the fact that we shall have access to the complete stock of nuclear knowledge, we have agreed to deposit knowledge of equivalent value with Euratom immediately after accession. What knowledge? In what form? How does it differ from the definition of scientific secrets that I gave earlier, that if one says something can be done one may have conveyed by that simple piece of information the result of hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of research? The idea of a trade of a limited amount to be valued conveys in a single sentence something that lies at the very heart of the question: are we getting value out of the arrangements under the Euratom Treaty?

[Sir ROBERT GRANT-FERRIS in the Chair]

8.45 p.m.

I am slightly surprised that the Under-secretary is to reply to the debate, because the issues raised by the Clause are very large. However, perhaps on this issue he can tell us what the valuation is of what we are getting and what we are giving. What arbitration procedure is there? How does the conveying of this information differ from the conveying of information that will be going by the ordinary provisions of the treaty? Indeed, will the hon. Gentleman put a price on the balance? After all, we are talking in the CAP of hundreds of millions of pounds. In nuclear research we are talking of thousands of millions of pounds, possibly.

If the right hon. and learned Gentleman thinks that by what he has put into a 40-word paragraph he can evade the responsibility for telling the country about what the Government are doing with an inheritance of nuclear energy knowledge built up over 25 years, he must be mad. This is the great, central theme; this is the greatest discovery of knowledge which has been made, perhaps for all time, but certainly since the war. We have been given none of the essential information. We are told only that under the treaty everything is to be conveyed to Euratom. No doubt the Under-Secretary will deal with this.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman keeps directing me towards the question whether Euratom is worth while. In July, 1971, Nature said this: One of the least dazzling parts of the British Government's policy declaration last week in favour of British membership of the European Economic Community is a passage dealing with what was formerly known as the European Atomic Energy Community, Euratom for short. I ask the Committee to listen to this, because the writer is not opposed to Britain's joining the Common Market: The case for a British link with the EEC is by now…self-evident. So the case the writer is about to make in his next sentence is worth listening to: …yet the case for membership of Euratom is so meagre as to be non-existent. This is the reality.

In reply, the Under-Secretary will have to tell us what we get in return. In our negotiations we should have insisted upon proper safeguards for protecting the British basic national interest. The Euratom Treaty would not of itself have been a barrier to British entry, with the proper safeguards for British know-how built into the negotiations. However, no attempt was made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman to negotiate safeguards. No reference was made. All that he did was to shift from a 12-month transitional period to a minimum period, or to a six-month period. No attempt was made by him to protect the great heritage he acquired.

Is it necessary to have Euratom for there to be co-operation? I was the rotating chairman with the Commission in the continuing committee discussing nuclear policy between Euratom and the United Kingdom. Our half of that bargain was at least as good as theirs, if not better. We had the Dragon project at Winfrith, which was a joint project involving Euratom and the United Kingdom Energy Authority. I launched the centrifuge with the Dutch and the Germans. Nobody could accuse me of being opposed to nuclear exchanges with the Europeans on a proper basis.

In terms of the bargain here, the charge against the Government is that in the one area where we were overwhelmingly strong the right hon. and learned Gentleman made no effort to negotiate and safeguard our interests. He tried to cover this by Government legislation which would deny Parliament the right to debate it, except by the side wind of a security Clause and then said that, because five years ago we had not seen a barrier in principle to signing the Euratom Treaty, this alliance between the Front Benches should properly have excluded parliamentary supervision. This adhesion to Euratom in the form in which the Government have negotiated—I hardly like to call the right hon. and learned Gentleman a negotiator; he did not attempt to negotiate—is a major technical, commercial, political and even military shift which has been done entirely without the fact being published and has been brought to Parliament through an offences Clause.

I suppose that the Solicitor-General is here because his answer to every problem is the law. It is his job. Whatever it is, industrial relations, or anything else, it is all law. His safeguard is that it will be on a statutory oath that these secrets are to be kept. The hon. and learned Gentleman will have to learn about national loyalty as he is now learning about trade union loyalty. Loyalty can not be enforced by legislation. What is involved here is an attempt by a single subsection in an Act of Parliament to provide that people who have contributed to the nation's nuclear know-how should confer it on the other members of the Community and in this way just to pass it through the courts——

The Solicitor-General

The right hon. Gentleman may feel that he is entitled to give me a lecture on national loyalty, but will he come back to the point on which I first intervened? Has he yet identified a single factor in all the facts he has rehearsed so interestingly that differs by one jot or one tittle from those that underlay the position when he was in Government, at a time when, without any qualification of the kind he is now arguing, he and his Government commended the acceptance of the Euratom Treaty without variation? I ask the right hon. Gentleman, before he lectures anyone else on loyalty, to concentrate on his own personal and political credibility.

Mr. Benn

Every time the Solicitor-General intervenes, what he says is this. Because a previous Government of which I was a member saw no insuperable barrier in the Euratom Treaty, properly negotiated, with proper safeguards, that allows him and his right hon. and learned Friend to negotiate an arrangement which denies parliamentary supervision over what is to happen. The hon. and learned Gentleman often refers to the 1967 White Paper—and I was a member of the Cabinet at the time—but he may or may not know that when we discussed this matter we always talked about the impending required legislation, and it was known as the "thousand Clause. Bill".

Never did we contemplate at any time, nor did we ever indicate in any public statement, that we should be prepared to take this country into the Common Market in such a way as to deny Parliament the right to supervise and discuss what happened. The Government, with no negotiation, introduced a Bill containing this subsection which, if I had not strained the rules of order to discuss it under a security provision, would never have been discussed at all.

If the hon. and learned Gentleman does not understand that, I see with a fresh blaze of light why he does not understand industrial relations either. He thinks that all he has to do is to get an arrangement with another Minister, force the Bill through the House and the problem is solved.

I come now to the question of entry and the attitude to Euratom. If the Government are seeking to make the changes I have described, or any of them, they cannot do it without the full-hearted consent of the British public. If they want to break the special relationship, they must first say that they are doing it and then carry the people with them, or else they should not do it. If the Government want to transfer the accumulated stockpile of nuclear know-how, they must say that is what they are doing and carry the British public with them. If the Government want to change the highly sensitive basis of national loyalty—for it is upon that that national security rests, not upon the Official Secrets Act, they must say so. If they want to change the situation, there must be the full-hearted consent of the British people.

It is the total failure by the Government to be candid, truthful and honest in the presentation of these changes that leads me to recommend to the Committee that, as a way of indicating our total dissatisfaction with the way in which this matter has been handled, we should support this Amendment.

Mr. Raymond Fletcher (Ilkeston)

Many giggles are passing across the faces of the occupants of the Treasury Front Bench, and the years 1967 and 1970 are never absent from their interventions in our Committee proceedings. However limited my knowledge of nuclear physics or even of the details of the finer points of law in the Bill, I stand before this Committee in a white sheet as one who did not vote for entry in 1967 and who wrecked his own political career by not voting for entry. I also opposed entry in 1970 under the previous Government. Nothing that has happened since has done anything other than reinforce the conviction I tried to express both in this Chamber and upstairs in 1967.

When I come to this part of the Bill there are certain other issues which are at the back of my mind which, if I were to pursue them to their logical conclusion, would lead me far beyond the bounds of order.

The first proposition advanced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) is an absolutely cast-iron proposition. In fact, it is even better; it is made of the finest quality steel. Once one has the necessary equation—and many of us are familiar with the famous Einstein equation—once Rutherford had split the atom, from then on no kind of nuclear advancement could be kept secret. The Hollywood "B" movie notion that the Russians became a nuclear power because certain spies passed on secrets is fit only for the television screens at midnight in bleak periods indeed. Once one has unlocked the secrets of the atom, the world's scientific community knows precisely what one is doing.

It is a well known fact that the Central Intelligence Agency wants the Russians to know certain things that the United States is doing and that it has a special section to plant information in American technical journals with the idea that that information will be picked up by the Russians. Anybody who believes that any worthwhile information is passed out in envelopes concealed behind bricks in obscure walls ought to be writing scripts for the television screens and not be participating in such debates as these.

Of one thing we must be clear, and that is that the whole of subsection (2) is a load of "nonsense on stilts", to quote Jeremy Bentham's famous phrase. There can be no classification of information, no real attempt to keep certain information secret. What can be kept secret, and is being kept secret, is the precise military application of some of this nuclear knowledge which is being provided from the research stations at present under the control of Euratom.

9 p.m.

I have no intention of going through reams of statistics. However, when one looks at the figures it is quite evident that most of what the French take from Euratom is not devoted to making the atom an agent of peaceful progress. It is devoted to building up this ridiculous, fantastically useless, and strategically dangerous military institution, the "force de frappe", which confronts world pointing in all directions like an angry but totally impotent hedgehog.

As a consequence certain facts are concealed behind the figures. I am very anxious to quote from those sources which are favourable to entry into the Common Market. When we look at the figures, we find that Euratom and all its works, to use a motoring metaphor, are nothing more than the oldest Tin Lizzie on the road. It has produced nothing of any significance. It is a very old jalopy, and it is that for a reason that was given in a book published not very long ago and edited by a former Member of this House who was then and is now an enthusiastic advocate of British entry into the Common Market. I refer to Mr. Eric Moonman. In spite of being an advocate of entry into the Common Market, he remains my friend, as he was in 1967. He was then my hon. Friend, and very soon I hope he will be again when the British people are consulted on the Common Market and on a wide range of other issues.

This is what a contributor to this volume entitled "Science and Technology in Europe" had to say. I might say that the book created quite a stir when it first appeared. Discussing the situation in most of these collective scientific organisations in Europe, he said: To paraphrase Alexander King"— an American writer— the situation is much the same as if, in the United States, each state of the Union viewed the totality of American scientific effort in different terms and participated in it for reasons which would benefit only itself. In international competition European scientific organisations faced a double handicap; they are a composite of diverse efforts and divergent aspirations. They are, in fact, a Tin Lizzie. That quotation does not come from my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East, and still less does it come from my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), who is following my reasoning with his usual close attention. It comes from Jean-Jacques Salomon, who has a great deal to do with scientific endeavours in France. He ought to know. He does know. I have quoted him because he knows.

When we look at the amounts of GNP devoted to research in the United Kingdom compared with the countries which are already in Euratom we find the following, and here the contributor is talking about the French: The proportion is now about 1½ per cent. of GNP, the same as Germany but less than Bitain's 2.3 per cent. What is more, the part taken up by military expenditure is even higher than it is in the UK, thanks to de Gaulle's 'Force de Frappe' "— which reinforces an earlier argument that I presented. So the need for purposeful stimulation of civil research in France justifies the centralised French system, much as the need for better exploitation, rather than research as such, is the justification for the division of powers in the UK. Incidentally that is written by an Englishman, Mr. Rex Winsbury. In other words, in this Tin Lizzie which is Euratom we are now asked to put the finest Rolls-Royce engine ever made by the motor division of the Rolls-Royce Company. Why are we doing it? What is to happen when we do it? One cannot talk in this context without mentioning the famous or notorious Godkin lectures.

One thing I admire about the French is that they serve rigidly and ruthlessly the national interests of France. They know quite well what they are doing. They are taking us along on this expensive ride for purposes of which this Committee knows nothing and of which the British people know even less. If the full significance of the existence of, first, the French nuclear force and, secondly, an Anglo-French nuclear force were realised in this country, even among those who support the use of the nuclear deterrent, almost every bench in this Chamber, whether occupied by hon. Members or not, would be crying out in protest.

I will not repeat the speech I made in an earlier debate. But to inject into the present balance of terror situation other centres of nuclear command is the most dangerous thing we can do; and when those command powers are used by Frenchmen, who are almost neurotic with the concept of national glory and aggrandisement, to a degree which would astonish the ghost of the late Emperor Napoleon I, who was a comparative internationalist compared with President Pompidou, this gives cause for alarm.

Whatever is said from the Government benches, from the documentation—I have no desire to detain the Committee for a moment longer than necessary, but I have a file six inches thick on Euratom alone—there is not the slightest doubt that the French will dive into Euratom when it is equipped with the British Rolls-Royce engine and utilise it for purely French military purposes. That is wrong.

I do not attack the French for that. Unlike Nelson, I do not fear God and hate the French. I have a certain respect for the French. I always had considerable respect for the late President de Gaulle. When these debates began I said that had the late President de Gaulle survived into 1972 we would not have had to go through any of this blasted nonsense at all. But I admire the French for pursuing at all costs, in every possible way, whatever the dangers to the rest of the world, their own national interests. I admire them, but I am determined to try to stop them.

One can respect an enemy. Had I been fighting at Waterloo as my ancestors did—incidentally, on both sides—I should have respected that part of my ancestry which fought under the Duke, who certainly respected Napoleon Bonaparte and those who fought, I hope, in the Old Guard, and had considerable respect for the Duke of Wellington.

So one can object to a line of policy and yet have a certain respect for the Government or the nation pursuing that policy. However, I cannot find the slightest atom of respect for what this Government are now doing. I have always said that the Tories were rather better at accountancy than we were. They could read balance-sheets. They could come in and look at the work that we had done in government, check the balance sheets, check the advantages against the disadvantages, check the cost-benefit systems, check the costs against the benefits and the benefits against the cost. However, since they have been in government they seem to have lost that talent. I regret it, because their only function in political life is to read balance sheets and to correct some of the more idealistic notions which some of my right hon. and hon. Friends and I present to the House of Commons. But now they have lost the art. Who but a total idiot would put a Rolls-Royce engine—I keep going on with this metaphor—into a Tin Lizzie and imagine that he had made some kind of magnificent bargain? It is total and absolute nonsense but, as I said earlier, it raises wider issues, because in this Clause we are concerned with the passage of nuclear secrets—[Interruption.] If the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish) would like to intervene, or sing a song, or do something to add to the gaiety of our proceedings, I should be happy to give way.

Colonel Sir Tufton Beamish (Lewes)

I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. I was saying that the Model T Ford was one of the best cars ever made.

Mr. Fletcher

But one would not use it in 1972 if it were made in 1924. They age a little in body and in other respects, and one does not put a Rolls-Royce engine in a 50-year-old car.

I said earlier that this debate raises wider issues. It raises precisely those issues which were brought out in all their stark reality in the case of the late Robert Oppenheimer—the issue of the rôle of the scientist in the world today, the issue of the attitude of the scientist towards the political authority that he serves, and the greater issue of the responsibility of the scientist to the human race as such.

When any scientist works for any Government which tries to keep certain aspects of research secret, in the end that scientist is confronted, as Robert Oppenheimer was, with a conflict of conscience, and it produced a partial mental breakdown in that brilliant man. It also produced a most abominable witch hunt, and Oppenheimer said some valuable words about the American system of freedom and its value to scientific research. There is a certain connection between an open society, the quality of the scientific research in which that society indulges and the products of that scientific research. Robert Oppenheimer had been arguing for freedom and arguing for the free interchange of views between scientists of all nations as was the customary practice, and he said that there was a time when science was growing up into its present state when the language of scientists was a lingua franca when every scientist in every part of the world felt himself part of a scientific community. It was not until the Nazis came to power in Germany that the term "German Science" or "National Science" was even thought of. Oppenheimer continues: Thus there is a kind of pre-established harmony between scientific research and the democratic ideology of the country which produced the Declaration of Rights. Research prospers all the more for being surrounded by a climate of freedom which is natural to it, and, reciprocally, the spirit which animates science reinforces the structures of a free society. The Clause if interpreted in the French manner, as inevitably it will be, is a direct defiance of that magnificent utterance about the connection between scientific research and freedom by the late Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.

He had something to say also over the BBC even before he was arraigned before the court and before he had to defend, not what he had done, but what certain common, cheap informers claimed he had done, and that was to have, at a certain time in his life, Communist friends. It is very difficult in the modern world not to have Communist friends. There is not one Member of the House who would not accept an invitation tonight to have dinner with Pablo Picasso, make no mistake about it. Over the BBC—he was talking with great regret of the analysis of the scientific sphere by political authority—he talked of the increasingly expert destruction of man's spirit by the powers of police, more wicked if not more awful than the ravages of nature's own hand. 9.15 p.m.

Professor Oppenheimer knew more about the ravages of Nature's own hand, as he was one of the fathers of the hydrogen bomb, than any man living at that time. Yet we run the danger that if the Bill is passed in this form, if the subsection of the Clause remains part of the Bill, if we go into Euratom in this way, if the French use Euratom in the French way, the rigidities of the French police system will be applied to every scientist working in Euratom the moment the French demand military know-how that we have acquired at such enormous cost.

This raises wider issues that would take me far beyond the bounds of order, Sir Robert, and would strain your patience even more than I have done already. Yet this is what we are doing. I suggest that we are committing not a double error but a dual crime if we allow the Clause to pass. First, we are concluding an absolutely ridiculous bargain. We are giving away a lot in return for very little. We are putting a Rolls-Royce engine into a Tin Lizzie. But secondly, and much more ominously, we are placing in the hands of the most militantly nationalist nation in Europe, in spite of the Common Market and its so-called idealism, into the hands of a nation which did not hesitate to try to wreck the whole NATO defence system in its own interest, into the hands of French generals and admirals, an instrument which can frustrate the very development of science itself.

Is that what we want to do? Is it part of the nuts and bolts of the Bill not to expand science but to throttle it, not to encourage scientists but to gag them? Is that what we want to do? Is that the free, glorious international Europe that so many of my right hon. and hon. Friends have spoken to me about so often? Is this the extension of human freedom that we were told about when the vote was taken on 28th October? Is this the enlargement of our sovereignty that we have been told about time and again?

It is nothing of the kind. It is the biggest sell-out since Munich, and I have not the slightest hesitation in describing it as such. The Euratom business goes right to the heart of what is happening in this Chamber and right to the heart of what is being done to this country by means of this Bill. We are giving weapons to people who are unfit to have them. I make no mistake about using that strong language. My only regret is that I am not addressing the French Chamber of Deputies in French, as I had the privilege of addressing members of the European Parliament only a couple of days ago in German. I should like to say this to the French face to face. I do not trust them. I do not trust them with the powers that would be given to them with this kind of expansion of Euratom.

Ending on a rather low commercial note, I deeply regret that the Conservative Party, which used to be able to read balance sheets, has lost that capacity, it seems, for ever. It has become so obsessed with entry into Europe at all costs, so obsessed with the notion of steamrollering the Bill through the Committee and through Parliament, that it does not give a damn about the possible consequences and does not give a damn about the costs. There is a word for that kind of conduct, but I am not allowed to use it because it is an unparliamentary expression. But, although I am deeply sorry that I cannot use it, I assure right hon. and hon. Members on the Government benches that I can think it, and I hope that it is revealed in my face as I speak.

Mr. Emery

I answer immediately one point made by the hon. Member for Ilkeston (Mr. Raymond Fletcher), because it is important to put his speech in relationship to the Euratom Treaty. In many ways the hon. Gentleman was misleading the Committee in the belief that Euratom is concerned with military secrets. It must be pointed out from the word go, so that people understand this whether they are listening to the debate or reading about it, that the Euratom Treaty has nothing to do with the military aspects. The concept that we are placing weapons in the hands of the French is a complete and utter fiction in the mind of the hon. Member for Ilkeston and has nothing whatever to do with the Treaty.

Mr. Benn rose——

Mr. Emery

May I make my speech in my own way?

Mr. Benn

The Under-Secretary is perfectly right to make the point that Euratom does not deal with military matters. But the treaty deals with the classification of military secrets and the Clause that he is now recommending to the House would permit people to be punished for transmitting defence secrets which they had acquired accidentally or in any other way from the Euratom Corporation.

Mr. Emery

I am trying to do nothing more than put the record straight. What the right hon. Gentleman has just said was not the basis of the speech of the hon. Member for Ilkeston and therefore it is important to make it clear that the military type of information with which his speech was concerned is not a part of the Euratom Treaty.

Mr. Fletcher

May I point out that the Under-Secretary is therefore arguing not with me but with M. Jean-Jacques Salomon who heads the Science Policy Division of the Directorate for Scientific Affairs of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development? He says precisely what I have said.

Mr. Emery

I do not mind whom I have to correct as long as I can put the facts right. I will correct anyone, and the hon. Member knows me well enough to know that that is the way I would approach the matter.

May I say in a slightly calmer and less emotional way than the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) that I found his speech, in view of the fact that he was responsible at some time for the whole aspect of atomic matters when he was a Minister, disreputable, demagogic and even, at times, dishonest. I shall elaborate on that. We on the Government side, and particularly the Solicitor-General, do not need lessons in our national duties. That type of remark by the right hon. Gentleman, during discussion of a serious matter, does the House of Commons and the right hon. Gentleman as chairman of his party no credit whatsoever. [Hon. Members: "Answer the point."] One always knows when one gets comments like that from the Opposition that one's observations are hitting home.

The other thing I find somewhat intriguing is that this debate was mounted by the right hon. Gentleman as one of the most important debates in the whole of the Bill. We can assess the validity of that statement by the plethora of speeches we have had supporting the points he made. It does not seem to me that his statement can be substantiated. No doubt he can make another speech after I have replied if that is what he wants. But before he rose to speak there had been only one speech.

It is therefore proper and necessary for the Government to reinforce without contradiction from the Opposition that when the Labour Government were considering entry into Europe they absolutely accepted the Euratom Treaty as it was. Their White Paper makes it clear that it could have been accepted within 12 months. That was made clear by the Cabinet and the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman, who has made this flagrant attack, was a Member. Therefore, we must get a proper balance to the debate.

Mr. Nigel Spearing (Acton)

Can the hon. Gentleman explain to me, an interested observer of the exchanges, the following point: It seems that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) said that the exchange of information would be one of the great gifts from this country, and the Government Front Bench did not disagree. Will the hon. Gentleman tell me what we have received in exchange in the negotiations? What have we got on the common agricultural policy or any other matter in exchange for what it is obviously accepted has been given through the Euratom agreement?

Mr. Emery

First, may I correct the hon. Gentleman. He is presuming from my presence on the Front Bench and the fact that I did not immediately jump up to deny the statement, or that in the first three or four minutes of my speech I have not got round to dealing with the right hon. Gentleman's argument on that issue, that we believe that it is a deal in which we are giving everything away and receiving nothing in return. If the hon. Gentleman listens to me he will learn that that is not my argument. That is not my approach, nor do I think it would be a right or proper approach in the overall consideration of the Clause.

I would also point out that the right hon. Gentleman made great play of saying over and over again that this was the first time we could have discussed Euratom. He is an old enough hand at political in-fighting to know that that is not true. At any time in the debate on the White Paper, at anytime on Second Reading, the whole of the Treaty structure of Euratom could have been raised by the Opposition, and never did they do so.

Mr. Michael Foot (Ebbw Vale)

I know the hon. Gentleman was not present at the beginning of our debates in Committee, and I do not complain on that score. But does not he understand that one of the Opposition's main objections to the whole way in which the Bill is being presented to Parliament is that we have never had the opportunity to discuses individual items of the Treaty of Accession? If he had been present at the beginning of the Committee debates, he would have known that that was one of our main complaints, and what we protested about. If the whole matter had been properly presented to Parliament, we should have had the debate for which my right hon. Friend argued on Euratom and all the other items under the Treaty of Accession. That is what has been denied to hon. Members.

Mr. Emery

The hon. Gentleman is trying to fog the issue. He knows that I am on a very good point, because the Opposition have not been demanding debates on Euratom. The subject has never been raised. I understand the Opposition's objections. They would have liked to debate every single item ad infinitum and to stop the Bill ever getting through. One or two Labour hon. Members behind the hon. Gentleman are nodding agreement. I understand that argument, but no Government will accept it, neither a Government with which the hon. Gentleman would be associated nor the Government with which I am associated.

Mr. Foot

Whatever may be the approach on the question of the time it takes to complete discussion on a Bill of this nature, we have always claimed—and nothing that was done by any Labour Government contradicts this—that the Treaty of Accession, including individual items in the Treaty, should have been debated before we were ever presented with a Bill of this character. That we can discuss the kind of matter before us only on the kind of Amendment my right hon. Friend moved is entirely the responsibility of the Government, because of the way in which they have framed the Bill.

Mr. Emery

The hon. Gentleman must come off it; he cannot get away with that. He knows that the Opposition have never asked to debate Euratom. Who will deny that? [Interruption.]—It is being suggested by the Opposition Front Bench spokesman that it is terrifying that we have never debated the subject. We have never had, until this moment, any such indication—[Hon. Members: "Of course not."] May I make my speech in my own way?—[Hon. Members: "Hurry up."]

Mr. Speaker

Order. Hon. Members must not be continually interrupted. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will give way whenever he has the opportunity.

Mr. Emery

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Except on one occasion, when I was speaking against the clock, I have always given way.

Mr. Benn rose——

Mr. Emery

Allow me to finish at least one sentence.

The reaction of hon. Gentlemen opposite is proof of the effect of what I am saying. If they had wished they could have made clear any objection to the Euratom treaty, which was not known when they were in office, which they did not indicate when they were in government, which was never indicated when the right hon. Gentleman was Minister, which has not been indicated in any speech since then.

None of those points can be denied. I do not believe that the outside world will consider that there is the degree of importance attached to this matter which the right hon. Gentleman has suggested.

Mr. Benn

Would the hon. Gentleman, who is very courteous, tell the Committee this: on what occasion, other than during general debates which Parliament can always hold, have the Government put before the House of Commons the issue concerning our adherence to Euratom in such a way as to permit the Euratom question to be voted upon by Parliament? That is the point I was making and which was so studiously avoided.

Mr. Emery

The right hon. Gentleman knows that when he made his speech he did not use the words "voting upon"; he talked about a debate. Let us not switch the argument in the middle of this debate. It is a clever wiggle out; it will not wash. The hon. Gentleman knows that in July, in October and on Third Reading, the three treaties were discussed—not just the Treaty of Rome. That was made clear to the House.

This is a suitable opportunity for the Government to make some remarks about our accession to the European Atomic Energy Community. This was set up by a separate treaty at the same time as the European Economic Community. It concerns the peaceful uses of atomic energy. It promotes nuclear research and ensures the dissemination of technical information.

No one would claim that Euratom's history is an immense success story. When it was set up the future development of nuclear energy looked rather different from that viewed from our 1972 viewpoint. With hindsight it is clear that the desire of individual members to follow their own paths in exploiting the nuclear potential made it unlikely that any Community venture in this field would be a massive success. Even so, the criticism, and some might even say partial failure, which is acknowledged by many in the Community, has been more related to the lack of industrial collaboration than to any scientific inertia.

The position now reached is that all our partners in the enlarged Community accept, as do we, that to stand a chance in the world markets especially, with expensive technological activities such as nuclear energy, we must rationalise our efforts and co-ordinate major developments where we can. We have already shown our willingness to do this.

The right hon. Gentleman used the centrifuge project as part of his argument. I would like to correct him on one of the things he said about that. He suggested that the only secret about the project was the knowledge that it would work. The detailed technology pool in CENTAC maintains a classification factor on the centrifuge project even now. The information on this is still classified, and it would be wrong for the right hon. Gentleman to make people believe that the question of whether or not it works was the only important secret. It is because of this that there is the need to protect such secrets throughout the enlarged Community through Clause 11(2), and I hope that for that reason alone the right hon. Gentleman will be willing to withdraw his Amendment.

The question of our membership of the European Atomic Energy Authority is not really a problem in Amendment No. 408. What the Opposition are attempting to suggest is that, having accepted the Euratom Treaty, we should not defend our secrets within the Community. I cannot believe that a sensible Opposition, having to accept our accession to the Euratom Treaty, would not wish to ensure that our secrets were protected. The previous Administration acknowledged in the White Paper "Information in the Public Interest" published in 1969 that certain types of official material required the protection of the criminal sanctions provided by the Official Secrets Act. There is no doubt, in the context of the terms of the Euratom Treaty, that Euratom classified information falls within that category.

Mr. Ronald King Murray

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that our objection is to the provisions of this subsection of this Clause of this Bill, and will he accept that, from the way the Bill is framed, if a secret of this kind is disclosed by a British subject in any part of the Community, or by a foreign subject in Britain, he can be prosecuted in any of the countries of the Community? It would follow from that that, far from citizens of this country being protected by the presumption of innocence which they presently enjoy, they would be liable to be prosecuted for the disclosure of what is a secret in this country in the court of a foreign country which does not operate under the presumption of innocence as we know it.

Mr. Emery

The position under foreign law at present would ensure that a person who has disclosed a secret of that country would be able to be prosecuted in that country. This Clause does not affect prosecutions in any way other than in this country.

Mr. Deakins

May I put one minor matter to the hon. Gentleman which I am sure he will be able to clear up quickly? If an Englishman gives away information in England which the French under the French security rules would regard as classified information but which would not be classified information under British security rules, would that Englishman in England be guilty of an offence under this Clause? The way the Clause is drafted that would appear to be the case?

Mr. Emery

I thought for a moment that it was going to be a story about an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman.

The position is quite clear. It is not that he could be prosecuted for disclosing a French secret; it is a Euratom secret, because part of the information would be British within the Euratom concept.

The right hon. Gentleman put certain questions to me on inspection. Again, I was rather surprised at his questions because the position is no different now from what it was when he was advising his Government to accept the Treaty. He professes to be concerned about the background to nuclear proliferation. Inspections of the kind performed by Euratom are inspections of civil installations and they are to do exactly the opposite to that which he is suggesting. They are inspections not for military secrets but to ensure that materials and technology are not developed for military use. Surely he understood this when he was recommending to the country that the Euratom Treaty could be accepted by his Government and by the country as a whole.

The hon. Member for Ilkeston has left, but he argued that the Community might not maintain that Euratom was a success. He went on to argue that it is a Tin Lizzie—I think those were his words—and then he said that it was of vital importance because it could be exploited by the Community. He cannot have it both ways. He condemned Euratom for not being worth while and the next moment he said that he was terrified of Euratom because it meant that atomic military secrets would be presented to the French.

I think it important that the matter of the exchange of knowledge should be put straight. The heads under which information will be exchanged were agreed in detail in the course of the negotiations and are, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, scheduled in the Protocol published with the Treaty of Accession. The precise balance of information exchanged is a matter for mutual agreement between the Community, on the one hand, and the individual countries, on the other. I should have thought that it would be clear to the right hon. Gentleman that as a country with a large national programme we shall be in a better position to exploit the information we obtain from Euratom. This is one of the points that has been entirely neglected in this debate. An attempt has been made to suggest that we are the only people who are giving, that we shall in no way be beneficiaries. I must insist that in any serious and sensible consideration of this Bill and of this matter of the Euratom Treaty this statement is taken fully into account.

I have been on my feet for somewhat longer than I would normally expect but I wanted to try to deal with the debate in the way I considered right and proper and to make it quite clear that the Amendments suggested stand no chance of doing away with Euratom. They deal entirely with security matters, which I believe the Opposition would want to ensure can be maintained once we have signed the Euratom Treaty. I cannot believe that it would be a sensible Opposition which would suggest we should go into Euratom and then not have the safeguards of the national security of our secrets and the Euratom secrets which they, when they were the Government, would have insisted should be safeguarded.

Mr. Charles Loughlin (Gloucester shire, West)

I am very interested in the point that the hon. Gentleman made, that because we had a lead in nuclear technology we were likely to get more out of pooling than those countries which had not got as great a lead as ourselves. Will the hon. Gentleman tell me what he means?

Mr. Emery

Exactly what I said.

Mr. Benn

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for attempting to deal with some of the points which I made. Having heard him speak, I repeat what I said at the beginning, that this is one of the most important debates. The reason it has been poorly attended was contained in his closing remarks when he said there is no possibility that by voting upon the Amendment we can keep out of Euratom. That is what we are complaining about. He has provided no provision for the Committee to decide at any stage whether it wishes to be a party to this arrangement.

I shall take up briefly some of the points the hon. Gentleman made, because before we pass into the Lobby on this matter it is as well to get clear the issues that lie between us. The hon. Gentleman in winding up the debate made it clear—he was right to do so, and I intervened in his support—when he said that this was not a military exchange programme as such. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilkeston (Mr. Raymond Fletcher) might have given generally the impression that this was a defence exchange. For that reason the hon. Gentleman was right to intervene. But at the same time the hon. Gentleman must surely know that because of the complexity of nuclear technology one cannot easily divide the technologies into civil and military categories.

Mr. Emery rose——

Mr. Benn

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to finish, I shall certainly give way.

If we take, for example, the centrifuge project to which we both referred, the real sensitivity of the centrifuge technology was that it was known that the centrifuge was cheaper than the gas diffusion plant. That was 90 per cent. of the secret. But contained within centrifuge technology are certain components to which the hon. Gentleman referred which are important. They are important for military reasons. If other countries knew how to make effective centrifuges there would be a real risk of the spread of nuclear weapons.

My hon. Friend referred to civil exchange. This has been fully debated in The Times, by defence correspondents, and others who have had long debates. One of the difficulties is, first, that one cannot guarantee end use and secondly there is the technology involved. In many cases it is not nuclear technology but purely mechanical engineering, and some aspects of these matters allow some spilling over from the civil to the military side.

The next point I want to establish is that we believe that one of the biggest assets this country had was its quarter of a century of first-class nuclear technology, and that the Government made no serious attempt to use that experience to get advantages for this country. It is true that when the Labour Government looked at the Treaty we saw no insuperable obstacle. But as the hon. Gentleman said, quite candidly, Euratom has been a costly flop. It has been a terrible disappointment. The member States have not worked through it. The Germans and the French have done their work independently. The member States have not made Euratom into the great federal research programme which Euratom's officials would have liked, but that does not alter the fact that the feeding in, under the provisions of the treaty, of basic information about investment policy, research projects, the movement of fissile materials and so on, conveys to Euratom all the key information it needs to be able to monitor our own research programme.

This was the jewel in the British crown.

Mr. Raymond Fletcher

Diadem.

Mr. Benn

Diadem, if my hon. Friend prefers that word. He may have more acquaintance with jewellery than I have. But make no mistake—the Europeans know that this is our most valuable asset. When my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, as Prime Minister, made his famous Guildhall speeches on a European technological community, he was talking of the enormous contribution of British high technology in aircraft and in civil nuclear technology. But this great asset has not been used in the negotiations to get counter-vailing advantages as against, for example, our contribution to French agriculture. Why have we not used British nuclear technology to lift from our people some of the burden of financing French rural technology, which is not very good?

These are the charges we make. The way the Bill is drafted means that we have to debate this whole question on what is, in effect, a security officer's manual. The subsection is about exchange of screening procedures with other member countries. The Chamber is not as full as it might have been for this debate because one has to be an expert on nuclear energy, parliamentary procedure and one or two other things to realise the importance of the issues raised here. They are not self-evident and the Government have tried to conceal their importance.

The Solicitor-General rose——

Mr. Benn

The hon. and learned Gentleman is not yet in the Chair of the House of Commons. I hope I never live to see the day when he is.

The Solicitor-General

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the characteristic courtesy with which he has given way. I ask him to acknowledge, when he returns yet again to his suggestion that the drafting of the Bill has excluded opportunity for discussion of the issues involved in joining Euratom, the fact that the Government White Paper contained paragraphs dealing with it, that the White Paper was debated throughout last July and last October, and that the Bill on Second Reading was debated for several days in February. In not one single speech from the Front Bench opposite in all those days of debate, nor, as far as I have been able to trace, in a single Parliamentary Question, has any member of the Opposition even so much as referred to this apparently so important matter that he is raising with such anguish. That is the measure of the genuineness and sincerity of the case the right hon. Gentleman is making.

Mr. Benn

The hon. and learned Gentleman is setting himself up as a judge of what is proper and improper in Parliamentary debate. It is true that in general debate on the Common Market the effort and concentration may well have been upon wider matters, and that is all the more likely to be true if, as is the case, neither of the Front Benches saw an insuperable difficulty in the Euratom Treaty. But if the hon. and learned Gentleman does not understand the difference between a debate in principle and the tight legislative processes of Parliament, he simply does not understand the parliamentary system, which is that when one comes to the question of Euratom one must be allowed to discuss it. The fact is that but for the extraordinary accident that the hon. and learned Gentleman was forced to include in the Bill a provision for security procedures, we would not have been able to have even this debate on Euratom. The charge against the hon. and learned Gentleman is that he tries to cover under a cloud of discussion about general principle a reason why we should not debate now the important considerations which have been put to the Committee tonight.

That is the final complaint we make. That is the explanation I want to give of our vote. The Government—no one is more responsible for this than the Solicitor-General—so drew the Bill as to deny Parliament the opportunity to decide in isolation whether it wished to adhere to the Euratom Treaty. The Government signed the Treaties of Accession before they were published. The Government drafted a 12-Clause Bill against the alternative of the 1,000-Clause Bill which we always had in our minds had we promoted this legislation. A very full and lengthy Bill would have been necessary to allow parliamentary supervision.

Finally, however the issues that I have raised tonight are regarded, they are very big issues. These matters cannot be carried through without the consent of the British public. To try to make a change as monumental as this in the whole emphasis and direction of our nuclear work and to extend and change our provisions for official secrecy, though not by any means the most important of these matters, touches at the centre of a man's loyalty to his State, and cannot be altered by the tiny majority that the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his hon. Friends will secure yet again in the Division tonight. This matter must be taken to the British public, which alone has the authority to share what is an inheritance of our society with others within the European Community.

Mr. Loughlin

I am reluctant to intervene—[Interruption.] I can wait. The sedentary interventions of hon. Members opposite will not worry me.

I have avoided making interventions in the Committee stage till now, but by coincidence I was present when the Under-Secretary was winding up earlier. The hon. Gentleman said that, as we were the leading country in nuclear energy, we should gain more by pooling our information with the other countries which were presumably backward in nuclear energy than they would gain from us. This may be correct and axiomatic. I apologise if, by virtue of a low intelligence quotient, I cannot understand it. When I asked the Under-Secretary why it was so, he brushed it aside by saying. "Because I said so".

I do not know whether the Under-secretary is having a committee meeting with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster or is listening to this debate dealing with a specific and important issue. If the House of Commons means anything, the hon. Gentleman should be listening attentively. If the hon. Gentleman does not listen to the debate and is not prepared to answer, he does a gross disservice to the Committee. If I did not understand the matter and the fault is mine, the Under-Secretary is under a duty to explain to me in simple terms what he meant. He could not do so, and he cannot even now.

I invite the hon. Gentleman to intervene now and tell us why, if we are leaders in nuclear energy and we are to pool our information with countries which are backward in nuclear energy, he is right in saying that we are likely to get a greater advantage than those countries. If he can explain it to me, that is all right. If it is part of his Ministry brief that he does not understand, I am quite willing to talk around the point until his PPS comes to the Box to give him the information——

It being Ten o'clock, The CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report Progress and ask leave to sit again.

Committee report Progress.