Moscow (Hansard, 26 April 1978)

§ 12. Mr. Greville Janner
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will seek to pay an official visit to Moscow.

§ Mr. Luard
My right hon. Friend has no present plans to do so.

§ Mr. Janner
As my right hon. Friend is not planning to go to Moscow at the moment, will he now protest at the continued imprisonment of members of the Moscow-Helsinki monitoring committee? In particular, can he tell the House anything of the fate of Anatole Shcharansky, who has been held incommunicado for over 12 months?

§ Mr. Luard
My right hon. Friend and the Government generally have made known their concern on these questions many times in this House and on other occasions. During the Belgrade conference there was prolonged discussion about matters of this kind. We are well aware of the situation of Mr. Shcharansky, and opportunity is taken on appropriate occasions to make known our concern.

§ Mr. Boscawen
In view of the fact that 4 million or 5 million individuals inside the Soviet Union can and do listen regularly to the BBC, will the Minister ensure that, within the resources available for overseas broadcasts, greater priority is given to the size of transmitters and other facilities for the BBC to continue its transmissions there?

§ Mr. Luard
I agree that the facilities and transmitters available to the BBC's overseas broadcasts are matters of considerable concern to us. These matters were commented on in the CPRS report about overseas representation. I assure 1367 the hon. Gentleman that discussions are going on with a view to improving those facilities.

§ Mr. Heffer
Will my hon. Friend ask the Secretary of State, when he goes to Moscow on some future occasion, to tell the Russian Government that many Labour Members want peace, friendship, detente and the best possible relations with the Soviet Union but that it is impossible for us to understand why ordinary working peole who want to create free and independent trade unions, separate from the State—free in the sense that we understand trade unions—are sometimes put in mental institutions and arrested for trying to do something which in this country and in most countries in Western Europe is accepted as normal procedure?

§ Mr. Luard
I fully agree with my hon. Friend. I hope that the Soviet Government will take note of the views that he has expressed today and on previous occasions in the House on this question. The use of mental institutions as a means of imprisoning or keeping out of action people who express their own opinions, and, above all, people who simply try to perform the task of trade union leaders, is totally unacceptable to us in this House. I know that my right hon. Friend has heard what my hon. Friend said and will take account of it.