Lords Sitting of 17 April 1991

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The PRINCIPAL DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Worcester.
Lord Hothfield Lord Hothfield —Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

Kuwait: Oilfield Fires
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are contributing to efforts to extinguish the oilfield fires in Kuwait.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have been in contact with the Kuwaiti Government to ensure that the UK plays the fullest part in extinguishing the fires and in reconstructing the Kuwaiti oil industry. Two British consortia have been formed. In addition, Bechtel, which has a key overall management role, will operate mainly out of the United Kingdom. The Offshore Supplies Office of the Department of Energy is assessing a number of innovative technical options with the advice of the industry.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that informative answer. Mr. Red Adair and American specialists have been acknowledged as the experts; but has the United Kingdom the potential to provide significant help to reduce the time in which this huge number of oil fires can be put out?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: Yes, my Lords. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry have both led missions to discuss Kuwait's needs with the Kuwaiti authorities, including the Crown Prince. Mr. Lilley was in Kuwait last week for this purpose, and these meetings are being vigorously pursued.
We can help to speed up the extinguishing of fires by providing the support which we have offered to the North American teams. In addition, we may be able to develop the capacity to put out some fires. The Offshore Supplies Office of my department is looking at proposals that we have put to it, assessing whether they are commercially and technically viable.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, in addition to the constant cost of putting out the fires and of rebuilding Kuwait, I hope that it is relevant to the Question to ask this. Can the Minister say whether Saddam Hussein will be made to pay for it?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, the Kuwaitis are claiming reparations and we support them. This is a complex question which is under discussion in the United Nations.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, is not the problem to cap the wells rather than put out the fires?
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As I understand it, it is no good putting out the fire if one then has a perpetual gush of crude oil. Therefore, rephrasing the noble Lord's question, has the United Kingdom any capability in capping wells rather than putting out fires?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, what the noble Lord, Lord Williams, said is absolutely true. There are many aspects to this. The Royal Army Ordnance Corps has already received well deserved acclaim for its work in Kuwait and it can play a part in clearing the minefields. In addition, we have tremendous strengths in the United Kingdom in many of the key areas, which include overall project management and control, support equipment and supplies generally, mine clearance, which I have mentioned, and oilfield equipment supplies and services, including pumps, valves, hoses, wellheads and control equipment. Perhaps most important, there is our expertise in oil reservoir engineering, well control and the optimisation of recovery.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that his answer to the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, means that the British Government intend to recover from the government of Iraq the total costs which we incur in dealing with the damage that they created?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, broadly speaking, that is true.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, last month the environment ministers of the European Community expressed the wish to help. To what extent are other European countries capable of assisting? Do they have the technical ability to carry out these specialised operations?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I cannot be entirely precise in answer to that question. On 18th March there was a meeting of the EC Environment Council. The council asked the Commission to explore the potential assistance available within the whole European industry for extinguishing the burning oil wells. We are in close touch with the Commission in its work in following up this remit. Much of the relevant European capability is in the UK and we believe that our industry should be able to make a valuable contribution to this European initiative.
Lord Shepherd: My Lords, is any co-ordinating authority envisaged or being set up in order that the strengths of ourselves, the United States and the industrial world can be brought together, sharing knowledge and experience, to deal with this serious situation?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, that is largely carried out informally at the moment. Two consortia are co-ordinating this as concerns Britain and they are co-operating with other countries. One consortium is led by Wimpey and is comprised of AMEC and Taylor Woodrow. It is known as the British Kuwait Fire Group. The other is Mowlem, with W. S. Atkins and Porch. My noble friend Lord

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Limerick also recently made a worthwhile visit to Kuwait which helped to establish the City of Kuwait Group as a useful and supportive vehicle for the interests of the service sector.
Lord Shepherd: My Lords, in the light of that reply, would it be worth while the Government considering setting up a formal structure with the Kuwaiti Government to deal with the problem, instead of leaving it in an informal, commercial state, as appears to be the case at the moment?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, the co-operation is progressing extremely well, but I shall certainly pass on the noble Lord's remarks to my right honourable friend.

Renewable Energy: Planning Guidelines
2.44 p.m.
Lord Stanley of Alderley Lord Stanley of Alderley asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they hope to produce guidelines for local authority planning authorities as to where wind farms should be sited and whether those guidelines will take into account the financial state of agriculture and the Government's encouragement to farmers to diversify into such schemes particularly in the west of the United Kingdom.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, as my noble friend Lady Blatch said in her Written Answer on 28th March to my noble friend Lord Norrie, we hope to issue shortly for public consultation a draft of some planning policy guidance about renewable energy installations. The draft will take into account the Government's policies to encourage farmers to diversify their activities.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: My Lords, as usual I must declare an interest in that I have submitted a planning application for 19 wind turbines on my farm in Anglesey. I wish to thank my noble friend the Minister for his reply, particularly the second part of it. I hope he can tell me how he can further dispel the fears of farmers who feel that they have been led up the garden path to produce these kinds of schemes through diversification but have then been told by planners that they cannot proceed. I hope that the guidelines will make it clear that it is essential to site the wind farms in areas where there is wind which exceeds 6.5 metres per second. It is quite pointless and uneconomic to site the wind farms in other areas.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, the intention of the guidelines is to encompass wind energy, landfill gas, biogas, waste incineration, wood energy crops, tidal power and hydro-power. The document will be a long one dealing with all those issues. It will also take into account the Government's policy on renewable energy. Local planning authorities are generally adopting constructive and positive approaches to alternative enterprises on farms. Such projects can make an important contribution to the rural economy. On 28th March the Government provided three Written Answers on this subject: one in this House
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and two in another place. The Department of the Environment also issued a news release on the same day incorporating the Written Answers. We feel that there is no reason why a local authority cannot make a judgment on a planning application on the grounds that there is no specific government advice about these kinds of development proposals at the moment.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, why are we waiting for these guidelines to be fully prepared? The Minister referred to the Written Answer given by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, on 28th March, in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Norrie. Have local authorities been informed of what I would term the temporary guidelines mentioned in the reply of the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, or have they not been informed of what happened in this House?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, many local authorities are aware that the Department of the Environment issued a news release on 28th March incorporating the Written Answers. Any local authorities or any person submitting a planning application will read the Written Answers. The necessary information is therefore available to them.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, will the noble Viscount bring me up to date and say whether the three proposed new wind farms will still go ahead?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I cannot answer the noble Viscount because the wind farms are the subject of planning inquiries at the moment. I cannot comment on such matters.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, will the Minister assure the House that the guidelines will reconcile the interests held by local people who want work and incomes with the apparently conflicting interests of those who regard the countryside purely as something beautiful to look at?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, the guidelines will consider all those aspects. The noble Lord no doubt knows that the Written Answer requires authorities to,
"pay attention to the need to protect the local environment from damage and any loss of amenity which renewable energy installations may cause."—[Official Report, 28/3/91; cols. WA69 and WA70.]
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, this matter is now urgent. Many applications of the kind referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, have been submitted to planning authorities. Planning authorities have doubts about the criteria which they should use. Is it not also the case that any guidelines which are introduced, for example by the Welsh Office—that is relevant to the noble Lord, Lord Stanley—must reconcile the difficult problems of protecting the landscape with encouraging renewable energy and increasing farming incomes which are so poor, particularly in the Welsh uplands? This is a complex problem. Does the Minister recognise that it is essential that urgent consideration should be given to addressing this problem?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I agree with many of the remarks made by the noble Lord. We consider this is

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an urgent problem. We have taken various steps to tackle it and we hope to publish the guidelines shortly. The draft will be available for public consultation.
Lord Morris: My Lords, will my noble friend bear in mind the considerable benefit that could accrue to the United Kingdom if there were a domestic demonstration of the efficacy of wind farms from the commercial, economic and technological points of view, and if the wind farms were seen to be in place and to be working effectively?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, my noble friend has made a valuable point. We wholeheartedly agree with it.
The Duke of Somerset: My Lords, will the guidelines take into account the views expressed by the Minister of Agriculture in a speech in Staffordshire on 21st March? He then said that he was not in the scenery business but in the business of creating jobs and work for real people.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, we shall take into account everything that has been said by my honourable friends in another place concerning the Government's policies and the need for alternative energy.

Polish Visitors: Entry Visas
2.50 p.m.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton Lord Belhaven and Stenton asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will now abolish entry visas for Polish citizens visiting the United Kingdom.
Lord Reay: My Lords, we have no plans to do so but are keeping the matter under review.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply, although I am not quite sure what it means. In view of the fact that Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux countries—more than half the EC countries—have now abolished the requirement for visas for Poles, is there any special reason why this country should not follow suit? Is my noble friend aware that Poland has strong ties with this country, that it has great affection for us and our institutions and that the present situation is causing considerable resentment particularly in view of the fact that visas have been abolished in the case of Czechoslovakia and Hungary?
Lord Reay: My Lords, we are concerned by the high rate of visa refusal or withdrawal for Polish applicants to this country. In 1989, 19 per cent. of visa applications in Warsaw were refused or withdrawn and the figure rose to 35 per cent. of all visa applications in 1990. In most cases the entry clearance officers suspected that the real intention was to work illegally in the United Kingdom. If such applicants arrived at our ports, immigration officers would apply exactly the same criteria. The concern must be that significant numbers of Poles would arrive only to be turned back at the ports by the immigration service because they did not meet the requirements of the
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immigration rules. That would be a source of friction between our two countries and arguably more cruel to those turned away who would have wasted their air or train fares. In our view it would not necessarily be a preferable arrangement.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, is it acceptable that this country should behave towards a country to which we owe so much and with which we have such close and recent historical associations with so much less generosity than any of our colleagues in the European Community? Are not the rules by which these people are being judged unduly restrictive and harsh and damaging to the good name of this country?
Lord Reay: My Lords, I have attempted to give the reason why we are maintaining the present system. I do not believe that to change it in the direction requested would improve our relations with Poland, for the reasons I have given.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: My Lords, how do the immigration people know that a Pole arriving in this country is coming here to work? I have known the occasional Polish gentleman to be returned to Poland when he was not coming here to work. I do not know how immigration officers judge these things. They do not seem to judge them very well as a rule.
Lord Reay: My Lords, immigration officers must apply the immigration rules.

Radiation: Health Research
2.53 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby Lord Hatch of Lusby asked Her Majesty's Government:
What action they are taking on the reports linking leukaemia with exposure to radiation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Henley): My Lords, the Government are supporting a wide range of research to try to clarify the nature of the reported association between the operation of certain nuclear installations and childhood leukaemia. That work includes a major investigation of the health of the offspring of radiation workers and laboratory research on possible mechanisms. No causal mechanism associated with the incidence of leukaemia and the operation of nuclear installations has been identified.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, have the Government studied the three recent reports—the Gardner, Urquhart and Cartwright reports—and have they reached any conclusion on them as to whether any action should be taken? Is the noble Lord aware that in 1988 the National Radiological Protection Board recommended that the maximum worker dose of radiation per year should be reduced from 50 millesieverts to 15 millesieverts? Has any action been taken on the basis of that recommendation?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I think that I heard the noble Lord aright and that he mentioned the Gardner study. Following advice from the Committee on

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Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment, the Government established a co-ordinating committee on the health aspects of radiation research under the joint stewardship of the Department of Health and the Health and Safety Executive. The co-ordinating committee on health aspects of radiation research will seek to ensure that public funds for research are properly targeted and that approaches to the families involved are minimised and duplication of resources avoided.
The noble Lord also asked about reductions in radiation limits for radiation workers. I can tell the noble Lord that lower radiation dose limits for service and Ministry of Defence civilian employees have been adopted as a prudent anticipation of the International Commission on Radiological Protection's new recommendations. However, it should be emphasised that they have not been introduced in response to reports on associations between leukaemia and exposure to radiation.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is the Minister aware that some people will feel that that is a rather complacent approach to some disturbing evidence, particularly from Professor Gardner's study? I understand that that was the first research to offer a plausible explanation of why clusters of leukaemia have been detected around Sellafield and other nuclear plants such as Dounreay, Aldermaston and Hinkley Point. If the conclusions are correct, there are safety implications for all those employed in the nuclear industry and their families. Is it not important that some decision should be taken which would give greater safety protection to those who now seem to be at risk?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I do not accept the noble Lord's allegations that the Government have been complacent. It would be wrong for the Government to jump to conclusions before any causal link, should there be one, was established. I can assure the noble Lord that through the Department of Health and the Scottish Office the Government are funding some 43 separate research projects into these matters. That shows the level of the Government's commitment in relation to these anxieties.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that this whole subject is haunted by the intrinsic difficulties of applying what is called small sample theory? Does he agree that if we apply the much more manageable large sample theory and take the largest sample we can find—the Japanese irradiated in 1945 at Nagasaki and Hiroshima—no connection whatever with leukaemia can be established?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I certainly accept the noble Earl's point. With leukaemia, which is a relatively rare disease, it is very difficult to produce any statistical analysis of value. If the noble Earl will cast his mind back two years when he asked a similar question, he will recall that I responded in very much the same way.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I realise that the Ministry of Defence has voluntarily reduced its maximum radiation limit to 30 millesieverts a year, but that is still twice the recommendation made three years ago. The noble Lord did not say whether any action has been taken on the basis of that recommendation.
Further to the reduction in maximum radiation limit by the Ministry of Defence, is it not the case that the Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists is demanding a reduction to 10 millesieverts as opposed to the 30 millesieverts to which the Ministry of Defence, which after all is only one employer of nuclear workers, is voluntarily reducing its maximum at the moment?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I do not have the figures to show the level to which the Ministry of Defence has reduced its limit. As I said, this was adopted as a prudent anticipation of the new recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. I should have added that other nuclear operators, such as BNFL, the Atomic Energy Authority and naval dockyard contractors, have also adopted in a similar manner company dose restrictions well below the current statutory limits.

Business
3 p.m.
Viscount Long: My Lords, after the short debate on the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza and before the short debate on NATO, my noble friend Lord Caithness will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement on Iraq that is to be made in another place. This will be followed by my noble friend Lady Blatch, who will, again with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement on teachers' pay machinery.
I should like to say a word about this afternoon's short debates standing in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hylton and Lord Molloy. As the mover is allowed 15 minutes and the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate, in the case of the debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of nine minutes. In the case of the debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, the number of speakers is such that it is not necessary to propose a formal time limit, but I am sure that noble Lords will agree that it would conform with the spirit of these short debates if they would keep their speeches within the 15 minutes which applies to the mover of the Motion.

Water Industry Bill
The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate enactments relating to the supply of water and the provision of sewerage services, with amendments to

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give effect to recommendations of the Law Commission I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Water Resources Bill [H.L.]
The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate enactments relating to the National Rivers Authority and the matters in relation to which it exercises functions, with amendments to give effect to recommendations of the Law Commission. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Statutory Water Companies Bill [H.L.]
The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain enactments relating to statutory water companies. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Land Drainage Bill [H.L.]
The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate the enactments relating to internal drainage boards and to the functions of such hoards and of local authorities in relation to land drainage, with amendments to give effect to recommendations of the Law Commission. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bilk be now read a first time.— (The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Water Consolidation (Consequential Provisions) Bill [H.L.]
The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision for consequential amendments and repeals and for transitional and transitory matters and savings in connection with the consolidation of certain enactments in the Water Resources Act 1991, the Water Industry Act 1991, the Land Drainage Act 1991 and the Statutory Water Companies Act 1991, and to
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repeal certain related enactments which are spent or unnecessary. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

British Technology Group Bill
3.5 p.m.
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

Business of the House: Debates, 24th April
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Waddington): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in rn y name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of the Baroness Turner of Camden set down for 24th April shall be limited to 3 hours and that in the name of the Lord Dean of Beswick set down for the same day to 2 hours, and that Standing Order 35 and paragraphs 10 to 13 of the Rules for the Conduct of Short Debates shall apply to both debates. —(Lord Waddington.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza: Living Conditions
3.7 p.m.
Lord Hylton Lord Hylton rose to call attention to the conditions, including curfews, under which the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza have to live; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I think that I should ask for a small entry in the Guinness Book of Records after being lucky enough to win your Lordships' Ballot twice running. I should also perhaps apologise for having been absent in Northern Ireland for the March short debates.
Some may think that we should today be discussing the tragedy of the Kurds, another cast: of a stateless people. However, it is my task to examine the present conditions of the Palestinians and to ask whether they do not deserve at least a zone of protection wherein to live free from domination by historic enemies. I shall try to describe their general conditions and hope that other speakers may map out the way forward in more detail. I shall confine myself to the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza, leaving aside those living in Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait and other places.
We are talking about 1 million people on the West Bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea and a further 700,000 or so in the Gaza Strip, sited some 60 miles or so westwards on the Mediterranean. Those territories, under illegal Israeli military occupation since 1967, are

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subject to some 1,500 Israeli military orders. It is difficult for us in England to imagine the consequences for ordinary daily life.
For example, water is completely controlled by the military. Israel proper derives 30 per cent. of its supplies from the West Bank, taking in the process some 80 per cent. of the West Bank water flow. The 1 million Palestinians use one-eighth of the water consumed by the 100,000 or so Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The Palestinians manage to irrigate 7 per cent. of their land compared with 69 per cent. irrigation by the Israelis. Deep Israeli boreholes rob supplies from shallower Palestinian wells and springs. Is it surprising that such injustice generates fierce resentment?
Economically, the Palestinians have suffered a double squeeze, from the Gulf war and from direct Israeli actions. The war has cut remittances from expatriate workers to a trickle. Some of those workers have returned destitute. Tourism has almost disappeared. The curfews imposed by the Israelis are thought to have cost the Palestinian economy about US$120 million per month. Farming and market gardening became almost impossible. Manufacturing was severely affected. Many Palestinians from the Occupied Territories were prevented from going to work in Israel proper, causing a further loss of some $50 million per month. Now many of those Palestinian workers fear that they will be replaced by new immigrants from the USSR.
The land provides another striking example of injustice. On the West Bank, 100,000 Israeli settlers occupy 54 per cent. of the land, leaving 46 per cent. for the 1 million Palestinians. In Gaza, 10,000 Israeli settlers occupy 40 per cent. of the land, leaving the balance for the 700,000 local inhabitants. Some 2,500 Soviet Jews are thought to live in the territories already and official plans that were leaked made provision for 88,000 new Israeli settlers, thus almost doubling the present Israeli population in the territories. The existing and planned settlements directly breach the 4th Geneva Convention which forbids changes to the demographic balance of areas under military occupation.
Injustice and breaches of international law naturally provoke resentment, stimulating demonstrations and Palestinian demands for national self-determination. Those in turn are met with individual and collective punishments. Children and adults have been repeatedly beaten by the Israeli army. A military colonel, Colonel Yehuda Meir, admitted in court to drafting an order that the army should break the bones of demonstrators on the direct instructions of the minister of defence. Other collective punishments include blocking up and demolition of houses, confiscation of land, uprooting of trees, restrictions on Palestinian exports and heavy taxation without any accountability.
Curfews have now been lifted but, in addition to the economic effect already mentioned, they disrupted public health and welfare. In February the Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem was providing only a 50 per cent. service. Pregnant women could not get to
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hospital and children developed behaviour problems because of long confinement to their houses, while refuse, street and sewer cleaning could not be carried out. Incidentally, many of the refugee camps in Gaza still rely on open sewers after 23 years of Israeli occupation.
Curfews have given way to a system of passlaws. Identity cards must be carried at all times and are liable to be confiscated at checkpoints if they are creased or worn. To cross into Israel or into the illegally annexed East Jerusalem, Palestinians must have magnetic cards proving security clearance and a clean tax record. The latest regulations mean that Palestinians do not have freedom of movement between the north and south of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The intention appears to be to fragment the occupied territories, which is illegal in the view of the International Commission of Jurists. It has been criticised by the International Committee of Non-Governmental Organisations and contravenes UN Resolutions 253 and 267.
School and university closures have already been mentioned in your Lordships' House. Courses and examinations have been disrupted for a number of years, again in breach of the Geneva Convention signed by Israel. There will be a parliamentary lobby on the subject on 14th May and I hope it will be widely supported. I regret to say that the well-known Friends School at Ramallah may have to close after 103 years of service because parents can no longer afford the necessary fees.
Deportation from Israel and the occupied territories is another punishment that breaches numerous UN Resolutions. There have been well over 1,200 cases since 1967. Four orders are currently pending. Administrative detention has been used in over 10,000 cases in the past 3? years. The imprisoning of residents of the territories of Israel proper is yet another breach of the Geneva Convention. The weapon of detention for six months or a year has been widely used against doctors, journalists and other educated and professional Palestinians. Out of so many cases, I should just like to mention Mr. Abdal-Rauf Gabin and Mr. Taher Shriteh, both journalists from Gaza. They are alleged to have been tortured and detained in recent months.
I have tried to give some details of the injustice, oppression and disruption of normal life, especially family life, that are consequences of Israeli military occupation. There are many who think that the combination of Israeli measures is calculated to drive out the remaining Palestinian population. However, this is not a situation or policy approved of by all Israelis. Many in the labour movement think otherwise. Numerous Israeli peace groups (some known to me) demand negotiations and the giving up of territory in return for the recognition of Israel within secure and guaranteed borders. Here, I should like to pay a well-deserved tribute to the many Israeli advocates who have defended Palestinians over the years, often abandoning more lucrative legal work in order to do so. I mention particularly Linda Brayer and Felicia Langer. In the same breath, I wish to name the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. That body has

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provided invaluable free medical services not only in the West Bank and Gaza but also in Lebanon and Kuwait. It has always helped all in need, even treating Israeli and Syrian soldiers when asked to do so. British medical people have played a part in its work, as have Medical Aid for Palestine and Action around Bethlehem for Children with Disabilities.
I now ask Her Majesty's Government to draw attention by every means at their disposal to the injustice and illegalities suffered so long by the Palestinians and to do all in their power to prevent collective punishments and stop further Israeli settlement in the West Bank and Gaza. I hope they raised those matters while the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Shamir, has been in London, because such improvements are not only necessary in themselves but would be worthwhile as steps in confidence building.
I said at the start that the Palestinians are a people without a state. We should therefore work to provide them with the protection that they have lacked since the expulsion of the Jordanians in 1967. Can there not be a secure zone of protection which includes the West Bank and Gaza and parts of Lebanon, and possibly parts of Jordan? Within that zone the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and other UN specialised bodies should collaborate with direct aid from Arab countries, the EC and the USA to provide an environment in which Palestinians can live securely and become fully self-sustaining. I note the precedent of the UN Inter-Agency Humanitarian Programme for Iraq and Kuwait. A contented and prospering Palestinian people is the surest safeguard, security and shield that Israel can ever have. Let us establish the needed protection, including security arrangements, as a preliminary to a political and constitutional settlement. It could be a model for the Middle East and other areas of conflict. The Palestinians use the watch-word "Subud" which means endurance and steadfastness. In view of their great sufferings, it is a privilege to put forward these proposals. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
Lord Reay: My Lords., with the leave of the House, perhaps I may take this opportunity to confirm that the time limit in this debate is 12 minutes as stated on the speakers' list, not nine minutes as announced earlier by my noble friend.
3.17 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, the issue before us is so complicated that many people may find even 12 minutes too short a time. I do not find it too short a time because I have no quarrel with much of the description given by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. These deplorable facts exist and we would like to see them put to an end. However, I think it desirable to remember in calculating what the Government of Israel is likely to do, or what a future government is prepared to do, that the territories of the West Bank, which were occupied by Jordan after Israel's war of independence, were taken from Jordan as a result of a totally unprovoked act of aggression by Jordan on Israel in 1967. The King of Jordan was warned that
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such an act would be damaging to him, but he went ahead with it—not the only time in his long career that the King of Jordan has made a grievous error at the expense of his people. So there is an occupying army and one for which the basic rationale must be security.
It is true that occupying armies will behave with different degrees of severity. However, I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, may have slightly misled any noble Lords who are not fully aware of the situation. He used the rather neutral word "demonstrations" as though we were talking about the kind of thing that the NUS from time to time stages on Westminster Bridge. But the demonstrations in question include the stoning of soldiers and other people. A young conscript soldier being stoned may well feel that it is a little more than a demonstration and may exceed his authority in the severity which he uses to put it down.
However, we must agree that, although the conditions are deplorable, particularly in the Gaza strip and the refugee camps, the responsibility for that to some extent is shared by the United Nations and its relief agencies, which have not shown a considerable or continuous determination to put right the matters to which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred; namely, housing, sanitation and so forth. Although it is true that individual remittances from Palestinians in other countries have helped the economy, it is also true that there has been no massive help from any of the Arab governments. Not even the most wealthy ones have come to the aid of their fellow Arabs in these territories.
But those are merely rectifications. The picture is as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, painted it. There is a population subject to the rule of an occupying army with all the consequences that follow. I believe therefore that all the energies of Her Majesty's Government, like those of other Western countries, should now be directed towards bringing about a peace settlement which would involve the evacuation of at least a great part of those territories.
What have been the limitations of negotiations hitherto? Before the Gulf war the principal limitation was the inability to find interlocutors among the Palestinians who would be prepared to consider the proposals put forward at Camp David or other ways along the road to full autonomy and possibly in the end self-government and independence. It is not that such interlocutors do not exist. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred to the Israeli peace movement and its contacts. I am aware of things of that nature. But the fact is that anyone who has publicly associated himself with the idea of negotiation has been murdered. One must remember that murders of Palestinians by other Palestinians have been more prominent on the West Bank than the death scores in the demonstrations and riots and their suppression.
There is a powerful group which has assassinated not merely potential leaders there but, as noble Lords know, members of the PLO leading council itself who have shown some disposition to negotiate. Although I believe that the latest proposals put forward by Mr. Shamir for Arab ministries to deal with some important matters of internal concern mark an

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advance, the same problem arises of the inability to discuss them. Unless they are discussed it is hard to imagine how they can be put into operation.
I believe that a great disservice has been done to the Palestinians from two quarters. In the first place, as is obvious, it comes from the association of the PLO with Saddam Hussein. That is having very unfortunate repercussions in Kuwait, which is being very much harsher to Palestinians than Israel has ever been, and throughout the Arab world has made the cause of the Palestinians less appealing, at any rate for the time being. As has been admitted by many friends of the Palestinians in this country, that was a major error. They have also had some disservice from their supporters in this country (notably perhaps certain speakers in another place) who constantly reiterate their most extreme demands—namely, everything at once and a Palestinian state tomorrow—at the price of making it more difficult to reach any agreement upon an interim stage. It is possible to be too friendly to one's friends.
The Gulf War has thrown new light on the situation in the Middle East. At one moment people were talking as though the result was likely to be a good one and that this was, in the current phrase, a window of opportunity. It now looks as though it is rather less good than appeared at the time. First, because the enthusiasm demonstrated by the Palestinians for the Iraqis and the Scud missile attacks on Israel was not likely to give much comfort to Israeli doves. They more or less had to go into retreat for a period. I believe that that will be overcome.
Much more serious and something which we cannot forecast at the moment because the position is so fluid is the question of the ultimate position of the United States in the Middle East. How far will its credibility have been restored by President Bush's announcement last night that after all the United States was prepared to help those whom it had encouraged to rise against the common enemy? We have to assume that an Israeli government's calculation will and indeed ought to be based on the security of their people. That is their first responsibility. It may well be that the demonstration of the power of long-range weapons will make it less obvious than it was a quarter of a century ago that the thickening of the territorial belt between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is essential for security purposes. It may be that some rethinking will be done in the Israeli armed forces.
But, however that may turn out, the fact of the matter is that the only thing that can be offered to Israel in return for the withdrawal from the territories which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and I would like to see is first of all—here I believe that Secretary of State Baker's two-track policy was right—peace with the neighbours at least on paper. Therefore perhaps the hinge of a possible settlement is now to be found in Damascus. Secondly, other than military security brought about by its armed forces the only security which can be offered to Israel must be that offered by the promise and presence of the United States. If the United States were ready permanently to make itself
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felt as a factor for peace in that part of the world, if it were in a position to tell the Israelis, "You need not worry about your neighbours; you do not need buffer zones for military protection because you are part of the United States perimeter of defence", then the argument in Jerusalem would be much more powerful than it now is. However, if 24 hours ago the Israelis had consulted the Kurds about the validity of American assurances they might have had a rather dusty answer.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, cannot and should not be blamed for calling our attention to violations of human and individual rights that have gone on for too long. However, it would be wrong if it were assumed that anything short of a political settlement in which the Arabs of those areas would largely be responsible for their own affairs must be regarded as temporary. As the noble Lord suggests, it is difficult in the light of the grievous problems that we have been witnessing in the Middle East in the past few weeks and months to take altogether seriously a guarantee by the United Nations.
3.31 p.m.
Lord Bottomley: My Lords, by putting down the Motion, the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has provided an opportunity to discuss events on the West Bank and in Gaza. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Beloff. I agree with much of what he said. I share his view about the way in which Israel in particular has suffered over the years and will continue to do so without assurances of no further attacks by Arab countries.
It was while I was a member of the United Kingdom delegation to the United Nations Assembly that Israel was admitted to membership of the United Nations. I recall a Soviet leader supporting Israel's application and referring to the terrible sufferings of the Jews under the Nazis. There is no doubt that he had in mind too the brutal treatment of Jews by tsarist governments which caused many to flee to America, some to this country, and a substantial number to Israel. That must always touch the imagination: the story of men and women who throughout their lives have looked to Palestine as their home and who were prepared to make sacrifices in order to get there. Those in tsarist Russia were driven out of their country by persecution. However, for many, it was a religious pilgrimage and the fulfilment of a desire that had long been in their hearts.
Young people going to Israel were mostly from the cities of Europe: in Palestine, they had to become tillers of the soil. Most had no previous experience of agriculture and no background of country life. But they had three priceless qualities—enthusiasm, intelligence and youth. Barren sand dunes, bare hills and pestilential swamps were converted into fertile agricultural land dotted with pleasant villages where people were able to live in the faith of their fathers and where children could grow up happily. The labour was arduous, but it was cheerfully, even joyfully, undertaken. It was lightened by the generous help of Jews all over the world. This enabled the Israelis to overcome appalling conditions. Entire settlements

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were built to a coherent plan with permanent, comfortable homes for the people. Those remarkable developments benefited the whole country and improved the standard of living for both Jews and Arabs.
The Israelis were criticised some time ago for taking action to destroy the nuclear armament of Iraq. In retrospect it is very fortunate that they did so. If Saddam Hussein had possessed nuclear weapons during the course of the Gulf War, the war would not have ended so soon and so successfully.
With the ceasefire in the Gulf today there is no blanket curfew in force in Israel. Indeed, only specific population centres where there has often been unrest are subjected to curfews, usually at night. Since the end of the Gulf war the Israeli Government have embarked on a deliberate policy of improving conditions for the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza. The past few weeks have seen the Government order the release of 1,200 administrative detainees and reduce the level of taxation paid by the inhabitants of the territories to the military administration. Bethlehem University has been opened. All kindergartens, schools and colleges and three other universities are open. Social and welfare services are working without restriction.
The Israeli Government proposals for a regional peace conference involving parallel negotiations between Israel and her Arab neighbours and Israel arid Palestinian leaders reflect the Government's desire to promote the peace process in accordance with the directives of the 1979 Camp David accord.
The PLO has never publicly dissociated itself from terrorism and has never denounced violence. Yasser Arafat, by associating himself with Saddam Hussein and promoting extremist positions, shows no sign of recognising the state of Israel. There have been six wars since the state of Israel came into being, none of which was started by the state of Israel. As a result of one of those wars the Israelis occupy the West Bank and Gaza. Their continued occupation is a safeguard against Israel being pushed into the sea which is the desire of some Arab countries.
3.40 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I wish to ask a single, brief question of the Minister of which I have given him notice.
Why should the Government not propose a powerful United Nations peacekeeping force in the occupied territories, thus making it a safe haven for the Palestinian people while at the same time increasing the security of Israel?
The sufferings of the Palestinians, serious as they are, are not to be compared with the appalling fate of the Kurdish refugees. Nevertheless, as was shown by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and acknowledged in the thoughtful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, their sufferings are bad enough. Like the Kurds, they urgently need a zone of security: a safe haven.
In a number of ways the establishment of such a safe haven in the occupied territories would raise fewer problems than the establishment of a haven in Northern Iraq. First, it would not raise the difficult
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questions of interventions in the internal affairs of member countries of the United Nations. Israel's security and sovereignty would not be challenged nor compromised in any way. The charter of the United Nations would not be strained by such an action.
The presence of a powerful United Nations force would be of the greatest benefit to both sides. The peace force should include, as it would, armed contingents from the Western European countries—in the past they have agreed to that in principle—and also a United States contingent. That leads on to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff. That would decisively lessen both the incentive and the ability of Israel's enemies to attack her. Equally, it would frustrate the Arab extremists, who would like to see the whole of Palestine in Arab hands; and the Israeli extremists, who would like to keep the whole of Palestine in Israeli hands. The action would be welcomed by at least nine-tenths of the moslem world and would credit greatly the British Government with such an initiative.
The idea is fully in line with existing United Nations resolutions. It would end the occupation which we all agree is illegal and objectionable in many ways. It would open the way to free elections in the West Bank, bringing a new representative leadership of the Palestinian people and the restoration of civil rights leading eventually to self-determination. If the idea found favour in the United States it could be implemented without much delay or difficulty. The idea might be objected to; it is true that the Israeli Government and the Washington lobby might oppose it and defeat it. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, pointed out, many Israelis are strongly in favour of exchanging land for peace. The same is true of a proportion of the Israeli lobby in. Washington. According to their public statements, Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker also support the principle of exchanging land for peace.
I urge the Government to follow up their initiative over the Kurdish safe haven with a similar initiative on behalf of the Palestinian people. Let them persuade first the European Community and then the Americans that the occupied territories should become a UN safe haven for the Palestinian people. That would serve the interests of the Israeli and Palestinian people and could be a major contribution to world peace.
3.45 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, during the Gulf war people rejoiced that at last the United Nations was enabled to do something positive in the world. With great efforts the Americans, we in this country and members of the coalition tried to act under the umbrella of the United Nations. Therefore, I find attractive the proposition put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, that having once galvanised the United Nations into action, we might continue to give it our support. We should give the idea of a United Nations presence in Palestine every possible commendation that we can muster.
Perhaps I may attend to the terms of the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. Only three

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weeks ago Constantine Dabbagh of the Near East Council of Churches Committee for Refugee Work said:
"Palestinians in Gaza feel like chickens in a cage because of the curfew. Many people have been unable to leave their homes even to work. So now they have no money to buy food for their families… We pay taxes to support our occupiers and get little for them. We have no social security".
The noble Lord, Lord Bottomley, may be right in saying that the situation has changed and has been set right; but three weeks ago Constantine Dabbagh said:
"Most schools are still closed, living conditions are bad and health facilities are poor if not non-existent".
He works on the spot and made those comments only three weeks ago.
At the request of the right reverend Primate the Archbishop of York a Church of England delegation led by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry visited Israel and the occupied territories a day after the cease-fire ended the Gulf war. That delegation saw the privations and harassment of the Palestinians. It met families whose children had been killed, sons detained and homes demolished. The containment of 1.5 million people who lack freedom of movement, freedom of speech and a national home and who lack representation in national government requires a ruthless military regime. I am afraid that the delegation saw evidence which proved that as being so.
No examination of this issue would be fair without recalling Israel's dilemma. In 1917 the Balfour declaration encouraged them to pursue the idea of a national home. That was supported by a great deal of fundamental Christian theology which wanted to see Israel back in its national home after which the end of the world would come. That was a strong lobby. There was the awesome, searing experience of anti-Semitism during the 1920s and 1930s and then the holocaust.
There was then the setting up of an Israeli state in 1948 and the discovery that the Israelis were immediately at war with the whole of the Arab world surrounding them. To say the very least, that has put Israel permanently on the defensive. As your Lordships know, many Israeli people feel that they have never experienced a day of security since 1948. They feel that they have a right to establish their place in the Promised Land. What is more, in the days of missiles they know the need for safe borders—hence the expansionist greater Israel policy.
Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that the delegation of which I spoke was greeted with a great deal of criticism of the West and of Christendom by the Palestinians. That goes back to the days of the Crusades. Pain is still felt over the carve up after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Then, the West, guilty after the holocaust, was anxious to give away to the Israelis land in Palestine which was not theirs to bequeath.
I read recently a touching story of a village called Ain Anoub where Arab Christians had lived for centuries. They belonged to one of the ancient indigenous churches. Suddenly in the 1950s and early
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1960s they found themselves to be second class citizens in their homeland and the Moslem Arabs were third class citizens.
It may be that the sharp and painful experience of a Gulf war will have taught the lesson that a Middle East peace conference, local yet of international significance, can come about. One change for the better is that America has accepted that and America will have the task of persuading its powerful Jewish element that that is a necessity for peace.
I want to say that there are moderates on both sides. If we do not allow them and encourage them to talk to each other then we immediately and inevitably encourage extremists and polarisation. Men like Faisal Husseini and Amos Oz are prepared to consider —no, to promote—the principle of land for peace. Ghassan Rubeiz has pointed out that 700,000 Israeli citizens within the borders of Israel are Palestinian already. Equally Israelis who have taken up residence in the West Bank could surely accept a two-state plan.
Moderates like Dr. Mamdouh Aker and Dr. Sari Nusseibeh are prepared to consider a regionalised West Bank based on the principle of an economic, unarmed, demilitarised confederation of states. That would mean security based on the policy of making neighbours. Sadly Israeli military successes—and it is true that none of the six wars were started by the Israelis—have tended to make them all too ready to rely not on neighbour-making but on military might.
Yet, those who are Israel's friends—and perhaps I may say in passing that I have spent a lot of time in my ministry working with, for example, the Campaign for Soviet Jewry—would want to say that there can be no true peace and security for Israel so long as Israel's foreign policy is based on the oppression of her near neighbours. That may attract the very aggression which Israel is keen to avoid.
In a remarkable address to the Church Missionary Society, Canon Naim Ateck, himself a Palestinian, suggests that although we all owe, and we know we owe, the Jews an immense unpayable moral debt as a result of the holocaust, nevertheless it is wrong falsely to place Israel as a nation on a pedestal. It is a state like any other state and no higher morality should be expected of it and nor should any lower morality be tolerated from it. There must be consistency in the implementation of United Nations resolutions. The United Nations should be brought in to act with speed and strength when violations of human rights take place.
It is necessary also to de-stereotype the Palestinians and to remove the image of Palestinians as being always terrorists. I am reliably informed that the PLO is prepared to allow moderates, whom I have mentioned, and others, whom I have not, to represent it. My friends with the recent delegation were surprised to find that Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, a lecturer in philosophy, had been imprisoned on what his friends regarded as a preposterous charge of spying. It is almost as though such moderates are being imprisoned by the Israeli Government in order to avoid holding talks with them.
It is the hope of many that sharp and even painful lessons have been learnt. If we do not encourage

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people who are moderates to talk, we play straight into the hands of extremists. I believe that the Palestinians are prepared to accept the Israelis' right to exist—and that is new. How much we rejoice to hear the noble Lord, Lord Bottomley, speaking of the Israelis' achievements! They have been remarkable. However, Israel cannot be a light to the nations if the shadow of a repressive greater Israel foreign policy remains.
3.57 p.m.
The Earl of Oxford and Asquith: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for giving us the opportunity of this debate. Of the many good causes which he has espoused, of the many instances of human suffering and injustice he has sought to alleviate, the case of the Palestinians is one of the most worthy of our attention.
Many of those disabilities and injustices have been so eloquently described by him that there is no need to spend much time in recalling deportations, collective punishments, the annexation of East Jerusalem, confiscation of ancestral Arab land to make way for over 100,000 new Jewish settlers, disruption to the Palestinian economy in various ways and repeated closures of schools and universities, so that since 1987 few, if any, Palestinians have been able to complete an uninterrupted year of education.
As has been said, many of those actions were in clear breach of the 4th Geneva Convention, to which both our Government and Israel subscribed but which in the past Israel has claimed does not apply to the occupied territories. I should be grateful if the Minister could confirm in his reply that our Government consider that it does apply and that the Israeli Government should be in no doubt that that is our view.
As regards education, my memory turns back some 45 years to a time when Palestinian education was an example and, indeed, a source of envy to the Arab world. The director of education in those days was a great man and a great educator. His name was Jerome Farrell. He was told one day that students of the Government Arab College in Jerusalem had chalked up on their blackboards, "We want freedom or death". His robust comment, as he told me at the time, was, "1 shall see to it that they get neither". Whatever we may now think of his views on freedom he at least saw that they got education. Since then times have changed and the Palestinians have got neither freedom nor education, whereas death or disablement is all too common a risk when the stone throwing of schoolboys is answered, as it often is, with bullets.
Let us now turn our attention from the past and present and concentrate instead on the kind of future in which the injustices we are debating are most likely to be relieved. Since the end of the Gulf war, across the Atlantic have come well-meaning if somewhat grandiose phrases such as "a new world order" and "a window of opportunity". We may hope that that is a sign that Americans, despite their disappointing record in the past, mean seriously to try again.
I have long advocated a higher profile in these matters both for the United Nations, whose
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resolutions have been ignored, and for the countries of Western Europe. However, I can understand that having taken so notable an initiative in the Gulf war the Americans may now wish to play a leading role in the regional peace. Indeed, a start has been made by Mr. Baker's recent tours. Whether it is too optimistic to call it a promising start time will tell. Let us always remember that time is short and that the momentum of change must be kept up. If it is not kept up the resulting disillusionment will make it all the more difficult to achieve a solution.
If the Americans are to be given a free hand without European assistance they need to show within the next two months that they can make sufficient progress within the diplomatic field to ensure that the momentum is kept alive. Whether progress can be made by the method now proposed by America—the regional conference—remains to be seen. The outcome must at best be uncertain. It may well fall short of Palestinian demands for self-determination, and the selection of Palestinian representatives at such a conference is bound in any case to be a bone of contention.
With the PLO for the time being in disarray there seems to be all the more need to press urgently for a properly elected Palestinian body whose representatives—whether or not they may be members or supporters of the PLO—can sit at the negotiating table provided (and this is an important proviso) they declare themselves willing to accept a non-violent solution. The elections must be independently monitored and the criteria for voting must not be dictated by Mr. Shamir. Without prejudice to the eventual future of Jerusalem, those criteria must include residents of East Jerusalem since its annexation is not permitted under the Geneva Conventions.
Should America fail to make progress along those lines within the proposed timescale, we and our European allies, in concert with the United Nations, must be ready to step in with confidence-building measures so that present opportunities may not be lost. Our own high profile in the Gulf war has given us fresh opportunities of contributing to the final outcome. At the same time it has raised fresh expectations from us in the Arab world which, if they are disappointed, will add all the more to its disillusionment.
What might these confidence-building measures be? In the short time available to me I can allude only briefly to a few which have been suggested. I stress that they are peripheral to the main issue and their value is partly psychological in contributing to the atmosphere in which the main issue can be fruitfully addressed.
The first and most important measure is in the economic field. Since 1987 the Palestinian economy has been so hampered by Israeli restrictions that Palestinians have been obliged to work for Israeli employers instead of directing their energies into their own indigenous concerns. To remedy that, and to help make their economy self-sufficient, foreign capital, together with technical assistance, will have to be injected in ways which will be proof against Israeli

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interference. I suggest that the Government should seek ways of promoting that by encouraging British companies to set up joint ventures with Palestinians.
Secondly, pressures could be put on the Israeli Government to allow Palestinians now suffering notorious hardships and dangers in Kuwait to return to the West Bank and Gaza if they have relatives there who can look after them. There could be pressures also to allow some outside monitoring of the conditions in the territories, whether by the United Nations or some EC body or EC missions already there.
In the education field there is a crying need to do whatever can be done to remedy the effects of repeated closures of schools and universities since the beginning of the intifada. Scholarships could be provided to complete the education of the Palestinians who will be needed to teach the next generation. Existing graduates in the West Bank and Gaza, where there is no work for them, could be helped to find teaching jobs or other work abroad. For example, exchanges could be arranged between British and Palestinian teachers which could do much to break down the barriers of misunderstanding between our peoples. In these matters the British Council, British universities, other bodies such as the Palestine Studies Trust based at Exeter University and Voluntary Services Overseas could be encouraged to play an important role. Lastly, financial help could be provided for that admirable charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians, to extend the valuable help it is already providing in that field.
I commend those suggestions to your Lordships' sympathetic attention and that of the Government.
4.7 p.m.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, as one grows old one becomes aware of the benefits of modern technology. When I was first elected to the other place if one needed to obtain information regarding what had happened previously one had to spend hours poring over Hansard indexes and making copious notes. I am glad to say that one is now able to go to the Library and ask for a print-out of a particular subject.
If one goes to the Library and asks for a print-out of the subject we are debating today one finds the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hylton and Lord Mayhew, and my noble friend Lord Molloy, frequently occurring. My noble friend Lord Molloy is otherwise engaged this afternoon; I understand that he is inaugurating the following debate regarding the role of NATO. However, the overwhelming concentration of some Members of both Houses on a very small area of the Middle East—an area only the size of Wales and with a population of a few million—to the exclusion of massive world problems has never ceased to amaze me.
Since I came to your Lordships' House I have taken the opportunity to draw attention to some of those problems. In particular, on 13th November last year I mentioned the problem of the Kurds. I know that a number of other noble Lords have tried to draw attention to the desperate problems of the Kurds and
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what has been happening to them. By and large our words fell on stony ground. Now, largely through the accident of Iraq being sufficiently injudicious to invade Kuwait, one cannot open a serious newspaper without seeing pages of newsprint devoted to the problems of the Kurds. I am extremely pleased about that; it is something that some of us have been attempting to achieve for a long time.
I, together with other noble Lords in your Lordships' House, tried also to draw attention to the problem of the Christians in the Sudan. I have had to raise with the Bishops' Bench the fact that for some years there has been no mention from that quarter of the problems of their fellow Christians in Africa. We are all aware of the pressures of lobbying by various interests on this House. What outside interest would not give its eye teeth to have an entire Bench devoted to its interests? Unfortunately, however, problems such as those which face the Christians in the Sudan have gone virtually unmentioned. I hope that the inauguration of Archbishop Carey will usher in a new interest and concern not only for the social and moral welfare of the people of this country but also for our Christian brothers and sisters abroad in many lands who need our continuing support.
I shall not detain your Lordships for long except to say that a number of matters are not mentioned in the context of the Palestinian issue. I shall not go into detail. The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, dealt with a number of the points far more ably than I can hope to do. I took the precaution of obtaining figures for the deaths of Palestinians in the area we are talking about. Since the beginning of the intifada on 9th December 1987 until 7th March of this year, 408 Palestinians were murdered by other Palestinians. Some of the murders were committed for various reasons associated with alleged criminal acts, but the bulk of them concerned people who were showing signs of wanting or actually trying to co-operate with the Israeli authorities and work towards the building up of some kind of control and government within the area.
I visited Israel fairly recently. I was specifically asked, if I had the opportunity, to point out that a great deal of interest in a curfew during the period of the Gulf war arose because Palestinians were going on to the roofs of their houses and relaying back over the border what was happening during the Scud attacks, where they were landing, and what sort of impact they were having. While I was out there I also saw in the newspapers a report concerning a leaflet issued by the PLO asking its people to stop murdering those who showed any signs of collaborating with the Israeli authorities. So it is not entirely a one-sided affair.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, has spoken and I have already mentioned his interest in this matter. In the past he has upbraided the UN for double standards particularly during the development of the Gulf crisis. He is not entirely faultless in this respect. I have heard him in this Chamber refer to Prime Minister Shamir as a terrorist because of his previous record during the foundation of the state of Israel. Yet, as your Lordships will know, the noble Lord was one of the chief architects of the destruction of the

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Government's War Crimes Bill during our previous Session. I think the charge of double standards can also be turned the other way.
I know that the noble Lord is extremely concerned about these matters. He was present at Belsen at the end of the war. Tonight, at the Imperial War Museum, there will be the unveiling of a permanent memorial to Belsen which, as your Lordships will know, has become synonymous with some of the worst infamies committed by the Nazi regime against the Jewish people during the last war. So let us try to clear our minds of many of the stereotypes which have existed over the years and get the matter into perspective.
I was fortunate enough to address your Lordships on 15th January of this year. We should try to put into perspective what we are talking about. I mentioned the problems of the Kurds and, apart from their problems, I tried to draw attention to the Sudanese Christians and what is happening in that country. I hope that within a short period of time there will be as much concern among your Lordships and others about their plight as there is about the Kurds. There has been a complete exaggeration of one particular place in the Middle East as opposed to all the other world problems.
I referred to United Nations' resolutions about these matters. Perhaps I may be forgiven for repeating that over the past 10 years there has not been one resolution in the United Nations apropos the problems of the Kurds. Their situation is not new. We have known for some time about the atrocities perpetrated against them through chemical warfare. There have been no resolutions on Eritrea; only three on the problems of Somalia and two on the Sudan. Yet over the same period of 10 years there have been 19 resolutions concerning Israel and the Palestinian problem. We have to ask ourselves whether our genuine concerns about human problems are not being exacerbated and manipulated by other interests.
I ask noble Lords to keep the matter in perspective and to realise that there are many equally pressing problems in other parts of the world which for some reason or another do not receive the same attention.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, I did not quite follow the noble Lord in speaking about my noble friend Lord Mayhew and his known support of the Arabs. I differ from him but entirely respect his views. The noble Lord seemed to say that my noble friend's view was inconsistent with the attitude which most of us in this House took (I certainly did) against the War Crimes Bill. I can see no connection whatever. Am I being very thick headed or is it obscure?
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord if I was not entirely clear. The point that I was trying to make in my limping way was that in the past few months I have heard the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, refer to the Prime Minister of Israel as a terrorist because of his immediate post-war record. While, after a period of about 45 years, he was still prepared to put that label on the Prime Minister of Israel, he was among the most assiduous in persuading your Lordships to reject the War Crimes Bill at Second Reading.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, I do now see a certain connection.
4.18 p.m.
Viscount Buckmaster: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Hylton for raising this very important but nevertheless difficult and delicate subject. I have spoken on the same subject in five debates over the past eight years and on each occasion—and on this occasion too—I am speaking as one of the joint chairman of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding. I am fully aware that since the outbreak of the Gulf war public opinion in this country has hardened even further against the Arabs and in favour of Israel. Having served for the greater part of my adult life in the Arab world, I have formed numerous friendships over many years and that situation has distressed me very greatly.
Perhaps it may be appropriate to examine some of the commonest misconceptions that one hears. First, there is the often accepted view that the Israelis are only returning to lands which their forebears occupied in Biblical times some 2,000 years ago. This may be true of the Israeli heartlands "from Beersheba to Dan", as is described in the Bible, but it is certainly not true of such occupied zones as the Gaza. Strip and the Golan Heights. Secondly, people will say that in their actions against the Arabs, the Israelis are merely upholding the principle of a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye. In reality the opposition to the intifada (many aspects of which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, described) which has manifested itself very largely in the throwing of stones at Israeli soldiers, can be likened to a whole faceful of eyes for one eye and a whole mouthful of teeth for one tooth.
The imposition of the curfew on Palestinians—which has now been eased, and about which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, spoke at some length—has been, I suppose, the most unkindest cut of all. To the objective observer it seems to have been yet another form of collective punishment for the Palestinians and an instrument that the Israeli authori ties hope will bring about the destruction of all the achievements of the intifada over the past three and a half years in health, education and the economy. Th;, latter aspect is particularly important. Perhaps I may enlarge a little on what the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said. In the industrial and agricultural sectors. most of the 30,000 Palestinian industrial workers and 42,000 agricultural workers in the West Bank and Gaza were unable to reach their work places, with colossal losses resulting in both spheres.
There have been over the years many examples of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, such as the closure of schools, which have now re-opened, and universities; and shootings—mainly of students—and even in some cases attacks on patients in hospitals. As an example of such attacks, I quote the killing on 28th March of a 12 year-old boy and the injuring of 59 Palestinians in Rafah. This is an important point: wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health is, according to Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, a grave breach.

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The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has spoken at some length about water restrictions. Perhaps I may remind him in this connection that the Palestinians have to obtain licences for drilling wells. In most cases their wells are limited to 200 feet, although the Israelis are permitted to sink their wells to 1,000 feet or so. The annual water consumption per capita has been only 140 cubic metres for Palestinians, but 537 for the Israelis and no less than 965 cubic metres for the West Bank settlers. Furthermore, Palestinians have to pay twice as much for their water, and farmers receive none of the subsidies that their Israeli counterparts enjoy.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and other noble Lords referred to deportation. On 23rd March the Israeli Government issued deportation orders against four Palestinian civilians from the occupied Gaza Strip, bringing the total number of deportation orders within the past four months to eight. Israel's deportation of Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territories constitutes a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and is therefore a war crime as defined by that convention. Expulsion orders also contravene numerous United Nations security resolutions which specifically address the deportation of Palestinians from the occupied territories.
Perhaps I may take up one point mentioned earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Bottomley. He spoke, as has been mentioned in many previous debates, about the PLO. He regards the PLO as a terrorist organisation. Many of your Lordships who have studied this problem in detail will be aware that the PLO consists of seven or eight different groups of which only one, or perhaps two, are terrorist.
Surely the most important matter we have to address at this stage is to urge the United Nations to reinforce its Resolutions 242 and 338. Until that is done, until the Israelis agree to withdraw from the occupied territories, there seems to me to be little chance of any lasting peace in this very disturbed part of the world.
4.27 p.m.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, noble Lords on all sides of the House, with the possible exception of the noble Lord, Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe, to whom I shall refer in a moment, will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for introducing this debate today.
I have been greatly encouraged by the constructive tone of the debate. We have been dealing with matters that are very disturbing and with situations which need to be improved, but I thought that the tone of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, was extremely helpful to this debate and provoked a response from my noble friend Lord Mayhew which I also thought was extremely helpful and contained ideas that might well be useful for the future. I suspect that the Minister will be anxious to know where all these peace-keeping forces are coming from. I should have thought that it is an investment that the world order might well make,
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because in the end it will be cheaper to provide United Nations forces even on that magnitude rather than risk the consequences of not taking steps at this time.
Like the delegation referred to by the right reverend Prelate, I had the privilege of being in the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan and Israel proper just before the war broke out —in fact we left on 13th January. Like that delegation, we met some of these moderate Palestinians, Faisal Husseini and Sari Nusseibeh among them. I too was deeply shocked to find that Nusseibeh had been locked up in the early stages of the war. It was a grave mistake because here is a man who is undoubtedly a moderate. He was locked up apparently because he was alleged to be giving information to the Iraqis as to where Scud missiles were landing. That would have been difficult since he was in East Jerusalem under curfew and the missiles, as I understand it, were landing in Tel Aviv. Perhaps the Israeli authorities had some other means of discerning such matters. However, it was a mistake because these are the sort of people with whom discussions have to take place at some stage.
We came away from that visit feeling that there was a terrible air of frustration among the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. We noted many of the conditions referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. He certainly did not exaggerate. In the period immediately leading up to the war there seemed to be some hope of improvement. Some things had changed in that part of the world. The end of the Cold War is a not insignificant fact. There seemed to be some hope that the Americans would begin to use their undoubted influence to try to move the peace process forward. The fact that the European Community was beginning to get its political act together and to act as another weighty group in the world of politics was again a hopeful sign.
Unfortunately, however, with the outbreak of the war we saw the foolishness of some of the Palestinians. The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, was absolutely right to point the finger of scorn at Yassir Arafat because he has undoubtedly done terrible damage not only to his own people but to the hope of peace in the near future in the Middle East. The pictures of him embracing Saddam Hussein for whatever reason —there are reasons—undoubtedly did tremendous damage which will be apparent for a long time to come.
At that time it is true that the Israeli Government were a Right-wing Likud government, ruling or having a tendency to rule, as was said at a meeting I attended this morning, by divine intervention, which I thought was an interesting phrase. There was at that time a peace movement, as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said, which commanded respect. It was to be supposed at that time that around 30 per cent. of the Israeli people had considerable sympathy with their point of view. After the beginning of the war and the landing of the Scud missiles, and after the shouting from the rooftops—a point referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Beloff and Lord Cocks—that mood evaporated and the people who were involved in the peace movement melted away like snow in the sunshine.

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The Israeli Labour Party was also at that stage beginning to talk about the possibility of what it described as a Benelux type of solution to the problem. Precisely what that meant one need not explore, but at least there was beginning to be a feeling that land for peace was a subject worth exploring. I fear that that has been put right back by the consequences of the war. The Right wing in the Israeli Government has been strengthened. Some quite fanatical people have been introduced into the Government in recent weeks. That is extremely depressing. The settlements in the occupied territories are being pressed ahead with. Indeed I am told that a new one is being set up today. This is in total defiance of world opinion. We know that Her Majesty's Government are opposed to it and have expressed their view very strongly. I hope that they will do so again. The Israeli Government seem to be able to defy world opinion with absolute impunity.
Where do we go from here? In my view we have to try to return to the position that existed before the war. The British Government, through the European Community, have an important role to play. Mr. Baker is doing the rounds of the Middle East at the moment. At the present time he unfortunately appears to have swallowed the Israeli view hook, line and sinker. The regional solution may be a starting point but to many Palestinians it looks like another source of delay, more delay and still more delay. Camp David was successful in relation to the Israeli relationship with Egypt but it did nothing for the Palestinians. The individual picking off of Arab nations through bilateral deals with the Israeli Government may give the Israelis an increased sense of security—that cannot be bad—but it does not immediately reduce the level of frustration for the people living in the camps.
I have received today a copy of a report of someone who came back from the occupied territories recently. The person says that among the heaviest losers in the Gulf war have been the Palestinians. Not only have they lost significantly in the international political field but in the occupied territories the Israeli authorities have exploited the loss of world sympathy for the Palestinians and the diversion of attention away from their situation by putting in place measures which are more repressive than any others in the history of the occupation. During the war itself these measures included continuous curfews—rather more than was suggested by one or two noble Lords—and the stopping of all Palestinian labour in Israel. Now that the war is over the blanket curfews have been lifted but are still applied selectively.
Workers are being allowed back into Israel at less than half the pre-war rate. Formerly some 120,000 to 150,000 workers crossed the green line daily. Seventy thousand of them worked legally and the rest worked illegally but with the connivance of Israeli employers and hence, by implication, also the state. Now the figure is down to 40,000. They must get official passes involving at least six stamps, each valid for only one week. The pass becomes invalid as soon as the first stamp is out of date. The green line had been dramatically and severely reimposed as a fact on the ground.
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Of even greater importance is the separation of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. No West Bank cars are allowed into Jerusalem and only Palestinians with passes can cross the line. As Jerusalem is a bottleneck through which all north-south traffic must pass, the West Bank has been effectively cut in two. This has major implications for all activities, whether economic, cultural, social or humanitarian. It means, for example, that schools, hospitals and other public institutions in Jerusalem relying on a workforce which is largely from the West Bank cannot function properly. Organisations with their offices in Jerusalem are gravely hindered in their work.
The report also says that there are signs that the separation of Jerusalem and the pass system for entering Israel are now designed as permanent measures. I very much hope that that is not the case. David Steel commented as we came away from the camp in Gaza:
"I have never seen or felt anything like this since I was in Soweto".
That was the kind of impression one got.
The economic pressures on the Palestinians have been greatly exacerbated by the war. We have heard reference to the lack of money coming from Kuwait and the oilfields. I was talking this morning to someone who returned from Kuwait only two days ago. I digress slightly from the West Bank and Gaza because this matter impinges on it because of the remittances. At the beginning of the war around 20 per cent. of the population of Kuwait were Palestinians. They numbered some 420,000. At the end of March that figure had come down to 120,000. Government offices in Kuwait have been told not to employ Palestinians. One bank which employs 100 Palestinians now employs 12. The Kuwaiti Government will not deal with the Palestinian Red Crescent.
All Palestinians have to re-register by 16th May or leave the country, even though many of them have lived in that country for three generations now. They have not yet been told where they should register. They suspect that there is a steady move to try to remove them from the country and replace them as workers with people from Eastern Europe. There is an article in the Independent this morning to which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, drew my attention earlier today. Noble Lords who are interested in the subject may well wish to cast their eyes over it. It gives a vivid impression of what is happening there. This pressure goes back to the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Cocks, has left the Chamber. Therefore I shall not refer to what he said. I do not believe that this is the only problem in the world, nor is it the only problem in the Middle East, but it is essential to the problems of the Middle East. Unless we can begin to get it right, many of the difficulties in that sad area will never be sorted out.
We in this country have a particular responsibility and the British Government have a responsibility. I do not believe that they can discharge it alone. It can only

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be discharged through the United Nations, particularly through the European Community. There is a special role for the European Community to play today.
I wish to make one final comment which has nothing to do with the West Bank and Gaza. I would not wish the debate on this important part of the Middle East to pass without somebody mentioning that today is the fifth anniversary of the incarceration of John McCarthy. I hope that in their minds noble Lords will dwell on him and on the other hostages not just from this country but from other countries who are held in the Middle East. The results of the disturbance in the Middle East are the sad symptoms of all the problems in the Middle East which stem from many sources. One is the current situation in Israel, exacerbated by what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza.
4.41 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, if we are conscious of anything these days, it is that the problems of the Middle East are numerous, grave and complex. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has drawn our attention to one of these problems and we are grateful to him for his opening speech and to other noble Lords who have made interesting and constructive contributions.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester described the historical background. I do not propose to follow him save to say that when Israel and Palestine are debated in this Parliament, most of us react with a mixed feeling of involvement, guilt and responsibility. There is on the one hand Britain's historic link with the Arab world, and on the other hand our strong commitment to the preservation of the state of Israel, the only democracy in the region. We also know and deeply regret that the relations between large elements in the two races are, in the main, bitter and unforgiving. However, a settlement between the two is essential if a permanent peace is to be achieved. Egypt and Israel have shown that this is possible.
Saddam Hussein tried his best to drag Israel into the Gulf war, but he failed, thanks to Israel's wise refusal to retaliate. Many of us felt that at the end of the war there could and should be a new opportunity to seek a solution to the continuing problem. Our attention has rightly been concentrated on the appalling suffering of the Kurdish people over the past few weeks. We cannot be diverted from that. It was encouraging to hear of the visit of Mr. James Baker, the US Secretary of State, to the Middle East. I shall return to that in a moment.
The curfews imposed by the Israeli Government and described in some detail by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and others are just one facet of the unhappy relationship to which I have referred. The Palestinians call it persecution. They were confined to their homes, and other restrictions described by the noble Lord were imposed upon them. The reason for it was the PLO support for Iraq in the war when Israel was attacked by Scud missiles. As the noble Lord, Lord
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Tordoff, said, the PLO leadership showed a monumental lack of judgment before and during the war. However, the unfortunate Palestinians should not be made to suffer indefinitely for this.
We further noted a few days ago that Mr. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli minister of housing, announced that settlement on the West Bank is to be substantially increased and that his ministry is to build 13,000 new houses on the Golan Heights over the next two years, thus doubling the Jewish population there.
The US State Department has calculated that about 200,000 Jews now live on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. It is significant that opposition MPs in Israel say that this Jewish housing boom is intended to make an Israeli pull-out impossible. That is something we should ponder. President Bush has said that his government are pursuing a Middle East settlement based on "trading land for peace". We do not underestimate America's influence in Israel, or Israel's indebtedness to the United States; but some current policies in Israel do not appear to reflect this. It is a disquieting state of affairs. The responsibility and influence of the United States, however, is still considerable in Israel.
When President Bush talks of trading land for peace, he is talking about land which Israel acquired in the Six Day War, which included the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Sinai and the Golan Heights. The occupation of Sinai ended after the Camp David agreement. However, let us be clear about this, for it lies at the root of the problem: Israel has for over 20 years held and occupied territories in which 1,300,000 Arabs have lived without a vote, without representative government and without any of the democratic rights which Israel itself quite properly respects and prizes. That is the paradox in Israel and the occupied territories.
It is interesting after all to note that the Arabs have been in the area far longer than the Northern Irish have been in Ulster. In recent years, the policies of the present Israeli Government—which are not supported by Mr. Peres and his opposition Labour Party—appeared to make a long term settlement a doubtful possibility at present. However, we must try not to be too pessimistic.
There is now a new factor. The Gulf war has changed attitudes. Mr. Yitzak Shamir has said that he is ready to discuss peace with President Assad of Syria who, in turn, has responded favourably. This is encouraging but we must recognise that formidable obstacles lie in the way of success; for example, the return of the Golan Heights which Israel has occupied for over 20 years. Mr. Shamir has said that this is not on the agenda, but perhaps after consultation over a period he will modify his view. The Gulf war is over, but there are at least two further gulfs to be traversed. The first is to find agreement on the kind of conference in which all the parties are prepared to participate. The second is the central problem which such a meeting would seek to resolve.
On the first point, Mr. James Baker's visit to Israel has shown how difficult it will be to secure a

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consensus. It seems that Israel will consider a regional conference—and this has been referred to by noble Lords—but not one convened by the United Nations.
Furthermore, it is far from clear which Palestinians the Israelis are ready to talk to. The PLO support for Saddam Hussein throughout the Gulf conflict has made matters much more difficult. Whom will Israel meet if it rejects the PLO? If it persists in that, will Syria and Jordan confer with them? That is doubtful. It will require statesmanship of the highest order to unravel this tangled web.
On the second point; namely, the basis of discussions, we are driven to conclude that Israel must be prepared to make real concessions. That means the release of territories as envisaged in Security Council Resolution 242. This is what happened between Israel and Egypt at Camp David. With the best will in the world, and with all my respect and affection for Israel, I see no alternative if we are to have peace in the Middle East. That is the view of the Israeli Labour Party and it is the view of Egypt as well as the Palestinians in the occupied territories. This brings us back to the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and what the future holds for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. After all, it is their future that we are discussing.
In 40 years of independence Israel has won the respect and admiration of the world. There is no doubt that the international community strongly supports the preservation of the state of Israel and that any settlement must ensure and enshrine that principle. UN Resolutions 242 and 338 state that clearly. Mr. Shamir and the Likud Party are, unhappily, unwilling to consider a meeting convened by or under the auspices of the United Nations. Let us hope that bilateral meetings lead to a wider conference and this in turn results in a multilateral settlement. There are solutions provided there exists the will to work them out. The right reverend Prelate, my noble friend Lord Cocks and others have made some interesting suggestions in this regard.
I mentioned Mr. James Baker's current efforts to bring the parties together. The results reveal the difficulties of that process. For example, Saudi Arabia appears to support a regional meeting while Syria is adamant that it wants an international peace conference and a full Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab lands. The Israeli Government wish to exclude the United Nations and those countries, including our own, which they believe are biased. I should be grateful if the noble Earl can tell me whether he concurs with that scenario. I think Mr. Shamir and his colleagues in Likud have a huge responsibility at the present time. They must make a substantial move and be ready to make real concessions. Clinging to the status quo will not save the situation. If they fail, then the future of the Middle East is bleak indeed. However, if they do make concessions, as I hope and believe they will in due course, it is also essential to ensure that the existence of Israel as a state and its territorial integrity after the settlement are assured beyond all doubt.
The rights of Israel are no less important than the rights of the Palestinians. No Saddam Hussein, now
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or in the future, must be given the opportunity to flout those rights and to harass or attack Israel. The United Nations and world leaders must help to get the balance right. That is the huge challenge facing the UN and the world at the present time.
4.53 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for raising this most important issue. His commitments to human rights not only in the occupied territories but also in Israel are well known. We share many of his preoccupations as well as those of your Lordships who have spoken and to whom I am grateful for making this such a relevant and constructive debate.
There are nearly 2 million Palestinians living in the occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Of those, over half a million are refugees registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. Many of the refugees live in camps.
We have long been working for a Just and lasting settlement of the Arab/Israel dispute, based on UN Security Council Resolution 242 which calls for Israel to withdraw from territories occupied during the 1967 war, and recognition of the right of all states in the region, including Israel, to a secure existence. That latter point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Bottomley. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester summarised the situation when he referred to land for peace.
Until a settlement is reached, Israel should administer the territories in accordance with international law and human rights obligations. Civilians in occupied territory are protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits forcible deportation, detention without trial, destruction of property and denial of access to food, health and education. I am happy to confirm to the noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith, that we have made that clear to the Israeli Government. We have also made clear that we are concerned by the failure of the Israelis to live up to their obligations under the convention. We regularly raise human rights issues both with the Israeli Government and with the Israeli ambassador in London.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has drawn particular attention to Israeli settlement policy. I take this opportunity to reiterate our firm conviction that the settlement by the occupying power of its own civilians in occupied territory is illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. It creates further obstacles to peace. We estimate that over 200,000 settlers are now living in approximately 200 settlements in the occupied territories. Jewish settlers now make up about 13 per cent. of the total population of the occupied territories. About one-half of the West Bank and one-third of the Gaza Strip have been allocated to Israeli use. Most of the settlers live in the West Bank but 3,000 live in Gaza and 120,000 in Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. A further 12,000 live in settlements on the Golan. The continuing expansion

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of these settlements is a cause of deep and continuing concern to us, as it is to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn.
We have regularly stated our opposition to the Israeli settlement policy. While we welcome the liberalisation of Soviet emigration controls and the new freedom of Soviet Jews to go to Israel, all Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, are illegal. We therefore agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, that to allow Soviet Jews to settle there will further set back the search for peace.
The economic and social situation in the occupied territories is also a source of grave concern to us. Since the start of the intifada, the regular all-out strikes, combined with the uprising have brought the economy almost to a standstill. But the loss of remittances from Kuwait, unemployment and the tightening of restrictions on movement both within the occupied territories and between the territories and Israel have caused great hardship. Conditions are particularly severe in Gaza, which is much more densely populated than the West Bank and has a higher proportion of refugees.
We have worked for many years to tackle the immediate problems confronting the Palestinian population, both through our actions with the Israelis and through our valuable aid programmes. I can assure the House that these efforts will continue. But we must be realistic. We cannot expect sustained improvement in the situation in the occupied territories without progress towards a comprehensive settlement of the Arab/Israel dispute. As my noble friend Lord Beloff reminded us, the human rights problems and material deprivation in the occupied territories which are of concern to so many of us are symptoms of this deeper problem.
Throughout the recent Gulf crisis we made it clear that as soon as Kuwait had been liberated we would turn our attention back to the Arab/Israel dispute and the Palestinian problem. The swift success of our forces in the Gulf has enabled us to do this more quickly than we could have hoped. The first step towards the reviving of the peace process must be to forge some kind of consensus among the parties to the dispute on the way ahead. We have been playing a full part in this. We have been in regular contact with the other permanent members of the Security Council and with the key players in the region. We have put our full weight behind American efforts to put a new momentum behind the search for peace.
We welcome President Bush's reaffirmation to Congress last month of the United States' commitment to a settlement based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of land for peace. That commitment has been demonstrated by the two visits which the US Secretary of State, James Baker, has paid to the Middle East during the last month. We all have our roles to play in the search for peace, but we believe that the Americans are best placed to take the lead in bringing together the parties to the dispute. While their efforts to do that continue we shall support them to the best of our ability. We therefore welcome their latest initiative and the
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regional conference proposal at the centre of it. With the other Foreign Ministers of the Twelve my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary will be meeting Mr. Baker in Luxembourg this evening to discuss in detail what the Americans have in mind and the European role in it.
It is for that reason that I cannot fully answer the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, rightly reminded the House, the Twelve have a responsibility, which I am confident we shall fulfil. We can play a part in furthering the peace process and we are active in our attempts to improve human rights and living standards in the occupied territories. I should like to make it clear to your Lordships that our overriding concern is to see progress. We are ready to be flexible about the mechanisms used to achieve this.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, we would not want to underestimate the difficulties ahead. We are only at the beginning of a long and complicated process, but Mr. Baker's discussions revealed considerable areas of agreement between the parties. Like the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, we were encouraged in particular by the apparent acceptance by all in the region of the twin-track approach originally proposed by the Israeli Government. We support the idea that progress on the Palestinian problem should go hand-in-hand with an improvement in the relations between Israel and her Arab neighbours. The key to the success of such an approach must be simultaneous progress on both sides of the equation. Attempts to relegate either problem to second place will lead to failure but with goodwill such difficulties can be overcome.
In the meantime, there is an urgent need for improvements in human rights standards and living conditions in the occupied territories. We are working for both. On the first, we were active in securing the unanimous adoption by the UN Security Council of three successive resolutions in the final quarter of last year. The last of these, UNSCR 681, invites the Secretary-General to come up with proposals on ways and means to enhance the protection of Palestinians in the occupied territories. These would provide the basis for further international action to ensure respect for Palestinian human rights. The Secretary-General has begun to make suggestions, and we are playing a positive part in discussion of the alternatives.
As I have said, the Israelis are obliged to administer the occupied territories in accordance with provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. We deplore their continuing failure to do so. We are particularly concerned by their continuing use of deportations and collective punishments, such as the sealing and demolition of Palestinian homes. We deplore the continuing closure of four of the six Palestinian universities in the occupied territories.
The Israelis are in no doubt about our views on these matters and we shall keep up our efforts to persuade them to improve their record. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary raised continuing Israeli interference with education when he met the Israeli Foreign Minister in London last month. We make regular démarches to the Israeli

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authorities both bilaterally and with our European Community partners on particularly worrying aspects of their administration.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Bottomley, we welcome the recent Israeli announcement of the release of over 1,000 Palestinian detainees. At a time when there is talk throughout the Middle East of confidence-building measures, that is precisely the kind of step which we should like to see the Israelis taking more frequently. However, more than 10,000 more detainees are still being held. We urge the Israelis to follow up this welcome initial gesture with further releases.
A number of prominent moderate Palestinian leaders have also been held in administrative detention. The cases of Sari Nusseibeh, Radwan Abu Ayyash and others are known to many members of the House. We welcome Abu Ayyash's recent release and look forward to the release of Sari Nusseibeh whose case the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, brought to the attention of your Lordships earlier.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, mentioned the curfew problem in the occupied territories. The 24-hour curfews throughout the occupied territories during hostilities in the Gulf exacerbated an already difficult economic situation. The combined impact of their rigorous enforcement throughout the Gulf conflict and the decline in remittances and return of remittance earners from the Gulf have hit the Palestinian economy, and in particular agriculture, hard.
Like all your Lordships, we welcome the relaxation of the curfews since the end of hostilities in the Gulf, but their effects will not disappear so easily. With our European Community partners, we have responded decisively to this problem. The Foreign Affairs Council agreed on 4th March to make 60 mecu—about £40 million—of emergency aid available to the occupied territories. This came on top of the existing European commitment, made at the end of 1989, to double aid to the occupied territories by the end of 1992 to 12 mecu or about £8.5 million. We contribute about a fifth of that. The Community is on course to achieve that target. So the resources have been made available.
However, there remains the problem of spending the funds agreed. In order to tackle this problem, the Community has decided to put a representative into the occupied territories to make aid disbursement more effective. We attach great importance to that initiative. We hope that the Israelis will agree to his being posted in the occupied territories on terms acceptable to the Community very soon.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, reminded the House, the UN has an important role to play. We welcomed the UN Secretary-General's appointment of the distinguished Swiss diplomat Eduard Brunner to be his special representative in the Middle East. We were delighted to welcome him to London for talks with my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary and my honourable friend the Minister of State earlier today. We believe that Mr. Brunner can play a
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valuable role in bringing the parties to the dispute together and establishing areas of common ground. We wish him luck in his endeavour.
Britain has long been one of the principal supporters of UNRWA, the United Nations agency charged with the care of Palestinian refugees. Through UNRWA, the European Community and our own bilateral programme in the occupied territories we are giving about £22 million worth of assistance to the Palestinians this year.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has proposed that zones of protection, monitored by the UN, be established for the Palestinians, along the lines of those being introduced for the Kurds. I understand his concern to do more to protect the Palestinians. Indeed we share it. But the plights of the two peoples are very different. The rights of the Palestinians of the occupied territories are protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention. The wellbeing of Palestinian refugees, their education and their health, wherever they are in the Near East, are already the responsibility of a UN agency—UNRWA. In Jordan and Syria their condition is similar to that of many inhabitants of the host country. In Lebanon they suffer from many of the problems facing ordinary Lebanese.
Although I am grateful for the compliment that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, paid to the Foreign Office and its persuasive negotiating ability, we do not, we believe, need new arrangements to protect the Palestinians. However, I must put it to your lordships that we need to make the existing arrangements work more effectively.
We agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, that there is a case for safe havens in certain circumstances but we do not believe that the promotion of the idea that the whole of the occupied territories be made a safe haven, policed by a large UN force, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, would serve either the Palestinians there or the cause of peace. The Israeli Government have made plain their rejection of that proposal, which is entirely inconsistent with their policy. If we are to achieve a lasting improvement in conditions and a lasting political settlement, we must, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester reminded us, engage Palestinians and Israelis in negotiation, not alienate them.
Finally, I turn briefly to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe. He took the debate wider to include other unfortunate people in the world who are suffering. He mentioned in particular the Kurds. If he can bear with the House a little longer, I shall be making a Statement on that subject which may be of interest to him.
There is much to be done to improve the unsatisfactory conditions in the occupied territories to which the noble Lord referred, but I can assure the House that Britain is playing a full part in tackling the problem.
5.9 p.m.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, I should like to express my thanks to all the speakers in the debate. It has been timely and I am delighted that it seems to have drawn out a number of constructive ideas. I should like to

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thank the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for his proposal and, in that context, to say that there are around the world still some very large military forces which could perhaps be employed to better effect in putting into practice those peacekeeping and problem-resolving proposals that have been agreed by the United Nations.
I am grateful to my noble kinsman, Lord Oxford and Asquith, for his confidence-building measures which I am sure are important. The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, asked who are the valid Palestinian interlocutors. Perhaps part of the answer is that Mr. Baker, the American Secretary of State, sat down in Jerusalem with at least half a dozen of them and, if they are not the right people, a number of others were named in today's debate.
The Government's reply was very nearly all that I could have hoped. There is perhaps one small exception about the Fourth Geneva Convention which, alas, does not seem to be observed and applied within the occupied territories. I am sure that we all join in wishing well the meeting taking place today between Mr. Baker and the European Community Ministers. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Iraq: Measures to Relieve Suffering
5.12 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat a Statement on the situation in Iraq which was made earlier today in another place by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a further statement about the relief of the suffering in Iraq.
"On Monday I reported to the House on the plan put forward by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to establish temporary safe havens in Iraq for the refugees until they can return to their homes in safety. I said that we were pressing the plan vigorously. I can now report good progress.
"Following my right honourable friend's initiative, we have continued intensive discussions with our close allies, particularly the French and United States Governments, our partners in the European Community and the Secretary-General of the United Nations. We warmly welcome the decision announced by President Bush late yesterday to establish, in conjunction with ourselves and the French, several encampments in northern Iraq where relief supplies for the refugees will be made available in large quantities and distributed in an orderly way. This is essential for the survival of the refugees. Security will be provided at these temporary sites by US, British and French forces. The details are today being worked out in close consultation with our Allies and with the UN Secretary-General.
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"These proposals are to help provide emergency aid, as authorised by Security Council Resolution 688. We regard these camps as temporary. They will provide, first, the emergency supplies and shelter needed to keep the refugees alive and, secondly, over time the reassurance they need to move on in safety to their homes. It is an immediate measure designed to save lives. We shall be working closely with the United Nations. UN Resolution 688 requires the Iraqi Government to co-operate both with measures undertaken to ensure the implementation of that resolution and generally with the UN Secretary-General's efforts for the refugees.
"Meanwhile we shall continue our own additional relief efforts. My right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development gave evidence on this to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs this morning. In addition to our contribution to the air aid bridge we have contributed over £20 million to appeals by the United Nations and other agencies. We are supporting the efforts of our own nongovernmental organisations. Our efforts are not confined to Turkey. My right honourable friend will leave for Turkey and Iran tomorrow to help to ensure that the relief effort is being properly co-ordinated on the ground. Last week we sent 80 tonnes of relief supplies to Iran. Two additional flights carrying a similar amount will leave for Iran this week and more will follow.
"The Iranian authorities and Red Crescent are making strenuous efforts, but it is clear that a substantial build-up of the international effort to help the Kurds in Iran is essential and urgent". My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Earl for repeating the Statement. We discussed the appalling situation in Iraq during our exchanges on Monday and today we warmly welcome the decision by Her Majesty's Government, the United States Government and France to send troops to Northern Iraq to make the encampments for the Kurdish refugees secure and to defend them against any possible attack by the Iraqi army.
Will the noble Earl say whether an attack from the south is a possibility, or does he think that Saddam Hussein will hold back? Further, may we assume that our aircraft are in position to counter any possible attack, not only by Iraqi troops but by Iraqi aircraft, including helicopters? We note that the size of the British force will be less than a brigade. Will the Minister tell us the extent of the area in Northern Iraq which will be occupied by them and by US and French forces? What is to be the command structure under which they operate, or is this matter currently being discussed?
Will the noble Earl tell us whether the entire action is being taken under Security Council Resolution 688 or whether a further resolution will be necessary in

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order to legalise it? If military action breaks out, I assume that that would not be covered by Resolution 688 alone.
Furthermore, the Statement recognises that a similar disaster is developing on the Iranian border where the Kurdish refugees number about half a million. We welcome what the Statement says about the dispatch of food to those unhappy people. Will the Minister say whether any action in terms of troops is proposed to help them as well? For example, are there to be encampments on the Iraqi side of the Iranian border where those 500,000 refugees are gathered?
We note that the objective is to hand over that responsibility to the United Nations as soon as possible. Will the noble Earl tell us what the timescale is likely to be? How long does he think the British brigade will be there?
Finally, we regard this as a positive and practical response to a terrible problem and we welcome and support the initiative.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Earl for repeating the Statement made by his right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary in another place. I should like to associate myself with many of the questions put to him by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos.
We welcome the Statement as marking considerable progress since the last Statement on Monday, not least in the position of the United States. In that regard, we should congratulate Her Majesty's Government, particularly the Prime Minister. We should point out that that change in the position of the United States has been taken on an initiative from Europe.
We are particularly happy to hear that safe havens are to be established in Iraq. However, I should like to associate myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, said in connection with the situation in Iran, to which the noble Earl referred, but which involves larger numbers and in some ways is in more acute need, if that were possible, than the situation on the Turkish border.
I was surprised that there was no reference in the Statement to the situation in the south and to the Shias there. I should like to know whether the Kuwaitis and the Saudi Arabians who have benefited to some extent from the Gulf operation are playing their part in assisting those who are in danger or see themselves in danger in that part of Iraq.
We are happy to hear that military protection will be provided, though I noted that the Statement did not make any reference to the role of air supremacy in the whole operation, which must be crucial. This is presumably one of the largest operations of its kind that has taken place since the Berlin airlift. The logistical skill with which the military operations in the Gulf were conducted was remarkable. One only hopes that the same energies and skills are being applied to this humanitarian relief.
I think I am right in saying that at the time of the Berlin airlift something like 1,400 air movements a day were taking place at RAF Fairford. That gives some idea of the scale of the operation required, not least because the numbers here are probably not much
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smaller than those involved on that occasion. I too should like to know what the position is vis-à-vis the UN and whether Resolution 688 is sufficient to cover all the operations with which we are concerned.
One of the aspects this tragedy has revealed is the necessity to make clear in any final settlement that the rights of minorities are in future protected in that part of the world and elsewhere. Indeed, a weakness in the cease-fire terms was precisely the absence of such conditions.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am grateful to both the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition and the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for their responses to the Statement. A number of questions have been asked. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, asked whether Saddam Hussein would hold back. As I said in the Statement, it is part of the Security Council resolution that Iraq has to comply with it.
I should like to make perfectly clear again that we shall not tolerate any interference in our humanitarian relief operations anywhere in Iraq. The Americans have specifically told the Iraqi authorities not to fly any aircraft, fixed-wing or rotary, north of the 36th parallel. Woe betide Saddam Hussein if he does not hold back. On that basis, I can confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, that aircraft are available to take appropriate action should it be needed.
The noble Lord raised a relevant question about the extent of the area and the command structure. At this stage I am unable to give him full details because the modalities of the plan are being discussed today. We want to see early implementation of However, let me reassure the House that in whatever way possible I shall seek to keep your Lordships abreast of developments in what is obviously a very fast-moving situation.
Both noble Lords asked for further details about whether this action was being taken under Security Council Resolution 688. We believe that our plan is consistent with the provisions of that resolution, and the UN Secretary-General agrees with the general principles of our plan. I fully take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, that we may have to seek a further resolution if things do not proceed as we hope, but we very much believe that the existing resolutions cover exactly what we are doing.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, also asked about the timescale of the operation. Obviously the deployment is short-term to meet the immediate need to protect the relief operation. Our objective is to give the Kurds sufficient assurance of their future security so they will come down from the mountains and later go back to their homes. How long that will take we cannot say, but we hope it will be a short rather than long timescale, and perhaps the appropriate word at the moment is "months".
I am grateful for the congratulations extended to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister by the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter. Indeed, it is a remarkable tribute to the initiative of my right honourable friend and to the concerted work we have done with the French and Americans.
With regard to Iran, I shall not repeat what I said in the Statement. I add only that my right honourable

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friend the Secretary of State will be discussing the situation in Iran with EC colleagues and the US Secretary of State, Mr. Baker, in Luxembourg later this evening.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, also asked what was happening in the south. I remind him that our concern is for the humanitarian needs of all Iraqis, and we are urging the Saudis and Kuwaitis to give shelter as necessary to displaced Iraqis.
I should like to add to what I said yesterday. The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, who is not in his place but perhaps will read this in the Official Report, asked what part of the UNIKOM force would be armed. The 300-man officer observer force will not be armed but the infantry back-up company comprising 1,140 men will carry arms for defensive purposes. The chief military observer, General Greindl, has left for the region. Some observers are already in place and the rest will follow shortly. Therefore, there will be protection in the south as well.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, suggested that this was the biggest operation of its kind since the Berlin airlift. I do not have precise figures to hand, but President Bush said late last night that it was the largest US relief effort mounted in modern military history.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, perhaps I may ask my noble friend the Minister whether, as the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, has most graciously suggested, it was not the timely and humanitarian initiative of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister which played the crucial role in securing American support for safe havens and also recognition of the need for a military presence to protect them. I would also ask my noble friend the Minister to explain the part played by Her Majesty's Government in drawing up terms of cease-fire under which Iraq will be stripped of its weapons of mass destruction.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. Indeed, the Prime Minister played a most crucial part in this humanitarian effort, which has been backed up by intensive negotiations. Besides paying tribute to the initiative of my right honourable friend, I would pay tribute to all those who have burnt the midnight oil and beyond in taking the initiative forward to its present state in this country and in France and America.
Referring to the second point made by my noble friend, it was a British initiative which led in large part to the drafting of the cease-fire arrangements, including those relating to the horrible weapons Saddam Hussein now has, and now the cease-fire agreement in respect of which Iraq has signed up for their destruction.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, I should like to say that we on these Benches do not see the Prime Minister's action in this case as that of a ditherer and a wimp.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I would say only that none of my right honourable friend's actions takes that form.
5.30 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, briefly I should like to say how good it is to hear the Statement and to express the hope, as put by the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, that we shall put as much vitality, initiative and daring into this as we did, quite rightly, in prosecuting the war. This is something in which perhaps some of the aid agencies can play their part and give of their expertise, and I hope they will be called upon so to do. As we have said in the House before, one of the things we do not want is to create refugee camps which will not be dissolved for 15 years. This is a good announcement, and let me say how much we in the Churches will want to affirm it.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate. It will require a great deal of logistical expertise and determined effort by governments, the UN, the NGOs and the relief agencies, all of which have an enormous role to play, to make sure the aid gets there as quickly as possible. I can tell your Lordships that the right reverend Prelate wrote to me yesterday, he not having taken part in Question Time, and reminded me of Drake's prayer. Indeed, we shall see this through to the end.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, having been in contact over the past month with many of the Kurdish leaders, and in view of what we have been able to see on television and read in the newspapers, I am sure that the entire Kurdish people as well as the British people will be most grateful for the endeavours of our Prime Minister and the success that he has achieved in persuading the President of the United States, to change his attitude a little. That is no mean achievement. I hope that none of it will be ruined by not having the courage to proceed in the United Nations to acknowledge that all the world's tyrants such as Saddam Hussein have always had people in their own country who support them. Such is the case now in Iraq. It is a tiny minority but it is enough. It will be a terrible shame if those endeavours—which could be made a reality with enclaves being constructed—should be beaten and smashed and once again the Kurds slain by the might of Saddam Hussein.
Can the noble Earl say whether it is the desire of our country to put pressure on the United Nations to ensure that Saddam Hussein is brought to book for the grave crimes that he has committed in Iraq and Kuwait?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, makes a fair point. As I said yesterday, it has been agreed within the Twelve that the Community will approach the UN Secretary-General —indeed the President did approach him yesterday —to see whether this matter could be taken further forward.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, the Statement referred to when it would be safe for the Kurdish people to return to their homes. In view of the misunderstanding which arose between the Americans saying that they never told the Kurds to rise against

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Saddam and the Kurds denying it, it could well be that the Minister's Statement will be read as a commitment to safeguard the Kurds until they are safe to go home. Can the noble Earl give us an explicit answer: is that the pledge that is being given?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the pledge is clearly set out in the Statement. We wish to encourage the Kurds to come off the mountains from those desolate conditions down to the lower levels where it is easier and logistically more sensible for the aid to be taken to them with the idea that eventually they will be able to return safely to their own homes. I do not want to get into the semantics of this. We did not encourage the Kurds to rebel. President Bush again confirmed today what was said. He said that he would not shed any tears at all if Saddam Hussein went.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, I do not disagree with that at all. I asked a specific question. We must consider how including in the Statement mention of when it is safe for the Kurds to return home will be looked on by the Kurds. First of all, someone has to define when it is safe for the Kurds to return home. Someone has to do that because in the future someone will question it. Is this a pledge to safeguard the Kurds until they can return in safety to their home?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I shall use exactly the wording of the Statement. What my right honourable friend the Prime Minister sought to do through his initiative, which was taken forward by the announcement of President Bush last night, was to attempt to establish temporary safe havens in Iraq for the refugees until they can return to their homes in safety.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I unreservedly welcome the action of Her Majesty's Government and congratulate them on taking it. As the noble Earl rightly stressed in the Statement, these are and can only be temporary measures. As my noble friend Lord Sefton just pointed out, the policy depends on persuading the Kurds to come down from the mountains to the camps with the prospect of going back home. As my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition and the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, pointed out, there is no mention of double the number of Kurds who are in Iran Nor any mention of the Shi'ites in southern Iraq. Nor, I would add, of the Kurds and other minorities who are still in their towns. What will persuade them that they will be safe to return either from the mountains of Turkey, from Iran or from the south of Iraq to their towns which are at present being bombed and attacked by the Iraqi army?
As my noble friend Lord Sefton asked: is this in the longer term a guarantee to the minorities or indeed to the opposition groups in Iraq who were certainly encouraged, as a result of the way in which the war was fought and by what was said after the war by leaders of the coalition, to believe that they had the green light to rebel? They now feel that they have been let down because Saddam Hussein has been enabled to continue to attack them. Is this now the first stage of
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a promise that the coalition will safeguard the right of the Kurds to return to their homes in safety? That safety will never come from Saddam Hussein. It can only come from the coalition.
Further to that point, when the peace treaty is arranged, will the Kurds and other opposition groups in Iraq be entitled to be represented at the peace talks? Will there be within that peace settlement a guarantee of their safety in the future?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, when the noble Lord started I thought that for once should be able to agree in full with what he said. But he went on to say that I had not covered the points about the people in the south of Iraq, those on the Iranian border and indeed those in Iran. Quite contrary to what he said, I have spent a lot of time on Monday, yesterday and today dealing with precisely those points.
The noble Lord omitted to remind the House that UN Resolution 688 requires the Iraqi Government to co-operate with the measures undertaken to ensure the implementation of that resolution and generally with the UN Secretary-General's efforts for the refugees. So although the immediate humanitarian effort is to get the Kurds off the mountains down Lo more clement climates where the aid can be disbursed more efficiently and effectively, our ultimate intention is to allow them to return safely to their homes and for those in Iraq to live in peace.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the noble Earl has not said whether the Government envisage—possibly at some future time but it must be very quickly—the same kind of protection for the Kurds in Iran and the Shi'ites in southern Iraq. Do the Government intend to set up similar enclaves, protected by troops, in those two areas as well as for the Iraqis who are now in the mountains of Turkey?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, as I have already said to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, the modalities of the scheme are being, worked out at the moment. Therefore I cannot comment exactly where the safe havens will be. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, that I have already explained at length about UNIKOM which is an armed force in the south.
Earl Russell: My Lords, the Prime Minister's objective to get the Kurds down off the mountains is clearly vital. However, has any thought been given to the logistics of getting them down? It is my understanding that not all of them by any means are fit to walk. Is there any other means of transport available?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, considerable thought has been, is being, and will be given to the logistics both of getting aid to the Kurds and of getting them off the mountains. There are now a considerable number of American, British and French helicopters in the area. I fully take the noble Lord's point about the condition of some of the people and the harrowing scenes that we have all seen on television. I am sure that every effort will be made to get them down as quickly as possible.
Lord Kilbracken: My Lords, can the noble Earl say how the refugees will be protected on their journey from the mountains to the camps from attacks by the Iraqi army?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, basically, the area of which we are talking is an area where the Iraqi army is not present at the moment.

Teachers' Pay Machinery
5.40 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, I should like to repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education. The Statement is as follows:
"The Government have been reconsidering the best approach to settling teachers' pay and conditions in England and Wales in the light of other developments, including discussions during the Committee stage of the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Bill, the Fourth Report of the Interim Advisory Committee, and progress in implementing the education reforms.
"As I made clear when I was appointed to my present office, my concern is that we should have a well-qualified and well-paid teaching force, dedicated to serving the needs of pupils. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has expressed his strong personal commitment to those same aims. He and I want to reinforce the professionalism of teachers, and we want to raise still further the esteem in which the teaching profession is held in our society.
"The work of the Interim Advisory Committee has, we believe, been of great importance in encouraging teachers' professionalism by avoiding conflict about the level of their pay. In practice the operation of the committee has meant determining teachers' pay in much the same way as that of doctors, dentists, nurses and midwives in the National Health Service, who are similarly committed to the needs of their patients. We have decided that it would be better to continue this broad parity of treatment for these key professions rather than return teachers to collective bargaining which has caused so much conflict in the past.
"Mr. Speaker, previously the Government took the view that a review body for teachers could not be established because of the emphasis teacher unions had placed on their ability to take industrial action. We believe that that situation has changed. Teachers have worked with great professional commitment on the implementation of the 1988 reforms. The recommendations of the Interim Advisory Committee, culminating in their Fourth Report earlier this year, have produced a more progressive and flexible salary structure, which has won support across a very broad spectrum of teacher opinion. The public and the vast majority of teachers do not want to see any return to industrial action affecting the education of pupils.
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In my opinion the reaction to the antics at the Easter conferences of one or two of the teacher unions underlined that only too clearly. I am confident that the public will welcome the Government's acknowledgment of the professional status of teachers, and our offer to them of the review body status reserved to certain key non-striking professions.
"Mr. Speaker, accordingly I now propose that teachers' pay and conditions should in future be determined by an independent review body reporting to the Prime Minister alongside the review bodies for the health service, the armed forces, and senior civil servants and the judiciary. This proposal is made on the basis that teachers fully recognise and accept their professional responsibilities, and will not in future take industrial action about matters within the review body's ambit. The Government for its part will undertake, as in the case of the other review bodies, to implement the review body's recommendations unless there are clear and compelling reasons to the contrary. The recommendations will apply to teachers in maintained schools except those grant-maintained schools which choose to make their own arrangements.
"Teachers are not Government employees, and their pay is not directly financed from the Exchequer. So unlike the other review bodies the Schoolteachers' Review Body will have to be statutory. It will have to cover conditions as well as pay, as do both the present IAC arrangements and those in the pay and conditions Bill. The body will not be subject to a pre-determined financial constraint, but as with the IAC I shall direct it each year as to considerations to which it is to have regard. These considerations will include as now the Government's view that school teachers' pay should be such as to recruit, retain and motivate sufficient staff of the appropriate calibre within what can be afforded, as expressed at present in the level of education standard spending set by Government.
"I attach particular importance to allowing schools the scope to tailor pay to their own needs in the light of local labour markets. Through the work of the Interim Advisory Committee schools have recently acquired the freedom to choose from a wide menu of options within a national framework. I expect the review body to build on that approach. The grant-maintained schools will be able to make their own arrangements if they want to go further.
"Like other review bodies, the teachers' review body will take evidence from all the parties concerned—in this case the teacher unions, the employers and the Government. Once the review body has made its recommendations, the decision on their implementation will rest, in the same way as applies to the other review bodies, with the Prime Minister.
"Accordingly the Government are now withdrawing the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Bill. Instead I shall bring forward as soon as possible a new Bill to give effect to the decisions I

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have announced today. My intention is to secure Royal Assent in time for next year's settlement to be determined by the new body. I reiterate the Government's determination to give practical effect to our desire to enhance the professional standing of teachers. I confidently expect their wholehearted co-operation with these new arrangements as an essential element in that process.
My Lords, that concludes the statement.
5.45 p.m.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, what is surprising about the Statement that we have just heard is that it offers absolutely no explanation why the Government are withdrawing a Bill and producing a totally new approach. So far as I am aware, there has been no consultation either by the local authorities or the teachers' unions on this. It was only on 27th November of last year that the Secretary of State for Education in a Second Reading of the teachers' pay Bill in another place said that the Government were totally committed to the Bill that they are now withdrawing. Why are we now seeing this U-turn?
Perhaps I may quote from the Secretary of State's speech on that occasion. He said among other things that the Government's decision was to restore teachers' negotiating rights. He said that the Bill provides for direct national negotiations between employers and unions. At the end of his speech he said:
"I do not believe that we shall embark on a fresh review of pay arrangements, when the Bill contains excellent arrangements that should be enacted and put into force".— [Official Report, Commons, 27/11/90; col. 749.]
In the circumstances, is it not rather surprising that we are suddenly confronted with a Statement which will produce completely different arrangements?
In another place, the Opposition supported the Bill although of course they put down reasoned amendments. Why has so much valuable parliamentary time been wasted on processing a Bill through Parliament? Fortunately in this House we have not wasted time because the Bill has not reached us. But can that be regarded as good government? I admit that the time that has been wasted and that the costs involved in producing the Bill and in discussing it in another place are small compared with those associated with the poll tax and with the subsequent revisions to it. But it does not seem to me to be good government and good decision making to have such U-turns.
The central issue in relation to teachers' pay is resources. We have underfunded teachers' pay now for a very long time. Although teachers had a relatively good settlement this year, they have fallen behind many other groups. As a result, there are serious shortages of teachers in a number of subjects. Every prediction that has been made in recent months suggests that that will become worse.
The Government now say in the Statement that,
"pay should be such as to recruit, retain and motivate sufficient staff".
Of course it should. However, the Government have had every opportunity over the past 12 years to produce pay that is sufficient to recruit, motivate and
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train sufficient staff, but they failed. The huge wastage, with large numbers of teachers leaving the profession —very often after only a few years—is a measure of that failure.
On this side of the House we share the Government's view on the importance of teachers' professionalism and on the need to raise their esteem. We are very glad of and welcome the fact that the Government wish to reinforce the professionalism of teachers. However, I regret to say that in the past 12 years it seems to us that a great deal has been done to undermine that very professionalism. The over-prescriptive nature of the national curriculum is a good example.
Perhaps I may ask two or three specific questions. The Statement makes very little reference to exactly what the ambit of the review body should be. There is no information whatsoever provided on the composition of the review body. How will people be appointed? Who will be appointed? Perhaps the Minister will say something about those key and important considerations. We shall wish to scrutinise the Bill carefully in respect of these issues.
Why is it that grant-maintained schools will be able to make their own arrangements? Public money is involved in supporting grant-maintained schools on both the capital and the recurrent side. There appears to be no reason why they should be treated differently from schools elsewhere in the system. Is there to be collective bargaining for them but not for teachers working in the maintained schools run by the local authorities?
Will the Minister describe the position in Scotland about which, regretfully, I am unclear? In paragraph 5 of the Statement are the Government saying that it will be illegal for teachers to strike? That appears to be implied. What will the Government do if teachers do not accept that there are no circumstances in which industrial action is justified? The proposals now put forward appear to rest on the teachers' acceptance of that. However, it is not necessarily the case that they will accept such a dramatic change in their position.
In my view the Opposition spokesman on education in another place, Mr. Jack Straw, rightly took the lead in condemning the frivolous and unjustified proposals for industrial action put forward in teachers' conferences at Easter. I share his views on the matter. However, that is different from saying that there are no foreseeable circumstances in which industrial action may be justified.
Are we here discussing teachers' pay and how it should be determined or are we merely discussing yet another way of getting round the poll lax debacle? We appear to be abolishing teachers' negotiating rights which were to be maintained in the Bill that the Government are abandoning. Is it justifiable to scrap without consultation the right to collective bargaining with employers of a major profession for no reason other than a wish to reduce the role of local government? The Statement indicates that teachers are not government employees and that their pay is not directly financed from the Exchequer. That is the current position but will it remain so? Is the Statement

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a precursor to new arrangements that will take teachers' pay out of local government expenditure and transfer it to central government expenditure?
The Statement is unsatisfactory in providing no reasoned arguments. Its proposals involve an amazing U-turn on the Government's previous position. It is also unsatisfactory in leaving so many initial questions unanswered.
5.53 p.m.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. For some time we suspected that there would be such a Statement. There was an inordinate delay between the Committee and Report stages of the Bill in another place and earlier the Government gave the unconvincing reason that that was due to pressure of other parliamentary business.
In commenting on the interim arrangements made in 1987 for determining teachers' pay the Secretary of State said on Second Reading of the Bill last November that following:
"prolonged and careful consultations with all the interested parties"—[Official Report, Commons, 27/11/90; col. 743.]
it was time to put more permanent machinery into place. So much for the Government's idea of permanence. That Bill provided for direct national negotiations between employers —that is local authorities—and trade unions subject to certain stringent conditions. My party supported the concept of national negotiations. However, this afternoon we have been told that the pay and conditions of teachers are to be determined in a completely different way by means of a review body. The most disturbing effect of what has happened—or what has not happened—during the past few months is the damage that the Government's indecision must have caused to the morale of teachers.
There must now be a new Bill. We shall determine our attitude to that Bill when we have it before us. In the meantime, I shall content myself by asking a few questions. Will there be any consultation with representatives of employers and the teacher unions before the legislation is drafted? Clearly, there was none prior to the making of this Statement. We have been told that the Government's proposals are made on the basis that teachers will not in future take industrial action about matters within the review body's ambit. I share that hope and expectation. Will the Minister confirm what I feel sure is the case: that the Government have no intention of statutorily denying teachers the ability to take industrial action?
The Statement indicates the Government's intention is to secure Royal Assent for the Bill in time for next year's settlement to be determined by the new body. Can the Minister give the House a clearer indication of when the Bill will be introduced? It is said that the review body will take evidence from all the parties concerned including the teacher unions. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, in asking when we shall hear how the review body is to be constituted. In particular, can we be assured that its members will include people with practical experience of teaching?
5.57 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and to the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, for their response to the Statement. I shall try to deal with their questions as briefly as possible. Teachers have clearly demonstrated their professional commitment by the way that they have tackled the major education reforms. It is also true to say that circumstances have changed.
Only a year ago some teachers were placing far too much emphasis on their ability to take industrial action to allow my right honourable friend's predecessor to adopt this option. A significant number of teachers have always favoured a review body; indeed, three of the teacher unions have campaigned for such a body. The Prime Minister has also made plain his commitment to seeing teachers treated in a way which recognises and strengthens their professional status. He and my right honourable friend believe that the proposals announced today are the best way of achieving that. The latest report of the interim advisory committee also confirms the professional commitment with which teachers have approached the implementation of the education reforms. Neither teachers nor the public wish to return to industrial action which affects the education of the children. That has done a great deal of damage to the professionalism of teachers.
The noble Baroness referred to the underfunding of teachers' pay. I refute that statement absolutely. Under this Government teachers' pay has risen in real terms by 30 per cent. That compares with only 6 per cent. under the party of which the noble Baroness is a member. The average pay of a primary school teacher is now £18,300, and that of a secondary school teacher is £20,000. The spine for head and deputy teachers rises to just below £47,000. This Government does not need to be apologetic—
Lord Parry: My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving way. Does she realise that that statement causes a great deal of grief and misery in staff rooms because a great number of teachers do not receive anywhere near that amount of money?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I understand that under the new flexible arrangements where extra pay is awarded for good teaching, which is a new departure from the old system, many more teachers reach the average. However, this is not meant to denigrate teachers. It is meant to refute the wholly inaccurate statement constantly made across the Floor of the House that this Government's record on pay is bad. This Government's record on pay compares very favourably with the record of any government who have gone before.
Reference was made to grant-maintained schools being treated differently. Those schools which have achieved that status have chosen democratically to opt away from being run by local education authorities or centrally from government. They have opted to cope with pay in their own way. Under this legislation they will be party to these arrangements unless they

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positively opt away from them. It is our view that many GM schools may opt to remain within the system.
The appointments to the review body will be made, as are all review body appointments, by the Prime Minister. I can give an assurance to both the noble Lord. Lord Rochester, and the noble Baroness that it will not be illegal for teachers to take industrial action. We believe that this method of determining pay will appeal to the professionalism of teachers. There has been a very good record on this by the medical profession and we expect that the teachers will respond very professionally. However, it is not for me today to spell out in detail the Government's reaction to what they will do if teachers respond negatively to the proposals.
I was asked also about the situation in Scotland. Teachers' pay and conditions in Scotland are a matter for my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. There is already established a permanent pay machinery in Scotland. I understand that my right honourable friend has no immediate plans to change that.
I was asked also about whether this is a paving provision to get round the community charge. The Government's record on meeting review body recommendations is exemplary. Other than as regards phasing rather than meeting in full the recommendations, the only recommendation which has not been accepted in full was that put forward by the Top Salary Review Body. I am not sure that the noble Baroness would be entirely unsympathetic to the Government's view on that.
As regards moving pay to central government, this is not a paving measure for that. This is a decision made on its merits. As I say, this is a decision which the Prime Minister believes represents the best way of recognising and strengthening the professional status of teachers. It is our view and hope that teachers will respond in a professional way to these proposals.
6.3 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many of us are delighted that the Government have had second thoughts as to the proper way of dealing with teachers' salaries? Is she also aware that many of us were very unhappy with the old system, which apparently some noble Lords would wish to revive, of negotiation by trade unions, backed by threats of industrial action? That has always seemed to me to be quite inappropriate for members of a profession with very high responsibilities towards young people and the community as a whole.
Is my noble friend aware that putting the teaching profession in the same broad position as other professions seems to make very good sense? I hope that this measure will soon take effect.
As regards industrial action, I share my noble friend's hope that under this system industrial action by teachers, which imposes hardship and loss on the children, will not be seen to be acceptable by that profession. By treating teachers as a profession, which this measure does, it will become apparent to all
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concerned that industrial action is entirely inappropriate, undignified and unworthy of a profession with such high responsibilities. Is she aware that we shall welcome the Bill, and the sooner it completes its passage the better?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his comments. They echo all that my right honourable friend would wish to say. Many of us have very painful memories of the days of the Burnham Committee and the constant, almost annual ritual of either threat or actual strike action against our young people. Even threat of action was exceedingly disruptive to our young people. Therefore, we wish to see an end to that. We pay tribute to the interim advisory body, which appears to have established an equilibrium. We now wish to take that one stage further because we believe the atmosphere is right.
We have made it clear that these proposals are made on the basis that teachers fully recognise and accept their professional responsibilities and will not take industrial action about matters within the ambit of the review body. We fully accept that teachers will respond positively to that.
My noble friend reminded me that I was remiss in not referring to the timetable, which was a question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester. I am not able to be specific except to say that it will be as soon as is practicable, and it is intended to have the Act in place so that next year's pay round can be fully dealt with.
Viscount Tonypandy: My Lords, I apologise to the Minister for the fact that I was not in the House at the beginning of the Statement. I declare an interest to the House because I am an honorary life member of the National Union of Teachers. We are riot half as bad as the noble Lord thinks. I should be very proud to be a member of the teaching profession entrusted with the children of total strangers. We do not know how fortunate we are in this country to have thousands of men and women who, although they felt humiliated because they were not allowed to negotiate their own salaries, nevertheless have given of their utmost to the younger generation.
I could not help smiling a little at the noble Lord who sits to my left—only physically—when he reminded us that teaching is a profession. If one touches upon the interests of the doctors, one sees how they react. In this House the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has cause to know how the lawyers behave when they believe their interests are affected. They utter threats and make a great deal of noise. The teachers are a very gentle body compared with others who have longer experience of negotiating.
I was so pleased to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, who reminded the House that there is a background to this. I wish the Government well in gaining good will because unless there is a happy and contented teaching profession, the country suffers. Therefore, I wish the Government well with all my heart in seeking good will.

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However, it must be remembered that the dignity of the profession has been trampled on. From time to time—and not regularly because I like a life of peace —I go to the conferences of the National Union of Teachers. I know good people who have felt in their bones that the Government were wrong to take from them the Burnham Committee. Therefore, when it comes to considering the review body, I hope that the Government will take exceptional measures to ensure the utmost consultation with each of the teachers' unions.
Over 40 years ago I served for some years on the executive of the National Union of Teachers; I was also a member of the Burnham Committee. It seemed to work all right in those days. We never had enough but who expects any union in the world to say, "Yes, we have enough, thank you". No such union exists. It is no good being critical of teachers because they do not say that.
I hope that the noble Baroness who carries responsibility in this House for education will realise when she meets the teachers, as I trust she will, along with the Secretary of State that there is no ill will felt towards the progress of the education service. However, we must restore to that noble profession the feeling that they are honoured and respected, and that they enjoy the elementary human right of having a voice in what they should be paid for their labours.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, my admiration for the noble Viscount, Lord Tonypandy, knows no bounds. If only all members of the National Union of Teachers were like the noble Viscount we might have seen a rather different outcome to this matter.
I totally agree with him that unless we carry teachers with us and recognise the professional commitment of teachers we shall not succeed and will not serve our children well. Where I take issue with him is that I have the most painful memories of the way in which the Burnham Committee worked. It is true that over the 20 years to 1986 collective bargaining, which included negotiating through the Burnham Committee, produced only three negotiated settlements for teachers. The conflict which represented all the other 17 years caused mayhem. Although it was a minority, some of the teachers within some teaching unions—including the NUT—did more damage to the professionalism of teachers than almost anybody else. Therefore, I believe that this is a way forward.
Teachers are professionals. They should see themselves as professionals and be treated as such. These proposals offer them a status which is reserved for non-striking professions.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, are not these proposals in the Statement in clear contravention of the United Nations international labour organisation on human rights provisions to which the Government of this country are a signatory? If the Minister believes that is not the case, will she say why not?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, they are not in conflict with the ILO. The review body approach to determining the pay of professional people in public service is well established in this country. I see no reason why its application to teachers should give the ILO any difficulty. The ILO conditions are not binding. We are recognising the full worth and professional commitment of teachers. The ILO should have no difficulty in recognising that through this new machinery.
Baroness David: My Lords, perhaps I could discover whether I rightly understood the Minister in her reply to my noble friend. I believe that she said that the Statement is not a paver to taking money out of local government to be put in to central government; that it is not a way or a precursor of teachers' pay being taken from local government and put within the orbit of central government. I asked about that in the debate on local government finance not long ago, when I also asked about the teachers' pay Bill. The noble Baroness wrote to me later saying that it was merely postponed, and we understand that. I should like to make sure that there is no question of teachers' pay being taken from local government and put within central government.
While on my feet I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, that the Labour Party was not in favour of returning to the Burnham Committee.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I say again that this decision has been taken on its merits. It is not connected, not related and is not a paver for switching from local to national taxation. A switch from local taxation has just been made. The definitive statement on that is that the split between national moneys provided for local services and local taxation to be raised is around 14 per cent. local taxation to 86 per cent. national provision. In terms of the new arrangements, that has been established. However, the two decisions are not connected.
Baroness David: My Lords, have the local authorities been informed? I take it that there were no consultations beforehand. Have they been informed or will they have to read Hansard tomorrow to find out what happened?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the Statement will be a new statement to the local authorities. They will be informed simultaneously with the announcement of the Statement. However, within the course of consultations on a way forward for new pay machinery for teachers we have heard the views of the teaching professions, the local authorities and indeed the Opposition Benches about the status of a review body.
Lord Parry: My Lords, will the noble Baroness give us one small piece of information regarding the timetable? Is it envisaged that the Bill will go through the House immediately and before the declaration of the next general election? That is not a frivolous question; it is important. For those of us who spent many years within the teaching profession one of the

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happiest developments over the past few weeks is that the major parties of Britain have at last, thankfully, put education at the top of the agenda for consideration by the parents of Great Britain at the next election.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am not able to say definitively whether the provisions will be in place before the next general election. However, it is the intention of this Government to see that the measure is in place in time to settle next year's pay award. Perhaps I could bounce the question back to the Opposition Benches. Should there be a general election and should, heaven forbid, they come to office, will they support these measures?
Lord Rochester: My Lords, the noble Baroness answered a number of questions but did not answer one which I asked; namely, in the apparent absence of consultation with employers and union representatives before the Statement was made, will there be such consultation before the legislation is drafted?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, this is a firm commitment to a Bill that will be processing through the House as soon as possible. The straight answer to the noble Lord's question is no. However, there will be consultation regarding the implementation of the legislation. There will need to be a higher degree of co-operation for the Bill to become an Act.
Lord Peston: My Lords, perhaps I could help the noble Baroness. Obviously we cannot say whether or not we support the Statement. One of our difficulties is that there is not much to support. However, if it is of interest to her, many of us on this side of the House were interested in review bodies in this field. The trouble is that we were persuaded by the Government, who put it as forcefully as they could, that the earlier measure that they abandoned was probably a better way forward.
I hope I do not sound cynical if I inquire of the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, whether we may assume that if the Government had stuck to their Bill he would have opposed it; that he would have voted against it so forcefully in accordance with what he said. At this stage we cannot go further than query what is happening. That is what we have tried to do, and I hope the noble Baroness realises that. When we learn the details I ask her to recognise that we shall scrutinise them in our normally cogent but obviously fair way.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am flattered that I managed to persuade the noble Lord. If I persuaded him so easily on the last Bill perhaps I could use my skills to persuade him on this one.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, the noble Lord puts a question to me. I only say that as he refused to answer a substantive question he will not expect me to answer a hypothetical one.

NATO's Role in the 1990s
6.19 p.m.
Lord Molloy Lord Molloy rose to call attention to the role of NATO in the 1990s; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is still difficult for many of us to appreciate that the shedding of communist shackles in Eastern Europe and the introduction of glasnost and perestroika should have created problems to a degree regarding our own defence. A number of worthy journals and so-called experts were called in for the examination of NATO. I believe that that was the proper and right thing to do. However, some are already advancing the cause that NATO should be considerably reduced.
I believe that is a crass observation and a very dangerous one. The examination of NATO must be a matter for great caution. It has been argued that NATO was created for the war that never came, and that is perfectly true. That war never came because NATO existed, which of itself is no mean achievement. That is why we should exercise very great caution indeed in what we do about the future of that organisation in the next decade.
We should also bear in mind that there are parts of the world which are suffering under communism and there are parts of the world where there are communist victims. People vanish off the face of the earth because they are not communists in places such as Vietnam, Afghanistan, Zaire, Angola, El Salvador and Cuba. One day we might be very fortunate in realising that we did not take advice to reduce the power of NATO. The future of that body must be linked to the United Nations, with a specific role. It should be considered at all times as a vital part of the defence of the free world. I shall welcome it very much if the noble Earl can tell this House whether the Government take that view as well.
There is no replacement for NATO. I had the distinction of working with Ernest Bevin, who was the founder of NATO. In my judgment he was almost a supreme Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He had the idea of NATO. That organisation was born out of a hatred that Ernest Bevin had for communism. He also had a massive distrust of Stalin. I can remember him being upset by Winston Churchill, who called Stalin "Dear old Uncle Joe". I regret that the rules of this House will not allow me to repeat what Ernest Bevin called Stalin. Nevertheless, it was the gut reaction of a British lorry driver and a great trade union leader who became one of our finest Foreign Secretaries. That has been acknowledged by another great Foreign Secretary of ours—the noble Lord, Lord Carrington.
That gut reaction created a benediction for Western Europe. What is more, the creation of NATO gave hope to many anti-communists and victims of communism in communist countries. Therefore, NATO is a basic ingredient which is fanning the spark of freedom in Eastern Europe and I hope will do so in other places as well. I hope that Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin realise how much they owe to NATO. If that organisation had not existed they could

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never have dreamt of raising the issues that they have raised. Therefore, they and the peoples of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe must be immensely grateful for the fact that we in this country, with our American allies and other allies in due course, created the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
We would be wise to look at the form and role of NATO in the future. Let us never forget that communism is the multiple sclerosis of freedom and always will be. There is a need to refashion NATO's defences, equipment and weapon technology. We have seen an example of that in the war in the Gulf. There has been a remarkable improvement in weapon technology for the Royal Navy and other navies, for the British Army, the United States army and others and for our Air Force and that of the United States in particular. Through NATO they have been able to develop remarkable weapons which have made a massive contribution to saving the lives of so many soldiers which might otherwise have been lost. That is a part of NATO which is sometimes not appreciated.
Recently at a London conference a case was made for enlargement and closer liaison with new members, particularly with the new Germany. But as we can see, that is going to create problems. I hope that the concerns of Germany will in no way entice us to give in to a reduction in the availability of NATO. At the last May Day celebrations in Red Square the situation was so very different. There were free market economists among those in the Politburo. Soviet citizens were freely participating in the parade. Being a Welshman, one of the things that struck me emotionally was when I saw crosses representing the crucifixion at the May Day parade in the Soviet Union. All that has been achieved because we helped to create the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Therefore we should think carefully before we attempt in any way—not to abolish it, because that is totally out of the question, but perhaps to make reductions which would be a little risky.
Talks about conventional forces in Europe is a very useful procedure. I believe that the noble Earl will want to enlarge on that a little. The interchange of command should be made practical. All these matters are worth while examining. I refer to the wise words of Mr. Manfred WÖrner as regards "the collapse of communism". He says that a new threat could emerge. There is a good deal of sense in that because, as Mr. WÖrner continued, we have a need now to examine what we all understand as NATO's out-of-area involvement and to keep it under constant review.
Our Commonwealth involves about 30 nations and they all owe much to NATO. It can contribute in various ways. I hope that the Government will see to it that, with our other allies, we keep our Commonwealth informed with NATO developments. We have to realise that there is nothing so cunning as a communist organisation. There are all kinds of communism, and they are all evil. If one wants to appreciate the reality of communism, it was summed up best by Aneurin Bevan when he said that the relationship of communism to democratic institutions is that of,
"the deathwatch beetle. It is not a party—it is a conspiracy".
That is as true today as when Nye Bevan first said it.
After 40 years the forces of NATO must be updated to meet the changes in the world. We have to look to weapons, materials and the sciences and industries which are associated with NATO in this and other NATO countries. Those weapons, materials, sciences and industries have a great deal to contribute to the NATO of the future. We should embark with thoroughness and care on a review of NATO. That has to be done, but in a manner which in no way weakens the organisation but strengthens it for the possibility of a threat in the future.
We should modernise and adjust both the weaponry and the troops and the liaison between the troops of various nations to create a speedy efficiency but never ever to weaken the organisation. I ask the noble Earl to comment on the need for even closer liaison between the various nations after the Gulf war. That close liaison worked very well with the Gulf war coalition. We should continue with the example that we had then and bring it into NATO. Defence, security and industrial co-operation are vital. NATO nations stand together for freedom and progress and for a better life for all. It may be that an efficient NATO, which is both larger and stronger and is unchallengeable, could begin the possible abolition of chemical and nuclear weapons.
We should update NATO for the future but never forgetting or endangering the real value of NATO to the alliance and to all mankind. It is the best multi-national treaty organisation of all time. It has done so much for not only the nations of NATO but for others as well.
I conclude with these words. I hope that the aims and objectives of NATO will continue and that NATO will always be regarded as the international flagship of freedom, so winning the approbation of the good, the applause of the wise and ultimately the blessing of all mankind.
6.31 p.m.
Lord Wade of Chorlton: My Lords, I wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, for initiating this debate and for the very forceful defence of NATO which he gave us. First, like him, I wish to express my concern at the emphasis that some of our EC partners are placing on the development of a common European defence policy and at suggestions that the Europeans can create a self-reliant security system outside the NATO framework.
NATO is a political and military alliance that has served us well. In the bipolar world of the Cold War the military threat to our security was clear and our military requirements were relatively simple to calculate. As a result of the pressing military requirements the important political nature of the Atlantic alliance was perhaps overlooked. Now that the Warsaw Pact has broken up, our military requirements are more difficult to calculate and the political will of the alliance may be weakened as a result.
However, I want to underline that, while the emphasis may have shifted from NATO's military role

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to its political role, both the political and military logic for retaining NATO remains. Any suggestion that the end of the Cold War and the resurgence of Western European economies means that we can do without the North Americans must be refuted on both the political and military fronts.
NATO is first and foremost a political organisation. It is important that NATO's political integrity survives and is not replaced by diluted, impotent, all-European alternatives. NATO represents a unique forum in which the communities of Western Europe and North America can co-ordinate their security policies.
It has been possible to summon the political will of the 16 NATO nations to work together because NATO represents a genuine political community. The United States and Europe have common interests. They share common values which they believe must be defended—democracy, freedom and market economics. NATO is a forum in which co-operative policies can be formulated. It is also a forum in which parties can learn to understand one another's anxieties and in which disagreements can be worked out. The mechanisms at its disposal were not born overnight. They represent 40 years of experience of working together. A degree of trust and understanding has been built up that cannot easily be replaced.
There are two main dangers in downgrading the importance of the Atlantic alliance. First, there is no other comparable forum in Western Europe or Europe as a whole in which security policies to defend shared Western interests can be satisfactorily worked out and implemented. In the current climate there is a tendency to emphasise the need for a common European defence policy and to point to institutions such as the Western European Union and the EC as the guardians of our future security. The EC is not a suitable forum since it excludes three NATO members and includes neutral Ireland. The Western European Union consists of only nine members of the EC and it has not, as yet, a command structure, or any forces committed to it. Should it become, as some have suggested, the defence wing of the EC, the decision-making channels have yet to be worked out, along with how they will be translated into military action.
The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe allows Western states to co-ordinate their policies in relation to other European states and the Soviet Union in specific issue areas. It will play an important part in building trust between East and West, managing crises and helping to disseminate Western values in Eastern Europe. It is not a forum in which the West can formulate and co-ordinate security policies.
A credible alternative forum that includes Western European and North American states does not exist. It is therefore important that NATO remains as an expression of the political will of the Western democracies to defend Western values. Secondly, if the Europeans put too much emphasis on an independent and individual defence policy the shared interests of Western Europe and North America may be eroded and forgotten.
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It should be remembered that, though the Cold War has been successfully concluded, new and perhaps unexpected challenges may lie ahead. If we detach the security policies of Western Europe from North America our interests may diverge and the clarity of our security policies may become muddied by the interests of different blocs. For example, as we have stated in this House in previous debates, there is a danger that should the GATT negotiations fail the world may be divided up into rival trading blocs. Under these conditions the interests of the North Americans may conflict with those of Europe. NATO is a forum in which we can nurture a sense of common purpose in defending Western values and work to overcome such possible suspicions and disagreements.
The best interests of democracy can be served by showing that the West will stick together and remain vigilant in the defence of its freedom. NATO need not be a confrontational organisation. NATO is willing to co-operate with its former adversaries and with other organisations, such as the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, in confidence building and crisis management. However, NATO's determination to defend Western values will allow us to hold them up as an example to be emulated in the, perhaps, stormy seas ahead. As these values take root in Eastern Europe, so they too may become part of a genuine political community with common interests. Thus NATO has a political dimension that may prove essential for the future well-being, not just of Western Europe, but of Eastern Europe too.
In addition to these political imperatives, the military logic for NATO remains. There is no guarantee that renewed threats to Western security will not emerge in the years ahead. The Soviet Union still has the largest standing army in Europe. It has nearly 4 million men under arms, of whom nearly 3 million are in the Atlantic to the Urals zone. While the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty was a significant breakthrough in creating military stability in this zone, Soviet adherence to the treaty is still in some doubt. It still has the nuclear arsenal of a superpower, against which there Ls no credible European-based deterrence. The future of the Soviet empire is unclear. The future orientation of its leadership is open to question. The spectre of a renewed Soviet threat remains. Should the Soviet empire collapse in disarray, it is possible that the central control of the Soviet nuclear arsenal will be lost.
Thirdly, until democracy and prosperity take root in Eastern Europe its instability may threaten the West, either through the return of totalitarian rule, the spillover of ethnic unrest, or mass migration westwards. The certainties of Western military capabilities could be a stabilising factor in such circumstances. Fourthly, there may be threats from other regions to Western democracy to which NATO will be required to respond. For example, NATO was able to respond to possible threats to Turkey from Iraq during the recent Gulf war.
The Europeans alone cannot meet these challenges. First, we cannot afford to replace and maintain the forces and the intelligence-gathering equipment that

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the US is willing to commit to NATO. Nor can we afford to develop the new technologies that will be required for a credible defence, as the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, explained. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, there is as yet no command structure through which political decisions can be implemented by the Western European Union or the EC. There is no supreme commander of European forces as there is for NATO. It must be emphasised that we must not throw away NATO for the sake of a European defence policy.
This is not to say, however, that NATO should not evolve to reflect a new balance of responsibilities between Europe and North America. The European pillar of NATO will play a bigger role than it has in the past. Europe's resurgent economies should also expect to shoulder more of the burden. The Western European Union could be used to co-ordinate the policies of the EC members within Europe and thus allow Europeans to play a more prominent role in NATO than they have before. The Western European Union may also strengthen NATO by providing an important military link with France. It could also play a role in co-ordinating Western European action outside the NATO area.
There are also ways in which European co-operation within NATO, on developing military hardware, can be used to economic, military and political advantage. First, it makes economic sense because it provides real jobs in participating countries, eliminating the danger of destroying the defence industry of one country through failure to win contracts in a shrinking market. Secondly, it makes military sense, since standardisation of equipment will lead to greater military efficiency. It also makes political sense, since it will enable greater control of weapon systems exports to the third world. The problems in this area have been demonstrated to us in recent months.
The European fighter aircraft is an example of such European co-operation. Similar projects should be encouraged and should include the Americans, if possible. For example, it may be sensible to look to co-operative projects for the next generation of tanks between the four main tank manufacturing states of the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The European states should thus seek to play a bigger role in NATO. They should not seek to marginalise NATO. At the end of the day it must be remembered that NATO has provided us with 40 years of peace, the longest sustained period of peace the continent has ever experienced. NATO's stabilising influence has provided unparalleled levels of prosperity for those of us fortunate enough to live under its guardianship. We must use the stability NATO has secured in the West to help the Eastern European states. We must be aware of the dangers of decoupling the defence interests of the US from those of Europe through pursuing elusive common European defence policies. We must work to keep the
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Americans committed to the defence of Western Europe. NATO must remain the cornerstone of our defence policy.
6.41 p.m.
Lord Parry: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend and fellow countryman Lord Molloy—I am glad he told the House that he is Welsh; it might not otherwise have recognised the fact—for the opportunity that his initiative has given me to include local and particular concerns in the debate on the general and operative consequences of NATO's revised requirements for the 1990s.
Reassessment of the role of NATO presupposes radical revision of Britain's defence forces with knock-on implications that worry communities that host and service Royal Air Force, army and naval establishments. In making those local worries known to the House I am also aware that the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, is already advised of them and that the Secretary of State for Defence will shortly meet a delegation to discuss some of them, having been given copies of a number of documents that report concern, particularly in West Wales, about the defence review. These are documents such as the report prepared by Dyfed County Council and Preseli Pembrokeshire District Council working in conjunction with the Transport and General Workers' Union. They spell out the economic and social importance of RAF Brawdy to the local economy of West Wales, and especially to Preseli, Pembrokeshire. The report was produced because of the concern of the local authorities and the trade unions at reports that the future of RAF Brawdy is in some doubt and that there is a possibility of its closure in 1992. If it were to occur it would mean the direct loss of 163 civilian jobs, more than £12 million in income paid to the 768 service personnel based at RAF Brawdy and many millions of pounds to the local economy from operating expenditure of the base.
When in 1990 the Secretary of State for Defence, Mr. Torn King, identified in Options for Change various ways in which the armed forces might be restructured by the mid-1990s, he was said to be looking for reductions in regular service manpower of 18 per cent. and a similar percentage reduction in civilian employment. Mr. King promised further work on the detailed implications of these broad proposals. Clearly it is this work that has given rise to reports that RAF Brawdy's future is under threat.
Similarly, RAF Valley on Anglesey, which was represented in another place for many years by my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition, and the station at Chivenor in Devon seem threatened by the proposals. Rumours of the proposed disbanding of anything from a dozen to 15 squadrons of the Royal Air Force clearly concern many in the RAF and in the communities likely to be affected. The prospect of the closure of RAF Brawdy is viewed in West Wales and elsewhere with great alarm. Not only is it one of the largest employers; it is also located in an area already hit by defence cuts, by the recession and by other threats of unemployment.

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In expressing my concern I ask the House to accept that the socio-economic impact elsewhere will be potentially disastrous if these large cuts are carried through. Important and inevitable though it is, as two speakers have said, that a total review of Britain's defences should be undertaken and radical changes made, every single proposal should take full account of the possible socio-economic impact. We have not done that as a country. We have not begun to do it in assessing some of the changes that we make. All too often we seem to go ahead pragmatically when forced to do so without studying the fact that something done for good and proper reasons in an individual sector might have serious consequences outside that sector.
The House will perhaps better understand my concern if I take leave to show just how much Dyfed is affected by defence considerations integral to NATO's defences. Defence establishments integral to NATO play an important role in providing employment in West Wales. There has been a continuing reduction in the number of employees in defence establishments in Dyfed, and in recent years that county has suffered economically and socially from a number of factors. There was the closure of RAF Tenby and the closure of the Royal Naval armament depot at Johnston. There was also the closure of the Royal Naval stores depot in Llangennech. That alone resulted in the loss of more than 600 jobs. Although the Ministry of Defence transferred its stationery stores to a centralised organisation at Llangennech, of the 250 jobs forecast fewer than 60 have materialised. Privatisation of certain jobs at the Proof and Experimental Establishment at Pendine, inevitably involving some job losses, is a concern and a study being undertaken at RAF Aberporth could result in an agency taking over the running of the establishment which may also lead to job losses. In fact, a dispute about wages is going on there at present.
The most recent blow was the closure of the Royal Naval armament depot at Milford Haven only a couple of weeks ago with the loss of 285 jobs. A review is now in progress of the Royal Naval armament depot at Trecwn. The number of service personnel stationed in Dyfed fell from 1,229 in June 1976 to 825 by December 1985. By January 1990 the figure stood at 790. What is significant is that 96.5 per cent. of the service personnel were based in the former county of Pembrokeshire, mostly at RAF Brawdy. We have always known that over the years the Ministry of Defence was the largest single employer of labour in that county. In 1986 the number of civilian jobs in defence in Dyfed totalled 2,435. By February of this year there had been a fall to 1,581 civilian jobs in the Ministry of Defence, with a further 190 in privatised jobs. More than half of the jobs are in the former county of Pembrokeshire.
I would not wish to leave the House with the impression that all is doom and gloom in the lovely West Wales peninsula, nor does anyone there expect the service chiefs to weigh defence needs against social and economic ones. It is recognised that changes and savings must be made and that strategic issues must govern service proposals made by servicemen. The
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Government, however, have a wider mandate and a deeper responsibility. All across South Wales quite massive efforts are being made to resuscitate the economy. Some of the successes of the Welsh Development Agency, the Rural Development Board, the Wales Tourist Board, the Welsh Office and several administrations, local authorities, the Milford Haven Port Authority and the Cleddau Enterprise Zone are winning respect. It would be tragic if. in pursuit of apparent rationalisation and the peace Budget bonus, hard won progress were to be set back in the reviews that are being undertaken.
Perhaps I may summarise as I conclude. I have noted here that unemployment in any case remains desperately high. In January this year a total of 2,118 persons were registered as unemployed in the travel-to-work area of Haverfordwest alone. That is the equivalent of one in nine of the working population. In terms of unemployment, the area has consistently suffered a level well in excess of the national rate. While there was a 5 per cent. fall in female unemployment since January 1990, male unemployment has risen by 13 per cent.
The Minister may feel that I am taking the local and particular beyond the general and operative, but I am not. I assure noble Lords that any major review of consequence, as this one must be, will inevitably cause greater difficulty in the resuscitation of the economy of Great Britain. There is no excuse then. It will not surprise noble Lords that I think it would be disastrous if there were substance in the rumour that Brawdy Air Station will close in or after 1992. There are 768 service personnel based at Brawdy and the establishment employs 163 civilians. Closure of the base is viewed with great alarm as it is one of the largest employers in the area. It is in an area already seriously hit by defence cuts, the recession and other threats to employment.
Any closure effects will be compounded because the local economy is already in a parlous state. The direct impact of closure will be the loss of 163 civilian jobs and £14.59 million in wages and salaries of both civilian and service personnel.
There will be indirect and induced effects: the loss of orders and income by the industries which supply materials, goods and services to the base. That in turn could produce further closures of firms and job losses. It is estimated that, of £6 million spent on operational purchases, £1.59 million remains in the local economy and generates 120 jobs. The loss of local purchasing power will have an immediate impact on the quality and quantity of local shopping and other services. An estimated 250 jobs could be lost as a consequence.
There are likely to be wide-ranging social effects from closure. These will include unacceptably high levels of unemployment, increasing dependence on benefit and welfare support systems, pressure on local authority social services and housing and the loss of younger and more mobile elements of the community.
All that I have specifically related in the researched relationship to West Wales and the closure of the Brawdy Air Base will be part of the effect that every service oriented community in Britain will feel at the radical reorganisation of NATO needs. Pilots and air

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and ground crews, using systems and tactics learnt in Wales, were vitally important in the war in Iraq. The almost instant readiness of the Royal Air Force won vital strategic initiatives for the coalition forces and that fact must surely have an influence on Options for Change that would not have been obvious when the peace Budget seemed possible in 1990. I urge the Government to back that success with their support and always to consider the socio-economic effects of the policies that they propose.
6.55 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, we must ask ourselves what is the threat to peace in Europe with which NATO is suitably equipped to deal. That is the question. In the clear and informative statement of the noble Lord, Lord Wade, I missed any analysis of the dangers to peace in Europe for which NATO is well equipped. To some extent, although we are grateful to him for raising the subject, I missed the same analysis in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy.
The truth is that Europe now is a very different place from the Europe we knew at the time when NATO was formed in 1947–48, with which I personally was involved. The formation of NATO was made possible not by Truman, Attlee, Ernest Bevin or Adenauer; NATO was made possible by Stalin and Molotov. If they had not been there, if the Soviet challenge had not existed, it would have been totally impossible to bring together the Canadians and Americans with the West European countries.
Now that Gorbachev is there and, to be frank, the threat of a Soviet conventional attack on the West has vanished, we are left with an organisation which has done a magnificent job but which is not properly suited in its membership, structure or spirit to handle the remaining, luckily diminished, threats to European peace.
There are threats of ethnic violence in many parts of Eastern Europe—Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary and other places. However, the threat for which NATO was designed and for which its membership is proper—the threat of Soviet conventional attack—has vanished. We all know that there is resistance among the Soviet military high-ups to the Gorbachev reforms, to his political revolution in Eastern Europe and his disarmament concessions to the West, which have been considerable. We know that there is resistance among the military commanders in Moscow. However, when we consider the increasing weakness of the Soviet economy, its long-term need for Western aid and, above all, the bitter ethnic and national divisions in the Soviet Union, it is quite plain that for the foreseeable future the threat against which NATO was formed no longer exists.
On these Benches we recognise that. We do not suggest that NATO should be wound up; not at all. I shall come to that later. However, with great respect, we are not in sympathy with the view that new jobs must be found for NATO; that now the old ones have gone, let us start considering overseas expeditions based on NATO—that is, excluding Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Let us have Western overseas
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expeditions—not with the United Nations or the CSCE but with NATO. We believe that this is the wrong approach.
The truth is that what Europe today needs for its security is not organisations based on the confrontations between East and West; not organisations that are exclusively based on the West, as once upon a time the Warsaw Pact was exclusively concerned with members of the Eastern countries. That concept has gone with the Cold War. The concept of confrontation of a military nature between East and West is over and therefore organisations such as the Warsaw Pact and NATO, which were based on that position and reflected it, have no big long-term future. I am not saying that they should be wound up here and now, but what Europe needs today is a European security system which provides shared security and a common security for all the countries of Europe both in the East and in the West.
How do we achieve that? There seem to be two lines of advance. First, we need to apply to all the countries of Europe the remedies which have made war unthinkable between the members of the European Community. That is to say, we need to adopt ever closer political and cultural ties and ever greater economic interdependence—there must be a steady decline in the ability, as well as in the incentive, for one country to attack another. That position should be reinforced by further big advances in arms control, confidence building, crisis management, disarmament and mediation.
For all those roles the CSCE, which includes NATO members and former members of the Warsaw Pact, is ideally suited and already has major achievements to its credit. In the view of my noble friends it should now be formed into a treaty organisation committing its members to the objects I have mentioned and to mutual support against aggression. However, its membership is so large and so varied—it includes the Soviet Union, the United States and San Marino —that it is not well constituted for raising operationally effective defence forces. That goes without saying. Nor has NATO that ability. NATO represents only one half of Europe and it does not have the ability to form defence forces on a pan-European basis.
In the new Europe we have today the concept of neutrality to which the noble Lord, Lord Wade, referred, as practised by Austria, Ireland and Sweden, has lost a great deal of its meaning. We believe the solution is to extend the functions of the European Community to cover defence. It is anomalous that the European Community should have the same policies in trade and aid and more or less the same policies in foreign policy and yet have nothing to do with defence. Why should the Western European Union not be developed into or replaced by a European defence community—with regular meetings of the council of the Community defence ministers and with a Community directorate general for defence? Why should there not be more joint European military formations? Why, as the United States forces diminish in Europe, without leaving it altogether, should there not be a European Community military command?

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These major developments would take time to achieve and would involve amendments to the Treaty of Rome. However, in the view of my noble friends and myself, the Government should adopt them as a long-term aim.
I believe the following comments would be true of NATO. First, the level of forces are being and will be sharply reduced. I say that with great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Molloy. Fewer of the forces will be stationed in countries other than their own. Nuclear policy will be modified, with nuclear weapons restricted strictly to the role of a minimum deterrent. As the noble Lord, Lord Wade, said, there will be a relative increase in the influence of the European component inside NATO. It would therefore be appropriate for the supreme commander to be a European.
However, as I have said, there can be no question during this period of getting rid of NATO. We cannot do this, first, because an American presence in Europe, even if curtailed, will still be needed and, secondly, because the minimum nuclear deterrent of which I have spoken, although it might, I suppose, be provided one day by CSCE or by the European Community, should remain for the present in American and NATO hands. The major role of NATO should be in effect to do itself out of a job —that is, to set the crown on its great achievements in the past by helping to put in place, as its successor an effective security system for Europe as a whole.
7.6 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elva: My Lords, we are grateful to my noble friend Lord Molloy for bringing forward this important matter for debate today. It is to a certain extent disappointing that there are not more speakers in this debate because this subject is of immense importance and great national interest.
The House has reviewed three aspects of this question. I believe all the speakers in the debate would agree with that. The first aspect concerns the question of whether NATO should survive and in what form. The second aspect concerns whether NATO should change and whether it should be transformed in some way that we shall have to consider. The third aspect is whether the 1990s—the Motion refers to the 1990s —should see a strong European pillar—I hope I may use the current jargon—within NATO, or outside NATO or separate from NATO as some would argue. I wish to address those aspects in that order.
Should NATO survive? I believe all speakers have agreed that NATO must survive, at least for the present. Even the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, agreed that NATO should survive for the present. He introduced the possibility that CSCE might take over NATO's role. With great respect to the noble Lord and the opinions he was putting forward from the Benches he represents—
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord does not intend to get me wrong. I said there were two ways of development—one was the CSCE; but the
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real role of producing a pooled defence might be transferred from NATO to a European defence community.
Lord Williams of Elyel: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for that clarification. I understood him to say that CSCE might at some stage develop some kind of nuclear capability. However, I must have misheard the noble Lord.
Clearly there may be a case at some future stage for a developed CSCE—in a manner which at the moment we can only envisage in the long-term future—to assume responsibility for international stability or stability within the broader Europe. I agree with all noble Lords who have spoken that it is perfectly clear that there have been dramatic changes to military doctrine. The Cold War is effectively over for the moment, so far as one can see. I shall qualify that statement in a minute. At the moment, although there are distinct possibilities that the CFE treaty will not be ratified and distinct possibilities that the START treaty will never get off the ground, there is at the moment the possibility that NATO will have a greatly increased warning time because of the progressive withdrawal of Soviet forces from Eastern Europe.
However, it would be unwise to ignore the fact that, even after any START treaty or after ratification of CFE, if that comes about, the Soviet Union will still possess a formidable nuclear arsenal and large conventional forces. It will be far and away the largest military superpower on the continent. If it explodes, as the noble Lord, Lord Wade, suggested that it might, which is perfectly possible judging from what is happening at the moment, it will explode violently. It will not be an easy transition from a monolithic Soviet Union run by the Kremlin and the Politburo in Moscow to a diverse confederation, even if they avoid civil war, which they will be lucky to do. Therefore, there has also been increased talk of a military or KGB putsch or takeover in the Soviet Union, which would return us to the days of the Cold War.
The answer to the question, should NATO survive? in my view is yes. As noble Lords have said, it has served us well for 40 years. As my noble friend Lord Molloy said, it was a Labour Government which participated in and was the motive force in forming NATO. As the Foreign Secretary wrote in an article in the Financial Times yesterday, it is for the opponents of NATO to demonstrate why it should not survive rather than ask why NATO should continue.
There are other detailed reasons why NATO should survive, at least for the foreseeable future. First, it is reassurance that even if things go wrong in Eastern Europe in a way which we cannot predict, we shall still have an institution which has been proved to work. That is important. When one sets up institutions, it is difficult to know whether they will work. This one works.
Secondly, NATO is the only institution that links Europe militarily with the North American democracies. It is vital to ensure that the United States and Canada are enmeshed in our security system.
Thirdly, NATO has played, and in my view will continue to play, a critical role in arms control and the

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disarmament process. US forces, although they will be greatly reduced, will be required in Europe for the foreseeable future.
Fourthly, there are strong arguments that the Soviet Union itself would wish to see a US military presence on the continent. There are many signs coming out of Moscow that they do not want the Americans to detach themselves from Europe and to move back to the United States. A number of the Soviet Union's allies in the former Warsaw Pact, which has now been abolished, wish to see the continuing existence of NATO. Some even desire to be members of NATO. For those specific reasons, I would answer the question, should NATO survive?, with a resounding yes.
However, when I come to the second question, should NATO change and if so in what direction?, the ground is slightly less certain. It is perfectly true that the Cold War as we knew it is not on the agenda for the moment. NATO was founded as a Cold War alliance. The two alliances—NATO and the Warsaw Pact—faced each other across a divided Europe with the ever-present possibility of war, either by accident or by design.
It was in 1987 that the North Atlantic Council started the process of moving NATO away from that particular stance. That process has accelerated with events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union moving very quickly in 1989 and 1990. The process was further accelerated by the London Summit of 5th and 6th July 1990 which, after very considerable study, produced the London Declaration on a Transformed North Atlantic Alliance.
That declaration set the tone for what is to happen in NATO in the future. No fewer than 19 initiatives were produced by the London declaration to set a course for the alliance and to shape a new Europe. They included preparations to adapt, if necessary, its nuclear and conventional weapons strategy. There were also a number of initiatives reaching out to the former adversaries, to change the character of conventional defence, calling for further measures of arms control and for the strengthening of the CSCE process. It was not for nothing that President Bush said after that declaration:
"The London Declaration will bring fundamental change to every aspect of the Alliance's work. This is indeed a day of renewal for the Atlantic Community".
Those initiatives are now being studied and the strategic reviews are due to be completed soon. The direction in which NATO will change will be decided by the result of those reviews and the debate that takes place round them. I take very much to heart what my noble friend Lord Parry said about the socioeconomic consequences of any decisions that might be taken as a result of those reviews. However, we have to see what those reviews produce and we have to debate the results of those reviews to see which way NATO may go in the 1990s.
The largest and most striking development in recent months has been the desire of the Europeans to see a strong European pillar within NATO. The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, if I did not misunderstand him, would like to see a European defence community take
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on much of the responsibility of NATO in due course. The initiative for this has come principally from President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl, and also from the Italians at the Rome Summit last December.
The problem is whether the Western European Union is a proper vehicle or whether the European Community is a proper vehicle. We should like to see a stronger European voice in NATO but we should like to see one which would operate through a strengthened Western European Union, which would be kept separate from the Community. We do not see the Community having a defence role, not least because the United States reacted with a great deal of vigour to the Delors speech of 7th March suggesting that the Treaty of Rome should be amended to include a mutual defence clause on the lines of that of the Western European Union.
The United States did not like that at all. The United States ambassador to NATO said that if people were to "mess" —to use his word—with familiar security structures, that would make the Americans very suspicious. A very strong diplomatic note was sent from the United States to European capitals, followed by a very clear message that if there was to be a European caucus inside NATO which would face the Americans with an agreed caucus view, much as in the GATT negotiations, the Americans would find that offensive. So we must find a way—this is the big issue —for Europe to develop a defence identity without alienating the United States. That is the major problem that we must address at the moment.
I believe that there should be no merger of any kind between the Community and the WEU; that the WEU should not take orders of any kind from the Community; that European defence competence should be retained in the WEU and not in the Community itself; that an expanding WEU should, if necessary, limit its military capabilities to the non-NATO area and should avoid duplicating NATO command structures; that the use of WEU military forces should require some degree of consent from the NATO Council—in other words, there should be some integration between the WEU itself as it develops and the NATO council—and that NATO's strategic review should aim to make the alliance a more attractive home for that European defence identity so that the Europeans do not have to feel that they have to set up something which is in opposition to the United States.
All that is a fairly large agenda and something to which we shall have to give great thought over the months and years to come. However, there is no doubt in our minds that for the 1990s NATO itself has a positive and strong, albeit modified, role. We shall have to wait and see exactly what that role will be and how it will operate when the strategic reviews are produced and debated. But we must recognise two important facts. First, there is a move in Europe towards a defence identity. As the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said, Europeans wish to have a greater say in some form in their own defence. We believe that that should come through the WEU. We must seek to allow space for that in a modified NATO. Secondly,

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the world is far too uncertain a place at the moment for us to abandon an organisation that has served us so well for over 40 years. As the chairman of NATO's military committee recently said:
"in this period of dynamic change, of unrest, turmoil and instability, we should not add to unpredictability by throwing away our own stability".
I recommend that view to your Lordships.
7.22 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, for raising this timely debate in your Lordships' House this evening. I agree immediately with the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel. I too wish that there had been more speakers for a matter that is so important to our future and at a moment when so much discussion is taking place on the future.
The debate takes place after a period of great international activity aimed at adapting our security arrangements to the new circumstances of the 1990s. The NATO review, the intergovernmental conference of the Twelve on political union and the moves to strengthen the Western European Union are all part of that broad process. Defining a new relationship between those organisations in the field of security and defence is a key task for 1991.
NATO has been the particular focus of our debate today. We in Western Europe are most fortunate to have had such an alliance over the past 40 years. Not only has it kept the peace in Europe and provided the vehicle for the essential North American commitment to our defence; it has also given us a firm basis of security on which we have built a stable and prosperous European Community.
Now the NATO alliance faces a new challenge. It needs to show that it can outlast the immediate purpose for which it was created. We are all familiar with the extraordinary changes that have taken place in Europe in the last two years. The communist regimes in Eastern Europe have fallen away and democratic governments have taken their place. The military structures of the Warsaw Pact have been dismantled. German unification has been achieved. Soviet forces are returning to their own country. The treaty on conventional forces in Europe will, if fully implemented, create unprecedented openness in military activities on our continent. With CFE in place, it would be an extremely difficult task for the Soviet Union to mount a successful conventional attack.
I should like to expand on that point which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy. Along with our allies and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, we are maintaining pressure on the Soviet Union to comply with the treaty, especially over its claim that ground equipment and naval and other units do not count against previous ceilings. Discussions continue. We hope for an early resolution of the outstanding problems so that we can all ratify the treaty and begin to enjoy the benefits that it will bring. Once that has taken place, other arms control negotiations, such as SNF, can get seriously under way.
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All that changes the job which NATO has to do. The heads of state and government meeting in London at the NATO summit last July recognised that. They set in hand a thorough review, which is still under way. The Government are approaching this in a confident rather than a timid spirit. We want to design structures which will last us through the nineties and not simply tinker with a few cosmetic changes for 1991.
At the height of the euphoria in Europe last summer, some, including many in this House who, alas, are not here tonight, were inclined to ask: do we still need NATO? I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, wobbled on the answer that he gave, saying that there was no big future for it but that we should not necessarily abolish it now. I disagree with the noble Lord, not for the first time. The Government's answer was always and remains an emphatic yes. Our security needs may be changing but our need for security is not. We have in fact heard less questioning of the need for NATO in the months since then. Once again there is a recognition that we shall face security challenges in the 1990s and beyond. I would put these in three main categories.
First, there is the Soviet Union. My noble friend Lord Wade was right to say that for the foreseeable future it will remain a mighty military power, even if the present instability worsens. Secondly, there is Central and Eastern Europe. It is possible that, as that region emerges from under the shadow of the Warsaw Pact, old rivalries and tensions may come back to the surface. Thirdly, there is the possibility of threats to our security from outside Europe. The Gulf conflict has reminded us all that the combination of modern weaponry and old-style military aggression can still pose a direct threat to our vital interests, requiring a military response. The Gulf crisis did not involve aggression against NATO territory, so NATO was not involved in the military operations. But next time it might be different. Allies therefore need to pay more attention to the threats that may arise from beyond Europe.
For all those reasons, we need to maintain sound collective defence based on NATO. We agree with the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, on that point. The transatlantic dimension to that is crucial. We should never forget the contribution in men and resources which the US has made and continues to make to the defence of Europe. I am sure that the whole House recognises that and wishes to pay tribute to the United States for the part that it has played. European security without the US simply does not make sense.
Over the next few years the American military presence will diminish—quite rightly since the Americans have borne more than their fair share of the military burden over the years. But—here my noble friend Lord Wade puts his finger on the vital point—it is vital for our security that a significant number of US forces remain in Europe. That in turn requires a healthy alliance in which the Europeans and North Americans consult openly about all issues affecting their security.
From what I have said, it follows that there are a number of essential features of NATO which we

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should retain: the collective military structure, US forces stationed in Europe and a sensible mix of nuclear and conventional weapons to provide effective insurance. But that list of the enduring features of NATO leaves great scope for change. We see three aspects to that process of change. First, there must be a stronger European input to the collective defence. As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has said:
"I see the strengthening of the European pillar in NATO as a major priority for 1991".
It is right that Europeans should be taking greater responsibility for their defence at a time when the US presence is diminishing; and it is right that as part of the broader process of European integration Europe acquires a more distinct role within the alliance.
There is a lively debate under way in Europe about how a stronger European input should be achieved. It is vital that decisions should be driven by the need to produce a more effective European defence contribution, not by institutional tinkering. This requires that the European defence identity should be developed in a way which is compatible with preserving a strong alliance. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, that we should not put at risk the sure defence we have in NATO for some uncertain alternative. We could not therefore accept separate European defence structures which would duplicate those of the alliance, or the notion that European defence should be pursued separately from the alliance.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, referred to strengthening the European pillar of NATO-an important point. I was pleased to hear what the noble Lord had to say towards the end of his speech on that subject. We firmly believe that the best way of doing that is by developing the Western European Union. If the WEU was moved to Brussels it would be well placed to build up close links both to NATO and the Twelve and act as a bridge between the two. That would be wholly consistent with the Twelve co-ordinating their policies on security issues as part of the process of political union. But defence should be kept separate from the Twelve and dealt with in the WEU and NATO. The WEU should develop an independent military capability. This should not undermine or cut across NATO's role or duplicate its military structure; but a European reaction force for use outside the NATO area would be logical and compatible with NATO's responsibility to defend NATO territory.
The second aspect of change in NATO is the need for a review of strategy and force structures. A great deal of work is taking place within NATO on this. The results should be made public later in the year, but the main lines are already clear. NATO will field highly mobile and versatile smaller forces to give the necessary flexibility for responding to the wider range of possible threats. There will be a larger role for
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multinational units comprising American and European forces. In the new Europe we shall move away from forward defence, directed only eastwards, to strategy and structures designed to meet a variety of threats from different directions. Nuclear weapons will continue to fulfil an essential role in the overall strategy of the alliance for preventing all forms of war in Europe, but the numbers of nuclear weapons in Europe should be much reduced.
NATO is not solely a military alliance. The third aspect of change is NATO's increasing contacts with the Soviet Union and the countries of central and eastern Europe. NATO has long supported the goal of freedom and democracy in eastern Europe. Last summer it extended a hand of friendship to our former adversaries in the Warsaw Pact. This new policy has borne fruit in the development of dialogue and co-operation. There have been high level visits to NATO headquarters, including visits last year by the Soviet Foreign Minister and last month by the President of Czechoslovakia. NATO is seen widely in central and eastern Europe as a force for stability, and it serves the interest of stability for contacts to be expanded. NATO adapted on those lines will be well fitted to continue to serve in its twin roles as defender of our security and the expression of our transatlantic values for the next 40 years. As the London summit made plain, NATO can,
"help build the structures of a more united continent, supporting security and stability with the strength of our shared faith in democracy, the rights of the individual and the peaceful resolution of disputes".
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I wish to thank noble Lords on all sides of the House who have participated in this important debate and for all their contributions. In particular, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who has had a hard and tough day. I am bound to say that he has come through very well indeed. To a degree I am glad that Her Majesty's Government and Her Majesty's Opposition see almost eye to eye. I suppose it is right and proper that the Liberal Democrats should have another view. At one time I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, in saying that Molotov and Stalin had created NATO was taking the same attitude as those who claim that if it were not for microbes medical science would not exist. We can all indulge in absurdity from time to time and today was the noble Lord's turn.
Three political parties have participated in this debate. If the communists in Eastern Europe look at us I hope they will acknowledge that the plurality of political parties is a wonderful thing. We may not always agree—rarely are we all in complete agreement —but the fact is that we have the right to disagree. I believe that that right has been guaranteed by the existence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at twenty-four minutes before eight o'clock.