Eastern Europe: Withdrawal of Soviet Forces (Hansard, 22 July 1991)

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, all Soviet forces have withdrawn from Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Arrangements have been made between the Soviet Union and Germany to regulate the withdrawal of all the remaining Soviet forces in the former GDR, which is due to be completed by the end of 1994. Although the Soviet Union has also agreed to total withdrawal from Poland, negotiations over timing and other arrangements continue.

§ Lord Mayhew
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his reply. However, can he say what warning time the NATO Governments now estimate they have before the Soviet Union could launch a conventional attack on the West, or is the possibility regarded as too remote to make a guess worthwhile?

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for having given me advance, if brief, notice of that question. Through reductions so far 460 achieved under the CFE treaty, and through the new ability to verify, we believe that the risk of a surprise attack no longer exists.

§ Lord Mason of Barnsley
My Lords, will the Minister inform the House, first, what Soviet land forces were transferred to the Soviet navy in breach of the conventional forces reductions agreement and, secondly, what tank forces were spirited east of the Urals to avoid being counted in the cuts?

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, I cannot give exact figures as regards the numbers in the Soviet navy. However, under recent negotiations, agreement has been reached with the Soviets about arrangements for the navy. About 70,000 items were withdrawn from the treaty area before signature, of which more than 50,000 items of all five categories limited by the treaty are east of the Urals. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary expressed our anxieties during visits to Moscow. The Soviet Union was left in no doubt that it must resolve those problems. The British and other Allied action contributed to the success of the United States-Soviet negotiations.

§ Lord Richard
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. However, he will be aware that the fact that negotiations for the withdrawal of forces from Poland appear to have stalled is of considerable concern. Will the Prime Minister raise that issue and other similar issues when he goes to Moscow?

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, I do not know whether my right honourable friend will raise that issue. The Soviet anxiety over withdrawal from Poland stemmed from its concern to have sufficient cover for its troops withdrawing from Germany. I understand that progress is being made in those negotiations.

§ Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer goes to Moscow to discuss economic affairs and improvements in the Soviet Union, will he be able to question the large percentage of gross domestic product that is allocated to the armed forces in the Soviet Union?

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, the proportion of GDP employed in defence is greater for the Western countries than it is for the Soviet Union. Having said that, the figures are extremely difficult to make sense of, given the costing systems of the Soviet Union.

§ Lord Chalfont
My Lords, in calculating the possibility of a surprise attack against NATO, will the Government bear in mind the following point? When troops are removed from Central Europe, as they have been in recent months, and when, as has already been said, the Soviet Union withdraws behind the Urals and transfers many of its armoured vehicles to its navy (making the Soviet navy virtually the only navy in the world that now has tanks) it would take much longer to reinforce the European theatre from the West than it would take the Soviet Union to reinforce Europe from behind the Urals, given the tanks now in its navy.

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, with progress so far—it is of course unending—the treaties that have been achieved give a degree of security to the West As I said, the question of arms reduction does not cease there. I shall bear in mind the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont.

§ Lord Mackie of Benshie
My Lords, is the Minister aware that, although we must obviously keep an eye on what is going on, it is bound to take time to resolve the difficulties in the cumbersome Soviet economy of trying to reverse the military-industrial conflict?

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, the noble Lord is right. The restructuring of the Soviet political and economic life, initiated by President Gorbachev, is largely intended to reorientate the country away from the previous military emphasis. CFE force reductions and other arms control measures thus run with the grain of Soviet reforms and should benefit the Soviet economy as much as they do East-West relations.

§ Lard Beloff
My Lords, was the House right in understanding the Minister to say that the Soviet proportion of its GDP devoted to defence is less than that of the major Western countries? If so, the statistics available to the Minister are different from those available to anyone else.

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, I have seen statistics along those lines. That is why I quoted them. On the other hand, I think that they are utterly meaningless in the context in which I saw them.

§ Lord Williams of Elvel
My Lords, is the noble Lord used to quoting utterly meaningless statistics from the Dispatch Box? Is it not the case, as the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, said, that from all the statistics, meaningless or otherwise, that we have heard, the Soviet Union spends a vastly higher proportion of its gross domestic product on defence than any Western country? Does he agree that the Government—obviously from the Dispatch Box—have emphasised that point throughout, in order to make sure that the options for change do not go wrong?

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, I am sorry if I confused the House. I did not mean to imply that the Soviet effort was in any way diminished by that. I merely tried to illustrate that, with a currency that is not operated similarly to our own, the figures do not make much sense in that context.

§ Lord Williams of Elvel
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that calculations of the gross domestic product of tit! Soviet Union are made in the rouble? Whatever the value of the rouble may be, the figure is a percentage of output. I insist again on the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff. Is it not the case that the Soviet Union still spends a higher proportion of its gross domestic product—calculated on any basis that anybody cares to choose—on defence?

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, I suspect that the noble Lord is right; but he is not right about the basis on which GDP statistics are published.
462 Differences arise not only because there are various levels for the rouble but it also depends on what the Soviet Union declares as part of the defence effort.

§ Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, I must confess that I was rather nonplussed at the noble Lord's reply, but as I do not have the statistics to hand, I let the matter go. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, for bringing back the matter. The Minister did not tell us the statistics. Can he let us have them so that we can perhaps make a comparison?

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, no, I cannot do that today. In fact that is not part of the Question.

§ Lord Mayhew
My Lords, in view of the Soviet withdrawals and its drastic cuts in military equipment, of which he informed the House last week; in view of the switch of loyalties in Eastern Europe; and in view of the Soviet economic bankruptcy and ethnic difficulties, does the noble Lord agree that the prospect of a secret invasion by the Soviet Union is not for consideration?

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, indeed, we feel that it is very much reduced.

§ Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, I am sorry to rise again but this is an important question. We have been given certain answers. What puzzles me even further is how the Minister can have given an answer to the question if he did not have the statistics to which it referred. Can he enlighten us?

§ Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, the answer to that is that I had the statistics last week in answer to another Question and I recalled them from memory.