§ 4.43 p.m.
§ THE MINISTER OF DEFENCE FOR THE ROYAL AIR FORCE (LORD SHACKLETON)My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I should like to intervene to repeat yet another Statement, one that is being made by my right honorable friend the Secretary of State for Defense in another place, on our policy and organization for selling defense equipment abroad. The Statement is as follows:
" In July this year, my right honorable friend the Minister of Aviation and I invited Sir Donald Stokes, the Managing Director and Deputy Chairman of Leyland-Triumph, to look into our policy and organization for selling defense equipment abroad, and to suggest in what ways they could be improved. Increased sales of British equipment will help significantly to reduce the burden of our military commitments by enabling us to win hack some of the foreign currency which we have to spend on keeping our forces overseas and equipping them for their tasks. While the Government attach the highest importance to making progress in the field of arms control and disarmament, we must also take what practical steps we can to ensure that this country does not fail to secure its rightful share of this valuable commercial market.
" Sir Donald has now let us have his recommendations, and I think the House would like to know what the Government have decided already about the more important points in his proposals.
" First, we agree with Sir Donald on the importance of having a closely-knit organization within the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Aviation to handle arms sales and to help 52 British firms to secure overseas defense orders, under the centralized control of a Head of Defense Sales. He will be a man of high calibre with direct access to Ministers and a suitable supporting staff both at home and overseas. He will be responsible jointly to my right honorable friend and myself for all the arms sales work in our Departments.
" At the same time we are taking steps to ensure that when our own equipment requirements are formulated, the present and future requirements of the overseas market are taken fully into account.
" In setting up the arms sales organization we will have regard to the recommendations of the Plowden Report and of the Seventh Report of the Estimates Committee dealing with electrical and electronic equipment in the Services, to the extent that they cover the field of export sales. The more detailed proposals made by Sir Donald as to how the organization might operate most efficiently are still under examination.
" I should like on behalf of the Government to thank Sir Donald Stokes for undertaking this important task."
EARL JELLICOEMy Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for repeating this Statement and to echo the tribute in it which has been paid to the energy and public spiritedness shown by Sir Donald Stokes in this matter. I would also agree on the importance of fostering the export of defence equipment, not least if the noble Lord and his colleagues continue to order a wide range of defense equipment off the foreign peg. Could I ask the noble Lord three questions? First, is it proposed to publish Sir Donald Stokes's Report? Secondly, is it proposed that the new Head of Defense Sales should be recruited from within, or outside, the ranks of the Civil Service? Thirdly, what about Ministerial responsibility? I think the Statement said that the Head of Defense Sales would be responsible to the Secretary of State for Defense and to the Minister of Aviation. But will any particular Minister—for example, one of the Ministers of Defence—be directly responsible, under the Secretary 53 of State or the Minister of Aviation as the case may be, in this matter?
§ LORD SHACKLETONMy Lords, in answer to the first question, I may say that it is not the intention to publish the Report. I wish it were possible to do so, for it is a very good Report; but there are a number of confidential observations in it. Secondly, it is likely that the Head of Defence Sales—and this was part of Sir Donald's particular recommendations—will be drawn from industry. Thirdly, the noble Lord asked whether there will be a Minister particularly concerned to whom the Head of Defence Sales especially will have access. This is the intention; and it is likely to be, apart from the Secretary of State and the Minister of Aviation, that Minister who holds responsibility across the board in this field and who happens, my Lords, to be myself.
§ LORD OGMOREMy Lords, my noble friends and I on these Benches do not join in congratulating the Government on this Statement. We feel it is a very dangerous Statement, and the proposals made in it are, in our opinion, not such that a British Government should make. I am surprised that we have not heard from the Church on this matter.
We note that the Statement says that this arrangement is to enable these gentlemen to look into our policy—that is, British Government policy—and organization for selling defence equipment abroad, and to suggest ways in which they can he improved. The Statement goes on to say:
While the Government attach the highest importance to making progress in the field of arms control and disarmament, we must also take what practical steps we can to ensure that this country does not fail to secure its rightful share of this valuable commercial market.In our view these two aims cannot work in harness. They are not compatible. The Government must decide whether or not to be genuine in their support of disarmament. They have appointed a Minister of Disarmament—an appointment which we, on these Benches, welcomed. We do not think that this "super-salesmanship of death" can properly be joined with the appointment of a Minister of Disarmament.
§ LORD SHACKLETONMy Lords, I am not quite sure whether the noble Lord had the Statement when he said "these gentlemen" are to look into it. Is he referring to Sir Donald Stokes's specific purpose?—which was to inquire whether any improvement in co-ordination was necessary. The noble Lord used the expression, "these gentlemen". I was not sure whether he was referring to the new organization. I personally attach the highest importance to our—
§ LORD OGMOREMy Lords, may I clear up the point? I meant the Minister of Aviation and the Secretary of State for Defence and Sir Donald Stokes. I meant all three who are all concerned in this project.
§ LORD SHACKLETONIt might be helpful if the noble Lord would read the advance copy more closely before giving a false impression. Even now he has not interpreted it correctly.
I assure your Lordships that there is no conflict with the fundamental aim of Her Majesty's Government, which is in fact to strive by every possible means to achieve disarmament. That is not incompatible with this. Unless those noble Lords on the Liberal Benches do not wish us to sell abroad any defence equipment at all, and wish to retire to a purely autarchical relationship in which we neither buy nor sell defence equipment, it is clearly necessary, and it seems to me only common sense, especially within an alliance in which interdependence is of the highest importance —and I stress that this is not intended to lead to great competition; we still look towards interdependence—that if you have equipment to sell you should sell it. I really do not understand what the noble Lord wishes, because it seems to me that here is a market in which we can sell some of our goods abroad, and we propose that this organization should be answerable to Government policy. There can be no question of this organization's going ahead, under this Government any more than any other Government, and getting into the arms business where, for national or international reasons, it is undesirable to sell arms.