§ 2. Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate)If he will make a statement about the state of defence relations with Malaysia. [36258]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. John Spellar)The United Kingdom's defence relations with Malaysia are very good. We are both members of the five-power defence arrangements and we also have important bilateral links.
§ Mr. BluntWas it wise of the Minister for Defence Procurement, when arriving in Malaysia to lead the British delegation to the Langkawi international maritime exhibition, to ignore the Malaysian Government representative waiting to greet him at the aircraft steps and spurn the travel arrangements made by the Malaysian police and the British high commission—whereby he was to travel to his accommodation in the high commissioner's Rolls-Royce with a Malaysian police escort—instead instructing his staff to arrange for a self-drive hire car? When he left the airport in his soft-top daffodil-yellow Fiat Punto, did the Malaysian police follow him through concern for his safety or through curiosity?
Is it right for the actions of a Minister of the Crown to have to be explained away to senior Malaysian Ministers, by senior figures in the very industry that he is supposed to represent, as those of a harmless eccentric?
§ Mr. SpellarI was going to say that that was not the sort of question that one would have expected from a former adviser in the Ministry of Defence, but perhaps it was. We have had nine months of the strategic defence review. We are discussing the sale of defence equipment with the Malaysian Government, and we are about to sign a memorandum of arrangement on defence with them. We also provide considerable training for the Malaysian forces. Those are the issues that concern the Malaysian Government, with whom our relations are extremely good, especially after the enormously successful 4 Asia-Europe summit, in which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Government played an important role.