Non-aggression Pact (Hansard, 1 February 1983)

§ 3. Mr. Adley
asked the Secretary of State for Defence what is the effect on United Kingdom defence policy of the Russian proposal for a non-aggression pact.

§ The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Michael Heseltine)
No changes are planned in the Government's defence policy, but we are carefully studying the Warsaw Pact proposals, including that for a treaty on the mutual non-use of force. NATO is already fully and publicly committed to the non-use of force except in self-defence. Any treaty could not, of course, be a substitute for real progress toward a general reduction in the level of armaments. We await a constructive response to the radical proposals that have been put forward by NATO.

§ Mr. Adley
The soft words pouring out of the Kremlin make good propaganda, but does my right hon. Friend agree that it is deeds, not words, that count? In view of the ruthless extermination of freedom in the countries of eastern Europe—Hungary, East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia—and in Afghanistan, practised by the Soviet Union for the past 40 years, will my right hon. Friend ensure that it is deeds not words that count when it comes to entering upon any of these negotiations?

§ Mr. Heseltine
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful question. It explains a background that has 129 meant that, since the war, we in this country have been determined to maintain a credible deterrent in favour of peace and that all parties, up to and including this Government, have seen the ability of the Western world to deter the Soviet Union as the single most important guarantee of peace on offer.

§ Mr. John Silkin
May I first wish the right hon. Gentleman an enjoyable, if abbreviated, tenure of office? How does he consider that the United Kingdom's possession of nuclear weapons enables it to take part in the peace negotiations for the general reduction in nuclear arms about which he spoke when our possession of those nuclear weapons does not allow us even into the negotiating chamber?

§ Mr. Heseltine
I presume that the right hon. Gentleman, as a leading member of the previous Government, explored all these relative advantages and arguments and that he decided that the nature of the Western Alliance was such, and has been such since the 1940s, that Britain, under Labour or Conservative Governments, believed itself to be a fully integrated member of the Alliance and of the negotiating posture of the West.

§ Mr. Silkin
The right hon. Gentleman believes, does he not, that the United Kingdom has no place in the negotiating chamber and wishes to leave the matter entirely to the United States?

§ Mr. Heseltine
The position is the same as that which existed under the Government whom the right hon. Gentleman supported. If it was so profoundly unsatisfactory, why did he not change it?

§ Mr. Speaker
Mr. Nicholas Lyell.

§ Mr. Silkin
Why does not the right hon. Gentleman answer the question?

§ Mr. Heseltine
The position is the same.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Will the Front Benches be as self-restrained as the rest of the House?

§ Mr. Lyell
I revert to the question of non-aggression. While one would welcome any genuine moves in that direction from the Soviet Union, might it not make a major start by reducing the 19,000 battle tanks that it seeks to keep on the borders between Western and Eastern Europe, which compares with 6,000 or 7,000 in NATO?

§ Mr. Heseltine
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for that question. He will be aware that the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact enjoy a superiority not simply in tanks. That superiority exists in many of the conventional forces of eastern European countries. It is precisely because of that, and precisely because the eastern European countries did not reduce their conventional forces after 1945 whereas the West did that it was necessary for us to form the NATO Alliance in the first place.