OFFENCES (Hansard, 9 July 1991)

§ Mr. Cohen
I want the Minister to agree to write to me about offences. I said on Second Reading that there should be an offence of wilfully misleading the inspectorate and asked why it had not been included in the Bill. The clause provides only that someone who wilfully obstructs any member of the inspection team … shall be guilty of an offence. The issue that I raised on Second Reading is worthy of consideration, and the Minister did not respond to it. I do not ask him to do so now, but I hope that he will give some thought to the matter and will write to me.

§ Mr. Lennox-Boyd
I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman that undertaking.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 4 to 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule agreed to.
Bill reported, without amendment.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

§ Mr. Cryer
We should not allow the Under-Secretary's unsatisfactory responses to go by without comment. The hon. Gentleman employed the formula that Ministers usually adopt when they do not want to answer a plain, straightforward question. In the context of national security, they say that what can and cannot be inspected cannot be defined. However, the Government will be asked about inspections by other members of the treaty and they will have to respond. After all, the Government will be bound to be open. We are discussing future legislation that arises from a treaty that has been signed by the Government and that will provide access to inspect and verify arrangements for the mutual inspection of arms. The mumbo-jumbo that the Minister produced about the national interest not allowing any definition of what can be excluded, for example, is not acceptable, given the changes that have taken place throughout Europe.
At an earlier stage, hon. Members spoke of the cold war and the threat from the Soviet Union. None of us believed in that threat for very long and it has now been proved that it was a hollow one. It was—[Interruption.] Hon. Members may chortle, but the threat has been proved to have been hollow. Many of us, since elected to this place, have been saying that the threat from the Soviet Union was an illusion that was developed by the Conservatives and the military to justify wanton, wasteful expenditure year after year when we should have been spending the money on hospitals, schools and infrastructure. The moneys should not have been wasted on things that we could never have used. Yet it seems that the old hollow attitude is still prevalent.
The Soviet Union is no longer an enemy. The right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) went to the Soviet Union and said that its leader was a bold, courageous man. She did not stay in office long enough to make further visits to Moscow to sustain the friendship that she developed and, in any event, it was not necessary to do so. After all, we are friends with the Soviet Union now. 892 Indeed, all the eastern bloc countries have changed. We do not need to indulge in the constant repetition of cold-war language or to argue that we must retain our enormous secrets because any indication of their nature to an elected body, such as the House, would prejudice the safety of the United Kingdom. It was not true then and it is not true now.
I hope that the Minister's comments do not show a lacklustre attitude on the part of the Government in he implementation of the treaty, because any treaty that is a step towards reducing our commitment to arms expenditure, towards building up confidence and towards providing verification that we are carrying out our part of the treaty is a step in the right direction. That is why we are supporting the treaty tonight.

§ Mr. George
I shall not follow the line of argument pursued by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer).
For many years, people in the Labour party and outside, some more than others, argued vociferously that NATO's figures showing the enormous disparity of conventional forces between NATO and the Warsaw pact were a fiction. I remember the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament producing a document that it subsequently denied it had sent out, arguing that the concept of the Speznatz was a figment of some militarists' imagination. But when the CFE negotiations began, the Soviets honestly put on the table exactly what they had. They admitted that they had lied and, if anything, the discrepancy had been understated.
It is possible to argue that people on both sides played up the cold war for their own advantage and, bearing in mind the evidence available, most people would argue that, looking back for a period, there was a considerable threat. The cold war did exist and it was not exclusively the responsibility of a handful of warmongers on either side. But I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that the situation changed radically. One should put the past in perspective while remembering the agonies that both sets of alliances went through.
If one had to describe the events of the last hour and a half or so the word farce would be inappropriate. The proceedings have been more than farcical. This is a critical Bill, yet party managers on both sides of the House have, for one reason or another, been determined to rattle through this important measure in a short time, late at night, putting pressure on those who wished to speak to be brief—not observed by all, myself included. That shows the House in a bad light.
When it comes to controlling the Executive in defence and foreign affairs, we are probably slightly in advance of the Supreme Soviet before the Gorbachev reforms. Events such as this vindicate the view that we are permanently bypassed. The only defence for such an approach would be if it could be argued that because of the need to implement the CFE treaty the legislation had only a narrow time slot.
Legislation going to the Lords is often perceived as being less important. The House rarely gets it teeth into legislation relating to treaties, arms control, defence—anything that is serious. One can do nothing about this now, but I register the strongest possible protest to the 893 party managers and to my colleagues in the House that we have allowed something as important as this to be dealt with in such a cursory and contemptible manner.
Those who spoke are part of that process. I spoke for 10 minutes, which in itself was a mistake in the light of subsequent speeches. A matter such as this should have been dealt with in great detail, even if it required one, two or three sessions. It is insulting to the House that we cannot raise enough knowledge or enthusiasm to speak in detail about specifics. The Bill is not about START, chemical arms control, open skies or anything mentioned by hon. Members; it is a specific piece of legislation. We did not do it justice. Although that may be partly the fault of Back Benchers, I feel that the bulk of the blame lies with those who decided to rattle through it so quickly. I very much hope that, if we deal with similar legislation in the future, Government and Opposition will decide to give us a little more time, at an earlier hour.
In a couple of weeks, I shall attend a conference of the North Atlantic Assembly. We parliamentarians—well versed in parliamentary scrutiny of the executive, and in parliamentary control of Governments dealing with defence and foreign affairs—will lecture the newly emerging democracies of eastern Europe on how to control the executive. All that I can tell them is, "Please do not follow our example." In their few months' experience of democracy, those countries have probably established more control over their executives than we have established over ours after 700 years of trying.

§ Mr. Lennox-Boyd
First let me tell the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) that the Bill was debated in another place, given a Second Reading and passed to this House. It was considered non-controversial in the other place, and came to this House—and to tonight's debate without a single amendment attached to it. That is why the Committee stage was taken so quickly.
894 We have not "rattled through" the Bill; this has been an open-ended debate. If the hon. Gentleman wanted to debate the Bill in more depth, he and his hon. Friends could have table amendments that could have been discussed in detail. They did not do so. That cannot be the fault of the Government, the business managers or the system that the hon. Gentleman has disparaged; it is the fault of those who scrutinised the Bill. If the people who scrutinised such Bills want to debate them, they can do so. I say that with the greatest respeect, recognising the hon. Gentleman's great knowledge of the subject. I think that he will agree, however, that the Bill—although it touches on the wider arms control debate—is a specific provision within that context, and that the Government are therefore not to be blamed for dealing with Second Reading in rather narrow terms.
The hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) referred to clause 2. The clause is drafted to reflect the challenge regime, as referred to in the CFE treaty. Where the word "may" applies, rather than the word "shall", it also applies to all the signatories of that treaty—and, presumably, to any legislaton that the Soviet Union may have to implement to give effect to the treaty.
The wording allows an inspected state party to refuse a challenge inspection. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that any Back Bencher in the Soviet Parliament whom he might contact would not find it easy to challenge his Government to give a definition of what the national interest constitutes. It is simply not possible to do that and to receive a sensible, coherent and comprehensive reply.
What I can say is that in practice we would expect to refuse only very rarely, and then only for overriding reasons of national security. It must be important, however, that the right that the treaty confers on all state parties—without which it would not have been completed and signed, and which is not restricted—be retained in the clause.