HC Deb 24 January 1985 vol 71 cc1232-40

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn—[Mr. Lang.]

10.14 pm
Mr. John Home Robertson (East Lothian)

I understand that the Minister of State has had to come to the Chamber to reply to this debate because the Under-Secretary of State is busy studying bananas in the Windward islands.

I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the proposal to publish a new version of the pamphlet "Home Defense and the Farmer". The original pamphlet under that title was published in 1958. I understand from a written reply to Lord Melchett that two civil servants have been revising that pamphlet since May 1980. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food wrote to me recently to confirm that the new version was to be published early in the new year. We all look forward to reading the results of five years' work by two intrepid civil servants.

Meanwhile, I urge the Minister to reconsider certain matters before he publishes the advice on farming after the nuclear holocaust. In her letter of 21 December, the Parliamentary Secretary said that the new pamphlet will present an updating of the advice contained in the previous booklet about the simple steps which farmers could take to afford some protection to themselves and their farms against the effects of radioactive fallout from a nuclear weapon exploded some distance away. The advice on these measures remains much the same as it was when the old pamphlet was issued". That information raises three important points. First, farming has changed dramatically since 1958. The industry is now heavily dependent on bought-in supplies, which would be totally disrupted in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. There are no horses now to take over from tractors when the fuel supplies run out, and the number of farm workers has been more than halved from 679,000 in 1958 to 325,000 now. It will be almost impossible to return to primitive agriculture.

Secondly, the scale of any likely nuclear attack is far greater than was envisaged in 1958. The deployment of dispersed cruise missiles in addition to fixed targets makes it likely that Britain will be subject to a blanket nuclear attack in the event of any hostilities.

Thirdly, the 1958 pamphlet refers to damage from blast and fall-out but says nothing whatever about the other effects that are now thought to be likely, such as the nuclear winter.

I should like to cite some examples of the advice in the pamphlet which the Minister appears to think is much the same as what is needed now. We are told that people who saw the mushroom-shaped cloud would do well to make ready to shelter in case fall-out followed in their area. If I saw a mushroom cloud, I would be more inclined to make ready to meet the Almighty. Remember that the fall-out might be so dangerous that you would have to stay indoors for two days after it came down. This means that you might not be able to get out to milk your cows and they might be in considerable pain by the time you could milk them again". The Home Office now recommends that one should stay in one's shelter for 14 days before emerging. One can imagine the condition of cows left without being fed or milked for such a long period.

I must give one further example of the advice in the 1958 pamphlet.

you should cut and cart away the grass from your pastures, especially if the fall-out had come in the summer when growth was quick. This treatment would remove most of the fall-out from the pastures. Your cows could then graze the new grass as it grew. Presumably that contaminated grass would have to be taken to Sellafield for reprocessing.

The final sentence that I have quoted is open to serious doubt, because the new grass could grow only in the presence of heat and light.

The term "nuclear winter" is used to describe the climatic consequences of the smoke and dust raised into the atmosphere in a nuclear conflict. The seminal work on this issue was done by Dr. Turco, Dr. Toon, Dr. Ackerman, Dr. Pollack and Dr. Sagan —TTAPS for short. Their study was subjected to rigorous scrutiny by 100 physicists and biologists before it was published in America in 1983, and was debated even more fully at the Washington conference in October that year. The International Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment—SCOPE—is now considering the matter further, and I have been advised by people in Edinburgh university that there is a widespread consensus among scientists all over the world that this thesis makes sense.

Some of us find it odd that it has taken scientists so long to discover that there is no fire without smoke. The thesis is as simple as that. It requires a calculation of the volume of smoke and dust that would be raised into the atmosphere by a nuclear conflict and a further calculation of how much heat and light from the sun would be blocked by this pall of smoke.

In a written reply of 6 March 1981, the Ministry of Defence said that a 1,000 megaton attack would be required to ensure the destruction of cruise missiles in Britain. The TTAPS study shows that as little, if I can use that word, as 100 megatons could raise enough smoke and dust into the atmosphere to darken the sky and reduce temperatures to minus 20 deg C during an artificial winter lasting two months. A bigger conflict could make things even worse and we should remember that those climatic changes would affect the whole hemisphere.

It has been estimated that only 11 million of our population of 55 million would survive the initial nuclear attack. If a nuclear winter were to occur during the spring or summer, the survivors would find themselves in a devastated, dark, freezing radioactive desert with no prospect of food supplies for many months. There is growing scientific evidence to support the thesis, but the Government, and especially the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, have apparently decided to ignore all of the evidence and to adopt tactics that are intended to mislead the public.

In a letter of 21 December, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food told me that: More than one expert has seriously questioned the inputs to the study and the authors themselves have acknowledged that their estimates of the physical and chemical impacts of nuclear war are necessarily uncertain because they used one-dimensional models, because the data base is incomplete, and because the problem is not amenable to experimental investigation". To take the last point first, thank God it is not amenable to experimental investigation. However, there is evidence from volcanic eruptions to suggest that dust in the upper atmosphere can affect daylight and temperature.

I must try to deal with the Minister's attempt to discredit the entire study, for that is what it is. I asked her to list the scientists to whom she had referred as having reservations about the findings. In a written reply on 21 December she listed nine scientists, including Dr. Norman Myers of Oxford and the five members of the original TTAPS team. This appears to be a mischievous interpretation of the fact that, although they believe that a nuclear winter would be more than likely to occur, it is not absolutely certain in all possible circumstances. I know that Dr. Myers has protested directly to the Minister about her reference to him as a doubter. Meanwhile. Ministers were refusing to allow civil servants to attend scientific seminars, which were being held to discuss the study, all over Britain. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

In marked contrast, the United States Government set up a panel of scientists to review the issue. The panel published its findings last month. It said in its conclusion: there is a clear possibility that great portions of the land areas of the northern temperate zone (and, perhaps, a larger segment of the planet) could be severely affected. Possible impacts include major temperature reductions (particularly for an exchange that occurs in the summer) lasting for weeks, with subnormal temperatures persisting for months. The impact of these temperature reductions and associated meteorological changes on the surviving population, and on the biosphere that supports the survivors, could be severe". The United States Government are therefore taking this material seriously, and rightly so.

It seems a mischievous, cruel nonsense for the Government to attempt to conceal such evidence from the British people. If the Minister refuses to acknowledge the validity of this evidence tonight, I must appeal to scientists to give their evidence on these affairs to Members of Parliament direct to enable Parliament to inform the people, if the Government insist on obscuring the facts.

We know that the Government are obsessed with nuclear weapons, but many of us, and a growing proportion of the population, think that the time has come for nuclear tacticians to see that they have fallen victim to their own deterrence. This is not Left-wing propaganda. It is a matter of historical fact. So I can appeal to this Minister at least to stop trying to kid farmers that they will be able to go back to producing food within days of a nuclear holocaust under the supervision of farm wardens wearing tin hats.

There is increasing evidence that the combined effect of blast, heat, radiation and the subsequent long, freezing night would put an end to food production as we know it. The time has come for a different defence strategy, but that is a matter for another Minister. I certainly hope that this Minister of State will at least say something about the relevance of the TTAPS study and the nuclear winter thesis to the United Kingdom agriculture industry.

10.26 pm
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John MacGregor)

As the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) rightly said, his concluding comments were directed much more to defence matters than to agriculture. Obviously the hon. Gentleman would not expect me to go into them tonight.

The hon. Gentleman has shown his interest in this subject by the number of parliamentary questions that he has asked recently and by his correspondence with my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, to which he referred. Therefore, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for providing in an Adjournment debate an opportunity for me to explain in greater detail than is possible in parliamentary questions the Government's position, particularly in relation to the pamphlet that is the subject of the debate.

I should like to address the subject under three main headings: first, the need for such a pamphlet as is proposed; second, the contents proper to such a pamphlet; and, finally, the timing of issue of such advice. The basic premise is that the whole purpose of our defence policy is to prevent the escalation into nuclear war of any other act of aggression on our country. It has very successfully achieved just that over the last 40 years, but to make that deterrence policy even more credible we have to have proper civil defence planning for any eventuality. We must also, under more recent planning assumptions, have regard to lesser eventualities such as a crisis short of war or a period of conventional war.

I do not intend to deal tonight with either of those two eventualities — a crisis such as food shortages, or anything of that kind, or a period of conventional war—because the hon. Gentleman did not do so. However, since both the hon. Gentleman and I have concentrated so much recently upon some of the huge surpluses that we have to deal with in certain commodities in the European Economic Community, we ought to recognise the beneficial aspects of having modest surpluses in certain commodities, because they can help to alleviate some of the crises relating to shortages of commodities around the world. We ought also to recognise the benefits of the increasing move towards self-sufficiency that we have so successfully achieved in recent years in British agriculture. This makes the situation so very different from what it was 30 or 40 years ago.

I want to concentrate, as did the hon. Gentleman, upon the nuclear question. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is well forward with its civil defence planning for food and for agriculture on which advice to farmers must be based. There is no secret about the general outlines of our planning. They were set out in Home Office circular ES 1/79 which is available to the public and which was issued to local authorities in January 1979. Much the same material is contained in the new Home Office consolidated circular on civil defence that was issued to local authorities in draft for comment in July of last year. A copy is available in the Library.

Against this background, the question arises, how much of this material, much of which is organisational, needs to be made known directly to individual farmers and what further advice should they be given about what they themselves should do? I turn, therefore, to answering those questions in relation to the possibility of nuclear war and its consequences.

Nobody disputes that, in the event of a large-scale nuclear attack on the United Kingdom, there would be very large numbers of casualties and widespread disruption. Here we are on territory that is, for most of us, mercifully uncharted, but because of its unfamiliarity it is an area in which we need to give advice. As with conventional war, there is very little to be said that might help those who were at or close to ground zero of a nuclear explosion. The more likely risk in the case of most farmers might be the dangers resulting from radioactive fallout from an explosion some distance away. That was the position when our original booklet, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, was published in the 1950s. It remains so today, as does much of the advice that can be given to farmers on this matter.

Therefore, it is our intention that this is the ground that should be covered when a new edition of our booklet of advice to farmers is published. I know that some of the advice to be given consists of taking simple action such as getting cattle inside where possible. The hon. Gentleman made some fun of that. I am not suggesting that it is funny, but the hon. Gentleman tried to make it into a funny piece of advice. Another simple action was the covering up of water supplies or improving the protection given by walls by stacking various kinds of material against them. It is easy to criticise advice on those lines as inadequate in the face of the enormity of a nuclear attack, but the fact remains that such action could make all the difference between losing cattle and keeping the radiation dose down to acceptable levels and to having rather than losing a supply of water.

The hon. Gentleman has spoken at length about the perils of a nuclear attack, and, in particular, of the possible effects of a so-called nuclear winter. He is clearly impressed by the case made by eminent scientists about the likely effects of nuclear conflict on the atmosphere. He referred to a particular study and article. He argued that those effects have a bearing on contingency plans for agriculture and on the content of the booklet.

We have never attempted to disguise the fact that the consequences of a nuclear exchange will be appalling. That is why we must prevent war from ever breaking out in the first place. NATO's policies of deterrence, coupled with the unceasing search for genuine arms control agreements, are the best means of maintaining our peace and freedom. As I said earlier, they have worked for 40 years.

However, it would be premature to speculate on the implications of the nuclear winter hypothesis until the results of further more detailed work, carried out in the field to test its scientific validity, are available.

Mr. Gavin Strang (Edinburgh, East)

My hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) has done the House and the country a service by initiating this short debate. He has rightly brought out that the Government, for reasons that I do not understand, have sought to play down, if not discredit, the agreement between American and Soviet scientists that a nuclear winter is the likely outcome of nuclear exchange, not necessarily an all-out nuclear exchange. Why are the Government seeking to play down that result?

Mr. MacGregor

I am not playing down the consequences of an appalling nuclear holocaust, but there are all sorts of possibilities. Let me go into those briefly, from the agriculture point of view. Obviously, what the hon. Member for East Lothian was talking about takes us much wider into the whole area of defence policy as well.

We need to have the results of further and more detailed work to test the scientific validity of the claims; that brings me to a point that the hon. Gentleman made great play of in his speech. In a sense, I detected that he was calling for an update of the booklet and at the same time arguing that it would be irrelevant because of the dangers of a nuclear winter. That seems to be somewhat contradictory, but perhaps I slightly misunderstand his position. He seemed to be urging that we produce the booklet for guidance to farmers—

Mr. Home Robertson

Let me clarify the point. It is fairly futile to offer advice on survival in circumstances where it is becoming increasingly evident that people cannot survive. I am suggesting that, if the Government go ahead with their plans to publish the leaflet, they will simply be trying to mislead the public into thinking that a nuclear war can be survived. That is why I am suggesting that the Minister should not go ahead with publishing the pamphlet.

Mr. MacGregor

Let me come to that point later.

Let me talk directly about the present position with regard to the nuclear winter. The theory has received wide publicity and was the subject of an article to which the hon. Gentleman drew attention. The article is 10 pages long. It contains two rather complex scientific tables and six detailed graphs and concludes with 88 references and notes.

I am not qualified to test the authenticity of that theory. However, I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should claim that he was deliberately misinformed when, in reply to a question on 21 November 1984, he was told that reservations about the conclusions of that study had been made by some of those who were themselved involved in the study. That reply was in no sense an attempt "mischievously to undermine the study". There were reservations about the study. The article to which the hon. Gentleman referred ends as follows: Our estimates of the physical and chemical impacts of nuclear war are necessarily uncertain because we have used one-dimensional models, because the data base is incomplete, and cause the problem is not amenable to experimental investigation. We are also unable to forecast the detailed nature of the changes in atmospheric dynamics and meteorology implied by our nuclear war scenarios, on the effect of such changes on the maintenance or dispersal of the initiating dust and smoke clouds. Nevertheless, the magnitudes of the first order effects are so large, and the implications so serious, that we hope the scientific issues raised here will be vigorously and critically examined. I characterise that as a reservation, which was the point made earlier.

Dr. Brian Mawhinney (Peterborough)

Perhaps my hon. Friend knows that I am the only professional radiation biologist in the House. Will he accept it from me that the variation in the assumptions behind that paper are of such a magnitude, and the things that people can do to protect themselves from nuclear blast and fallout are such, that any counsel that no action should be taken because of this doomsday scenario would be unfortunate?

Mr. MacGregor

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, which makes the point that I sought to make. Indeed, the authors sought to make that point but did not put it so clearly. I noted that the hon. Member for East Lothian acknowledged that action could and should be taken to deal with lesser effects of nuclear radiation.

The proper perspective on the matter was well put by another scientist, Dr. John Maddox. He was the author of an article in the magazine Nature, published on 1 March 1984. The article was headed: Nuclear Winter, Not Yet Established", and subtitled, Talk of some of the consequences of nuclear warfare had better be postponed until some of the underlying assumptions are better understood. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney) made that point extremely well.

The article concludes: there is the strongest case for asking that the prospect of a nuclear winter should not be made into a more substantial bogeyman than it is by those who earnestly wish to avert the prospect of nuclear war as such. By clouding the case with disputable predictions they are in danger of weakening it. That is what the hon. Member for East Lothian did tonight.

Further reservations were expressed by Dr. Fred Singer in the magazine Practical Civil Defence, published in August 1984. The article is entitled, Is the 'Nuclear Winter' Real?", and Dr. Singer questions what he describes as outstanding uncertainties that need investigation.

The current position is that the debate on this matter continues. Further studies are being conducted by the international scientific community, most notably by the neutral body SCOPE, the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, part of the International Council of Scientific Unions. That is an important point. The results of the study are expected in 1985, and the Government will await them with interest. We would not wish to dismiss the nuclear winter out of hand, but as matters stand, many aspects of the argument must be regarded at least as not proven. We shall not, therefore, cover that matter in our pamphlet.

It is important to understand that all this does not mean that our booklet will be of no value. We must plan for a wide range of possible scenarios in our agricultural planning, and cover areas which I have mentioned only briefly, including conventional war and other world crises that prevent the free transport of food as well as the nuclear winter scenario.

Even if we accept the nuclear winter theory without criticism—that is a long way from where I stand tonight—the fact remains that we must still plan for lesser scale attacks, whether conventional or nuclear weapon attacks. There are simple steps which farmers can take to provide some protection for themselves and their farms against the hazards of nuclear attack. It is right that we should renew advice to farmers on what to do about these matters. It will, therefore, be included in our booklet, which still has a useful role to play in this respect.

The timing of the publication of the revised edition must be considered carefully. One reason for considering a revised edition is that, with the renewed interest in civil defence, we are receiving a fairly regular stream of inquiries about such an updated booklet. Therefore, the Government believe that advice to farmers should be published along the lines of that contained in the 1950s pamphlet, now long out of print, and with the same objectives. I stress that much of the advice remains as it was. However, we must not get the importance of the document out of proportion. The main thrust of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food civil defence planning must remain the work being done within the Department, some of which, where appropriate, is being pursued with local authorities.

Some wish us to take more advanced action with regard to the plans—for example, by appointing now the farm wardens who in wartime would be a vital link between a local group of about 20 farmers and the officers of our local agricultural control organisation—the body that would be created at that time to support and guide the industry. However, our present view is that there is no current need to make the appointments, although all the contingency plas are ready.

The areas to be served by each farm warden have been delineated by our regional and divisional offices, and they have identified the sources from which such people might quickly be drawn. Those chosen would already be people well known in their localities, who already had a good working knowledge of the farms in their areas; that would be their most valuable asset in acting as a channel for advice to farmers, and in conveying farmers' problems to the wartime Ministry.

The hon. Gentleman asked me to record the present position with regard to the new edition of the advice to farmers. The text has been prepared by civil servants in my Department with access to officers of the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service for technical farming advice, and to Home Office scientists for material relating to the effects of blast and radiation. The text is substantially complete but is being revised to take account of the latest findings in the new Home Office rules on calculating the effects of radiation and blast. The booklet, as I said, will deal mainly with what we believe to be the aspect most likely to cause problems for farmers—the effects of radiation from fallout.

As for the timing, I cannot give a firm commitment about publication. It depends on when the work is completed. The hon. Gentleman should not complain that the booklet has not been put to press, because it gives me the opportunity to examine his comments and advice on the booklet. One possibility would be to time publication to coincide with the issue of other civil defence publications in the pipeline, so that it can be seen for what it is—a routine but important part of the Government's continuing work to advance the state of readiness of civil defence.

Mr. Home Robertson

Can the Minister confirm that the pamphlet has been revised? Does he recall that HMSO listed it as being published as long as two months ago? Why has it been suppressed? Are the Government embarrassed about it?

Mr. MacGregor

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman is so eager to catch his train that he did not listen to my concluding remarks. I made it clear that the booklet is in its final stages of revision, but that it must be finally revised to take account of the latest findings in the new Home Office rules on calculating the effects of radiation and blast. I repeat that it may be desirable to publish it with other civil defence publications in the pipeline, and I hope that if we do so, it will be seen as part of the Government's continuing programme to advance the readiness of civil defence. In that context, I hope that he will welcome it.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjournment accordingly at seventeen minutes to Eleven o'clock.