Cruise Missiles

HC Deb 01 March 1983 vol 38 cc117-22

3. Mr. Stoddart

asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he can give a more precise estimate of the cost of establishing a dual key system for United States cruise missiles located in the United Kingdom than that given in his reply of 1 February, Official Report, c. 63.

14. Mr. Penhaligon

asked the Secretary of State for Defence what estimates he received from the United States Government which led him to form his estimate of the cost of a dual key system for cruise missiles.

The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Michael Heseltine)

All dual key control systems are based on the ownership and operation of the weapons system involved. The cost to the United Kingdom of providing a force of 160 ground-launched cruise missiles over a period of 10 years has been estimated by the Ministry of Defence to be about £1 billion. The information on which this estimate was based reflected our knowledge of the United States cruise missile programme.

Mr. Stoddart

That is a very high figure. Does the Minister agree that, high though it is, it is worth it for the defence of the sovereignty of this country? However, did the right hon. Gentleman see last night the ITV programme "The Truth Game" and the statement by Admiral La Rocque, a former high ranking officer in the Pentagon, that nobody in Europe could stop the United States of American firing its nuclear weapon system from this country? Would it not be far better if the Government declined to have these weapons on our soil?

Mr. Heseltine

The hon. Gentleman is right. The cruise system is justified by the strategic decisions affecting this country. I did not see the programme last night, but I have read the reviews in the national press. It seems that the consensus is that it had more to do with propaganda than with an objective analysis. [Interruption.] I say that because I read the reviews, and that is what the reviews say. The views of Admiral La Rocque have been denied on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mr. Penhaligon

If we were to say to the Americans that we would give them only £100 million and that we must have dual control, does he believe that they would not let us have the missile system?

Mr. Heseltine

The hon. Member has forgotten that it was the Europeans who approached the Americans and suggested that these missiles should be based on European territory. All our previous existence, which is considerable and stretches back over 30 years, of operating American nuclear weapons from British bases has been covered, as the House is aware, by the 1952 agreement. It has been found to be satisfactory by all Governments and we have seen no reason to change it.

Mr. Alan Clark

Does my right hon. Friend recall the various occasions in the past month, notably on the Brian Walden programme, when he has said that each of these missiles would be accompanied by British service men when they were dispersed? Leaving aside the fact that this does not say very much about my right hon. Friend's faith in the 1952 agreement, what would be the cost of the deployment? Would it not involve at least a brigade and greatly distort home defence as well as inflicting another burden?

Mr. Heseltine

I know of my hon. Friend's concern on this matter, but he will agree that if there were to be deployment of such missiles on British territory it would be appropriate for there to be a British military force while deployment was taking place. It seems right that those arrangements should be made. The cost of providing personnel would be met from within the defence budget.

Mr. John Silkin

Is not the Secretary of State becoming a little confused? Is not the truth simply that there is no dual key, no dual control, no British veto on the use of cruise missiles and that the British people do not want the cruise missiles here in any event?

Mr. Heseltine

The arrangements for cruise missiles are those that applied to the F111 and the American nuclear submarines that have a nuclear weapon capability. The arrangements were satisfactory to the Government whom the right hon. Gentleman supported.

Mr. John Silkin

Will the right hon. Gentleman face one essential fact? Cruise missiles can be launched or deployed, as he said, from any surface in the United Kingdom. What possible control has Britain over their use? Is it not a fact that the Americans would not have the weapons here if we had such control?

Mr. Heseltine

This is a serious matter and the right hon. Gentleman must not misrepresent the position, as he seeks to do. The fact is that those missiles could not be deployed—

Mr. Silkin

From bases?

Mr. Heseltine

—from bases, without the agreement of the British Prime Minister. That is the first stage in the chain of inquiries about which the right hon. Gentleman asks. The second stage would be the firing from outside the base from which the missiles were deployed. The agreement would cover that contingency in the same way as it would cover the deployment from the original bases.

Mr. Roper

Does the Secretary of State agree that the only previous example of land-based American missiles in this country was the Thor missile, for which there was a dual key arrangement? Have he or his Department had any discussions with the American authorities since 1979 when the Americans offered a dual key arrangement?

Mr. Heseltine

The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the Thor missile, because that was a system where a dual key arrangement of the sort that we are discussing existed, and the system was owned by the British military command. That gives substance to the view that I have explained to the House that if one wants a dual key in the Thor precedent, a substantial price tag is involved in the process. The Thor missile is 30 years old, as are the circumstances surrounding it. Since then, under all Governments, we have had wide experience of operating the disciplines that govern the American use of bases in this country under the agreements that have replaced, or have been seen to be sufficient in the place of, the original Thor arrangements. It is those new arrangements, embodied in the Churchill-Truman understandings, that have proved to be satisfactory.

4. Mr. Renton

asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether he plans further discussions with the United States Government regarding the deployment and control of cruise missiles in the United Kingdom.

9. Mr. Frank Allaun

asked the Secretary of State for Defence what progress has been made towards the deployment of cruise missiles.

15. Mr. Straw

asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether the installation of cruise missiles continues to proceed according to plan.

Mr. Heseltine

Work is proceeding on schedule at RAF Greenham Common to enable deployment of cruise missiles in this country to begin by the end of the year as planned, in the absence of concrete results from the arms control negotiations now under way in Geneva.

Officials from my Department regularly meet officials of the United States Government to discuss matters affecting the planned deployment. Ministers are in regular contact with their American opposite numbers.

Mr. Renton

I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer, but is he now sufficiently satisfied with the agreement with the Americans on the deployment of cruise that he will never try to change it under any circumstances? Or does he believe that if subsequent events, such as the result of the German elections next Sunday, were to enable him to negotiate dual key at a much lower cost he would try to change the agreement?

Mr. Heseltine

I am sure that my hon. Friend realises that he is putting to me hypothetical situations in unlimited circumstances. It is impossible for Ministers to anticipte on such a long time scale and to answer hypothetical questions in that context. I say to him only that the Government, having considered the circumstances in which the cruise missile is deployed, are satisfied with the terms of our agreement with the United States.

Mr. Frank Allaun

Is not the Secretary of State shirking his duty in refusing to debate this issue with Joan Ruddock of the CND and instead hinting that he will push it off to a junior Minister? Secondly, did not Admiral La Rocque say last night that the British would be fools to have this American missile on their territory, which statement is backed up by the unconditional opposition to the weapon of 54 per cent. of the British public, with only 32 per cent. in favour?

Mr. Heseltine

The hon. Gentleman must be fully aware that Admiral La Rocque's statement is simply untrue. The hon. Gentleman's first question was why I do not engage in a debate with Joan Ruddock. I cannot see how the Labour party can suggest for one moment that I should have a debate with a Labour candidate who failed to get elected, having secured the lowest Labour vote in absolute proportionate terms in that constituency since the war, and who sent out an election address in which, from one end of it to the other, she did not refer to defence. I do not understand the dogma that says that I should engage in debate with failed Labour candidates when I can debate even more successfully with failed Labour Governments.

Mr. Straw

Is the Secretary of State aware that with every statement that he makes on dual control and dual key he does not clarify the position of the British Government, but further confuses it? Will he answer a simple, straightforward question? Will a British Prime Minister have the right, at the moment just before the firing of a cruise missile, to say to a United States President "You will not use that weapon"?

Mr. Heseltine

The answer is perfectly clear. The agreement with the Americans—

Mr. Cryer

Yes of no?

Mr. Heseltine

Perhaps I could answer the question in the terms that it was put to me. The agreement with the Americans governs the use of any base from which their nuclear weapons are to be used in this country. Those bases cannot be used without the agreement of the British Prime Minister. In those circumstances, the answer to the hon. Gentleman has to be that the Americans would not use those bases without that agreement.

Mr. Bill Walker

Does my right hon. Friend agree that for 30 years and more the United States Air Force has been operating from bases within the United Kingdom, flying both theatre and strategic bombers with both free-fall and stand-off capabilities, and that it makes complete nonsense of the Opposition's position on dual key when a bomber hundreds of miles away from its base would appear to he much more potent than a missile that is land-based?

Mr. Heseltine

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for putting the position so clearly. The House will be unable to resist the conclusion that the only real change in the Labour party's position is not the strength of the argument, but the fact that that party is now in opposition.

Mr. Denzil Davies

If the Secretary of State is right—I do not believe that he has convinced the House—that the firing of cruise missiles will be a joint decision and that Britain has control over it, does it not destroy the whole basis of the reason why the Europeans asked for cruise missiles in the first place? Was not the whole object of cruise missiles that they should be American-owned, American controlled, with complete American responsibility for their firing, and that that should be perceived as such by the other side?

Mr. Heseltine

The original purpose—[Interruption.] I should be most grateful if, before I get out two words, I were entitled to deploy my answers in the same manner as that in which the question was put. The original reason why former Chancellor Schmidt of West Germany raised the potential for the deployment of cruise missiles in Europe was that he saw the need to counter the deployment of SS20s by the Soviet Union with a land-based intermediate-range missile based in Europe. That was the original purpose, and it is the purpose that this Government have supported. Moreover, I believe that it is the purpose that the Labour party, had it remained in government, would also have supported.

Dr. Owen

Is it not the job of the Secretary of State for Defence to try to ensure the maximum degree of confidence by the nation as a whole in the defence decisions of Her Majesty's Government? Is not the lesson of Harold Macmillan in 1958, in establishing the dual key for Thor, that he had the confidence of all parties and of the vast majority of the people of the country, and that there was never the controversy about the Thor missile deployment that there has been about the cruise missile? Does the Secretary of State agree that opinion polls demonstrate that, were there to be a dual key, the majority of the people of this country would be ready to accept, if necessary, and given failed INF negotiations, cruise missile deployment here, because that would strengthen the Government's hand?

Mr. Heseltine

The right hon. Gentleman will be fully aware that a major source of the attempt to undermine the confidence of this country is to be found in the fact that the party of which he was once a member is now consistently trying to undermine the credibility of agreements upon which it relied 100 per cent. in every Labour Government since the war. The Labour party, through its official defence spokesmen, Foreign Secretaries and Prime Ministers knew the details of these agreements as they applied to American nuclear weapons and the basis from which they came.

Dr. Owen

They existed before Thor.

Mr. Heseltine

And they were current after it. The right hon. Gentleman is fully aware that the systems to which I refer existed after the Thor arrangements, and they were found fully satisfactory by the Labour party and by the right hon. Gentleman when he was in office.

Mr. Nelson

Will my right hon. Friend remember, in the context of all these discussions, that the overriding consideration is the fact that we face a combined Soviet threat of some 220 SS20 missiles, each with three warheads, which have a combined killing power of nearly 24,000 Hiroshima bombs, and which are all directed at Western Europe? Does my right hon. Friend agree that a policy of deterrence, not acquiescence, is the most credible posture?

Mr. Heseltine

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he puts in the starkest possible context one of the threats that we face from the Soviet Union. The entire basis of our strategy in the West lies in deterrence, and the purpose of the deployment of cruise missiles is not to initiate a new breed of weapons, but simply to counter with our deterrent the deployment of SS20 missiles, which the Soviet Union itself of course initiated.