HL Deb 12 March 1968 vol 290 cc89-90

2.38 p.m.

LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government to what extent British military and diplomatic encoding and decoding are dependent upon American facilities.]

THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD CHALFONT)

My Lords, our diplomatic and military coding systems are entirely in our own hands and do not rely on the United States' or other Governments' facilities.

LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his reply. May I take it that it also means that we are not dependent upon the supply of encoding and decoding machinery from the United States?

LORD CHALFONT

Yes, my Lords, the noble Lord may take that from my reply. The Diplomatic Service does not use American cypher equipment for its telegraphic traffic. I think that some confusion may have arisen here because, for ease of intercommunications, some British and American cypher equipments are used jointly by both the United Kingdom and the United States military authorities. But when these equipments are used for exclusively British traffic they are fitted with special security devices made by Her Majesty's Government exclusively for British use.

LORD TREFGARNE

My Lords, can the noble Lord comment on some remarks in The Times this morning that communications between Her Majesty's Government and the Government of France at the time of the Suez crisis in 1956 were all copied and read by the United States Government by virtue of the fact that they had some knowledge of either our equipment or our procedures?

LORD CHALFONT

My Lords, it would be wrong of me, I think, to comment on newspaper reports of this kind. The noble Lord is now, of course, referring to code-breaking, cryptonalysis, and not to coding and decoding or ciphering and deciphering. That is an entirely separate matter upon which I cannot comment.