Sitting of 26 February 1996

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
  DUCHY OF LANCASTER

    Government Policy (Presentation)
    Mr. Winnick: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what recent assessment he has made of the arrangements for the presentation of Government policy. [15237]
    The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Michael Heseltine): The presentation of Government policy continues to go from strength to strength.
    Mr. Winnick: In presenting Government policy on the Scott report, will the Deputy Prime Minister explain why he had so many misgivings about signing public interest immunity certificates? Why is the Deputy Prime Minister so keen to defend the Attorney-General, when the Attorney-General did not pass on to the court those misgivings or the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister—then the President of the Board of Trade—was anxious that the documents in question should be released to the court? Would it not be better if the Deputy Prime Minister now explained the position fully?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me a chance to do so. The Attorney-General gave me the clearest advice. He said that the papers in front of me would be considered by the judge who would determine whether they should be released.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: That is not what you told the inquiry.
    The Deputy Prime Minister: It is interesting that, whenever one tries to give a serious answer in the House, one is barracked by sedentary Members on the Opposition Benches. This is an extremely important matter and I was giving a serious answer to the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), who asked a serious question. He is entitled to an answer and I shall give it.
    I was given advice by the Attorney-General that the papers would be considered by the judge and, if he considered it appropriate, they would be released. The judge considered the papers and he thought that they should be released. The papers were released, the trial
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    proceeded on that basis and two of the defence counsel said at that time that they thought the Attorney-General had behaved properly.
    Mr. Nigel Evans: I know that my right hon. Friend is keen to ensure that we present Government policy on law and order to demonstrate that clear blue water exists between the Government and the Opposition. My right hon. Friend may be aware that I own a small retail business in Swansea. Shoplifting is a corrosive act that affects not only small businesses, but medium and large retail enterprises. Does my right hon. Friend agree that any political leader who tried to justify shoplifting as acceptable would demonstrate that he was not only soft on crime, but soft on the causes of the crime?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is right. We were amazed that the leader of the parliamentary Labour party should appear to think that that sort of activity was of trivial importance. Shoplifting is a very serious matter for small business people, and, indeed, large companies, who suffer from it. A leader of a parliamentary party should give no succour to that sort of practice.
    Mr. Beith: Can we get the Government's policy clear? Was the Deputy Prime Minister wrong to require a certificate to be set out in a special form and to require that his reservations be passed on to the judge—which they were not—or was he right, and were other Ministers wrong not to do that?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: That is another serious question, and I shall try to answer it. I agreed a certificate with the Attorney-General that related to the papers in front of me in the Department of Trade and Industry. We both agreed that certificate, I signed it and it was the basis of the judgment that both the Attorney-General and I reached in those circumstances. It is not relevant to my colleagues in other Departments because they were signing certificates about papers in their Departments that were available only to them. It is fundamental to understand that when Ministers are invited to sign public interest immunity certificates of any sort, they sign them only in respect of the papers in front of them that relate to their Department.
    Mr. Ian Bruce: Did my right hon. Friend hear two programmes this morning on Radio Four? On the first, the "Today" programme, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster gave a clear account of Government policy on Scott. The other was "Start the Week", on which a strange person, who appeared to be speaking for the Labour party, gave a muddled version of his intentions. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that both those programmes are given a wide airing and encourage the BBC to put them out more often so that people will realise how boring and confused the Labour party is, and how clear and straightforward the Conservative party is?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: As always, my hon. Friend makes a valid point; but I would go further. The parliamentary Labour party's position is reprehensible to a fault. For three years, it conducted a vilification

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    campaign against my right hon. Friends and me, and on the substance and heart of the matter it has been found that its charges are ill-founded.
    Mr. Prescott: Is the Deputy Prime Minister aware that his remarks encouraging the late payment of business debts have been condemned by the British Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses? Will he apologise to the thousands who have been made bankrupt by late payment? Is he able to confirm reports this weekend that senior figures in the Tory party have been in discussions with banks to save Tory Members from bankruptcy? Is that not an example of one rule for small businesses and another one for Tory Governments with small majorities?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: I am delighted again to respond to a question seriously. Like many small business men in my position, I have faced the problems that often arise. I was faced with putting a company into liquidation or borrowing money to pay the creditors—I borrowed money to pay the creditors. I regard that as a matter of great personal pride, and I very much hope that it will be seen as such.
    It is ridiculous to suggest that in any way I believe that, as an art form, small businesses—or large companies—should deny payment of their bills. That is why I have been part of a process of accepting the Confederation of British Industry's code of practice, and why Departments are making every effort to catch up on their payment problems. That is also why large companies will be expected to comply with the code of practice.
    I have always been hesitant about the facile assumption that the introduction of an interest charge will somehow benefit all small companies. It is forgotten that many small companies might themselves be tipped into bankruptcy by that process.

    Scott Inquiry
    Mr. Olner: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister how many civil servants, and at what cost to public funds, were employed in the preparation of the Government's response to the Scott inquiry. [15238]
    The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service (Mr. David Willetts): The Scott report covered a wide range of policy issues. Access to the report itself before publication was restricted to a very small number of officials in the main Departments concerned. However, a number of other officials will have contributed to preparation of the Government's response without sight of the report. It is not possible, therefore, to give precise numbers or costings.
    Mr. Olner: The wider world will know that the Tories have once again failed to answer a question on the Scott report. If figures are not being given, my constituents in Nuneaton who suffered job losses as a result of Matrix Churchill being closed will conclude that the Tory Government are again engaging in a cover-up on the report. When will the Government pay some
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    compensation to the 600 workers and their families at Matrix Churchill, workers who lost their jobs through the Government's bungling?
    Mr. Willetts: I fail to understand how a 1,800-page report and a day's debate can be regarded as a cover-up.
    Mr. Derek Foster: Does the Minister, who was part of the cost of the response to the Scott report, accept the verdict in paragraph D4.63 that
    "Government statements made in 1989 and 1990 … failed … to comply with the standard set by paragraph 27 of the Questions of Procedure for Ministers"
    on Ministers' accountability to Parliament? As "Questions of Procedure for Ministers" is the Prime Minister's document, is the Prime Minister not failing in his constitutional responsibility to the sovereign Parliament in not bringing Ministers to account? Is he not undermining parliamentary democracy? If the Ministers concerned do not resign, should not the Prime Minister resign?
    Mr. Willetts: The right hon. Gentleman should know, if he has read the Scott report carefully, that Conservative Members have been cleared of any "duplicitous intent", to quote the words of the report, and have been cleared also of deliberately misleading Parliament. There will be a debate today when the wider issues that the right hon. Gentleman rightly raises will be addressed by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.

    Government Policy (Co-ordination and Presentation)
    Mr. Mackinlay: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what staffing resources he has within his Department in order to fulfil his duties of co-ordination and presentation of Government policy. [15239]
    The Deputy Prime Minister: I have the resources that I need to carry out these duties.
    Mr. Mackinlay: Does the Deputy Prime Minister not understand that many people would consider his Department to be over-resourced for someone who has a sinecure in the evening of his political life? May I tax his communication skill and ask him what he would say to the countless thousands of men and women who, through no fault of their own, had to endure the trauma of bankruptcy and were unable to get credit from the banks, and who see hatched in Downing street a rescue plan involving the National Westminster bank, Midland bank, Barclays bank, Trustee Savings bank and UCB to save the Government? Is he not aware that the people listening to the story will consider it grossly unfair that there is one law for Conservative Members of Parliament and the Government and another for people struggling to maintain businesses in which they have invested both their lives and their homes?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: The whole House, having listened to that extraordinary outburst, will draw one clear conclusion: they would rather me half asleep than the hon. Gentleman wide awake.
    Mr. Caborn: When he is co-ordinating policy, particularly on late payments for small businesses, can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us the Government's position

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    on the Interest on Debt Bill—a private Member's Bill, which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Jones)? Are the Government indifferent to that Bill?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: No; it is an important issue. As the hon. Gentleman will know, we addressed and answered the question that he raised in the previous Government announcement on the subject. We made it clear that we are not at the moment persuaded of the advantages of a statutory interest rate on outstanding debts, because although some companies would gain from that, some companies would suffer. Therefore, we decided to back a number of initiatives, including support for the CBI code of practice and the encouragement of Government Departments to pay their bills rapidly, which we thought more likely to address the issue. We also made it clear that if our proposals did not deliver the improvements that we sought, we would return to the matter, and that we will do.

    Deregulation
    Mr. Evennett: To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what progress has been made in the Government's deregulation initiative. [15240]
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the progress of the deregulation initiative. [15241]
    The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Roger Freeman): By the end of last year, we had already repealed or amended more than 500 regulations, with another 500 in process. The first deregulation orders under the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 have now passed into law and there is a steady flow of new orders. We are also making useful progress in our efforts to encourage deregulation in Europe.
    Mr. Evennett: I thank my right hon. Friend for that response and welcome the Government's initiatives to date on deregulation. There is, however, much more to be done. Does he share the concern of business men in my borough of Bexley that the red tape and bureaucracy emanating from Brussels need to be curtailed even more?
    Mr. Freeman: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I can confirm that, at the Internal Market Council informal meeting in Rome over the weekend, a clear majority of the member nations of the European Union agreed that greater priority should be given not only to reviewing existing European legislation but to ensuring that new regulations meet the simple test of being fewer, better and simpler. I am glad to tell the House that in Rome there was agreement to review existing legislation on machine standards, food hygiene and public procurement.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: Is there not a case for regulating for greater disclosure in the case of Campbell's Soups, which refuses to recognise trade unions? In the past five years, there have been six major scalding incidents in its two major factories, and one death last year. Surely such information should be made available
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    to the great supermarket chains—for example, Tesco, Sainsbury and Safeway—which buy its products. Indeed, should not the consumer know the truth?
    Mr. Freeman: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the issue of health and safety legislation. I am glad to say that the Government have already agreed that 40 per cent. of existing health and safety legislation should be repealed. That is a start. There is more to be done. I am glad to tell the hon. Gentleman that, in relation to Campbell's Soups and every other American company that has operations in the United Kingdom, the Department of the Environment recently requested all health and safety officials to enforce the law in a more uniform, user-friendly and sensible fashion. I welcome that.
    Mr. Wilkinson: Following the European Union ministerial meeting in Rome, can my right hon. Friend reassure the House that EU directives and, in particular, EU health and safety regulations, will not be used to sabotage Her Majesty's Government's opt-out from the social chapter, and that, if the European Court decides against Her Majesty's Government in regard to the working-time directive, the United Kingdom will take no notice of that adjudication?
    Mr. Freeman: Yes, that is our intention.
    Mr. Pike: Does the Minister accept that most of what the Select Committee on Deregulation has dealt with so far has no significant implications for this country? The implications for greyhound betting and the possibility of a £10 rather than a £4 payout on a one-armed bandit in a pub or arcade will not contribute to the well-being of the nation, even under the Tories.
    Mr. Freeman: The hon. Gentleman is being unnecessarily modest. A great many draft orders are being prepared, which I expect to be of more consequence, including a proposal to save money on the circulation of used cheques between banks once they have been drawn and credited. There is much more to be done, but the process has started. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and to other members of the Deregulation Committee for their hard work.
    Mr. Nicholls: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a substantial contribution would be made to reregulation if the country took on itself the social chapter, recognition of trade unions, workers councils and the like? Does he agree that business men who favour deregulation should bear in mind the fact that the Labour party would throw the process into reverse by introducing those European measures?
    Mr. Freeman: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. One reason why our unemployment rate—measured on a basis consistent with that in other European countries—is now broadly the same as Germany's, but falling, is the fact that businesses in this country need not shoulder the substantial on-costs on labour rates borne by Germany, Italy and France.

    Civil Service Pension Scheme
    Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what plans he has to contract out the principal civil service pension scheme. [15242]
    Mr. Willetts: I intend shortly to lay before both Houses an order, under the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994, to open up the administration of the principal civil service pension scheme to the private sector. The pension entitlements of civil servants will not be affected in any way.
    Mr. Cunningham: Can the Deputy Prime Minister say what discussions he has had with the Paymaster General on the implications of the proposed privatisation—
    Hon. Members: Reading.
    Madam Speaker: Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that he is not allowed to read out questions during Question Time.
    Mr. Cunningham: What discussions has the Deputy Prime Minister had with the Paymaster General regarding the implications for the Paymaster General's office of the proposed privatisation of the civil service pension scheme? What objections has he received from teachers about the privatisation of their pension scheme, particularly teachers in Coventry?
    Mr. Willetts: What we are talking about is the possible contracting out of the administration of schemes. Many letters that we have received from teachers and other organisations have reflected a serious misunderstanding of the position, and a fear that their pension entitlements will be affected in some way. I am pleased to assure the House that there will be no change in the substance of civil servants' or teachers' pension entitlements.
    Mr. Dicks: Do the new arrangements mean that civil servants will have to contribute to their pensions for a change, like the rest of us?
    Mr. Willetts: The changes are in the administration of civil service pension arrangements. They do not change either the pension entitlements of civil servants or the way in which they are financed. I assure my hon. Friend, however, that they contribute to the Government's overall public expenditure objectives. Whenever we have contracted out public sector services, we have achieved an average saving of 21 per cent.

    Recruitment and Assessment Services Agency
    Mr. Miller: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the privatisation of the Recruitment and Assessment Services Agency. [15243]
    Mr. Willetts: The privatisation of the Recruitment and Assessment Services Agency is proceeding as announced. I expect the sale to be completed in the summer.
    Mr. Miller: In the wake of Nolan and now Scott, are not the Government taking actions that will undermine the neutrality of our civil service?
    Mr. Willetts: That is complete nonsense. The selection of civil servants will still be in the hands of civil servants and, as now, the procedures will be regulated by the independent civil service commissioners. That is another example of a successful privatisation combined with stringent regulation. It is a great pity that, after 16 years, the Opposition still do not understand the basic argument for privatisation.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Does my hon. Friend think that, if the Opposition are concerned about the civil service's neutrality, they may be leaning towards new Labour rather than old Labour? We know that old Labour is still what runs the Labour party.
    Mr. Willetts: I do not recognise the terms old Labour or new Labour. We know what the Labour party stands for and we remain opposed to it.

    Government Policy (Presentation)
    Mr. Grocott: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what recent representations he has received on his responsibilities for the strategic presentation of Government policy. [15244]
    The Deputy Prime Minister: As I told the hon. Gentleman when I last answered questions to my Department, I have received no recent representations on my responsibilities
    "other than from Opposition Members."—[Official Report, 29 January 1996; Vol. 270, c. 632.]
    Mr. Grocott: With all the millions of words have been said and written about the Scott report, is not the irreducible truth that Ministers—I put it in its kindest way—deliberately withheld information from the House? As that is the clearest possible abuse of our parliamentary system, and as it is difficult to see how the system can operate if that abuse is allowed to continue, will the Deputy Prime Minister, on behalf of the Government and without reservation or qualification, publicly apologise to the House?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: When the Scott report is considered in its totality, the overriding conclusion will be that the allegations peddled by the parliamentary Labour party for three years were unfounded. We did not arm Saddam Hussein or conspire to send innocent men to prison. The parliamentary Labour party and its spokesmen should apologise unreservedly for those charges.
    Mr. Harry Greenway: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Scott report argues in a number of different directions at the same time and that, finally, it is impossible to take it seriously for that reason?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: I have read of the Scott report that it is biblical in its judgments—there is something there to suit most people, depending on which quotation they use, but the facts remain that the central charges against the Government have not been proved by the report.
    Mr. Skinner: The Deputy Prime Minister now has a newfangled machine in the biggest office in Whitehall and the new titles Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State—which he screwed out of the Prime Minister on the day of the ballot. If he had had that spying machine and that position when the arms sales were taking place, could he have used them to tell all the Cabinet Ministers, "Look, you are going down the wrong track"? Does he think that that would have worked?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: As so often with the hon. Gentleman, he is out of touch with his own party. Only one big lying machine has been introduced in modern politics recently and that is in Millbank. It has been put there by the Labour party.
    Mr. Stephen: Does my right hon. Friend recall that, in the 1960s, British business man Greville Wynne was arrested by the Soviets, that a Member of Parliament, who should have known better, asked in the House whether Wynne was working for British intelligence and that, on that occasion, the Minister was obliged to lie to Parliament? Does my right hon. Friend accept that there are occasions, especially in relation to foreign affairs and defence, when not only should Ministers not answer the question, but Members of Parliament should not ask the question?
    The Deputy Prime Minister: My hon. Friend raises important issues. I very much sympathise with the reply given by the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore), who clearly recognised the dilemma that Ministers sometimes face when they have to answer questions giving the fullest possible information to Parliament but also have regard to our security and commercial interests overseas. Every Minister has had to wrestle with that balancing judgment. The right hon. Gentleman had the integrity to answer that question honestly. It is of course apparent that it is long time since the Labour party was in a power and that now it is prepared to disregard totally what its own spokesman said when he was in office.

    Deregulation
    Mr. Barry Jones: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what assessment he has made of the effect of his deregulation proposals on British manufacturing industry. [15245]
    Mr. Freeman: As we made clear in our second White Paper on competitiveness, deregulation is central to improving the competitiveness of British industry. Unnecessary requirements stand in the way of market entry, innovation, investment and jobs. We are also ensuring that new regulations are introduced only where really necessary, meet the test of public benefit exceeding cost of implementation and are enforced in a business-friendly way.
    Mr. Jones: In that case, why have the Government imposed 294 new regulations since 1992? May I please have a truthful reply?
    Mr. Freeman: If the hon. Gentleman is referring to the press speculation about the document coming from the European Commission, I should tell him that I have not seen that document. Early reports imply that the document is substantially flawed because it includes UK legislation that implements European legislation. We introduce about 1,400 substantive statutory instruments each year and a clear majority of them either have no bearing on business and industry or are deregulatory in nature.
    Mr. Jenkin: Does my right hon. Friend agree that we are only just beginning to realise the huge magnitude of the regulatory task before us not only in preventing British officials from implementing to the letter everything that is put before them, but in relation to the problem of gold plating European regulations? Not only are some European regulations excessive, but we implement them with excessive zeal.
    Mr. Freeman: My hon. Friend is right. For far too long in Whitehall, we have added unnecessary additional provisions to legislation that implements directives agreed by various Councils of Ministers. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister and I have put a stop to the gold plating of European legislation. My hon. Friend is also right to refer to over-enforcement. It is important that, when officials enforce any European legislation in this country implemented under the European Communities Act 1972, they do so sensibly, and in a balanced and user-friendly way.
    Mr. Dafis: Does the Sea Empress episode not show the importance of more stringent regulation in some areas? Is that not especially true for the environment, where regulation can stimulate technological inventiveness and therefore produce solutions? For example, is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the work of the Environmental Industries Commission, and of its conviction that Britain needs to recognise the huge importance of environmental technology as a major sector in global industry over the next decade? Will he firmly undertake not to deregulate in the important area of environmental sustainability?
    Mr. Freeman: Yes.

    Compliance Cost Assessments
    Sir Donald Thompson: To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what guidance has been issued to Ministers on the preparation of compliance cost assessments. [15246]
    Mr. Freeman: Following publication of the new guidance booklet on compliance cost assessments on 25 January, I have written to all departmental Ministers asking them to ensure that the new guidelines are observed in their Departments. The guidance includes a requirement for Ministers to sign off personally all compliance cost assessments and to certify that the benefit of the regulatory proposal exceeds the cost.
    Sir Donald Thompson: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that he agrees that compliance costs and likely compliance costs must be rigorously examined and the whole of an industry consulted before legislation from either Britain or Europe is accepted without compliance

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    costs? Often, the cost of compliance to a large firm is negligible, while the cost to a small firm of compliance to the same regulations is relatively huge.
    Mr. Freeman: I agree with my hon. Friend and I am happy to say that the European Commission has accepted in principle that it will follow the practice that we have adopted in the United Kingdom and will introduce compliance cost assessments for new draft directives and regulations before the end of the year.
    Mr. MacShane: Surely the Minister will agree that one of the most important elements of any compliance cost system is that companies or individuals who are bankrupt are not allowed to continue trading? Do not the revelations yesterday, that No. 10 has spread its protective arm over the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Thomason) to allow him to keep trading while bankrupt, show that there is nothing but contempt for the normal operations of business at the heart of our Government system?
    Mr. Freeman: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support for general deregulatory measures in company law, auditing and other financial requirements. The Government have an excellent record over the past 24 months in introducing deregulatory measures in relation to auditing and accounting standards for small firms.

  OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT

    Indonesia
    Mr. MacShane: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assistance he provides to the independent trade union movement in Indonesia. [15267]
    The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Jeremy Hanley): There has been no change since the hon. Gentleman last asked that question. No aid is given to the independent trade union movement in Indonesia.
    Mr. MacShane: Is not the deplorable fact that no help is given to one of the most important trade union movements in Asia a reflection of the complaint that the Minister's boss, Baroness Chalker, made in her lecture last week, when she protested at Treasury cuts in the budget of the Overseas Development Administration? We can leave that aspect of the Government's death throes to the Ministers involved, but will the right hon. Gentleman accept that the SBSI, the independent trade union movement in Indonesia, is an important social actor and should receive Government support? Is the Minister prepared to meet a small delegation to discuss whether there is some line of budget to give help to Indonesia in future?
    Mr. Hanley: British aid to Indonesia was £22.2 million in 1993–94 and £21.5 million last year—excluding the Commonwealth Development Corporation's programmes and debt relief. The money is spent on those who are most in need. I do not believe that there is a strong case for
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    sponsoring the trade union movement in Indonesia, but there is a strong developmental, economic and commercial case for Britain to maintain a substantial aid programme to Indonesia—other donors agree.

    East Africa (Sustainable Development)
    Mr. Carrington: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what proportion of the aid budget is directed towards sustainable development in east Africa. [15268]
    Mr. Hanley: In 1994–95, 7.6 per cent. of total British bilateral aid was spent on sustainable development in east Africa—Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. In 1993, the latest year in which figures for our share of multilateral programmes to the three countries are available, 6.4 per cent. of the aid budget was spent on bilateral and multilateral aid to east Africa.
    Mr. Carrington: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer. Does he agree that the quality of aid is more important than the straight quantity of aid? In order for our aid programme to be successful in east Africa, it is vital that the recipient countries pursue more sensible economic policies than they show signs of doing at present.
    Mr. Hanley: I agree that our aid should be given to countries where there is not only poverty and a need for aid but a good developmental case and a good case for economic restructuring—Uganda is an excellent example. Our aid in Uganda has helped to achieve an average annual economic growth rate of 6 per cent. over the past eight years.
    Miss Lestor: Notwithstanding that reply, does the Minister accept that one of the biggest threats to sustainable development in east Africa is the totally unsustainable level of external debt? Does he agree that it is unacceptable that Tanzania spends twice as much on repaying debt as on providing access to clean water? Does he also agree that it is unacceptable that Uganda is forced to spend $17 per person on debt, while it can still afford to pay only $3 per person on health?
    Will the right hon. Gentleman assure hon. Members that at the spring meeting in April of the International Monetary Fund and the World bank, the British Government will be at the forefront in pushing for a comprehensive solution to the debt crisis aimed at restoring debt stock and debt servicing to sustainable levels by 2000, and financed from new and additional resources from within multilateral institutions, including the World bank and the sale of IMF gold stocks?
    Mr. Hanley: The hon. Lady will be aware that the United Kingdom is leading the way in the progress that is being made to reduce aid debt. Indeed, we have led the last two series of negotiations and we will continue to convert debt into aid, as we have done over the past few years.
    Mr. Cash: Will my right hon. Friend note the early-day motion in my name, as chairman of the all-party east Africa committee, which is designed to come forward with proposals—backed by President Museveni—

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    to reduce debt and interest on debt, having regard to the opening of the books of account of Uganda? Is my right hon. Friend aware that I have had meetings with Baroness Chalker of Wallasey and with the economic section of the Treasury? Is he aware that the Government are making efforts to exert pressure on the countries that are corrupt? The Government are ensuring that we achieve a degree of reduction of debt, where it can be justified, and a reduction in the necessity for aid—which otherwise just goes back into the reduction of debt.
    Mr. Hanley: I will certainly look at that early-day motion. I shall discuss the matter with my right hon. Friend Baroness Chalker. As I have said, the United Kingdom is leading the way in the process of reducing debt and turning debt into aid.

    Iraq
    Mr. Gapes: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the current position with regard to sanctions against Iraq and provision of aid to Iraq. [15269]
    Mr. Hanley: The purpose of sanctions is to ensure that Iraq complies with its obligations under relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. There has been some progress, notably in the recognition of Kuwait and UN-demarcated borders. However, I am sorry to say that Iraq remains a long way from compliance. Since 1991, we have given £73 million to the humanitarian effort in Iraq.
    Mr. Gapes: If the Government are concerned about the situation in Iraq today, why were they not concerned in the 1980s? Will the Minister give hon. Members an assurance that the Government are not allowing the diversion of aid, aid and trade provision funds or export credit guarantee funds to Jordan which might be used to assist the Saddam regime, as referred to in section E of the Scott report?
    Mr. Hanley: Yes, Madam Speaker.
    Mr. Stephen: Is it not vital to the interests of this country and to the people of the middle east that neither Iran nor Iraq should ever become powerful enough to overwhelm the other? Were not British trade relations with those two countries managed so as to ensure that neither country was able to dominate that region? Was that not a foreign policy triumph of which the House should be proud?
    Mr. Hanley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making these comments. However, today I am here to answer questions about the Overseas Development Administration and its role with regard to overseas aid, and I think it will be best if I stick to that subject.
    We are conscious of the suffering in Iraq. It is Saddam, not the United Nations, who is responsible. Food and medicines are not subject to sanctions. There is clear evidence that Saddam is using Iraq's foreign currency reserves for military procurement, for ostentatious construction projects and for luxury items for his
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    hangers-on. This underlines the blatant disregard for his people. We will continue to help the people of Iraq—they deserve our help.

    Europe (Social and Economic Disparities)
    Mr. Mackinlay: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what measures are being taken by the Overseas Development Administration to reduce the social and economic disparities that exist between the EU and new democracies in central and eastern Europe. [15270]
    Mr. Hanley: We contribute to the reduction of social and economic disparities between the EU and the countries of the region through the know-how fund. This aims to support their transition to a pluralist democracy and a market economy. More than £230 million has been spent since its inception in 1989.
    We also provide assistance through our membership of the multilateral institutions that operate in the region, in particular the EU, the European bank for reconstruction and development, the European investment bank and the World bank.
    Mr. Mackinlay: I welcome the information given by the Minister. I wonder whether he would use his good offices and give consideration to the need for British newspapers to be available in all the further and higher education institutions of Russia and the former communist bloc countries. Countless young men and women are desperate to read and consume information about the United Kingdom but do not have access to a quality British newspaper. Surely it would be a small contribution if the United Kingdom made available those newspapers in such places, outside the main capital cities?
    Mr. Hanley: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that newspapers are available in British Council offices and libraries. They are also available on the streets of many countries in central and eastern Europe. There are some newspapers that I would not want those people to see anyway.
    Sir Patrick Cormack: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in many cases, the communities that the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) mentioned would be much better served by adequate provision of the BBC World Service? Does he also agree that British Council offices should never be closed in parts of former communist Europe?
    Mr. Hanley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. The British Council is reviewing its operations at the moment. The World Service will continue to be an excellent service, and I believe that my hon. Friend's praise for the World Service and the British Council is echoed throughout the House.

    Aid Recipients (Free Elections)
    Mr. David Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list those countries that receive United Kingdom aid which have been assessed as not having free and fair elections. [15271]
    Mr. Hanley: We have not made a systematic analysis of the 160 recipients of our aid, but our policy is to encourage good government, including moving towards the holding of free and fair elections, in all recipients of our aid.
    Mr. Evans: I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply. Does he agree that charity begins at home—
    Mr. Tony Banks: We want an election!
    Madam Speaker: Order.
    Mr. Evans: Does my right hon. Friend agree that no country should receive aid unless it has one man, one vote? Does he further agree that that lot over there would spend more taxpayer's money on any corrupt Government they thought fit, as they have great experience of not holding free and fair elections—what with clause IV, 176 of them being supported by unions, blah, blah, blah, and the Labour-controlled councils of Hackney, Islington and Camden? Is this not another example of saying one thing and doing another?
    Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman does try the patience of the House.
    Mr. Hanley: I am pleased to confirm to my hon. Friend that the last four general elections in the United Kingdom were free and fair; so was the result.
    Dr. Godman: The Minister talked of good government. How does he measure Indonesia in relation to the Government's policy on good government? Is it not the case that, for the people of East Timor, that is a harsh and oppressive administration—if it may be called that? How much of that aid goes to the people of East Timor?
    Mr. Hanley: We are concerned about reports of continuing human rights abuses in Indonesia, especially East Timor, and we certainly let the Indonesian Government know of our concerns. We did so most recently when Foreign Minister Alatas visited us last month. I shall write to the hon. Gentleman about how much Indonesian aid goes to East Timor.

    South Africa
    Mr. Pike: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what percentage change has taken place in aid to South Africa since the South African elections of 1994. [15272]
    Mr. Hanley: Bilateral aid to South Africa in the year leading up to the South African elections in April 1994 was £14.4 million. The outturn for the current financial year is expected to be about £17 million—an increase of 18 per cent. Our share of European Union assistance has increased from approximately £12.5 million to about £17 million in 1995 at current exchange rates—an increase of 36 per cent.
    Mr. Pike: Although those increases are very welcome, does the Minister recognise the tremendous legacy of the apartheid years, particularly in education, health and
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    housing? Should we not do far more to help the majority of South Africans to achieve the living standards to which they are entitled?
    Mr. Hanley: I agree with the priorities that the hon. Gentleman has expressed. We believe that education is a vital part of the aid that we provide to South Africa in helping its transition to what I hope will be a glorious future.
    Mr. John Marshall: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the main hope for economic development in South Africa is international investment? Will he recommend to President Mandela that he encourage, rather than discourage, international investment?
    Mr. Hanley: The key to South Africa's long-term prosperity is trade and investment. The Government are committed to developing our commercial links with South Africa, but there is also a role for well-targeted aid. Our aid is designed to help to develop sound policies and to establish models of sustainable development while focusing on the most disadvantaged groups. The South African Government understand their responsibilities and I believe that they are on the right track.

  PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMISSION

    Health Service Bodies
    Mr. Simon Hughes: To ask the Chairman of the Public Accounts Commission what discussions the Commission has had with the Comptroller and Auditor General on the costs of inspecting the accounts of health service bodies. [15277]
    Sir Peter Hordern (Chairman of the Public Accounts Commission): The commission regularly discusses the costs of the National Audit Office's activities—most recently on 30 January when it considered the National Audit Office's estimate for 1996–97. The costs of inspecting the accounts of health service bodies are included in the totals, but they were not discussed separately.
    Mr. Hughes: I am grateful for that answer. I have received on the best—[Interruption.] As I have received information that the local Guy's and St. Thomas' national health service trust is to write off about £7 million in relation to the Philip Harris phase 3 building, how may I be assured that the Comptroller and Auditor General will have the resources this financial year to investigate and report on whether that information is correct?
    Sir Peter Hordern: The Comptroller and Auditor General will have the resources for that study. Further, in light of preliminary work undertaken by the National Audit Office, the Comptroller and Auditor General intends to carry out a full investigation into what is now referred to as Guy's phase 3. The work will focus on the reasons for delays and cost overruns, given the National Audit Office's understanding that the building will be used largely as was intended at the outset of the project. The timing of the work is complicated by pending legal action. A report is expected to be published next year.

  OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION

    Palestine
    Mr. Gunnell: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has for increasing aid for improving infrastructure and public services in Palestine. [15273]
    Mr. Hanley: The United Kingdom intends to spend £85 million over three years for the Palestinians, with our bilateral aid for the west bank and Gaza being focused on improving public services. We will continue to provide aid for infrastructure improvements through our share of the substantial multilateral programmes.
    Mr. Gunnell: In the wake of the events this weekend—which I am sure we all deplore—does the Minister agree that, as the election process is complete, the people who live on the west bank and those parts of Palestine under Palestinian control must see urgent and real improvements in their living standards? Does he agree that recent events signify the importance of redoubling efforts in support of the new, democratic regime in Palestine?
    Mr. Hanley: I am pleased to agree with every word that the hon. Gentleman has said. Our aid to the Palestinians is the main pillar of our support for the peace process. Our policy is to encourage all states in the region to reach lasting, just and comprehensive settlements. We welcome the progress that has been made so far in the middle east peace process and we hope that there will be a resolution on the Israel-Syria track.
    As to the hon. Gentleman's comments about the awful incidents yesterday, the whole House sends its sympathy to the families of those who were killed and to those who were injured. We all hope that it will not put the peace process off track. Considerable courage must be shown in the peace process. I hope that the people who suffered yesterday will share in the courage that is required.

    Aid Budget
    Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what percentage of gross domestic product will be devoted to the Government's overseas aid budget in 1996–97. [15275]
    Mr. Hanley: The aid budget in 1996–97 will be more than £2.1 billion. The proportion of gross national product that it will represent will depend on the rate of United Kingdom economic growth and inflation.
    Mr. Cunningham: Is the Minister not ashamed of the Government's record? Over the past 10 or 15 years, the Government have systematically cut overseas aid. Is that not a disgrace when many under-developed countries are still struggling to modernise their water facilities, for example?
    Mr. Hanley: I am certainly not ashamed of our aid contribution. Our aid budget of £2.23 billion covers aid to developing countries and assistance to countries in transition. We readily admit that last year's public
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    expenditure survey was particularly rigorous, but the Government have had to take some tough decisions. The cuts in the bilateral aid programme are effectively offset by lower forecasts of multilateral aid spending and, despite the small reduction in the budget, Britain will continue to be the fifth largest donor with an aid budget of £2.1 billion next year.

  CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

    Cathedrals (Admission Charges)
    Mr. Jenkin: To ask the right hon. Member for Selby, representing the Church Commissioners, what is the policy on admission charges to cathedrals. [15279]
    Mr. Michael Alison (Second Church Estates Commissioner, representing the Church Commissioners): It is not a matter for the Church Commissioners. Policy on admission charges rests with individual cathedrals, but I would be happy to convey any representations that my hon. Friend might wish to make to the appropriate authority.
    Mr. Jenkin: Has it not become evident that cathedrals that levy charges on entrance for tourists are maximising their resources? In these straitened times, should not the Church Commissioners encourage cathedrals and other major church buildings to levy charges so that extra revenue can be raised?
    Mr. Alison: My hon. Friend makes a fair and reasonable point. In practice, there is a good deal of variation in regard to the bits of a cathedral to which admission charges apply, but I shall arrange to have the general point that my hon. Friend makes widely circulated in all cathedral cities.
    Mr. Donald Anderson: Is it not surprising that the Government have not sought to bring cathedrals into the private finance initiative?
    Mr. Alison: I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that cathedrals are almost entirely financed by the residual money left in taxpayers' pockets after the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken his share, so their funding arises from voluntary donations from supporters of cathedrals.

    Beneficial Clergy (Salaries)
    Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the right hon. Member for Selby, representing the Church Commissioners, what is the current average salary of the beneficial clergy; and if he will make a statement. [15280]
    Mr. Alison: The average stipend for clergy of incumbent state for the year beginning 1 April 1995 is £13,450. That is 2.1 per cent. above the previous year's figure of £13,170.
    Mr. Greenway: Does my right hon. Friend agree that there need to be differentials in terms of pay and emoluments between archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, vicars and curates? Vicars live in vicarages; why do so many bishops continue to live in palaces? Would it not

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    be better if the majority followed the example of the few who have been taken out of their palaces and placed in bishops' houses?
    Mr. Alison: I take my hon. Friend's point that some bishops appear to live in substantial and splendid circumstances, but I am glad that he is in a favour of differentials in the ranks of the clergy, as he is no doubt in favour of differentials between Back-Bench Members and Cabinet Ministers, although Cabinet Ministers do not live in palaces.

    Ordination of Women (Financial Provision) Measure 1993
    Mr. Tony Banks: To ask the right hon. Member for Selby, representing the Church Commissioners, what payments have been made under the terms of the Ordination of Women (Financial Provision) Measure 1993. [15281]
    Mr. Alison: At 31 January 1996, the commissioners had made payments from their income totaling
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    £6 million. Since the legislation came into effect in 1994, 300 clergy eligible for financial assistance under the Measure have resigned during that period.
    Mr. Banks: That figure is astounding. Why on earth should those crusty old sexists get a penny piece for opposing the ordination of women? The right hon. Gentleman has given an appalling answer, and it shows how deep sexism runs within certain elements of the clergy in the Anglican Church. Those people should get not a farthing. They should be driven from the temples of the Lord with scourges, not be given a silver handshake from the offertory plate.
    Mr. Alison: The hon. Gentleman called the figure of £6 million "astounding". If I had said that the amount was £600,000, £6 million or £60 million, he would still have described it as astounding. His references to the clergy of the Church of England would have been exactly the same, whatever the figures involved. The House may expect the same sort of response when we hear the hon. Gentleman speak later this afternoon on another compendious statement, the Scott report.

Points of Order
3.30 pm
Mr. Andrew Mackinlay: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Will you, in the course of the afternoon, read pages 119 and 128 of the 21st edition of "Erskine May", which relate to the influencing of hon. Members? Page 128, under the heading "Improper influence", refers to the resolution of the House of Commons of 1695, which stated that
"the offer of money, or other advantage, to any Member of Parliament for the promoting of any matter whatsoever, depending or to be transacted in Parliament is a high crime and misdemeanour and tends to the subversion of the English Constitution."
The current edition of "Erskine May" states also that
"the offering to a Member … of any fee or reward in connection with the promotion of, or opposition to any bill, resolution, matter or thing submitted or intended to be submitted to the House"—
Madam Speaker: Order. I am quite capable of reading, and the hon. Gentleman gave me the page numbers. What is the hon. Gentleman's point of order?
Mr. Mackinlay: It seems to me that if an extraordinary package is put together for one hon. Gentleman—a Conservative Member of Parliament—so that he can avoid disqualification from the House, that could unduly influence the hon. Gentleman's conduct. It goes to the heart of the matter. If that package had been put together exclusively to keep the hon. Gentleman in question in the House, that would affect his conduct. I ask you, Madam Speaker, to consider whether or not such a package is lawful, and whether such a package should be declared in the Register of Members' Interests.
Madam Speaker: If the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) believes that the matter may be a question of privilege, he should write to me and I will consider it in that light. If the hon. Gentleman believes that the matter relates to the standards of the House, the hon. Gentleman should write to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. If the hon. Gentleman is not clear in his own mind, if he will write to me, I will be glad to sort him out.
Mr. Jerry Hayes: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I gave you written notice of this point
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of order, which concerns the conduct of the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd)—to whom I sent a courtesy note, to inform her of my remarks.
At the weekend, a well wisher gave me a letter from the hon. Member for Cynon Valley—of which you, Madam Speaker, have a copy. The letter is to Conservative constituency chairmen throughout the country, asking them to urge their Members of Parliament to vote against the Scott report. Of course that matter is for the hon. Lady. The difficulty is that the letter is on House of Commons notepaper. The added difficulty is that the letter was posted in a prepaid House of Commons envelope. I make no political points, Madam Speaker, but seek your guidance.
Madam Speaker: The political points come later. I would ask the hon. Gentleman to refer the matter to the Serjeant at Arms. The hon. Gentleman has been kind enough to let me have a copy of the document to which he refers. The Serjeant at Arms will be carrying out an inquiry, and he would be helped in that if the hon. Gentleman let him have any information in his possession.
Mrs. Ann Clwyd: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for writing to me to say that he was going to raise that point of order—but I could not understand his writing. I suggest that next time he writes to me he joins up his letters, or types.
I find it difficult to take seriously a point made by an hon. Member who is prepared—[Interruption.]
Madam Speaker: Order. This matter has been referred to the Serjeant at Arms; the hon. Lady has been referred to; it is quite right that she should be heard.
Mrs. Clwyd: Parliament has been brought into disrepute by the hon. Gentleman dressing up as French maid, and by all sorts of other activities—
Madam Speaker: Order. I have given my ruling. The matter has been referred for an investigation.
Mr. Hayes rose—
Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman would look very pretty as a French maid. I wish I had his curls.

Scott Report
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Burns.]
Madam Speaker: I must tell the House that speeches by all Back Benchers will be limited to 10 minutes.
3.35 pm
The President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Ian Lang): The House will welcome the opportunity afforded by this debate to consider Sir Richard Scott's report, now that all hon. Members have had the opportunity to study it. That is why the Government deliberately allowed 10 clear days to elapse between publication and debate.
We welcome the central conclusions of the report: that there was no plot secretly to arm Saddam Hussein, and no attempt to suppress documents that could have led to a miscarriage of justice. Those issues were central to the inquiry. But today I want to look forward. I want to look in detail and with care at Sir Richard Scott's recommendations and criticisms, as he asked the Government to do.
Dr. John Reid: Just before the right hon. Gentleman leaps forward, will he tell the public whether he accepts the findings of Scott in sections D4 and D8, that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury "deliberately" and "designedly" misled Parliament? If he does, how can the Chief Secretary remain with honour in the Cabinet?
Mr. Lang: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, those were not Sir Richard Scott's words. If he contains himself, however, I shall try to cover all points of relevance as I proceed.
Mr. Menzies Campbell rose—
Mr. Lang: I must get started. The report rightly focused on the serious and defamatory charges that had been made and of which the Government now stand acquitted. But in my statement 10 days ago, I also took care to draw attention to Sir Richard's criticisms, to which I referred repeatedly, and to his conclusions and recommendations on which I should like today to indicate more of the Government's thinking.
To recap on my earlier remarks, mistakes were made. There are lessons to be learnt. The Government have accepted the inquiry's criticisms concerning the distribution of intelligence material, and have already taken action to improve it. We have accepted the criticism about export controls and licensing procedures and have already undertaken to publish a consultation paper on that, as Sir Richard Scott recommends.
We have already undertaken to consider further and very carefully Sir Richard's comments on the use of wartime export control legislation. We accept the principle of the need now for greater supervision by the office of the Attorney-General of Customs and Excise prosecutions in relation to export control matters, and I shall say more on that. We also accept many of his other recommendations.
Mr. Menzies Campbell: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Lang: If I give way now to the hon. Gentleman, I shall not be able to give way to him later.
Mr. Campbell: Does the Minister accept the Scott report's central conclusion, which was that policy was changed and that the change was deliberately kept from Parliament?
Mr. Lang: No, I do not; there is a difference between the Government and Sir Richard on that matter. I accept his report's two central conclusions, on the question of secretly arming Saddam Hussein and on the question of gagging the courts and risking the imprisonment of innocent men.
I should like to address the recommendations that I have mentioned, including, in particular, the issues of openness in government and accountability to Parliament.
Mr. Gerald Kaufman rose—
Mr. Lang: No, I must make some progress, if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to do so.
As I said in my statement, there is a continuing line of criticism running through the report of the conventions—which are long established in the House—whereby successive Governments have undervalued, as Sir Richard Scott sees it, the public interest in the disclosure of information. The Government have a good record of improving openness in government, and the debate on how much further openness in Parliament might go should be seen in that context. We have, for example, introduced or supported numerous measures that, for the first time, open up specific areas of government, even the most sensitive, as with the Intelligence Services Act 1994. More generally, we published the first White Paper on Open Government in 1993, and the code of practice that it proposed a year later.
As a result of all those measures, and of other citizens charter initiatives—which was another first for the Government—much more information is now released, whether on the background to Government decisions, on medical and other records, or on school, hospital and local government performance data. More than 48,000 previously confidential public records have now been released.
The new departmental Select Committee system was introduced under this Government, in 1979, as a major step towards more open and accountable government. We have avowed, for the first time, the Secret Intelligence Service, put it on a statutory footing and made it subject to a statutory oversight committee. The Government have also published—they have been the first to do so—detailed lists of ministerial cabinet committees and "Questions of Procedure for Ministers", which are causes dear to the heart of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), to whom such openness was denied by the previous Labour Government.
Closer to the issues of foreign policy and export controls, in 1991 my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security, who was then my predecessor at the Department of Trade and Industry, took the

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unprecedented step of publishing the detailed lists—70 pages in all—of the exports licensed for Iraq between 1987 and 1990.
Despite the Government's good record, I hope that we can go further down the route of open government—further, as we have already gone, than in the traditional answer, which I quoted to the House 10 days ago, to questions on defence sales when answered by the Labour Government in the 1970s. The right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) then said:
"It has been the policy of successive Governments not to reveal information on the supply of arms to individual countries".—[Official Report, 10 June 1974: Vol. 874, c. 396–97]
We hope to go further, too, than the answer given by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), who said:
"the list of recipient countries is not published because defence purchases are regarded as confidential".—[Official Report, 20 December 1976; Vol. 923, c. 26.]
Mrs. Helen Jackson: A year ago, I was given a misleading answer to a parliamentary question. Since then, and after a great deal of pressure from my right hon. Friends on the Labour Front Bench, I have received an apology, which was printed in Hansard on 9 February. Why is it that, when Sir Richard Scott and the Government recognise that so many misleading and false parliamentary answers have been given, no apology has yet been made to any of the hon. Members concerned?
Mr. Lang: Sir Richard Scott has identified answers that he concluded are misleading, but he has also recognised that they were given in good faith by Ministers who thought that they were accurate.
Mr. Peter Shore: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for having the courtesy to inform me that he was likely to mention my name. I am inclined to think that, in recent days and weeks, no ministerial speech is complete without some mention of the fact that, when I was the Secretary of State for Trade, I stated clearly and with agreement the doctrine that we did not give information about exports of defence and weapons equipment to other countries. That has made good sense, but if I may say so, that is not the issue. The issue—the basic issue—is whether we should have been supplying the amounts of defence-related equipment that we did to the two most odious regimes in the world.
Mr. Lang: That is an issue to which I shall come shortly. At the moment, I am addressing the question of openness in government and the conventions in the House that have been observed by successive Governments, including the ones of which the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney was a Member.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Following on from the intervention of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mrs. Jackson), is my right hon. Friend aware that I was sent a letter by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave) when he was a Foreign Office Minister? Is he further aware that I was not in any way misled by that letter, and that I wrote to inform Sir Richard Scott that that was the case? On 4 May, the Minister told me that the guidelines were applied on a case-by-case basis in the light of prevailing circumstances, including the ceasefire.
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Those words were not tablets of stone, and should not be applied in a mechanical way. It would be madness to expect guidelines to be so imposed. Although the Government remain committed to those guidelines, I was not misled, and I do not see why anyone should say that I was.
Mr. Lang: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point clear.
"Erskine May", the standard authority on the conventions and procedures of this House, sets out—
Mr. Mike O'Brien: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Lang: No, I must make progress.
"Erskine May" sets out a number of subjects on which successive Administrations have declined to answer questions on grounds of public policy. At present, those include discussions between Ministers, or between Ministers and their official advisers; the proceedings of Cabinet, or its Committees; security matters; operational defence matters; and details of arms sales to particular countries.
Here I come to the particular point that Sir Richard Scott has raised in relation to parliamentary questions on the sale of arms or defence-related equipment. He said that the long-standing practice should be re-examined. The Government are content to do this and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has today placed in the Library of the House a document setting out the current position in relation to informing Parliament on the export of arms, together with an explanation of how that practice has evolved.
That is an important step forward and I hope hon. Members will find that document a useful basis on which to take the discussion forward. Serious issues are involved. The Government's policy on defence sales is based on a respect for the right of other countries, and sovereign states, to protect their independence and to exercise their right to self-defence. That right is recognised explicitly by article 51 of the United Nations charter.
The countries to which we export arms have a legitimate right to maintain the confidentiality of the strength of their armed forces and the equipment they have available. Strategically, the export of defence equipment benefits our own defences through reducing the overall cost of equipment.
At the same time, the export of defence equipment is beneficial to the health of the British economy. Total defence expenditure, including overseas sales of equipment, provides employment for more than 400,000 people in industry in this country. And our success in overseas defence markets also helps our much bigger and broader export trade in normal commercial goods. No one should understate the importance of jobs in considering those issues.
Despite our economic interests—
Mr. Mike O'Brien: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Lang: No, I have a lot of ground to cover.

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Despite our economic interests, the Government maintain a strict policy on the control of defence exports—stricter than any other country, even though that involves denying to British firms valuable overseas markets, involving not just the sale of weapons for defence, but non-lethal equipment and potentially dual-purpose goods, which has a knock-on disadvantage to purely commercial civilian export opportunities, all of which our international competitors have no hesitation in exploiting.
Mr. Robert Jackson: My right hon. Friend is determined to do justice to Sir Richard Scott. I have looked at the Franks report on the Falklands, a matter of war and peace; I have looked at the inquiry on Aberfan, which involved the death of large numbers of school children and looked at a variety of other important recent tribunal reports. All of them came out at less than 150 pages. Does my right hon. Friend think that the public might be entitled to feel that there has been a certain loss of sense of proportion concerning the Scott report?
Mr. Lang: It is not for me to judge the requisite length or content of a report. The Government carefully and deliberately gave Sir Richard Scott an entirely clear hand as to how he should go about preparing his report.
Sir Richard Scott has recognised the potentially divergent and conflicting policy objectives in relation to employment and trade as well as foreign policy and humanitarian considerations. Those are conflicting issues with which all Governments have to wrestle. Sir Richard himself recognises that the moral case for refusing to allow defence exports to a particular country has to be set against the damage to British economic interests.
As the publication of the document placed in the Library shows, the Government are willing to play their part in public debate about the issues raised and would welcome the views of hon. Members and others on this issue, including in particular those of the opposition parties. In the light of those comments, we will consider what changes might be made, and bring forward any specific proposals for discussion in the House.
On a further important point on openness, before I turn to the report's other recommendations, I refer to the question of accountability, which has been raised in particular in relation to Government agencies, on which the Public Service Select Committee is currently taking evidence. If that Select Committee, which is currently undertaking an inquiry into these matters, were to be content to consider the question of accountability and responsibility more widely, the Government would propose to submit their views on the issue to it. I hope that the Select Committee will be willing to take up that opportunity and, in due course, to put forward its considered proposals.
Thus, in addition to being content that the parliamentary convention that the Government do not answer questions about exports of arms and defence-related goods should be reviewed in the light of modern circumstances, as Sir Richard recommends, the Government are also willing to consider positively Sir Richard Scott's wider views about ministerial accountability and responsibility. I hope that the House will welcome those proposals. That approach is already in marked contrast to the approach of previous Governments.
Mr. Allan Rogers: The Secretary of State said that the Government have a long, well-established record of controlling arms exports. Why is it stated, on page 873 of the Scott report, that only seven out of 26 export licences to Iraq were actually seen by Lieutenant-Colonel Glazebrook in the Ministry of Defence? Is that the form of control that the Government exercise?
Mr. Lang: The control of the licences lay in the approval of some 76,000 export licence applications that came before the appropriate officials during 1988–89.
A further major step forward in making ministerial accountability transparent was taken by the Prime Minister in May 1992, when he decided to publish, as I have already mentioned, the guidance for Ministers known as "Questions of Procedure for Ministers". That had been a classified document under previous Administrations.
The section of "Questions of Procedures for Ministers" to which Sir Richard Scott refers states that Ministers have the duty to give Parliament, including Select Committees, and the public, as full information as possible about the policies, decision and actions of the Government. There are, and have long been, a number of conventions and accepted reasons why full information cannot be made public and therefore cannot be given to Parliament. As Sir Richard says in his report,
"It is generally accepted, and rightly so, that there have always been and always will be some subjects in respect of which full information, or sometimes any information cannot be given."
Those include, inter alia, matters that are sub judice, commercially confidential information, and sensitive security and foreign policy matters.
That is recognised now even by the Labour party in its new guise as an advocate of open government. I am aware, of course, that concern about freedom of information derives in some cases more from genuine conviction than simple political opportunism. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) has on numerous occasions set out his views on this issue, which I know he has held with consistency and great sincerity.
The question of a full-blown Freedom of Information Act is one that the Government have had the opportunity to examine in considerable depth over several years, both in the context of responding to the Right to Know Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) and in formulating our "Open Government" White Paper in 1993.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. I regret interrupting the right hon. Gentleman. It is apparent that the Secretary of State, at this stage, is not willing to give way. Therefore, hon. Members should be aware of that and should not persist at this time.
Mr. Lang: We have become persuaded as a result that that sort of approach—a Freedom of Information Act—is not the right way towards a fundamental opening up of government.
Nor have recent events changed our view on that. The Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central, in common with all overseas countries' freedom

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of information regimes, would have exempted a number of classes of material from disclosure, including policy advice. All of them tend to impose a legalistic approach, which is more inflexible in its application and much more expensive to those who use it and which risks undermining the role of Parliament and accountability to the House. I believe that that is something about which we should always be careful. But the debate over the alternatives should continue and the Government will be willing to participate.
Mr. Donald Anderson: The Minister is trying to distract the attention of the House from Ministers' culpability by introducing a rather academic screed on accountability. Will the right hon. Gentleman return to Ministers and set out the precedent for a Minister remaining in office when, as with the Attorney-General, he has been found personally at fault by an official inquiry?
Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. I am not seeking to distract the House about the central issues. Now that the two central charges levelled by the Labour party have been disproved and dismissed by the report, the essential underlying theme of the report is about openness and accountability to the House. These are deeply important issues that the House should have the opportunity to address.
Mr. Robin Cook: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Lang: No. I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. Well, I will give way to him if he comes to the Dispatch Box to apologise for his behaviour over the past three years.
Mr. Cook: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
Mr. Lang rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. I am trying to deal with a point of order.
Mr. Cook: The President of the Board of Trade referred to a paper that has been deposited in the Library. We have just been advised that the paper is subject to an embargo until the right hon. Gentleman resumes his place. It is proper for the Minister to refer to a paper deposited in the Library if that paper is not available to Members calling at the Library? Should not the President of the Board of Trade be willing for the paper to be circulated so that he can be questioned on it while he is on his feet?
Mr. Lang rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. I intend to respond to the point of order. I have no doubt that the President of the Board of Trade will provide information to the House.
It is entirely for the right hon. Gentleman to decide what papers he puts in the Library and what embargo he puts on them. Perhaps he might now enlighten the House about the matter.
Mr. Lang: I had no part in the placing of any embargo. I would be entirely content for the paper to be available at once to Members.
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The Scott report makes important recommendations concerning the role of Customs and Excise, to which I said I would return. Lack of co-ordination and guidance here lay at the heart of some of the criticisms that Lord Justice Scott makes, with hindsight, on the way in which the Matrix Churchill trial was pursued by Customs and Excise.
The report first addresses possible changes—
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. The House must come to order to hear what the Secretary of State has to say.
Mr. Peter L. Pike: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. It appears that the document that has been referred to, which has been placed in the Library, is being passed along the second Bench on the Government side of the House. That seems most inappropriate.
Madam Speaker: I am not aware of what is passing along the second Bench on the Government side of the House. I am interested in what the Secretary of State is saying, as the House should be.
Mr. Lang rose—
Mr. Nigel Spearing: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Would it be in order, the Secretary of State having said that he would be content for Members to obtain copies of the paper, for the right hon. Gentleman to tell us whether he has distributed the document to the press or any other sections of the media?
Madam Speaker: It is for the Secretary of State to give what information he wants to the House.
Mr. Lang: I have not given the document to anybody. It has been placed in the Library. It should have been placed there at the beginning of my speech.
Mr. Alan Williams: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I accept entirely the point made by the Secretary of State, but you indicated in your ruling that it is for the Minister to determine whether the document should be the subject of an embargo. A document has been placed in the Library which should be available to Members. The Minister has said that he has not put an embargo on it, but someone has. Will you, Madam Speaker, as protector of the House, ascertain exactly who is responsible for the embargo?
Madam Speaker: I am curious as to what embargo has been placed on it and who has done that. The Secretary of State says that he has not placed an embargo on that paper, and I accept that.
Mr. Lang: I am addressing the question of Customs and Excise. The report addresses possible changes to the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 to clarify the various powers and definitions. In addition to these and other specific legal provisions, Sir Richard recommends a number of other changes to internal Customs and Excise procedures. As he recommends, there will be a review of

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the relationship between the Customs solicitor's office and the Customs investigation division. Sir Richard's recommendations relating to customs legislation and internal procedures are largely accepted by the Government; and we have asked for them to be implemented subject only to further consideration of some detailed technical legal matters. We will report back to the House on the changes that are being made once the implementation plans are finalised. I hope that that, too, will be welcome to the House.
Mr. George Foulkes: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Lang: No, I must make some progress.
The report also considered the position of Customs and Excise as an independent prosecuting authority, a role that has remained unchanged for very many years. It recommends the introduction of a formalised system of supervision by the Attorney-General of export control prosecutions. At the same time, Sir Richard affirms the important constitutional principle that a prosecuting authority should be independent and free from political direction. He considers the analogy with the Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions, both of which are subject to the superintendence of the Attorney-General, whereas the Customs and Excise prosecuting authority is not. Sir Richard notes that, acting in that capacity, the Attorney-General exercises a quasi-judicial role. His actions and decisions are not, for example, subject to Cabinet collective responsibility.
Although the analogy that Sir Richard draws with the CPS and the Serious Fraud Office is not exact, the Government accept that there are benefits in his recommendation: that in future the role of the Attorney-General should include the exercise of increased supervision of Customs and Excise prosecutions in relation to export control matters.
Mr. David Ashby: Does my right hon. Friend accept that, in this instance, Customs and Excise looked as though it was out of control—and probably was—because it is not responsible to anyone? Is not it time that we got rid of it and amalgamated it with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service so that it would be subject to proper controls?
Mr. Lang: That is not what Sir Richard recommends, but perhaps my hon. Friend will have an opportunity to advance his view during further consideration of the matter.
The Government are urgently developing proposals on the precise nature and scope of the increased supervision, and my right hon. and learned Friend will be reporting further on that to the House as soon as possible.
In relation to the use of intelligence by Government Departments, Sir Richard makes it clear that he does not feel qualified to make recommendations on how the various systems and procedures might be improved. He acknowledges that a number of improvements have been made and sets out a number of areas in which he considers that problems existed.
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Since 1992, major reviews have taken place in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Defence and Customs and Excise. As a result, modern information technology systems have been introduced and new internal distribution arrangements have been adopted. In addition, the requirements of users are now more fully reflected in the intelligence-gathering process.
Sir Richard also makes a procedural recommendation, which he has not published for security reasons, concerning intelligence personnel, which will be discussed with the chairman of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. The Government also propose to inform the Intelligence and Security Committee, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), of other improvements that have been made. I have no doubt that that Committee, which was specially set up to deal with such matters, will want to be satisfied, and in due course to reassure the House, that an adequate response has been made to Sir Richard's observations.
Mr. Foulkes: I am grateful to the President of the Board of Trade for giving way. I congratulate him on accepting a number of Sir Richard Scott's detailed recommendations, but if Sir Richard has reached the correct conclusion on all these matters, can he explain to the House why the Government believe that, on the specific allegations relating to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Attorney-General, Sir Richard reached the wrong conclusions? Is that not a curious comparison?
Mr. Lang: It would be very curious if the Government did not exercise their judgment on all the recommendations and criticisms in Sir Richard Scott's report, and that is what we have done.
Let me now turn to prosecution procedures and public interest immunity. On the question of prosecution procedures, Sir Richard notes that the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Bill is before Parliament, and that his proposals in that regard will have to be considered in the light of whatever legislation is eventually enacted. In relation to public interest immunity, Sir Richard has made a range of detailed proposals. In respect of his report, the Government are clear that the legal advice given by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General was correct at the time of the Matrix Churchill and other trials. His view is supported by a range of decisions in the higher courts; in addition, eminent lawyers—including a current Law Lord and a Master of the Rolls—have made clear their agreement with it. But Sir Richard's concluding chapter also focuses on suggestions for the future of this judge-made and evolving legal procedure.
Mr. Michael Stephen: Has there not been a wicked deception of the British people? [Interruption.]
Madam Speaker: Order. Come along.
Mr. Stephen: Has there not been a wicked deception of the British people by the press and the broadcasting media, who for the past three years have referred to public interest immunity certificates as "gagging orders"? They are no such thing. The effect of a public interest immunity certificate is to bring documents out of the archives of the

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Department involved and place them before a judge, so that he can decide whether they should or should not be admitted in evidence.
Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend is right. The first point that I want to make on the subject is that the law has moved on significantly as a result of the House of Lords decision in 1994 in ex parte Wiley. That has already introduced into current practice a number of the points made by Sir Richard. As a consequence of that decision, Ministers can now disclose PII documents without the prior approval of the court when they consider it to be in the overall public interest.
Mr. Alex Carlile: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Lang: No, not now. I have given way a great many times, and I still have a good deal of important information to divulge to the House.
The second point that I should like to make clear is that, contrary to the Opposition's assertions, PII claims have been made in criminal cases both before and since the Matrix Churchill trial, and have been upheld in the courts. The abandonment of PII claims in criminal cases, which I understand that the Opposition propose, would result in cases against serious criminals and terrorists having to be dropped. That would be necessary, for example, to protect sensitive sources of information, and those whose lives might otherwise be at risk. Moreover, PII applies not only to Government documents and confidential police information but to the work of other agencies, such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in relation to child abuse cases.
The law on public interest immunity in civil and criminal cases is made by the courts, and Sir Richard Scott does not consider legislative intervention necessary or, at present, desirable. The Government, however, will consider his recommendations in the light of developing case law—in particular, his view that the time is opportune for a collective reappraisal by Ministers. As part of that consideration, the Government would welcome the views of hon. Members and others on future developments in the use of PII certificates.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer a question that I have been asked by a number of my constituents? Why did the Attorney-General refuse to pull the prosecution—to end the trial—when he knew that Henderson was working for MI6? Scott says that he could have done so.
Mr. Lang: The matter is not one for my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General. The trial was conducted properly and fairly. All the appropriate documents were placed before the judge; the judge commented on them and said that he was satisfied, and three defence counsel concluded that a fair and proper trial had taken place.
Mr. Alex Carlile: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
Mr. Lang: The report devotes—
Madam Speaker: Order. I have yet another point of order.
Mr. Carlile: Is it right for the President of the Board of Trade to assert to the House that it is not possible for
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the Attorney-General to pull a trial, as it was put, when it is the Attorney-General and the Attorney-General alone who has the right to stop criminal proceedings before they reach judgment?
Madam Speaker: That is not a point of order, but a point of argument.
Mr. Lang: The report devotes two chapters of recommendations to export control powers and licensing procedures. Before I come to those recommendations, I should like to cover, as I did in my statement, our policy regarding the export of defence equipment to Iran and Iraq.
The Government's policy was to remain neutral in the Iran-Iraq war.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Is it possible for the Attorney-General to come to the Dispatch Box to give a ruling on the point made by me and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) because it is important and significant in this whole affair?
Madam Speaker: The Secretary of State is at the Dispatch Box and I am sure that he is capable of responding to the points that have been made.
Mr. Lang: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I understand that points of order are for you, which is why I did not respond to the previous one, but I am sure that if the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) catches your eye, he will pursue his point.
Dr. Keith Hampson: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Lang: If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I must make progress.
The Government's policy was to remain neutral in the Iran-Iraq war. As Sir Richard recognises, no lethal weapons were sold to either side and the Government took vigorous measures to prevent the export of non-lethal goods that could have prolonged or intensified the conflict. As the House knows, a set of guidelines was introduced to assist in the application of that policy, which was far stricter than that of our main international competitors. The guidelines were exactly that. They were for guidance, essentially for internal use, to assist officials in dealing with export licence applications. They had no legal basis and were not intended to set out the complete policy. As Sir Richard Scott acknowledges in his report:
"I would readily accept that, in relation to defence sales to Iran and Iraq, the Guidelines were not, and were never intended to be, an exclusive exposition of Government policy".
Mr. Spearing: The President of the Board of Trade has made it clear that the guidelines were not necessarily related specifically to policy, which was a different matter. Why is it then that, in paragraph D4.3, Sir Richard quotes a statement included in letters by Ministers on four occasions that
"The Government have not changed their policy on defence sales to Iraq or Iran"?

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Does not the President of the Board of Trade agree that all the evidence clearly showed that the Government had?
Mr. Lang: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's point. On the question of guidelines, let me quote the author of a different guide on guidelines, who said:
"They must not be allowed, by an over-rigid application that fails to take into account the circumstances of each case, to become a constraint on effective and sensible case management."
Those are the words not of myself or the Government. Those are the words in a preface to the Chancery guide written by Sir Richard Scott himself.
My point is that Ministers and officials in all three Departments believed—and Sir Richard Scott accepts—that they were applying the Government's policy on the export of defence equipment in a way that remained within the guidelines announced by the then Foreign Secretary in 1985, with all their inherent flexibility. While honest opinions can and do differ—
Mr. Kaufman rose—
Mr. Barry Sheerman: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: I think that it is a point of frustration, but either way.
Mr. Sheerman: The Secretary of State has been on his feet for 37 minutes. Support for parliamentary democracy in this country is ebbing and haemorrhaging away every second that he speaks. Will you, Madam Speaker, direct him to answer the main charges of Scott before it is too late?
Madam Speaker: That is not a point of order.
Mr. Lang: The central tenet of our parliamentary democracy is freedom of speech. I have given way many times in this debate. I have a great deal of information to lay before the House and I wish to do that so that the debate can continue.
Mr. Kaufman rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman must resume his seat. The Secretary of State has indicated that he is not giving way at the moment. Is that correct?
Mr. Lang indicated assent.
Madam Speaker: The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) must therefore resume his seat.
Mr. Lang: Officials in all three Departments believed, and Sir Richard Scott accepts—
Mr. Kaufman: On a point of order, Madam Speaker—[Interruption.]
Madam Speaker: Order. I have yet another point of order.
Mr. Kaufman The President of the Board of Trade gave way to my hon. Friend the Member for Newham,
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South (Mr. Spearing) and purported to give a response to him in which he deliberately misinformed the House. It is essential that the House have a chance—
Madam Speaker: Order. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will want to rephrase what he has said. I am sure that he will do so—[Interruption.]
Mr. Kaufman: Yes, Madam Speaker. Of course I will rephrase my point of order in response to what you have said. The President of the Board of Trade gave a response to my hon. Friend in which he will have misinformed the House unless he allows that to be corrected by giving way to me.
Madam Speaker: That is what a parliamentary debate is made of. Thank you.
Mr. Lang: I look forward to listening to the right hon. Gentleman's speech.
Mr. Kaufman rose—
Hon. Members: Give way.
Mr. Lang: No.
Madam Speaker: Order. I require the right hon. Member for Gorton to resume his seat.
Mr. Lang: As I have said, we will be placing in the Library a document that sets out our current approach to informing Parliament about our policy on arms sales. In the light of comments that we receive, we will bring forward any specific proposals for discussion in the House. I am also placing in the Library a note on how that policy operated between 1980 and 1990.
I return to Sir Richard Scott's recommendations on export controls. The Government accept that the current export control powers and procedures should be reviewed and that there should be wide consultation in the course of such a review. That review will take into account the points made by the report. We will then produce a consultation paper covering those points, as Sir Richard Scott recommends. I should make it clear that the Government are committed to an export control system that is easy for business to use and understand but allows the Government to take restraining action where it is necessary for wider policy reasons. I am sure that the House will approve progress in that area.
It is important to put the issue of defence equipment sales and the operation of those guidelines into clear perspective. Let it not be forgotten that the whole debate on guidelines is not about the sale of arms such as guns, missiles, bullets and bombs, but about non-lethal defence equipment. Moreover, the issue is not about the sale of such equipment by the Government, but about the steps taken by the Government to control sales by manufacturers and others to unacceptable destinations. The details of the export licences to Iraq in the crucial years have all been published.
I invite the House to contrast that point with the policy pursued by Labour Governments in the 1960s and 1970s, when the issue was not about non-lethal equipment but the

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sale of lethal weapons. It was not about the Government controlling such sales. Indeed, the Government helped to do the selling.
In 1966, the Ministry of Defence, under the then Secretary of State for Defence, Lord Healey, set up its own defence sales organisation tasked not with the control of overseas defence sales, as this Government's guidelines have sought to do, but with the specific purpose among others of organising sales, campaigns and presentations and of negotiating major deals—deals be it noted not in spare parts for microprocessors or field telephones, but in lethal weapons. At what countries did the Labour Government direct their sales campaign? I have done a little research and found that in 1975, 1976 and 1977, during the run-up to the Iran-Iraq war, British defence sales to Iran averaged more than £50 million a year, including the sale of lethal weapons.
Still more interesting is the previous Labour Government's record at the same time with another country: Argentina. I have discovered that the previous Labour Government helped to secure contracts to sell to Argentina—again, not a country renowned at the time either for its democracy or its human rights record—such choice consignments as 42 Sea Dart surface-to-air missiles, 120 Blowpipe surface-to-air missiles and two Lynx helicopters. Those are not spares for radar sales or metal detectors; they are weapons of war that were sold to the Argentine dictatorship.
If we go back a little further, we find that Labour Governments were selling to Argentina two type 42 destroyers and—direct, at their own hands—eight Canberra bombers. There we have it: destroyers, missiles, helicopters and bombers—it is a case of "Don't fly for me Argentina". Those lethal weapons were sold direct by a Labour Government. Is not the real contrast between Labour and ourselves that in the Gulf war against Iraq, British forces risked facing no British weapons in the hands of the enemy, but in the Falklands war against Argentina, they did? There can surely be no more sickening example of hypocrisy than that—Labour saying one thing and doing another. [Interruption.]
There remains the unfinished business of the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), who has been shown by the Scott report to have systematically misled the House and the country over three years with the repeated charges that we secretly conspired to arm Saddam Hussein with lethal weapons and that we gagged the courts to suppress the evidence.
Mr. Kaufman: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. As I heard it, the right hon. Gentleman accused my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) of having misled the House. If that is so, surely he is culpable.
Madam Speaker: If there were not so much noise, we could all hear precisely what is being said. Is it a fact that the Secretary of State used those words? [Interruption.] Order. I want to hear the Secretary of State, not the Opposition.
Mr. Lang: Yes it is, Madam Speaker, and if you rule that to be unparliamentary I shall withdraw the words "misled the House", but I shall leave in place the words "misled the country". I shall do so because for three years the hon. Gentleman went around the country accusing the
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Government of secretly arming Saddam Hussein and of attempting to gag the courts. Those two serious charges are completely rejected by the report and the hon. Gentleman now tries, vindictively and contemptibly, to shift his ground in order to continue the odious smear campaign. He shows a standard of behaviour that renders him unfit to be trusted by either the House or any foreign country even in the shadow post of Foreign Secretary. The House continues to await and demand an apology.
The Government welcome their acquittal by the Scott report of the two serious charges that caused the inquiry to be set up. We accept, as I have said today—and, indeed, in my statement 10 days ago—that there have been mistakes. There have been shortcomings and there is a need for improvement in several areas. I have today mapped out a number of ways in which the House can proceed. I have done so in a positive and forward-looking spirit, recognising that long-established conventions and practices of the House and elsewhere need to be looked at in a fresh light. I invite the House to respond in that spirit and to support the Government in the Lobby tonight.
4.22 pm
Mr. Robin Cook: I shall respond in a moment to the Secretary of State's purple peroration, but I shall first comment on the announcements that he has made today. That need not detain the House for long, because the length of the passage in the right hon. Gentleman's speech cannot conceal the shortness of the specifics in those proposals.
I shall respond on three counts. First, we welcome the fact that Customs is to have supervision of the prosecuting role. In the light of the grave criticisms by Sir Richard Scott of the conduct of the Matrix Churchill trial, it would have been astonishing if the right hon. Gentleman had not proposed changes to the prosecuting role of Customs.
Secondly, I agree with the Government that we require a review of ministerial accountability. After all, one of the key conclusions in the closing section of the report is that, during the inquiry, example after example has come to light of the failure of ministerial accountability. What I find surprising is that, having had 18 days to study the report, the right hon. Gentleman could still produce no proposal as to what might be done to strengthen ministerial accountability.
Today, the one initiative that the right hon. Gentleman announced was that the Government will give evidence if the Select Committee holds an inquiry into ministerial accountability. I would hope so—after all, it is their duty to give evidence to Select Committees if they are asked to do so. However, the initiative does not shed any light on what single proposal they will make in that evidence to avoid us ever again having to debate a report that, in its closing chapter, details seven specific cases in which ministerial accountability was broken.
Mr. Nicholas Budgen rose—
Mr. Cook: I shall finish my point, and then give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Thirdly, we shall certainly consider the Government's paper on parliamentary questions on arms exports.
Mr. Budgen rose—
Mr. Cook: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment—he should relax; his time will come.

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I have in front of me the paper that has been deposited in the Library, and I shall share its conclusion with hon. Members:
"This note summarises the position in relation to the release of information on defence related exports and has been prepared in order to assist further discussion on this subject."
Not a single proposal is contained in the document. We shall enter into the spirit of these discussions as fully as possible, but these discussions would have been assisted further if the paper had contained a single idea.
Mr. Budgen: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be extremely difficult to lay down any rules for ministerial accountability, because, essentially, it is a question for the House, and a question as to how much the House wants information? For instance, as far as negotiations with the IRA were concerned before the ceasefire, the House came to a misunderstanding as to the state of discussions between the Government and the IRA. However, when my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland came to this House, it was pleased to accept a slightly changed expression of those relationships. Is that not an example of how the House decides what information it wants?
Mr. Cook: At a later stage in my speech, I shall return to the question whether it is justifiable at any stage not to share information with the House. I cannot accept for one moment the hon. Gentleman's claim that it is impossible to make any rules about ministerial accountability. Indeed, the Government keep issuing rules about ministerial accountability. In relation to those rules, Sir Richard Scott states in chapter 8 of section K:
"Paragraph 27 of Questions of Procedure for Ministers identifies as one of the facets of Ministerial accountability to Parliament `the duty to give Parliament, including its Select Committees, and the public as full information as possible about the policies, decisions and actions of the Government, and not to deceive or mislead Parliament and the public'."
Then Sir Richard Scott—whom the Government appointed to judge on this point; he was their choice—said:
"In the course of the Inquiry example after example has come to light of an apparent failure of Ministers to discharge that obligation."
The right hon. Gentleman' commitment to openness was a lot less convincing when he ruled out a freedom of information Act. Secrecy made this scandal possible. The five volumes of the Scott report provide the firmest foundation yet of a case for a freedom of information Act. There were never better witnesses for a freedom of information Act than the long parade of officials and Ministers who queued up to explain to Sir Richard Scott that the public interest was best served by not letting the public know what they were deciding.
Mr. David Mellor: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that those who seek to hold Members of the Government accountable must expect to be held accountable themselves? The hon. Gentleman said:
"First, they armed Saddam; secondly, when he used those arms against a British ally. they covered up the fact that they had provided the arms; and thirdly, as the cover-up unravelled, rather than own up, they were willing to see three executives of Matrix Churchill go to prison."—[Official Report, 23 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 638.]
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Is the hon. Gentleman aware that not a word of that is true, and will he now withdraw it?
Mr. Cook: No. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is wrong on every single count, and I shall demonstrate that all those charges were justified.
The right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) has echoed the allegation made by the President of the Board of Trade. What made the latter's speech so remarkable was the absence of any acceptance by any Minister of any responsibility for the errors set out in the report.
Confronted with those errors and five volumes of supporting evidence, the President of the Board of Trade and the right hon. and learned Member for Putney have produced the novel constitutional principle that it is the Opposition's duty to accept responsibility and resign. Every time they produce it, a wave of hilarity crosses the nation and drowns them.
Hon. Members: Answer the question.
Mr. Mellor rose—
Mr. Cook: I will answer the question.
The Government are fond of lecturing the rest of the nation on its need to accept responsibility. Parents are held responsible for actions; teachers are held responsible for the performance of their pupils; local councillors are held legally and financially responsible; yet, when it comes to themselves, suddenly, not a single Minister can be found to accept responsibility for what went wrong.
Sir Peter Hordern rose—
Mr. Mellor rose—
Mr. Cook: I will not give way. I shall answer the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and he will not like the answer.
In the past week, several right hon. and hon. Gentleman, of whom he is only the latest, have expressed their version of Labour's charges against the Government. I have no doubt that they are trying to be helpful, and I am grateful for their assistance, but I hope that they will forgive me if I rely on the charges that the Opposition actually made. [Interruption.] Yes, they were all set out in the debate. They were in the motion that I moved three years ago, on the last occasion that the House debated the issue. There were four charges, not three. I shall deal with each of those four charges, and demonstrate how Sir Richard Scott's report convicts the Government on every one.
The first charge in the motion was that the Government had acted
"in clear breach of the Howe Guidelines of 1985".—[Official Report, 23 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 631.]
Sir Richard returns a verdict of guilty. You can tell, Madam Speaker, the importance that he attaches to the conclusion, because, like all his key findings, it is expressed as a double negative:
"It is clear that policy and defence sales to Iraq did not remain unchanged."

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Indeed, Sir Richard reserves the most scathing passages in his report for those witnesses who tried to argue that the guidelines had not changed. The Chief Secretary submitted that the guidelines were not changed, but were only interpreted more flexibly. Sir Richard dismisses his view as one that
"does not seem to me to correspond with reality".
For good measure, Sir Richard quotes a minute that says:
"Mr. Waldegrave is content for us to implement a more liberal policy on defence sales".
That minute was from what was then the private office of the Chief Secretary. It was signed by his private secretary. Sir Richard observed:
"Mr. Waldegrave did not find the expression jarring at the time. He did not do so for the reason that the words, 'a more liberal policy', describe in ordinary and simple language the reality of what he and his colleagues were discussing."
When he made his statement to the House, I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether the Government accepted—
Mr. Mellor rose—
Mr. Cook: I shall answer all three questions.
I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether the Government accepted all the conclusions of the Scott report, and he replied:
"Yes, the Government accept the conclusions".—[Official Report, 15 February 1996; Vol. 271, c. 1148.]
To avoid all doubt, I shall refer to the statement that he made to the House, which appears in the Hansard. Let us hear what he said one more time. I ask to hear it again because, while the right hon. Gentleman was telling me on the Floor of the House that the Government accepted the Scott report's conclusions, his information officers were in the Press Gallery handing out a press pack. It claimed that the Scott report exonerated Ministers, and it stated:
"There was no change of policy in 1989".
As a press guide to the conclusions of the Scott report, that was flatly untrue.
Can the President of the Board of Trade confirm whether the Government accept those conclusions? Do they accept the conclusions, or, when the right hon. Gentleman said, "Yes, we accept the conclusions," did he mean that the Government accept only those conclusions that support their position? If the right hon. Gentleman will not tell us, what about his boss?
Mr. Mellor rose—
Mr. Cook: I give the right hon. and learned Gentleman an undertaking that I shall give way towards the end of my speech, because, by then, every single one of his charges will be nailed. At the moment—[Interruption.]
Madam Speaker: Order.
Mr. Cook: At the moment, I am playing some bigger fish.
What about the right hon. Gentleman's boss? When he set up the inquiry, the Prime Minister wrote to me and said:
"Whether Ministers themselves breached their own guidelines is one of the things that will be established by the inquiry".
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That fact has been established. Will the Prime Minister accept that Ministers broke their own guidelines? He told me that the inquiry was set up to investigate that issue, so will he now accept the result?
Upon reading the Scott report, I am unclear why an inquiry was needed to establish whether the guidelines were changed. In the week that the Prime Minister set up the inquiry, he was minuted by his private secretary, whose remarks appear in paragraph D4.51 of the report. He told him:
"as Chancellor of the Exchequer you knew that the Government had decided to change the guidelines".
In his evidence to the Scott inquiry, the Prime Minister said:
"One of the charges at the time"—
Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman may want to assist the House by pointing out that that occurred in July 1990, which was long after the time in question. It was a decision taken by a Committee presided over by the Foreign Secretary, about which my right hon. Friend, the then Chancellor and present Prime Minister, was subsequently told. That recommendation was not passed on to the Prime Minister for approval, because the imminent invasion of Kuwait by Iraq ruled it out. The matter was not proceeded with.
Hon. Members: Withdraw.
Mr. Cook: The right hon. Gentleman should listen to what he has just said: the month before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the Government were willing to relax the guidelines still further.
Mr. Kaufman: As the President of the Board of Trade has intervened inaccurately—to describe it in friendly terms—upon my hon. Friend, we should draw attention to the fact that Mr. Wall's statement to the Prime Minister—
"as Chancellor of the Exchequer you knew that the Government had decided to change the guidelines"—
was dated 13 November 1992. In that submission to the Prime Minister, his private secretary said:
"the Howe Guidelines of 1985 were amended by Ministers in December 1988 but the amendment was never announced to Parliament".
That is why, knowing those words, the President of the Board of Trade was too timorous to give way to me.
Mr. Cook: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The nub of the memorandum is: why did the Prime Minister and others feel able to tell the House that the guidelines had not been changed when they had that evidence?
I return to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's other charge, about the Government arming Saddam Hussein. It was in our motion, which said:
"British servicemen may have been exposed to fire from shells and rockets made in munitions factories equipped by Britain".
Sir Richard's report reveals that, three years before the Gulf war, there were intelligence reports that Iraq had placed multi-million pound orders with four British companies, including Matrix Churchill, to equip its armaments factories at Nassr. The same intelligence

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reports warned that annual production targets for Nassr were 10,000 missiles, 150,000 artillery shells, 100,000 mortar shells and 300,000 fin-stabilised shells.
Mr. David Shaw: They were not British.
Mr. Cook: The hon. Gentleman says that they were not British. They were made on British machines. That is what I am reading out.
Mr. Shaw: That is not the same.
Mr. Cook: The hon. Gentleman says that it is not the same, but it was never our case that Saddam Hussein would shove the machine tools down gun barrels and fire them at his enemies. Our case was always that he would use those machine tools to turn out shells, some of which may well have been fired at British forces in the Gulf war.
Sir Richard paints a scandalous picture of the failure of intelligence reports by Whitehall to reach those who needed information—although, once again, no Minister will accept responsibility for that departmental failure—but enough information did reach Ministers to ring alarm bells, if they had wanted to hear them.
Mr. Phil Gallie: Can the hon. Gentleman help me on this point? He said that British companies had sold machines to Iraq. I heard him make the statement that they had secretly sold arms to Saddam Hussein. It does not refer to anyone having secretly sold machines to Saddam Hussein. It referred to secretly selling arms. The hon. Gentleman has a reputation for propagating porkies, so will he answer that question?
Mr. Cook: I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that to claim that selling machine tools that produced the shells that went into those gun barrels was not arming Saddam Hussein is—to borrow a word from Sir Richard Scott—sophistry. Perhaps I should explain to the hon. Gentleman that sophistry means a plausible answer that, on further investigation, is plainly misleading.
Sir Timothy Sainsbury: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Cook: No. I must continue with my speech. [HON. MEMBERS: "Give way."] Perhaps I should give way to the right hon. Gentleman, as he was one of those who came to the Dispatch Box and repeatedly denied that there had been a change in guidelines.
Sir Timothy Sainsbury: Will the hon. Gentleman have the grace to admit that, if anything in the entire episode lacks credibility, it is his suggestion that, when he said that the Government had armed Saddam Hussein, he was trying to do anything other than give the impression that lethal weapons had been sold?
Mr. Cook: I have it here. The motion that I moved in the House three years ago stated:
"British servicemen may have been exposed to fire from shells and rockets made in munitions factories equipped by Britain".
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That has consistently been our argument. Moreover, they knew where those machine tools were going as early as February 1989. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but it is in paragraph D6.94.
In February 1989, when he was in the very act of negotiating change in guidelines with his colleagues, the Chief Secretary was given a minute that told him:
"The Iraqis intended to use"
Matrix Churchill
"to supply machinery for the new armaments and munitions factories of the Nassr and Hutteen State Establishments".
They knew what they were approving, and the knowledge went much higher than the Chief Secretary. It would be unfair if he were left to take the rap.
A year earlier, an intelligence digest warned the then Prime Minister that Matrix Churchill
"has been heavily involved [in the supply of equipment to Iraq for use in arms production]".
The problem was that Ministers kept turning a deaf ear to the alarm bells. When the Chief Secretary was warned that some of the machine tools might go into the Iraqi nuclear programme, he replied that screwdrivers are also required to make hydrogen bombs.
After the Gulf war, the International Atomic Energy Agency found 30 Matrix Churchill lathes in Iraqi nuclear plants. Faced with that evidence, how dare Ministers still claim that they did not arm Saddam Hussein?
The right hon. Gentleman played the trade card and justified the decision to equip Saddam's armaments factories on the commercial grounds that it was good for business. Perhaps one of the Conservative Members can help me. After all, they claim to be the party of business. Could one of them explain to me how it can be good for business to approve a contract for which one does not get paid?
That is what happened. Saddam did not pay for the machine tools that went into his factories—we did. The British taxpayer has been left with a bill for about £700 million for our total exports to Iraq. Incurring a bad debt of £700 million would surely be enough to get someone sacked from any organisation in Britain except the Conservative Government.
Mr. Bill Walker: Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House, on which weapons sales—and I mean weapons sales, including the destroyers sold by the former Labour Government—were debts not paid? Can the hon. Gentleman answer that? He should think very carefully before he does so.
Mr. Cook: As Ministers are for ever saying, not without notice. But one cannot find any example in the history of export credit guarantees of such a vast debt with one country. That debt was the direct result of ministerial decisions to increase export credit guarantees to Iraq, and to allocate one fifth of the total for defence sales.
The last of those decisions was in September 1988, when export credits to Iraq were increased by £340 million, despite mounting evidence that Iraq did not have the cash to service existing credits. Sir Richard notes:
"The Chief Secretary endorsed the proposed new offer".
The Chief Secretary in question is, of course, the current Prime Minister.

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When Lord Howe gave evidence to the Scott inquiry, he explained that the decision to give no publicity to the change in guidelines was that the decision might appear cynical to the public. For once, I must defend Ministers. I would acquit them of the charge of cynicism. What I find striking about their attitude is its naivety and the innocence with which they believed that if they armed a brutal dictator, he would use his military capacity in manner consistent with HMG's foreign policy and would pay all invoices on time. Their policy was both a strategic blunder and commercial disaster. It is no wonder they wanted to keep it quiet.
Mr. Richard Needham: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Cook: I shall return to the points raised by the right hon. Member for Hove (Sir T. Sainsbury), as I have another of his charges to answer. I am glad that I have his support.
I come to the third charge that we laid against Ministers three years ago—that
"hon. Members were persistently misled by assurances that the Guidelines were being observed".
Sir Richard's conclusion is set out at the end of 600 pages in which he examines the Government's conduct of arms exports to Iraq. The final sentence records:
"Parliament and the public were designedly led to believe that a stricter policy … was being applied than was in fact the case."
In short, Parliament was misled, and was designedly misled.
Mr. Mellor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Cook: Of course.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is he still here?
Mr. Mellor: I am still here, and I will be here for a long time yet.
The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) has invented the third point. He has dealt with the question—typical of him—that arms are to be equated with multi-use machine tools. The third charge that I quoted from the hon. Gentleman's speech on 23 November 1992 was:
"as the cover-up unravelled, rather than own up, they were willing to see the three executives of Matrix Churchill go to prison."—[Official Report, 23 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 638.]
That is an outrageous slur, and nothing in Scott gives the hon. Gentleman the right to maintain that accusation. He should withdraw it.
Mr. Cook: I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not be stretched too far if I ask him to count up to four. I said that there were four charges in our motion, and I will come to that charge. The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not do our charge sheet sufficient justice when he left out this charge, so let us make sure that we get it on the record.
Sir Richard concluded that the failure to inform Parliament of the truth was deliberate, and was the inevitable result of the agreement among three junior
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Ministers that no publicity would be given to the decision. Let us try them out again. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether the Government accept that conclusion?
Perhaps the Prime Minister would like to answer. Three years ago, the Prime Minister told the House:
"The suggestion that Ministers misled the House is a serious and scurrilous charge and has no basis whatsoever in fact."—[Official Report, 17 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 136.]
The suggestion does have a firm basis, in the five volumes beside me. I agree with the Prime Minister that it was a serious charge. Will he now accept that, far from being scurrilous, it was entirely accurate? [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] Suddenly, we have a row of limpets stuck to the Treasury Bench.
Where does that leave the Chief Secretary? In the six months after the guidelines were changed, the Chief Secretary signed not one or two, but 30, letters to Members of Parliament denying any change in the guidelines. The matter should concern not only Opposition Members, because 23 of those letters went to the Chief Secretary's colleagues on the Tory Benches—to each of them he refused to admit any change in the guidelines.
Sir Richard observed that the Chief Secretary
"knew, first hand, the facts that … rendered the 'no change in policy' statement untrue."
Of course the right hon. Gentleman was in a position to know at first hand—he was at the meetings at which the changes in the guidelines were changed.
Sir Richard's summing up is damning. He concluded:
"Government statements … consistently failed … to comply with the … Questions of Procedure for Ministers and, more important, failed to discharge the obligations imposed by the constitutional principle of Ministerial accountability."
The desk officer for Iraq who drafted those letters for the Chief Secretary knew that they were untrue, and he said so to the Scott inquiry. That desk officer resigned from the foreign service, rather than be obliged to continue drafting them. Tonight, the House must judge whether he is the only person who should resign over the misleading of Parliament.
I come to the last of the four charges in our motion of three years ago. We said that the Government were willing
"to see citizens put on trial for exports at which Ministers had connived and to put their liberty at risk by attempting to prevent the disclosure of documents crucial to their defence".—[Official Report, 23 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 631.]
Section G, in which Sir Richard considers the conduct of the Matrix Churchill case, is one of the longest in his report. Anyone who has read it in its entirety will know that it is not we who should apologise in the light of Sir Richard's conclusions.
He concluded that the Matrix Churchill case should never have been brought to court, and that the claims of public interest immunity that were made in the course of it ought to have had no place in a criminal trial. Sir Richard sums up that the Government's attitude
"to disclosure of documents to the defence was consistently grudging. The approach ought to have been to consider what documents the defence might reasonably need and then to consider whether there was any good reason why the defence should not have them. The actual approach.…seems to have been to seek some means by which refusal to disclose could be justified."

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Not every means by which refusal was justified appears to have impressed Sir Richard. The claim by the then Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in his PII certificate that disclosure would cause "unquantifiable damage" to the public interest is dismissed by Sir Richard as "risible". Perhaps that is not surprising, as the Minister hardly helped himself at the inquiry by claiming that the word "unquantifiable" could have meant unquantifiably small, not necessarily unquantifiably large.
Mr. Donald Anderson: Does my hon. Friend agree that not only could the Attorney-General have stopped the prosecution at any time in the light of his knowledge of all the facts, but that the Government were quite prepared effectively to leave the guilt or innocence of the three Matrix Churchill executives to the robustness or otherwise of the trial judge? It happened that Judge Smedley was a robust judge and stood for justice. Another judge might have been less strong.
Mr. Cook: My hon. Friend draws attention to one of the Government's defences—that, in laying the public interest immunity certificates, they were only bringing the documents to the attention of the trial judge. However, there is the awkward matter of the second certificate, signed by the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. His first certificate contained a list of the documents covered by it. The second certificate, which was used at the trial, omitted that list. The minute to the Secretary of State that accompanied the doctored certificate stated that to retain the words
"might increase the risk that the judge will call for copies of the documents."
Having seen those documents, Sir Richard observed that it was "very obvious" that any defence counsel
"would give his (or her) eye teeth for them."
There is no need to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he accepts those conclusions. From the moment of publication, the whole Government have been loud in their complaints that the Vice-Chancellor of Chancery Division does not understand the law. They were led by the right hon. Gentleman in his statement to the House that the Government's interpretation of the law was supported
"by such distinguished judges as Lord Scarman."—[Official Report, 15 February 1996; Vol. 271, c. 1141]
The force of that argument was somewhat blunted, when Lord Scarman wrote to The Times five days later:
"The Attorney-General was wrong … the Attorney-General was under a duty to advise the Crown that in this case justice required immediate disclosure and an end to the prosecution."
Sir Ivan Lawrence: I know that the hon. Gentleman would not want to mislead the House about the effect of the contents of the documents in question. If they were so essential to the defence, can the hon. Gentleman explain why the trial did not stop immediately following their disclosure, but continued for five weeks, until the evidence given by Alan Clark was heard?
Mr. Cook: Anybody who has read the transcript of the trial knows that the prosecution case collapsed under the
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cross-examination of Alan Clark, when his evidence in chief was plainly inconsistent and unsustainable against the documents then obtained by the defence.
Sir Ivan Lawre rose—
Mr. Cook: The hon. and learned Gentleman should read the transcript.
Sir Ivan Lawre rose—
Mr. Cook: The hon. and learned Gentleman has lost his point, but he must not lose his rag.
There is a large problem with the Government's response. Sir Richard was the distinguished judge whose opinion the Government sought. Now that they do not like it, it is a bit rich to tell us that that opinion is not worth having, because Sir Richard is not distinguished enough.
The self-serving nature of this complaint can readily be understood if the House contemplates, just for a minute, what Ministers would be saying about Sir Richard Scott if he had told them what they wanted to hear. Then we would be told how conclusive his opinion was; how it was the product of three years' careful research and examination of all the legal judgments; how it was made on the authority of a long and respected career on the Bench.
Those facts are all still true. After three years' exhaustive research, Sir Richard concluded that there was no legal authority for the type of class claims for public interest immunity made in the Matrix Churchill trial. He also recommended that such class claims should never again be made in a criminal trial.
Mr. Stephen rose—
Mr. Cook: Not again; the hon. Gentleman has had his chance.
I note that there was one recommendation that the President did not endorse in his speech. I understand why. Although Sir Richard makes a compelling case in the interests of justice for his recommendation that class claims for PIICs should not be used again in criminal trials, the Government dare not announce that they accept it, because to do so would be to concede that they were wrong in the Matrix Churchill case.
Mr. Neil Hamilton: May I take the hon. Gentleman back to the charge levelled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), which the hon. Gentleman himself has described as the fourth charge in the Opposition's indictment, and from which he has moved somewhat in the course of his speech?
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman's attention span faltered before he reached the last paragraph of volume III of Sir Richard Scott's report, but if I read it to him perhaps he would like to answer it:
"I must refer to the charges … that the Ministers who signed the PII Certificates were seeking to deprive defendants in a criminal trial of the means by which to clear themselves of the charges."
Sir Richard comes to this conclusion, in the very last sentence of volume 3:
"The charges to which I have referred are not, in my opinion, well founded."

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Would the hon. Gentleman now withdraw his allegation?
Mr. Cook: I accept that paragraph in its entirety. Will the hon. Gentleman do likewise? Will he accept the passage in the middle of that paragraph which has been omitted from the central office crib sheet, but which states that the legal advice that Ministers received
"had no authoritative precedent in a criminal trial."
If Conservative Members are going to rely on the idea that Ministers acted only on legal advice, they must accept that that legal advice was wrong, and that it was given to them by another Minister.
Mr. Neil Hamilton rose—
Mr. Cook: No. The hon. Gentleman has had his chance—
Mr. Hamilton: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. The hon. Gentleman asked me a question. I now seek an opportunity to answer it.
Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has been here long enough to know that the Member at the Dispatch Box is unlikely to give way now.
Mr. Cook: Not all Ministers acted on that legal advice. There was one shining example to all the rest of them. The Deputy Prime Minister has been very free in bandying my name around every studio that would let him in over the past week. I have given his comments careful consideration. I have concluded that what would hurt him most would be if I were to praise him. Let me now do so.
I praise the right hon. Gentleman willingly, because he was the first person to introduce the term "cover-up" to the discussion. Two years before anyone else thought of the term, the Deputy Prime Minister objected to the attempt to withhold documents because
"it would look as though he had been engaged in an attempted cover-up".
I praise the right hon. Gentleman deservedly, because his reluctance to claim public interest immunity is praised by Sir Richard Scott as showing
"an instinct for the requirements of justice that was fully justified and corresponded with the legal principles correctly understood".
The right hon. Gentleman is a collector of titles. To his roll call of Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State, perhaps we should now add Attorney-General-in-Chief. Certainly there should be a vacancy to fill. Some Conservative Members know that, even if they will not vote for it tonight. The hon. Member for Coventry, South-West (Mr. Butcher) illustrated their thinking with the helpful headline in the Coventry Evening Telegraph:
"Sack Lyell—but not yet".
It must be a comfort to the Attorney-General to know that he has that quality of support behind him.
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Michael Heseltine): Why should anybody trust the hon. Gentleman's judgment against the views of the Attorney-General, when two of the defence counsel acting in the Matrix Churchill case thought that the Attorney-General was right?
Mr. Cook: I regret having to correct the Deputy Prime Minister while trying to achieve a spirit of unity with him,
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but this is a debate based on the five volumes of the views of Sir Richard Scott. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] That is the answer. Sir Richard Scott finds the Attorney-General personally at fault for failing to convey to the court the reservations expressed by the Deputy Prime Minister.
Mr. Nigel Evans: Stop dodging the question.
Mr. Cook: I am not dodging it. I am arguing closely from the five volumes in front of me. It is the Attorney-General who is dodging. Three years ago, on the day the inquiry was announced, the Attorney-General said:
"There could be no better way of examining whether ministerial responsibility should be pinned in any particular area".
Well, Sir Richard has certainly pinned ministerial responsibility in this area. He has concluded that the Attorney-General bears "major responsibility" for the inadequate instruction of the prosecuting counsel. Now that responsibility has been pinned on him by the inquiry that he appointed, will he accept it? Will he recognise that the Government should never have put on trial a man who was an agent of our security services and who had been the prime source of our intelligence on Iraq?
The Deputy Prime Minister: The Attorney-General advised me and my colleagues that the judge would consider the documents, and, if they were necessary for the defence, would order their release. The Attorney-General was proved right. Two of the defence counsel said that he was right. The hon. Gentleman has been attempting to wriggle out of the charges he originally made, but the hollow and synthetic allegations he has been publishing across the country for three years have now been exploded in his face.
Mr. Cook: I regret having to be combative with the Deputy Prime Minister, but at least we have got him to his feet. It would perhaps have been helpful if the Prime Minister had risen to his. May I remind the Deputy Prime Minister of what he told Sir Richard?
"I had been assured that my certificate would send a clear message to the judge."
The right hon. Gentleman was then asked:
"Do you think a clear message of the kind you were intending was sent to the judge?"
The Deputy Prime Minister replied:
"No, and it should have been."
It is this failure for which Sir Richard holds the Attorney-General personally at fault. Yet tonight, no one is going to accept responsibility—no one is going to go. As the Secretary of State said a week ago, there are to be no regrets, no resignations. This is not just a Government who do not know how to accept blame: they are a Government who know no shame. That is an appropriate judgment from which to approach how we should each vote tonight.
Last week, I again heard the Deputy Prime Minister on the "Today" programme, gently remonstrating with the presenter, as is his style. He said:
"You keep looking at it in terms of will the Government be defeated. That isn't the way to look at it. You ought to rejoice we live in a democracy."

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I must confess that I was a bit surprised to hear that subconscious echo of his old opponent in the invitation to us all to rejoice—but, once again, I find myself in agreement. Conservative Members should heed his advice. They should not think of tonight's vote in terms of whether it is a defeat for the Government; they should look on it as a vote that will decide the quality of the democracy in which we live. They should remember Sir Richard's summing-up. In his final chapter, he said:
"A failure by Ministers to meet the obligations of Ministerial accountability undermines the democratic process".
The first function of Parliament is to hold the Government to account. The first duty of hon. Members is to defend the rights of Parliament against any Government who threaten those rights. That is why Parliament cannot allow the current Government to ignore the findings of the Scott report: hon. Members were designedly misled, and Ministers consistently failed in their duty of accountability to the House.
Of course the hon. Members on the other side of the Chamber were elected as Conservative Members, but that does not lessen their obligation to defend the rights of Parliament. On the contrary, there was a time when insisting on individual responsibility and upholding the sovereignty of Parliament would have been seen as conservative values.
Tonight Parliament has the opportunity to insist that Ministers must accept responsibility for their conduct in office and to assert that the health of our democracy depends on the honesty of Government to Parliament. That is what we shall vote for tonight. Of course Conservative Members have enough votes to defeat us. If they vote to reject those principles, however, they will demonstrate not only that the two Ministers who have been most criticised in the Scott report should leave office, they will convince the public that this is an arrogant Government who have been in power too long to remember that they are accountable to the people, and that the time has come when the people must turn them all out of office.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. Before I call the next hon. Member to speak, I should say that the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) has asked me to inquire about a document in the Library that was said to be embargoed. I have made some inquiries about it. The document was sent over to the Library from the office of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. There was no intention whatsoever to embargo that document; it was to be made available to hon. Members immediately, as the accompanying letter says.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Will hon. Members allow me to finish, please?
"Embargo" was written on a brown paper envelope that was with the document. I believe that that word was written by someone who is not in a very high position—[Interruption.] I believe that there was no intention whatsoever to embargo the document.
5.13 pm
Mr. Douglas Hurd: The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) has been telling the House about the Scott report for three years now. It sometimes seemed to us that he got not three hours' notice but about three years' notice of the Scott report. He seemed to have very extensive inside information about what it would contain. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), however, is quite right. What the hon. Gentleman has constantly predicted is not what has occurred.
The hon. Member for Livingston has constantly predicted that the Scott report would show a conspiracy of Ministers to do two indefensible things: to arm Saddam Hussein in secret; and, in that cause, to allow innocent men to be sent to prison. That is not what the Scott report has revealed. The hon. Gentleman has shown us an elegant sideways movement, so that he can claim that what he now alleges is what he has always alleged.
On the point about conspiracy to arm Saddam Hussein, what the hon. Member for Livingston said is wholly characteristic, because he omits—it is crucial—to say what Sir Richard Scott said about the conduct of my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary. He said that if my right hon. Friend, when considering the licence for Matrix Churchill, had known the current intelligence about the destination of the lathes for export, he would not have approved the licence.
That movement is typical of what has happened to the accusations. What starts as an accusation of conspiracy becomes a criticism of the circulation of defence material. My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade has acknowledged—as anyone would acknowledge—that there is a problem. The problem has already been addressed to some extent, and it can be further addressed. However, a problem about the circulation of intelligence material to Ministers of State is light years away from the accusation that the hon. Gentleman persists in making, that my right hon. Friend was in some way privy to a secret decision to arm Saddam Hussein. Exactly the same movement has occurred, as I shall seek to show, on the question of sending innocent men to prison.
I have no particular axe to grind in this matter. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh?"] No; Sir Richard Scott deals very reasonably with my difference of opinion with him about Jordan. He did the Home Secretary and me a favour by once more correcting the sloppy and inaccurate press reporting about the PII certificates that we signed on the Ordtech appeal, which once again showed that the certificates were upheld by the court and not repudiated by them.
Mr. Giles Radice: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hurd: I do not wish to give way.
Nevertheless, I find the Scott report—I speak entirely for myself—a disappointing document. Sir Richard has been timid in one important matter in which he could have been bold and, in other passages, partly through ambiguity, he has allowed the Opposition and the press to convey to the country an impression of policy making that I know to be wrong.
Sir Richard makes an immense analysis of the PII certificates—I obviously do not have time to follow it—and I believe that there are three conclusions be drawn

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about them. The first conclusion is that there is a need for such certificates—the hon. Member for Livingston did not deny it—in both criminal and civil trials. There will be occasions on which it is right for a Minister to point out to a judge that the documents in question would, if published in their existing form, cause harm to the servants or interests of the Crown. Sir Richard may be right in saying that, in criminal cases, there should not be a class objection but only an objection as regards a particular document and its contents. The inquiry can look into that.
The second conclusion is that there is no such thing as a gagging order, and that there has been no such thing as a gagging order since the Conway v. Rimmer case, in 1968. Ever since then, the law has been clear, and as my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General explained it to the Ministers in question. A Minister can give a view about the document; he is competent to do that and he ought to do that. What he cannot do is to give a view on the trial—on the question of the influence of that document or its publication on the guilt or innocence of those involved in the trial. That is not a matter for a Minister; it is a matter for the judge. Only the judge can see the total picture and decide whether and, if so, in what form the document should be released.
Mr. Rupert Allason: Will my right hon. Friend give way on that very point?
Mr. Hurd: No, although I am sure that it is on that very point. Madam Speaker, I am sure that my hon. Friend will have a chance to catch your eye.
That is the doctrine of Conway v. Rimmer, in 1968. That is the doctrine that the Attorney-General explained to the Ministers and, in my view, it must be right.
My third conclusion is more controversial. I am driven to the conclusion, from some experience in this subject, that we need legislation on it. I am not happy about the latest judgment, the Wiley judgment after the Matrix Churchill case. With the best of motives, the judges in the Wiley case have invited Ministers back on to that treacherous ground of performing a balancing act. They have invited Ministers to balance the merits or demerits of publishing the document against the interests of the trial. I do not think that Ministers should have anything to do with that balancing act.
Sir Richard Scott believes as a judge—in this he is too timid—that the matter should be left to waft from trial to trial on some flying carpet of case law. I do not believe that. One can hardly open the pages of The Times or The Daily Telegraph these days without reading about some distinguished judge or Queen's Counsel trying to blow the flying carpet in the direction that he favours. That judgment is not guidance that Ministers can successfully operate. Several of us have had rueful experience of that. I believe, reluctantly, that we need legislation to make matters clear and I hope that the review will lead to that conclusion.
On the second question about the portrait of policy making that emerges from the report, I cannot spend much time on the question whether paragraph (iii) of the guidelines was altered, modified or changed or whether the guidelines were more flexibly interpreted. I have read the essential papers on that point three times now. I read them in 1992, when it first became controversial; I read them in 1994, before I gave evidence to the inquiry;
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and I read them in the report itself. I can see that different officials described what happened in the spring of 1989 in different ways, and clearly, in practice, it did not seem to them at that time that the difference between one phrase and another was crucial. It had nothing to do with the Matrix Churchill trial or the guilt or innocence of those involved.
On that particular point I rest my case on two things: first, my absolute confidence, derived over several years of working with him, in the integrity of my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary; and, secondly, the fact that when in July 1990 the Prime Minister of the day asked me to review the guidelines, what we then reviewed were the original Howe guidelines, without reference to any changes of interpretation or modification that might have occurred in 1988 or 1989. We believed that the Howe guidelines held the field and that it was they that fell to be reviewed.
The fundamental problem is that Sir Richard Scott set himself to reconstruct a set of discussions among Ministers and officials on a specific, narrow point of policy four or five years after those discussions took place. He made the effort, he tried and in my view he failed to reconstruct those discussions successfully. The fault may lie less with the report itself than with the interpretation of it that has been current in the press ever since.
The issue of arms to Iraq has been dealt with. There were no arms to Iraq authorised by the Government in the normal sense of that word. There were no gagging orders. I do not believe that the House has been misused. I do not believe that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) has said, we expect Government to make impossible the task of government. My worry about the report is that the interpretation of it is casting a slur on the way in which policy making in this country is carried out. That does harm to the House and to all those who strive or who may in the future seek to strive to carry out effective policy for this country. I hope that the House will avoid that trap.
5.23 pm
Mr. Tony Benn: I opposed the establishment of the Scott report because I thought it was totally wrong that political matters should be handed to a judge who knew nothing about administration. That had the effect of depriving the House of Commons of its proper function, which is to hold Ministers to account.
Having had some experience of ministerial office, I am also of the view that on matters of arms sales all Ministers know what is happening all the time because they are fully briefed. Whatever Lord Justice Scott might or might not have said, I do not believe for a moment that Ministers were in any doubt as to what they were doing by keeping the House in the dark. I cannot interpret the Attorney-General's motive in seeking public immunity certificates except that it must have been done with a view to putting to the judge the case for suppressing relevant documents.
I want to turn my mind to something else that has hardly been touched on. What would we have achieved if two Ministers resigned? I think that they both should resign, and I think that public opinion is now totally persuaded of the case against them recapitulated so devastatingly by my hon. Friend the Member for

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Livingston (Mr. Cook). We should now, however, ask ourselves where those resignations lead us. Whether we call them arms for Iraq or non-lethal equipment, the fact is that the British Government authorised the supply of equipment for Iraq that was designed, ordered and purchased to strengthen Iraq's military machine.
It has been suggested that in a high-tech war the only lethal weapon is a gun that fires a bullet, but everyone knows that is not so. Just look at the list that even The Daily Telegraph extracted from the report. The equipment sold included high-tech communications equipment; aircraft engines; flight simulators; armoured vehicles; tank helmets; artillery parts; mortar-locating radar; battlefield surveillance; night vision goggles and laser rangers. Was that not equipment to strengthen Saddam Hussein? What a pretence to argue about non-lethal weapons. Two hundred and seventy export licences were granted, worth £400 million, and the idea of whether the equipment was lethal or not is absolutely irrelevant to the question that the House is considering.
I am sorry that another matter has not been discussed so far in the debate. What else have the Government done to Iraq? What happened throws a completely new light on the Gulf war. During the debate on the Gulf war, in which I participated, having asked for the House to be recalled, I warned that there would be hundreds of thousands of casualties. There were between 200,000 and 250,000 Iraqi casualties in that war caused by the high-tech weapons used by the allies against Iraq. Since then, we have seen the impact of sanctions on Iraq. I cite United Nations figures, which are more important than the future of two Ministers, because I think they will all be out of office soon.
According to the figures published by the UN mission to Iraq, more than 4 million people, a fifth of Iraq's population, are at severe nutritional risk; 2.4 million children under five, some 600,000 women or nursing mothers, and destitute women, as well as hundreds of thousands of elderly, are at risk. The incidence of malnourishment and stunted growth within newborn children has risen by 23 per cent. and 70 per cent. of pregnant women in Iraq suffer from anaemia. The following figures sum it all up: there were 110,000 aerial sorties which dropped 850,000 tonnes of explosives—the equivalent of seven and a half Hiroshimas—on Iraq, and more than half a million Iraqi children have died because of sanctions.
Not only did the Government agree to the sale of equipment to one of the most ruthless dictators in the world, but then, by going along with the sanctions, they have imposed something that I believe makes them almost an accessory to genocide in Iraq. That goes far beyond the future of two Ministers.
I do not want to detain the House, but we should look at another aspect of the matter—the arms trade. If we do not discuss the international arms trade, we will be betraying many people outside the House who are concerned about it. I have looked up the figures, which reveal that, in 1994, $22 billion-worth of arms were sold in the world. The developing world bought $12.5 billion-worth. Britain is the fourth largest supplier of arms—$6 billion-worth—and we subsidise them to the extent of £1 billion a year, which is £12,500 for everyone working in the arms industry.
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If we consider the recipients of those arms, we see that. between 1990 and 1994, Saudi Arabia bought £9 billion-worth of weapons. What is the record of human rights in Saudi Arabia? Turkey, with a hideous record of repression against the Kurds, bought £7.8 billion-worth. Iran bought £3.2 billion-worth and Indonesia, where 200,000 people in East Timor have been killed, bought £2.3 billion-worth. We are now selling Hawk aircraft to Indonesia, with the East Timor question still before us.
It is not surprising that the Bishop of Coventry with two other bishops wrote to The Times the other day to point out that 4 million civilians have been killed in conflicts in the past four years, and the world's arms manufacturers very often supply arms to both sides of a conflict. On a religious programme yesterday, it was pointed out that 85 per cent. of all the weapons sold in the world are sold by the five permanent members of the Security Council. I recall, as a young man coming back from the war, reading the first words of the charter of the United Nations:
"We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to free humanity from the scourge of war which twice in our generation has brought untold suffering to the peoples of mankind".
Eighty-five per cent. of weapons are sold by Security Council members that are supposed to be part of the United Nations to preserve peace.
When these weapons are used, Governments demand a ceasefire. During the ceasefire, the arms manufacturers pour in to find out which weapons worked best so that they can sell more of them. That happened in the Falklands war. As soon as that war was over, the Exocet missile became the most popular missile in the world because it sank HMS Sheffield. The utter hypocrisy of Governments who supply weapons in that way is what is at stake, not just the careers of the Ministers.
I recognise—the point has been made, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) may speak shortly—that all Governments have supplied weapons. During the cold war, those weapons were supplied allegedly to protect us from communism. Now, as in the multiplicity of conflicts that have occurred, the weapons are fuelling world conflicts that are now motivated by nationalism, religious fervour and other factors. There is a terrible danger that those arms supplies will precipitate even more such conflicts.
I believe that those engaged in the arms trade are accessories to genocide. I do not acquit anyone who has been responsible for that. I believe that Parliament has a duty to control the sale of arms. There is nothing more important than that there should be proper supervision by Parliament of what weapons are sold and to whom.
I also believe that we must recognise that, in taking Sir Richard Scott's report as a solution, we have abdicated our responsibility. That is not only the fault of the Government or of the Ministers, because the House of Commons should never have agreed to subcontract such decisions to somebody who knew nothing about politics and nothing about how Government worked. We are now spending our time crawling over every dot and comma of some judge's report. We should take our own responsi-bility, because on that the peace of the world may hinge.
5.32 pm
Mr. Tom King: It is interesting that I follow a member of a former Government who approved sales of lethal arms to Iran, but we refused to supply lethal arms. That Government also refused to publish guidelines on arms exports, but we supplied such guidelines.

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My interest is most marked in the last comments by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), in which he totally undermined the position of the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) by criticising Scott for knowing nothing about politics and government. The hon. Member for Livingston leant heavily on the Scott report as part of his evidence.
My interest in these matters goes back to 1982 when I led a Department of the Environment mission to Baghdad, where I met Saddam Hussein. I saw then the efforts that were being made by all countries to export to Iraq. Many people have forgotten the background to some of these issues. At that time, the Department of Trade and Industry and other trade ministries had identified Iraq as a most interesting trade prospect. There were some question marks about the regime, but the debates and comments on the report have reeked of hindsight. I remember how many British companies were working on sensible, good projects in Baghdad, including attempts to improve the water supply, to tackle sewerage problems and to build decent housing to improve the condition of the people. At that time, there was a major campaign in Iraq to spend the funds from their oil reserves.
I later saw Saddam Hussein in a different light. I witnessed the super-gun affair and the web of deceit that was created, so I found the Scott report very interesting reading. I envied Sir Richard Scott because he was able to freeze the frame and examine every detail of the events of that time. The Government work in real time and have about 400 different problems to deal with at the same time. Before people lampoon hard-working officials and civil servants who gave evidence, they should remember how many other problems and challenges were on officials' plates. Officials were trying to cope with many problems and sometimes they could not give smart and accurate answers to every question. But I have no doubt—from my personal experience, which is all that I can put before the House—about the overwhelming sincerity and commitment of those officials who genuinely try to work as Parliament and the country would wish.
I accept that mistakes were made and I applaud my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade for recognising that. Those mistakes must be addressed, but I must tell the hon. Member for Livingston and his right hon. and hon. Friends that acting like a political lynch-mob does no service whatever to the serious issues that need to be addressed.
I will pass quickly over the issue of public interest immunity certificates—I have signed them in my time in the strong belief that the principles that the Attorney-General laid down were correct. If there are problems with that—and I know that the position has changed—I leave it to the judges, because the law is judge-made, to sort out the fairest basis for the future. I have no doubt that that needs tackling.
I believe that Customs and Excise got off lightly in some aspects of the report. Everybody knows that the Attorney-General was not directly responsible for the prosecutions of Customs and Excise, which has an independent power of prosecution. One does not have to look hard for part of the reasons for the problems that arose.
I turn now to the key issue that affects my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary. The argument hinges on how great was the flexibility and at which moment flexibility
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became a change of policy. Of course, there had to be guidelines. One could not handle something as sensitive as defence sales to overseas countries under any other arrangement. There had to be flexibility of interpretation. Ministers could not, every time they exercised that flexibility, come to the House to explain the reason.
One criticism that I have of the Scott report in connection with not making public statements is that Sir Richard picked up too quickly the single point about public reaction feeding overseas to cause embarrassment. The real reason—which was rightly given by Sir Richard Luce in his evidence—and why we did not publish the guidelines for nearly a year after they were made, was concern about the reactions that they might cause and the effects on British interests in the Gulf region.
One has only to stop and think to realise that it would be a lunatic approach to come to the House every time that there was a different interpretation of the guidelines. Ministers would have had to come to the House after the problems with the hostages in Beirut, after the fatwa, the killing of the Kurds, and the execution of Mr. Bazoft, and after the sinking of shipping by the Iranians. It would be lunacy for Ministers to have to come to tell the House that aircraft tyres were off the list and radar equipment was on the list—or vice versa—for supply to one country or another.
I would have been one of the Ministers who would have had to approve a change of policy. It is true, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd)—a former Foreign Secretary—said, that the policy came forward for consideration in July 1990. At that time, we considered whether the policy should be changed. Of course, we sell lethal arms to other countries, but our policy was that we did not sell them to Iraq and Iran. We stuck to that policy and we had guidelines with flexibility to govern how non-lethal defence equipment should be handled.
I do not go as far as the right hon. Member for Chesterfield in his description of Sir Richard Scott's approach. He was rather tough on Sir Richard. I think that Sir Richard tried genuinely to understand the workings of government and of Parliament. Similarly, I do not agree that there was a change of policy. There was proper use of the guidelines. I believe that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary was right. I happen to know quite a bit about the circumstances and the policy to which we were adhering. It was only at a later stage that we considered changing that policy.
Did the policy work? I tell the House again that I saw captured equipment. I was driven up and down row upon row of captured equipment in Al Jubail, which is by the Kuwait border. All the equipment that we had captured from the Iraqis stretched for as far as the eye could see. If anyone is interested, he or she can obtain aerial photographs from the Ministry of Defence. It was only from the air that such a mass of equipment could be photographed.
Among the equipment, I found French Exocets. We all knew about the existence of French Mirage jets. I found a range of Chinese and Russian rocket launchers. There were ranges of artillery, tanks and armoured personnel carriers. There were many types of guns. Among it all I found one Land Rover with a Racal radio. That was the sum total of British equipment. If someone asked me whether the Government kept faith with their policy, I would answer yes. That cost us billions of pounds.

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We are great at looking back and contemplating something that faced us eight years ago. I agree, however, with something that the right hon. Member for Chesterfield said about arms and arms sales. We are debating events of some years ago but in the meantime Russia has trebled its exports of arms. There is no adequate control over certain nuclear materials, including weapon-grade plutonium. In Kazakhstan, the Ukraine and other areas of what was the Soviet Union—they are in desperate need of foreign exchange—there is a real danger that the export of arms to several regimes will continue without sufficient control.
I doubt whether anyone in this place has yet focused on the Wassenaar arrangement, which will be examined in April when 28 countries will try to establish a new arms control arrangement. I take the opportunity that is presented by the debate to tell Ministers that several countries have reduced their support to the arms control effort and the support that is given to some of the former Soviet republics. That is false economy. I hope that it will be recognised before it is too late that extra effort should be directed to arms control. If that does not happen, we shall see an influx of extremely dangerous weapons into countries that should not have them and would never pass our arms tests or controls.
5.42 pm
Mr. Menzies Campbell: I entirely agree with the last point made by the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King). I fear that there was almost nothing in the remainder of his speech with which I could agree.
Sir Richard Scott and the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) have demonstrated eloquently that by ministerial design Parliament was denied the opportunity to hold the Government to account over their policy on the supply of arms to Iraq. The Parliament that today does not assert that right will merely compound and homologate the breach of constitutional responsibility that has been identified on so many occasions by Sir Richard. As the Government refuse to impose any sanction on themselves, only Parliament can now do so, even in the artificial terms that are offered to us by a Division at 10 o'clock.
This is a Government who refuse to accept any responsibility. Mistakes were made; who made them? This is a Government who have ignored distortions and who have denied the main findings of the Scott report. Neither the Ministers involved nor the Prime Minister, who carries ultimate responsibility, will acknowledge any fault. Blaming the system is a well-worn and unconvincing excuse for indefensible behaviour. The fault found in the report was compounded by the fault in the handling of the report.
There were disgraceful efforts to undermine the report in advance. Silly arrangements were made for publication. The statement made by the President of the Board of Trade a week ago on Thursday was disingenuous. There was a failure to reflect the overall weight of the report. The Treasury's press release had to be acknowledged to be wrong by the Government. Selective quotations at the press conference so angered Sir Richard that he felt compelled to intervene in the debate.
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If you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, need corroboration of the arrogance of government that is identified in the report, it is to be found in the arrogance that has surrounded its publication. The central charges that Sir Richard has made against the Government are that policy was changed in 1988, the text of the guidelines published in 1985 was altered, no publicity was given to that change and the failure to inform Parliament was deliberate. The overriding reason for all that was the fear of public opposition. The relevant reference is D4.42. Everything else flows from that conclusion.
The Government have sought to describe their unwillingness to accept Sir Richard's simple conclusion as something of an "honest difference in opinion". I doubt whether Sir Richard would describe it as such. Such a description is wholly unjustified.
What is the alternative view? To summarise Sir Richard's words, that view does not correspond with reality. The alternative view, again to reflect on Sir Richard's words, is incapable of being "sustained by serious argument". The alternative view is misleading. I refer the House to paragraphs D3.121, 122 and 123.
Mr. Edward Leigh: The hon. and learned Gentleman has referred to paragraph D4. In the light of Sir Richard's conclusion in that section that the Chief Secretary did not intend to be misleading, is the hon. and learned Gentleman solemnly telling Parliament that either the Attorney-General or the Chief Secretary deliberately lied to Parliament?
Mr. Campbell: I am not saying that and I have never made that charge. I am saying, however, that both the Attorney-General and the Chief Secretary, as Ministers of the Crown, have a duty to accept the consequences of their actions. The alternative view, which Sir Richard Scott dismisses, was set out by the Chief Secretary. Perhaps he did so out of a strong sense of duty. He is described by Sir Richard as "strenuously and consistently" asserting
"his belief, in the face of … overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that policy on defence sales to Iraq had … remained unchanged."
That is all the more curious when we consider that Sir Richard finds elsewhere that the Chief Secretary
"had been one of the midwives"
of the changed guidelines.
This is not merely a matter of interpretation. Sir Richard Scott had in support of the conclusion that he had reached compelling evidence from three separate sources. The first was Mark Higson, to whom reference has already been made. He was the desk officer for Iraq at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office between March 1989 and January 1990. He wrote some of the letters that were received by hon. Members on both sides of the House—letters that did not reveal the true situation. Mark Higson ultimately resigned.
The second source was Mr. John Goulden, then an official at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He gave evidence to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry during the super-gun inquiry. He told the inquiry that the third guideline was amended to take account of the ceasefire. The Government did not challenge that finding when the Select Committee's report was made public.

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The third source was Sir Timothy Daunt. I refer to his minute of 18 November 1992. He wrote that it was his judgment that three Ministers had agreed to change the guidelines, to relax their application and not to make any announcement. He added that what they had done
"may be represented as culpably failing to inform Parliament of a significant change to the guidelines of October 1985."
Dr. Hampson: The hon. and learned Gentleman and I were both members of the Select Committee to which he has referred and I recognise that he has taken up an important statement. But why does he think that when the Select Committee published a statement that the guidelines had been changed no member of his party, no occupant of the Opposition Front Bench and no other Member of this place complained that he or she had been badly done by? No one raised the issue, yet now we have so much synthetic noise.
Mr. Campbell: We did not challenge it because we accepted it. The reason why the Government did not challenge it, we are now told, is that they did not accept it. If one is looking for "Alice in Wonderland", one will find her more easily on the Government Front Bench than anywhere else.
This all shows that Sir Richard was entitled to reach the conclusion, which he sets out in his report, that between the ceasefire and the war between Iran and Iraq in 1990 Parliament and the public were
"designedly led to believe that a stricter policy towards non-lethal defence exports and dual use exports to Iraq was being applied than was in fact the case."
This all makes the Government's assertion that Sir Richard Scott found that no arms were sent to Saddam Hussein wholly unconvincing. I remind hon. Members of the atmosphere in the House when we were recalled during the summer recess to debate the Gulf war. At that time, as the right hon. Member for Bridgwater will remember, as he and I had private conversations about this, there was considerable anxiety about the extent of casualties that British forces might sustain in a war in the Gulf. Let us suppose that Saddam Hussein had used nuclear weapons. Would we have been able to go to the parents or relations of any of our constituents who had been the subject of nuclear attack and say, "It's all right. We didn't sell them nuclear weapons. We sold them only the machine tools by which they might be made"?
Mr. Henry Bellingham: If the Liberals had been in power, we would have possessed no deterrent!
Mr. Campbell: If the hon. Gentleman thinks that Saddam Hussein has the kind of rational mind that will be affected by the finer points of nuclear deterrence, the history of the past five or six years stands substantially against him.
Let us suppose that some of our constituents had been killed by shells manufactured by Saddam Hussein. Would it have served us much to say to their friends, relations or parents, "We didn't sell him shells. The Royal Ordnance factory didn't send them. Matrix Churchill supplied him with machine tools for that purpose." That is a wholly artificial distinction in the minds of the British public, and the artificiality of the distinction is emphasised by the
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brutal honesty of Mr. Alan Clark. Remember him? We do not hear much about him these days. There has not been a Gadarene rush from the Government Front Bench to assert his integrity, but he is the person who, at the meeting on 20 January 1988, told the Machine Tool Technologies Association, and Mr. Henderson, who later stood trial, to emphasise the civilian and not the military use of any machine tools that might be sent to Iraq.
Are we to believe that Mr. Clark kept all that to himself? From his diaries, he does not seem to be a man who keeps very much to himself—of anything. Are we to believe that he was conducting some clandestine policy of his own, quite separate from the Government? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes!] Apart from alliteration, the idea has nothing to commend it. Alan Clark was right at the centre of government. He was playing Darnley to Queen Elizabeth. He was the favourite of the monarch in No. 10. The idea that he was going around conducting some secret policy and telling only the Machine Tool Technologies Association of his views simply does not bear scrutiny.
Once the central conclusion of the report is accepted, all else flows from it. Paragraph 27 of "Questions of Procedures for Ministers" was ignored. The convention of ministerial accountability to the House was ruptured. Why did that happen? Because the public would not have liked the idea of assisting Saddam Hussein to build up his arsenal; because they would not have liked the idea that we were assisting a dictator who had used chemical weapons, with devastating effect, on his own countrymen at Halabja; and because they would have wanted to know not only why we were selling him arms but why we were financing those sales, or at least the means to make them. Do the Government think that the public were not entitled to know of those things? If so, let them say so and then the public can make their own judgment.
Some say that this should not be a witch hunt. "Why", they ask, "should the Chief Secretary take responsibility?" I do not reflect on the Chief Secretary's honour, but I ask him to reflect on this. What confidence can the public have in Ministers of the Crown if they are not willing to take the consequences of their actions? The Chief Secretary was, as Sir Richard Scott found, the midwife of the policy change. He agreed to it being kept from public and Parliament. He wrote letters or answered questions that did not give accurate answers. His explanations of how he behaved in that regard have been dismissed as sophistry. As a result, he was responsible for a breach of ministerial rules and, ultimately, for a rupture of the convention of ministerial responsibility.
I do not reflect on the Chief Secretary's honour. I merely ask him to consider whether he thinks that, in those circumstances, he commands the confidence not just of his party but of the House and the country. If he survives, he must know that he will have done so not because of the strength of the Government but because of their weakness. He will survive, perhaps, on the abstentions of hon. Members from Northern Ireland. Even according to the modest aspirations of the Government, that is hardly a ringing endorsement. If he survives, he will be a constant reminder of a breach of the principle of ministerial accountability. He may even have his place in history, because whenever such circumstances arise—whatever the Government—his example will be used as a justification. In short, he may well become a dangerous precedent.

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More than any other, the office of Attorney-General demands public confidence, because as well as being a Minister the Attorney-General has wider responsibilities independent of government. The case against him falls into two parts. Put relatively simply by Lord Justice Scott, despite a long and detailed analysis of the law relating to public interest immunity, the Attorney-General was wrong in law in the advice that he gave. I have read and tried to follow in detail Sir Richard's analysis of the law, and it is clear that even if Conservative Members are able to draw our attention to eminent jurists, either on or off the Bench, who support the position of the Attorney-General on public interest immunity, and even if there is room for doubt on the legal advice that he gave, there is absolutely no room for doubt about his failure to take responsibility for ensuring that the Deputy Prime Minister's reservations were properly conveyed to prosecuting counsel. Hon. Members will have noted that that is an issue on which the Government have been blindingly silent.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Sir Patrick Mayhew): Does the hon. and learned Gentleman intend to convey to the House the fact that he accepts, in view of his recent remarks about the law, that it cannot possibly be a matter of culpability on the part of the Attorney-General that he gave the advice that he did on the law? It cannot possibly be a matter for culpability in the light of the conflicting opinions that have been voiced recently.
Mr. Campbell: I made it clear that I believe that Sir Richard Scott is correct and that his judgment on the Attorney-General's advice is correct. In that respect, I support Sir Richard Scott. His conclusion, without any equivocation, was that it was wrong advice. I have had some small experience of prosecuting, and if I gave wrong advice in a matter of this importance I would certainly consider my position. From what I know of the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the way in which he conducted himself when he appeared before the Select Committee on Trade and Industry to give evidence in relation to the prosecuting authority—HM Customs and Excise—I suspect that he would have taken a similar view.
The real issue for the Attorney-General to face is his failure to advise prosecuting counsel of the reservations of the then President of the Board of Trade.
We must have some sympathy for the then President of the Board of Trade, who has now left the Chamber. Sir Richard Scott gave him a medal, but he cannot wear it: if he does, he will merely show up the fact that others did not win medals. It might be said that he will show up their inadequacy, but, in particular, he will show up the inadequacy of the Attorney-General.
The Attorney-General accepts that the brief sent to Mr. Alan Moses was inadequate. Sir Richard Scott concludes that it was inadequate because there were no copies of the correspondence that had passed between the Attorney-General and the then President of the Board of Trade. He goes on to say that the instructions given to Mr. Alan Moses were contrary to the wishes of the President of the Board of Trade and that the major
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responsibility for that inadequacy must be borne by the Attorney-General. The stand taken by the President of the Board of Trade raised issues that were not
"mundane, routine or run of the mill".
Those issues needed the Attorney-General's supervision.
In what I consider a devastating passage, Sir Richard says that the views of the then President of the Board of Trade raised serious issues of a legal and constitutional nature, and that the Attorney-General should have recognised that. The absence of personal involvement that the President of the Board of Trade's stance made necessary is a criticism levelled against the Attorney-General.
I examined the evidence given by the then President of the Board of Trade to Sir Richard Scott at the oral hearing. The hon. Member for Livingston has already referred to one question and answer. The right hon. Gentleman was asked:
"Having now looked at the passages we have drawn your attention to during the submissions that were made to the Judge, do you think a clear message of the kind you were intending was sent to the judge?"
He replied:
"No, and it should have been."
He was asked:
"And, in fact, having looked at it, does it seem to you now the message sent to the judge was that your certificate was like everyone else's?"
He replied:
"I understand that is what did happen.
The right hon. Gentleman was asked, "Does that concern you?", and he replied, "Of course."
A little later, in response to a rather longer, rambling question, the right hon. Gentleman said:
"No, it was only after all of this that I saw what was being said in the court. I thought that I had done all that was necessary, and I asked the question whether the Judge would get a message and I was assured he would and indeed you can see clearly that that was the reply to me. I thought I had done all I properly could to indicate to the judge what I thought the position to be, and I find it difficult to explain the way in which events worked out."
A little while ago, the present Deputy Prime Minister came loyally to the Dispatch Box, but I did not understand his intervention to depart in any respect from the opinion that he expressed during the giving of oral evidence to the Scott inquiry on 28 February 1994. It is not a question of honour; it is a question of competence. We must ask—I believe that the Attorney-General must ask—how he can command public confidence in the light of these matters.
Sir Patrick Mayhew: I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for allowing me to intervene for a second time.
We must address the question, and the question is whether my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General is personally responsible for what happened. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman accept that, having been a Law Officer for nearly nine years, man and boy, I have never heard of a Law Officer checking instructions to counsel prepared by the Treasury Solicitor's Department, which is presided over by the head of the Government legal service? Would that not impose a wholly unreal standard? In this instance, when

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the Treasury Solicitor's Department had the relevant correspondence, it was in possession of all that was necessary for it to prepare the appropriate instructions.
Mr. Campbell: I yield to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's experience as a Law Officer; but I wonder whether, in positing certain cases, he is doing more than saying that, in a routine context, that is what happened. This was not a routine case, but a case in which the then President of the Board of Trade declined to sign a public interest immunity certificate until he had engaged in direct negotiation and correspondence with the Attorney-General—and, indeed, until he had received an assurance that his reservations about having to sign the certificate would be properly conveyed to the judge at the trial. I fancy that, in the nine years that the right hon. and learned Gentleman spent as a Law Officer, there were not many cases of that type.
The President of the Board of Trade has made a number of proposals. He may have made them in a rather different tone from the tone that he used 10 days ago, but the position does not seem to have changed. We shall consider the proposals in detail; it is a pity that they were not circulated rather more widely before the debate. I echo the hon. Member for Livingston in saying that, without a commitment to a culture of freedom of information rather than official secrets, we cannot be sure that circumstances of the kind that Sir Richard Scott was forced to investigate will not arise again. The best defence against abuse of power is public scrutiny. The proposals would carry much more weight if they had been accompanied by a frank recognition of responsibility for the catalogue of culpability identified by Sir Richard Scott.
I go further. In their present tentative form, there is no guarantee that, if all those proposals had been implemented in 1988 and 1989, they would have prevented the abuse of both power and position that Sir Richard has identified.
In any event, how can such proposals provide retrospective justification for the Government's manifest failures, as identified in the Scott report? During the period when Parliament was not told of a change of policy, there was a set of standards against which Ministers could test their conduct. They had their own rules in paragraph 27 of "Questions of Procedure for Ministers". By convention, they had to abide by the constitutional principle of ministerial accountability. It was not the absence of rules or principles that allowed Ministers to behave as they did; it was a flagrant disregard for those rules and principles. That is why the House should vote against the Government this evening.
6.6 pm
Mr. Paul Channon: Clearly, as a layman, I am not in a position to argue with the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) about the legal aspects of the case. I can only say—and I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman will concede this to be fair—that, over the past week, a large number of senior judges and others, including defence counsel, have concluded that what my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General did was right: indeed, we have been told that by no less than the Master of the Rolls. If my right hon. and learned Friend is to be convicted of dereliction of duty, when many senior members of the Bar support what he did, that is exceedingly unfair.
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I want to concentrate on the guidelines. For a short time, as Minister of Trade, I was one of those who had to deal with the problems in the early 1980s. I therefore have some experience of dealing with the guidelines. Given the way in which my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has been accused over the past few weeks, I feel that there is a fundamental misconception of the role of the guidelines. They were not holy writ, set down like the laws of the Medes and Persians; they were broad guidelines, and officials were asked to examine the suggestion of exporting certain goods in the light of those guidelines. In important cases, Ministers themselves decided whether to allow exports to take place.
Mr. David Shaw: No weapons.
Mr. Channon: I shall deal with the question of weapons in a moment, but my hon. Friend was right to intervene. As the report makes clear, the whole intention was to ensure that no lethal weapons were supplied either to Iraq or to Iran. Of course, the definitions of lethal and non-lethal are not absolutely clear cut in all cases, but that was the honest intention that Ministers had when they applied the guidelines. Nevertheless, there were many cases in the early days—and, I suspect, later—when goods that could probably have been exported under the guidelines were not. It was Ministers who decided; it was not a question of the blind application of a rigid set of guidelines.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: They were applied strictly, not flexibly.
Mr. Channon: I am not sure to what date the hon. Gentleman is referring. I am talking about the early days. That is what I believe may have happened. When the three Ministers concerned later decided to re-examine the policy, they considered the application of the guidelines to find out whether they could be made more flexible. There was no suggestion of a substantial change in policy. How could it have been done? None of the Ministers concerned consulted their superiors. None of the Secretaries of State was consulted. The matter was not put to the Prime Minister. It can be argued that no decision was taken. None of the three Ministers would claim that they had the authority to undertake a major policy change without reporting the matter to senior Ministers.
What took place was not, therefore, a change of policy. Ministers have been pilloried by people who have said that there was a change of policy that Ministers did not reveal to the House of Commons, but that is not justified. I hope that my hon. Friends and other hon. Members will feel that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has been most unfairly criticised in this case. I am naturally predisposed in his favour because he is a member of my party and I know him well, but I would like to think that, if I were on the Opposition Benches, I would be as objective as possible in the face of such serious allegations.
Mr. Radice rose—
Mr. Campbell-Savours rose—
Mr. Channon: I am sorry, but I cannot give way. Speeches are restricted to only 10 minutes and I have only

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a few minutes. I am sure that the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) will be able to make his point later.
The real difficulty with the Scott report is that it is all things to all men. We can all find quotations to suit the argument that we are trying to advance or to rebut. It is a great pity that the report has no conclusions so that we can find out exactly what was intended.
Of course Ministers and others made mistakes. Naturally, when running such a complex policy over a long period, involving hundreds of officials in difficult decisions, difficult choices had to be made. I concede of course that mistakes were made. I assure hon. Members that, if a Labour Government had been in power, mistakes would have been made as well because no Government are foolproof when running such an enormous machine.
We should therefore revert to the serious issues. Did we supply lethal weapons to Iran or Iraq and break our guidelines? The answer is clearly no. [HON. MEMBERS: "The answer is yes."] I disagree. Sir Richard Scott confirms my view. Did we try to send innocent men to prison? There is absolutely no doubt from the report that there was no intention to send innocent people to prison.
Those are the two main charges levied against the Government. I concede that errors have taken place, but, on the basic charges involving important principle, the Government and, in particular, my right hon. Friends principally concerned should be acquitted.
6.12 pm
Mr. Peter Shore: A week or so ago, I said in a brief intervention during the statement that it should have been made by the Prime Minister and that this debate should also have been opened or closed by him. After all, he set up the Scott inquiry and, above all, he is responsible for Ministers' conduct. It was up to him to give us his honest judgment on the Scott report. I know that that is difficult. Frankly, he was faced with three possibilities. One was to accept what Scott said, with all the unpleasant consequences that that would have for him and his Cabinet. The second was to reject, in whole or in part, the Scott report's conclusions, but in that case he would have been obliged to put seriously to the House the weight of his argument and judgment. The third option—the one that he chose—was to opt out of those difficult decisions and to organise with his colleagues a sustained misrepresentation of what Scott said.
The Prime Minister has made a serious mistake. The Scott report needs close examination and serious debate. Let us be clear: the voice of Scott is not the voice of God. Although much of the report is persuasive, other parts of it are not. Let me make one thing clear before I proceed: the personal integrity and honour of the Attorney-General and of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is not an issue. Both are honourable Members and I accept that they have acted throughout in good faith. That does not mean, however—nor did they expect it—that they could escape severe criticism of their conduct and competence as Ministers of the Crown.
The Attorney-General and his handling of the Matrix Churchill trial is the great puzzle. I shall not go into the argument between high-powered judges about whether
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Ministers were obliged to sign public interest immunity certificates—I leave that apart and am prepared to be neutral on that issue. What worries me and, I am sure, other hon. Members is that Mr. Henderson and his fellow Matrix Churchill directors were prosecuted by Customs and Excise for deceiving the Department of Trade and Industry. I and, I think, most hon. Members believe that those directors should not have been so prosecuted.
Surely sufficient evidence of the involvement of Mr. Henderson with British intelligence—evidence that should have made certain that no prosecution was started was available to Ministers before the trial—was available from the beginning. The Deputy Prime Minister read with care the documents that were submitted to him and refused to sign the PIIC. In his own words:
"this was telling me … that the Security Services at that time were in touch with Matrix Churchill."
If he knew that, why did not the Attorney-General? I regret that the Attorney-General did not know because he had not read the documents that he had asked Ministers—not only the then President of the Board of Trade—to sign. That was a terrible omission.
The Attorney-General (Sir Nicholas Lyell): Before making his criticism, the right hon. Gentleman was extremely courteous to me and to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Is he aware that, when my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, then President of the Board of Trade, brought his concerns properly to me, I not merely considered the legal position and advised him about his special public interest immunity certificate but, as the Scott report records, immediately summoned a meeting with prosecuting counsel, Mr. Alan Moses QC, a man of great experience, integrity and skill and the solicitor to Customs and Excise, to ask specifically—and he had been handling that case for more than a year—whether there was any reason known to him why the prosecution might be unfair or should not go ahead?
Mr. Shore: Did the Attorney-General point out to the Treasury counsel that Matrix Churchill directors were involved with the secret services? If so, how could the Treasury solicitor have proceeded with his prosecution?
The Attorney-General: The answer is that I did not point it out because neither I nor anyone advising me was aware of it. When one reads section G carefully, one notes that Sir Richard Scott, when he says that, at the end of the day, the prosecution should not have proceeded, emphasises—both at the beginning and at the end of the chapter—that he speaks with hindsight.
Mr. Shore: I partly accept what the Attorney-General says, but, by reading the documents, the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry knew that Matrix Churchill directors were in touch with the secret services, so Mr. Moses and the Attorney-General would have known the same if he had read those documents. In those circumstances, the trial could not have proceeded. Although the Attorney-General is not directly responsible, as he made clear in his letter to The Times today, for the Customs and Excise legal department, he has, as I have always understood it, an overriding power. He can enter a nolle prosequi—I think that that is the correct term—

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to bring a trial to an end. I maintain that he should have done that. I find it amazing that such crucial information was not passed on as it should have been.
I shall now consider the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the United Kingdom's policy on the export of defence equipment to Iraq and Iran and the very serious charge that the House was deliberately misled. The crucial question is this: was the original 1984 guideline policy changed—first in August 1988 and again in April 1989—or were those simply modifications of the existing guidelines and of insufficient importance to warrant a public statement? The answer to that is crucial in determining the answer to the second question—whether Parliament was deliberately deceived.
Scott is clear that the answer to the first question is yes and, consequently, the answer to the second is yes. On balance I agree with Scott, but the answers are not as simple as he suggests. His preoccupation with those two questions leads him away from the simple truth and the most glaring fact that the original guidelines agreed by the Cabinet in 1984 and made public by the Foreign Secretary in February 1985 were designedly so loosely drawn as to be almost meaningless.
The supply of weapons was clearly banned—there is no argument about that—but defence equipment, ranging from Land-Rovers to advanced radar equipment, was not. Such equipment should be refused an export licence only if, according to the Government guidelines, their supply would,
"significantly enhance the capability to prolong or exacerbate the conflict".
There is plenty of leeway there.
Under the change in 1988, following the ceasefire, exports were to be refused only if, in the Government's view, they would be of
"direct and significance assistance to either country in the conduct of offensive operations".
There is plenty of scope there, too. The words are different and the intention was to relax export controls. In the event, though, the change had little practical effect.
The real culprit was the original guideline policy and the misleading distinction drawn between banning lethal weapons and licensing other defence equipment. The truth is that, while Iraq needed lethal weapons and could get all that it wanted from Russia and France, its main strategic aim was to expand massively its own indigenous arms industry so that in future it could supply its own weapons needs.
Since the Gulf war, and from reports of the United Nations arms inspection teams, we know just how massive and dangerous the Iraqi arms industry was, and Britain's exported defence equipment undoubtedly contributed to its growth. One example of that will suffice. The Scott report says that the supply of lathes in 1980 to Iraq was sufficient to equip a factory designed to produce 500,000 155 mm shells a year.
The second shift in policy was in April 1989, after the Salman Rushdie affair, when the export control on defence equipment to Iran was tightened. Although there was a clear shift away from the so-called even-handed policy that had previously prevailed, I can understand the reluctance to make a public statement about it when the fates of British hostages in Iran and of Terry Waite and
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the other hostages held in the Lebanon by Hezbollah under Iranian control were still at risk. Those were very serious matters and they had to be considered.
I find it odd that the Scott report should censure so particularly the then junior Minister at the Foreign Office. The idea that he and two other junior Ministers from the other Department made shifts of policy without gaining first the tacit or positive consent of their Secretaries of State is simply unbelievable—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. [Interruption.] Order. I have already adjusted the time given to the right hon. Gentleman.
6.23 pm
Mr. Richard Shepherd: I first want to say how much I appreciate the fact that the Prime Minister set up the inquiry. I must be like the fellow in a Bateman cartoon—the only person on my side who believes parliamentary answers and who would have engaged in argument with my constituents about whether we supplied defence-related equipment during 1988 and 1989 that enhanced the capacity of Saddam Hussein. I was born when one anathema threatened Europe. Many people in this country are aware that Saddam Hussein is another anathema. Thanks to the Prime Minister, we have an account of how we enhanced the defence capacity of Iraq. I find that deeply and profoundly disturbing.
I have tried to list the instances in just the first volume of the report where Sir Richard Scott identified that the Government were intending to mislead or be less than candid with Parliament and the people of this country. I jotted down just a few of the references before I ran out of resources, time and patience. They include: D1.27, D1.151, D1.165, D2.35, D2.36, D2.432. It goes on; there are pages and pages of it.
In D4.3, on page 501, Scott alludes to the evidence of Mr. Gore-Booth, and later to that of Sir Robin Butler. There we see clever men laying out an argument, the substance of which is to argue that half a picture may be an indication of the whole picture. We have to make it quite clear to Sir Robin Butler, Mr. Gore-Booth—an honoured servant who I understand has been promoted to the high commission in New Delhi—and such servants of the state that neither the House nor the country will be governed on the basis of half the picture.
That is profoundly important because as a Back-Bench Member of Parliament, I represent the constituency of Aldridge-Brownhills. In that I am equal to the highest in this land, those who govern us, who are dependent on the authority of their own electorate and answer directly through this House and at times of elections. I am profoundly disturbed that the intent behind the policy, if not to tell an untruth, was to give an impression that was designedly misleading.
At the very end of volume i, Sir Richard Scott says:
"In the circumstances, the Government statements made in 1989 and 1990 about policy on defence exports to Iraq consistently failed, in my opinion, to comply with the standards set by paragraphs 27 of the Questions of Procedure for Ministers and, more important, failed to discharge the obligations imposed by the constitutional principle of Ministerial accountability."
Some of us may have heard Mr. Raymond Seitz on the radio the other day making the observation that one of the features of the United Kingdom is that it has—perhaps—

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the most powerful Executive of any western democracy. In fact, that was the challenge that worried Lord Hailsham when he wrote about an elective dictatorship. What stands between us and that is the candidness, openness and frankness of those who govern us. When they mislead, how do we know that the premises on which we argue our case are truthful?
Dame Jill Knight rose—
Mr. Shepherd: Please forgive me a moment. We are talking about the most difficult of all areas—the supply of armaments. Let each one of us consider when we relay to our constituents the basis of public policy how we can be certain of it when the dismal array of the intent of a civil service and bureaucracy with—I suggest—the acquiescence of Ministers is allowed to be set out in a report to the House. It is a serious judgment.
Dame Jill Knight rose—
Mr. Shepherd: If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I shall not give way because we are under a time restraint.
The report is of immense importance to each one of us and we should take it seriously. In the balance of judgment of the all-powerful Executive—more powerful than any in the western world—I must tell my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench that I stand for the people of Aldridge-Brownhills and I will stand for the balance of the power of this Chamber against the Executive.
This is an important exclamation mark in our constitutional affairs, for Sir Richard Scott makes the observation that, time and again, Ministers failed in their constitutional duty to keep the House accurately informed. That is at the heart of our constitutional arrangements. How can I give assurances or say with certainty to anyone whom I represent that a policy is as stated by Ministers? In that, I had confidence, but perhaps I was naive.
Dame Jill Knight: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Shepherd: If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I shall not give way as I am trying to finish my speech within the terms set out.
I hear from many of my hon. Friends that they know full well that the answer that they are given is meaningless. Unfortunately, I am sufficiently naive that I trust and believe the answers given. Without that foundation and certainty, the House is at grave risk of failing to represent the people who send us here. We in the House have the authority to hold Governments to account—in this country that authority comes from the people, not from the Crown—as we in turn will be held to account within a short time.
The cynical response of some people when addressing the report should make us pause and wonder. Does that not bring about a cynical response in the public? We should think about our standards and what we are meant to stand for. We are abased daily in the press as standing for so little. Is that not perhaps a reflection of the cynicism that we show way in the way in which we treat this matter? I ask my right hon. Friends to reflect on that because, in much of life, it is a mirror as to who and what we are.
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I want—I prayed—for a stronger and more vigorous response. I know what needs to be done. First, we need a freedom of information Act. That will not be the complete answer, but I profoundly believe that people who know that, within a certain time, others can look over their shoulders, will act differently. Secondly, our Select Committees must be able to send for papers and men, and have the right to subpoena them without the need for a reference to the House. That will confirm the authority of the House.
Why did the DTI inquiry fail? We all know. The House is partisan—it is part of the constitution that it should be so because we can then argue and test the propositions across the Benches. The Scott inquiry was to try to find out the facts. In page after page of 1,800 pages, the report resonates with a criticism of the conduct of public business. Is anyone accountable? Is anyone responsible? Is no civil servant to be addressed? What is going to happen to Sir Robin Butler? What is to happen to our distinguished ambassador in Saudi Arabia, who believes that half the picture is more than good enough for the House? We must remember that the principle is that the House shall have the information so that we can judge this country's proper public policy. That is the essence—the proper struggle to determine what is correct for this country and what reflects the views and judgment of an informed and interested public. If we dismiss that, we dismiss democracy.
6.32 pm
Mr. Gerald Kaufman: I value following the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), not only because of the honourable and courageous speech that he has just made, but because he has covered some of the ground that I hope to cover this evening.
The House will be aware that my concern with the change in the guidelines on the embargo on arms exports to Iraq began long before the Matrix Churchill trial that triggered off the Scott inquiry. I wrote to the Prime Minister on 30 January 1992 about the matter. The Prime Minister replied to me on 17 February insisting that the guidelines had not been changed. The Scott report labels that letter inaccurate and misleading, whereas a preliminary draft had contained at least some element of the truth. That draft was doctored by the Prime Minister's Foreign Office private secretary, Mr. Wall, so that a relative truth became a total untruth. Just as the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills asks why certain people can remain in office, I find it impossible to understand how the man who turned the Prime Minister's letter to me into a lie is now the British ambassador to the European Union rather than having been dismissed from the post in which he turned the Prime Minister, unwillingly, into the sender of an inaccurate letter.
However, despite what was done to the Prime Minister's letter to me, the Prime Minister knew the truth about the guidelines. That is made clear from the Scott report at D4.51, which the President of the Board of Trade shrank from allowing me to read out to the House earlier. In that passage, Mr. Wall again made it clear that
"the Howe Guidelines of 1985 were amended by Ministers in December 1988 but the amendment was never announced to Parliament."
He told the Prime Minister that the Prime Minister knew about that when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

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When the Prime Minister's letter to me became a matter of public controversy in November 1992, the Prime Minister's office made public the fact that the reason why the Prime Minister had not told me that there was a change in the guidelines was that the change, which the President of the Board of Trade denies existed, was already in the public domain. Reference was made to a statement made by Mr. John Goulden of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry.
Mr. Goulden made a statement on 28 January 1992 to the Select Committee in which he said:
"The guidelines set out by Sir Geoffrey Howe in '85 applied until December 1988, when the third guideline was amended … It was updated to take account of the fact that there was a cease fire."
No. 10 Downing street, on behalf of the Prime Minister, drew attention to that statement by Mr. Goulden as evidence of the fact that we were supposed to know about the change in the guidelines even though the Prime Minister was made by Mr. Wall to conceal that change from me.
Mr. Goulden said to the Select Committee:
"I am here before the Committee to tell you the truth."
He was there to tell the truth. The question that the House must answer is: was Mr. Goulden lying on 28 January 1992, when he had no motive to lie and said that it was his job to tell the truth, or are Ministers lying now, when they have every motive to do so?
The question that must also be asked is: why are Ministers putting a totally unsustainable interpretation on the report? The answer is that they exported arms to Iraq and, despite all the evidence that they should adopt a more severe policy towards Iraq, they deliberately adopted a far more lenient and favourable policy towards that country. Some of the arms exports to Iraq were listed in a memorandum to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry from the Department of Trade and Industry in April 1992. The list from the Government to the Select Committee included air defence simulator, armoured vehicle spares, armoured vehicle, artillery fire control, artillery board, explosives, fast assault craft, gun sound ranging equipment, hostile fire indicator, mortar-locating radar, pistols, rifles, shotguns, portable explosive detector and tank helmets. Those items were exported. When I wrote to the then Foreign Secretary—who has now made himself scarce—about those matters, he told me that those exports were considered by the interdepartmental committee and assessed as not breaching the guidelines.
The Government repeatedly adopted an over-friendly attitude to Iraq when evidence was being accumulated to show that they should have been exceptionally and increasingly wary. The Scott report demonstrates at paragraph D3.175 that in September 1988 the Prime Minister, then Chief Secretary, increased export guarantees to Iraq by £244 million above a total that was already £912 million.
A week ago the President of the Board of Trade, in a series of answers that reeked of casuistry, and also today, listed a series of events that he described as
"general situations of an extremely unpleasant kind".—[Official Report, 15 February 1996; Vol. 271, c. 1156.]
He listed a series of malfeasances by Iraq. What did the Government do about them? When Farzad Bazoft was executed, my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton
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(Mr. Robertson)—on my behalf and at my direction—asked the Foreign Secretary to reconsider carefully the extensive trade credits that we offer Iraq. The Foreign Secretary said that to do this might do more harm than good.
Later that month, nuclear detonators bound for Iraq were discovered at Heathrow airport. On 29 March 1990, I asked the Foreign Secretary whether the Government would reconsider their attitude towards export credits for Iraq. The Foreign Secretary simply referred to his response to my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton. I asked for the expulsion of the Iraqi ambassador, and the Foreign Secretary turned me down. The following month, Customs officers seized sections of the super-gun bound for Iraq. After attempting to dodge responsibility, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was forced to make a statement to the House on 18 April 1990. When my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) stressed the seriousness of the situation, Nicholas Ridley accused him of going over the top on a scale outside anything previously experienced. The Government's casual and, indeed, cavalier reactions to these serious events would not have been lost on Saddam Hussein.
In July 1990, the situation became positively threatening. On 15 July, the Sunday Times reported that American customs agents had detained containers of furnace equipment, which they believed was to be used to produce titanium parts for Iraq's rapidly developing missile arsenal. It stated:
"Two of the giant furnaces are being manufactured near Glasgow by a subsidiary of an American company."
On 16 July, Saddam Hussein made a speech about his dispute that had broken out with Kuwait. He said:
"Iraqis will not forget the saying that 'cutting necks is better than cutting the means of living'. If words fail to protect Iraqis, something effective must be done to return things to their natural course and return usurped rights to their owners."
The Times warned of a threat to Kuwait's existence. The American Government pledged support for the individual and collective self-defence of our friends in the Gulf. Yet, following those developments, on 19 July 1990 the Foreign Secretary took the chair of a meeting at the Cabinet overseas and defence committee and decided to relax still further the arms embargo on Iraq.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. The right hon. Gentleman's time has expired.
6.42 pm
Mr. David Mellor: I am qualified to contribute to this debate because I was the Minister of State at the Foreign Office from June 1987 until July 1988. My immediate successor was my right hon. Friend who is now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave). I shall continue the process begun by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), and try to bring a wider context to bear on some of the things that have been looked at under a microscope in Lord Justice Scott's report. I refer to the pressures that were on Ministers at the time that these decisions—which have been minutely scrutinised by Scott—were taken.
I have no quarrel with Lord Justice Scott. I gave evidence before him, it was an amiable encounter, and I have no quarrel with anything that he attributes to me

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during the course of his report; nor does he have any quarrel with me. I do not rise in this debate in the spirit of resentment or against anything that Lord Justice Scott has said about me. The guidelines were set out and publicly promulgated to this House; however, they could not guarantee what view should be taken about quite a number of categories of equipment—they were not self-defining.
The guidelines had four parts—first, that we should maintain our consistent refusal to supply any lethal equipment to either side. That was done, and there was no question of the Government supplying arms to Iraq. The most that it can be said was done was the supply, at certain points, of multi-purpose machine tools that had a variety of possible uses. Secondly, existing contracts and obligations should be honoured.
Thirdly—this clause always caused difficulties—we should not in future sanction new orders for any defence equipment which, in our view, would significantly enhance the capability of either side to prolong or exacerbate the conflict. Fourthly, all applications for export licences should be rigorously scrutinised. That was done. It is understandable, in that context, that there would have been discussions passing back and forth between various Departments to decide into what category certain applications fell.
In paragraphs D2.148 to D2.167, Lord Justice Scott deals with an argument about rubber boats which engaged the Department of Trade and Industry and the Foreign Office for many months. It was determined—this should be a reassurance to hon. Members about the care that was taken—that those rubber boats should not be exported to Iraq, not because they would significantly enhance Iraq's ability to continue the conflict or to enhance its capability to do so, but because it would appear to be a conspicuously unmutual act. That was the Foreign Office view, stated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Renton) and then by me, which won the day.
There was nothing discreditable in the Department of Trade and Industry pressing for that export. When the Labour Government were in office, exports to Iraq increased from £50 million to more than £400 million—and I make no criticism of them for that. If Iraq were a properly run country, it would be the second most potentially prosperous country in the middle east—possibly even more so than Saudi Arabia. Iraq is now in chaos because it has been badly run.
Departments were criticised if manufacturers went out of business or when unemployment increased—within the principles that were laid out in this House to advance British interests—and were put under pressure by manufacturers and by Members of this House in whose constituencies the manufacturers carried on their business. The testing of the evidence, which was the role of the Foreign Office in this matter, was carried on by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. It is sad and tragic that he should now be pilloried for this, and—as a result of outrageous and unsustainable claims by Labour Members—that he should stand in threat of having a forced resignation imposed upon him.
As my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for Defence made clear, the realities of the situation in which Ministers were working at that time were different
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from what they are perceived to be now. We need to remember that what is now in the past was once in the future. Saddam Hussein—who was always a nasty piece of work: hence our requirement to put a strong arms embargo on him—had launched an opportunist attack on Iran, thinking that Iran was in such chaos that he would be able to obtain large quantities of territory. He found himself not merely unsuccessful, but on the defensive, running the risk of Iraq being overrun. Today people would say that that was a jolly good thing. However, it did not seem to be a jolly good thing at the time.
Ironically—the history of those days is filled with irony—the people whom Saddam Hussein subsequently invaded and threatened were the people who were saying to us, "You are our friends. Help us to prevent Iraq from establishing hegemony over the whole Gulf region". The Shah—whose reign we now look back on as some kind of golden age—laid claim to the island of Bahrain and to some of the islands that are now part of Abu Dhabi, all countries that we are under defence obligations to defend.
Let us consider the pressure. There was the prospect of an Iranian victory, the Iranians were mining Fujeira harbour, gunboats were being sent out into the Gulf to shoot up the sea lanes, innocent tankers were passing back and forth, mines were placed on the route to Kuwait, British naval vessels were protecting convoys going up, and British merchant seamen were going through the Gulf. The one great thing that can be said about our nation is that we do not get on the first plane out when there is trouble, as some other countries do.
Against that background, the remarkable thing is that we did not loosen the guidelines more than we did. The reason was the reason that the Government are being pilloried—the profound suspicion that Ministers had about Saddam Hussein's motives, long-term interests and concerns.
Miss Emma Nicholson: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Mellor: I would give way, but I have only a few minutes.
My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary was part of a continuum that maintained tight regulations, in a principled way, against a great deal of pressure. It is only when one looks through a microscope that it appears remotely as though the guidelines changed. They did not; the perceptions changed. The test was the ability of one of the combatants significantly to enhance its capability to maintain the fighting. After a ceasefire, that changes, because a war is not then going on.
The efforts of British diplomats in New York, under the guidance of Ministers, persuading the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to work together for the first time, led to resolution 595—the basis on which that terrible war, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives, was finally brought to an end. That is the background and the context.
I listened with interest to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd). I consider much of what he said in the context to be profoundly misconceived, but who can fail to warm to his eloquent statement about Parliament's right to know? What troubles me is that my hon. Friend should be lined

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up with the opportunist attack that has been made by the Opposition, and that Opposition Members should nod sagely as those principles, sincerely held by my hon. Friend, rolled forth, when everything that they have done in the debate has been characterised by a lack of principle.
It would be naive to expect any precision from the deputy leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). Earlier this month, on 9 February 1996, he said:
"Next week, we shall have more evidence with the Scott report, showing how Ministers were prepared to send citizens to jail to cover their own backs."
He has never apologised for that disgraceful assertion.
The same is true of the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook). He made three charges in the House in November 1992. [HON. MEMBERS: "Four."] No, it is three, and I have the quotation, and I have read it out for those who were bothered to listen. First, he said that the Government armed Saddam; the Government did not. Secondly, he said that those arms were used against Britain; no arms sold by the Government were used against British service men in Kuwait, but arms sold by a Labour Government were used against British service men in the Falkland islands. That is the difference.
The third and most monstrous accusation was:
"as the cover-up unravelled, rather than own up, they were willing to see three executives of Matrix Churchill go to prison."—[Official Report, 23 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 638.]
That is a disgraceful thing. The whole of the Conservative party—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Time is up.
6.52 pm
Mr. Giles Radice: I do not know whether the right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) noticed, but during his speech he admitted that the guidelines were loosened. That is an interesting omission. I am not sure that Ministers would thank him for it.
I have read most of the Scott report, and the one thing that it does not do is give comfort to the Government. It is a devastating indictment of the Government, especially on the issues of ministerial responsibility, the misleading of the House of Commons and the incompetence of the Attorney-General.
Admittedly, the report's use of language is occasionally opaque, and Lord Justice Scott goes in for the double negative too much. The report is certainly too long, and it is wrong that there should not be an executive summary. That was, in a sense, a cop-out, and it allowed the Government to get away with a disgraceful response at the start.
No apologies were made when the Government came before us a week ago. There were no resignations. There was no sign that the Government considered that anything had been done wrong—that any mistakes had been made. They decided to bluff it out, and they did so.
The two-page summary produced by the Government for Members of Parliament, purporting to say what was in the Scott report, was a disgrace. It would have been bad enough for Conservative central office, but I am amazed that civil servants lent their name to it. There are at least four totally misleading statements in it, and it should not have been made available as a Government document.
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The disturbing message of Scott is that Ministers and civil servants, while paying lip service to parliamentary accountability and openness, believe in keeping things secret. Whitehall is a world where phrases are used such as
"flexible interpretation of the guidelines",
which we have heard so much from so many Ministers; and sentences are used such as:
"There is nothing necessarily open to criticism in an incompatibility between policy and presentation of policy."
That was Lord Howe, incidentally, to the Scott inquiry. That type of statement appears to be commonplace.
It is not only Ministers, but civil servants. Mr. Gore-Booth and Sir Robin Butler said:
"Half a picture can be accurate";
and Ian McDonald, from the Ministry of Defence, said:
"Truth is a very difficult concept".
Another civil servant said:
"It is damaging to the public interest to have any decision-making process exposed".
Sir Michael Quinlan said that the process of parliamentary answers was "analogous to a game".
Of course foreign policy, defence and especially security are difficult issues in a democracy, but, having listened to many of the Scott hearings and having read the Scott report, I gain the impression that the Government and civil servants believe that those matters are too serious to be considered by Members of Parliament, the House of Commons or the general public. They appear to assume that we in the House are not capable of weighing and balancing the different factors that go into the making of foreign policy and defence policy decisions.
Sir Richard Scott summed up the secretive Whitehall culture in the following terms:
"We know what is good for you. You may not like it, and if you are made aware of it, you might protest, but we know what is best".
That, basically, is the report's message.
It is abundantly clear from the report that Ministers consistently misled the House. They withheld information from Members of Parliament, from Select Committees and from the House of Commons regarding the sale of defence equipment to Iraq, in clear breach of conventions laid down for the House.
We do have a set of standards. There is "Questions of Procedure for Ministers", which the Prime Minister is to be congratulated on publishing, because we know what they are now. We have the Osmotherley rules for Select Committees. We have the new civil service code, which was drafted by the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee. Together, they are a mini-constitution, and they stipulate that Ministers have a clear duty to give accurate and truthful information to the House and its Select Committees.
If we do not give that information, we undermine the principle of ministerial responsibility, as Sir Richard Scott rightly says. The Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee defined that principle in our report; we said that ministerial responsibility had two vital elements. First, one must be clear
"about who can be held to account and held responsible when things go wrong".

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I am not sure that we have been able to do that; certainly the Government have not drawn any lessons from it.
Secondly, we must have
"confidence that Parliament is able to gain the accurate information required to hold the Executive to account and to ascertain where responsibility lies".
We certainly did not get that from the Government, although we have got it from Scott. I believe that our formulation was a good one, and it was endorsed by Sir Richard Scott.
We must now decide, as a Parliament, what we should do. As Chairman of the Public Service Select Committee, which has responsibility for overseeing the civil service code and "Questions of Procedure for Ministers", I have heard from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry today that, if we were to expand the terms of reference of the inquiry that we are conducting into ministerial responsibility and the next steps initiative, the Government would be gracious enough to give evidence, and give us a statement of what they consider the position to be. That is very good news. Although we have made no formal decision and we do not yet have any terms of reference, we have agreed, in principle, to follow up the Scott report. I am glad that the Government intend to co-operate with the inquiry, as is their duty according to "Question of Procedure for Ministers" and the Osmotherley rules.
Tonight we have an obligation to decide on our approach. We are all Members of Parliament—albeit of different political persuasions—and, as such, we should be concerned about the House and its rights. That is what we must consider tonight. Many Conservative Members were misled by the answers to questions. We were all concerned about the issue and we were misled: we should all learn some lessons from that. If we defeat the Government tonight—I hope we do—we shall send a clear message that, despite all that is said about us, Parliament cares about its rights and about British democracy.
7 pm
Sir Timothy Sainsbury: I think that I read a different Scott report from the one read by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Radice)—I certainly drew different conclusions from it. Perhaps we might have had a more informed and rational debate on the serious subjects that he has identified if his hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench had had the courtesy to apologise to the House for their disgraceful and unsubstantiated allegations about Ministers and about how the Government armed Saddam Hussein, which they peddled around the country for three years. If any apology were required, that was it.
There can be no doubt about the importance of the report and the value of its recommendations. I welcome what my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade said about accepting and responding to the various recommendations. I think that I am the only Member who served as a Minister in the three principal Departments involved in the matter. As Minister for Trade, I was directly involved with the specifics, and therefore I have some experience of export controls and defence exports and the complexities that they create for Ministers who have responsibilities in that area.
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The report identifies quite clearly some things that did not happen and some things that should and some that should not have happened. Perhaps most importantly and most controversially, it identifies something that Sir Richard Scott thinks happened. As I have said already, it is very clear what did not happen: we did not arm Saddam Hussein, in any logical meaning of that phrase. That is absolutely incontrovertible. There is no way that the Opposition, particularly the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), can persuade the average person that shipping dual-purpose machine tools or tools which could be used in munitions manufacture could be called "arming Saddam Hussein".
Mr. Frank Cook: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Timothy Sainsbury: No, I am afraid that I do not have time.
If that were so, we could not be said to manufacture any cars in this country because, according to the Opposition's logic, if they are manufactured using Japanese machine tools they are Japanese cars. Equally, there was no conspiracy to send innocent men to gaol. I am not a lawyer and many expert lawyers have explained why that is not so; I shall leave that argument to them.
I shall concentrate on something that Sir Richard Scott thinks happened, with which many others—including, I am glad to say, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd)—and I do not agree. I refer to the allegation to which the Opposition have shifted: that answers given by Ministers, including me, were misleading as the guidelines—it was the first time that defence export guidelines were published—had been changed. I suppose that it is logical for the Opposition to shift to that criticism of the Government, because their more serious criticisms, which they have sustained for so long, have been rejected decisively. As that criticism is now at the forefront of the debate, it should be addressed.
I have always been somewhat sceptical about the allegation. When I became Minister for Trade, I discovered that the guidelines at that time were the same as those published in 1985 and established by the then Foreign Secretary. Having read the report, I am even more convinced that the allegation that the guidelines changed cannot be substantiated. I point particularly to two quotes from the report which confirm that analysis. I direct those hon. Members who like to refer to their text to paragraph D3.100 on page 414. No one has reached for it yet—except the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Cousins). It contains a quote by a senior official at the Ministry of Defence in July 1989—before we began to worry about the issue. He said:
"The relaxation related to the interpretation of the guidelines, not the guidelines themselves."
That is what an official said before the issue of changing the guidelines was raised.
I put it to the House that even Sir Richard recognises that he is putting too much weight on the wording of the guidelines and upon their precise interpretation. In paragraph K8.1, example (iv) on page 1799—that proves that I have read the whole report—he refers to the "adjustment" to the guidelines rather than the "change". We must recognise that talking about changing

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the guidelines, about how they might be changed or even agreeing on a change of wording is not the same as changing the guidelines.
Recognising that fact, the report concedes that the guidelines were not changed but that, in effect, they were changed because the substance of the guidelines was changed. Therefore, the allegation stands that hon. Members were misled and that Parliament was not informed. I believe that that allegation is unfounded for a number of reasons.
The first good reason can be found in the speech of the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore), who said that the guidelines were meaningless anyway. That is an extraordinary statement, which seems to undermine any suggestion that the House was misled by a change in the guidelines. A more important point is that the guidelines were not—and were never intended to be—a precise indication of how to respond to any specific export licence application. As the Minister responsible for export licences, I can confirm that fact. The guidelines were not capable of providing such an answer—if they were, we would not have needed the committees to whose minutes and proceedings Sir Richard devoted so much detailed analysis.
Secondly, the alleged change to the guidelines did not affect the volume and scale of our armaments exports, which remained a tiny percentage of total exports. Thirdly, the report gives insufficient weight to the recognised parliamentary convention of not giving details of arms sales. The fact that Sir Richard Scott may disapprove of that convention does not mean that it does not exist. I do not dispute the fact that we should debate the issue, but the information about arms sales to Iraq and elsewhere was always limited and that situation did not change. I would welcome a debate about disclosure—just as I welcome what my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade said about it.
Fourthly, I believe that the charges of misleading are unfounded because Sir Richard's approach is far too legalistic. The report is written by a lawyer, sadly, without the help of assessors who have more knowledge about the real world. Parliamentary proceedings do not equate with drawing up a contract at law: real life is not like that. I am sure that any right hon. or hon. Member who has answered questions at the Dispatch Box would agree that, if his every word were taken down and turned into a legal contract, life would be quite impossible.
Mr. Sheerman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. How many more former Ministers will be wheeled on to attack Sir Richard Scott?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair.
Sir Timothy Sainsbury: The reason why Sir Richard gave so much weight to the suggestion that the House had been misled was his widely shared concern about the unnecessary secrecy surrounding Government. That is why he devoted so much attention to the Import and Export Control Act 1990, which was not otherwise relevant to his inquiry, but certainly revealed the Opposition's attitude to informing Parliament.
There are plenty of matters for the House to debate. We certainly need to debate the arms trade, and I hope that we can accept most of Sir Richard's
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recommendations and follow up the rest. We must recognise, however, that no lethal weapons were exported, that there was no conspiracy and that there are strong grounds for concluding that the guidelines were not changed; therefore the House could not have been misled by any Minister saying that that was the case.
7.10 pm
Mr. Richard Caborn: I should like to cover three issues. I have a constituency interest in the super-gun, not in Matrix Churchill, and a parliamentary interest in the matter as Chairman of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry dealing, first, with the aftermath of the super-gun and, secondly, with setting up the Committee's terms of reference for the BMARC inquiry.
In 1990, I tabled a series of questions to the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and wrote to the Prime Minister of the day asking whether they knew about the super-gun in 1988 or in 1989. Sir Richard Scott confirmed that I was totally misled when he wrote that
"A direct answer to Mr. Caborn's question"
on exports of military equipment to Iraq
"would have required the DTI to accept that they had been aware in June 1988 of possible military implications of Walter Somers"—
and indeed the Forgemasters—
"piping contract."
He said that the Government's failure to respond constituted
"a further example of failure to discharge the obligations of accountability."
There was great concern in Sheffield at the time. There were 4,000 jobs at Firth Brown—which used to be Forgemasters—and people were concerned about the way in which the Government had treated them when they had genuinely tried to provide the Government, particularly the DTI, with all the relevant information that they had at hand to prove or disprove whether the contract involved the super-gun. The way in which the Government were treating business at the time was deplorable. The powerful statements that have been made tonight about misleading Members of Parliament, and thereby their constituents, have to be taken extremely seriously and those who are responsible for that misleading should pay a price.
I became Chairman of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry in July 1992. The hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Dr. Hampson) was wrong in his earlier intervention about following through the report of the Trade and Industry Select Committee, as the election stopped that happening. Immediately I became the Chairman of the Select Committee, the Government responded to the Committee on the export to Iraq of Project Babylon and the long-range gun.
I wrote to the then President of the Board of Trade in July 1992 and the following January I received a reply to my letter in which he promptly told me that the matter would be referred to the Scott inquiry. I know that the Deputy Prime Minister is a past master of the long game, but that takes the biscuit.
At the time, serious issues were raised by the report of the Trade and Industry Select Committee and the problems that the Committee faced in trying to extract information both from Ministers and from civil servants are on record. It became evident that the memorandum of guidance for Select Committees is somewhat weak.

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Last year, the President of the Board of Trade requested the Trade and Industry Select Committee to consider the implications of BMARC. Many members of the Select Committee were involved in the super-gun inquiry and were not prepared to be sent on a fishing expedition for information because they knew that their report on the super-gun had run into the sand, partly because of the Select Committee's inability to take evidence from the right people. That calls into question the role of the Select Committee.
There was an exchange of letters between the Select Committee and the then President of the Board of Trade culminating in such an unsatisfactory position that the President of the Board of Trade was asked to meet the Select Committee to clear up at least some of our terms of reference and explain how much access we would have to people and papers. The transcript of that meeting has not been published. I suggest that the Select Committee should be requested to publish the transcript, the correspondence between the President of the Board of Trade and the Select Committee and the guidance notes that the Clerk of the Committee gave the Select Committee for the sitting on 27 June 1995. It is interesting to learn that Ministers had been consulted before the Scott inquiry had been published. Those documents would demonstrate the weakness of the Select Committee structure and the strength of the Executive in controlling the ability of Select Committee to obtain evidence.
Standing Order No. 130, under which Select Committees operate, illustrates those weaknesses. The BMARC inquiry that is now under way will have the same difficulties as the super-gun inquiry. The transcript of our meeting with the President of the Board of Trade will reveal that he provided very little further access to people and papers. What do I mean by that? The Select Committee asked the President of the Board of Trade for access not only to present Ministers and civil servants but to past Ministers and civil servants. We wanted to question those who were making decisions at the time and it is a matter of fact that they included past Ministers and civil servants. Present Ministers and civil servants cannot provide those answers. Scott dealt with the matter adequately in section F of his report.
Members have to take that on board and decide whether we want to bring the balance back into Parliament. Do we want to give Parliament real powers of investigation, scrutiny and reporting back? If so, we have to revisit Standing Order No. 130. Although the Public Service Select Committee will examine that issue—that is one of the concessions that the Government have made—it must be perfectly clear that the powers have to be with the Select Committees and not be biased in favour of the Executive. Select Committees exist to scrutinise, and although one commends the development of Select Committees as part of the Executive, as the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) said, we have the most powerful Executive in western Europe. Parliament must take that on board and see how we can bring them under much more scrutiny.
I shall ask the Public Service Select Committee to examine the accountability of present and previous Ministers and access to civil servants, which is also crucial. That, along with the transcripts of the private session, will throw some light on the matter.
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Had Parliament been able to scrutinise the Executive more effectively and had the Select Committee been given wider-ranging powers, we would never have had to askSir Richard Scott to undertake his inquiry. It was a political question, but if the House had powers of scrutiny within the Select Committee structure, there would have been no need for Scott. That should be taken on board by all right hon. and hon. Members, to ensure that such an occasion does not arise again—and that Parliament is able to cross-check all the evidence relating to the Executive's actions. That means taking a completely new look at the role of Select Committees.
7.19 pm
Mr. Richard Needham: I am a non-executive director of the General Electric Company, and I was also the longest-serving Minister for Trade in this Administration.
The right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) knows that if her party were to come to power, it would be her responsibility and that of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell)—if they were so lucky to be appointed—to represent the interests of British industry and to fight for the orders for which British companies compete throughout the world. A large number of the Labour Members seated behind the right hon. Lady do not believe that this country's armaments industry should continue. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) eloquently made that point. The hon. Members for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell) and for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd), who have written to me on numerous occasions, share the same view.
The more disclosure, transparency and discussion there is about the extremely difficult and complicated problems of exporting arms, the less likely it is that the order will be won. The more that British arms exports are undermined, the less this country is able to defend itself. It is impossible to conceive that the British armed services will ever require enough of everything to support an adequate UK defence industry. It will be the job of the right hon. Member for Derby, South and the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, if they have the opportunity, to ensure that this country's national interests are protected.
The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) can wander in and out of the Chamber and box and cox, while having no particular interest in or experience of this nation's defence, which is to the fore of the national policy that the right hon. Lady will have to determine.
If more transparency and openness is wanted, perhaps we should consider the words of Sir Richard Scott, who was careful to examine the options. He questioned whether it was right for foreign policy issues to be criteria in determining export licensing:
"Is it acceptable, for example, for a licence to export goods to Country A to be refused for the reason that the export may be objectionable to … Country B?"
I imagine that that is the sort of transparency and openness that the House would seek. If such considerations are to be prescribed in legislation, what will happen if a company asks for an export licence to Taiwan? It would have to be granted. What would be the consequences for the UK if we were to be forced by law to grant export licences for defence materials for Taiwan? What effect would that have on China or Hong Kong? If one goes down that route, it is almost unthinkable that one would

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not be confronted with the most appalling problems of national importance, which were never foreseen by Sir Richard and could never have been.
Arguing the case for greater openness, Sir Richard, suggests the purposes against which export licences should be judged. They include, at K2.18(iv),
"the avoidance of assistance to human rights abuses in foreign countries".
What would that mean? British Aerospace is currently negotiating a Hawk order for India. If the British Government decided to grant that export licence, they would immediately find themselves subject to a judicial review brought by Amnesty International because of the violation of human rights in Kashmir by the Indian Government. That would be a wonderful way to win orders from India. Nobody believes that arms exports could be ring fenced from other types of exports—whether they be of water, telecommunications or electricity generating equipment. If the UK is not prepared to help a country to defend itself, that country will not be interested in placing other types of orders.
The right hon. Member for Chesterfield mentioned Indonesia as an example of a country to which we should not sell arms. What is Labour's policy on selling arms to Indonesia? I was constantly asked that question as Minister for Trade. In May 1994, the hon. Member for Nottingham, East asked whether arms exports to Indonesia should not be stopped. I replied that I thought not. The hon. Member for Livingston said:
"The Minister will appreciate the fact that this is a major humanitarian issue … He will be aware that Hawk aircraft have been observed on bombing runs in East Timor in most years since 1984. What assurances did he seek, before giving export licences …?" —[Official Report, 11 May 1994; Vol. 243, c. 308.]
There is no evidence from the Ministry of Defence that any Hawks have been seen on bombing runs in East Timor in any year since 1984. Perhaps the hon. Member for Livingston should get his evidence from the Ministry of Defence, rather than from dubious television programmes. Anybody reading the hon. Gentleman's remarks would believe that Labour's policy is not to sell arms to Indonesia. Labour's policy was spelt out by the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) in the New Statesman in November 1993:
"As for British Aerospace's proposes sale of Hawk ground-attack … "trainers" … to Indonesia, where the military dictatorship is actively suppressing occupied East Timor, Clark is in favour. South-east Asia needs a stronger security system, he says, and Indonesia must be part of it. This is clearly not the happiest part of the job for Clark. 'I'd like a world where there is no war and no weapons,' he says."
Is that still Labour party policy? Will it be the policy of a Labour Government? If Labour's policy has changed, who changed it? Is that the policy of the hon. Member for Livingston, or should I be generous and say that the hon. Gentleman did not know that it was Labour's policy? The hon. Member for Livingston accused two of my right hon. Friends—two men whom I have known virtually all my life, and who have more integrity than almost any other hon. Members—yet the hon. Gentleman's own policy on Indonesia contradicts that of the hon. Member for South Shields. If that is the case now, what on earth will be the position if the hon. Gentleman and his friends ever get in government? We heard something about Argentina. What about Nigeria? I suspect that that issue would not have been open to close scrutiny in the past.
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When the right hon. Member for Derby, South speaks, she should show the House that any future Labour Government would act in the best interests of British industry and in the national interest. She should not continue to make cheap party political points, when Labour Members cannot agree policy even among themselves.
7.28 pm
Mr. Andrew Faulds: The dissertation of the right hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Needham) might be more relevant on another occasion, when the House is discussing business ethics. Tonight, we are debating the Scott report—the hon. Gentleman occasionally alluded to it.
Both law officers, the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, according to the definition in the "Oxford Companion to Law"—I always consult the best works of reference—are appointed from supporters of the party in power and are expected to defend the legality of the actions of Government Ministers. That definition could explain the extraordinary record of the present Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned—I have to use these phrases—Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell). Look at that record, which provides the most cogent argument for the depoliticising of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's job.
Look at the Attorney-General's handling of the Asil Nadir case and the Maxwell brothers saga. Then recall the right hon. and learned Gentleman's dismissal of a Serious Fraud Office forged letter as an April fool's joke—until another turned up. This is the right hon. and learned Gentleman who disregarded the insistence of the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) that the judge and the prosecuting counsel in the Matrix Churchill case should be informed of the right hon. Gentleman's reservations about signing public interest immunity certificates. Sir Richard Scott said of the Attorney-General—it is in the report:
"I do not accept that he was not at fault."
He stressed that
"the public interest dictates that the need for a fair trial outweighs the sensitivity of the documents".
That is not what happened. The Attorney-General was prepared to allow three innocent men, of whose activities the Government well knew, to go to prison to save the pelt of his Cabinet colleagues—[HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] That is the fact of the case, however much Conservative Members may disagree with it. They should read the report, because most of them have not.
Mr. David Shaw: The hon. Gentleman is acting again.
Mr. Faulds: I make better speeches than pretend parliamentarians with their dishonourable records.
He is an Attorney-General, incidentally, who has never questioned the fact that the Tory party is funded in large part by a crowd of crooks and fraudsters. Any denials? There seem to be none, despite my prompting.
Then there is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a man born to the purple who practises the arrogance of the true aristocrat. His very profile breathes disdain. The House should not misunderstand me: some of my best friends are aristocrats, and I have in my collection of English

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pottery a bulbous Staffordshire creamware mug bearing the motto "Chewton and Hay Forever"—perhaps the hon. Gentleman remembers the phrase. It is in delicate pink lettering, surrounded by roseate wreaths—a lovely piece. The motto is the election memento of one of the right hon. Gentleman's parliamentary ancestors of about the year 1780—I stand open to correction on that.
Such fellows—the right hon. Gentleman and his ancestor—assume entry to Parliament to be their birthright. Such as they judge their privy decisions to be beyond question and, of course, above their responsibility to account to Parliament. The Chief Secretary was one of the gang of three—a bunch of somewhat undistinguished junior Ministers—who composed the changes in the guidelines that permitted an increase in the provision to Iraq of weapon-making equipment, and a shift against Iran. The right hon. Gentleman thought the rewording so inconsequential as not to merit mention to the House; and besides, the public might not like it.
So the right hon. Gentleman denied the implications in a couple of dozen letters to Members of Parliament. Had he had my fortunate experience of playing both Falstaff and Mark Anthony—both brilliantly—and had he remembered their dissertations on honour, he might have had more conception of what honour is.
It is stated in the Scott report that the Chief Secretary's responses were "sophistry". That of course is the gentlemanly way of denoting fibbing. Sir Richard also reported that Parliament was "deliberately" and "designedly" misled. If the Chief Secretary was not deliberately and designedly misleading both Sir Richard and the House of Commons, we can only conclude that he is a simpleton. This fellow of All Souls, this scholar of Eton must be a simpleton. He did not understand the implications of the words that he had written into the guidelines.
The Prime Minister has tried to control—it is only too obvious—the Scott report. Last year Sir Richard produced a provisional report so that those criticised could suggest corrections—in other words, could water down the more direct criticisms. Apparently—this is an astonishing fact—more public money has been spent on civil servants monitoring the passage of the report and managing the response to it than was spent on Sir Richard's tribunal costs.
The personae fingered in the report were allowed eight days of pre-publication examination; but Opposition leaders were granted two and a half hours under strict oversight. Back Benchers, the poor bloody infantry, were permitted 10 minutes to collect their lumpy packages, lug them into the Chamber and study them. What a generous gesture—10 minutes to study a 1,800 page document.
Sir Richard stated that the report should simply have been presented to Parliament and then made available to Government, Opposition, media and public, so that we could examine it properly. That is not asking too much.
There followed the original debate. The right hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Lang), who is unfortunately not here now, in a ludicrously aggressive presentation, managed to convince himself that it was all the Opposition's fault and that the Government
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were blameless. His performance, perhaps after a little thought, this afternoon was somewhat more plodding and pedestrian.
Then followed—this is all part of the history, furious briefings by the Government to manipulate the media response to the whole issue. The conduct of the Government in this respect has been disgraceful and only too obvious. Sir Richard has complained in a letter that his report is being misrepresented by Ministers—how true that is. But the very terms and tenor of the Government's reaction, and their obfuscation, have been counterproductive, as we observe the more honourable Tory Members peeling off the parade.
The more Conservative Members have the political courage and moral honour to cast proper judgment on the Scott report and vote against the Government tonight, the more they will do to restore a little of Parliament's lost standing.
7.35 pm
Mr. Quentin Davies: I greatly welcomed the Prime Minister's decision to set up the Scott inquiry. It seemed to me designed to establish higher standards of integrity and openness in public life. It seemed an admission that, if there had been problems or allegations, the Government did not mind having a learned judge take an independent look at the machinery of government. It was a fine and brave decision, and I proudly hoped that we would stay on that high road.
Over the past few days, however, I have been somewhat disappointed. I was disappointed by the speech made this evening by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. He made a characteristically able speech, in which he mentioned a great many things—everything and anything, as far as I could see, including arms sales policies of the 1960s and information technology arrangements in the Customs and Excise. Indeed, he mentioned everything except the subject that we ought to be examining tonight.
The subject that we should examine tonight concerns the fact that the learned judge, Lord Justice Scott, has after three years has come back to the House with his five volumes and his 1,800 pages of detailed analysis and with the considered judgment that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was guilty of misleading Parliament.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no ambiguity about these judgments. I offer hon. Members three small extracts. The first reads:
"Mr. Waldegrave knew, first hand, the facts that, in my opinion. rendered the 'no change in policy' statement untrue."
That comes on page 475 of the report. The second example comes from page 495 of volume I:
"The answers to PQs, in both Houses of Parliament, failed to inform Parliament of the current state of Government policy on non-lethal arms sales to Iraq. This failure was deliberate".
The third example is to be found on page 507 of volume I:
"the Government's statements made in 1989 and 1990 about policy on defence exports to Iraq consistently failed … to comply with
the standards set by paragraph 27 of the Questions of Procedure for Ministers and, more important, failed to discharge the obligations imposed by the constitutional principle of Ministerial accountability."
We have two tasks before us this evening, and we had better fulfil them properly and make sure that people outside this House, and generations to come, recognize

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that we have faced up to the issues. First, will we accept the judgments of Lord Justice Scott of the type that I have just read out? Secondly, if we accept them, what will we do about them? Before considering these questions, I want to issue a plea: that nothing we do in this House—I am not referring here to the Chief Secretary—can afterwards be said to have left the rest of us open to the charge that we did not always discharge our obligations with the highest degree of good faith and clarity.
Let us, therefore, not deceive ourselves. Let us not be carried away or allow ourselves to fall into the temptation of being diverted so comfortably into talking about something else so that we do not have to face the harsh reality before us. In that context, I hope that we hear nothing more about whether there was a change in the guidelines or whether the guidelines were simply being flexibly interpreted—because of course there was a change in the guidelines. There are two separate sets of guidelines: those of November 1984; and the separate text, which was agreed in December 1988, and implemented from February 1989. They are referred to in the report: the first set is referred to on page 171, and the second set on page 397. I do not have the time, in the 10 minutes that I have to speak, to read them out, but they are there. So let us not fool ourselves; there were two separate guidelines.
When each set was independently valid, from 1984 to 1988 and from 1989 to 1990, it is perfectly true that they could have been interpreted more or less flexibly. But it is absolutely clear beyond a peradventure from all the evidence in the report that the whole of the Whitehall machine was working on the first set of guidelines until February 1989, and then it worked on the second set of guidelines. It is perfectly clear that the third guideline—No. 3 in the Howe guidelines; C in the separate set of Waldegrave guidelines—were conceptually very different and that very different decisions were taken. The acid test—the control experiment—is that there are at least three items for which export licences were refused correctly under the Howe guidelines, in 1988, and were accepted under the Waldegrave guidelines in 1989. Those items were a tactical radar system produced by Plessey and two simulators from Marconi and Ferranti. So let us not fool ourselves about that.
Let us also not talk about whether it is reasonable to make changes in arms sales policy—of course it is. No one is denying that; it is no problem at all. But it is very different to make changes and then pretend to the House that they have not been made. That is the point.
Let us also not fool ourselves and spend time talking about whether we perhaps should not have a policy on the disclosure of arms exports or whether we should have a policy of greater disclosure. I would perfectly accept arguments in the national interest that we should say nothing about our arms exports to the middle east. I would have been perfectly happy to accept that, and if Ministers had done that I would not have quarrelled with it, but they did not. They pretended that they were making statements that were relevant, true and informative to the House; the statements that they made were anything but that.
Let us also not spend too much time—although, of course, the point is important—discussing the integrity of my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary. I accept his integrity and that he did not wish to mislead the House. I entirely accept that he never thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to mislead the House of Commons? How can I best
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do that?" I accept that entirely and I accept, as the judge did, his sincerity in that matter but, whatever may have been his subjective sentiment at the relevant time, the objective fact—I shall prove it in a moment—is that he did mislead the House. Therefore, I am afraid that he has made a very serious mistake.
I have no wish at all to deprive the Government of an extremely able Minister and a man for whom I have always had a high personal regard, but I am afraid that he must take responsibility for that mistake. Whatever happens tonight, it must be made clear that someone is taking responsibility and that the principle has been restored that Ministers remain fully accountable to the House of Commons.
I do not have much time for quotations in the short time allotted to me in this debate, but I shall provide a couple to reinforce the point. On 7 February, my right hon. Friend, through his private secretary, replied to Mr. Alan Clark:
"Mr. Waldegrave is content for us to implement a more liberal policy on defence sales, without any public announcement on the subject."
That was on 7 February. Over the next few months of April, May, June and July, my right hon. Friend sent a series—some 30-odd—of letters saying:
"The Government have not changed their policy on defence sales to Iraq or Iran."
We find in the report that, from 8 February—the next day—the Ministry of Defence working group meeting was saying that
"We now have the new guidelines. We are working on those."
The whole bureaucracy went into a new gear and implemented loyally the new guidelines. There is some evidence that some of the civil servants did not approve of them, but that is another matter. They implemented them loyally.
We then have another direct quotation of my right hon. Friend. On 28 March, he wrote an internal memorandum, again to another Minister, to say he saw
"no reason to change this flexible approach for applications to export defence related equipment to Iraq … we should now revert to the stricter implementation of the present guidelines as applied to Iran"
In other words
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Time is up.
7.45 pm
Mr. Jim Cousins: We should remember that we are a working Parliament and that we are rightly proud—if we are to be more than a tourist attraction—of our record in calling successive Governments, whether they were represented by Ministers or by mandarins, to account.
The facts are set out in Vice-Chancellor Scott's report, and it is left to us to form the judgments and to make the conclusions. We should recall, too, that the deceits that are recorded in his report are still continuing.
Only last week, an hon. Member was told in a parliamentary reply that mortar-locating radar was sold to the Iraqis in the 1980s because it was deemed at the time not to be a significant enhancement of the Iraqis' ability to make war. We can clearly see from the Scott report what that meant at the time. The report recounts how Lord Howe, then the Foreign Secretary, reviewed defence sales

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to Iran. He was told by senior officials that we had sold 10 times as much defence equipment to the Iraqis as we had to the Iranians. The reason was that Iraq was
"better equipped already, so a given item might well not be a significant enhancement for Iraq, but would be if sold to Iran."
So the Iranians, who were poorly equipped and relying on human wave attacks, would find mortar-locating radar very useful—it would be a "significant enhancement"—but the Iraqis were already equipped to mow those attacks down and would not find them such an enhancement. The supply of mortar-locating radar would, therefore, have made only a slight difference to them. That is the quality of argument that Lord Justice Scott found rehearsed between the Foreign Secretary and senior Foreign Office officials on 7 November 1986. How shameful, how disgusting and—as it turned out—how utterly mistaken was that argument.
The report demonstrates that a Minister approved the diversion of 29 armoured recovery vehicles—tank hulls fitted with cranes—from Jordan to Iraq, in flagrant breach of all the undertakings that had been given to Parliament. That was done, and it was concealed.
The exporters were not always shady outfits from the grimmer reaches of the M25. In one dramatic case, a Government-owned company committed that type of offence. In 1986, a British Government-owned company sold to the Iraqis British designs for a specialist weapons testing centre to be built at Basra. That company, whose sole shareholder was the Ministry of Defence, wrote to the Ministry of Defence that it was conscious of the need for a low profile. The company also stated that the Iraqi officers, who were to be trained to use the weapons testing centre, were to be designated and disguised as civilian Government servants during their stay in the United Kingdom. What did the Ministers and civil servants responsible at that time imagine that the weapons testing centre would be used for? Table tennis? Nor was that deal good business, because the export credits on the contract were never paid. Saddam did not pay and the British taxpayer paid more than £700 million.
There can be no doubt that Britain played its part in building up Saddam's strategic weapons capacity. When a defence intelligence expert was first told of Space Research Corporation's rather odd order in 1988 for the largest forgings placed with a British company since the second world war, he pointed out to his superiors and to the export controllers that his friend, Mick Bayne, formerly of the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment—one might feel that that was a hint of a clue—worked for Space Research Corporation. Yet no inquiries were made and neither defence intelligence nor the export controllers followed up that very obvious hint. One might feel that an exchange of Christmas cards might have done it—"Dear Mick, how are the kids and what are you doing with the largest forgings built in Britain since 1945 at your company, Space Research Corporation?" Incredibly, it took another 18 months for the super-gun to be discovered. If the intelligence services function like that, they should not be allowed out after dark without a police escort. That is a record of the most demonstrable incompetence and somebody must be called to account.
Of course, when the super-gun was discovered, the reaction of the Government was to lie about it for the next three years and to conceal the truth. Sadly, it was
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concealed from the Select Committee on Trade and Industry—when it looked into the super-gun affair—that, since May 1989, there had been a specialised Iraqi procurement control operation. It was also concealed from the Select Committee that Sir Robin Butler had conducted an inquiry into the super-gun and had come up with much the same conclusions as the Trade and Industry Committee was later to come to, with one exception. If the Trade and Industry Committee had had the same information at that time, it would have gone further and certainly the Matrix Churchill trial would never have occurred.
If this affair is to pass without correction and without investigation and if we are to have so little control or interest in what Ministers and mandarins do in our name, the rights of Parliament will count for nothing. Certainly if we continue to talk of our honour, anyone still listening to us will rightly start counting his spoons.
7.53 pm
Sir Kenneth Carlisle: I am glad to take part in this debate, especially as I was appointed a Minister in the Ministry of Defence 10 days before the Gulf war broke out. All of us can agree that Scott wrote a weighty report that certainly deserves a considered response. There are lessons to be drawn from the report, to which I shall return.
If we are to consider the report properly, we must get away from the fevered efforts to gain political advantage from it which, perhaps inevitably, have grabbed the limelight since publication. Those efforts are assisted by the fact that any interpretation can be drawn from such a lengthy document and we can all find quotations to support our lines of argument. If we take the time to stand back and review the central issues on which the inquiry was established, we see that in reality the facts simply do not bear out the main charges made. Scott resolved the report in favour of those who were charged, and that conclusion needs repeating and reiterating.
First, there was simply no conspiracy to send innocent men to gaol.
Mr. Sheerman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is not this yet another abuse of Parliament and yet another former Minister who has been sent by the Tory Whips to sing exactly the same song from the same hymn-sheet?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. I sense that that might be a criticism of the Chair.
Mr. Sheerman: No, it is a criticism of the Whips.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. If it was a criticism of the Chair, I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would withdraw it.
Mr. Sheerman: I totally withdraw any criticism. I never intended any criticism of the Chair, but we all know that behind the Speaker's Chair certain pressures are applied by the Whips. It is very suspicious that very few independent Back Benchers have spoken from either side of the House.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Chair knows nothing about what happens behind the Speaker's Chair.
Sir Kenneth Carlisle: I resent that allegation most strongly. I have my own views. I am not standing for

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election again and I have not spoken before in this Session. I have every right to give my sincere views and it is shameful that the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) should take that view.
The two main decisions were, first, that there was no conspiracy to send innocent men to gaol and, secondly, that lethal arms did not go from this country to Iraq during the period in question. We must consider those two issues.
In an article recently in The Times,Lord Alexander of Weedon, a former chairman of the Bar Council, described the Attorney-General as
"an able lawyer, a good advocate and a man of total decency and integrity".
It would surprise me if the House did not agree with those sentiments.
There will always be disagreement about the interpretation of the law—indeed, that is why we have an appeals system from one court to another—but my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General gave careful consideration to the issues. It seems to me that the bulk of legal opinion backs his views. Significantly, the Master of the Rolls backed my right hon. and learned Friend's use of public interest immunity certificates in criminal cases. We must remember that the rules on PII certificates are judge-made. They are not made by politicians but by law as interpreted by judges.
Some commentators have mischievously described PII certificates as gagging orders and the Opposition have sought to reinforce that in the public mind, but that is not the case. As we all know, it is for the judge to decide what documents are required by the defence to secure a fair trial. In the Matrix Churchill case, the system worked as it was designed to work. The defence lawyers agreed with the working of the system and the men were not found guilty. The Attorney-General also alerted the Treasury solicitor to the reservations of my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister. If the House is prepared to set aside politics, we should accept that the Attorney-General's interpretation of the law was well grounded. There was no evidence that anyone was gagged and the judge had sight of all the relevant documents. The system worked well and just as it was intended to do. There was certainly no conspiracy to convict innocent men, as some have so ignorantly claimed.
I now turn to the case of arms sales. It is self-evident—and I have some experience of this—that as a country we have the most careful and meticulous of policies among arms manufacturing countries. We are more careful about the countries to which we export arms than, I think, any other country. Anyone who reads the Scott report will be informed of the almost endless meetings and discussions that reflect our concern. There is a struggle to find the right balance between the ethical approach, national security and a valid wish to protect industrial jobs that are so precious to those who have them. Would there have been such meticulous discussions in other European countries, such as France? Would other European countries have agonised over the interpretation of the guidelines? I submit not.
In the end, the supply of military equipment to the evil regime of Iraq was minuscule. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir T. King), with whom I had the honour to serve in the Ministry of Defence, has vividly brought reality to the House. We should take note of his words.
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The Scott report clears the Government on the main charges, but we should consider carefully the proposals for reform. There are lessons to be learnt. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) that we require more open government. We have been moving towards it, but we can do more. We should be more open except where national security makes that impossible. Every Minister—this applies to Ministers of all Governments, and I was a Minister in this Government—knows how easy it is to give unhelpful answers. We all know how easy it is to stonewall. I am glad that we are considering again how we could be more forthright with the House.
My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade made a fulsome response to some of the recommendations that are set out in the report. For example, we are to re-examine the information that is available on arms exports. We shall consider export controls and the licensing procedure. We shall consider also the role of Customs and Excise in prosecutions and the relationship of that body with the Attorney-General. We shall explore the scope of PII certificates. At the same time we must always consider the practicalities. Government is difficult. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Needham) produced some carefully worded guidelines on how difficult government is and how practical we should seek to be.
As I have said, government is never easy. We all know that. A Minister is surrounded by conflicting issues and contradictory demands. He must find a way through much advice and many difficulties to arrive at sensible decisions. I am convinced that, in the real world, my right hon. Friends conducted themselves correctly and with integrity. Indeed, the Scott report absolves them of the two main charges levelled at them and the Government by the Opposition.
8.2 pm
Mr. Jim Cunningham: We have had about four and a half hours of debate on the Scott report. So far, however, I have heard no mention of the consequences of the collapse of Matrix Churchill and the effect of Ministers' actions, directly or indirectly, on the employees of the company. For various reasons the employees were not allowed to present a case for compensation. They were allowed to give written but not oral evidence. In effect, they were not given their day in court. We claim that we are a just society, but in a major investigation—probably one of the biggest this century—some of the principal players were not allowed to give oral evidence.
We have heard much about the national interest, but what about the local interest? What about the people of Coventry? What do they think about these events? Ministers and Conservative Back-Bench Members have not said a word about the feelings of the people of Coventry. They have not talked about those who were employees of Matrix Churchill. That is well documented, however, and I do not want to go through it this evening.
It was the collapse of Matrix Churchill in 1992 that triggered the Scott inquiry. That in itself merits an investigation. The collapse left over 600 skilled men and women—many in my constituency—out of work. It is an area that had already witnessed the decline of the manufacturing and engineering industry. Those employed

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in the manufacturing industry in the west midlands, and especially in Coventry, had experienced the traumatic recession of the 1980s. Yet these people were denied access to justice through an inquiry into the collapse of Matrix Churchill.
An inquiry would have served several purposes. It would have established whether Matrix Churchill would have collapsed without Government interference in its affairs. It would have established also whether ex-employees were entitled to compensation for loss of employment. It would have given ex-employees the chance to present their case. As I have said, that opportunity was denied them during the Scott inquiry, except for written evidence. It has been suggested for some while—at least since Sir Richard Scott defined the remit of his inquiry—that there should be a second inquiry. That is the only way in which the ex-employees will get justice.
Ministers and civil servants had the opportunity to defend themselves and present their version of the truth. While that took place, the ex-employees watched from afar. They were not allowed to give oral evidence at the Scott inquiry, despite the fact that their livelihoods vanished with the collapse of Matrix Churchill. They are the forgotten victims. I remind the House of their grief, their loss and the need for justice on their account.
The Government have claimed consistently that there is no case for a separate inquiry into the collapse of Matrix Churchill. The Government's principal argument has been that the company was over-reliant on the Iraqi market. When United Nations sanctions were imposed on Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait, the market was lost and the company collapsed. The Government said in April 1994 that the company was trying to find orders at what can be described only as a very bad time. They said that it was as simple as that. Such loftiness would be laughable were the future of more than 600 people not at stake. But the case is far from simple.
There are many reasons why there should be a separate investigation into the collapse of Matrix Churchill, some of which I shall outline briefly. Was the company sustainable without the Iraqi market for its goods? The evidence is that, at the very least, there was a good chance that it was. From the 1950s, Matrix Churchill developed and marketed CNC lathes and manufactured thread-grinding machines. As at the time of the collapse there were only four thread-grinding machine manufacturers in the world, Matrix was well placed to divert its energy into that market. In addition, Matrix was the leading lathe manufacturer in the United Kingdom and the most advanced technologically. If any UK company could have branched out into new world markets for lathes, or built on existing ones, the evidence points clearly to Matrix Churchill.
It must not be forgotten that in 1991 the company was planning a new range of lathes, which it was confident would be world beating. Although it is true that it exported heavily to Iraq, the middle east was not its only market. It traded also with Germany and Japan. Indeed, it exported 60 per cent. of its products, excluding those to Iraq. Had the company had the same encouragement to develop its markets in other areas—the encouragement that it was given to trade with Iraq—there may have been many potentially lucrative markets.
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It was not only to Germany and Japan that Matrix could have looked. In the early 1990s the company was beginning to build relations with eastern Europe. It was planning to involve itself in the rebuilding of the manufacturing industry of the former eastern bloc. It may be speculative to suggest that eastern Europe could have been a lifeline, but there is strong evidence to suggest that it might very well have been that.
Eastern Europe desperately needed manufacturing expertise. Matrix was a leading UK company, with a proud tradition and a highly skilled work force. It could have become involved in, for example, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Such markets could have helped to sustain the company. In short, the case that Matrix was nothing without Iraq is far from true. There were other markets in which it could have become involved. An inquiry would have been able to examine whether Matrix would have survived. The very fact that the question is uncertain merits an inquiry, not least because the livelihoods of so many people are at stake.
That brings me to my second point: whether Government involvement was in any way to blame for Matrix Churchill's demise. That is central to the ex-employees' argument for compensation. If Government interference was partially to blame, the case for compensation is irresistible. Again, an inquiry would establish the truth.
It is clear from the evidence, for I want to stick to the evidence, that Matrix Churchill was encouraged by the Government to export to Iraq. If, as the Government claim, the company was over-reliant on Iraq, the Government are to blame. At a meeting between a former Minister of Defence, Alan Clark, and Matrix Churchill executives, Mr. Clark advised on how to make applications for export licences. It was given the nod to export to Iraq. No attempt was made to encourage exports elsewhere. Therefore, had the Government demonstrated reluctance to grant further export licences, Matrix Churchill may have been forced to redirect its efforts. The other markets, which I have described, would have been exploited. Iraq would have been left aside. The Government gave no consideration to that, and for that reason alone there is a strong case for a separate inquiry.
It is evident that Matrix Churchill was being used, through the work of one director, to gather information on Iraqi procurement. Did that contribute directly or indirectly to the collapse? A separate inquiry would establish that. Yet there is one more aspect to consider. There was a chance of a management buy-out—a chance that collapsed with the company. Matrix Churchill was controlled by Iraqi directors through a company called Technology Development Group. The management of Matrix Churchill planned to buy out the Iraqi equity and achieve sole control. That was also the intention of the Iraqi directors. On 21 December 1990, the executives cleared a statement with the Department of Trade and Industry, which read:
"The directors are more confident that the deal to buy-out the Iraqi financial interest will succeed."
It continued:
"At a meeting this week, the DTI recognised our efforts and indicated that a speedy resolution of our plans to acquire 100% equity in the business would be welcomed."
There appears to have been sufficient interest in Matrix Churchill for a buy-out. Financial backing was available. But the arrest of Matrix Churchill directors, leading to a

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trial that should never have taken place, scuppered the buy-out deal and signalled the demise of the company. That mistake on the part of the Government—a conclusion reached in the Scott report—cost Matrix Churchill its future and the jobs of more than 600 people.
Government chaos and poor intelligence co-ordination contributed directly to the collapse of the buy-out. That must merit a separate inquiry into the collapse. At the very least, it would establish the degree to which the Government are culpable. In addition, it would determine whether the ex-employees of Matrix Churchill are entitled to compensation.
It is ironic that the Iraqi Government are—if reports are true—to be allowed to use frozen assets in this country to claim compensation against the firm that bought Matrix Churchill. How ironic indeed that British courts are to be used to pursue a British company when such action is denied to British employees. I hope that it shows the injustice that has been suffered by the ex-employees. They must not be forgotten in this debate.
8.12 pm
Mr. Rupert Allason: May I remind the House that one of the most important people involved in the debate today is Paul Henderson? He is a man who volunteered his services to the Security Service when he was travelling behind eastern Europe. He was subsequently recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service. In my judgment, and, indeed, that of Mr. T, who gave evidence for him at the Old Bailey, he is a very brave man, particularly as he was willing to go back to Baghdad after the execution of Farzad Bazoft.
In my judgment, officials in Whitehall would have been better off trying to find ways to get Mr. Henderson a medal than trying to put him in prison. It is a fact that there was a conspiracy to put him in prison. If one reads volume 3, and all of section G, one will see that it is quite clear that every possible obstacle was put in the way of his defence. It is also perfectly clear that the support that was given, in terms of documents to the defence, was given grudgingly. That is also in the report.
Mr. Henderson was the subject of public interest immunity certificates, and I shall pursue that issue, as it is important. It is not just a matter for spies and arms dealers. PIIs are used all too frequently, particularly by abusing the term "national security". There are several different ways in which one can apply for a PII certificate, and using the words "national security" takes the matter into a completely different category.
As is made clear in G11.9, in November 1991, the Home Secretary signed a certificate to say that, if documents went to Matrix Churchill defendants, it would result in
"innocent civilians both inside and outside the United Kingdom"
being killed. The only innocent civilian who was putting his life at risk and was likely to be killed was Paul Henderson, and all he wanted was confirmation from the Government that he had worked for MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service.
Mr. Bellingham: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Allason: I shall not, I am afraid.
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There is clear evidence of the abuse of the term "national security". Look at G10.28. Government lawyers took three particular lines. Their third line of defence was applications for PII certificates on the grounds of national security. It is astonishing that the abuse of the words "national security" in applications for PII certificates was disputed by David Bickford, legal adviser to SIS and the Security Service. That is quite clear in G18.40.
The precedents for national security are also quite clear:
"If a responsible Minister stated that production of a document would jeopardise public safety it is inconceivable that any Court would make an order for its production."
That is what Lord Justice Donaldson said was, in effect, a trump card.
I quote again a judgment used as recently as 1993:
"The decision on whether the requirements of national security outweigh the duty of fairness in any particular case is for the Government and not for the courts; the Government alone has access to the relevant information, and in any event the judicial process is unsuitable for reaching, decisions on national security."
It is quite clear that only Ministers can decide these issues. They should not pass the matter to the courts.
Indeed, in a case in which I was directly involved, where I was the defendant, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd) said in his certificate:
"The preservation of national security is the duty of the Crown which alone is effectively equipped to judge its dictates."
In short, the words "national security" turn PIIs into a trump card, to the disadvantage of defendants.
Mr. Bellingham: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Allason: No, because time is pressing.
The idea that some of this damage to national security could be "unquantifiable", as described by my right hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones), is quite risible.
I now deal with the conduct of the Attorney-General, whose integrity I do not doubt for one moment. The fact, however, is that he failed to stop the prosecution at an early stage. It is also the case that somebody somewhere failed to tell the judge of the President of the Board of Trade's reservations about the certificate that he had signed. Most significantly, the advice that the Attorney-General gave regarding PIIs and the duty of Ministers was perceived by Lord Justice Scott to be wrong. If Scott is wrong, the offence is even greater, because there was no even-handed approach to the suppression of the documents going to the defence, because the PIIs were used only to disadvantage the defence.
The fact is that, even after calling in the Matrix Churchill papers, the Attorney-General still had no idea that Henderson was an SIS agent. The question that has yet to be addressed is why the Director General of the Security Service, Sir Patrick Walker, or the chief of the SIS, Sir Colin McColl, simply did not take a stroll down Whitehall to Buckingham gate and tell the Attorney-General, "This is our man." What message does that give to other people who wish to assist our security and intelligence services?
As regards the future, I very much hope that we shall have a complete review of the way in which PIIs are used. I should like to see a Crown Immunity Bill so that we can

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get rid of the mess of judge-made law. I would like it in statute, so that we can all understand the criteria by which Ministers can or cannot claim public interest immunity. I should also like a substantial review of Customs and Excise to be carried out, removing its right to bring independent prosecutions, and making it subordinate to the Crown Prosecution Service.
It is clear from paragraph 27 of G17 that Customs and Excise was out of control, and working on auto-pilot. The letter from the chairman, Sir Brian Unwin, to Sir Colin McColl complaining about the evidence of his officer in the Old Bailey, describing Paul Henderson as a very, very brave man, is one of the most disgraceful letters that I have ever seen. Sir Brian should be ashamed of himself; but I am delighted that, at least on that occasion, Sir Colin was willing to stand up for one of his officers.
No doubt the compensation issue will be dealt with elsewhere, but the fact remains that 700 people lost their jobs at Matrix Churchill. Some two and a half years ago, I wrote that it struck me as appropriate for about seven others to lose their jobs at Westminster. I hope that, when he winds up, my right hon. Friend will agree that PII certificates should never again be used in a criminal case to cover whole classes of document; I also hope that he will agree that there should now be a presumption of disclosure, not suppression.
As for the squabbling of judges and lawyers in the columns of The Times about who is right and who is wrong about public interest immunity and Crown immunity, let us make that a matter for the House. Let us pass statute law once and for all, so that we never again see such a disagreeable mess—a mess that could have allowed innocent men to go to prison. We must err on the side of disclosure, even if that means redacting documents and blotting out sensitive areas. PII certificates are a legitimate instrument to protect witnesses and the identities of informants, but it is high time the House acted to prevent future abuse.
I do not care so much about the export of dual-purpose machine tools to the middle east, and I am not particularly concerned about the writing of disingenuous letters to my parliamentary colleagues; but I do care about PII certificates, because they can affect all our constituents. I am currently in touch with two gentlemen who feel that they are the victims of injustice, because evidence that they wanted to deploy in their defence was suppressed through instruments of this kind—instruments that can give rise to considerable injustice.
If the House is to send any message to people who wish to support our security and intelligence services in the future, those people must be certain that the full weight of Whitehall supports them. They do not want spineless bureaucrats trying to protect their own backsides, and trying to ensure that innocent men go to prison.
8.22 pm
Mr. Terry Davis: Several Conservative Members have tried to suggest that this whole affair resulted from the Government's concern for exports and jobs. They should try telling that to my constituents who used to work at Matrix Churchill, and lost their jobs in the aftermath of the prosecution of three of its executives. They should try telling it to my
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constituents working at BSA Tools, whose managing director was arrested and charged. The charges were eventually dropped, because a Government document supporting his defence had belatedly come to light.
The debate is not about exports, jobs or the arms trade; I wish it were. It is about Sir Richard Scott's report. There should be no difference between us about the facts found in that report. Sir Richard says that the guidelines for exports to Iraq were changed, and I make no complaint about that; the Government were entitled to make the decision.
Sir Richard also finds, however, that among Ministers present at the meeting was the present Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave). That cannot be denied. He also finds that it was decided that full disclosure should not be made to the House of Commons. The Government and the Opposition will disagree about whether full disclosure should have been made, but that is not the real point. Sir Richard goes on to find that the right hon. Member for Bristol, West sent 38 misleading letters to Members of Parliament who had inquired about the guidelines for exports to Iraq, and that is wrong.
Lawyers tell me that, according to a legal principle, "The thing speaks for itself." If someone takes action that has obvious and automatic consequences, it can be assumed that that person intends those consequences. I should have thought that sending 38 misleading letters would mean that the intention was there. I can understand someone's making a mistake once or twice; I can understand their sending five misleading letters; but what about 10, 20, or even 38?
The right hon. Member for Bristol, West—the present Chief Secretary—says that he did not intend to mislead those 38 Members of Parliament, and Sir Richard Scott believes him. As the right hon. Member for Bristol, West is not only an honourable Gentleman but a Privy Councillor and therefore a right honourable Gentleman, we must believe him: we must believe that he did not intend to mislead when he signed those letters. Sir Richard says, however, that the letters were designedly misleading, so someone intended to mislead the 38 Members of Parliament.
Of course, we all realise that the right hon. Gentleman did not sit down and dictate 38 letters. They were drafted for him, and they were drafted to mislead the recipients. One civil servant has had the moral courage to resign, but others are still there, and some seem to have been promoted. That is wrong, but it extends to a high level in the civil service.
I see no evidence that the Government will do anything about the way in which the civil service has behaved. The Scott report has destroyed any faith I had in the honesty and integrity of the civil service, and I believe that the same applies to most of my hon. Friends—and, perhaps, many Conservative Members. I am afraid that the question of what is to be done to restore that honesty and integrity, and the respect in which the civil service used to be held, will have to be put to a Labour Government after the next general election, because we shall see no action from the present Government.
The guilt of the civil service, however, does not let the Chief Secretary off the hook. He signed 38 misleading letters. I can think of only two explanations. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman does not read the letters he signs:

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perhaps he simply writes "Dear Tom, Dick or Harry … Yours, William", in which case a rubber stamp might as well be issued to civil servants. I do not think that he is as negligent as that, however. We must assume that, in his previous capacity, the right hon. Gentleman signed 38 misleading letters, having read them. He must have been in a position to know that they were misleading—as Sir Richard Scott has found—but did not realise that they were misleading. He just did not understand.
The right hon. Gentleman was present at a meeting that changed guidelines; he signed letters that said that those guidelines had not been changed; but he did not make the connection. He did not understand. Now he says that he did not intend to mislead—but we know that the letters were misleading. The Treasury has admitted that. Having put out a press statement a week ago saying that they were not misleading, it put out a new press statement saying, "Ah—we missed out the word 'intentionally'." The letters were misleading, but they were not intentionally misleading. The Chief Secretary did not intend to mislead 38 Members of Parliament; he just did not understand.
Now the right hon. Gentleman shelters behind his lack of understanding. He is a very honourable—indeed, right honourable—Gentleman, but he shelters behind that lack of understanding, and holds aloft his lack of intelligence. He uses his incompetence as a shield.
We are entitled to ask why the Prime Minister keeps the right hon. Gentleman as Chief Secretary. Some of us think that he does it so that the Prime Minister also has a shield. Others think that perhaps he keeps him as Chief Secretary because the Prime Minister must have someone in the Cabinet he can feel superior to—I do not know. I do know that, if the Prime Minister insists on keeping the Chief Secretary and will not get rid of him, the people of this country will almost certainly get rid of the Prime Minister at the next general election.
8.29 pm
Mr. Michael Alison: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis) referred to the 38 letters, and I hope to rebut his line by asking hon. Members to focus on one of the letters which was referred to—for those who would like to follow the text—on page 478 of the Scott report. That letter was addressed by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Sackville). I shall quote two significant parts from it to rebut the hon. Member for Hodge Hill's argument. It refers to the specific limitation on defence-related equipment.
Mr. Terry Davis: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would not want to mislead the House. The 38 letters do not include that one. Paragraph D4.3 shows that all 38 letters were sent before August. The letter that he is describing was sent in August.
Mr. Alison: I leave that aside, and concentrate on one letter that, in relation to the indictments levelled at the Chief Secretary, is nevertheless highly definitive in the way in which Lord Justice Scott handles it. My right hon. Friend's letter states:
"These"
guidelines
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"specifically prohibit the sale of any lethal equipment or any defence-related equipment which could significantly enhance the capability of either side to prolong or exacerbate the conflict."
The fact that the letter and other similar letters contain the phrase
"to prolong or exacerbate the conflict"
must mean that they needed some qualification and interpretation.
When that letter was written, in the middle of August 1989, the conflict between Iraq and Iran was already over. That is why its final sentence was:
"These restrictions on defence sales are kept under constant review, and are applied in the light of prevailing circumstances, including the ceasefire and developments in the peace negotiations".
Clearly that was a necessary qualification to the reference to prolonging or exacerbating conflict.
The Scott report goes on to observe that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary
"in his written evidence to the Inquiry, contended that the passage I have cited was an accurate statement of Government policy at the time."
He goes on to say that the Chief Secretary
"knew of this new formulation"—
that refers to the need to qualify the guidelines relating to the period of conflict between Iran and Iraq—
"but regarded it as an interpretation of the original guideline."
It is the report's use of the word "interpretation" that I want hon. Members to focus on. Interpretation is at the root of the Scott report's acquittal of my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary, and of his view as to where the truth lay. I quote the key reference in Scott to my right hon. Friend's complete integrity in the matter:
"I accept that Mr. Waldegrave and the other adherents of the `interpretation' thesis did not, in putting forward the thesis, have any duplicitous intention and, at the time, regarded the relaxed interpretation, or implementation, of guideline (iii) as being a justifiable use of the flexibility believed to be inherent in the Guidelines … Flexibility that reflects the differences of opinion that may arise whenever an attempt is made to apply a criterion that depends upon a value judgment is inevitable and desirable. For example, whether an enhancement of military capability is 'significant' is a matter on which opinions may differ. If opinions do differ, a decision falling within the spectrum created by those differences can legitimately be described as an application of the criterion. Guideline (iii) had, thus, an inherent and entirely acceptable flexibility."
It is worth pointing out that Lord Justice Scott expressed the view that it is possible for guidelines to possess
"an inherent and entirely acceptable flexibility."
The Scott report goes on to show how value judgments might arise. This is the most important dimension in which the blamelessness of my right hon. Friend comes through.
Mr. Sheerman: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Alison: I must make progress. The hon. Gentleman knows the problem we have with time-limited speeches.
Mr. Sheerman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): It had better be a serious point of order.
Mr. Sheerman: It is a serious point of order. This debate is about parliamentary democracy, and tonight we

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have heard from nine former Ministers—six of them ex-Etonians and six ex-Oxford university students—all of whom have a close connection with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Is the hon. Gentleman criticising the occupant of the Chair?
Mr. Sheerman: I have no intention of criticising the occupant of the Chair, but we all know—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. In that case, perhaps the hon. Gentleman will resume his seat, and think before he speaks on another occasion.
Mr. Alison: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I trust that you will give me injury time, not for being an old Etonian—I can do nothing about that—but for having been interrupted for minute and a half by that assault.
The Scott report goes through three different categories of how the guidelines might be understood. It says in paragraph D2.428 that the equipment subject to the guidelines "included 'defence-related' equipment". That phrase was included in my right hon. Friend's letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West, even though the phrase does not, strictly speaking, appear in the original criteria. The report goes on:
"Defence-related equipment would, in my opinion, normally be taken to include all dual-use equipment save for equipment which was earmarked for a non defence-related use. Dual-use equipment whose intended use, whether for civil or military purposes, was uncertain. ought to have been treated as subject of the Guidelines."
This is a matter in which a "value judgment"—the phrase used by Scott in relation to giving flexibility to the interpretation of guidelines—is manifestly appropriate.
Uncertainty as to whether equipment would be for civil or military purposes is manifest in some of the equipment referred to. For example, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) mentioned rubber boats. Was that equipment not subject to interpretation? My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary was entirely right to make the judgments he did. The criticism levelled at him in the Scott report relates entirely to interpretations or value judgments of particular pieces of equipment.
The Scott report is, in fact, doing exactly what it seeks to blame my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for doing—being perfectly value-free in its effort to secure that there was a fundamental change. I do not believe that there was a fundamental change. My right hon. Friend was entirely within the scope of Lord Justice Scott's own view that such matters are a matter of interpretation—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.
8.39 pm
Mrs. Margaret Ewing: In the short time that has been allocated to me to speak on behalf of the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru, I do not intend to follow the example of some previous speakers by quoting many of the chapters and verses of the substantial report. I should like again to put on record the fact that our minority parties were not allocated the opportunity of an early sight of the report prior to the President of the Board
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of Trade making his statement in the House last week, despite Madam Speaker's ruling that she wished to protect the rights of minority parties in the House. We still have not yet had a satisfactory reply from the Department of Trade and Industry outlining its arguments.
All the arguments in the Scott report have been put very eloquently by hon. Members from all parties and have highlighted where the Government have shown their weaknesses. At one stage, we became used to the phrase "lies, damned lies and statistics". As a result of the Government's interpretation of the Scott inquiry we have a new phrase: adjectives, damned adverbs and qualifications. The use of those adverbs, adjectives and qualifications is no excuse for the incompetence that they have shown and will not win back the people's support or faith in the idea of parliamentary accountability or ministerial responsibility.
I shall concentrate on two points of principle arising from the report. Although one Labour Member said that he did not feel that the report was about the arms trade, I believe that it has long-term implications for the arms trade. As a young student in the 1960s, I remember campaigning against the then Labour Government's attitude to the arms trade which was affecting Nigeria and resulted in the virtual eradication of the Ibo tribe in Biafra. That policy was driven by interests in oil and energy.
Since then, I have watched the development of arms trade policy over the years and I should like to refer to two issues. First, despite the Government knowing that Saddam Hussein was gassing the Kurds, a distinct preference was given to the Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq war. At the moment, the Government are considering selling Hawk aircraft and Scorpion tanks to Indonesia, despite the atrocities that it is enacting against the people of East Timor.
The Secretary of State spoke about the common conflict between morality in international affairs and jobs at home. There will always be conflicts of interest—I say that as a Member who represents a constituency with substantial defence interests—yet I have heard nothing logical either from the Treasury Front-Bench team or the official Opposition Front-Bench team about a long-term policy on the arms trade. The justification that seems to be given is that everybody else does it. Indeed, the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark), is on record in The House Magazine during the 1995 summer recess for praising the fact that we are
"second only to that of the United States"
in selling arms abroad. It is incumbent on all hon. Members to consider such a long-term strategy, which is why it is important that we consider the possibility of a defence diversification fund. All political parties face that challenge.
If there is to be a peace dividend, we must recognise that we also have a responsibility for those who are employed in the defence industry. Some hon. Members have made eloquent speeches on the jobs lost as a result of the Matrix Churchill scenario. In its dynamic budget, my party has already planned for £25 million a year in the first four years of independence to be put directly into a defence diversification fund so that people will have security of employment. Jobs and homes are of critical importance to everyone. If the Government were to implement such a policy instead of the short-term

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concessions that have been made today, they would gain much more respect throughout the country. It would be a positive step forward and it might restore some public confidence in the political process.
The phrase "freedom of information" has been bandied around a great deal since the Scott inquiry was set up and its report published. I first entered Parliament in 1974 and well remember supporting Bills on the freedom of information, introduced by such people as Sir Clement Freud, the then Member for Isle of Ely. They were all defeated by the then Government. Between 1979 and this Session, more than a dozen freedom of information Bills have been introduced—all apparently destined for the scrap heap of Government, Opposition or parliamentary indifference. If the Government were to introduce a Bill on freedom of information—it would undoubtedly receive cross-party support, since all of us believe in freedom of information—it would restore faith in the political profession.
I could say much more about the Scott inquiry, but time constraints limit me. Members of all parties must make up their minds on how they cast their votes. As a Scottish nationalist, I do not argue on the basis of parliamentary sovereignty. I argue the Scottish case for the sovereignty of the people and we must represent the views of our constituents tonight. Although a tumbrel of ministerial heads might bring some short-term satisfaction, the onus on all of us is to look for long-term solutions.
My final plea is therefore to Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies. There has been widespread agreement in this place that we should not—to refer to the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume)—play politics with the prospects for peace in Northern Ireland. The Ulster Unionists have been conspicuous by their absence during the debate, although they have given varying messages to the media. I say to them with all genuine sincerity, if potential opposition to the Government and votes have been bought by any arrangements in that sphere, it is a darker shade of deal than any I have ever known.
8.47 pm
Mr. Henry Bellingham: One reason why I am speaking in the debate is that Mr. Peter Allen, one of the defendants in the Matrix Churchill, was a constituent of mine. He used to work for the firm Cooper Roller Bearings in my constituency.
Two speeches made by Opposition Members in the debate made sense. The hon. Members for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Cunningham) and for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis) spoke at some length about jobs in their constituencies and the role that Customs and Excise obviously played in the destruction of jobs and an excellent company. My former constituent was a victim of all that.
Apart from those two speeches, the attitude of Labour Members has been hysterical. It was summed up by the number of interventions during the speech of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade and the number of totally bogus points of order. That is as sure a sign as anything that they are losing the argument and are worried because the debate is going against them.
The Labour party wanted the Scott report to be devastating and find that at least two Ministers had acted improperly and with impropriety. The report did not find
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that. For the past 10 days, Labour Members have been trying to convince themselves that it did find that. We have had nothing more than hysterical interventions. The one that summed them all up was that of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who has made two or three bogus points of order.
Mr. Sheerman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bellingham: I shall not give way at the moment.
One of the key aspects of the debate has been the sale of arms.
Mr. Sheerman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's previous point of order was out of order.
Mr. Bellingham: The Opposition were shattered because the report did not contain what they wanted.
Mr. Sheerman rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot stand up at will and choose what he wants to say. If he wants to apologise to the House, he can do so after the debate.
Mr. Bellingham: My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) summed up extremely well the perspective in which we must place the matter. He said that, throughout the period, countries such as France were exporting Mirage jet fighters and exocets. He also mentioned that a number of other countries were exporting lethal weapons. We could add to his list the fact that the Germans exported a variety of chemicals that were subsequently used in the chemical warfare programme.
Miss Emma Nicholson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bellingham: No, I shall not give way as I have only 10 minutes in which to make my speech.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater said that, when he went to look at the captured weapons, the only British item that he could find was a Land Rover. We can categorically say that not a single British-made Iraqi weapon was used to injure or kill a NATO service man. As my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade made clear, that contrasts with the Falklands war.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) asked a question about defence exports. In 1974, the total number of defence exports was £179 million; in 1979, the figure had gone up to £400 million. Many of those exports went to Argentina. As my right hon. Friend said, we are talking about type 42 destroyers, blowpipe missiles and Canberra aircraft—an array of front-line weaponry. Anyone who has been to the Falklands will probably have seen the grave of the first British service man to be killed in that conflict, Flight Lieutenant Nick Taylor, whose Harrier was shot down by a blowpipe missile.

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Opposition Members have given a great display of sanctimonious humbug over arms exports. It seems that they have now become little Englanders—they have gone from one extreme to the other. They now say that they do not want defence exports; they are now prepared to put at risk 400,000 jobs and procurement programmes for our armed forces. That point was well made this afternoon by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, who made a very good speech.
When we consider that period of arms exports we see that the Government can hold their head up high. I strongly believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave) can also hold his head high. I have read through the report—it is not a question of trying to select one or two quotations that may benefit our cause or the Opposition's cause. If Sir Richard Scott had found that my right hon. Friend had acted improperly or had deliberately misled Parliament, he would have said so, but he did not. That is why my right hon. Friend should not resign and I am pleased that he has not done so. I hope that he will remain in his job for a long time.
My former constituent, Mr. Peter Allen, was not involved in working for the security services, but the other two defendants were. I have read carefully the part of the report that deals with the Secret Intelligence Service, and I was interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) said. He made it clear that the security services did not stick up for the two defendants.
The press release issued by the Customs and Excise the other day is revealing. It states:
"In particular he gave no hint that these contracts concerned the supply of Matrix Churchill to Iraq of equipment specifically for military production. Against this background, Customs obtained an explicit view from the SIS that his involvement with them"—
Paul Henderson' s—
"was not a reason for not prosecuting him."
I find it extraordinary—as did my hon. Friend—that the SIS did not make information available to the Customs and Excise about his involvement in the security services. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay made clear, Paul Henderson risked his life on many occasions—he went to Iraq, served his country and ran the risk that he would be arrested. He would have been given no mercy. It is extraordinary that the information was not disseminated in a better way.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay will vote with the Government this evening. On the basis of what my hon. Friend has said, I believe that the Attorney-General should not resign. If we consider the detail in the report, we see that, although the first the Attorney-General's office heard about the involvement of the security services was in July 1991, it is clear that the Attorney-General himself was not informed. I believe that, by calling the meeting in September 1992—when he asked the prosecuting counsel and the head of Customs and Excise to talk to him about the case—he wanted to establish whether there were grounds for the prosecution not to go ahead. If he had been in a different position in relation to Customs and Excise—as he is to the Serious Fraud Office and the Crown Prosecution Service—it would have been different. But he was not in overarching control of that prosecution, and he could not have issued a nolle prosequi
674
except in extreme circumstances—whereby prosecuting counsel had recommended that action to him. That is why there must be a change in the rules over Customs and Excise prosecutions—they should be put on the same footing as those of the CPS and the SFO. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will address that issue carefully.
I have studied the report carefully and I feel strongly that a speech by one of my hon. Friends sums it up best. My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay has a far greater grasp of the subject than me. He has considered the matter carefully and, on the basis of what he says, I believe that, if Sir Richard Scott had found that the Attorney-General had acted improperly or unwisely, he would have said so and made that crystal clear. But he erred on the side of extreme caution. He did not want to interfere in what he knew to be an independent prosecuting body, Customs and Excise, and he did not have the right information before him, which was the fault of the SIS and, to some extent, Customs and Excise, which by then had much more information. The idea that the Attorney-General should stand down is ridiculous.
The Opposition are hysterical and deeply shattered and disappointed by what has appeared in the report. The Prime Minister asked for a full and comprehensive report, which is what we have received. That report in no way warrants the resignation of any Ministers. I hope that all my hon. Friends will support the Government and that the Ministers will remain in their places and carry on doing the excellent jobs they have been doing.
8.57 pm
Mr. Allan Rogers: It has been a long time since the events that we are debating took place. As various Conservative Members have said, we should recall the background against which the events took place.
From 1987 until 1992, I was the Opposition spokesman on defence responsible for defence procurement and I had an opportunity to follow this matter quite closely. It should be remembered that at that time the Prime Minister was exhorting everyone to bat for Britain. As a result of her exhortations, we had deals such as Malaysia and Pergau and the involvement of overseas aid to obtain contracts, which has been strongly denied by the Government time and time again; the export of arms to Saudi Arabia, the Al Yamamah deal; and the export of arms to Jordan, which was reneged on—the bill was picked up by the British taxpayer as a result of the funding and support from the Export Credits Guarantee Department. In other words, the Prime Minister turned arms exporting into a virtue. Quite naturally, Government Members were flexible with the regulations, which is perhaps the key to the discussions that have gone on today.
I disagree with the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) and with other hon. Members who have said that the Ministers, by withholding public interest immunity certificates, put two innocent men in jeopardy—that they may have had to go to gaol. Quite frankly, in my book, they were guilty: they were senior officers of a company that had been breaking the regulations that were laid down by the Government and they had been conspiring with Ministers to export arms to Iraq. It is beyond me how anyone can claim that they were innocent men who were likely to go to gaol.

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Like many other hon. Members, I was disappointed with the Scott report. The report is not clear—which is why there have been so many interpretations of it. However, some fairly basic questions must be asked. The man who, in an odd way, is the most honest in all this has clearly laid out his stall. He was the Minister of State in the Department of Trade and Industry; he then went to the Department of Defence as the Minister of State in charge of defence procurement; and he has been alluded to in other parts of this debate—the right hon. Alan Clark. He pursued with great rigour his Prime Minister's line of batting for Britain.
When the right hon. Member for Hove (Sir T. Sainsbury) was moved from defence procurement to the Department of Trade and Industry and made a statement, I was outside in the Members' Lobby talking to John Sergeant from the BBC. Mr. Clark crossed the Members' Lobby and I asked, "Why aren't you in there making that statement?" He said—I will paraphrase it slightly and leave out his fruity language—"I don't care if those wogs want to kill themselves, as long as I can promote British jobs." That was an honest answer. I asked him, "Why don't you go into the Chamber and say that?" He said, "Because they won't bloody let me." That was the attitude of a Minister of the Crown. We ought to judge the present Chief Secretary and the Attorney-General against that background, because the Government were completely dedicated to developing the arms trade and raising it to the level of a virtue.
A number of simple questions must be asked. Were arms exported against or contravening the guidelines that were laid down? It does not matter whether they were amended or flexible. Did Ministers know that these arms were being exported contrary to the guidelines'? Did Ministers deliberately mislead Parliament? The Government are guilty on all these charges. Regardless of how people try to defend them from certain sections of the Scott report, there is absolutely no doubt about it. Government Members are not condemned by the Scott report—although tonight the issue under discussion is the Scott report—they are condemned out of their own mouths: by the answers that they have given to parliamentary questions and by statements that they made at the time.
No one now can deny that arms were exported. The President of the Board of Trade said earlier that we did not export tanks and aeroplanes; as someone said, that is a silly argument. The ex-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), who is Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, said that all he saw was a Land Rover lined up. That did not mean anything except perhaps that the rest of the Land Rovers could go a hell of a lot faster than the Russian tanks when they were fleeing the battlefield. Undoubtedly, battlefield weapons were exported. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) summarised the equipment involved.
We did supply lethal weapons; Scott illustrates that. Although it may appear a small item, it is crucial, and shows that the Government were condemned at that time—not by Scott. All Scott does is to illustrate the condemnation and the action that the Governments took.
On pages 853 and 854, the Scott report states that MI6 had reported in 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987 that Egypt was diverting ammunition to Iraq. On page 858, there is evidence that a company called Allivane had supplied
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Egypt with more than 1 million large-calibre artillery ammunition fuses. Why were those going to Egypt—to attack Israel, Jordan or Saddam or to build a pyramid? Of course not. Everyone knew that they were being passed to Iraq.
We go to page 873 of Scott to discover where the problem occurred. Lieutenant-Colonel Glazebrook, the MOD official responsible for vetting lethal weapon export licences, confessed to the Scott inquiry that he had seen
"only 7 of the 26 applications"
that had been submitted by the company. Between 1981 and 1987, the company exported between 1 million and 3 million artillery fuses to Iraq via Austria, Portugal, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The Government were informed of that by MI6 and did nothing.
Ministers knew what was going on, and they cannot deny it. They obviously contravened the guidelines and obviously they knew. From the Prime Minister down, the Prime Minister at that time—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.
9.7 pm
Sir Michael Marshall: I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in the debate, even at this late stage.
I begin by declaring my interest as a lifelong exporter of English goods and services. In view of the issues that have been mentioned, I should explain that I was adviser to British Aerospace and, as a former Minister, had an opportunity for two and a half years to play my small part, in the dim and distant past, in promoting British defence exports. I emphasise that the views that I express tonight are my own.
I express my incredulity at some of the comments that have been made about defence exports. One of the strengths of the debate has been that speeches have been made by many right hon. and hon. Members who have served in a ministerial capacity, so the House has had the benefit of their direct experience. I commend, to those who may have not heard it, the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), who encapsulated the position that arose during the Gulf war and compared, to great effect, our restraint with that of other countries, which had filled the void in the supply of lethal weapons that had been created by our willingness to show restraint.
I hope that we can return to that subject as it relates to defence sales, because those who drew attention to it tonight reminded us that if we had not had the Spitfire and the Hurricane, this country would probably be a German colony today. We must play our part in the defence of our friends around the world.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers) queried the appropriateness of some of the projects in which we are involved. He mentioned Al Yamanah, which is a classic example of a project that has brought a huge amount of civil engineering work to this country. It was invaluable in defending Saudi Arabia against invasion by Saddam Hussein. Its airfields—which were provided by Britain—were a key base for allied forces, and the provision of pilot training by British Aerospace and the supply of equipment were crucial to our success in the Gulf war.

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Defence sales require commercial confidentiality. There is a certain naive tendency to assume that, as long as we are satisfied, the rest of the world must put up with it. Anyone who follows such matters will know that, if we were to opt for more open disclosure, as some would urge, there would be a real danger of our excluding ourselves from opportunities around the world. Many countries believe that that kind of information is classified, and they would look to other suppliers. In all candour, I am worried that our competitors will go through the report with a fine tooth comb and will quote—even out of context—the arguments about placing future contracts with Britain.
That brings me to the guidelines. It has been well argued tonight that they have no place in statute. Anyone with even modest ministerial experience understands the difference between guidelines and policy. Anyone who reads the report can see that any changes in the guidelines were made with the best intentions and that what occurred thereafter was an attempt to balance many difficult issues.
I pay tribute to the speech of the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore). He reflected on his ministerial experience, and his answer to parliamentary questions has been quoted several times in the debate. His experience shows that one must balance some extremely difficult issues and that the idea of complete openness raises enormous problems. I welcome an opportunity to debate that issue. However, in the light of what has occurred—particularly from 1988 onwards—the Government's actions seem perfectly clear. They followed closely the precedents set by both the Labour and the Conservative parties when they were in government.
It has been pointed out that Secretaries of State must be involved in any change in policy: it is absurd to assume that junior Ministers could carry forward significant policy changes. Therefore, I am entirely clear about the argument, which is moving in a purely party political direction in attacking my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General and my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary.
In considering what might occur in the future, we must look carefully at some of the Scott proposals. I pay tribute to that massive work, but we must reflect on the fact that it represents the opinion of only one man. It is perfectly clear that there are many other legal opinions—but I shall leave that matter to the lawyers. Sir Richard Scott's opinion cannot be taken as gospel, although some of his proposals and recommendations are worth careful consideration by the House.
I strongly support any examination of Customs and Excise operations. In my constituency and throughout my ministerial career, I have seen the "pressing on regardless" approach of Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue create real problems. Any reluctance on their part—which is founded on very honourable traditions of ministerial non-intervention in the activities of prosecution in those Departments—must be reviewed. Having said that, I join—perhaps surprisingly—the argument of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn). With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the inquiry would have been handled better by a special Select Committee of the House. The opportunities that it would have provided in
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taking evidence to balance the political arguments and to produce more clear-cut and definite recommendations for the future would have been of benefit.
I think back to my five years on the Defence Select Committee. I will retire at the next election and I do not want to embarrass Opposition Members, but one of my most salutary experiences was to find on a Defence Select Committee, when defence was not a very fashionable subject among the Opposition, a number of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen—I shall not name them—whose integrity and motivation in protecting Britain's defence interests was clear. If the Labour party were in power, we would have look to them for our defence.
I return to an argument that I advanced during Prime Minister's questions last week. The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) must reflect on the process of defence and defence sales and on the fact that in the real world there has to be a measure of trust. We cannot prescribe in guidelines or legislation something to cover such eventualities as have been described tonight. There must be a willingness to trust, but I would certainly go along with the view that the Select Committee system, which allows for confidentiality and sidelining, provides an opportunity for more openness within Parliament. That is why I would have preferred the matters to have been examined by a special Select Committee rather than by Sir Richard Scott.
In considering the arguments that we have heard against my right hon. Friends, I cannot escape the obvious conclusion that this debate has been a straight party political battle. Scott has provided the opportunity for selective quotations on both sides. That is another reason why we would have done better to have handled the inquiry ourselves. On the central issue of the honour and integrity of my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General and my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, hon. Members can use their common sense. They know that there are not two more honourable Members in the House of Commons. I certainly feel fully able to support them in the Lobby tonight and I urge hon. Friends to do the same.
9.16 pm
Mr. Peter Hardy: In recent years, hon. Members on both sides of the House have devoted considerable time and perhaps made a not insignificant contribution to the development of parliamentary democracy in eastern and central Europe. Recent events, however, lead me to suggest that none of us should now be able to look into the eyes of those with whom we have had conversations over the past few years. The events on silly Thursday 15 February, when hon. Members were engaged in the most farcical demonstration of mismanagement, give the lie to any claim to maturity on our part. The fact that Parliament was prepared to see hon. Members given 10 minutes to collect and study five volumes of an important report is rather ridiculous. That is matched by the campaign of mismanagement—or press management—by the Government in recent months in their attempt to rubbish the report.
Let me refer to two issues that Conservative Members have raised and which are relevant to my constituency. The Government said that no one was in prison, but in my patch there is a police station called Rawmarsh. It is normally used to accommodate thieves, burglars,

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criminals, vandals and violent drunks. Into that police station went distinguished business men from Forgemasters, who were later released and never charged. They were held for some 30 hours while their offices and homes were ransacked. I believe that they were held there for one particular purpose, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn) referred—to ensure that a Select Committee of the House could not proceed with a proper investigation into the super-gun. Such conduct might be expected of a banana republic, but not from a Government consisting of the right hon. Members about whom we have heard today. The House was told that the UK does not export lethal weapons, but it did export lathes that manufactured thousands of shells a year. Some Conservative Members will be well aware that RAF Tornados were then expected to fulfil the need to ground the Iraqi air force in the first days of the Gulf war by flying straight and level to drop airfield denial weapons in the face of thousands of shells made on those lathes. Most farcical of all, the UK was never paid for the lathes that made the shells that were fired at our Tornados.
The two right hon. Gentlemen to whom many references have been made can properly be described in adequate parliamentary parlance as right hon. Gentleman, but—as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis) said—they are being used as cover for a Prime Minister who was more aware of the problems and commitment than any other member of the Government. As a former Foreign Secretary, Chief Secretary and Chancellor, the Prime Minister was well aware of the political and economic policies being pursued. The fact that the right hon. Gentleman's policies failed is disgraceful. If Members of Parliament are to serve the principles of democracy that are supposed to be the foundation of this Chamber, they should not vote for the Government tonight.
9.20 pm
Mrs. Margaret Beckett: There can be no doubt that the Scott report and the ensuing discussions have been difficult for the public to follow because many of the issues are detailed and complex. This debate has given the House an opportunity to react to the report and to reflect on whether there are simple and clear-cut lessons—and if so, to determine what they are.
The House can reflect on whether any matters of fact emerge—whether the UK helped to arm Saddam Hussein, as suggested by the fact that the Matrix Churchill lathes, far from being dual purpose, were set up for arms production. Were some of the individuals involved acting in concert with agents of our intelligence services? Did the certificates signed by Ministers withhold information in the defence of those individuals?
The public have clear pointers to the judgment that they should make amid the welter of charge and counter-charge. There was the pre-publication rubbishing of Sir Richard Scott and his inquiry. Ministers who had chosen the form of the inquiry, and who insisted on it in the face of pressure from the late John Smith, later complained about the inquiry as if Sir Richard were to blame. Ministers sought to undermine the process, evidence and potential conclusions.
In this debate, the Government have chosen to prevent the House from taking a view. Why, if Ministers have no fear of the outcome? The arrangements for the report's
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scrutiny were further evidence, should any be required, of the arrogance and incompetence of Ministers and of their utter contempt for the House. There has been no precedent set by any Government of any party for the insulting restrictions on Members of Parliament who were allowed a few hours to scrutinise a report that had been in the possession of Ministers for days—and on which they had the support, time and advice of many civil servants. That was all evidence of the Government's desperate desire to shield themselves from effective scrutiny in the first key hours, when Ministers hoped that their version of events would be irrevocably accepted—not least, and perhaps most of all, on the Conservative Benches.
Anyone who wants a touchstone—one simple piece of evidence by which to judge the Scott report and the events that it describes—need look no further than the handling of the report's publication. A Government who have nothing to hide do not shamelessly manipulate publication. A Government who continue to insist on such restrictions and even seem to tighten them after four or five days of sole access to a report's contents are not a Government who have found themselves exonerated in the report's pages.
The Government, after all, had every excuse for leniency. You, Madam Speaker, expressed concern on behalf of this House, as from time to time the Speaker has a duty to do. Sir Richard Scott made it plain that he had not sought and did not support the Government's withholding of the report from others in this way. Yet the Government continued to insist that it was necessary; and on 15 February, at the Dispatch Box, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry showed us why. It was a snow job. There were, he admitted, people at fault. The handling of intelligence was singled out—then, and repeatedly since. Few commentators have pointed out that this identified defect, acknowledged with a grace awarded to none of the others, could be regarded primarily—perhaps wholly—as a criticism of the civil service.
Ministers also decided that the Labour party was at fault. So civil servants were at fault and the Opposition were at fault, and Ministers alone were found to be without fault—at least by Ministers.
The Secretary of State put on a similar, and similarly disgraceful, performance today. He claimed to be accepting a number of the more technical and practical recommendations of Sir Richard Scott—but, it rapidly became clear, without accepting the basic conclusions from which those recommendations were drawn. The right hon. Gentleman repeated, as I understand he has done again on "Channel 4 News" this evening, there is nothing for any Minister to apologise for; and that the Chief Secretary and the Attorney-General in particular—I quote the news bulletin—
"did not make mistakes for which they should apologise."
So they should not even apologise, let alone take any more serious action.
These were not the findings of Sir Richard Scott. As time has gone on, the Secretary of State and his colleagues have grudgingly admitted that Sir Richard Scott found them to be at fault in some respects, and in forthright terms. In paragraph D3.123, for instance, he found that the guidelines were changed and that the argument that they were not was
"incapable of being sustained by serious argument".

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Sir Richard repeats that time and again in the report. Ministers have a simple explanation for it, repeatedly voiced from the Tory Benches in this debate: Sir Richard was just wrong. He was right when he blamed others and when Ministers claim that he failed to find them guilty; he was wrong every time he found Ministers to blame or to be derelict in their duty to this House, and through us, to the country.
Crucially, Ministers claim that Sir Richard was wrong about the key issue of whether the policy changed on the handling of exports to Iraq, and about whether in consequence, as Sir Richard alleged, Parliament was misled. This charge lies especially at the door of the Chief Secretary. His evidence to the inquiry, like his attitude to its findings, suggests an unusual approach. What he seems to have told the inquiry, in essence, is that if the guidelines had been changed senior Ministers and Parliament should have been informed. They were not so informed, so the guidelines did not change.
It is evident that this argument failed to convince Sir Richard, who dismissed it in blunt terms. He said that the right hon. Gentleman repeatedly gave Members of Parliament answers which were misleading. In paragraph D4.62 Scott says that the Chief Secretary gave answers that were "inadequate and misleading".
It would of course be an absolute defence against this charge if the right hon. Gentleman had made such statements in ignorance of the facts that Sir Richard Scott states made the statements misleading. But it is plain that the Chief Secretary was not in ignorance of the facts. Indeed, he was better placed to know them than almost anyone else in Whitehall. But it is equally plain that the right hon. Gentleman has convinced himself that he had no intention to mislead, and he has convinced Sir Richard Scott that that is what he believes.
Is the right hon. Gentleman justified in this belief? His reasoning seems remarkably similar to his reasoning over the change in guidelines and reporting to Parliament: a change would have had to be reported; no change was reported; therefore no change occurred.
Similarly, the Chief Secretary's view seems to be that he is a man of honour, that a man of honour does not mislead the House and that, therefore, he did not mislead the House. Whatever else he may be, that facility in argument and ability to convince himself so fully of the logic of his own argument makes him a very dangerous man, who—on the evidence before Sir Richard Scott and on the evidence before the House—should not remain in office.
Mr. Stephen: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Beckett: No.
Ministers speak as though Sir Richard Scott, and only Sir Richard Scott, had cast doubt on the judgment that led the Attorney-General to tell his ministerial colleagues that they had no choice but to sign PII certificates to withhold a class of documents, irrespective of their contents, from the defence in the Matrix Churchill trial. That decision was said to be without precedent for that type of document in a criminal trial, in which the withholding of such evidence might lead to a conviction and to a possible gaol term—which might have been averted by the production of those documents.
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There were clearly other reservations, which varied in kind. There was, for example, the Deputy Prime Minister's express reaction to the advice that he was given, which he described in these terms:
"no rational person, who had looked at the files, could have said that the documents should not have been disclosed."
Sir Richard Scott found that the Attorney-General had a major responsibility for the prosecutor's instructions, and that he was personally at fault for not ensuring that the Deputy Prime Minister's concerns were conveyed to the court. Those and other criticisms cast doubt on the Attorney-General's competence in the functions he carries out in the House, which is why I should like to draw attention to the views expressed in a speech, in November, by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who will reply for the Government in this debate. On the question of ministerial responsibility, he said:
"My view—indeed, the conventional view—is, I believe, founded on common sense. It is that:
Ministers cannot possibly be held personally blameworthy … for everything …
the test in any particular case should be the scale of the failure; and whether a decision or action of the Minister's leads directly to it."
Tonight we shall discover whether the Chancellor, in the advice that he gives to the House, stands by that judgment. It is very clear to every hon. Member who has read the report and listened to the debate that the named Ministers are seriously at fault, and that their actions directly contributed to that fault.
The events that have been described, the Scott report itself, the media coverage and even this debate have offered a welter of opinion, justification, reason and excuse. I should, therefore, like to single out three matters that are key to the whole affair and on which we can find fact. First, British companies were helping to arm Saddam Hussein, while British Ministers were telling the House that they were not. That is a matter of fact. Secondly, those who were engaged in such sales were known to be assisting, and were assisting, agents of the Government intelligence services, at some considerable personal risk. That is a matter of fact. Thirdly, Ministers, on the Attorney-General's instructions, signed PII certificates that could have withheld evidence of that involvement from the defence, which could have—as it already had in the Ordtech case—led to a conviction and possibly to a gaol sentence. That is a matter of fact. That is what they did. Ministers have repeatedly defended that action by saying that it is for the judge to decide.
Mr. Ian Bruce: It is all in the report.
Mrs. Beckett: That is just the point, which the hon. Gentleman—who has not even attended the debate, never mind spoken—makes in his sedentary intervention. Ministers say that it is for the judge to decide, that that is "the system" and that the judge's decision shows that "the system" works. The Deputy Prime Minister said that again today.
We, too, have a system in the House. It is called ministerial responsibility. Under the Government, it is honoured more in the breach than in the observance, but today, here and now, we decide whether, under this Government, it any longer exists. Sir Richard Scott states in paragraph D4.63:

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"the Government statements … consistently failed, in my opinion, to comply with … Questions of Procedure for Ministers and, more important, failed to discharge the obligations imposed by the constitutional principle of Ministerial accountability."
Many commentators have expressed irritation that Sir Richard Scott did not summarise his conclusions, but left them to be found scattered throughout his report. A number of hon. Members said so in the debate tonight, but Sir Richard's reasons seem plain to me. He wanted to make people read the report to see for themselves the evidence on which he based his conclusions rather than that they should decide to agree or disagree without considering the weight of evidence, as he had done. Secondly, he seems to have been determined to lay out the evidence and the arguments in the five volumes of the report and to leave the verdict to the House and the people whom we are sent here to serve.
Whether we like it or not, I believe that Sir Richard Scott has put Parliament itself on trial. He has flung down a gauntlet to the House. In his judgment, he tells us, after three years of careful study, that Parliament was misled. In his judgment, Ministers failed, and failed repeatedly and deliberately, in their duty of accountability to the House, to all those whom we are elected to serve, and hence, in his words, to our democracy itself. Yet Ministers, by their argument and rhetoric, are asking us not just to accept but to applaud the way in which they have acted in our name.
It is this House that is on trial tonight and the verdict is in the hands of each of us.
9.37 pm
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Roger Freeman): I reject completely the allegations from the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) that the publication of the report did not follow the accepted precedents and practice in the House. The publication of the report followed the precedents used in the House. The House has now had 10 days to read the report thoroughly, and has been well prepared for a thorough debate. The Government have behaved entirely properly—[Interruption.]—in the publication of the document, permitting a full debate.
The Government appointed Scott, and Sir Richard has made a number of important and useful recommendations. I should like to start by summarising the recommendations that Sir Richard has made, and the Government's positive and constructive response to them.
First, on the use of intelligence, the Government have accepted the inquiry's criticisms concerning the circulation of intelligence material, and have taken action to rectify those failings. I regret, and the Government regret, the fact that proper intelligence was not fully available to all Departments and to all Ministers before licensing decisions were taken.
We will tell the Intelligence and Security Committee of the improvements that the Government have made and will make.
Mr. Robert Maclennan: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Freeman: The hon. Gentleman will allow me to respond to the debate. The right hon. Lady did not give way. Ministers were not aware of intelligence about
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export proposals that would have caused them to stop the exports as breaching export policy, specifically about the military end use of dual-use machine tools.
Secondly, the export control legislation and licensing procedures are, of course, founded upon the Import, Export and Customs Powers (Defence) Act 1939, as amended by the Import and Export Control Act 1990. The Government accept that export control policy and procedures should be reviewed and we intend to issue a consultation paper. There has been much debate, not only today but in 1990, when the Government held discussions with Opposition Front Benchers on the 1990 Bill. It is right in our judgment now to review the powers contained in that Act and the degree to which Parliament should be involved in its implementation.
Mr. Andrew Mackinlay: What about the charges made by the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason)?
Mr. Freeman: I am coming to those.
Thirdly, on the supervision of Customs and Excise, the Government accept the principle of the need for greater supervision by the office of the Attorney-General of Customs prosecutions in relation to defence export control matters, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General will report further to the House. Fourthly, on Customs procedures, we accept Sir Richard's recommendations relating to Customs legislation and internal procedures. We will report back to the House on changes once the implementation plans are finalised.
I turn to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) about prosecution procedures and the use of public interest immunity certificates. Concern has been expressed during the debate about the scope and procedures for public interest immunity claims. There is a strong case for the House to have an opportunity to consider the circumstances in which public interest immunity should be claimed by Ministers, and, if so, the criteria for those claims. At present, the law is wholly judge-made, and the areas to which it applies include intelligence sources and other sensitive material relating to national security, commercial interests of a public character, and advice to Ministers.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay has taken the issue very seriously. Under existing law, Ministers must ensure the maximum disclosure commensurate with the essential public interests to which I have referred. The real question is whether there is a need for class claims, or whether claims should be content-based. In any case, wherever possible, maximum use—in the opinion of the Government—should be made of redaction. Whatever system is adopted, it should remain—
Mr. Allason: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Freeman: I will give way to my hon. Friend when I have concluded my sentence.
Whatever system is adopted, it should remain for the judge to decide on disclosure—if justice so requires—on matters of national security or other matters covered by a PII certificate. The House needs a better opportunity to discuss that important issue, and the Government will ensure that such an opportunity arises.
Mr. Allason: Will my right hon. Friend give an undertaking that the presumption in future will always be

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on disclosure and not suppression? Will he give an undertaking that there will never again be such an abuse of public interest immunity certificates granted on national security grounds?
Mr. Freeman: The presumption should be disclosure, and when the judge read and interpreted the public interest immunity certificates in the Matrix Churchill trial, he made a positive decision on disclosure. I give my hon. Friend the undertaking I gave a few moments ago—the Government will ensure that an opportunity arises in Government time for that matter to be considered further.
Mr. Nigel Griffiths: Reply to the debate.
Mr. Freeman: If the hon. Gentleman will permit me, I will reply to the debate.
Sixthly, I turn to the centrally important issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), about openness to Parliament on defence sales and other security issues.
It is a long-held parliamentary convention—it has been followed by Labour and Conservative Governments—that these matters should be subject to the withholding of information. That is documented in "Erskine May". Last November, I repeated the amendment to "Questions of Procedure for Ministers", which referred specifically to this parliamentary convention. The Labour Government used it when upgrading Polaris missile systems with Chevaline. There have been countless examples of the use of the convention over the years.
I accept the sincerity of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills on these matters, and I therefore call upon all parties represented in the House to participate—
Mr. Nigel Griffiths: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Freeman: I am not giving way.
Mr. Griffiths: Why not?
Mr. Freeman: Because I am trying to respond to the debate. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will listen.
I hope that the House will have a full opportunity to reassess the parliamentary convention that I have described. We welcome the fact that the Select Committee on Public Service may well take an interest in early hearings on the subject. We have today published a paper setting out the present position on the convention. It is important for any Government—Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat—when considering informing the House about the details of defence sales always to balance the best interests of the United Kingdom defence industrial base and the importance of confidentiality in its commercial dealings and, for diplomatic reasons, the protection of British interests, against the importance of openness to Parliament.
The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), who opened the debate on behalf of the Opposition, has a major problem that he will have to face with his Back-Bench colleagues. The right hon. Member for
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Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) fairly and squarely nailed his colours to the mast of full disclosure of all arms/defence sales. If the hon. Member for Livingston seeks to act as a senior Minister in a Labour Government, he must decide where he draws the line. Where is the balance for the Labour party? The hon. Gentleman has so far made no contribution to the important debate on what is in the best interests of the British defence industry, which represents 500,000 jobs.
The hon. Member for Livingston must know that many of his right hon. and hon. Friends represent constituencies where, for example, GEC, Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace, have plants. Those are important defence interests that the Labour party cannot ignore. We look forward to the Labour party's positive contribution on the extent to which long-standing parliamentary conventions should be changed.
The Government will bring forward specific proposals in due course on the parliamentary convention that now concerns us.
I move on to the centrally important issue which was taken up by the right hon. Member for Derby, South, which is whether my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary misled the House. The policy pursued by the Government has been clear: it was not to export lethal weapons to Iraq. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) said, when he visited the battlefield immediately after the Kuwait war, he found only one Land Rover among all the defence equipment left over from that war. The Scott inquiry found that the United Kingdom Government did not condone the export of lethal defence equipment.
The policy was also not to exacerbate the Iran-Iraq conflict when that existed by the export of non-lethal defence equipment. When the conflict ended it was our policy to stop the export of non-lethal defence equipment that could mean the resumption of the conflict by either side. It was—[HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] That is not rubbish. It is a statement of our policy. Non-lethal equipment did not include—
Mr. Nigel Griffiths rose—
Mr. Freeman: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will listen to my reply to the debate. I have 10 minutes left to me. Non-lethal equipment did not include—[Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will listen to my reply. I have 10 minutes left.
Mr. Quentin Davies: Will my right hon. Friend give way? [Interruption.]
Mr. Freeman: Let me deal with the debate.
Non-lethal equipment did not include dual-use equipment if intelligence was available that there would be military end use.
Mr. Davies rose—
Mr. Freeman: I shall give way to my hon. Friend when I come to his contribution. I shall make some progress, and then give way to him when I come to the guidelines.
The guidelines represented, for internal use, how the policy was to be interpreted. They reflected the policies. The guidelines relating to the Iran-Iraq conflict were not,

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as Scott said in his report, an exclusive exposition of Government policy on defence exports. For example, when there were clear examples of internal repression both by Iraq and by Iran, the Government interpreted our policies and our guidelines to restrict exports.
We have published today and placed in the Library a second document, entitled "Government Policy on the Control of Exports to Iran and Iraq 1980 to 1990".
Mr. Menzies Campbell rose—
Mr. Freeman: I quote one sentence from it:
"Guidelines"—[Interruption.]
Madam Speaker: Order. The House must come to order, so that we can hear what the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has to say.
Mr. Freeman: I shall certainly give way to the hon. and learned Gentleman, but let me just quote this sentence:
"Guidelines on the export of defence equipment to the two countries, Iran and Iraq, were therefore developed to reinforce the Government's policy and to help in its day-to-day application."
As the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) quite rightly said, the guidelines were broad. Ministers were given the responsibility of interpreting those guidelines. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater said, Ministers operated in real time, having to interpret the guidelines against the great pressure of events.
Mr. Menzies Campbell: If the Government's position was to do their best to ensure that there was no internal repression in Iraq, why, in the immediate aftermath of the use of chemical weapons at Halabja, did the Government extend financial guarantees to Iraq?
Mr. Mackinlay: Yes, why?
Mr. Freeman: The hon. Gentleman should listen to the answer. Financial guarantees under the Export Credits Guarantee Department were the subject of long preparation. They covered not only defence but civilian use, including the building of power stations and schools. The amount allocated for defence was always limited and capped.
I now come to the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding. Let me deal with the points he raised, because he is misguided. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd), the former Foreign Secretary, clearly told the House that the guidelines did not change between 1984 and the summer of 1990. That was the evidence he presented to the House. The interpretation changed as circumstances required.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding argued that there was a change in 1988. He therefore disputes the specific evidence provided by my right hon. Friend. As the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney said, it was inconceivable that junior Ministers could have changed those guidelines without the agreement of senior Ministers and my right hon. Friend
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the Prime Minister. The interpretation did, and in 1988 and 1989, junior Ministers interpreted the guidelines to reflect the fact that the war had ended.
Mr. Quentin Davies: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that, if the policy was changed without proper authorisation from senior Ministers, that compounds the offence rather than mitigating it.
Can my right hon. Friend think of a better documented case in the history of this Parliament of the House being misled? If he can, will he name it? Does he not share my fear that, if we do nothing about such a case as a result of tonight's debate, the most fearful constitutional precedent will be created?
Mr. Freeman: Today the House heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney, who told us that the guidelines did not change, and that, when he and other senior Ministers came to review them in the summer of 1990, they had not changed since 1984.
I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding to accept that evidence. I ask him to accept my argument that junior Ministers interpreted the guidelines in the different circumstances of the end of the conflict. The Ministers involved interpreted them impartially, to prevent the conflict from starting again. They interpreted them in a strict fashion. Indeed, in comparison with any other nation, we took immense, thorough trouble to interpret those guidelines.
In 1989 and 1990, this country exported £11 million-worth of non-lethal defence equipment to Iraq. That is less than 1 per cent. of Iraq's total imports of defence equipment in those two years. Let me remind the House what Scott said in paragraph D3.124:
"I accept that Mr. Waldegrave"—
my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary—
"and the other adherents of the 'interpretation' thesis did not … have any duplicitous intention and, at the time, regarded the relaxed interpretation, or implementation, of guideline (iii) as being a justifiable use of the flexibility believed to be inherent in the Guidelines."
The Government have taken positive, clear and constructive action in relation to the recommendations of the Scott report. We very much welcome the commencement of a debate on the parliamentary convention of withholding information on defence sales. The Scott report has completely vindicated my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary and my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General. It said that they acted in good faith, and the Government contend that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary did not mislead.
The charge against the Labour party, and the Opposition as a whole, is clear. First, the hon. Member for Livingston—together with the deputy leader of the Labour party—made the charges that there was a conspiracy to arm Saddam Hussein, and that there was a conspiracy to send innocent men to gaol. Both charges are untrue, and they should withdraw them. They have both refused to withdraw those charges, and Scott has found them to be untrue.
Secondly and finally, in advancing their case, those Opposition Members have taken an irresponsible and naive attitude to Britain's defence industry, and have been unfair to the civil service. They have lacked the courage to balance the need of British industry with the perfectly

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legitimate need to be open with Parliament. The Labour party will have to face those issues if it aspires to form the next Government.
Twenty years ago, the then Prime Minister, Mr. Callaghan, said that we could not maintain an independent arms industry unless we were prepared to engage in this trade. I ask for understanding. The Labour party has none. It is not fit to govern.
Mr. Donald Dewar rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.
Question put accordingly, That this House do now adjourn:—
The House divided: Ayes 319, Noes 320.

Division No. 61]

[10.00 pm

AYES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Clapham, Michael

Adams, Mrs Irene

Clark, Dr David (South Shields)

Ainger, Nick

Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Allen, Graham

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Alton, David

Coffey, Ann

Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

Cohen, Harry

Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

Connarty, Michael

Armstrong, Hilary

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Ashton, Joe

Corbett, Robin

Austin-Walker, John

Corbyn, Jeremy

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Corston, Jean

Barnes, Harry

Cousins, Jim

Barron, Kevin

Cox, Tom

Battle, John

Cunliffe, Lawrence

Bayley, Hugh

Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

Cunningham, Rt Hon Dr John

Beggs, Roy

Cunningham, Roseanna

Beith, Rt Hon A J

Dafis, Cynog

Bell, Stuart

Dalyell, Tam

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Darling, Alistair

Bennett, Andrew F

Davidson, Ian

Benton, Joe

Davies, Bryan (Oldham C'tral)

Bermingham, Gerald

Davies, Chris (L'Boro & S'worth)

Berry, Roger

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

Betts, Clive

Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

Blair, Rt Hon Tony

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

Blunkett, David

Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'dge H'l)

Boateng, Paul

Denham, John

Boyes, Roland

Dewar, Donald

Bradley, Keith

Dixon, Don

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Dobson, Frank

Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

Donohoe, Brian H

Brown, N (N'c'tle upon Tyne E)

Dowd, Jim

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Burden, Richard

Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

Byers, Stephen

Eagle, Ms Angela

Caborn, Richard

Eastham, Ken

Callaghan, Jim

Etherington, Bill

Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Ewing, Mrs Margaret

Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

Fatchett, Derek

Campbell-Savours, D N

Faulds, Andrew

Canavan, Dennis

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Cann, Jamie

Fisher, Mark

Carlile, Alexander (Montgomery)

Flynn, Paul

Chidgey, David

Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

Chisholm, Malcolm

Foster, Rt Hon Derek

Church, Judith

Foster, Don (Bath)

690

Foulkes, George

Loyden, Eddie

Fraser, John

Lynne, Ms Liz

Fyfe, Maria

McAllion, John

Galbraith, Sam

McAvoy, Thomas

Galloway, George

McCartney, Ian

Gapes, Mike

McCartney, Robert

Garrett, John

Macdonald, Calum

George, Bruce

McFall, John

Gerrard, Neil

McGrady, Eddie

Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

McKelvey, William

Godman, Dr Norman A

Mackinlay, Andrew

Godsiff, Roger

McLeish, Henry

Golding, Mrs Llin

Maclennan, Robert

Gordon, Mildred

McMaster, Gordon

Graham, Thomas

McNamara, Kevin

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

MacShane, Denis

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

McWilliam, John

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Madden, Max

Grocott, Bruce

Maddock, Diana

Gunnell, John

Maginnis, Ken

Hain, Peter

Mahon, Alice

Hall, Mike

Mallon, Seamus

Hanson, David

Mandelson, Peter

Hardy, Peter

Marek, Dr John

Harman, Ms Harriet

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

Harvey, Nick

Marshall, Jim (Leicester, S)

Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

Martin, Michael J (Springburn)

Henderson, Doug

Martlew, Eric

Hendron, Dr Joe

Maxton, John

Heppell, John

Meacher, Michael

Hill, Keith (Streatham)

Meale, Alan

Hinchliffe, David

Michael, Alun

Hodge, Margaret

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Hoey, Kate

Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll & Bute)

Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld)

Milburn, Alan

Home Robertson, John

Miller, Andrew

Hood, Jimmy

Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

Hoon, Geoffrey

Molyneaux, Rt Hon Sir James

Howarth, Alan (Strat'rd-on-A)

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Howarth, George (Knowsley North)

Morgan, Rhodri

Howells, Dr Kim (Pontypridd)

Morley, Elliot

Hoyle, Doug

Morris, Rt Hon Alfred (Wy'nshawe)

Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

Morris, Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Morris, Rt Hon John (Aberavon)

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

Mowlam, Marjorie

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Mudie, George

Hume, John

Mullin, Chris

Hutton, John

Murphy, Paul

Illsley. Eric

Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

Ingram, Adam

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Jackson, Glenda (H'stead)

O'Brien, Mike (N W'kshire)

Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)

O'Brien, William (Normanton)

Jamieson, David

O'Hara, Edward

Janner, Greville

Olner, Bill

Johnston, Sir Russell

O'Neill, Martin

Jones, Barry (Alyn and D'side)

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Jones, Ieuan Wyn (Ynys Môn)

Parry, Robert

Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)

Patchett, Terry

Jones, Lynne (B'ham S O)

Pearson, Ian

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd, SW)

Pendry, Tom

Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

Pickthall, Colin

Jowell, Tessa

Pike, Peter L

Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

Pope, Greg

Keen, Alan

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Kennedy, Charles (Ross, C&S)

Prentice, Bridget (Lew'm E)

Kennedy, Jane (L'pool Br'dg'n)

Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

Khabra, Piara S

Prescott, Rt Hon John

Kilfoyle, Peter

Primarolo, Dawn

Kirkwood, Archy

Purchase, Ken

Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

Quin, Ms Joyce

Lewis, Terry

Radice, Giles

Liddell, Mrs Helen

Randall, Stuart

Litherland, Robert

Raynsford, Nick

Livingstone, Ken

Redmond, Martin

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Reid, Dr John

Llwyd, Elfyn

Rendel, David

691

Robertson, George (Hamilton)

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

Robinson, Geoffrey (Co'try NW)

Taylor, Rt Hon John D (Strgfd)

Roche, Mrs Barbara

Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

Rogers, Allan

Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

Rooker, Jeff

Thurnham, Peter

Rooney, Terry

Timms, Stephen

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

Tipping, Paddy

Ross, William (E Londonderry)

Touhig, Don

Rowlands, Ted

Trickett, Jon

Ruddock, Joan

Trimble, David

Salmond, Alex

Turner, Dennis

Sedgemore, Brian

Tyler, Paul

Sheerman, Barry

Vaz, Keith

Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

Walker, A Cecil (Belfast N)

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Walker, Rt Hon Sir Harold

Shore, Rt Hon Peter

Wallace, James

Short, Clare

Walley, Joan

Simpson, Alan

Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

Skinner, Dennis

Wareing, Robert N

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Watson, Mike

Smith, Chris (Isl'ton S & F'sbury)

Welsh, Andrew

Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

Wicks, Malcolm

Smyth, The Reverend Martin

Wigley, Dafydd

Snape, Peter

Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Sw'n W)

Soley, Clive

Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)

Spearing, Nigel

Wilson, Brian

Spellar, John

Winnick, David

Squire, Rachel (Dunfermline W)

Wise, Audrey

Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

Worthington, Tony

Steinberg, Gerry

Wray, Jimmy

Stevenson, George

Wright, Dr Tony

Stott, Roger

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Strang, Dr. Gavin

Tellers for the Ayes:

Straw, Jack

Mr. John Cummings and Mr. David Clelland.

Sutcliffe, Gerry

NOES

Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Aitken, Rt Hon Jonathan

Brown, M (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

Alexander, Richard

Browning, Mrs Angela

Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

Bruce, Ian (South Dorset)

Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

Budgen, Nicholas

Amess, David

Burns, Simon

Ancram, Rt Hon Michael

Burt, Alistair

Arbuthnot, James

Butcher, John

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Butler, Peter

Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

Butterfill, John

Ashby, David

Carlisle, John (Luton North)

Aspinwall, Jack

Carlisle, Sir Kenneth (Lincoln)

Atkins, Rt Hon Robert

Carrington, Matthew

Atkinson, David (Bour'mouth E)

Carttiss, Michael

Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

Cash, William

Baker, Rt Hon Kenneth (Mole V)

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Baker, Nicholas (North Dorset)

Chapman, Sir Sydney

Baldry, Tony

Churchill, Mr

Banks, Matthew (Southport)

Clappison, James

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

Bates, Michael

Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Ru'clif)

Batiste, Spencer

Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

Bellingham, Henry

Coe, Sebastian

Bendal, Vivian

Colvin, Michael

Beresford, Sir Paul

Congdon, David

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

Body, Sir Richard

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

Booth, Hartley

Cormack, Sir Patrick

Boswell, Tim

Couchman, James

Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

Cran, James

Bottomley, Rt Hon Virginia

Critchley, Sir Julian

Bowden, Sir Andrew

Currie, Mrs Edwina (S D'by'ire)

Bowis, John

Curry, David (Skipton & Ripon)

Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Brandreth, Gyles

Day, Stephen

Brazier, Julian

Deva, Nirj Joseph

Bright, Sir Graham

Devlin, Tim

692

Dicks, Terry

Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

Dorrell, Rt Hon Stephen

Hunter, Andrew

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

Dover, Den

Jack, Michael

Duncan, Alan

Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

Duncan-Smith, Iain

Jenkin, Bernard

Dunn, Bob

Jessel, Toby

Durant, Sir Anthony

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Dykes, Hugh

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Eggar, Rt Hon Tim

Jones, Robert B (W Hertfdshr)

Elletson, Harold

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

Key, Robert

Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

King, Rt Hon Tom

Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

Kirkhope, Timothy

Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

Knapman, Roger

Evennett, David

Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

Faber, David

Knight, Rt Hon Greg (Derby N)

Fabricant, Michael

Knight, Dame Jill (Bir'm E'st'n)

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Knox, Sir David

Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

Kynoch, George (Kincardine)

Fishburn, Dudley

Lait, Mrs Jacqui

Forman, Nigel

Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

Forsyth, Rt Hon Michael (Stirling)

Lang, Rt Hon Ian

Forth, Eric

Lawrence, Sir Ivan

Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

Legg, Barry

Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

Leigh, Edward

Fox, Rt Hon Sir Marcus (Shipley)

Lennox-Boyd, Sir Mark

Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

Lester, Sir James (Broxtowe)

French, Douglas

Lidington, David

Fry, Sir Peter

Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

Gale, Roger

Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)

Gallie, Phil

Lord, Michael

Gardiner, Sir George

Luff, Peter

Garel-Jones, Rt Hon Tristan

Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

Garnier, Edward

MacGregor, Rt Hon John

Gill, Christopher

MacKay, Andrew

Gillan, Cheryl

Maclean, Rt Hon David

Goodlad, Rt Hon Alastair

McLoughlin, Patrick

Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

Gorman, Mrs Teresa

Madel, Sir David

Gorst, Sir John

Maitland, Lady Olga

Grant, Sir A (SW Cambs)

Major, Rt Hon John

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Malone, Gerald

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Mans, Keith

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)

Marland, Paul

Grylls, Sir Michael

Marlow, Tony

Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

Marshall, John (Hendon S)

Hague, Rt Hon William

Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archibald

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Mates, Michael

Hampson, Dr Keith

Mawhinney, Rt Hon Dr Brian

Hanley, Rt Hon Jeremy

Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

Hannam, Sir John

Mellor, Rt Hon David

Hargreaves, Andrew

Merchant, Piers

Harris, David

Mills, Iain

Haselhurst, Sir Alan

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Hawkins, Nick

Mitchell, Sir David (NW Hants)

Hawksley, Warren

Moate, Sir Roger

Hayes, Jerry

Monro, Rt Hon Sir Hector

Heald, Oliver

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Heath, Rt Hon Sir Edward

Moss, Malcolm

Heathcoat-Amory, Rt Hon David

Needham, Rt Hon Richard

Hendry, Charles

Nelson, Anthony

Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

Neubert, Sir Michael

Hicks, Robert

Newton, Rt Hon Tony

Higgins, Rt Hon Sir Terence

Nicholls, Patrick

Hill, James (Southampton Test)

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas (G'tham)

Norris, Steve

Horam, John

Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley

Hordern, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Oppenheim, Phillip

Howard, Rt Hon Michael

Ottaway, Richard

Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

Page, Richard

Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

Paice, James

Hughes, Robert G (Harrow W)

Patnick, Sir Irvine

Hunt, Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

Patten, Rt Hon John

693

Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Spink, Dr Robert

Pawsey, James

Spring, Richard

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Sproat, Iain

Pickles, Eric

Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

Porter, David (Waveney)

Steen, Anthony

Portillo, Rt Hon Michael

Stephen, Michael

Powell, William (Corby)

Stern, Michael

Rathbone, Tim

Stewart, Allan

Redwood, Rt Hon John

Streeter, Gary

Renton, Rt Hon Tim

Sumberg, David

Richards, Rod

Sweeney, Walter

Riddick, Graham

Sykes, John

Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

Tapsell, Sir Peter

Robathan, Andrew

Taylor, Ian (Esher)

Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Robertson, Raymond (Ab'd'n S)

Taylor, Sir Teddy (Southend, E)

Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

Temple-Morris, Peter

Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

Thomason, Roy

Rowe, Andrew (Mid Kent)

Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)

Rumbold, Rt Hon Dame Angela

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

Thornton, Sir Malcolm

Sackville, Tom

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Sainsbury, Rt Hon Sir Timothy

Townsend, Cyril D (Bexl'yh'th)

Scott, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

Tracey, Richard

Shaw, David (Dover)

Tredinnick, David

Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

Trend, Michael

Shephard, Rt Hon Gillian

Trotter, Neville

Shepherd, Sir Colin (Hereford)

Twinn, Dr Ian

Shersby, Sir Michael

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

Sims, Roger

Viggers, Peter

Skeet, Sir Trevor

Waldegrave, Rt Hon William

Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

Walden, George

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

Soames, Nicholas

Waller, Gary

Speed, Sir Keith

Ward, John

Spencer, Sir Derek

Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

Spicer, Sir James (W Dorset)

Waterson, Nigel

Spicer, Sir Michael (S Worcs)

Watts, John

694

Wells, Bowen

Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

Wheeler, Rt Hon Sir John

Winterton, Nicholas (Macc'f'ld)

Whitney, Ray

Wolfson, Mark

Whittingdale, John

Yeo, Tim

Widdecombe, Ann

Young, Rt Hon Sir George

Wiggin, Sir Jerry

Wilkinson, John

Tellers for the Noes:

Willetts, David

Mr. Timothy Wood and Mr. Derek Conway.

Wilshire, David

Question accordingly negatived.

DEREGULATION
Ordered,
That Mr. Roger Berry, Mr. John Gunnell and Mr. Alan Keen be discharged from the Deregulation Committee and Margaret Hodge, Mr. Denis MacShane and Mr. Ian Pearson be added to the Committee.—[Mr. Ottaway.]

AGRICULTURE
Ordered,
That Mr. Paul Marland be discharged from the Agriculture Committee and Mr. Edward Leigh be added to the Committee.—[Mr. MacKay.]

NATIONAL HERITAGE
Ordered,
That Mr. Sebastian Coe be discharged from the National Heritage Committee and Mr. Jerry Hayes be added to the Committee.—[Mr. MacKay.]

Raoul Wallenberg
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ottaway.]
10.16 pm
Mr. David Amess: "Hero" is an apt word to describe someone who saves the life of another person. There is no word in the English dictionary to describe someone who saved the lives of more than 100,000 people, which is what Raoul Wallenberg did in 1944. I am not Jewish—I am a member of the Roman Catholic faith—but I would have been proud to have been born a Jew. People of my generation cannot believe the atrocities that occurred during the second world war—and we thought that we would never see such atrocities again. Sadly, wicked people in this world are carrying out certain atrocities.
The purpose of tonight's Adjournment debate is to pay tribute to Raoul Wallenberg. In 1944, the United States War Refugee Board was established in response to President Roosevelt's desire to save innocent victims of the Nazis. The board saw in Hungary an opportunity to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews—practically the last surviving remnants of jewry in Nazi-occupied Europe—who were facing extermination.
Raoul Wallenberg—a young Swedish diplomat, who was born in 1912 into a wealthy and influential family of bankers—was approached by the War Refugee Board to represent it in Budapest. He agreed, and in July 1944 he went to Budapest as the official representative of the board and the first secretary of the Swedish legation. When he arrived in the city, its Jewish population of 230,000 were confronted with the prospect of imminent deportation to Auschwitz for extermination—a fate that more than 500,000 Hungarian Jews living outside Budapest had already suffered.
Wallenberg's task was to save as many Jewish lives as possible. On his arrival, he immediately began to issue the certificates for Jews who already had visas for Sweden. In addition, he invented on the spot what was to rescue approximately 100,000 people—the Schutz-pass, or protected passport.
Almost daily, Wallenberg visited the railway stations in Budapest whence Jews were being transported to Auschwitz in sealed cattle trucks. He watched carefully. Speaking with the authority of a Swedish diplomat, he would order the Germans to open the doors of the wagons so that he might check that none of those inside held Swedish passports. Once inside, he would distribute his Schutz-passes or accept any document, however trivial, that bore Hungarian script, which the Germans could not understand—library cards, driving licences, receipts.
In November 1944, Adolf Eichmann ordered that all remaining Hungarian Jewish women and children be rounded up and marched 125 miles to the Austrian border, from where they would be transported to Auschwitz. The Germans devised that gruelling one-week trek in the bitter cold, for which no food or winter clothing was provided, as a means of killing as many of the marchers as possible through exhaustion and starvation.
On hearing of the exodus, Wallenberg drove along the route passing out food, water, clothing and, of course, Swedish schutz-passes. A skilled negotiator, who understood that an air of authority was enough to dissuade most
696
Germans from challenging him, he succeeded in acquiring several properties, which he established as Swedish sovereign property by flying the Swedish flag and which thus benefited from Swedish diplomatic protection.
In the dying days of the German occupation of Budapest, the Nazis decided to liquidate the Jewish ghetto. The conditions in the ghetto were appalling—families were separated, there was a lack of food and clothing and people were dying of starvation and disease. On hearing of the Nazis' plans, Wallenberg confronted the German commanders and told them that he would personally ensure that they were hanged as war criminals if they proceeded with their plans—a credible threat, given that the German army's retreat in the east was gathering pace and Russian artillery could be heard in the distance as they advanced towards the city. The plan was halted, thereby saving an estimated 70,000 more lives.
On 17 January 1945, Raoul Wallenberg was driven to the Russian commander, who was leading the troops approaching Budapest, to obtain supplies for the surviving Jews. He never returned. There has been controversy about what happened to him. I, like other hon. Members, cannot be certain. The only person who could have told us was Andrei Gromyko, who I believe took that knowledge to his grave.
The purpose of the debate—I have received support from both sides of the House—is to allow us to join together in providing a tribute to Raoul Wallenberg. I am delighted to say that many people have inspired the Wallenberg appeal. It is a project of the International Council of Christians and Jews, administered by the holocaust educational trust.
Ten years ago, I knew little about Raoul Wallenberg. Several people, including Danny Smith of the Jubilee Campaign, and Paul Lennon, inspired my original interest. From that moment, I was so moved by the man's achievements that I decided to bring them to the attention of the House. In 1989, I tabled an early-day motion, which was signed by almost 100 Members of Parliament. On 22 March that year, I introduced a 10-minute Bill entitled the British Nationality (Honorary Citizenship) Bill. It was not opposed, but there was not enough time for it to pass through its stages in this House and the other place. On 8 January 1990, I introduced another private Member's Bill, the Wallenberg (Memorial) Bill, which aimed to persuade the powers that be to set aside a piece of land for a monument.
All of that is now of no consequence because Sir Sigmund Sternberg, Maurice Djanogly and Lionel Altman have established a wonderful committee, which involves a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House. We have launched a very successful appeal and, so far, raised almost half the money that is required. The tribute would be a prestigious and imposing monument to Raoul Wallenberg and would be erected in Great Cumberland place on a landscaped semi-circular piece of ground donated by Westminster city council—for which I thank Councillor Davis. It will stand in front of the Marble Arch synagogue, close to the Swedish embassy.
The project will cost £100,000 and a British sculptor of international repute, Phillip Jackson, has been commissioned to create the monument. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will examine my final points carefully.
Dr. Robert Spink: My predecessor, Lord Braine—who was a former Father of the House—said in another place that Wallenberg symbolised the
"determination to remain human, caring and free in the face of unspeakable tyranny".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 February 1995; Vol. 561, c. 703.]
Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating Lord Braine, whose human rights work is so widely known and acclaimed?
Mr. Amess: I certainly will. My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point, my noble Friend Lord Braine of Wheatley and I attended the funeral of our beloved agent Barbara Allen this morning. I was reminded then of the wonderful work that my noble Friend has done in supporting the Wallenberg appeal.
My hon. Friend the Minister may be interested to learn that we have applied for an award from the Arts Council lottery board, which is progressing at the moment. On the Saturday one week before holocaust day in April, rabbis in synagogues throughout the United Kingdom—including Westcliff in Southend—will launch special appeals to their communities in an effort to raise money to meet the £100,000 target.
I pay tribute to the interest and help that we have received from the Swedish and Hungarian ambassadors. Finally, I pay tribute to all hon. Members—this is not a party-political matter—many of whom are present this evening, who have supported the effort to build a monument to Raoul Wallenberg. I hope that a person of great note will be asked to unveil it. I hope also that future generations, not only from this country but visitors to London from all parts of the world, will look at the monument and recall that, at a time when so many individuals did not achieve great things, one very great man saved more than 100,000 lives and sacrificed his own.
10.29 pm
Mrs. Llin Golding: I am honoured to speak some words of praise in memory of Raoul Wallenberg.
At a recent meeting in the House I met a lady who belonged to a group of people from Hungary who considered it their duty to keep alive the memory of Raoul Wallenberg. She told me that she had met a number of people who had been saved by that remarkable man. They described him as a gallant young man who stood out from the crowd and who, with enormous self-confidence and nerve, issued false documents that gave them protection and a passport to life. I echo all that the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) said. Raoul Wallenberg provided a shining light in the evil darkness of that time. We owe it to him and to the thousands he saved to make certain that that light never goes out.
10.30 pm
Mr. John Marshall: First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) on introducing this debate and on everything that he has done to preserve the memory of Raoul Wallenberg. Raoul Wallenberg was a beacon of courage and determination during the awful days of the holocaust. The fact that one man could save 100,000 lives is a tribute to his personality, his courage and his determination.
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Raoul Wallenberg's tragedy was that, when he had saved so many lives, in 1945 we in the west ignored his fate. After he had been captured by the Russians, the Swedish, British and American Governments did nothing in the years that followed to inquire of the Russians what was happening to him. I do not believe that he died of a heart attack in 1947. I do not believe that the diet in the Russian prisons was so full of cholesterol or that they stuffed him with butter, cream and roast beef. I believe that he was murdered long after 1947. The indifference of the west to his fate was in stark contrast to his courage in ensuring that 100,000 people lived rather than perished in the holocaust.
Mr. Anthony Steen: With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. It is not with my permission; the permission rests entirely with the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess). It is not normal to have more than three hon. Members speaking in an Adjournment debate, unless the hon. Gentleman has the agreement of the Minister.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. David Davis)indicated assent.
Mr. Amess: I am aware of the pressure that the Minister is under, but I believe that two hon. Members wish to speak for just a few seconds, and I would welcome their contribution.
10.32 pm
Mr. Steen: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) for raising this very important matter. Hon. Members on both sides of the House wish to pay tribute to him for persevering for many years until he managed to persuade the authorities to build a monument to a very great man. I hope that the Minister will be able to make encouraging sounds about the other half of the money needed to complete the project.
10.33 pm
Mrs. Barbara Roche: I shall make some very brief comments. I was born in 1954 and I am extremely proud to be Jewish. I grew up with the memory of what the name Wallenberg means. It means a great deal to the Jewish community. He was a shining light; he was a beacon at a time when it would have been convenient for people to forget, ignore and hide their heads in the sand. He did not do so and we owe him a great debt. I am proud that we are having this debate tonight. I am also extremely proud that one of my constituents to whom the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) referred is Sir Sigmund Sternberg, who is a wonderful figure. We in the Jewish community are proud of him, but he is also famous and well-known in the Christian community. I pay tribute to Raoul Wallenberg, and to all my colleagues for their work. I wish the memorial every possible success.
10.34 pm
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. David Davis): I thank more than usually my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) for his

699
moving tribute to a man who unquestionably deserves no less than my hon. Friend's words. I particularly welcome the fact that there were tributes from both sides of the House—I was tolerant, because it was appropriate to show that the House is united in its admiration of Raoul Wallenberg's qualities.
Raoul Wallenberg was an exceptionally courageous man whose selfless efforts saved many thousands of lives, for which he deserves to be remembered. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to add my tribute to Wallenberg's bravery. Although I am replying on behalf of the Government, I will speak for a few moments on a personal basis.
Ever since first reading about Wallenberg rather more than 10 years ago, I have been inspired by his conviction, principle, humanity and, above all, selfless bravery. There are few people of whom I could say without qualification that they are my heroes, but Raoul Wallenberg is one of them. His deeds provide a source of inspiration to which we should all aspire, even if none of us could match them.
I make no apology for repeating some of the facts of which my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon reminded the House. Wallenberg went to Budapest in 1944 to head a special department of the Swedish legation, charged with helping persecuted Jews wherever possible. He left behind a secure and comfortable life in Stockholm to take up his mission. He found himself plunged into the horrors of Adolf Eichmann's extermination programme.
Lars Berg, a colleague of Wallenberg's in the Swedish legation in Budapest in July 1944 and a career diplomat, said:
"Raoul Wallenberg began from such a hopeless starting point, with such small resources and with such a lack of actual force to back him up. When he arrived to organise help for the Hungarian Jews, he was nothing but a blank page. He was not a career diplomat. His knowledge of the Hungarian language was limited. He knew no one of importance in Budapest. However, he had a job to do: to stop the already initiated deportations of the Hungarian Jews, to give them food and shelter and, above all, to save their lives. The most remarkable thing about Raoul Wallenberg's work was that it was not based on any legal rights. His task was not to protect any Swedish subjects, Allied prisoners of war, wounded or sick people. Neither he nor the Swedish legation had any right to interfere with the manner in which the Hungarian authorities chose to handle their problems—in this instance, the Jews. Wallenberg was not supported by physical force—neither weapons nor soldiers gave weight to his words. He began his mission with only one source of power—an unfaltering faith in himself, buttressed by the justness of his cause. His only protection was a diplomatic passport."
By the time that Wallenberg arrived in Budapest, the majority of the Hungarian Jewish population—numbering more than 400,000, mainly from the provinces—had already been deported to Auschwitz. The Jews remaining in Budapest were left until last. Wallenberg worked with the energy of a man possessed. In close to six months, risking his own life on a regular basis, he saved thousands who would otherwise have perished in the holocaust. It is widely thought that, directly and indirectly, he saved 100,000 people.
Raoul Wallenberg started by designing and issuing Swedish "passports"—documents that had no legal status but which were designed to achieve recognition by their extravagant symbolism. Wallenberg originally had permission to issue 1,500 such documents but ultimately issued many thousands. Witness reports even record Wallenberg issuing those passports to Jews already loaded on to cattle trucks waiting to depart for the concentration
700
camps, and to Jews in the forced marches to the border, en route to the same fate—both times under the noses of the Nazis.
Wallenberg's audacity and resourcefulness saved many Jews from certain death. He saved many more Jews by providing safe houses—buying up property and marking it with the Swedish flag.
Above all, however, Wallenberg's genius lay in his ability to motivate and inspire, drawing in other neutral representations in Budapest to work with him; to co-ordinate the relief efforts; and to deal with the enemy in whatever form necessary. He would bribe officials to gain advance information on planned raids and death marches; he reasoned with, bargained with and cajoled those in authority, including the Nazis, to spare lives; and when all else failed, he threatened reprisals after the war when it was clear that the tide had turned.
When the Russians entered Budapest some 120,000 Jews had survived the Final Solution, some if only barely alive in the ghettos. Per Anger, another Swedish diplomat who had worked alongside Wallenberg, said that
"he was the only foreign diplomat to stay behind in Pest with the sole purpose of protecting these people. And he succeeded beyond all expectations. If you add them all up, 100,000 or more people owed their lives to him".
The tragedy is that Wallenberg was not to share the freedom that he had won for so many others. A moment of liberation for others was the moment in which his captivity began. No one can dispute that we owe it to Wallenberg's memory to help to establish his fate.
It is well known that in January 1945, Wallenberg was taken into custody by the Red army, transported to Moscow and gaoled. What exactly happened next remains unanswered. For years the Soviet authorities denied that they held him. It was not until some 12 years later, in 1957, that Andrei Gromyko, then Deputy Foreign Minister, informed the Swedes that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack, at 36, in the Lubyanka—the notorious KGB headquarters—in 1947. That, of course, was not the end of the story.
A number of approaches have been made over the years to press the Russians to provide a full and frank account of what happened to Wallenberg after he was taken into Soviet custody. Unfortunately, despite a greater openness in Russia today, such a response has not yet been forthcoming. Efforts continue to elicit one.
The Swedish Government, with whom we remain in contact on this issue, believe that the best hope of making progress now lies with the joint Swedish-Russian Wallenberg working group. This was established in 1991 to search for relevant documents and to interview persons who might have knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Wallenberg's disappearance and subsequent fate. This group is continuing its work.
The group held its 12th meeting in Moscow in September 1995 and it is hoping to publish a common report by the end of this year; but it is slow and painstaking work. We hope that answers may be found in the Russian archives. Sadly, the group has made no breakthrough yet, possibly because the bulk of the documents relating to Wallenberg may have been destroyed by the Soviet security forces responsible, anxious to cover their tracks.
The evidence about Wallenberg's fate is not clear. Despite reports of sightings of Wallenberg which date from as late as 1986, none of these has been corroborated

701
by the joint working group or the researchers who preceded them. On the other hand, the version of events recounted by the former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky in his book "KGB" ties in with earlier Russian claims that Wallenberg died in a Soviet prison in 1947. While the Soviet authorities had tried to claim that Wallenberg died from a heart attack, Gordievsky states that he was shot, no later than 1947.
The uncertainty is frustrating. We sympathise with the relatives and surviving friends of Wallenberg for whom the lack of any clear information about his fate must be unimaginably distressing. The full facts of this case need to be uncovered. We will continue to give our support to the joint working group.
Wallenberg was made an honorary citizen of the United States in 1981, of Canada in 1985 and of Israel in 1986. Many have called for Wallenberg to be given a similar honour in the UK. Indeed I am aware that my hon. Friend introduced a Bill under the 10-minute rule in March 1989. The Bill was to provide for the award of honorary British nationality to any individual for outstanding humanitarian services in Hungary during the period July 1944 to January 1945. The clear intention of the Bill was to award honorary British citizenship to Raoul Wallenberg.
More recently, Lord Braine of Wheatley also raised the idea of honorary citizenship during a debate, in February 1995, to mark the 50th anniversary of Wallenberg's disappearance.
Mr. Sumberg: Is my hon. Friend aware of the Jewish saying, "He who saves one life, saves the whole world"?
702
On the basis of that, Raoul Wallenberg saved many, many worlds. Would it not be right for our country, which did so much to fight the second world war and to secure the freedom and safety of those Jews who remained, to make the gesture of conferring citizenship?
Mr. Davis: My right hon. Friend the former Foreign Secretary and I looked at that possibility closely. In the time available I cannot go through all the problems involved, but we established that they were insuperable. Her Majesty's Government have been keen, however, to help with other possibilities for honouring Wallenberg.
My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon outlined the arrangements behind the organisation of an appeal to erect a memorial to Wallenberg in Great Cumberland place. The cost of the project and its upkeep in perpetuity will be approximately £100,000. I understand that the hope is to have the memorial unveiled and dedicated within a year and that the organisers are hoping to trace survivors among the Wallenberg 100,000 to invite to the unveiling. I have seen the plans for the memorial. It will be an impressive tribute.
I wish the appeal every success. I must tell my hon. Friend that I have little influence with the Arts Council, but Her Majesty's Government are to donate £15,000 to the appeal. I look forward to the day when the memorial is completed and graces London, a worthy symbol of the British people's admiration for a very, very great man.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at fifteen minutes to Eleven o 'clock.

DEFENCE

  British Military Forces (Control)
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what requests he has received for British military forces to come under local, non-British control; what has been his response; and if he will make a statement. [13266]

  Mr. Soames
  British military forces regularly come under non-British operational control when they take part in operations under UN, NATO or ad hoc coalition auspices. In all cases, British forces remain under UK national command.

  Iraq
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will place in the Library a copy of the report, "Iraq's Growing Arsenal: Programs and Facilities," prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency in July 1990. [16004]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  I have no responsibility for reports prepared by a foreign intelligence agency. Matters relating to Iraq's procurement programme are dealt with in the Scott report.

  Public Bodies
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence which of the executive non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department have a statutory base and which(a) admit members of the public to all board or committee meetings and (b) hold open meetings for the public; and whether in each case this is (i) under a statutory requirement or (ii) voluntarily. [16030]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  None of my Department's executive non-departmental bodies has a statutory requirement to admit members of the public to board or committee meetings, or to hold open meetings.

  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the executive non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department which are subject to(a) investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner, (b) scrutiny by the Audit Commission, (c) scrutiny by the National Audit Office, (d) statutory provisions for open government, (e) performance indicators and (f) provisions under the citizens charter. [16017]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  While none of my Department's executive non-departmental bodies is subject to(a) investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner or (b) the Audit Commission, they are all subject to (c) scrutiny by the National Audit Office, (d) the code of practice on access to Government information, (e) performance indicators and (f) citizens charter provisions.

  Al Yamamah Project Office
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many of his Department's staff formerly involved in the Al Yamamah project office have made applications under the business appointment rules. [16190]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  The information is not held in the form requested and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Royal Yacht
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what efforts have been made to raise private sector finance to construct a new royal yacht. [16259]

  Mr. Soames
  No decision has been made on whether to replace Britannia and the Government have not invited contributions from the private sector to the costs of any replacement. A number of suggestions for a possible replacement have, however, been received from outside the Government, and some of these include private sector funding. The Government are continuing to consider the question of a replacement. An announcement will be made in due course.

  Mr. Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what efforts have been made to raise funds from the private sector towards the financing of HMY Britannia; and if he will make a statement. [16258]

  Mr. Soames
  Private sector funding has not been sought for the operation of HMY Britannia. However, organisers of trade promotion events held on board the yacht meet all additional costs incurred, over and above normal running costs.

  Air Vice-Marshal Howard
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what considerations led him to approve Air Vice-Marshal Howard's appointment as a consultant to Tripod Engineering Ltd. in November 1988 following his retirement in October 1988; and to what extent these considerations were based on(a) written policy guidelines and (b) assessment of the particular case. [16304]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  As Sir Richard Scott's report makes clear, Air Vice-Marshal Howard did not seek permission before taking up his appointment with Tripod Engineering Ltd.

  International Military Services Ltd.
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the present whereabouts and ownership of International Military Services Ltd. files relating to defence consultancies and contracts in Jordan, Iran and Iraq after 1981. [16313]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  These are matters for the company.

  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assistance was provided by(a) serving and (b) recently discharged British officers to International Military Services Ltd. to provide advice to the Government of Iraq between July 1981 and August 1990. [16305]
  299
  Mr. Arbuthnot
  Advice given by any IMS representatives is a matter for the company. I am not aware of any serving officers being involved in any such matters.

  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence on what date a final settlement of outstanding contractual issues with Iran in respect of contracts involving International Military Services Ltd. was concluded. [16309]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  This is a matter for International Military Services Ltd., but I understand that not all of the company's outstanding contractual issues have been concluded.

  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if his Department(a) was informed of and (b) approved the instruction of the chief executive of International Military Services Ltd. to remove material relating to Iraq from the company's files. [16394]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  No. The maintenance of records is a matter for the company.

  Integrated Weapon Complex (Basra)
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence on how many occasions the integrated weapon complex constructed in Basra, Iraq, in 1985, was subjected to allied attack in Operation Desert Storm; and what assessment his Department made of the damage caused to it. [16399]

  Mr. Soames
  Full details of coalition operational combat sorties are not held by the MOD, but we have no record of any RAF attacks on such a facility. Battle damage assessment reports from recent conflicts remain classified.

  Canira Technical Company Ltd.
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the ownership and trading activities of the Canira Technical Company Ltd. of Northern Ireland with particular reference to its involvement with the Iraqi arms procurement programme. [16325]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  There is nothing that I can usefully add to the information contained in paragraph D5.25 (xvi) of the Scott report.

  Iranian Naval Base (Bander-Abbus)
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many serving British officers(a) on secondment and (b) temporarily discharged were made available for the repair of an Iranian naval base at Bander-Abbas in the period between July 1981 and August 1988 as a contribution to a contract held by IMS. [16401]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  I am aware of none.

  Departmental Officials (Interests)
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the officials in his Department who have declared a current interest; what requirements are placed on officials to declare relevant interests; in what form records of such declarations are kept; and if he will establish a central register of officials' interests. [16877]
  300
  Mr. Arbuthnot
  Regulations require staff to declare to their line manager all investments in any company with which they have official dealings. These declarations should include details of such investments held by an individual's immediate family, as far as he or she is aware of those interests. Staff who are themselves directors, or partners or who hold any other appointment in a private sector commercial organisation must, if the private interest is associated in any way with their official duties, declare the interest to their line manager. Any information declared is confidential to the declarant and his or her line manager. No central records are kept, nor is it considered necessary to collect such information centrally.

  EDS Ltd.
  Ms Eagle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list those contracts his Department currently holds with EDS, indicating for each the(a) date of inception, (b) value and (c) duration. [17451]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  The central data maintained by the Ministry of Defence procurement executive shows that there are more than 150 contracts currently open with the company with a total value of in excess of £50 million. To obtain the level of detailed information requested for each contract would require considerable further research which could not be undertaken without disproportionate cost.

  Married Quarters Estate
  Mr. Brazier
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what progress he is making with his proposals to transfer the married quarters estate in England and Wales to the private sector. [17719]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  The preliminary information memorandum, published on 30 November 1995, has attracted strong interest from a substantial number of companies and consortia. A full information memorandum has now been issued to prequalified bidders, on a commercially confidential basis, to enable them to submit bids for the estate.

  Nigeria (Arms Sales)
  Mrs. Wise
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on his policy on arms sales to Nigeria. [16967]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) on 12 February,Official Report, column 447.

  Services Sound and Vision Corporation (Cyprus)
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 8 February,Official Report, column 358, from what sources it is proposed to raise the estimated cost of encrypting and providing decoding equipment for the SSVC television service in Cyprus; and what are the estimated numbers of expatriates in Cyprus who will not be entitled to a decoding device. [15905]

  Mr. Soames
  If it is decided to provide an encrypted SSVC television service in Cyprus and to supply the necessary decoders to the entitled audience, the costs will be met from the Defence budget.
  301
  I am unable to give an estimate of the number of expatriates in Cyprus who view SSVC television and would not be entitled to receive a decoding device if the television service were encrypted.

  Abbey Wood Building
  Mr. Berry
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 16 February,Official Report, column 722, regarding the position of sub-contractors working on the new MOD building at Abbey Wood, Bristol, if he will make a statement on the disputes between the main construction contractor and his sub-contractors. [16961]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  Commercial relationships between the main construction contractor and his sub-contractors are matters for the main contractor to deal with. However, the Department understands the normal process of settling final accounts for the sub-contractors who have completed their works continues.

  Mr. Berry
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 16 February,Official Report, column 722, regarding the costs of the new MOD building at Abbey Wood, Bristol, what are the estimated and budgeted costs for (a) site acquisition, (b) construction, (c) fitting out, (d) professional works management fees and (e) VAT; and if the estimated cost of construction takes account of disputed payments to the contractor. [16974]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  The estimated and budgeted costs for the Abbey Wood construction project, at 1992 prices and inclusive of VAT where appropriate, are as follows:

  £ million

  Site acquisition and planning obligations

  124.9

  Construction, including fitting out

  2212.6

  Works project management fees

  39.7

  Total

  247.2

  1 £27.3 million at 1995 prices.

  2 £235.5 million at 1995 prices.

  3 £10.5 million at 1995 prices.

  Elements of the fit-out works are currently subject to procurement competitions and therefore the associated costs are commercially confidential. These figures reflect the Department's estimate of the likely outturn costs for the project.

  Scott Inquiry
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to paragraph C 2.62 of the Scott report, if he will list the equipment that was sent to Iraq under temporary licences and subsequently incorporated into the Iraqi weapon producing system between 1980 and 1991. [17342]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  I am not in a position to state with certainty what equipment was incorporated into Iraqi weapons manufacture. Sir Richard Scott addresses these issues in detail in sections D2.46 to D2.51, D6.55 to D6.72 and D6.194 to D6.220 of his report and I have nothing to add to his description of what equipment was sent to Iraq under temporary licences.

  United Nations Arms Register
  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make it his policy to reply to parliamentary questions concerning sales of defence equipment and arms covered by the 1991 United Nations arms register. [17124]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  We intend to review the practice of successive Governments not to reveal details of the export of defence related equipment in reply to parliamentary questions.

  A paper is today being placed in the Library of the House which sets out current policy and practice in informing Parliament about arms sales matters. We hope that this will be a useful document to take the discussion forward. Copies of the UK returns to the UN arms register covering the export of seven categories of conventional arms have been placed in the House Libraries, on an annual basis, since the system began in 1992.

  Export Licences
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will now make it his policy to permit the disclosure of information contained in section C6 of the export licence application form where the prospective export is deemed to be a dual-use militarily sensitive technology. [15969]

  Mr. Lang
  I have been asked to reply.

  I refer the hon. Member to the statement that I made on Thursday 15 February, Official Report, columns 1139–44, in relation to Sir Richard Scott's recommendations on this matter.

CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

  Pensions and Stipends
  Mr. Frank Field
  To ask the right hon. Member for Selby, representing the Church Commissioners, what powers the Synod has to instruct the commissioners to(a) reduce the level of pensions already in payment and (b) reduce the level of stipends in payment. [15546]

  Mr. Alison
  The General Synod has no power to instruct the commissioners to reduce the level of pensions in payment. The levels are determined in accordance with the pensions regulations. Under the current arrangements, the legislation gives to the commissioners the power to increase the figures, which they customarily exercise in line with the Church's pensions policy. There is no provision for any reduction to be made in the monetary amounts payable.

  Stipend levels are determined on a diocesan basis by the bishop with the concurrence of the Diocesan Board of Finance in accordance with section 5 of the Diocesan Stipends Funds Measure 1953, having regard to the advice of the commissioners as central stipends authority. The commissioners were appointed as central stipends authority by a General Synod Regulation in 1972, which was revised in 1982. The Synod has the power to amend this regulation if it so wishes by appointing another authority, but cannot directly reduce the level of stipends.
  303
  The Synod also has the power to amend the above legislation, subject to the agreement of Parliament.

LORD CHANCELLOR'S DEPARTMENT

  Legal Aid (Maxwell Case)
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department how much has been paid by the legal aid fund on account in respect of defendants of the Maxwell case. [15959]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  To date, £8.3 million has been paid on account from the legal aid fund to lawyers representing Kevin and Ian Maxwell—Trachtenberg, Bunn, Fuller, and Stoney. That sum includes £829,000 paid in respect of the magistrates court proceedings.

  Statutory Instruments
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what steps he is taking to reduce the number and length of statutory instruments. [15764]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  In respect of the areas of law for which he is responsible, the Lord Chancellor endeavours to combine and streamline regulations wherever possible and to ensure that they are as concise as is consistent with clarity and legal certainty.

  Children Act
  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what efforts are being made to monitor the operation of section 8 orders under the Children Act 1989. [15948]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  I have been asked to reply. The Lord Chancellor's Department is undertaking a review of the operation of the Children Act, with a particular emphasis on minimising delay. The Children Act advisory committee is also monitoring the implementation of the Act and a number of research projects are being undertaken.

  The Department collects statistics on the number of applications for section 8 orders received, orders made, orders refused, orders of no order made and applications withdrawn.

  Public Bodies
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department if he will list the executive non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department which are subject to(a) investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner, (b) scrutiny by the Audit Commission, (c) scrutiny by the National Audit Office, (d) statutory provisions for open Government, (e) performed indicators and (f) provisions under the citizen's charter. [16010]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  The Lord Chancellor's Department sponsors two such bodies—the Legal Aid Board and the Authorised Conveyancing Practitioners Board. However, the latter has been inactive since March 304
  1992, when the Lord Chancellor announced his decision to postpone the implementation of the authorised practitioners scheme.

  The Legal Aid Board is not subject to scrutiny by the Audit Commission but (a) and (c) to (f) all apply to the board.

  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department which of the executive non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department have a statutory base and which(a) admit members of the public to all board or committee meetings and (b) hold open meetings for the public; and whether in each case is (i) under a statutory requirement or (ii) voluntarily. [16028]

  Mr. Evans
  The Lord Chancellor's Department sponsors two such bodies—the Legal Aid Board and the Authorised Conveyancing Practitioners Board. Both have a statutory basis. However, the latter has been inactive since March 1992, when the Lord Chancellor announced his decision to postpone implementation of the authorised practitioners scheme.

  The Legal Aid Board does not, nor is it required to, admit members of the public to board or committee meetings or hold open meetings for members of the public.

  Mental Incapacity
  Mr. Khabra
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department when he expects to publish the Government's consultation paper on mental incapacity, following the Law Commission's report on the subject; how long the consultation period will be; and when he expects the results will be published. [16151]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  No date has yet been set for publication of the Government's consultation paper on mental incapacity. The length of the consultation period has yet to be decided.

PRIME MINISTER

  Scott Inquiry
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the consistency between his statement in The Sun on 17 February as to United Kingdom arms exports to Iraq with the details of export licences provided on pages 21. 33, 34 and 77 of the appendix A of volume V of the Scott report. [16907]

  The Prime Minister
  Appendix A of volume V of the Scott report confirms that the UK did not on any occasion approve the export of lethal defence equipment to Iraq. This is the point that I was making in my article in The Sun on 17 February.

  Mr. Smith
  To ask the Prime Minister what guidelines he has issued to Departments in respect of the retention of papers dealing with export licences since the Scott inquiry commenced. [15979]

  The Prime Minister
  No specific guidance has been issued on the retention of papers dealing with export licences. Central guidance on the retention of Government
  305
  papers generally is issued by the Public Records Office. More detailed criteria are applied by each Government Department to meet its own needs.

  Mr. Smith
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library the briefing note prepared for him in support of his oral answer to the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) of 12 November 1992,Official Report, column 990. [15629]

  The Prime Minister
  [holding answer 16 February 1996]: This document was submitted as evidence to Sir Richard Scott's inquiry. Sir Richard Scott is free to publish any document which he considers relevant to his report, consistent with his procedures. I understand that he proposes to do this as soon as possible. Documents which Sir Richard does not consider relevant to his report and which contain internal discussion and advice will not be made available.

  Iraq
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will now place in the Library a copy of the chronology of United Kingdom trade with Iraq, prepared for his Office by the Cabinet Office in November 1992. [16050]

  The Prime Minister
  This document was submitted as evidence to Sir Richard Scott's inquiry. Sir Richard Scott is free to publish any document which he considers relevant to his report, consistent with his procedures. I understand that he proposes to do this as soon as possible.

  Ministers' (Resignations)
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Prime Minister how many Ministers have resigned in each year since 1979. [16985]

  The Prime Minister
  This is a matter of public record.

  Ministers (Broadcasting)
  Mr. Spearing
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will make arrangements for the transcripts of all television and radio broadcasts made by Ministers of the Crown to be deposited in the Library. [16729]

  The Prime Minister
  This is a matter for departmental Ministers. The cost of making it a universal practice would be very substantial.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

  Deregulation
  Mr. Rathbone
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what steps he is taking to measure the impact of the deregulation process. [15247]

  Mr. Willetts
  Savings to business arising from recent deregulatory measures include £41 million a year from simplification of food temperature controls and £18 million a year by removing unnecessary gold plating from the collective redundancies directive. New guidelines on compliance cost assessment require departments to assess the impact of all regulatory proposals likely to impact on business and to place copies in the House Libraries.
  306
  Mr. Jenkin
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what discussions he has had with the United Kingdom representative office in Brussels with regard to deregulation in the United Kingdom and the EC. [15623]

  Mr. Freeman
  I last discussed deregulation with the UK permanent representation to the European Union on 23 November last year. The United Kingdom representation in Brussels is fully aware of the Government's deregulatory objectives and takes every opportunity to advance the case for deregulation in its work with the Commission and other member states.

  Departmental Priorities
  Mr. Hain
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what plans he has to re-assess the priorities of his Department. [15248]

  The Deputy Prime Minister
  I have no such plans.

  Regulations (Cost-benefit Analyses)
  Mr. French
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what progress has been made in preparing the cost benefit analyses of regulations. [15249]

  Mr. Freeman
  New guidance on measuring the costs to business of regulatory proposals was issued to departments on 25 January. Guidance on measuring the benefits of regulatory proposals is currently being prepared and we hope to publish this by April. Copies of our compliance cost assessment guidance has been circulated to Ministers in other European Union nations.

  Scott Inquiry
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what recent representations he has received concerning the presentation of Government policy relating to the Scott inquiry. [15250]

  Mr. Willetts
  We have received a small number of representations concerning the Scott inquiry.

  Ms Rachel Squire
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the presentation of Government policy relating to the Scott inquiry. [15252]

  Ms Eagle
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the Scott inquiry. [15254]

  Mr. Freeman
  The Scott report will be debated later today.

  Mr. Clapham
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what representations he has received concerning open government and the export of defence-related equipment to Iraq. [15261]

  The Deputy Prime Minister
  None.

  Mr. Gunnell
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what discussions he has had with the Prime Minister about the implications of the Scott report for the civil service. [15260]

  Mr. Freeman
  My right hon. Friend has discussed a number of the conclusions and recommendations of the Scott report with the Prime Minister. Many of these have implications for the civil service.
  307
  Mrs. Jane Kennedy
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the Scott report and the workings of his Department. [15264]

  The Deputy Prime Minister
  The Scott report will be debated later today.

  Government Policies (Presentation)
  Mr. Dykes
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will list the Government's key policy priorities for presentation to the public throughout 1996. [15251]

  The Deputy Prime Minister
  The Government will continue to stress that their policies are designed to: pursue economic prosperity and security for all, based on an enterprise economy; create a nation of opportunity, reflecting the Government's values of choice, ownership and reward; uphold decent common-sense values in the pursuit of law, order and justice; provide the people of Britain with first-class public services; and reflect pride in the nation and its place in the world.

  Ministerial Responsibility
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what responsibility he takes for circulating information on the exercise of ministerial responsibility. [15253]

  The Deputy Prime Minister
  This information is contained in the "List of Ministerial Responsibilities", which is published and circulated by my Department.

  Civil Service (Morale)
  Mr. Touhig
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his proposals to improve the morale of the civil service. [15255]

  Mr. Willetts
  Morale in the civil service is best maintained by allowing staff to perform to the best of their abilities in the career they have chosen. As the Deputy Prime Minister made clear in his recent speech on the civil service, the Government's civil service reforms enable staff to focus their attention on delivering high-quality public services. This is the best way of satisfying both them and the users of their services.

  Forms and Surveys
  Mr. Hawkins
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what plans he has to reduce the number of forms and survey which businesses are required to complete and return to Government Departments and agencies. [15259]

  Mr. Freeman
  Departments have been asked to report annually on the burden that they impose on business through forms and surveys by setting targets and reporting achievements in meeting them. I have also established a study group to investigate ways of reducing the compliance cost of Government surveys of business. I announced the appointment of the chairman of the study group and its terms of reference in a written reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) on 9 February 1996 at column 372.

  Pay (Ministers and Special Advisers)
  Dr. Goodson-Wickes
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what account is taken of special advisers' pay in determining the pay of Ministers. [15262]

  Mr. Willetts
  None. Ministerial salaries are determined by the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975.

  Iraq (Exports)
  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what representations he has received concerning the presentation of Government policy regarding the export of machine tools to Iraq. [15265]

  The Deputy Prime Minister
  None.

  Cabinet Policies
  Mr. MacShane
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister which Cabinet policies he has spent most time promoting in 1996. [15266]

  The Deputy Prime Minister
  My colleagues and I have promoted policies that pursue economic prosperity and security for all, based on an enterprise economy; create a nation of opportunity, reflecting the Government's values of choice, ownership and reward; uphold decent common-sense values in the pursuit of law, order and justice; provide the people of Britain with first-class public services; and reflect pride in the nation and its place in the world.

  Departmental Publications
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how many copies of the booklets(a) "Getting a good deal in Europe" and (b) "Guidance on preparations of Compliance Cost Assessments" have been printed; and how many of each have been distributed to civil servants. [15882]

  Mr. Freeman
  The numbers printed and distributed were:

  Number printed

  Total distributed to date

  Getting a good deal in Europe …

  Deregulatory Principles in Practice

  20,000

  7,600

  Checking the Cost of Regulation:

  A Guide to Compliance Cost Assessment

  15,000

  3,200

  Information on the numbers distributed to civil servants is not separately available.

  EU Legislation
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, pursuant to his answer of 13 February,Official Report, column 484, what improvements in the regulatory systems he has pressed for at the EU level; and if he will list the directives he has assessed as burdensome on which hopes to take action. [15906]

  Mr. Freeman
  I refer the hon. Member to the paper "UK Priorities for European Regulatory Reform", which has been placed in the Library of the House.

  Government Car Service
  Mrs. Lait
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he plans to study the scope for privatisation of the Government car service. [17521]

  Mr. Freeman
  No. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment made clear on 8 November when he announced the transfer to my department of the Security Facilities Executive, the agency of which the Government car service forms part, the only study proposed into the scope for more private sector involvement in the work of the agency was in respect of the custody service. I have nothing to add to that statement.

  Next Steps Programme
  Mr. Sykes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on the progress of the next steps programme. [17520]

  Mr. Freeman
  The Government today published the sixth Next Steps Review—Cm 3164—which was laid in both Houses. It brings together information on the 109 next steps agencies and the executive organisations of HM Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue established in Government at the end of 1995. Two out of three civil servants work under next steps arrangements.

  The review has been developed from being a report on the next steps project to one that focuses on agency performance. It shows that in different areas and in different ways, many next steps agencies are delivering services to improved standards with increased efficiency and effectiveness.

  For the first time, as announced in the second competitiveness White Paper "Competitiveness: Forging Ahead", the review includes results for each agency against its key targets over the last three financial years as well as the performance targets set for 1995–96. This indicates trends and facilitates comparison.

  The individual commentaries on each agency include new features, such as whether the agency is involved in a private finance initiative project; its progress in securing investors in people accreditation; comment on external responses to completed prior options reviews; and more consistent coverage of market testing initiatives. The competing for quality returns reveal for the first time results for individual agencies. Between April 1992 and March 1995, agencies reviewed £1.3 billion of activities under the competing for quality programme, half of all the activity reviewed in the civil service. Agencies produced annual savings of £313 million, nearly 60 per cent. of the civil service total savings. This represents an average saving of 24 per cent.

  Taken together, the individual entries in the review report on more than 1,400 key performance targets. Of these, the overall proportion met by agencies rose to 83 per cent. in 1994–95. This shows a continuing trend of improvement over the three preceding years when the results were 80 per cent. in 1993–94, 77 per cent. in 1992–93 and 76 per cent. in 1991–92.

  Within government, agencies continue to be at the forefront of implementing the principles of the citizens charter. Sixty two charter marks are now held by agencies,
  310
  HM Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue, reflecting the commitment of agency chief executives and their staff to high standards of customer service.

  While improvements in performance and standards of service are being achieved, the data contained in the review also show that there is scope to do more. The Government's policy is to seek continuous improvement; and building on the present level of experience of target setting and monitoring, agencies will be required to demonstrate that they are delivering genuinely challenging levels of performance. Ministers will take an even closer interest in ensuring this is so.

  The year ahead will see most remaining candidates established as agencies. By 1997, assuming that currently identified functions are all launched as agencies, I expect around three quarters of civil servants will be working under next steps arrangements. That is a significant achievement and a tribute to the way in which staff at all levels have committed themselves to change and to improved performance. The benefits for taxpayers, customers and staff are set out in the review and are clear to see.

  Freedom of Information
  Ms Coffey
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will make a statement on Government policy in respect of freedom of information. [15257]

  Mr. Willetts
  Our policy is based on the code of practice on access to Government information, which has been operating since 1994, together with legislation covering specific areas of information that the Government have introduced or supported. We believe that this meets the aims of freedom of information in a way that is less legalistic, less rigid and less costly than a general statutory access regime.

OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION

  British Council
  Mr. Rathbone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last met the chairman of the British Council to discuss the level of Overseas Development Administration grant in aid to the council. [15274]

  Mr. Hanley
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs visited the British Council on 7 February. Among other subjects, he and the chairman discussed planned funding from both wings of the FCO.

  Emergency Disaster Relief
  Mr. Jacques Arnold
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what support the Government have given recently to emergency disaster relief. [15276]

  Mr. Hanley
  Since 1 January, the ODA has responded to six new emergencies—in China, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Nicaragua and South Africa—with grants totalling £515,000. It has also continued funding actions is more than 20 other long-term situations.

  Fundamental Expenditure Review
  Miss Lestor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the effect of the recommendation in the Overseas Development Administration's fundamental expenditure review that the technical assistance functions of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Children's Fund and the United Nations Population Fund be consolidated. [16397]

  Mr. Hanley
  The ODA fundamental expenditure review did not make a specific recommendation for the consolidation of the technical assistance functions of UNDP, UNICEF and UNFPA. We nevertheless keep under continuous review measures for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of all UN development agencies.

  Montserrat
  Mr. Alfred Morris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what financial help has been and is now being given to the people of Montserrat in relation to problems associated with increased volcanic activity in the dependency; what assessment he has made of its adequacy; what further help is being considered; and if he will make a statement. [16975]

  Mr. Hanley
  Through the official aid programme, the Government have committed £4.6 million since July 1995 to problems raised by the volcanic emergency. A list of the main elements of this continuing programme has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

  Monitoring and assessment of the existing funding is continuous through the governor's office, which is assisted by a full-time ODA consultant on Montserrat and visits from the regional office in Barbados. Further funds are available if necessary.

  Mr. Morris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many people have given up their homes in Montserrat and left for Antigua and elsewhere due to increased volcanic activity on the island; what contingency plans have been made for dealing with the worsening of the situation; and if he will make a statement. [16976]

  Mr. Hanley
  It is estimated that up to 1,000 Montserratians are now off the island. Most are working elsewhere in the Caribbean. There are no figures on the number of households involved. A range of plans for differing situations have been formulated. The lessons learnt from two recent evacuations into the northern safe zone are influencing continuing preparations for any third such event. Thanks to the co-operation of the Government of Antigua, facilities exist on Antigua should evacuation of Montserrat be necessary.

  Nigeria (Arms Flights)
  Sir Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many flights of arms and ammunition were made from Manaston airport to Nigeria in the course of the Biafra problems; and what assessment he has made of the delivery of the manifests. [17246]
  312
  Mr. Hanley
  I regret that to provide the information which relates to the period 1966 to 1970 would incur disproportionate costs.

  United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has received, and what discussions he has held, about the present funding situation of the UNHCR humanitarian operation in the great lakes region. [17025]

  Mr. Hanley
  Representations were made by the United High Commissioner for Refugees to the ODA and UK mission officials in Geneva on 4 February and the matter was subsequently discussed by European Union ambassadors in Geneva on 5 February. The release since then of US$ 26 million by the European Commission has now alleviated UNHCR's funding problems.

  On 31 January, my noble Friend Baroness Chalker announced a further UK bilateral commitment of £3 million towards the water and sanitation needs of refugees and local population in Tanzania. A large proportion of this will be channelled through UNHCR.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Scott Report
  Mr. Michael Brown
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what was the cost to public funds of the printing and publishing of the Scott report. [16218]

  Mr. Lang
  HMSO normally bears the costs of printing, publishing and distributing all Parliamentary publications, with the overall aim of recovering these from sales revenue.

  However, in this case, and at the request of Sir Richard Scott, my Department has agreed to pay a subsidy in the region of £85,000 so that the cover price can be contained at a level which ensures that the report is as accessible as possible to the general public.

  Price and Market Agreements (Foods)
  Mr. Campbell-Savours
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what representations he has received alleging an agreement on price and markets between manufacturers of pickles and other canned food products in the United Kingdom. [16229]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  None. Any evidence suggesting that manufacturers of pickles and other canned food products may be acting anti-competitively should be brought to the attention of the Director General of Fair Trading, who has the responsibility to consider and, if appropriate, investigate such allegations.

  Wind Turbines
  Mr. Nigel Evans
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what assessment he has made of the comparative efficiency of energy production of wind turbines and conventional forms of energy production. [16418]

  Mr. Page
  Reviews spanning the technical, economic and environmental status of the range of technologies available or potentially available, including wind energy,
  313
  to meet the UK's energy requirement over a 40-year time horizon were published in two reports, copies of which are available in the Library of the House. They are "ETSU R83: An Appraisal of UK Energy Research, Development, Demonstration and Dissemination" and "ETSU R82: An Assessment of Renewable Energy for the UK."

  Dogs (Exports)
  Mr. Gale
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how many dogs were exported for sale from the United Kingdom in each of the past five years; and to what destinations. [17043]

  Mr. Nelson
  The information requested is not available as the United Kingdom trade classification does not separately identify dogs.

  Industrial Tribunals (Utilities)
  Mr. Ian McCartney
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list(a) the number of industrial tribunal cases heard involving (i) British Gas (ii) British Telecom, (iii) National Power, Powergen, National Grid and Nuclear Electric, (iv) the East Midlands Electricity, (v) Eastern Electricity, (vi) London Electricity, (vii) MANWEB, (viii) Midlands Electricity, (ix) Northern Electricity, (x) Norweb (xi) Seeboard, (xii) Southern Electricity, (xiii) South Wales Electricity, (xiv) South Western Electricity and (xv) Yorkshire Electricity in 1995, (b) in how many cases, and in what percentage of occasions, the tribunal found against the company and (c) the monetary value of any award set by the tribunal in each case. [16619]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  I regret that the information requested is not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. McCartney
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list(a) the number of industrial tribunal cases heard involving (i) British Gas in 1985. (ii) British Telecom in 1983, (iii) the Central Electricity Generating Board in 1988, (iv) the East Midlands Electricity Board in 1989, (v) Eastern Electricity Board in 1989, (vi) the London Electricity Board, (vii) MANWEB in 1989, (viii) the Midlands Electricity Board in 1989, (ix) the Northern Electricity Board in 1989, (x) Norweb in 1989, (xi) Seeboard in 1989, (xii) the Southern Electricity Board in 1989, (xiii) the South Wales Electricity Board in 1989, (xiv) the South Western Electricity Board in 1989 and (xv) the Yorkshire Electricity Board in 1989, (b) in how many cases, and in what percentage of occasions, the tribunal found against the company and (c) the monetary value of any award set by the tribunal in each case. [16618]

  Mr. Taylor
  I regret that the information requested is not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Textile Manufacturing
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what percentage of household textiles retailing in the United Kingdom were manufactured in the United Kingdom. [16831]
  314
  Mr. Eggar
  The information is not available for the retail market. However, in 1994, UK manufacturers' ex-factory domestic sales of household textiles represented 61 per cent. of the UK market, calculated from these and overseas trade statistics.

  Marks and Spencer
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what discussions he has had with Marks and Spencer since 1992 concerning its policy on United Kingdom sourcing of goods sold by it. [16832]

  Mr. Page
  Ministers and officials from my Department have regular contact with Marks and Spencer, as with other major UK companies. These discussions have covered the company's strong relationship with its UK suppliers and how it can be maintained.

  Exports
  Mr. David Shaw
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what was the level of exports of(a) military goods and services, (b) dual-use goods and services and (c) other goods and services between 1974 and 1979. [16902]

  Mr. Nelson
  Information on UK exports of identified defence equipment and total goods and services is given in the table. Information on defence services and on dual-use goods and services is not available.

  Value of UK exports

  £ million, current prices

  Year

  Military goods

  Total goods

  Total services

  Total goods and services

  1974

  179

  16,191

  6,597

  22,788

  1975

  198

  19,429

  7,678

  27,107

  1976

  218

  25,139

  10,010

  35,149

  1977

  356

  31,921

  11,615

  43,536

  1978

  392

  35,280

  12,495

  47,775

  1979

  393

  40,400

  14,427

  54,827

  Sources: UK Defence Statistics, Ministry of Defence.

  The Pink Book, United Kingdom Balance of Payments.

  Scott Inquiry
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what changes have been made since the opening of the Scott inquiry into the criteria adopted by his Department in deciding whether to give substantive replies to parliamentary questions seeking details of arms or military equipment exports from the United Kingdom. [15971]

  Mr. Lang
  No such changes have been made. It has been the policy of successive Administrations not to disclose details about export licences that have been issued. However, the Government have from time to time released such information in exceptional circumstances where it was clearly in the public interest. I refer the hon. Member to the statement that I made on Thursday 15 February,Official Report, columns 1139–44, in relation to Sir Richard Scott's recommendations on this matter.

  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade, pursuant to paragraph C 2.62 of the Scott report, if he will list the exports of(a) machine tools and

  315
  (b) other equipment sent to Iraq under temporary licences and subsequently incorporated into the Iraqi weapon producing system between 1980 and 1991. [17343]

  Mr. Lang
  I am not in a position to state with certainty what equipment was incorporated into the Iraqi weapon producing system. Sir Richard Scott addressed these issues in detail in sections D2.46 to D2.51, D6.55 to D6.72 and D6.194 to D6.220 of his report and I have nothing to add to his description of what equipment was sent to Iraq under temporary licences.

  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list the members of his Department who saw the report of the Scott inquiry before it was presented to the House; and when each saw the report. [16539]

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: A small number of civil servants in each of the main Departments concerned had access to the report prior to publication for the purpose of preparing the Government's response. Such access was in accordance with the conditions laid down by the Scott inquiry.

  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade when he first saw the report of the Scott inquiry. [16578]

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: On Wednesday 7 February 1996.

  Mr. Hain
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what was the cost of the allocation of persons in his Department to the consideration of the Government's response to the Scott inquiry. [16598]

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: Access to the report itself prior to publication was restricted to a very small number of officials in the main Departments concerned in accordance with the procedure agreed with the Scott inquiry. However, the Scott report covered a wide range of policy issues and a number of other officials will have contributed to preparation of the Government's response without sight of the report. It is not therefore possible to give the cost of the work.

  Mrs. Jane Kennedy
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how many persons and at what level in his Department were involved in considering the Government's response to the report of the Scott inquiry. [16562]

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: Access to the report itself prior to publication was restricted to a very small number of officials in the main departments concerned in accordance with the procedures agreed with the Scott inquiry. However, the Scott report covered a wide range of policy issues and a number of other officials will have contributed to preparation of the Government's response without sight of the report. It is not therefore possible to give their number or grades.

  Mr. Madden
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade at what hour and minute of which day the report of the Scott inquiry was delivered to his office. [16494]

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: During the afternoon of Wednesday 7 February 1996.

  Public Bodies
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade 316
  if he will list the executive non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department which are subject to (a) investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner, (b) scrutiny by the Audit Commission, (c) scrutiny by the National Audit Office, (d) statutory provisions for open government, (e) performance indicators and (f) provisions under the citizens charter. [16023]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The information is as follows:

  Those non-departmental public bodies that are:

  (a) Subject to investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner:

  Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service Coal Authority

  Commissioner for Protection Against Unlawful Industrial Action

  Commissioner for the Rights of Trade Union Members and the DTI's seven Research Councils

  (b) Subject to scrutiny by the Audit Commission:

  None.

  (c) Subject to scrutiny by the National Audit Office

  The NAO's access to DTI's NDPBs is detailed in "Public Bodies 1995" which is available in the Library of the House

  (d) Subject to statutory provisions for open government:

  NDPBs subject to the jurisdiction of the Parliamentary Commission for Administration are covered by the code of practice on access to government information. Other NDPBs will be asked to draw up their own codes of openness.

  (e) Subject to performance indicators:

  Performance measures have been or are being introduced to all DTI's NDPBs when they are appropriate.

  (f) Subject to provisions under the citizens charter:

  All DTI's NDPBs are encouraged to follow citizens charter principles where they are appropriate.

  Export Controls
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what plans he has to review the Government's powers under the Import, Export and Customs Powers (Defence) Act 1939. [17232]

  Mr. Lang
  The Government are considering Sir Richard Scott's recommendations and will be publishing a consultation paper.

  Business Links
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what considerations led him to provide a freephone business link telephone service for businesses in England; and if he will make a statement. [15880]

  Mr. Page
  Business link inquiries have been handled by the original enterprise initiative freephone number, 0800 500 200, since May 1995. This will be discontinued at the end of the current financial year because the enterprise initiative is no longer operational.

  A dedicated business link helpline was set up in October 1995 at the time of the business link national launch. The 0345 567765 lo-call number provides callers

  317
  with a central inquiry point with direct switching to their nearest business link. A single national number is essential for any reference to business link in the national media.

  Christopher Muttukumaru
  Mr. Janner
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how he responded to communications received from Mr. Christopher Muttukumaru; what were the dates of letters; and if he will deposit copies in the Library. [16554]

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: My officials and I have responded to a number of letters from Mr. Muttukumaru. Sir Richard is free to publish any document he considers relevant to his report, consistent with his procedures. I understand that he proposes to do this as soon as possible.

  Iraq (Export Credit Guarantees)
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list for each year since 1985–86 the proportions attributable to awards to Iraq of(a) the amount in default and (b) the amount written off relating to export credit guarantees. [16005]

  Mr. Nelson
  [holding answer 19 February 1996]: The information is as follows:

  Claims paid and amounts written off by ECGD on Iraq by financial year from 1985–86:

  £ million

  Year

  Claims paid

  Amounts written off

  1985–86

  3

  0

  1986–87

  4

  0

  1987–88

  6

  0

  1988–89

  28

  4

  1989–90

  56

  0

  1990–91

  193

  0

  1991–92

  181

  0

  1992–93

  104

  0

  1993–94

  61

  0

  1994–95

  46

  3

  1995–961

  14

  2

  Total

  696

  9

  1 To 31 January.

  The above table reports all claims paid by the ECGD on Iraq. For this reason, the total of £696 million is higher than the claims figure of £683 million which I cited in my written reply to the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) on 15 January 1996, Official Report, columns 353–54. The latter figure excluded claims cases under the ECGD's now privatised credit insurance operations where the debt has been recovered in its entirety. All such cases predate the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

  Scottish Grand Committee
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, as representing the House of Commons Commission, what has been the cost of each 318
  meeting of the Scottish Grand Committee in the current session to date; and what is the estimated cost of each of those planned for the remainder of the Session. [12960]

  Mr. Beith
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: The information is not readily available in the form requested, because not all costs are analysed to individual meetings. The extra costs which relate to travel, accommodation, communication and additional staff time for those meetings of the Scottish Grand Committee held in Scotland have been forecast at £102,000 for the financial year to 31 March 1996 and £162,000 for the financial year to 31 March 1997. Sums expended in the current Session, to 31 January 1996, amount to £28,501.

TRANSPORT

  East Coast Main Line
  Mr. Wilson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what was the amount of debt outstanding at the time of train operations being wound up by Stagecoach on the east coast main line; how much has been repaid to date; and at what times. [17131]

  Mr. Watts
  This is a commercial matter between British Rail and Stagecoach. I understand that BR allowed Stagecoach Holdings plc to withdraw without penalty from its contract or provide overnight seated train services from Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh to London and return.

  Scott Inquiry
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list the members of his Department who saw the report of the Scott inquiry before it was presented to the House; and when each saw the report. [16535]

  Sir George Young
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: No member of my Department saw the report of the Scott inquiry before it was presented to the House.

  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport at what hour and minute of which day the report of the Scott inquiry was delivered to this office. [16496]

  Sir George Young
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: During the afternoon of Friday 16 February.

  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for transport when he first saw the report of the Scott inquiry. [16582]

  Sir George Young
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: At 3.30 pm on Thursday 15 February, when I collected a copy from the Vote Office at the House of Commons.

  Press Gallery Writing Rooms
  Mrs. Jane Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport which Ministers in his Department entered the writing rooms of the Press Gallery on 15 February. [16472]

  Sir George Young
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: None.

  Rail Franchising
  Ms Short
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to his answer of 7 February,Official Report, column 273, what instructions he has issued since 1 January to the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising regarding the rate at which services are to be franchised. [17036]

  Mr. Watts
  None.

  Rail Timetables
  Ms Short
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what guidance he has issued to the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising and the chairman of the British Railways Board regarding the inclusion of additional recovery time in timetables. [16986]

  Mr. Watts
  None.

  Railway Privatisation
  Ms Short
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what sanctions exist for refusal by private sector railway operating companies to affiliate to the Association of Train Operating Companies. [16981]

  Mr. Watts
  Membership of ATOC is not mandatory. However, all passenger operators are required under the terms of their licences and/or franchise agreements to participate in a number of mandatory schemes which are administered by ATOC. These are the ticketing and settlement scheme, the London Regional Transport scheme, discount card schemes for the elderly, disabled and young, the telephone inquiry bureaux scheme and the staff travel scheme.

  Railways (Disabled Access)
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he next plans to meet the rail regulator to discuss disabled persons' access to the rail network. [16781]

  Mr. Watts
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State meets the rail regulator on a regular basis to discuss a wide range of rail transport issues. His next meeting is planned for Tuesday 5 March.

  Railtrack
  Ms Short
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many staff are currently employed at the head office of Railtrack; and how many he expects to be employed in the financial years 1996–97 and 1997–98. [16984]

  Mr. Watts
  At 3 February, the headquarters directorates of Railtrack employed a total of 1,300 people; staffing levels for the company after it is privatised will be a matter for Railtrack.

  Regulatory Bodies
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list each regulatory body for which he is responsible indicating for each the percentage of business people on the board. [15736]

  Mr. Watts
  The table lists the agencies and authorities for which the Secretary of State is responsible and which could be defined as regulatory bodies.
  320

  Agency or authority

  Percentage of business representatives

  Vehicle Certification Agency

  17

  Vehicle Inspectorate Executive Agency

  33

  Marine Safety Agency

  20

  Driving Standards Agency

  33

  Driver Vehicle and Licensing Agency

  43

  Civil Aviation Authority

  36

  Although not part of this Department, the Secretary of State, under the Railways Act 1993, also appointed an independent rail regulator, John Swift QC, to head the Office of Rail Regulation, which has no advisory board and is directly answerable to Parliament.

  Gospel Oak to Barking Line
  Mr. Gerrard
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many valentine cards he has received from users of the Gospel Oak to Barking line. [16230]

  Mr. Norris
  About 700.

  Traffic Congestion
  Mr. Butterfill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will publish maps showing projections, at national and regional level, of future traffic congestion on the trunk road system as a basis for assessing likely requirements for improvement to the United Kingdom's infrastructure; and if he will undertake also to publish revised projections in future taking account of changes to economic and traffic forecasts. [13987]

  Mr. Watts
  [holding answer 8 February 1996]: I am placing maps of current congestion, and projections of future congestion, in the Library of the House together with an explanatory note. The maps will be kept up to date as appropriate.

  Sea Empress Incident
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what is his latest estimate of costs arising from efforts to control oil pollution originating from the Sea Empress. [17074]

  Mr. Norris
  As at midday Friday 23 February, the known costs to the marine pollution control unit exceeded £2 million, excluding some significant costs where information is not yet available. We would seek to recover these costs from the ship's insurers or from the international oil pollution compensation fund. Estimates of costs incurred by others is not currently available.

  Mr. Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what quantity of oil-dispersant chemicals have so far been used on oil slicks originating from the Sea Empress. [17077]

  Mr. Norris
  By midday Friday 23 February, 444 tonnes of dispersants had been used.

  Mr. Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many crew were on the Sea Empress at the time it ran aground; and what was their nationality. [17076]

  Mr. Norris
  Twenty-seven Russian crew members and a local pilot were on board.
  321
  Mr. Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many oil-retaining sea booms have been used to control oil coming from the Sea Empress. [17078]

  Mr. Norris
  As at 10:00 on Monday 26 February, some 2,250 metres of boom were in place.

  Mr. Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what tests were carried out on the captain of the Sea Empress following the ship running aground. [17125]

  Mr. Norris
  Drug and alcohol tests were carried out on all 27 crew of the Sea Empress. None were found to be positive.

  Mr. Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what consideration is being given to bringing criminal charges against(a) the owner and (b) the captain of the Sea Empress. [17126]

  Mr. Norris
  Whether it is appropriate to consider criminal proceedings against any party in respect of the Sea Empress will depend on the findings of the investigations that are being undertaken into the incident.

  Mr. Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what is his latest estimate of sea birds affected by oil originating from the Sea Empress. [17075]

  Mr. Norris
  As at 10:00 on Monday 26 February, it was reported that 1,640 birds had been affected.

  Land Compensation Act 1973
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what plans he has to amend the Land Compensation Act 1973 to allow tenants to claim compensation for disturbance to carpets and curtains, without being relocated to another property. [16042]

  Sir Paul Beresford
  I have been asked to reply.

  Under the 1973 Act, tenants are entitled to certain categories of compensation, such as a fixed amount of £1,500 as a home loss payment. Tenants may claim some disturbance compensation for incidental losses such as removal expenses, the cost of altering soft furnishings and moveable fixtures and fittings. Tenants who need professional help in preparing and negotiating a claim may also claim for the fee of a surveyor or solicitor, but there is no power, and there are no plans to introduce a power, to pay compensation to tenants where they do not have to move.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Know-how Funds (Tourism)
  Mrs. Lait
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list the tourism projects which have been supported by the know-how funds. [16336]

  Sir Nicholas Bonsor
  The know-how fund has supported 19 tourism projects since 1989 at a total cost of approximately £1.63 million. The projects are listed in the table.
  322

  Country

  Project title

  Financial year

  Approved costs £

  Tourism Management

  Bulgaria

  Development Pirin and Rila Eco and Sustainable

  1994–98

  500,000

  Tourism Project Tourism Training

  1993–97

  378,400

  Estonia

  Course Sustainable Tourism National

  1993–94

  12,289

  Hungary

  Park Project Seminar on Sustainable Tourism in

  1995–97

  234,000

  Latvia

  Protected Areas Transport/Tourism

  1993–94

  1,095

  Minister Visit

  1992–93

  5,095

  Tourism Training

  1994–95

  12,768

  Lithuania

  Tourism Training Baltic Tourism—

  1993–94

  13,032

  Pan Baltic

  UK Visit Project Identification

  1992–93

  2,379

  Visits Tourist

  1993–94

  6,157

  Information Centre Cracow Tourism

  1994–95

  23,557

  Poland

  Study Wiekiczka Salt

  1989–90

  37,000

  Mine Strategic Cultural

  1995–96

  110,000

  Plan Gdansk Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas

  1992–94

  35,000

  Russia

  Seminar SME Tourism Development

  1995–96

  2,500

  Slovakia

  Poprad Rural Tourism Development—

  1994–95

  34,000

  Gemer Region Sustainable

  1995–96

  198,800

  Slovenia

  Tourism Timeshare

  1993–94

  1,500

  Legislation

  1994–95

  20,700

  Mrs. Lait
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what small business projects have been supported by the know-how funds; of these which related to tourism; and if she will list them. [16326]

  Sir Nicholas Bonsor
  The know-how fund has supported more than 650 small business projects. Of these, the following four related directly to tourism:

  Poland

  Cracow Tourism Study, 1989–90: Approved costs £37,000

  Slovakia

  SME Tourism Development Poprad, 1994–95: Approved costs £34,000

  Slovenia

  Timeshare Legislation, 1994–95: Approved costs £20,700 Sustainable Tourism. 1993–94: Approved costs £1,500

  Indonesia
  Miss Lestor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans(a) he has and (b) other Ministers in his Department have to visit Indonesia. [16395]

  Mr. Hanley
  We have no immediate plans to do so.

  Italian Constitution
  Mr. Elletson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions HM ambassador to Rome has had with Italian political parties about proposals to reform the Italian constitution; and if he will make a statement. [16308]

  Mr. David Davis
  In the course of normal contacts, HM ambassador to Rome and colleagues have discussed proposals to reform the Italian constitution with representatives of parties across the Italian political spectrum.

  Ministerial Visit (Cyprus)
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he(a) has had and (b) will have with the leader of the British delegation to the Council of Europe following his visit to the Karpass area of occupied northern Cyprus; and if he will make a statement. [16310]

  Mr. David Davis
  My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary has not been in contact with Lord Finsberg following his recent visit to Cyprus. The British high commissioner in Nicosia spoke with Lord Finsberg during his visit.

  We support efforts to uphold the human rights of Cypriots in whatever part of the island they live. We welcome the recent announcement by the Turkish Cypriots of measures to improve the living conditions for Greek Cypriots and Maronites living in northern Cyprus. There is no reason why the remaining restrictions on basic freedoms for minorities should not be lifted.

  United Nations Special Commission on Iraq
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the current United Kingdom financial commitment to the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq. [16303]

  Mr. David Davis
  We have made a significant contribution to the work of the United Nations Special Commission since its inception in 1991 through the provision of specialist personnel and equipment. In the current financial year this has had a value of some £1 million, which is broadly in line with the support provided in previous years. We do not make a direct financial contribution.

  Social Welfare Provision (Germany)
  Mr. Elletson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment Her Majesty's ambassador to Bonn has made of Germany's ability to maintain its current level of social welfare provision over the next 20 years: and if he will make a statement. [16307]
  324
  Mr. David Davis
  Due to the many factors which have to he taken into consideration, such an assessment is impossible to make. It is up to individual states to establish their economic priorities.

  Sri Lanka
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on relations with Sri Lanka; and what plans he has to visit the country. [16511]

  Mr. Hanley
  Relations with Sri Lanka are good. We support the Sri Lankan Government's efforts to secure a lasting and peaceful settlement and urge all who are concerned to make every effort to persuade the Liberation Tamil Tigers Eelam to respond positively to the constitutional opportunities on offer. I visited Sri Lanka last October and have no immediate plans to visit again.

  Visa Applications (Waiting Times)
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what are the current waiting times for interviews for visa application in respect of(a) spouses. (b) fiances, (c) visitors, (d) dependants, (e) business visitors and (f) quota vouchers, at (i) Bombay, (ii) New Delhi, (iii) Dacca, (iv) Karachi, (v) Islamabad, (vi) Nairobi, (vii) Dar-es-Salaam and (viii) Kampala. [17055]

  Mr. Hanley
  In December 1995, the waiting times for interview for visa applicants at the posts listed were:

  (i) Bombay

  (a) spouses: 3 months

  (b) fiance(e)s: 6 months

  (c) visitors: same day

  (d) dependants: 3 months

  (e) business visitors: same day

  (ii) New Delhi

  (a) spouses: 3 months

  (b) fiance(e)s: 7 months

  (c) visitors: same day

  (d) dependants: 3 months

  (e) business visitors: same day

  (iii) Dhaka

  (a) spouses: 6 months

  (b) fiance(e)s: 5 months

  (c) visitors: same day

  (d) dependants: 6 months

  (e) business visitors: same day

  (iv) Karachi

  (a) spouses: 3 to 7 weeks

  (b) fiance(e)s: 3 to 7 weeks

  (c) visitors: same day

  (d) dependants: 3 to 7 weeks

  (e) business visitors: same day

  (v) Islamabad

  (a) spouses: 4 months

  (b) fiance(e)s: 6 months

  (c) visitors: same day

  (d) dependants: 4 months

  (e) business visitors: same day

  325
  The waiting times for interview for visa applicants in Nairobi, Dar-es-Salaam and Kampala are not yet available.

  For waiting times for persons applying for a special voucher, I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Leeds, North (Mr. Kirkhope) to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) on 9 January, Official Report, column 198.

  Police Training
  Mr. Jon Owen Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many Indonesian police officers have received training in the United Kingdom in each year since 1990; and if he will list for each officer the(a) name, (b) rank, (c) cost of training, (d) duration of training, (e) United Kingdom police force which provided the training and (f) Government department which provided the funding. [16941]

  Mr. David Davis
  The details of training given under the United Kingdom military training assistance scheme are confidential between Governments. Details of training funded by other Government Departments are not available.

  Scott Inquiry
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what actions he(a) has taken and (b) plans to take as a result of the recommendations of the Scott report. [16959]

  Mr. Hanley
  The recommendations of the Scott report are being carefully considered by the FCO and other interested Departments. Some recommendations, for example on intelligence handling, have already been adopted.

  Kashmir
  Sir Michael Grylls
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the potential role of the Commonwealth in facilitating peace negotiations between the Governments of India and Pakistan and representatives of the Kashmiri people. [16940]

  Mr. Hanley
  We believe that the Commonwealth could play a mediatory role only at the request of both India and Pakistan. We continue to urge the two countries to resolve their differences over Kashmir through dialogue.

  Yugoslavia
  Mr. Rooney
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he expects to give a substantive reply to the letter dated 13 December 1995 from the hon. Member for Bradford, North concerning visa facilities in former Yugoslavia. [16915]

  Mr. Hanley
  I replied on 8 January. I have arranged for a copy to be sent to the hon. Member.

  Montserrat
  Mr. Alfred Morris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what advice he has 326
  received in relation to possible worsening of volcanic activity on the island of Montserrat; and if he will make a statement. [16977]

  Sir Nicholas Bonsor
  Since 18 July 1995, we have received regular reports from scientists from the UK and the Trinidad-based seismic research unit, which is monitoring the volcano 24 hours a day.

  Montserrat remains on a state of alert and we have put in place contingency plans to evacuate Montserratians to the north of the island in the event of a partial eruption. Contingency plans also exist for a full evacuation of the island if it became necessary.

  Ecuador (Father Colin MacInnes)
  Mr. Wilson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what report he has received on progress by the central bank of Ecuador in recovering funds gathered by Father Colin MacInnes in Scotland and other moneys intended for community development purposes. [17166]

  Sir Nicholas Bonsor
  The recovery of these funds is a matter for the Ecuadorian authorities. However, our embassy is closely monitoring the situation.

  Mr. Wilson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make representations to the Ecuadorian authorities concerning the safety of Father Colin MacInnes. [17165]

  Sir Nicholas Bonsor
  Our embassy in Quito is in direct contact with Father MacInnes about his situation. It has also registered its interest with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  Imia
  Mr. O'Hara
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what international agreements govern the sovereignty of the island of Imia. [15671]

  Mr. David Davis
  [holding answer 16 February 1996]: The two sides do not agree on the question precisely because they take different views of the relevance of international documents concerned. The 1923 treaty of Lausanne, two agreements of 1932, and the 1947 Paris treaty of peace with Italy are among these.

  Mr. O'Hara
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his answer of 13 February, if the 1947 agreement is the basis of the international law in respect of sovereignty over Imia. [15723]

  Mr. Davis
  [holding answer 19 February 1996]: The two sides do not agree on the question precisely because they take different views of the relevance of international documents concerned. The 1923 treaty of Lausanne, two agreements of 1932, and the 1947 Paris treaty of peace with Italy are among these.

  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessments were made by(a) his departmental officials and (b) departmental Ministers of the reliability of information provided by Mr. Paul Henderson, while managing director of Matrix Churchill, on the status of the Iraqi military procurement network. [15692]
  327
  Mr. Hanky
  [holding answer 16 February 1996]: Details of the information supplied by Mr. Paul Henderson on the Iraqi military procurement network are covered in sections D and G of the report of Sir Richard Scott's inquiry. We do not propose to comment further on the sources of intelligence material.

HEALTH

  Drug Purchases
  Mr. Loyden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the monitoring mechanism to ensure that hospital trusts that purchase drugs from abroad meet British standards. [15889]

  Mr. Malone
  Licensed medicinal products imported from outside the European Union are required to undergo a full qualitative and quantitative analysis of at least all the active constituents and all other tests or checks necessary to ensure that the product is in full compliance with its marketing authorisation. Unlicensed medicines may be imported to fulfil a bona fide unsolicited order from a doctor or dentist on his or her personal responsibility. A condition of this exemption is that the importer should hold the appropriate wholesale dealer's licence and comply with its conditions.

  Thalidomide
  Mr. Loyden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what guidelines have been issued to hospital trusts about purchasing thalidomide, and if he will make a statement. [15896]

  Mr. Malone
  No guidance specifically relating to purchasing has been issued for the drug thalidomide. "Guidance on thalidomide" was published by the Committee on Safety of Medicines and the Medicines Control Agency in the May 1994 issue of "Current Problems in Pharmocovigilance", a drug safety bulletin circulated to all doctors, dentists, pharmacists and coroners. This guidance note strongly advised all doctors considering the use of thalidomide to follow detailed external guidelines on the clinical use and distribution of thalidomide, which were published in a widely available medical journal. A reminder was published in the July 1995 issue.

  Management Consultancy
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the total expenditure incurred by(a) his Department and (b) the NHS executive on management consultancy in each year since 1992–93. [16245]

  Mr. Horam
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) on 20 February at column 109.

  Professions Supplementary to Medicines Act
  Miss Hoey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) when the review of the Professions Supplementary to Medicine Act 1960 will be completed; [16246]

  (2) what findings the review of the Professions Supplementary to Medicine Act 1960 has made in relation to physiotherapy; [16247]
  328
  (3) if he can now release the findings of the review of the Professions Supplementary to Medicine Act 1960. [16248]

  Mr. Horam
  We expect to receive a report on this shortly. An announcement will be made in due course.

  Registered Homes Tribunal
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how appeals to the registered homes tribunal are processed and investigated; and if she will place in the Library a copy of the rules or guidelines which govern the work of the tribunal. [16410]

  Mr. Bowis
  The registered homes tribunal hears all appeals made under part III of the Registered Homes Act 1984. The registered homes tribunal secretariat receives notices of appeals and makes the administrative arrangements for appeals to be heard. The registered homes tribunal is an independent judicial body and is wholly responsible for reaching and making its decisions taking account of all the evidence laid before it. It operates within the Registered Homes Tribunal Rules 1984, SI 1984 No. 1346. A copy of the public booklet about appeals process is available in the Library.

  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many appeals have been considered by the registered homes tribunal in each year since 1984; and how many have been upheld. [16408]

  Mr. Bowis
  The information is shown in the table.

  Year

  Total

  Allowed

  1985

  9

  2

  1986

  37

  7

  1987

  17

  5

  1988

  14

  7

  1989

  24

  8

  1990

  24

  12

  1991

  34

  16

  1992

  37

  16

  1993

  25

  4

  1994

  24

  11

  1995

  25

  5

  1. In six of the cases above, part of the appeal was also dismissed.

  2. The tribunal considered a further three cases but ruled that they had no jurisdiction to hear the appeals.

  3. The figures do not include the appeals withdrawn before hearing.

  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how members of the registered homes tribunal are appointed; and if he will list the names and occupations of tribunal members in each year since 1984. [16409]

  Mr. Bowis
  All chairmen are banisters or solicitors and are appointed by my noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor. Expert members are appointed by my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council from nominations made by various professional and other organisations involved in the nursing and residential care sector.

  The registered homes tribunal began hearing appeals in 1985. Tribunal chairmen and expert members are normally appointed to serve for five years. Supplementary appointments are made when necessary. The names and occupations of those appointed from and including 1985 to 1994 are shown. I refer the hon. Member to the reply

  329
  I gave the Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) on 16 February at columns 741–43, for the list of members appointed in 1995.

  Appointments to Registered Homes Tribunal

  Occupation

  1985

  CHAIRMEN

  R. H. Christie QC

  J. C. R. Fieldsend

  His Honour B. H. Gerrard

  G. F. Harwood

  W. M. Jones

  Mrs. M. Rutherford

  PANEL MEMBERS

  Mr. G. Banner

  Consultant on social services to voluntary organisation

  Mr. R. Bessell

  Managing Director, the Retirement Society Ltd.

  Dr. G. Brackenridge

  District Medical Officer for Health Authority

  Mary Brown

  Administrator

  Dr. S. Brown

  Medical consultant

  Mr. M. Burrell

  Retired home owner

  Dr. J. Chawner

  Medical consultant

  Mr. K. Coleman

  Deputy Director of Commissioning, health authority

  Betty Cowell OBE, JP

  Retired Principal, Midwife Teachers Training College

  Miss R Dawson-Shepherd

  Resident of residential home

  Mr. G. Dunn

  P/t consultant to voluntary sector Housing Association

  Dr. B. Gray

  Retired university lecturer

  Mr. J. Hanson

  Retired Director of Social Services

  Mrs. M. Joynson

  Retired Director of Child care for national voluntary organisation

  Dr. D. L. Kerr

  Chief Executive, private hospital

  Col. R. MacKeith

  Chief Executive, private hospital group

  Mr. G. Neal

  Director of Residential Services, national voluntary organisation

  Miss M. Nurse

  State Registered Nurse

  Dr. J. R. Oxley

  Physician-in-Charge, private hospital caring for people with epilepsy

  Miss M. Phillips

  Retired local government officer

  Mr. Mervyn Phillips

  Chief Executive of County Council

  Mr. D. Prettyman

  Social Worker

  Dr. R. Rao

  General practitioner

  Brig J. Regan

  Head of voluntary sector residential home

  Mrs. I. Shepherd

  Assistant Director of Nursing Services

  Mr. J. Stephens

  Retired assistant Director of Social Services

  Prof O. Stevenson

  University lecturer in child care

  Ms E. Tait

  Ex-home manager

  Miss K. Wells

  Social worker, member of governing body of national voluntary organisation

  Dr. J. Williams

  Medical Director, hospice

  Margaret Woodier

  Consultant in child care issues

  1986: additional appointments

  Carole Alford

  Nursing home owner

  Susan Blanchard

  Nursing homes matron/owner

  Mary Blincoe

  Ex-Director of Nursing Services

  Mr. P. Carr

  Nurse

  330

  Appointments to Registered Homes Tribunal

  Occupation

  Rosalind Davies

  Director, British Nursing Association

  Mr. R. Guest

  District Nursing Officer, Health Authority

  Dorothy Harris

  Retired Director of Nursing Services

  Mr. M. McGeorge

  Nurse

  Mr. Tooley

  Consultant Surgeon

  Mary Parker

  Nursing home matron/owner

  Margaret Pilbeam

  Chief Nursing Officer, district health authority

  Maureen White

  Senior officer, Royal College of Nursing

  1987: additional appointments

  Mr. B. Maurice

  Consultant surgeon

  1990

  CHAIRMEN

  Mr. S. Pacey

  Mr. J.C.R. Fieldsend

  Mr. G.F. Harwood

  M. W.M. Jones

  Mrs. M. Rutherford

  Mr. J.W. Tinnion

  PANEL MEMBERS

  Dr. A. Admani

  Retired consultant physician

  Ms C. Alford

  Nursing home owner

  Ms S. Adams

  Health authority inspection officer

  Dr. A. Bannerjee

  Consultant physician

  Mr. R. Bessell

  Managing Director, the Retirement Society Ltd.

  Mr. D. Browne

  Consultant in social care

  Mr. M. Burrell

  Retired home owner

  Mr. W. Churchill

  Executive Secretary of an organisation representing independent sector care providers

  Mr. K. Coleman

  Deputy Director of Commissioning, health authority

  Dr. J. Cox

  Consultant physician

  Mr. K. Dainty

  Head of health authority inspection unit

  Ms R. Doidge

  Director of Nursing Services

  Mr. G. Dunn

  Consultant to voluntary sector Housing Association

  Mr. F. Edwards

  Home Owner

  Mr. J. Fisher

  Residential home owner

  Ms T. Galletly

  Nursing home owner

  Mr. B. Garner

  Director of organisation representing independent sector care providers

  Dr. B. Gray

  Retired university lecturer/serving magistrate

  Dr. Griffiths

  Medical practitioner

  Dr. G Hall

  Consultant physician

  Mr. G. Harper

  Director of Social Services

  Mr. J. Hanson OBE

  Retired Director of Social Services

  Dr. M. Hildick-Smith

  Consultant physician

  Mr. R. Humphries

  Consultant, social care issues

  Mr. D. James

  Retired Director of Social Services

  Ms P. Jenkins

  Health authority Inspector Officer

  Mr. M. Jobbin

  Local authority inspection officer

  Dr. Jones-Davies

  Medical practitioner

  Mrs. M. Joynson

  Retired Director of Child Care for national voluntary organisation

  331

  Appointments to Registered Homes Tribunal

  Occupation

  Ms N. Kelly

  Matron in charge of nursing home

  Dr. D. Kerr

  Retired Director of private hospital

  Dr. S. McDougall

  Employee of Health Authority

  Ms M. McGregor

  Nursing home owner

  Dr. B. Marcus

  Consultant Surgeon

  Ms J. Mathieson

  Former Assistant Director of Social Services

  Mr. Maurice

  Consultant surgeon

  Dr. N. Merali

  General Practitioner

  Miss A. Packer

  Information not available

  Miss S. Poupard

  Retired Deputy Director of Social Services

  Brig J. Regan

  Trustee of voluntary sector organisation

  Mr. J. Sharp

  Operations Manager, private nursing home group

  Mr. J. Stephens

  Information not available

  Dr. P. Tiplady

  District Medical Officer

  Mr. V. Tyndall

  Coordinator of Social Services, University

  Mr. D. Wakefield

  Retired Director of Social Services

  Mrs. J. Waldron

  Head of health authority Inspection Unit

  Mr. F. Watts

  Consultant to homeowners

  Miss K. Wells

  Retired social worker

  Mr. K. White

  Director of voluntary organisation

  M. Wilson

  Retired Director of Nursing Services

  Miss M. Woodier

  Consultant, residential care issues

  1993: additional appointments

  Mr. G. Thomas

  Retired Director of Social Services

  Mrs. J. Tunstill

  Professor of Social Work Studies

  Coronary Angiography
  Mr. French
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the guidelines provided under the terms of the patients charter on acceptable waiting times for coronary angiography. [16459]

  Mr. Horam
  The patients charter does not contain guidelines specifically on waiting times for coronary angiography. This procedure is normally carried out on an in-patient or day-care basis and where a patient is placed on a waiting list they must be admitted within 18 months of joining the list.

  Mental Health
  Dr. Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 18 December 1995,Official Report, column 939, if he will make a statement on the arrangements for making payments out of the mental health challenge fund. [16789]

  Mr. Bowis
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health published, on 20 February, the detailed criteria for applications to the mental health challenge fund, copies of which are available in the Library.
  332
  Dr. Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 18 December 1995,Official Report, column 939, what assessment he has made of the reports from regional directors of the NHS executive relating to health authorities' purchasing plans for mental health services. [16788]

  Mr. Bowis
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health published, on 20 February, a review of the purchasing of mental health services by health authorities in England, copies of which are available in the Library.

  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many private finance initiative schemes for mental health services have now been agreed. [16796]

  Mr. Horam
  Four private finance initiative schemes specifically for mental health services in the national health service have been approved, each valued at £1 million or more. Details of schemes with a capital cost of less than £1 million are not available centrally.

  Psychiatric Beds
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many psychiatric beds have closed in each year since 1980–81. [16795]

  Mr. Bowis
  Information on the numbers of beds closed is not available centrally.

  Wheelchairs
  Mr. Tom Clarke
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how many people have been provided with electrically powered indoor-outdoor wheelchairs by health authorities in England in each of the last three years; [17031]

  (2) what expenditure has been incurred by health authorities in England for the purchase of electrically powered indoor wheelchairs in each of the last three years; [17072]

  (3) what expenditure has been incurred by health authorities in England for the purchase of electrically powered indoor-outdoor wheelchairs in each of the last three years; [17186]

  (4) how many people have been provided with electrically powered indoor wheelchairs by health authorities in each of the last three years. [17196]

  Mr. Bowis
  This information is not available centrally.

  Mr. Clarke
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what is the most recent figure available for the cost of providing an individual with an electrically powered indoor-outdoor wheelchair; [16995]

  (2) what is the most recent figure available for the cost of providing an individual with an electrically powered indoor wheelchair. [17188]

  Mr. Bowis
  The cost will depend on individual circumstances and the type of chair supplied.

  Mr. Clarke
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what conclusions have been reached by the departmental working group set up by his Department to look at the feasibility of introducing a voucher scheme for the
  333
  provision of indoor-outdoor and indoor electrically powered wheelchairs; and what is the proposed value of the voucher. [17016]

  Mr. Bowis
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait) on 22 February at column 291.

  Residential Care
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) if the additional resources he proposes to make available to social services authorities in England will fully reimburse the costs those authorities will incur as a result of the proposals relating to the treatment of capital for those in long-term residential care and nursing homes announced in November 1995; [16800]

  (2) if he will monitor actual expenditure incurred by social services authorities in order to meet the requirements of the proposals relating to the treatment of capital for all people in long-term residential care and nursing homes announced in November 1995; and if he will make available additional funding to meet any shortfall between the resources provided for authorities and the expenditure they actually incur. [16802]

  Mr. Bowis
  We are currently discussing with local authority representatives the resources to be made available in respect of the changes in the treatment of capital. Decisions will be announced shortly.

  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he intends to raise the thresholds for treatment of capital for people in long-term residential care and nursing homes in future years. [16801]

  Mr. Bowis
  We have already announced such an increase to come into effect on 8 April. Thereafter, the levels will be kept under review.

  Private Finance Initiative
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what data his Department collects on the costs to the NHS of the process of applying for private finance initiative schemes. [16790]

  Mr. Horam
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave him on 15 January at column 337. Further information is not available centrally.

  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will publish details of the consortiums that have been successful in private finance initiative bids. [11211]

  Mr. Horam
  [pursuant to his reply, 23 January 1996, c. 159–61]: I regret that there was an error in the information provided.

  The private sector partner for the United Leeds teaching hospital power station scheme is AHS Emstar Plc, not ULTH Charitable Trust/Medley as stated previously.

  Renal Services
  Mr. Churchill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 8 February,Official Report, column 348, what have been the factors that have
  334
  led to the delay in the publication of the report by the national review of renal services. [17093]

  Mr. Horam
  Although the review was completed some time ago, it has taken a considerable time to consider all its implications. It was also necessary to commission additional work to develop a model to predict the changing pattern of need in this area. This is nearly complete and will be published with the purchasing guidance.

  NHS Administration
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the total remuneration of each NHS district health authority general manager. [17402]

  Mr. Malone
  The information will be placed in the Library. The figures need to be treated with caution. The payments listed represent renumeration in respect of the total gross salary, bonus payments, monetary value of benefits in kind, taxable expenses allowances and compensation payments in relation to the offices described—rather than to an individual. Thus payments listed for a particular district health authority could refer to more than one individual.

  Mr. Congdon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the total remuneration of NHS district health authorities' general managers in each year since 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1995. [17163]

  Mr. Malone
  The salaries and wages costs of national health service district health authority general managers for the years 1990–91 to 1994–95 are shown in the table:

  £

  1990–91

  11,363,000

  1991–92

  11,219,218

  1992–93

  11,685,299

  1993–94

  8,800,247

  1994–95

  6,881,200

  Source: The annual financial returns of district health authorities.

  Notes:

  1. The figures include employers' national insurance and superannuation contributions.

  2. The 1994–95 figures are provisional.

  Children Act 1989 (Contact Orders)
  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the most frequent pattern of contact arranged under orders made under section 8 of the Children Act 1989. [15950]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  I have been asked to reply. The question concerns a specific operational matter on which the chief executive of the Court Service is best placed to provide an answer and accordingly I have asked him to reply direct.

  Letter from M. D. Huebner to Mr. Mike Gapes, dated 23 February 1996:

  The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, has asked me to reply to your Question about section 8 orders. He was originally asked to reply to this Question by the Secretary of State for Health.
  335
  The information requested is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many court orders relating to contact or access broke down and involved the need for further court action(a) prior to and (b) since the coming into operation of the Children Act 1989. [15962]

  Mr. Evans
  I have been asked to reply.
  336
  The information requested is not available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the most frequent pattern of access or contact arranged by court orders prior to the Children Act 1989. [15949]

  Mr. Evans
  I have been asked to reply.

  The information requested is not available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

TREASURY

  Departmental Expenditure
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what assessment he has made of the expenditure of his Department, agencies and non-departmental public bodies on all external consultants including management consultants for each of the years(a) 1979–80, (b) 1989–90, (c) 1991–92, (d) 1993–94, (e) 1994–95 and (f) 1995–96 (i) to date and (ii) as estimated for the whole year; what estimate he has made of such expenditure for 1996–97; and if he will estimate the savings accruing to his Department from the use of consultants in each of these years. [11367]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  [holding answer 25 January 1996]: Information prior to 1991 and details of savings accruing, which are not held centrally, could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  The cost of employing consultants in the other years requested is shown in the table. The figures include expenditure incurred on professional fees in connection with the privatisation programme.

  Expenditure on consultancy

  £ million (excluding VAT)

  1991–92

  9.1

  1993–94

  6.4

  1994–95

  5.5

  1995–96 (to date)

  1.9

  1995–96 (whole year estimate)

  2.0

  Detailed figures as to expenditure on consultants in future years are not yet available.

  Pensioners
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what action he is taking to ensure that pensioners will benefit from any increased prosperity of the United Kingdom; and if he will make a statement. [15060]

  Mr. Waldegrave
  As a result of the Government's successful economic policies, average pensioner incomes have risen by more than 50 per cent. in real terms since 1979.

  Tax-exempt Investments
  Mr. Frank Field
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much of the investment in(a) personal equity plans and (b) tax-exempt special savings accounts is new investment; if he will estimate the proportion and sources diverted from other forms of savings; and if he will list the research his Department has (i) commissioned and (ii) evaluated in respect of this data. [15195]

  Mr. Jack
  Both PEPs and TESSAs have been very successful in achieving the objectives, respectively, of widening share ownership and encouraging longer-term saving. The most directly relevant research on savings is based on 1991 market research data from RSGB Ltd.,338
  from which Inland Revenue purchased additional analyses, and on work that is now part of the Institute for Fiscal Studies savings project, for which HM Treasury and Inland Revenue are among the sponsors, using data from the financial research survey. Both sources suggest that most of the funds going to TESSAs do not represent new savings, which a considerable amount coming from other deposit accounts, but for PEPs the IFS work so far suggests that there may be a somewhat greater element of new equity investment.

  Construction Industry (Cash Payments)
  Mr. Elletson
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what guidelines govern the Inland Revenue's powers to make assumptions as to the annual amount of work undertaken by firms in the construction and building industries for cash payments; and if he will make a statement. [15386]

  Mr. Jack
  Where business accounts have not been submitted to the Inland Revenue or, if submitted, the tax inspector is not satisfied that the full extent of the profits have been declared, the inspector may make an assessment to tax to the best of his or her judgment. The Revenue has not issued guidance specific to the construction industry, but its general guidance to inspectors is to estimate as reasonably and accurately as possible the likely income, cash or otherwise. In making estimated assessments, inspectors will take into account the facts and circumstances of each case—for example, profits agreed in previous years, trends in the particular trade of profession, specific evidence of the extent of the taxpayer's income and so on. Any assessment is open to appeal by the taxpayer to the independent appeal commissioners.

  Pension Funds
  Mr. Frank Field
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer of 16 January,Official Report, column 582, if he will estimate the value of pension entitlement which has accrued in each of the unfunded public sector pension schemes. [15397]

  Mr. Waldegrave
  Precise and up-to-date figures are not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. The latest information available, for the main unfunded public service schemes referred to in the answer of 16 January, relates to 31 March 1993 data and salary levels. The estimate of total liabilities in respect of the then active and former members, accrued to that date—including allowance for anticipated future salary and pension increases—is about £230 billion, made up approximately as follows:

  £ billion

  NHS

  55

  Teachers

  70

  Civil Service

  40

  Armed Forces

  35

  Police

  25

  Fire

  5

  Total

  230

  Taxation
  Mr. Andrew Smith
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will update to include information from 1993–94 to 1997–98 the figures for the burden of direct and indirect taxation in the format used in his answer of 19 December 1994,Official Report, columns 944–50, taking account of changes made in the November 1995 Budget, listing separately the effects of the council tax and value added tax. [15106]

  Income tax, national insurance and indirect taxes at multiples of average earnings 1993–94

  Percentage of male average earnings

  50

  75

  100

  150

  200

  300

  400

  500

  700

  1,000

  2,000

  Single £ per week

  Gross income

  179.55

  269.33

  359.10

  538.65

  718.20

  1,077.30

  1,436.40

  1,795.50

  2,513.70

  3,591.00

  7,182.00

  Income tax and NICs

  38.16

  68.68

  99.21

  152.07

  223.89

  367.53

  511.17

  654.81

  942.09

  1,373.01

  2,809.41

  VAT

  14.81

  19.77

  30.37

  Other indirect taxes

  19.56

  24.10

  33.80

  Total excluding council tax

  103.05

  143.07

  216.24

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  21.3

  25.5

  27.6

  28.2

  31.2

  34.1

  35.6

  36.5

  37.5

  38.2

  39.1

  VAT

  5.5

  5.5

  5.6

  Other indirect taxes

  7.3

  6.7

  6.3

  Total excluding council tax

  38.3

  39.8

  40.1

  Married, no children £ per week

  Gross income

  179.55

  269.33

  359.10

  538.65

  718.20

  1,077.30

  1,436.40

  1,795.50

  2,513.70

  3,591.00

  7,182.00

  Income tax and NICs

  29.89

  60.41

  90.94

  141.31

  210.66

  354.30

  497.94

  641.58

  928.86

  1,359.78

  2,796.18

  VAT

  13.57

  18.98

  30.75

  Other indirect taxes

  21.93

  26.55

  36.62

  Total excluding council tax

  95.92

  136.46

  208.68

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  16.6

  22.4

  25.3

  26.2

  29.3

  32.9

  34.7

  35.7

  37.0

  37.9

  38.9

  VAT

  5.0

  5.3

  5.7

  Other indirect taxes

  8.1

  7.4

  6.8

  Total excluding council taxes

  35.6

  38.0

  38.7

  Married, two children £ per week

  Gross income

  179.55

  269.33

  359.10

  538.65

  718.20

  1,077.30

  1,436.40

  1,795.50

  2,513.70

  3,591.00

  7,182.00

  Income tax and NICs

  11.79

  42.31

  72.84

  123.21

  192.56

  336.20

  479.84

  623.48

  910.76

  1,341.68

  2,778.08

  VAT

  13.44

  19.56

  32.89

  Other indirect taxes

  21.71

  25.38

  33.39

  Total excluding council tax

  77.47

  117.78

  189.49

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  6.6

  15.7

  20.3

  22.9

  26.8

  31.2

  33.4

  34.7

  36.2

  37.4

  38.7

  VAT

  5.0

  5.4

  6.1

  Other indirect taxes

  8.1

  7.1

  6.2

  Total excluding council tax

  28.8

  32.8

  35.2

  340
  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 14 February 1996]: A family on average earnings should be around £450 a year better off next year than this after tax and inflation, taking the total rise since 1978–79 to £4,500 a year. The tables show estimates of tax payments for various specimen households for the years 1993–94 to 1996–97. Changes in tax payments between years mainly reflect assumed growth in average earnings and should not be taken as the impact of Budget measures.
  341

  Income tax, national insurance and indirect taxes at multiples of average earnings 1993–94

  Percentage of male average earnings

  50

  75

  100

  150

  200

  300

  400

  500

  700

  1,000

  2,000

  Married, two earners, no children: Earnings split 60:40 £ per week

  Gross income

  179.55

  269.33

  359.10

  538.65

  718.20

  1,077.30

  1,436.40

  1,795.50

  2,513.70

  3,591.00

  7,182.00

  Income tax and NICs

  11.11

  37.86

  68.05

  129.10

  189.16

  304.58

  434.55

  578.19

  865.47

  1,296.39

  2,732.79

  VAT

  15.64

  21.53

  33.25

  Other indirect taxes

  25.46

  29.47

  37.43

  Total excluding council tax

  78.96

  119.05

  199.78

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  6.2

  14.1

  19.0

  24.0

  26.3

  28.3

  30.3

  32.2

  34.4

  36.1

  38.1

  VAT

  5.8

  6.0

  6.2

  Other indirect taxes

  9.5

  8.2

  6.9

  Total excluding council tax

  29.3

  33.2

  37.1

  1. Income tax payments are calculated on the assumption that the households receive no tax reliefs other than the standard allowances and only have income from employment. All earners, including wives, are assumed to pay class 1 NI contributions at the contracted-in rate. Child benefit is treated as a negative income tax in order to provide comparability with support given through child tax allowances.

  2. Earnings are taken to be the average gross weekly earnings of all full-time males on adult rates with pay unaffected by absence. Estimates of earnings in 1995–96 and 1996–97 are based on earnings growth assumptions of 3½ per cent. in 1995–96 and 4 per cent. in 1996–97.

  3. Figures for indirect taxes include estimates of the intermediate taxes on households as well as the impact of taxes on final goods and services. Estimates of the impact of taxes on final goods and services assume that these taxes are fully incident on households. Estimates of the impact of intermediate taxes are based on the relation between intermediate production costs and final consumption derived using input-output techniques.

  4. Estimates for most indirect taxes are based on equations derived from the 1985 Family Expenditure Survey uprated to later years using forecasts of aggregate tax receipts. Estimates of VAT on domestic fuel and power, airline passenger duty and insurance premium tax are based on equations using results from the 1991 and 1992 Family Expenditure Survey uprated using a similar methodology. All estimates are based on the illustrative assumption that 10 per cent. of disposable income is saved.

  5. Estimates of net council tax payments are based on analysis of the Family Expenditure Survey for the relevant year. Payment data for these years is affected by uncertainty about transitional relief, appeals and late payment. The estimates are therefore particularly uncertain and subject to a wide margin of error. No reliable estimates are available for 1993–94.

  6. Estimates of indirect taxes are very approximate, even within the range for which figures are shown, because spending patterns vary widely between households with the same composition and income. The margin of error is even higher outside the range shown, and even illustrative estimates cannot be made. Because of sampling variation, there can be substantial differences between estimates obtained from Family Expenditure Surveys for different years.

  Income tax, national insurance and indirect taxes at multiples of average earnings 1994–95

  Percentage of male average earnings

  50

  75

  100

  150

  200

  300

  400

  500

  700

  1,000

  2,000

  Single £ per week

  Gross income

  184.55

  276.83

  369.10

  553.65

  738.20

  1,107.30

  1,476.40

  1,845.50

  2,583.70

  3,691.00

  7,382.00

  Income tax and NICs

  40.59

  72.88

  105.18

  162.15

  235.97

  383.61

  531.25

  678.89

  974.17

  1,417.09

  2,893.49

  VAT

  15.94

  21.09

  32.06

  Other indirect taxes

  20.86

  25.62

  35.73

  Total excluding council tax

  109.68

  151.89

  229.95

  Council tax

  6.21

  6.78

  7.99

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  22.0

  26.3

  28.5

  29.3

  32.0

  34.6

  36.0

  36.8

  37.7

  38.4

  39.2

  VAT

  5.8

  5.7

  5.8

  Other indirect taxes

  7.5

  6.9

  6.5

  Total excluding council tax

  39.6

  41.2

  41.5

  Council tax

  2.2

  1.8

  1.4

  342 343

  Income tax, national insurance and indirect taxes at multiples of average earnings 1994–95

  Percentage of male average earnings

  50

  75

  100

  150

  200

  300

  400

  500

  700

  1,000

  2,000

  Married, no children £ per week

  Gross income

  184.55

  276.83

  369.10

  553.65

  738.20

  1,107.30

  1,476.40

  1,845.50

  2,583.70

  3,691.00

  7,382.00

  Income tax and NICs

  33.97

  66.27

  98.56

  155.53

  229.35

  376.99

  524.63

  672.27

  967.55

  1,410.47

  2,886.87

  VAT

  14.67

  20.28

  32.21

  Other indirect taxes

  23.24

  28.16

  38.62

  Total excluding council tax

  104.18

  119.13

  188.29

  Council tax

  9.37

  10.17

  11.88

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  18.4

  23.9

  26.7

  28.1

  31.1

  34.0

  35.5

  36.4

  37.4

  38.2

  39.1

  VAT

  5.3

  5.5

  5.8

  Other indirect taxes

  8.4

  7.6

  7.0

  Total excluding council taxes

  37.6

  32.3

  34.0

  Council tax

  3.4

  2.8

  2.1

  Married, two children £ per week

  Gross income

  184.55

  276.83

  369.10

  553.65

  738.20

  1,107.30

  1,476.40

  1,845.50

  2,583.70

  3,691.00

  7,382.00

  Income tax and NICs

  15.52

  47.82

  80.11

  137.08

  210.90

  358.54

  506.18

  653.82

  949.10

  1,392.02

  2,868.42

  VAT

  14.37

  20.71

  34.21

  Other indirect taxes

  23.15

  26.95

  35.04

  Total excluding council tax

  85.33

  127.78

  206.33

  Council tax

  7.29

  8.12

  9.89

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  8.4

  17.3

  21.7

  24.8

  28.6

  32.4

  34.3

  35.4

  36.7

  37.7

  38.9

  VAT

  5.2

  5.6

  6.2

  Other indirect taxes

  8.4

  7.3

  6.3

  Total excluding council tax

  30.8

  34.6

  37.3

  Council tax

  2.6

  2.2

  1.8

  Married, two earners, no children: Earnings split 60:40 £ per week

  Gross income

  184.55

  276.83

  369.10

  553.65

  738.20

  1,107.30

  1,476.40

  1,845.50

  2,583.70

  3,691.00

  7,382.00

  Income tax and NICs

  13.13

  42.92

  74.56

  139.15

  202.45

  329.55

  465.32

  612.96

  908.24

  1,351.16

  2,827.56

  VAT

  16.75

  22.89

  35.06

  Other indirect taxes

  27.25

  31.51

  39.90

  Total excluding council tax

  86.92

  128.96

  214.11

  Council tax

  9.63

  9.83

  10.23

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  7.1

  15.5

  20.2

  25.1

  27.4

  29.8

  31.5

  33.2

  35.2

  36.6

  38.3

  VAT

  6.0

  6.2

  6.3

  344

  345

  Income tax, national insurance and indirect taxes at multiples of average earnings 1994–95

  Percentage of male average earnings

  50

  75

  100

  150

  200

  300

  400

  500

  700

  1,000

  2,000

  Other indirect taxes

  9.8

  8.5

  7.2

  Total excluding council tax

  31.4

  34.9

  38.7

  Council tax

  3.5

  2.7

  1.8

  1. Income tax payments are calculated on the assumption that the households receive no tax reliefs other than the standard allowances and only have income from employment. All earners, including wives, are assumed to pay class 1 NI contributions at the contracted-in rate. Child benefit is treated as a negative income tax in order to provide comparability with support given through child tax allowances.

  2. Earnings are taken to be the average gross weekly earnings of all full-time males on adult rates with pay unaffected by absence. Estimates of earnings in 1995–96 and 1996–97 are based on earnings growth assumptions of 3½ per cent. in 1995–96 and 4 per cent. in 1996–97.

  3. Figures for indirect taxes include estimates of the intermediate taxes on households as well as the impact of taxes on final goods and services. Estimates of the impact of taxes on final goods and services assume that these taxes are fully incident on households. Estimates of the impact of intermediate taxes are based on the relation between intermediate production costs and final consumption derived using input-output techniques.

  4. Estimates for most indirect taxes are based on equations derived from the 1985 Family Expenditure Survey uprated to later years using forecasts of aggregate tax receipts. Estimates of VAT on domestic fuel and power, airline passenger duty and insurance premium tax are based on equations using results from the 1991 and 1992 Family Expenditure Survey uprated using a similar methodology. All estimates are based on the illustrative assumption that 10 per cent. of disposable income is saved.

  5. Estimates of net council tax payments are based on analysis of the Family Expenditure Survey for the relevant year. Payment data for these years is affected by uncertainty about transitional relief, appeals and late payment. The estimates are therefore particularly uncertain and subject to a wide margin of error. No reliable estimates are available for 1993–94.

  6. Estimates of indirect taxes are very approximate, even within the range for which figures are shown, because spending patterns vary widely between households with the same composition and income. The margin of error is even higher outside the range shown, and even illustrative estimates cannot be made. Because of sampling variation, there can be substantial differences between estimates obtained from Family Expenditure Surveys for different years.

  Income tax, national insurance and indirect taxes at multiples of average earnings 1995–96

  Percentage of male average earnings

  50

  75

  100

  150

  200

  300

  400

  500

  700

  1,000

  2,000

  Single £ per week Gross income

  191.00

  286.50

  382.00

  573.00

  764.00

  1,146.00

  1,528.00

  1,910.00

  2,674.00

  3,820.00

  7,640.00

  Income tax and NICs

  42.19

  75.61

  109.04

  168.27

  244.67

  397.47

  550.27

  703.07

  1,008.67

  1,467.07

  2,995.07

  VAT

  15.86

  21.01

  31.94

  Other indirect taxes

  21.70

  26.70

  37.30

  Total excluding council tax

  113.17

  156.75

  237.51

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  22.1

  26.4

  28.5

  29.4

  32.0

  34.7

  36.0

  36.8

  37.7

  38.4

  39.2

  VAT

  5.5

  5.5

  5.6

  Other indirect taxes

  7.6

  7.0

  6.5

  Total excluding council tax

  39.5

  41.0

  41.5

  Married, no children £ per week

  Gross income

  191.00

  286.50

  382.00

  573.00

  764.00

  1,146.00

  1,528.00

  1,910.00

  2,674.00

  3,820.00

  7,640.00

  Income tax and NICs

  37.22

  70.65

  104.07

  163.31

  239.71

  392.51

  545.31

  698.11

  1,003.71

  1,462.11

  2,990.11

  VAT

  14.34

  19.94

  31.84

  Other indirect taxes

  24.01

  29.17

  40.11

  Total excluding council tax

  109.00

  153.18

  235.26

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  19.5

  24.7

  27.2

  28.5

  31.4

  34.3

  35.7

  36.6

  37.5

  38.3

  39.1

  VAT

  5.0

  5.2

  5.6

  Other indirect taxes

  8.4

  7.6

  7.0

  Total excluding council taxes

  38.0

  40.1

  41.1

  346 347

  Income tax, national insurance and indirect taxes at multiples of average earnings 1995–96

  Percentage of male average earnings

  50

  75

  100

  150

  200

  300

  400

  500

  700

  1,000

  2,000

  Married, two children £ per week

  Gross income

  191.00

  286.50

  382.00

  573.00

  764.00

  1,146.00

  1,528.00

  1,910.00

  2,674.00

  3,820.00

  7,640.00

  Income tax and NICs

  18.37

  51.80

  85.22

  144.46

  220.86

  373.66

  526.46

  679.26

  984.86

  1,443.26

  2,971.26

  VAT

  13.90

  20.23

  33.69

  Other indirect taxes

  23.80

  27.86

  36.44

  Total excluding council tax

  89.50

  133.31

  214.59

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  9.6

  18.1

  22.3

  25.2

  28.9

  32.6

  34.5

  35.6

  36.8

  37.8

  38.9

  VAT

  4.9

  5.3

  5.9

  Other indirect taxes

  8.3

  7.3

  6.4

  Total excluding council tax

  31.2

  34.9

  37.5

  Married, two earners, no children: Earnings split 60:40 £ per week

  Gross income

  191.00

  286.50

  382.00

  573.00

  764.00

  1,146.00

  1,528.00

  1,910.00

  2,674.00

  3,820.00

  7,640.00

  Income tax and NICs

  15.94

  46.72

  79.41

  146.26

  211.27

  343.09

  484.38

  637.18

  942.78

  1,401.18

  2,929.18

  VAT

  16.34

  22.49

  34.64

  Other indirect taxes

  28.17

  32.60

  41.34

  Total excluding council tax

  91.23

  134.50

  222.24

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  8.3

  16.3

  20.8

  25.5

  27.7

  29.9

  31.7

  33.4

  35.3

  36.7

  38.3

  VAT

  5.7

  5.9

  6.0

  Other indirect taxes

  9.8

  8.5

  7.2

  Total excluding council tax

  31.8

  35.2

  38.8

  1. Income tax payments are calculated on the assumption that the households receive no tax reliefs other than the standard allowances and only have income from employment. All earners, including wives, are assumed to pay Class 1 NI contributions at the contracted-in rate. Child benefit is treated as a negative income tax in order to provide comparability with support given through child tax allowances.

  2. Earnings are taken to be the average gross weekly earnings of all full-time males on adult rates with pay unaffected by absence. Estimates of earnings in 1995–96 and 1996–97 are based on earnings growth assumptions of 3½ per cent. in 1995–96 and 4 per cent. in 1996–97.

  3. Figures for indirect taxes include estimates of the intermediate taxes on households as well as the impact of taxes on final goods and services. Estimates of the impact of taxes on final goods and services assume that these taxes are fully incident on households. Estimates of the impact of intermediate taxes are based on the relation between intermediate production costs and final consumption derived using input-output techniques.

  4. Estimates for most indirect taxes are based on equations derived from the 1985 Family Expenditure Survey uprated to later years using forecasts of aggregate tax receipts. Estimates of VAT on domestic fuel and power, airline passenger duty and insurance premium tax are based on equations using results from the 1991 and 1992 Family Expenditure Survey uprated using a similar methodology. All estimates are based on the illustrative assumption that 10 per cent. of disposable income is saved.

  5. Estimates of net council tax payments are based on analysis of the Family Expenditure Survey for the relevant year. Payment data for these years is affected by uncertainty about transitional relief, appeals and late payment. The estimates are therefore particularly uncertain and subject to a wide margin of error. No reliable estimates are available for 1993–94.

  6. Estimates of indirect taxes are very approximate, even within the range for which figures are shown, because spending patterns vary widely between households with the same composition and income. The margin of error is even higher outside the range shown, and even illustrative estimates cannot be made. Because of sampling variation, there can be substantial differences between estimates obtained from Family Expenditure Surveys for different years.
  348 349

  Income tax, national insurance and indirect taxes at multiples of average earnings 1996–97

  Percentage of male average earnings

  50

  75

  100

  150

  200

  300

  400

  500

  700

  1,000

  2,000

  Single £ per week

  Gross income

  198.65

  297.98

  397.30

  595.95

  794.60

  1,191.90

  1,589.20

  1,986.50

  2,781.10

  3,973.00

  7,946.00

  Income tax and NICs

  42.28

  76.05

  109.83

  168.58

  248.04

  406.96

  565.88

  724.80

  1,042.64

  1,519.40

  3,108.60

  VAT

  16.84

  22.35

  34.11

  Other indirect taxes

  23.11

  28.51

  40.00

  Total excluding council tax

  116.01

  160.68

  242.68

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  21.3

  25.5

  27.6

  28.3

  31.2

  34.1

  35.6

  36.5

  37.5

  38.2

  39.1

  VAT

  5.7

  5.6

  5.7

  Other indirect taxes

  7.8

  7.2

  6.7

  Total excluding council tax

  38.9

  40.4

  40.7

  Married, no children £ per week

  Gross income

  198.65

  297.98

  397.30

  595.95

  794.60

  1,191.90

  1,589.20

  1,986.50

  2,781.10

  3,973.00

  7,946.00

  Income tax and NICs

  37.12

  70.89

  104.66

  163.41

  242.87

  401.79

  560.71

  719.63

  1,037.47

  1,514.23

  3,103.43

  VAT

  15.17

  21.16

  33.95

  Other indirect taxes

  25.51

  31.07

  42.91

  Total excluding council tax

  111.57

  156.89

  240.27

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  18.7

  23.8

  26.3

  27.4

  30.6

  33.7

  35.3

  36.2

  37.3

  38.1

  39.1

  VAT

  5.1

  5.3

  5.7

  Other indirect taxes

  8.6

  7.8

  7.2

  Total excluding council tax

  37.4

  39.5

  40.3

  Married, two children £ per week

  Gross income

  198.65

  297.98

  397.30

  595.95

  794.60

  1,191.90

  1,589.20

  1,986.50

  2,781.10

  3,973.00

  7,946.00

  Income tax and NICs

  17.52

  51.29

  85.06

  143.81

  223.27

  382.19

  541.11

  700.03

  1,017.87

  1,494.63

  3,083.83

  VAT

  14.62

  21.40

  35.87

  Other indirect taxes

  25.35

  29.76

  39.19

  Total excluding council tax

  91.25

  136.22

  218.87

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  8.8

  17.2

  21.4

  24.1

  28.1

  32.1

  34.0

  35.2

  36.6

  37.6

  38.8

  VAT

  4.9

  5.4

  6.0

  Other indirect taxes

  8.5

  7.5

  6.6

  Total excluding council tax

  30.6

  34.3

  36.7

  Married, two earners, no children: Earnings split 60:40 £ per week

  Gross income

  198.65

  297.98

  397.30

  595.95

  794.60

  1,191.90

  1,589.20

  1,986.50

  2,781.10

  3,973.00

  7,946.00

  Income tax and NICs

  15.71

  46.76

  79.40

  146.95

  212.31

  345.75

  490.91

  649.83

  967.67

  1,444.43

  3,033.63

  VAT

  17.18

  23.79

  36.78

  Other indirect taxes

  30.00

  34.79

  44.23

  Total excluding council tax

  93.94

  137.99

  227.96

  350 351

  Income tax, national insurance and indirect taxes at multiples of average earnings 1996–97

  Percentage of male average earnings

  50

  75

  100

  150

  200

  300

  400

  500

  700

  1,000

  2,000

  Percentage of earnings

  Income tax and NICs

  7.9

  15.7

  20.0

  24.7

  26.7

  29.0

  30.9

  32.7

  34.8

  36.4

  38.2

  VAT

  5.8

  6.0

  6.2

  Other indirect taxes

  10.1

  8.8

  7.4

  Total excluding council tax

  31.5

  34.7

  38.3

  1. Income tax payments are calculated on the assumption that the households receive no tax reliefs other than the standard allowances and only have income from employment. All earners, including wives, are assumed to pay Class 1 NI contributions at the contracted-in rate. Child benefit is treated as a negative income tax in order to provide comparability with support given through child tax allowances.

  2. Earnings are taken to be the average gross weekly earnings of all full-time males on adult rates with pay unaffected by absence. Estimates of earnings in 1995–96 and 1996–97 are based on earnings growth assumptions of 3½ per cent. in 1995–96 and 4 per cent. in 1996–97.

  3. Figures for indirect taxes include estimates of the intermediate taxes on households as well as the impact of taxes on final goods and services. Estimates of the impact of taxes on final goods and services assume that these taxes are fully incident on households. Estimates of the impact of intermediate taxes are based on the relation between intermediate production costs and final consumption derived using input-output techniques.

  4. Estimates for most indirect taxes are based on equations derived from the 1985 Family Expenditure Survey uprated to later years using forecasts of aggregate tax receipts. Estimates of VAT on domestic fuel and power, airline passenger duty and insurance premium tax are based on equations using results from the 1991 and 1992 Family Expenditure Survey uprated using a similar methodology. All estimates are based on the illustrative assumption that 10 per cent. of disposable income is saved.

  5. Estimates of net council tax payments are based on analysis of the Family Expenditure Survey for the relevant year. Payment data for these years is affected by uncertainty about transitional relief, appeals and late payment. The estimates are therefore particularly uncertain and subject to a wide margin of error. No reliable estimates are available for 1993–94.

  6. Estimates of indirect taxes are very approximate, even within the range for which figures are shown, because spending patterns vary widely between households with the same composition and income. The margin of error is even higher outside the range shown, and even illustrative estimates cannot be made. Because of sampling variation, there can be substantial differences between estimates obtained from Family Expenditure Surveys for different years.

  Private Medical Insurance
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will add osteopathic and chiropractor treatments to the list of those paid for from private medical insurance policies that are eligible for tax relief. [15467]

  Mr. Jack
  Private medical insurance relief is aimed at policies that offer types of treatment normally provided free of charge by the NHS. When the relief was introduced in 1989, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury said in Committee: "We shall not include treatments not normally available under the National Health Service". [Official Report, Standing Committee G, 25 May 1989, c.229].

  Osteopathy and chiropracty are usually provided privately, so insurance policies that indemnify the cost of these treatments are not eligible for private medical insurance relief.

  I have no plans to alter the current rules regarding eligibility of polices.

  Income Tax
  Mr. Forman
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what would the single positive rate of income tax need to be in 1996–97, assuming a personal allowance of £5,000 and the abolition of all other tax expenditures, exemptions and reliefs now allowable against income tax, in order to introduce it on a revenue rental basis. [16078]

  Mr. Jack
  It is estimated that a single rate of about 23 per cent. would be needed in 1996–97 to achieve revenue neutrality. This assumes a personal allowance of £5,000 and the abolition of all other income tax 352
  allowances, and mortgage interest relief, tax relief on employees contributions to occupational and personal pension schemes, reliefs for TESSAs, PEPs, profit-related pay, national savings certificates, employee share schemes and charitable giving.

  This estimate does not take into account the substantial behavioural effects which might result from the introduction of such a change nor do they allow for any subsequent changes to the tax system, such as changes to tax relief on employer's contributions to pension schemes or relief for investment income in pension funds.

  Mr. Forman
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what would be the estimated full year cost in 1996–97 of making the 20 per cent. rate the only positive rate of tax for all income tax payers. [16079]

  Mr. Jack
  The estimated full year cost of introducing a single 20 per cent. rate of income tax at 1996–97 income levels would be about £16 billion. These estimates do not take account of any behavioural effects that might result from the introduction of the new regime.

  Departmental Bills
  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many civil servants, and at what civil service grades are involved in paying the Treasury's bills. [16201]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  [holding answer 20 February 1996]: Staff in many grades throughout the Treasury are involved in checking invoices for purchases made by their directorates.
  353
  In addition, there is a central team for purchasing and bill paying of eight personal at administrative and executive officer grades.

  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent payment of bills by his Department is computerised. [16196]

  Mrs. Knight
  [holding answer 20 February 1996]: Bill paying is computerised, as is the registration of invoices; checking and other steps are not.

  Scott Inquiry
  Mr. Alan Williams
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much has been spent on external legal advice for Ministers and civil servants in relation to the Scott inquiry and report since the period covered by his answer of 16 January,Official Report, column 527. [15929]

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  [holding answer 20 February 1996]: The value of accounts settled from public funds by my departments in the period since the making of the payments comprising the sum given in my answer of 16 January, Official Report, column 527, for the provision of external legal services on behalf of civil servants in connection with the Scott inquiry and report, is £3,037. There has been no comparable expenditure on behalf of ministers.

  Self-assessment
  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much money his Department expects to be collected under self-assessment in 1996–97 from overpayment of income tax. [16202]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 20 February 1996]: No estimate has been made. The payments collected under self-assessments in 1996–97 will be the first payments on account for 1996–97, due on 31 January 1997. The amounts due will be based on taxpayers' 1995–96 liabilities. Taxpayers will have the right to claim to reduce the amounts due if they think their tax liability for 1996–97 will be less than for 1995–96.

  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what assessment his Department has made of the proportion of taxpayers due to pay under the self-assessment system who are likely to make errors leading to financial penalties. [16198]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 20 February 1996]: The Department does not expect straightforward errors by taxpayers under self-assessment to lead to financial penalties. The Revenue intends to put right such errors when the return is processed, and taxpayers will not face financial penalties when such "repairs" are made.

  Unqualified Tax Advisers
  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans his Department has to regulate unqualified tax advisers. [16199]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 20 February 1996]: We currently have no plans to do so.

  Low Pay
  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the effective cost to public funds or low pay; and what plans he has to reduce it. [16389]

  Mr. Waldegrave
  There is no such cost: having more people in work increases output and reduces public expenditure.

  Sustainable Development
  Mr. Dafis
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) what response he has made to the section on environmental accounting in the second report of the British Government panel on sustainable development; [16612]

  (2) if he will make a statement on the conclusions of the British Government panel on sustainable development in paragraph 22 of its second report about the effect of the current emphasis on gross domestic product and gross national product on the decision-making process. [16627]

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  The Government expect to publish their response to the second report of the Government panel on sustainable development towards the end of March.

  Earnings
  Mr. Ian McCartney
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many (i) men and (ii) women, between the ages of(a) 16 to 24 years, (b) 25 to 49 years and (c) 50 to 64 years are employed but earn less than the lower earnings limit for national insurance contributions; and what proportion such people make of the total working population of each sex in each age group. [16616]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  Information from the labour force survey of spring 1995 is shown in the table:

  LFS—Spring 1995 (GB)

  Age

  Employees1 earning less than £58 per week (thousands)

  Percentage of total age group

  Males

  16-24

  312.5

  17.8

  25-9

  73.9

  1.0

  50-64

  47.6

  2.3

  Females

  16-24

  423.0

  25.1

  25-49

  1,017.4

  15.4

  50-64

  390.3

  20.3

  1 Earnings information is not available for the self employed.

  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the answer of 13 February,Official Report, column 537, regarding wages council rates, what were the average wages per hour and per week in each of these industries; what is the national average wage referred to per week; what date the figures relate to; and how many employees were receiving these minimum hourly rates in each industry and in total. [16346]
  355
  Mrs. Knight
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: The average wages referred to by my hon. Friend in his reply of 13 February were calculated from information taken from the new earnings survey of April 1993. The national wage referred to the average gross hourly earnings, excluding overtime, of all full-time employees on adult rates whose pay for the survey period was not affected by absence. This was equal to £7.82 in April 1993. The equivalent average weekly wage was £316.90. Further information from the new earnings survey is provided in the attached table.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  National Insurance Numbers
  Mr. Churchill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many national insurance numbers have been issued in each of the past five years for which figures are available to individuals who are not citizens of the United Kingdom but are(a) European Economic Area nationals or (b) nationals of countries outside the European Economic Area. [13734]

  Mr. Heald
  The information requested is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is in the table.

  National Insurance numbers issued to persons arriving from:

  An EEA member state

  Outside the EEA

  1990–91

  64,800

  119,900

  1991–92

  44,000

  100,500

  1992–93

  43,100

  86,000

  1993–94

  52,700

  85,400

  1994–95

  50,600

  72,500

  Notes:

  EEA—European Economic Area.

  The differentiation between EEA member states and countries outside the EEA is not based on nationality, it is based on the person's country of residence before arrival in the UK.Source:

  1 per cent. sample of the national insurance recording system (NIRS).

  Cold Weather Payments
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list for each parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom the number of cold weather payments made in each year since 1992. [15158]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  The information is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is contained in the social fund statistical series, "Cold Weather Payments by District Offices" held in the statistical section of the Library.

  Disability Living Allowance
  Mr. Clelland
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) how many new claimants appealed against the rejection of their claim to disability living allowance in the year 1994–95; and how many of those claimants were successful in their appeal; [15199]
  356
  (2) if he will estimate the average cost to the Benefits Agency of each appeal against the rejection of a new claim to disability living allowance in 1994–95. [15200]

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  The information is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is below.

  In 1994–95, 33,799 appeals against adjudication officers' decisions on claims to disability living allowance, disability working allowance or attendance allowance were heard by disability appeal tribunals at an estimated average cost to the independent tribunal service of £315 per appeal.

  Benefits (Pensioners)
  Mr. Frank Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list in real terms the amount paid out in benefits in the past 30 years; and if he will divide the data according to the amount paid to pensioners and non-pensioner claimants. [15234]

  Mr. Heald
  [holding answer 15 February 1996]: The information is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is in the tables.

  The clients group analysis is available only for 1978–79 onwards.

  Client group expenditure real terms (1994–95 prices) 1965–66 to 1994–95

  £ million

  Total benefit expenditure

  1965–66

  23,581

  1966–67

  23,947

  1967–68

  26,430

  1968–69

  28,597

  1969–70

  29,061

  1970–71

  28,774

  1971–72

  30,630

  1972–73

  32,211

  1973–74

  33,191

  1974–75

  35,204

  1975–76

  37,898

  1976–77

  40,088

  1977–78

  42,270

  Client group anlysis

  £ million

  Pensioners

  Non-pensioners

  Total benefit expenditure

  1978–79

  25,526

  20,769

  46,295

  1979–80

  25,335

  21,589

  46,924

  1980–81

  25,627

  22,227

  47,854

  1981–82

  27,648

  25,691

  53,339

  1982–83

  28,952

  27,906

  56,858

  1983–84

  29,990

  30,712

  60,702

  1984–85

  30,255

  32,275

  62,530

  1985–86

  31,283

  33,385

  64,668

  1986–87

  32,664

  34,948

  67,613

  1987–88

  32,687

  34,058

  66,744

  357

  £ million

  Elderly

  Non elderly

  Total benefit expenditure

  1988–89

  31,684

  31,726

  63,410

  1989–90

  32,201

  30,628

  62,828

  1990–91

  33,199

  32,245

  65,444

  1991–92

  34,495

  37,659

  72,154

  1992–93

  36,219

  42,609

  78,828

  1993–94

  37,672

  46,272

  83,944

  1994–95

  37,926

  47,295

  85,221

  Note:

  Information on pensioners is only available between 1978–79 and 1987–88; with the introduction of income support in April 1988, the definition was changed to elderly, ie to include expenditure for men aged 60–64.

  Source:

  The information has been calculated using data from the Annual Abstract of Statistics 1995.

  Local Exchange and Trading Schemes
  Mr. Chris Davies
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how participation in a local exchange and trading scheme affects an individual's benefit entitlement. [15431]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  Credits obtained from participation in local exchange and trading schemes can be exchanged for goods and services in the same way as money. For benefit purposes, therefore, the value of credits is treated in exactly the same way as other earnings. In income support, family credit and disability working allowance, work undertaken within such schemes will also be taken into consideration when applying the 16 hours remunerative work rule.

  Housing Benefit
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the figure of housing benefit paid to private landlords in the most recent year. [15910]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  Information on the amount of housing benefit paid by local authorities directly to private landlords on behalf of their tenants is not routinely collected. However, during the 1994–95 financial year, a total of £4,878 million was paid in housing benefit to tenants of private landlords and housing associations.

  Industrial Injury Benefit
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security when he expects to reply to the letter of 23 January from the hon. Member for Nottingham, North regarding Mr. D. Mitchell in respect of repayment of industrial injury benefit. [15714]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  The reply was sent on 16 February.

  Housing and Council Tax Benefit
  Mr. Gerrard
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list the information contained in housing benefit and council tax benefit subsidy claim form MPF 720A submitted by each local authority in Gloucestershire in(a) 1992–93, (b) 1993–94 and (c) 1994–95. [16141]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  The information has been placed in the Library.
  358
  Mr. Gerrard
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list for each local authority in Gloucestershire in(a) 1992–93, (b) 1993–94 and (c) 1994–95 (i) statistic 124 of local authority housing benefit and council tax benefit administration data, (ii) statistic 122, quarterly stock costs, giving caseload—claimants with housing benefit and/or council tax benefit not in receipt of income support—and (iii) statistic 122, quarterly stock costs, giving caseload—claimants with housing benefit and/or council tax benefit also in receipt of income support. [16140]

  Mr. Evans
  Form STATS 124 is used to collect data concerning the administration of the housing benefit and council tax benefit schemes, and is used essentially for the purposes of producing national estimates. The Department does not publish information from this form on an individual local authority basis due to concerns about its robustness at that level.

  Information from the quarterly caseload stock counts, taken on forms STATS 121 and 122, is set out in the tables.

  Table 1: Average housing benefit/council tax benefit caseload for each local authority in Gloucestershire—1994–95

  Local authority

  Housing benefit with income support

  Council tax benefit with income support

  Housing benefit without income support

  Council tax benefit without income support

  Cheltenham

  4,860

  5,610

  2,670

  3,370

  Cotswold

  2,130

  2,690

  2,120

  2,450

  Forest of Dean

  2,500

  3,680

  1,580

  2,690

  Gloucester

  5,460

  6,360

  2,400

  3,240

  Stroud

  3,300

  4,380

  2,410

  3,640

  Tewkesbury

  1,880

  2,460

  1,500

  2,330

  Notes:

  1. Figures given are an average of the four quarters in each year.

  2. Figures refer to benefit rules which may be a single person or couple.

  3. Figures have been rounded to the nearest ten.

  4. Council tax benefit was introduced from April 1993.

  Source:

  Housing benefit management information system, quarterly 100 per cent. caseload enquiries taken at the end of May, August, November and February in each year given.

  Table 2: Average housing benefit caseload for each local authority in Gloucestershire—1992–93

  Local authority

  Housing benefit with income support

  Housing benefit without income support

  Cheltenham

  4,210

  2,640

  Cotswold

  1,900

  2,120

  Forest of Dean

  2,020

  1,560

  Gloucester

  4,580

  2,380

  Stroud

  2,940

  2,500

  Tewkesbury

  1,690

  1,550

  359

  Table 3: Average housing benefit council tax benefit caseload for each local authority in Gloucestershire—1993–94

  Local authority

  Housing benefit with income support

  Council tax benefit with income support

  Housing benefit without income support

  Council tax benefit without income support

  Cheltenham

  4,610

  5,330

  2,690

  3,550

  Cotswold

  2,090

  2,730

  2,140

  2,700

  Forest of Dean

  2,350

  3,530

  1,620

  2,780

  Gloucester

  4,970

  5,800

  2,420

  3,410

  Stroud

  3,210

  4,320

  2,410

  3,910

  Tewkesbury

  1,840

  2,460

  1,520

  2,520

  Mr. Gerrard
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list for each local authority in Gloucestershire in(a) 1992–93, (b) 1993–94 and (c) 1994–95 the housing benefit expenditure incurred in meeting rents above the rent officer determined level for applicants not belonging to the groups described in regulations 11(3) and 6(b) of the Housing Benefit General Regulations 1987. [16142]

  Mr. Evans
  The information is as set out in the table:

  1992–93 (£)

  1993–94 (£)

  1994–95 (£)

  Cheltenham

  1,840

  3,206

  1,304

  Cotswold

  4,143

  3,042

  3,688

  Forest of Dean

  1,272

  2,157

  1,928

  Gloucester City

  0

  9,962

  17,223

  Stroud

  5,331

  13,154

  13,581

  Tewkesbury

  1,674

  2,254

  2,836

  Source:

  Audited final housing benefit and community charge benefit/council tax benefit claim forms for each year.

  Mr. Gerrard
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list for each local authority in Gloucestershire the budget for the current year for discretionary payments of housing benefit in cases of exceptional hardship. [16144]

  Mr. Evans
  To meet cases of exceptional hardship, local authorities are able to spend up to 0.15 per cent. of their expenditure on deregulated tenancies referred to the rent officer. To help authorities with this cost, central Government provide a contribution by way of a subsidy addition. For 1995–96 the amount of subsidy addition available to authorities in Gloucestershire is as follows:

  Authority

  Amount £

  Cheltenham

  5,532

  Cotswold

  2,309

  Forest of Dean

  1,968

  Gloucester City

  7,951

  Stroud

  3,272

  Tewkesbury

  1,578

  The maximum amount authorities will be able to spend is approximately double these sums.

  Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
  Mr. Barnes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what record his Department holds of the number of people in the United Kingdom who are diagnosed as having myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome and who are in receipt of disability living allowance. [16139]

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  The information is not available in the format requested. The number of people in receipt of disability living allowance at 30 November 1995, where the main disabling condition is shown as chronic fatigue syndrome, including myalgic encephalomyelitis, is estimated to be 7,400.

  Source:

  Analytical Services Division—based on a 5 per cent. sample of cases resident in Great Britain and a 100 per cent. sample of cases in Northern Ireland.

  Fraud (Northumberland)
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what recent special investigations have been undertaken by multi-agency investigation teams into housing benefit and fraud in the west end of Newcastle; and how many charges have been brought. [16148]

  Mr. Heald
  Joint operations to tackle housing benefit fraud are undertaken from time to time by the local authority with the help of the police, the Benefits Agency and other bodies. A recent operation in the west end of Newcastle involving those organisations has resulted in 18 charges being brought. It would not be appropriate to comment in greater detail on operational matters in order to avoid compromising any future operations.

  Weekly benefit savings of £½ million have been achieved.

  Benefits Agency
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what are the recorded staffing levels and average daily attendance at the Benefits Agency offices at Highgate and Finsbury park for(a) January 1992, (b) June 1992, (c) January 1993, (d) June 1993, (e) January 1994, (f) June 1994, (g) January 1995, (h) June 1995 and (i) January 1996; and what estimated level of public expenditure was planned for in each month. [15942]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  This is a matter for Peter Mathison, chief executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Peter Mathison to Mr. Jeremy Corbyn, dated 22 February 1996:
  The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking what are the recorded staffing levels and average daily attendance at the Benefit Agency offices at Highgate and Finsbury Park for (a) January 1992, (b) June 1992, (c) January 1993, (d) June 1993, (e) January 1994, (f) June 1994, (g) January 1995, (h) June 1995 and (i) January 1996; and what estimated level of public expenditure was planned for in each month.
  The information available is shown in the table at Annex A.
  I hope you find this reply helpful.
  361

  Annex A: Staffing and Caller Levels at Finsbury Park and Highgate Branch Offices

  Finsbury Park

  Highgate

  Period (calendar months)

  Staffing

  Average daily attendance

  Planned monthly staffing expenditure

  Staffing

  Average daily attendance

  Planned monthly staffing expenditure

  January 92

  31

  n/a

  n/a

  29

  n/a

  n/a

  June 92

  26

  204

  n/a

  27

  205

  n/a

  January 93

  32

  247

  n/a

  35

  218

  n/a

  June 93

  34

  298

  £38,044

  36

  237

  £44,438

  January 94

  36

  295

  £46,939

  40

  240

  £45,486

  June 94

  35

  244

  £41,211

  38

  154

  £44,783

  January 95

  33

  292

  £40,866

  38

  230

  £44,141

  June 95

  31

  255

  £43,625

  32

  245

  £46,468

  January 96

  30

  275

  £43,268

  32

  276

  £45,085

  These figures are provisional and subject to change. The statistics for average daily attendance prior to June 1995 are for Income Support callers only.

  Contributory Benefit callers prior to June 1995 are only available at a district level.

  n/a = not available.

  Motability
  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security, pursuant to his answer of 30 January,Official Report, column 735, on the Schroeders merchant bank report, if officials of his Department have seen the report. [16797]

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  With the permission of Motability, officials have had sight of this confidential report.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Milk Marque
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what estimate he has made of the change in(a) investment, (b) prices and (c) employment in the diary industry since the introduction of Milk Marque. [16460]

  Mr. Baldry
  On employment and the price of milk for processing, I refer my hon. Friend to the answer he was given by my predecessor on 26 June 1995,Official Report, column 525. We do not monitor retail prices, but in general the price of cheese and butter has gone up since 1 November 1995 while the price of liquid milk has remained fairly static. As regards investment in the diary industry since the abolition of the milk marketing boards, several companies have demonstrated their confidence in the new arrangements by undertaking or announcing major investment programmes.

  Live Animal Transport
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many of the veterinary officers and technical assistants were involved on(a) 15 February and (b) 16 February at lairages near Dover in inspecting animals to ensure that they were fit to travel under the Welfare of Animals During Transport Order 1994 and to deal with other related matters; on each such day how many consignments were inspected by his veterinary officers and technical assistants; how many (i) sheep and (ii) calves were inspected; how many hours were spent in carrying out the inspections; and if he will make a statement. [16339]
  362
  Mrs. Browning
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: On 15 February, there were 13 consignments of calves totalling 1,651 calves and one consignment of 231 sheep. Six Ministry veterinary officers, one temporary veterinary inspector and 10 technical staff were present at Dover lairages at various times between 0700 and 1630.

  On 16 February, there were two consignments of calves totalling 205 calves and one consignment of 250 sheep. There were two veterinary officers and two technical staff carrying out the inspections. In addition, the opportunity was taken to train three technical staff. Ministry staff were present at lairages between 0730 and 1230.

  Bovine Somatotropin
  Mr. Morley
  To asks the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what trials of bovine somatotropin are(a) being conducted in the United Kingdom and (b) planned; how many animals are involved; how is the BST being administered; in what quantities is it being administered; what effects are being measured; and if he will make a statement. [16344]

  Mrs. Browning
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: Although the European Commission has accepted that there is no risk to humans from the consumption of milk from cows treated with bovine somatotropin, a moratorium on its marketing and use was introduced throughout the EC in 1990, and after twice being extended is now scheduled to last until 31 December 1999. The terms of the current extension to the moratorium were agreed by the Council Agriculture Ministers at its meeting in December 1994, and allow limited practical tests in order to obtain any other scientific data that might be taken into account by the Council when taking a final decision on the authorisation of BST. No such trials of BST are currently taking place in the UK or any other member state.

  Any plans for other scientific research outside the terms of the moratorium are a matter for the pharmaceutical companies concerned. Such research could be conducted only under the terms of an animal test certificate issued by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, or a Home Office licence.

  Abattoir Industry
  Mr. Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he is taking both domestically and in Europe to assist the British abattoir industry; and what steps he is taking to increase business for that industry. [16656]

  Mrs. Browning
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: MAFF Ministers support and encourage the work of British abattoirs through frequent trade visits to promote British meat both here and abroad. For example, I recently visited trade fairs in Cologne and Milan, and plan to visit the Paris fair next week.

  On the export front, we continue to work to open up world markets closed to British meat because of unjustified public or animal health concerns. MAFF also encourages good applications for export initiatives to come forward under our marketing development scheme.

  Domestically, for small abattoirs, the UK was instrumental in obtaining less onerous structural requirements and increase in the throughput limits from 12 to 20 livestock units per week under the single market fresh meat directive. More recently, the Government set up the Meat Hygiene Service, which has since April 1995 provided a more consistent, cost-effective inspection service to abattoirs than was possible under the previous local authority arrangements.

EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT

  Teachers' Superannuation Scheme
  Dr. Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what safeguards will exist to ensure that a successful bidder for the administration of the teachers' superannuation scheme does not use the names of contributors for direct marketing purposes. [15071]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The statement of service requirements which will form part of any contract that we decide to let for the administration of the teachers' superannuation scheme contains the following condition: that the contractor must not use, or allow anyone else to use, any of the information to which he has access through the contract for the purpose of selling other services or products such as personal financial planning, or for any purpose other than administering the TSS.

  Skills Centres
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment which of the sites formerly used as skills centres have so far been sold by the Skills Training Agency; and how much has been received in total for the sites sold. [15082]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  [holding answer 13 February 1996]: The Skills Training Agency was established as a self-contained agency of the former Department of Employment in 1985. It was transferred into the private sector in 1990. In May 1990 the Government completed the sale of 36 skills centre businesses with associated freehold property interests. Professional advisers were appointed to assist the Department with the disposal of the residual property interests.
  364
  Since May 1990, 15 of the residual sites have been either sold or surrendered to landlords. These were in:
  Leicester, Chesterfield, East Lancs, Chelmsford, Leeds, Wakefield, Edinburgh, Southampton, Slough, Reading, Twickenham, Portsmouth, St. Helens, Cardiff, Deptford.

  Where an outright sale could not be affected, despite prolonged marketing, properties were offered for subletting. Five properties are currently sublet, wholly or in part.

  The total amount received for sales and leases is £14,731,372.

  Access to Work Scheme
  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list the bodies from which she has received representations in respect of the reduction in the budget of the access to work scheme. [15333]

  Mr. Paice
  A number of letters have been received about the access to work budget. Additional funds have been allocated to this year's budget and planned provision for 1996–97 has been maintained at £12.9 million.

  Travellers and Displaced Persons
  Mr. Kilfoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list the total amount under section 210 grant for travellers and displaced persons in each year since 1990–91,(a) allocated and (b) paid out to local education authorities under the Education Reform Act 1988. [16462]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  Total amounts of grant allocated and spent in each of the years in question are as follows:

  Year

  Supply estimate £

  Amount spent £

  1990–91

  6,068,000

  5,387,405

  1991–92

  7,199,000

  6,542,623

  1992–93

  7,419,000

  7,530,497

  1993–94

  7,644,000

  7,584,642

  1994–95

  7,867,000

  7,802,941

  1995–96

  7,197,000

  1—

  1 Not yet available.

  The figures are for England only. Any underspending in particular years is due to local education authorities failing to take up their available grant allocations in full.

  Mr. Kilfoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what is the projected total amount payable to local education authorities in 1996–97 as section 210 grant for travellers and displaced persons, under the Education Reform Act 1988; and what percentage this represents of the grant paid in(a) 1990–91 and (b) 1995–96. [16463]

  Mr. Squire
  The projected total amount of grant payable under this programme to local authorities in 1996–97 is £6,762,000, subject to parliamentary approval of the estimates. This represents a 25 per cent. increase on the grant paid in 1990–91 and 94 per cent. of the total grant allocated in 1995–96.

  Mr. Kilfoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans she has to supplement the section 210 grant under the Education
  365
  Reform Act 1988 for travellers and displaced persons; and what changes in weighting of the selection 210 grant for travellers and displaced persons have been affected since 1990–91. [16461]

  Mr. Squire
  The financial support provided under this programme, over and above basic educational funding, is pitched at a level which the Government regard as realistic and appropriate. Grant recipients are free to provide supplementary funding of their own, if they deem this a particular local priority. The grant rate in England was set at 75 per cent. in 1990–91. It was reduced to 65 per cent. from 1 April 1995, bringing it more into line with other specific grant programmes.

  Further Education Funding Council
  Mrs. Anne Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans she has to allow private companies to bid for FEFC funding. [16406]

  Mr. Paice
  The Further and Higher Education Act 1992 already allows private companies to obtain funding from the Further Education Funding Council, provided that they are sponsored by an institution within the further education sector. The Government plan to legislate to remove the sponsorship requirements.

  Schools (Staffordshire)
  Ms Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1) what assessment she has made of the full cost of bringing all schools in Staffordshire up to acceptable standards of repair and maintenance; [16298]

  (2) what assessment has been made, and by whom, of the current state and condition of existing schools and equipment in Staffordshire; [16279]

  (3) which bodies currently have responsibility for ensuring that school buildings and equipment in Staffordshire are kept and maintained in a proper state of repair; [16278]

  (4) what information she has collated in respect of each school in Staffordshire as to the outstanding repairs to buildings and equipment necessary to ensure compliance with health and safety regulations. [16280]

  Mrs. Gillan
  Local authorities and school governors are responsible for the upkeep of their schools.

  Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list all deregulation measures relating to schools in Staffordshire; and if she will make a statement on their impact. [16297]

  Mr. Forth
  The Department is currently taking the following deregulatory measures, which relate to all maintained schools:

  the Education (Length of School Day) Deregulation Order 1996, now before Parliament; and

  the proposed new school premises regulations.

  The deregulation order will help speed up the process by which schools may alter the length of their school day. The proposed new school premises regulations will abolish statutory minimum area standards for teaching space and playgrounds giving local authorities and school governors greater flexibility in building management.
  366
  In addition, the Department is working to relieve the administrative burdens on schools caused by the volume and frequency of communications from central Government and their agencies.

  Employment Schemes
  Mr. Ian McCartney
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list by region(a) the number of people taking part in the (i) jobplan, (ii) restart and (iii) workwise schemes, (b) the budgets for (i) to (iii), (c) the number and percentage of people who found jobs immediately on completion of (i) to (iii), (d) the number and percentage of people who become unemployed and in receipt of benefit after taking part in (i) to (iii) and (e) the number and percentage of people who become unemployed and are unable to claim benefit after taking part in (i) to (iii) for the last year for which figures are available. [16713]

  Mr. Forth
  Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service agency under its chief executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Mike Fogden to Mr. Ian McCartney, dated 26 February 1996:

  The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your question about Jobplan, Restart and Workwise schemes.

  These programmes aim to help people who have been unemployed for some time to compete successfully for jobs and opportunities. About 80% of people who become unemployed leave the unemployment register within a year. Those who remain can lose confidence and believe there are few options open to them. These programmes provide a stepping stone towards employment for people at greatest disadvantage in the labour market. It is important that after a long period of unemployment people take time to have a fresh look at their situation and assess their strengths and skills. After 12 months of unemployment people are asked to attend Jobplan, or Workwise if they are aged 18 to 24, unless they take up a place on another Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) programme. Workwise is a new programme which was piloted in 1994/95 and introduced nationally in April 1995/96. The course lasts for four weeks and helps young people to relaunch and refocus their job search.

  Restart Courses are for people who have been unemployed for two years or more. Many of the clients who attend will face very severe difficulties in finding work and so there is a strong emphasis on looking at employers' needs and how clients can 'sell' their strengths and abilities. As a result, clients are then better able to apply for job vacancies, or to select another suitable option which will help them progress towards getting back into work.

  The number of people who started on Jobplan and Restart Courses during 1994/95 and the expenditure on these programmes, by region, is shown in the tables attached. Information on Workwise is currently being collected but as yet a full year's figures are not available.

  Separate details of the numbers going into work were not routinely collected until 1995/96. However, I have instead supplied information on all positive outcomes achieved by Jobplan and Restart Courses during 1994/95. This includes entry into DfEE programmes such as Jobclub and Training for Work as well as job outcomes. Positive outcomes are counted within 13 weeks of participants completing the programme.

  Clients remain on the unemployment register and in receipt of benefit during the time they spend on these programmes. Therefore there is no break in their claim as a result of attending and those who do not take up a job or leave the register for another option continue to be unemployed.

  I hope this is helpful.
  367

  Jobplan performance—operational year April 1994 to March 1995

  Expenditure £

  Starters

  Positive outcomes

  Northern

  1,610,970

  15,821

  3,414 (23 per cent.)

  Y&H

  2,230,355

  21,442

  5,774 (29 per cent.)

  EM&E

  2,445,836

  21,845

  3,036 (15 per cent.)

  London and South East

  10,164,408

  79,919

  21,605 (29 per cent.)

  South West

  2,194,802

  18,864

  4,108 (24 per cent.)

  Wales

  1,273,122

  11,375

  2,635 (25 per cent.)

  West Midlands

  2,456,016

  22,820

  6,765 (33 per cent.)

  North West

  3,450,905

  31,590

  6,083 (21 per cent.)

  Scotland

  2,563,496

  24,712

  6,943 (31 per cent.)

  Total

  28,389,91

  248,388

  60,363 (26 per cent.)

  1. Expenditure includes VAT, fees, fares, marketing and publicity, leader training.

  2. Total positive outcomes are starts into—

  (i) Jobcentre jobs, non-jobcentre jobs and self-employment

  (ii) ES TEC/LEC programmes: jobclub, community action, JIG, JRW, worktrials, JSS, career development loan, PDF

  (iii) Further eduction, Prince's Trust, voluntary work or where activity is being undertaken.

  3. Outcomes are gained within 13 weeks of the end of the course.

  4. Outcomes into jobs were not routinely collected as a separate figure in 1994–95.

  Restart course performance—operational year April 1994 to March 1995

  Expenditure £

  Starters

  Positive outcomes

  Northern

  625,031

  8,335

  1,028 (14 per cent.)

  Y&H

  1,056,168

  13,728

  2,526 (22 per cent.)

  EM&E

  1,206,653

  13,339

  1,506 (13 per cent.)

  London and South East

  4,912,566

  47,191

  9,564 (23 per cent.)

  South West

  1,035,007

  10,959

  1,940 (21 per cent.)

  Wales

  720,008

  6,945

  1,281 (22 per cent.)

  West Midlands

  1,293,884

  14,358

  3,265 (27 per cent.)

  368

  Restart course performance—operational year April 1994 to March 1995

  Expenditure £

  Starters

  Positive outcomes

  North West

  1,664,055

  19,673

  2,963 (18 per cent.)

  Scotland

  1,061,082

  12,592

  2,456 (23 per cent.)

  Total

  13,574,454

  147,120

  226,529 (21 per cent.)

  1. Expenditure includes VAT, fees, fares, marketing and publicity, leader training.

  2. Total positive outcomes are starts into—

  (i) Jobcentre jobs, non-jobcentre jobs and self-employment

  (ii) ES TEC/LEC programmes: jobclub, community action, JIG, JRW, worktrials, JSS, career development loan, PDF

  (iii) Further education, Prince's Trust, voluntary work or where activity is being undertaken.

  3. Outcomes are gained within 13 weeks of the end of the course.

  4. Outcomes into jobs were not routinely collected as a separate figure in 1994–95.

  Awarding Bodies
  Mrs. Anne Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list the cost to her Department of each of the different awarding bodies. [16413]

  Mr. Paice
  The main examining and awarding bodies are independent commercial organisations that do not rely on grant in aid from the Department for their normal course of business.

  School Premises Regulations 1981
  Mr. Chris Davies
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list those local education authorities which responded(a) favourably and (b) unfavourably to proposals in her Department's consultation document issued in August 1995 to abolish the School Premises Regulations 1981. [16834]

  Mrs. Gillan
  The consultation document issued in July 1995 proposed replacing the Education (School Premises) Regulations with new, revised regulations.

  Of the 49 local education authorities that responded during the consultation exercise, the following responded favourably to the proposal that the current school premises regulations should be revised: Barking and Dagenham, Barnet, Doncaster, East Sussex, Enfield, Hammersmith and Fulham, Hounslow, Knowsley, Solihull, Somerset, Stockport, Suffolk, Trafford, Wandsworth and Warwickshire.

  The following authorities responded unfavourably to the proposal that the current regulations should be revised: Kent, Harrow and Sutton.

  School Inspectors
  Mr. Kilfoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1) what estimate she has made of the number of lay inspectors of schools who have not yet participated in a school inspection; [16910]
  369
  (2) how much is being spent in 1995–96 on further training of lay inspectors; and if she will make a statement; [16912]

  (3) how many lay inspectors have been used in inspections in private schools in the last year. [16911]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  These are matters for Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools, who heads the Office for Standards in Education. I have asked Mr. Woodhead to write to the hon. Member.

  Literacy Levels
  Mr. Cohen:
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make it her policy to collect information on literacy levels on the basis of the definitions in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report, "Literacy, Economy and Society"; and if she will make a statement. [16904]

  Mr. Paice
  Yes.

  The OECD report covers literacy levels for countries which took part in the first stage of the international adult literacy survey. The UK is taking part in the second stage. The Department is helping to fund the survey of UK literacy levels by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. This uses the same definitions as the first stage.

  School Sports Fields (Manchester)
  Mr. Callaghan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what is the value of the land sold by local authorities in the Greater Manchester area formerly used as school sports fields. [17037]

  Mrs. Gillan
  The information requested is not held centrally.

  Schools (Administrative Burden)
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment when the Government set up an official inquiry into the administrative burden on schools; when she expects it to report; who was on the official inquiry; what were its terms of reference; what was the cost of setting up the inquiry; and when she expects to act on the areas for action which the inquiry team highlights. [15617]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  My right hon. Friend commissioned the efficiency scrutiny into the administrative burden on schools in December 1994. The report was published on 31 July 1995.

  There were four full-time members of the scrutiny team, who were departmental officials, and three part-time members; two head teachers and one Her Majesty's inspector.

  The terms of reference were:
  To report on, and make recommendations about, the scope to reduce and minimise the burden of bureaucracy on schools. In particular to consider:
  the cumulative administrative burden of all communication with schools by Government and related bodies;
  likely future trends in this burden given current policies;
  the potential benefits for reducing administrative burdens of action to improve internal control mechanisms;
  370
  the scope for improving the nature, format and timing of communications with schools by DFE and other centrally sponsored bodies so as to minimise the administrative burden.

  The cost of the scrutiny was £100,000. Copies of the report are in the Library.

  Action in response to most of the recommendations is already in progress. The Department has established a "Gatekeeper" team to control and reduce the overall flow of communications from the DFEE and related bodies to schools. The team has issued—to DFEE staff and others—guidance on communicating with schools, and has set up an advisory group of heads, teachers and governors to give "customer feedback" on DFEE communications.

  Training and Enterprise Councils
  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many different types of Government audits each TEC has undergone in the Greater London area. [16439]

  Mr. Paice
  During the 12 months ending 20 February 1996, London TECs have participated in the following audits:

  AZTEC:

  Two financial controls audits; one PRF audit; one quality and health and safety audit.

  CENTEC:

  Two financial controls audits; one PRF audit; one quality and health and safety audit; one European Social Fund Audit.

  C1LNTEC:

  One financial controls audit; one PRF audit; one quality and health and safety audit.

  LETEC:

  Two financial control audits; one PRF audit; one quality and health and safety audit.

  NLTEC:

  One financial controls audit; one PRF audit; one quality and health and safety audit.

  NWLTEC:

  Two financial controls audits; one PRF audit; one quality and health and safety audit.

  SOLOTEC:

  One financial controls audit; one PRF audit; one quality and health and safety audit.

  "Jobs: How the UK Compares"
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many copies of "Jobs: How the UK Compares" were printed; how many were distributed and to whom; and what was(a) the cost of printing, (b) the cost of distribution and (c) the total cost. [16440]

  Mr. Forth
  Seven thousand five hundred copies of "Jobs: How the UK Compares" were printed.

  So far, 3,000 copies have been distributed to the United Kingdom embassies of European Union countries, the European Commission, all Members of Parliament, all British Members of the European Parliament, training and enterprise councils; major British companies, and other Government Departments.

  Production costs were £5,050 and distribution added around £500, giving a total of £5,550.

  Head Teachers (Salaries)
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many grant-maintained schools fall into each of the school teachers' pay and conditions document groups 1 to 6; and, in each case, how many of the head teachers' salaries fall into each pay spine point in the scale in the last year for which figures are available. [17027]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The following table shows the head teachers of grant-maintained schools in England and Wales identified in the Teachers Pensions Agency database of teachers' records on a spine point of at least the minimum for the appropriate school group.

  Head teachers of grant-maintained schools by school group number and spine point—England and Wales—provisional March 1994 data

  School group number

  Spine Point

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  3

  0

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  4

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  5

  0

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  6

  3

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  7

  4

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  8

  10

  0

  —

  —

  —

  —

  9

  1

  2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  10

  3

  8

  —

  —

  —

  —

  11

  1

  5

  —

  —

  —

  —

  12

  0

  4

  —

  —

  —

  —

  13

  3

  22

  —

  —

  —

  —

  14

  1

  4

  —

  —

  —

  —

  15

  2

  14

  0

  —

  —

  —

  16

  2

  9

  1

  —

  —

  —

  17

  0

  12

  1

  —

  —

  —

  18

  0

  7

  10

  —

  —

  —

  19

  0

  7

  4

  —

  —

  —

  20

  1

  11

  3

  —

  —

  —

  21

  1

  5

  2

  —

  —

  —

  22

  0

  13

  7

  —

  —

  —

  23

  0

  2

  2

  2

  —

  —

  24

  0

  0

  8

  1

  —

  —

  25

  0

  4

  9

  1

  —

  —

  26

  0

  1

  4

  6

  —

  —

  27

  0

  0

  5

  1

  —

  —

  28

  0

  0

  6

  1

  —

  —

  29

  0

  0

  10

  4

  —

  —

  30

  0

  1

  1

  22

  —

  —

  31

  0

  0

  1

  8

  3

  —

  32

  0

  0

  2

  9

  1

  —

  33

  0

  0

  1

  7

  4

  —

  34

  0

  0

  2

  14

  26

  —

  35

  0

  0

  0

  8

  7

  —

  36

  0

  1

  1

  4

  13

  —

  37

  0

  0

  1

  11

  20

  —

  38

  1

  0

  0

  3

  49

  7

  39

  0

  1

  0

  4

  16

  0

  40

  0

  0

  0

  0

  38

  6

  41

  0

  0

  1

  1

  24

  7

  42

  0

  0

  0

  0

  28

  5

  43

  0

  0

  0

  0

  13

  10

  44

  0

  0

  0

  0

  41

  15

  45

  0

  0

  0

  0

  4

  11

  46

  0

  0

  0

  0

  3

  9

  47

  0

  0

  0

  0

  2

  6

  48

  0

  0

  0

  0

  2

  9

  49

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  5

  50

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  51

  0

  0

  0

  0

  2

  25

  Total

  34

  133

  82

  107

  296

  116

  Nursery Inspectors
  Mr Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, pursuant to her answer of 12 February,Official Report, column 441, (1) what are the chief inspector's general criteria relating to suitability for nursery inspectors; [17422]

  (2) if vetting by the police will be included in the general criteria relating to the suitability of funded nursery education inspectors. [17421]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  Subject to parliamentary approval, schedule 1 to the Nursery Education and Grant-Maintained Schools Bill sets out general criteria for the registration of nursery education inspectors, including that they be fit and proper persons for this task. I expect the chief inspector will use procedures along the lines of those for registration of inspectors under the Education (Schools) Act 1992.

  Training (Expenditure)
  Mr. Frank Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what was the total Government expenditure on(a) direct training services, (b) local initiative funds, (c) the old job training scheme, (d) youth training including youth credits and (e) the youth training scheme in each year of their existence since 1971–72. [17460]

  Mr. Paice
  The information requested is contained in the following tables

  Direct Training Services1

  Year2

  Expenditure £ Million

  1971–72

  22.7

  1972–73

  35.5

  1973–74

  49.7

  1974–75

  58.2

  1975–76

  118.6

  1976–77

  183.5

  1977–78

  197.1

  1978–79

  208.9

  1979–80

  229.4

  1980–81

  246.3

  1981–82

  235.1

  1 The figures for direct training services include expenditure for the TOPS programme which cannot now be disaggregated.

  2 Expenditure on training, education and enterprise programmes and administrative cost up to and including 1990–91 is for Great Britain. Expenditure in 1991–92 is for England and Wales and expenditure from 1992–93 is for England only.

  Local Initiatives Fund

  Year1

  Expenditure £ million

  1990–91

  9.9

  1991–92

  48.2

  1992–93

  49.7

  1993–94

  47.7

  1 Expenditure on training, education and enterprise programmes and administrative costs up to and including 1990–91 is for Great Britain. Expenditure in 1991–92 is for England and Wales and expenditure from 1992–93 is for England only.

  373

  Job Training Programme1

  Year2

  Expenditure £ million

  1982–83

  311.1

  1983–84

  240.7

  1984–85

  232.9

  1985–86

  219.4

  1986–87

  286.2

  1987–88

  272.3

  1 The figures given are for the job training programme and include expenditure on the old job training scheme which cannot now be disaggregated. The job training programme was the generic name which covered a range of separate programmes include the old job training scheme.

  2 Expenditure on training, education and enterprise programmes and administrative costs up to and including 1990–91 is for Great Britain. Expenditure in 1991–92 is for England and Wales and expenditure from 1992–93 is for England only.

  Youth Training (including Youth Credits)

  Year1

  Expenditure £ million

  1990–91

  823.4

  1991–92

  746.3

  1992–93

  617.0

  1993–94

  640.1

  1994–95

  647.0

  1 Expenditure on training, education and enterprise programmes and administrative costs up to and including 1990–91 is for Great Britain. Expenditure in 1991–92 is for England and Wales and expenditure from 1992–93 is for England only.

  Youth Training Scheme

  Year1

  Expenditure £ million

  1983–84

  426.8

  1984–85

  836.2

  1985–86

  869.9

  1986–87

  939.1

  1987–88

  1,064.9

  1988–89

  993.2

  1989–90

  976.0

  1 Expenditure on training, education and enterprise programmes and administrative costs up to and including 1990–91 is for Great Britain. Expenditure in 1991–92 is for England and Wales and expenditure from 1992–93 is for England only.

  Schoolchildren (Permanent Exclusions)
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many schoolchildren were excluded permanently from schools in(a) Coventry and (b) the west midlands in 1995. [17122]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  This information is not available centrally.

  The Department is collecting figures on permanent exclusions in the school year 1994–95, through the annual census returns sent to all schools in January. Data should be available by the early autumn.

  Young People (Full-time Education)
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many people aged between 16 and 18 years in(a) Coventry and (b) the west
  374
  midlands are in full-time education; and if she will give the figure (i) in real terms and (ii) a percentage of the total number of 16 to 18-year-olds in (a) and (b). [17123]

  Mr. Paice
  Information is available for young people aged 16 and 17 only, and is shown in the following table. The figures relate to the 1993–94 academic year.

  16-year-olds

  17 year-olds

  Number in full-time education

  Percentage of population1

  Number in full-time education

  Percentage of population1

  Coventry

  2,400

  70

  1,900

  49

  West Midlands

  42,000

  70

  34,400

  55

  1 Figures are based on the total population for each relevant age group.

  Nene College
  Mr. Marlow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment when she expects Nene college to achieve university status. [17132]

  Mr. Forth
  Nene college does not at present meet the criteria for university status. It is not possible to predict when it will do so.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Stormont (Office Facilities)
  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland which political parties have office facilities in the Stormont estate; what is the budgeted cost for these facilities; to what extent officers of those parties may work for the Government of the Republic of Ireland; and if he will list those bodies contributing to the cost. [15194]

  Mr. Ancram
  Conferencing facilities at Castle buildings have been made available to all of the relevant Northern Ireland parties and the Irish Government, solely for the purposes of the preparatory talks process. To date only four parties—the Alliance party, the Workers party, the Progressive Unionist party and the Ulster Democratic party—have availed themselves of the facilities, although other parties have attended meetings in the building.

  The accommodation is part of the existing Government estate. The additional costs incurred in providing conferencing facilities average approximately £1,900 per month. The staff costs incurred in January were approximately £1,500. From 1 February 1996 staff costs are expected to amount to a total of approximately £4,000 per month.

  These costs are being met entirely by my Department as appropriate expenditure in the search for a comprehensive political settlement.

  Linen Industry
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what discussions have been held with the Directorate of the Killyleagh, Rathfriland and Rostrevor spinning mills concerning the future of the linen industry; and what action he plans to take to assist these spinning mills. [15712]
  375
  Mr. Ancram
  There has been a sharp downturn in world demand for linen yarn over the last eight months. Killyleagh Yarns, other linen yarn spinners in Northern Ireland and producers in other European countries have found it necessary to curtail production. The Industrial Development Board is in regular contact with spinners in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland spinning businesses have available to them and are using a range of marketing and trade development schemes administered by the Industrial Development Board.

  Fair Employment Legislation
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what steps will be taken to incorporate the policy appraisal and fair treatment guidelines for the public service into the fair employment legislation. [15713]

  Mr. Ancram
  The policy appraisal and fair treatment guidelines have been issued as administrative guidance for Northern Ireland Departments and the Northern Ireland Office. There are no proposals to incorporate these guidelines in legislation.

  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many employers with more than 25 workers have not complied with requirements in respect of the submission of reviews for the Fair Employment Act 1976 in each year from 1 April 1990 to 31 March 1995. [15709]

  Mr. Ancram
  There is no requirement on employers with 25 or more employees to submit to the commission reviews under either the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act 1976 or the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act 1989.

  Targeting Social Need Initiative
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what resources will be allocated to Government departments in order to implement the strategic plan for the targeting social need initiative. [15707]

  Mr. Ancram
  Many departmental spending programmes already contribute to the targeting social need initiative and departments are encouraged to direct existing resources in relevant programmes, as far as possible, to areas and people in greatest need. Planned spending over the survey period 1996–99 on making Belfast work and Londonderry initiatives remains substantial and additional funds are being made available for a major hospital redevelopment project in west Belfast. The Government's contribution to the new European Union special programme for peace and reconciliation will also have a positive TSN impact.

  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what steps he will take to ensure that the Departments of(a) Agriculture, (b) Environment, (c) Economic Development and (d) Finance and Personnel publish a targeting social need strategic plan. [15708]

  Mr. Ancram
  All Departments take TSN principles into account in drawing up policies and determined expenditure priorities, but it is for each to decide, in the light of its particular responsibilities, whether it is necessary to develop a strategic plan and, if so, whether to publish it.
  376

  Social Deprivation
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the council areas in Northern Ireland by degree of social deprivation. [15770]

  Sir John Wheeler
  A list of council areas in Northern Ireland by degree of deprivation has been published by the Department of Finance and Personnel in a policy planning and research unit occasional paper, No. 28 of September 1994, entitled "Relative Deprivation in Northern Ireland". Copies of this report have been deposited in the House of Commons and House of Lords Libraries.

  Water Supply Pipes
  Dr. Hendron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what(a) percentage and (b) mileage of water main supplies pipes in Northern Ireland are made from asbestos cement. [16033]

  Mr. Moss
  It is estimated that approximately 11 per cent., or 1,400 miles, of water mains in Northern Ireland are made from asbestos cement.

  Public Bodies
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the executive non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department which are subject to(a) investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner, (b) scrutiny by the Audit Commission, (c) scrutiny by the National Audit Office, (d) statutory provisions for open government, (e) performance indicators and (f) provision under the citizens charter. [16020]

  Sir John Wheeler
  The remit of the Parliamentary Commissioner does not extend to executive non-departmental public bodies in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration investigates complaints of alleged injustice as a consequence of maladministration by Northern Ireland Departments, including their agencies, while the function of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints investigates similar complaints against local and public bodies.

  The current list of executive non-departmental public bodies which are subject to the jurisdiction of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints is as follows:

  Agricultural Research Institute of Northern Ireland

  Arts Council of Northern Ireland

  Construction Industry Board

  Council of Catholic Maintained Schools

  Education and Library Boards

  Enterprise Ulster

  Fire Authority for Northern Ireland

  Fisheries Conservancy Board

  Labour Relations Agency

  Langanside Corporation

  Livestock and Meat Commission

  Local Enterprise Development Unit

  Mental Health Commission for Northern Ireland

  National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting for Northern Ireland

  377

  Northern Ireland Commissioner for Protection Against Unlawful Industrial Action

  Northern Ireland Commissioner for the Rights of Trade Union Members

  Northern Ireland Housing Executive

  Northern Ireland Local Government Officers' Superannuation Committee

  Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment

  Northern Ireland Museums Council

  Northern Ireland Tourist Board

  Trustees of the Ulster Folk and transport Museum

  Trustees of the Ulster Museum

  Youth Council for Northern Ireland.

  There are no executive non-departmental public bodies in Northern Ireland that are subject to scrutiny by the Audit Commission.

  The following executive non-departmental public bodies sponsored by the Northern Ireland Office are subject to scrutiny by the National Audit Office.

  Police Authority for Northern Ireland

  Probation Board for Northern Ireland

  Independent Commissioner for Police Complaints

  Training School Management Board Rathgael and Whiteabbey.

  The responsibility for the National Audit Office does not extend to the six Northern Ireland Departments, which have their own similarly appointed body—the Northern Ireland Audit Office. The following executive non-departmental public bodies are subject to scrutiny by the NIAO:

  Agricultural Research Institute of Northern Ireland

  Education and Library Boards

  Enterprise Ulster

  Equal Opportunities Commission for Northern Ireland

  Fair Employment Commission for Northern Ireland

  Fire Authority for Northern Ireland

  General Consumer Council for Northern Ireland

  Labour Relations Agency

  Local Enterprise Development Unit

  Mental Health Commission for Northern Ireland

  National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting for Northern Ireland

  Northern Ireland Commissioner for Protection Against Unlawful Industrial Action

  Northern Ireland Commissioner for the Rights of Trade Union Members

  Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum Examinations and Assessment

  Northern Ireland Fishery Harbour Authority

  Northern Ireland Housing Executive

  Northern Ireland Tourist Board

  Sports Council for Northern Ireland

  Staff Commission for Education and Library Boards

  Ulster Folk and Transport Museum

  Ulster Museum

  Youth Council for Northern Ireland.

  The executive non-departmental public bodies that are subject to the statutory provisions for open government
  378
  are those bodies listed as under the jurisdiction of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints.

  All executive non-departmental public bodies listed in the publication "Public Bodies 1995" are subject to performance indicators and the provisions under the citizens charter. A copy of "Public Bodies 1995" is available in the Library.

  Transfer Examinations
  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what analysis has been made of the questions used in the transfer examinations to determine whether either gender has been advantaged by the type of questions on the examination papers. [16254]

  Mr. Ancram
  The questions used in the tests are trialled to seek to ensure that they are free of bias in relation to any factor, including gender. My Department is, however, commissioning an analysis of the responses of pupils to the 1995–96 transfer test.

  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what was in(a) 1993–94, (b) 1994–95 and (c) 1995–96 the total number of children involved in transfer procedure; how many were (i) boys and (ii) girls; which grades were obtained; what was the percentage of total entrants awarded each grade; and what was the percentage variation between boys and girls. [16253]

  Mr. Ancram
  The numbers of pupils transferring from primary to secondary education in the years 1993–94, 1994–95 and 1995–96, analysed by gender, are shown in Table 1:

  Table 1

  1993–94

  1994–95

  1995–96

  Boys

  13,258

  12,976

  13,570

  Girls

  12,164

  12,723

  12,736

  Total

  25,422

  25,699

  26,306

  Tables 2 and 3 show the numbers of pupils who obtained each grade, and the percentage of the entrants for the tests in each year which those numbers represent, analysed by gender.

  Table 2

  Grade

  Boys

  Percentage of test entrants

  Girls

  Percentage of test entrants

  Percentage variation

  1993–94

  A

  3,354

  37.1

  3,378

  36.8

  0.3

  B

  1,170

  12.9

  1,261

  13.7

  0.8

  C

  1,339

  14.8

  1,384

  15.1

  0.3

  D

  3,173

  35.1

  3,168

  34.5

  0.6

  1994–95

  A

  3,049

  34.7

  3,566

  38.0

  3.3

  B

  1,268

  14.4

  1,314

  14.0

  0.4

  C

  1,235

  14.1

  1,332

  14.2

  0.1

  D

  3,235

  36.8

  3,176

  33.8

  3.0

  379

  Table 3

  Grade

  Boys

  Percentage of test entrants

  Girls

  Percentage of test entrants

  Percentage variation

  1995–96

  A

  3,436

  38.5

  3,278

  36.1

  2.4

  B1

  731

  8.2

  723

  8.0

  0.2

  B2

  654

  7.3

  652

  7.2

  0.1

  C1

  662

  7.4

  720

  7.9

  0.5

  C2

  627

  7.0

  673

  7.4

  0.4

  D

  2,805

  31.5

  3,034

  33.4

  1.9

  Action for Community Employment
  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is the present basic wage payable to ACE workers; what has been the basic wage in each year since the ACE scheme became operational; and if he will make a statement on the long-term future of the ACE programme. [16249]

  Mr. Ancram
  Responsibility for the subject in question has been delegated to the Training and Employment Agency under its chief executive, Mr. Ian Walters. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Ian Walters to Mr. Roy Beggs, dated 23 February 1996:
  The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has asked me as Chief Executive of the Training and Employment Agency to reply to your questions about the Action for Community Employment Programme (ACE).
  The Training and Employment Agency does not pay ACE workers a basic wage. Sponsoring organisations receive a grant of £93 per week for each ACE worker employed. Up to £11 of this grant can be used by the sponsor to defray overhead expenses. The balance must be used as a contribution towards paying the local rate for the job being undertaken by the ACE employee. Any shortfall between the grant and the local rate must be met by the sponsor.
  I feel sure you will understand therefore that it is not possible to provide details of the basic wage paid to ACE workers since the scheme became operational.
  You asked also about the long term future of the ACE programme. During 1996 the Agency will undertake an in depth review of the needs of the long term unemployed which will inform the Agency about the programmes and services we currently offer. ACE will, of course, be included in the review and its future and shape will depend upon the outcome.
  I hope you find this reply helpful.

  Scott Inquiry
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the members of his Department who saw the report of the Scott inquiry before it was presented to the House; and when each saw the report. [16532]

  Sir Patrick Mayhew
  [holding reply 22 February 1996]: No member of my Department saw the report before it was presented to the House.

  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland at what hour and minute of which day the report of the Scott inquiry was delivered to his office. [16499]

  Sir Patrick Mayhew
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: Between 3.30pm and 4.00pm on Thursday 15 February 1996.
  380
  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he first saw the report of the Scott inquiry.[16585]

  Sir Patrick Mayhew
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: On Thursday 15 February 1996, after 3.30pm.

  Press Gallery Writing Rooms
  Mrs. Jane Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland which Ministers in his Department entered the writing rooms of the Press Gallery on 15 February. [16488]

  Sir Patrick Mayhew
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: If any Ministers did so, that is a matter for them.

  Prisoners (Transfers)
  Mr. Mallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is the policy of the Prison Service in relation to applications for prison transfers to prisons in the country of origin of the applicant. [16233]

  Sir John Wheeler
  Responsibility for the subject in question has been delegated to the Prisons Service under its chief executive, Mr. Alan Shannon. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from A. D. Shannon to Mr. Seamus Mallon, dated 26 February 1996:
  The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your parliamentary question regarding Prison Service policy in respect of repatriation of prisoners.
  The repatriation of prisoners to and from the United Kingdom is governed by the Repatriation of Prisoners Act 1984. Repatriation may be considered where the country to which application is being made is a signatory to the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons or to the Commonwealth Scheme for the Transfer of Convicted Offenders or has a bilateral agreement with the United Kingdom.
  To be eligible for repatriation a prisoner must have received his final sentence for an offence which must be a criminal offence under the law of the receiving country, by a national of that country or have close family ties there and as a general rule have at least 6 months of his sentence to serve at the time of application. Repatriation requires the consent of both jurisdictions and the prisoner concerned. In considering whether to consent to a repatriation request it has been the policy of Her Majesty's Government not to agree to a transfer where such a move would result in a substantial reduction in time left to serve.

WALES

  NHS Patients (Private Sector Care)
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what percentage of NHS funding is now used to buy care in the private sector. [15759]

  Mr. Richards
  The annual accounts submitted by health authorities and GP fundholders for 1994–95 show that 1 per cent. of expenditure by health authorities and GP fundholders was used to purchase care in the private sector.

  Modern Apprenticeship Scheme
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what has been the cost in Wales of the advertising campaign to promote the modern apprenticeship scheme. [15761]

  Mr. Richards
  The modern apprenticeship scheme has been promoted as part of the Department for Education and Employment-funded "Free your Potential" advertising campaign. To date, the Welsh Office has contributed £53,000 for Welsh language press advertising and the provision of information and materials in Welsh.

  The Welsh Office is also contributing £68,383 towards a marketing campaign organised by the training and enterprise councils in Wales to promote modern and accelerated modern apprenticeships to young people and employers.

  Care in the Community
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what guidelines he has issued about the provision of care to elderly people living in the community. [15758]

  Mr. Richards
  The White Paper "Caring for People", Cm 849, and the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 set the policy and legislative framework for community care.

  In addition, the Welsh Office has issued policy guidance to local authorities and the NHS in Wales in respect of their responsibilities for planning, commissioning and providing services in the community. The main areas covered include social care planning, assessment and care management and NHS responsibilities for meeting continuing health care needs, complaints procedures and inspection units.

  Council Tax
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will introduce provision to enable payments of council tax to be made in 12 monthly instalments. [16060]

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  No. Billing authorities can establish annual, biannual, weekly or up to 10 monthly instalment payment regimes for council tax.

  Empty Dwellings
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many empty dwellings owned by Government Departments there were in 1995 in Alyn and Deeside. [15762]

  Mr. Hague
  On 1 April 1995, the Welsh Office had 13 empty dwellings in Alyn and Deeside and the Ministry of Defence had 62 dwellings—40 of which were inside the perimeter of RAF Sealand and unable to be let.

  Disability
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many individuals between the ages of 16 and 18 years who(a) are disabled and (b) have learning difficulties are currently in (i) full-time education, (ii) Government-funded training courses, (iii) employment, (iv) none of (i) to (iii), (1) in Wales and (2) in each country. [16187]
  382
  Mr. Richards
  Information is available on a county basis for those with special needs in full-time education and is as follows:

  Full-time education

  Pupils aged 16 and over with a statement of special needs (January 1995)

  Students aged 16 to 18 with Special Education needs at Further Education Institutions (November 1994)

  Clwyd

  149

  39

  Dyfed

  102

  7

  Gwent

  107

  99

  Gwynedd

  33

  19

  Mid Glamorgan

  91

  139

  Powys

  18

  12

  South Glamorgan

  71

  39

  West Glamorgan

  62

  70

  Wales

  633

  424

  Sources:

  LEA STATS2 return; FESR.

  In addition, in December 1994, 43 students aged 16 to 18 on full-time courses at higher education institutions in Wales were recorded as having a disability.

  For Government training schemes, information is not available on a county basis. In 1994–95, 3 per cent. of those starting on youth training or youth credits in Wales had a disability or a health problem.

  Information on the number of young people with disabilities or learning difficulties in employment or in the population as a whole, is not available.

  Breast Cancer Services
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how he monitors the effectiveness of the breast cancer screening programme in Wales. [16626]

  Mr. Richards
  The NHS breast screening programme, carried out in Wales by Breast Test Wales, is part of a 10-year UK evaluation to determine the contribution of screening in reducing the mortality rate from breast cancer. It commenced in 1989 and is scheduled for completion in 1999. Evaluation of its success is a continuous process monitored by the UK co-ordinating office with contributions from Breast Test Wales. Additionally, breast Test Wales activities are the subject of annual review by the Department.

  Neath Hospital (Obstetrics Service)
  Mr. Hain
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what remaining obstacles exist to agreeing the proposal by West Glamorgan health authority to retain a full on-site consultant-led obstetrics service at Neath hospital and its planned successor. [16333]

  Mr. Richards
  There are a number of issues relating mainly to clinical safety that are being addressed by the chairman designate of the Morgannwg health authority and his team.

  They have been asked to come forward in early March with firm proposals for the provision of maternity services.

  Business Contact Service
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what considerations led him to require a charge to be paid by business people using the business contact service; what plans he has for introducing a freephone service for business people in Wales; and if he will make a statement. [15881]

  Mr. Hague
  Quality of service, cost-effectiveness and ease of access to the local network of business information and advisory services were the main considerations behind the decision to adopt the 0345 local call rate system for business connect. This all-Wales service was launched in January and its operation will be kept under review.

  Water Levels
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what consultations he has had with the chairman of the Wales region of the National Rivers Authority and Welsh Water-Dwr Cymru as regards the authority's warning on reservoir levels in north Wales, and if he will make a statement. [17080]

  Mr. Hague
  None. Throughout the past 12 months, both Dwr Cymru and the National Rivers Authority—Welsh region have kept my officials fully informed of reservoir levels throughout Wales and the remedial measures required to safeguard water supplies.

  Grant-maintained Schools
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what assessment he has made of the impact of his proposed departmental staff reductions on the auditing of expenditure of grant-maintained schools. [17082]

  Mr. Hague
  The Welsh Office does not undertake the external audit of grant-maintained schools. It is the responsibility of the governing body of each grant-maintained school to ensure that its accounts are audited annually by external auditors appointed under arrangements laid down by the Secretary of State.

  Departmental Staff Reductions
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) what assessment he has made of the impact of the proposed staff reductions on the target times for processing (i) agricultural grant applications, (ii) industrial assistance grants made the Industry Act 1972, (iii) export advice and (iv) miscellaneous inquiries; [17081]

  (2) what assessment he has made of the impact of his proposed departmental staff reductions on the processing of complaints by (a) members of the public and (b) hon. Members of Parliament in terms of target times for responses. [17079]

  Mr. Hague
  The running cost reductions in the Welsh Office, which are broadly in line with most other Departments, reflect the Government's firm commitment to control public expenditure.

  My Department is currently working through the full implications of the planned staffing reductions, with a view to ensuring that it will continue to provide high quality services at minimum cost to the taxpayer.
  384

  Powered Wheelchairs
  Mr. Tom Clarke
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) what expenditure has been incurred by health authorities in Wales for the purchase of electrically powered indoor wheelchairs in each of the last three years; [17013]

  (2) how many people have been provided with electrically powered indoor wheelchairs by health authorities in each of the last three years; [17193]

  (3) what is the most recent figure available for the cost of providing an individual with an electrically powered indoor wheelchair. [17190]

  Mr. Richards
  Responsibility for the supply of electrically powered indoor wheelchairs in Wales rests with the artificial limb and appliance service, which is managed by the Welsh health common services authority under its chief executive Nigel Kirk. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Mr. Clarke
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) what is the most recent figure available for the cost of providing an individual with an electrically powered indoor/outdoor wheelchair; [17000]

  (2) how many people have been provided with electrically powered indoor/outdoor wheelchairs by health authorities in each of the last three years; [17011]

  (3) what expenditure has been incurred by health authorities in Wales for the purchase of electrically powered indoor/outdoor wheelchairs in each of the last three years. [17187]

  Mr. Richards
  The provision of indoor/outdoor powered wheelchairs in Wales is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security.

  Teachers' Pay
  Mr. Win Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many grant-maintained(a) primary and (b) secondary schools fall into each of the school teachers' pay and conditions document school groups; and, in each case, how many head teachers' salaries fall into each pay spine point on the scale in the last year for which figures are available. [17345]

  Mr. Richards
  The table shows the head teachers of grant-maintained schools in England and Wales identified in the Teacher's Pensions Agency database of teachers' records on a spine point of at least the minimum for the appropriate school group. Separate figures for primary and secondary schools and for Wales are not shown because detailed information for such a small number of individuals within certain school groups could disclose individual head teachers's salary details.

  Head teachers of grant-maintained schools by school group number and spine point—England and Wales—provisional March 1994 data

  School group number

  Spine point

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  3

  0

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  4

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  5

  0

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  6

  3

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  7

  4

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  385

  Head teachers of grant-maintained schools by school group number and spine point—England and Wales—provisional March 1994 data

  School group number

  Spine point

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  8

  10

  0

  —

  —

  —

  —

  9

  1

  2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  10

  3

  8

  —

  —

  —

  —

  11

  1

  5

  —

  —

  —

  —

  12

  0

  4

  —

  —

  —

  —

  13

  3

  22

  —

  —

  —

  —

  14

  1

  4

  —

  —

  —

  —

  15

  2

  14

  0

  —

  —

  —

  16

  2

  9

  1

  —

  —

  —

  17

  0

  12

  1

  —

  —

  —

  18

  0

  7

  10

  —

  —

  —

  19

  0

  7

  4

  —

  —

  —

  20

  1

  11

  3

  —

  —

  —

  21

  1

  5

  2

  —

  —

  —

  22

  0

  13

  7

  —

  —

  —

  23

  0

  2

  2

  2

  —

  —

  24

  0

  0

  8

  1

  —

  —

  25

  0

  4

  9

  1

  —

  —

  26

  0

  1

  4

  6

  —

  —

  27

  0

  0

  5

  1

  —

  —

  28

  0

  0

  6

  1

  —

  —

  29

  0

  0

  10

  4

  —

  —

  30

  0

  1

  1

  22

  —

  —

  31

  0

  0

  1

  8

  3

  —

  32

  0

  0

  2

  9

  1

  —

  33

  0

  0

  1

  7

  4

  —

  34

  0

  0

  2

  14

  26

  —

  35

  0

  0

  0

  8

  7

  —

  36

  0

  1

  1

  4

  13

  —

  37

  0

  0

  1

  11

  20

  —

  38

  1

  0

  0

  3

  49

  7

  39

  0

  1

  0

  4

  16

  0

  40

  0

  0

  0

  0

  38

  6

  41

  0

  0

  1

  1

  24

  7

  42

  0

  0

  0

  0

  28

  5

  43

  0

  0

  0

  0

  13

  10

  44

  0

  0

  0

  0

  41

  15

  45

  0

  0

  0

  0

  4

  11

  46

  0

  0

  0

  0

  3

  9

  47

  0

  0

  0

  0

  2

  6

  48

  0

  0

  0

  0

  2

  9

  49

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  5

  50

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  51

  0

  0

  0

  0

  2

  25

  Total

  34

  133

  82

  107

  296

  116

SCOTLAND

  Court Service
  Mr. McFall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many trials there were in the district court during 1995; and if he will indicate the total number of adjournments of trials in the district court, the reason for these adjournments, and if they were at the instance of the prosecution or the defence. [15862]

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  Using information provided by procurator fiscal offices, in 1995 there were 5,451 trials in district courts of which 899 were before a stipendiary magistrate court. Information is not collected centrally on adjournments at district courts.

  Prisoners (Health)
  Mr. Gerrard
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) how many prisoners in prisons in Scotland are currently known to be terminally ill; and what information is available as to the cause of the terminal illnesses; [16697]

  (2) what provision is available to prisoners in Scotland for therapeutic and psychological follow up in the case of positive results in tests for transmissible diseases; [16688]

  (3) how many nurses and doctors are employed in the prison service in Scotland per 100 inmates; [16686]

  (4) what steps are taken to prevent discrimination against prisoners in Scotland with specific health problems; [16699]

  (5) what specific provisions are made for those prisoners in Scotland known to be terminally ill; [16698]

  (6) what regular medical checks prisoners in prison in Scotland receive; and what systematic checks are carried out for transmissible diseases; [16685]

  (7) what policies the prison service in Scotland has concerning the prevention of transmissible or contagious diseases (a) in general and (b) in respect of specific outbreaks; [16681]

  (8) what percentage of the total annual budget for prisons in Scotland is designated for health care: [16700]

  (9) what steps are taken to ensure the confidentiality of medical checks on prisoners in Scotland, including where a case of a transmissible disease is identified; [16687]

  (10) how many prisoners died in prison in Scotland in each year since 1992; and of these deaths how many were (a) self-inflicted, (b) accidental, (c) homicides, (d) due to disease, (e) due to AIDS, (f) due to tuberculosis, (g) due to cancer and (h) due to vascular and heart disease. [16683]

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The subject of the questions relate to matters undertaken by the Scottish Prison Service. I have asked the chief executive, Mr. E. W. Frizzell, to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from E. W. Frizzell to Mr. Neil Gerrard, dated 26 February 1996:
  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton has asked me to reply to your questions about health matters in Scottish Prisons.
  The Scottish Prison Service has since the mid-1980s encouraged prisoners, where appropriate, to undergo testing for transmissible diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis. Where appropriate, prisoners are also encouraged to have tests for other transmissible conditions such as venereal disease. In all cases arrangements are made to ensure that the prisoner understands the purpose of the test prior to its being undertaken. Prisoners are offered psychological counselling and support when the result becomes available if they so desire. Those who do test positive for diseases which require treatment are then encouraged to undergo regular health checks in order that any deterioration in their physical and mental well-being is minimised. Where appropriate such monitoring is carried out within the prison setting but where necessary the prisoner may be sent to an appropriate facility within the NHS. The Scottish Prison Service has at no time pursued a policy of segregation for prisoners who have been found to be positive with HIV.
  The Scottish Prison Service offers medical checks as appropriate to prisoners for a variety of conditions including coronary vascular disease, asthma and diabetes. Appropriate measures are taken to minimise the risk of spread of HIV and Hepatitis by a variety of means including awareness counselling and the provision of bleach.

  387
  Health and hygiene measures are in place to prevent the spread of other diseases. In any instance where there is an outbreak of transmissible disease the Service's Medical Adviser initiates extra measures to provide support to staff and prisoners. All steps are taken to ensure medical confidentiality and no information is imparted to any third party without the prisoner's permission.
  Records are not kept centrally of the number of prisoners who are terminally ill. For those prisoners who are in the terminal stage of an illness Section 3(1) of the Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993 makes provision for the Secretary of State to grant early release on compassionate grounds.
  SPS policy is to deliver a standard of primary care equal to that which an individual receives in the community. Just over 3% of the total Scottish Prison Service total annual budget is devoted to health care. Medical officers in Scottish prisons are usually general practitioners appointed part-time. There are at present 3 full-time medical officers and provision for 28 part-time medical officers. In addition, we have 142 nursing staff, including nursing managers, clinical supervisors, practitioner nurses and a small number of health care assistants. This is equivalent to approximately 2.5 nursing staff per 100 prisoners. Because the medical staff are part-time and offer variable numbers of hours in their contracts each month, it is not practical to calculate a ratio of doctors to prisoners.
  Finally, the information you asked for on prisoner deaths in Scotland in each year since 1992 and the causes is as follows:

  1992

  1993

  1994

  1995

  Self-inflicted

  9

  5

  16

  10

  Accidental (including overdoses)

  —

  2

  2

  —

  AIDS/HIV

  —

  —

  1

  1

  TB

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Cancer

  —

  —

  —

  1

  Vascular/Heart Disease

  2

  1

  3

  1

  Other Disease

  2

  1

  3

  2

  Homicide

  —

  —

  —

  1

  Cairngorm Funicular Railway
  Mr. Galbraith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the cost to public funds per job for the proposed funicular railway development on the Cairngorm plateau. [16267]

  Mr. Kynoch
  The amount of public funds which might be made available for the proposed construction of a funicular railway in the Cairngorms area have yet to be determined.

  Census Data
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when the 1991 census data will be available on the basis of the new parliamentary constituencies in Scotland. [16457]

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  On current plans, 1991 census data for the new parliamentary constituencies will be available in September 1996.

  Scott Inquiry
  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he first saw the report of the Scott inquiry. [16584]

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: When it was presented to the House of Commons.

  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland at what hour and minute of which day the report of the Scott inquiry was delivered to his office. [16498]
  388
  Mr. Forsyth
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: During the morning of Friday 16 February 1996.

  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the members of his Department who saw the report of the Scott inquiry before it was presented to the House; and when each saw the report. [16533]

  Mr. Forsyth
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: No one in my Department saw the report before it was presented to the House.

  Press Gallery Writing Rooms
  Mrs. Jane Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland which Ministers in his Department entered the writing rooms of the Press Gallery on 15 February. [16489]

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on Thursday 22 February 1996,Official Report, column 239.

NATIONAL HERITAGE

  National Lottery
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if she will list the total amount of national lottery awards by(a) English county, (b) Scottish region and (c) Welsh county to date. [15448]

  Mr. Sproat
  Figures for national lottery funds broken down by county areas are not currently available. The Department of National Heritage is currently developing a lottery database that will make these figures available.

  A report on the distribution of national lottery proceeds is placed in the Library of the House each month, which includes a breakdown of awards made by region. The February edition will be placed in the Library of the House in early March.

  British Library
  Mr. Campbell-Savours
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage on what date she agreed the report of the National Audit Office on the British Library. [16212]

  Mr. Sproat
  The Department's officials have been co-operating with the National Audit Office examination of the construction project. It is for the Comptroller and Auditor General to determine the date of publication and we understand that he expects to publish his report in the spring.

  Public Bodies
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if she will list the executive non-departmental public bodies sponsored by her Department which(a) have a statutory base, (b) admit members of the public to all board or committee meetings and (c) hold open meetings for the public; and if in each case this is (i) under a statutory requirement or (ii) voluntarily. [16181]
  389
  Mr. Sproat
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: The information is as follows:

  (a)

  British library

  British museum

  British Tourist Authority

  Broadcasting Complaints Commission

  Broadcasting Standards Council

  English Heritage

  Football Licensing Authority

  Imperial war museum

  Millennium Commission

  Museum of London

  National gallery

  National heritage memorial fund

  National maritime museum

  National museums and galleries on Merseyside

  National portrait gallery

  National museum of science and technology

  Natural history museum

  Public Lending Right Registrar

  Royal armouries

  Tate gallery

  Victoria and Albert museum

  Wallace collection

  (b) None.

  (c) None holds formal open board meetings for the public, although many engage in regular dialogue with, or arrange informal events for, members of the public to discuss matters of policy.

  Isle of Wight (Expenditure)
  Mr. Barry Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what was the total expenditure by her Department in 1994–95 on the Isle of Wight, broken down by category. [16773]

  Mr. Sproat
  My Department recorded expenditure of £395,020.84 on the Isle of Wight in 1994–95. This related to Osborne house convalescent home; the following table provides the available expenditure breakdown.

  £

  i. Payments to the Civil Servants Benevolent Fund:

  Reimbursement of deficit

  359,490.39

  Furniture and equipment

  35,000.00

  ii. Payments to Medina Borough Council:

  Council Tax

  530.45

  Scott Inquiry
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage at what hour and minute of which day the report of the Scott inquiry was delivered to her office. [16492]

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: During the afternoon of Friday 16 February 1996.
  390
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if she will list the members of her Department who saw the report of the Scott inquiry before it was presented to the House; and when each saw the report. [16521]

  Mrs. Bottomley
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: None.

  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage when she first saw the report of the Scott inquiry. [16597]

  Mrs. Bottomley
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: On Thursday 15 February 1996.

  Press Gallery Writing Rooms
  Mrs. Jane Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage which Ministers in her Department entered the writing rooms of the Press Gallery on 15 February. [16485]

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: None.

  Television Licences
  Ms Lynne
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage in what circumstances the owner of two households is required to purchase a television licence for only one property when a television is being used at both properties; and what is the estimated extra revenue that would be generated by making a television licence compulsory for every household where a television is used. [16064]

  Mr. Sproat
  A person may not instal or use a television set except under authority of a television licence, which is generally valid at the single place specified in the licence. However, there has been a practice whereby the Licensing Authority has permitted people owning second homes not to notify temporary changes of address when moving between those homes, and thus not to hold a second television licence, provided that they confirm that no use of television ever occurs simultaneously in both homes. This practice is currently under review by the BBC, which has responsibility for administration of the television licensing system and determination of licensing requirements in individual cases. We understand that the BBC hopes to be able to make an announcement shortly. No accurate figures are available for the number of second homes in which television is installed. However, there are approximately 38,000 second homes with television for which, by agreement with the licensing authority, no second licence is currently held. If a full colour television licence were to be taken out for each such home, this would raise about £3 million in extra revenue.

  Mr. Nigel Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage when regulations will be laid to bring into effect the television licence fee increases from 1 April. [17728]

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  On 14 December 1995,Official Report, column 753, my hon. Friend the Minister of State announced that, from 1 April 1996, the fee for a colour television licence would increase to £89.50 and that for a black and white licence to £30. The regulations necessary to bring these fees into force were laid before Parliament on Friday 23 February.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Prison Doctors and Nurses
  Mr. Gerrard
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many nurses and doctors are employed within the Prison Service per 100 inmates. [16702]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. Neil Gerrard, dated 26 February 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about the number of nurses and doctors employed within the Prison Service per 100 inmates.
  Information on the whole time equivalents of part time health care staff, which would alow an accurate comparison per 100 inmates, is not available centrally.
  The available information is set out in the table below.

  Numbers of full time and part time Health Care Staff (excluding Health Care Governors)

  Staff

  Number

  Doctors

  270

  Nursing grades

  600

  Health Care Officers

  1,037

  Total

  1,907

  The prison population as at 21 February was 53,040.

  Hertfordshire Probation and Bail Hostel
  Mr. Garel-Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what response he has received to the proposed closure of the Hertfordshire probation and bail hostel in Watford; how many letters have been received about the proposed closure and if he will list them; and how many and what proportion are(a) in favour of closure and (b) opposed. [16630]

  Mr. Sackville
  Representations have been received from five Members of Parliament, the chairman of Hertfordshire probation committee, the Bishop of Hertford, the Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, the high sheriff of Hertfordshire, the chairmen of the North Hertfordshire, Watford and St. Albans benches; the secretary of the south-west Hertfordshire young homeless group, the right noble Lord Parkinson of Carnforth and his honour Judge Colston QC. All these representations were opposed to the closure of the hostel.

  However, in view of the sub-standard condition of the hostel and the fact that, over the last year, it has on average been two-thirds occupied, my right hon. and learned Friend decided last month that the hostel should close shortly.

  Prisoners (Deaths)
  Mr. Gerrard
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners died in prison in England and Wales in each year since 1992; and of these deaths how many were(a) self-inflicted, (b) accidental, (c) homicides, (d) due to disease, (e) due to AIDS, (D due to tuberculosis, (g) due to cancer and (h) due to vascular and heart disease. [16682]
  392
  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. Neil Gerrard, dated 26 February 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about deaths in prison custody in England and Wales since 1992.
  The detailed information requested is not recorded centrally. The attached table gives the number of deaths for each year since 1992 broken down into self-inflicted, natural causes, accidental deaths and murders.

  Cause of death

  1992

  1993

  1994

  1995

  Self-inflicted

  41

  47

  62

  60

  Natural causes

  34

  42

  43

  56

  Accidental death

  4

  3

  0

  0

  Murder

  2

  2

  3

  1

  Total

  81

  94

  108

  117

  Note:

  These figures do not include deaths of prisoners which occurred outside of prison, for example on home leave or while unlawfully at large.

  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what has been the number of suicides in prisons in England and Wales since 1 January. [16321]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from A. J. Pearson to Mr. Tom Cox, dated 26 February 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me, in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question about the total number of suicides in prisons in England and Wales since 1 January.
  There have been 11 self inflicted deaths between 1 January and 21 February 1996. No inquests have yet been held into any of these deaths.

  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the number of suicides in prisons in England and Wales during 1995. [16319]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from A. J. Pearson to Mr. Tom Cox, dated 26 February 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me, in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question about the total number of suicides in prisons in England and Wales during 1995.
  There were 60 self-inflicted deaths in 1995. Inquest verdicts were: suicide (27), open verdicts (6), accidental deaths (3) natural causes (1). Inquests are still awaited in 23 cases.

  Wandsworth Prison
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the proposed prison budget for Wandsworth prison for 1996; and what it was for each year since 1990. [16244]
  393
  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from A. J. Pearson to Mr. Tom Cox, dated 26 February 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me, in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question about the budget allocations for Wandsworth prison between 1990 and 1996.
  Prison Service budgets are allocated to prisons in financial years rather than in calendar years. The table below therefore gives details of the budgets for the financial years 1991–92 to 1996–97.

  Financial year

  Budget allocation £

  1991–92

  14,201,000

  1992–93

  16,303,220

  1993–94

  21,027,624

  1994–95

  21,201,390

  1995–96

  21,516,600

  1996–97

  20,353,000

  1 Proposed. It is not possible to provide a budget figure for 1990–91 as reliable records are not available for that year.

  Prostitution
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what research he has(a) commissioned and (b) evaluated in England and Wales as to the age of young girls soliciting for prostitution on the public highway; what has been the location of each such survey; and if he will make a statement. [16255]

  Mr. Maclean
  As part of an evaluation of a multi-agency initiative to reduce prostitution in Streatham, south London, an analysis was carried out of the details held on police files about prostitutes operating in the area in 1989–90. The ages of the women ranged from 16 to 48 years. Twenty-seven per cent. of the prostitutes were aged under 20, 50 per cent. were between 20 and 30 and 23 per cent. were over 30. A copy of this study, by Roger Matthews, is available in the Library.

  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many girls between the ages of 14 and 17 years have been charged with soliciting for prostitution in each of the last five years in England and Wales. [16256]

  Mr. Maclean
  The available information is given in the table:

  The number of females aged 14 to 17 prosecuted for offences of 'a common prostitute loitering or soliciting for the purpose of prostitution'1

  England and Wales

  Number of females

  Number of prosecutions

  1990

  396

  1991

  337

  1992

  283

  1993

  139

  1994

  186

  1 An offence under section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959.

  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what has been the number of(a) men and
  394
  (b) women charged with and convicted of living on immoral earnings in England and Wales in each of the last five years; how many were sent to prison; and how many were fined. [16257]

  Mr. Maclean
  The available information is given in the table:

  The number of males and females prosecuted, the number found guilty and of those sentenced, the number fined and the number sentenced to immediate custody for selected offences, England and Wales 1990–94

  England and Wales

  Number of persons

  Offence description

  1990

  1991

  1992

  1993

  1994

  LIVING ON EARNINGS OF EXERCISING CONTROL, OVER PROSTITUTE1

  Prosecutions

  Males

  73

  87

  89

  63

  78

  Females

  20

  19

  21

  9

  20

  Total found guilty

  Males

  62

  68

  58

  42

  60

  Females

  14

  11

  12

  7

  10

  Fined

  Males

  15

  16

  10

  10

  13

  Females

  10

  6

  6

  1

  2

  Sentenced to immediate

  custody

  Males

  22

  31

  21

  22

  21

  Females

  —

  2

  —

  1

  3

  MAN OR WOMAN LIVING WHOLLY OR IN PART ON THE EARNINGS OF MALE PROSTITUTION2

  Prosecutions

  Males

  1

  1

  —

  —

  1

  Females

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  Total found guilty

  Males

  23

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Females

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  Fined

  Males

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Females

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  Sentenced to immediate

  custody

  Males

  2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Females

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1 An offence under sections 30 and 31 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956.

  2 An offence under section 5(1) of the Sexual Offences Act 1967.

  3 The proceedings at magistrates courts which lead to offender being found guilty in the Crown court are not necessarily recorded in the same calendar year.

  Wormwood Scrubs Prison
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is to be the prison budget for Wormwood Scrubs prison for 1996; and what was it for each of the years 1990 to 1995. [16320]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from A. J. Pearson to Mr. Tom Cox, dated 26 February 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me. in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question about Wormwood Scrubs prison.
  Prison Service budgets are allocated to prisons in financial years rather than in calendar years. The table below therefore gives details of budgets for the financial years 1991–92 to 1996–97.

  395

  Financial year

  Budget allocation £

  1991–92

  14,652,000

  1992–93

  15,596,000

  1993–94

  20,299,000

  1994–95

  20,359,000

  1995–96

  19,801,000

  1996–97

  120,132,000

  1 Proposed. It is not possible to provide a budget figure for 1990— 91 as reliable records are not available for that year.

  Public Bodies
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the executive non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department which are subject to(a) investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner, (b) scrutiny by the Audit Commission, (c) scrutiny by the National Audit Office, (d) statutory provisions for open government, (e) performance indicators and (f) provisions under the citizens charter. [16012]

  Mr. Howard
  The answer is:

  (a) investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration:

  Commission for Racial Equality

  Data Protection Registrar

  Horserace Betting Levy Board

  (b) scrutiny by the Audit Commission: none; the Audit Commission has responsibility only for local government;

  (c) scrutiny by the National Audit Office:

  Community Development Foundation

  Commission for Racial Equality

  Data Protection Registrar

  Gaming Board for Great Britain

  National Lottery Charities Board

  Police Complaints Authority

  (d) statutory provisions for open government: the following executive non-departmental public bodies are required by statute to publish annual reports:

  Alcohol Education and Research Council

  Commission for Racial Equality

  Gaming Board for Great Britain

  Horserace Betting Levy Board

  Horserace Totalisator Board

  National Lottery Charities Board

  Data Protection Registrar

  Police Complaints Authority

  Those NDPBs that are subject to scrutiny by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration are also subject to the code of practice on open government, and other NDPBs are being asked to develop codes of practice on similar lines.

  (e) performance indicators: NDPBs are encouraged, wherever appropriate, to develop performance indicators and associated targets and to publish these.
  396
  (f) provisions under the citizen's charter: those executive NDPBs which offer a service to the public are encouraged to adopt the principles set out in the citizens charter and to publicise how these are being reflected in their working arrangements—for instance, the Commission for Racial Equality has published a statement and the Gaming Board has published customer service targets in its annual report.

  Prison Service (Director General)
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when the position of the Director General of the Prison Service was advertised, when is the closing date for applications; and what is the number of applicants who have so far applied. [16043]

  Mr. Howard
  The position has not been advertised.

  Ms Janet Anderson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he plans to appoint a new Director General of the Prison Service. [16189]

  Mr. Howard
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer that I gave to the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) on 5 December 1995 at column 204.

  Prison Transfers
  Mr. Mallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many applications for prison transfers from prisons in(a) England and (b) Wales to (i) Northern Ireland, (ii) the Republic of Ireland and (iii) elsewhere are currently under consideration; and in each category how many applications have been (1) approved and (2) denied in each of the past 10 years; [16231]

  (2) if he will approve outstanding prison transfer applications for Irish prisoners wishing to return to prisons in (a) Northern Ireland and (b) the Republic of Ireland. [16232]

  Miss Widdecombe
  England and Wales are treated as one jurisdiction and separate figures are not held. Repatriation to the Republic of Ireland was not possible until the Council of Europe convention on the transfer of sentenced persons came into force for the Republic on 1 November 1995. Information on applications received before this date is not recorded. Available information for the past 10 years is given in the table:

  Transfer of prisoners from England and Wales

  Northern Ireland

  Other United Kingdom and foreign jurisdictions

  Transferred

  Refusal

  Transferred

  Refusal

  1986

  3

  1

  0

  0

  1987

  3

  7

  0

  0

  1988

  9

  8

  41

  15

  1989

  15

  40

  47

  17

  1990

  13

  36

  42

  13

  1991

  28

  30

  45

  19

  1992

  20

  24

  56

  16

  1993

  8

  9

  35

  18

  1994

  21

  16

  27

  40

  1995

  16

  8

  47

  73

  On 22 February, 25 requests for transfer to Northern Ireland, 69 requests for repatriation to the Republic of Ireland and 91 requests for transfer to other United

  397
  Kingdom or foreign jurisdictions were under consideration. All outstanding requests will be determined on their individual merits. To date, no application for repatriation to the Republic of Ireland has been determined.

  Fire Services
  Mr. Ian McCartney
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what plans he has to carry out investigations in relation to(a) backdraft, (b) flashover and (c) positive pressure ventilation with a view to increasing the safety of firefighters; and if he will make a statement. [16615]

  (2) what investigations are currently being carried out in relation to (a) backdraft, (b) flashover and (c) positive pressure ventilation with a view to increasing the safety of firefighters. [16614]

  Mr. Sackville
  A Home Office fire research and development group study on flashover and backdraft was published in 1994. Following this research, a supplement to the manual of firemanship entitled "The Behaviour of Fire—Compartment Fires" was published in February 1995. The supplement provides advice and details on the potential for flashover and backdraft. Firefighting tactics most likely to avert or reduce any potential danger are also described.

  A further supplement, "Ventilation of Buildings and Structures", is being drafted. This will provide information on the use of ventilation, including operational experience in the United States of America, set in a United Kingdom firefighting context.

  A group of representatives of the professional bodies concerned with operational firefighting, including Her Majesty's fire service inspectorate, the Fire Brigades Union and the chief and assistant Chief Fire Officers' Association will be meeting soon to consider what further research, training or advice might be appropriate.

  Ms Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many fire appliances attended the blaze at Blue Anchor lane, Bermondsey, London SE16 on Tuesday 13 February; at what times the first appliance arrived and the last appliance left; how many appliances arrived within five minutes of being summoned, and how many arrived within 10 minutes of being summoned; from which stations appliances were sent; and how many firefighters attended; [15839]

  (2) when the first firefighter reliefs were called out to attend the site of the IRA bombing on Friday 9 February; when the first firefighter reliefs arrived and when the firefighter reliefs left; and from which fire stations they were called out. [15840]

  Mr. Sackville
  [holding answer 19 February 1996]: The deployment of appliances is an operational matter for the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority. I would be grateful, therefore, if the hon. Member would contact the chief officer for the details that she seeks.

  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the use of information systems in the fire service. [16671]
  398
  Mr. Sackville
  Fire brigades make much use of information systems, both operationally and for administrative purposes, but the extent of such use in particular brigade areas is a matter for each individual fire authority.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the total number of incidents attended by the fire service in each of the last five years for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement. [16673]

  Mr. Sackville
  The number of incidents attended by the fire service in England and Wales for 1989 to 1994 is given on page 23 of Cm 2998, "Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Fire Services for England and Wales", presented to Parliament by my right hon. and learned Friend in October 1995 and available in the Library.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the current operational assessment of the number of calls per year to be expected in each fire service area; in what year the assessments were last made; what was the actual number of calls received in each fire service area for the last year for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement. [16677]

  Mr. Sackville
  No such assessment has been made. The numbers of fire calls and fire false alarm calls attended by local authority fire brigades in 1993 are given on pages 162 and 52 respectively of the Home Office publication, "Fire Statistics—United Kingdom 1993", which is available in the Library.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received concerning(a) fire service pensions, (b) fire service training, (c) fire service capital investment and (d) standards of fire service cover in the last year; and if he will make a statement. [16670]

  Mr. Sackville
  My right hon. and learned Friend has received a number of such representations during the past year. All these subjects have been considered.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what change to fire service recommended attendance standards are planned; and if he will make a statement. [16672]

  Mr. Sackville
  The nationally agreed standards of fire cover, which are expressed in terms of required attendance times, are under review by the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council. This is in line with a recommendation by the Audit Commission in its recent value for money study on the fire service.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list all European Community directives which relate to fire services and fire safety measures, the dates they were implemented and the deadlines for implementation; and if he will outline the key requirements of any directive. [16657]

  Mr. Sackville
  Information regarding implementation of European Council directives relating to fire services and fire safety measures is shown in the table.

  The health and non-fire safety provisions of the framework and workplace directives were implemented on 1 January 1993. An announcement about

  399
  implementation of the outstanding fire safety provisions of these directives will be made shortly. The regulations implementing the safety signs directive include an extended transitional provision for the introduction of fire safety signs.

  The framework directive requires the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the health and safety of workers at work. In particular, it requires that employers shall make an assessment of the risks to the health and safety of their employees. The other directives listed set out more specific health and safety requirements.

  Working title

  EC reference

  Date of implementation1

  Deadline for implementation2

  Framework directive

  89/391/EEC

  1 January 1993

  1 January 1993

  Workplace directive

  89/654/EEC

  1 January 1993

  1 January 1993

  Construction sites directive

  92/57/EEC

  31 March 1995

  1 January 1994

  Safety signs directive

  92/58/EEC

  1 April 1996

  24 December 1994

  Boreholes Directive

  92/91/EEC

  1 October 1995

  3 November 1994

  Mines and quarries directive

  92/104/EEC

  26 October 1995

  3 December 1994

  1 The date of implementation identifies the earliest date on which regulations came into force implementing some or all of the requirements of the directive.

  1 The EC deadline for implementation indicates the date from when implementing regulations should he in force.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to introduce a funding allocation for fire safety campaigning conducted by fire brigades; and if he will make a statement. [16658]

  Mr. Sackville
  The fire standard spending assessment distributional formula for England has been adjusted for 1996–97 to include indicators to reflect the work that fire brigades do on fire safety enforcement and education.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what research his Department has conducted on the relationship between fire prevention campaigning and levels of deaths and injuries caused by fire; and if he will make a statement. [16659]

  Mr. Sackville
  Research is carried out following each national campaign to determine whether its message has been understood. It is difficult to establish a direct casual link between fire safety publicity and reductions in fire casualties. A number of factors can affect trends in fire casualties. However, the fact that the latest available statistics show fire deaths at their lowest level for 30 years may be due to the effectiveness of fire safety campaigns, and fire prevention work carried out by fire brigades.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will introduce a statutory requirement for fire safety campaigning to be conducted by fire brigades; and if he will make a statement. [16663]

  Mr. Sackville
  Brigades are already aware of importance of education and publicity in preventing fires; and several have conducted some very successful local campaigns. Moreover, the Government have very recently recognised the importance of this work by including a fire safety education factor in the formula used for calculating standard spending assessments for the fire service. But the question of whether or not it would be appropriate to introduce a statutory duty is still under review. Following last year's recommendation by the Audit Commission in 400
  its report, "In the Line of Fire", the matter is being considered by the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council, which includes representatives of both fire authorities and the fire service. We will look very carefully at whatever advice they may offer.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the percentage of fire service budgets allocated to pensions provisions for the last year for which figures are available; what is the projected percentage of the fire service total budget to be allocated to pension provision by the year 2000; and if he will make a statement. [16664]

  Mr. Sackville
  Returns from fire authorities in England show that for the year 1993–94, net expenditure on firefighters' pensions represented 12 per cent. of the total fire service revenue expenditure. Over recent years, there has been a generally upward trend in the proportion of pensions expenditure against total expenditure for fire brigades. This trend is expected to continue in the short term.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the percentage of fire service budgets allocated to pensions provisions for the last year for which figures are available; what is the projected percentage of the fire service total budget to be allocated to pension provision by the year 2000; and if he will make a statement. [16664]

  Mr. Sackville
  Returns from fire authorities in England show that for the year 1993–94, net expenditure on firefighters' pensions represented 12 per cent. of the total fire service revenue expenditure. Over recent years, there has been a generally upward trend in the proportion of pensions expenditure against total expenditure for fire brigades. This trend is expected to continue in the short term.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the estimated cost of the transition to new combined authorities for fire services; and if he will make a statement. [16666]

  Mr. Sackville
  To date, seven combined fire authorities have been established for England and Wales. At present, they are operating as shadow authorities in preparation for taking over their full functions from 1 April. More combined fire authorities will be established over the next two years as local government reorganisation takes effect in other areas of England. Supplementary credit approvals of up to £3.875 million have been provisionally set aside by the Home Office to meet the transitional costs which may arise in respect of combined fire authorities in England and Wales during 1996–97.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the total budget allocation to training in the fire service for each of the last five years for which figures are available; what is the predicted total budget allocated to training in the fire service for the next two years; and if he will make a statement. [16667]

  Mr. Sackville
  These figures are not held centrally. It is for each fire authority to set a budget for training which ensures that it fulfils its statutory obligations under the Fire Services Act 1947.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on fire service pensions. [16668]

  Mr. Sackville
  A review of the firefighters' pension scheme was announced in March 1994. The review group's terms of reference require it to identify ways in which the scheme could be made more comparable to other public service schemes. I hope that it will be possible to circulate a consultation document to the fire service organisations shortly.

  Mr. Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the total capital investment in the fire service for each of the last five years for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement. [16669]
  401
  Mr. Sackville
  Total capital expenditure (gross) in respect of the fire service in England and Wales was as follows:

  £ million

  Outturn

  1990–91

  52.865

  1991–92

  55.700

  1992–93

  64.195

  1993–94

  70.726

  1994–95 (provisional)

  72.377

  Prisons (Assaults)
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the average assault rate in each prison for the first six months of the current financial year; and if he will make a statement. [16674]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. Alex Carlile, dated 26 February 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about the average assault rate in each prison for the first six months of the current financial year.
  The information requested is provided in the attached tables, copies of which will be placed in the Library of the House.

  Rates of assault1 per 100 population, by Male establishments: April 1995-September2 1995

  MALES

  Assault rate per 100 population

  Staff/others

  Prisoners

  Total

  Local prisons and remand centres1

  5.1

  4.6

  9.7

  Remand centres

  7.7

  15.3

  22.9

  Brinsford

  7.2

  9.2

  16.3

  Dorchester

  11.6

  5.8

  17.4

  Exeter

  9.5

  9.5

  19.0

  Feltham

  16.0

  20.9

  36.9

  Glen Parva

  7.0

  17.9

  24.9

  Gloucester

  11.0

  23.5

  34.5

  Haslar

  0.9

  0.0

  0.9

  Hindley

  3.7

  21.3

  25.1

  Lancaster Farms

  1.7

  16.0

  17.7

  Low Newton

  2.5

  9.4

  11.9

  Northallerton

  7.1

  9.9

  16.9

  Norwich

  10.1

  27.7

  37.7

  Reading

  11.8

  11.0

  22.7

  Rochester

  8.8

  16.4

  25.2

  Stoke Heath

  13.1

  13.1

  26.1

  Swansea

  12.1

  121.2

  133.3

  Wood Hill

  8.9

  11.1

  20.0

  Local prisons

  4.7

  3.0

  7.7

  Bedford

  1.8

  0.9

  2.7

  Belmarsh

  9.2

  3.1

  12.3

  Birmingham

  3.4

  2.5

  5.9

  Blakenhurst

  9.8

  1.7

  11.5

  Bristol

  1.6

  5.9

  7.5

  Brixton

  6.0

  1.3

  7.3

  Bullingdon

  9.5

  2.9

  12.3

  Camp Hill

  0.0

  7.0

  7.0

  Canterbury

  5.1

  3.1

  8.2

  402

  Rates of assault1 per 100 population, by Male establishments: April 1995-September2 1995

  MALES

  Assault rate per 100 population

  Staff/others

  Prisoners

  Total

  Cardiff

  3.6

  5.2

  8.8

  Chelmsford

  3.3

  3.3

  6.5

  Doncaster

  5.1

  16.2

  21.4

  Dorchester

  2.2

  3.7

  5.9

  Durham

  3.3

  1.8

  5.0

  Elmley

  4.7

  2.1

  6.8

  Exeter

  2.1

  1.3

  3.4

  Gloucester

  2.6

  2.6

  5.3

  Highdown

  4.8

  3.5

  8.3

  Holme House

  4.2

  2.0

  6.2

  Hull

  12.0

  7.9

  19.9

  Leeds

  4.5

  2.1

  6.7

  Leicester

  4.0

  4.0

  8.1

  Lewes

  3.5

  2.6

  6.1

  Lincoln

  1.8

  2.5

  4.3

  Liverpool

  2.9

  1.3

  4.2

  Manchester

  4.5

  1.6

  6.1

  Norwich

  3.7

  0.9

  4.6

  Pentonville

  5.0

  1.6

  6.6

  Preston

  4.5

  2.4

  6.9

  Shrewsbury

  0.0

  3.8

  3.8

  Swansea

  0.6

  3.8

  4.4

  Wandsworth

  8.1

  3.2

  10.3

  Winchester

  4.7

  2.4

  7.1

  Wolds

  3.8

  1.3

  5.0

  Wood Hill

  6.9

  3.0

  10.0

  Wormwood Scrubs

  3.9

  1.1

  4.9

  Open prisons

  0.2

  0.1

  0.3

  Ford

  0.3

  0.0

  0.3

  Hewell Grange

  0.9

  0.0

  0.9

  Hollesley Bay

  0.9

  0.0

  0.9

  Kirkham

  0.3

  0.0

  0.3

  Lindholme

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Leyhill

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Morton Hall

  0.0

  0.8

  0.8

  North Sea Camp

  0.0

  0.7

  0.7

  Spring Hill (Grendon)

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Standford Hill

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Sudbury

  0.0

  0.3

  0.3

  Usk

  2.7

  0.0

  2.7

  Wealstun

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Closed training prisons

  2.4

  1.0

  3.4

  Dispersal prisons

  4.7

  1.6

  6.3

  Frankland

  4.0

  2.3

  6.3

  Full Sutton

  3.9

  1.2

  5.1

  Long Lartin

  6.7

  1.1

  7.9

  Parkhurst

  6.3

  2.5

  8.8

  Wakefield

  1.3

  1.1

  2.4

  Whitemoor

  8.5

  2.1

  10.5

  Category B trainers

  2.6

  0.9

  3.5

  Albany

  1.6

  1.0

  2.5

  Blundeston

  5.9

  1.4

  7.3

  Dartmoor

  3.8

  1.4

  5.2

  Garth

  2.4

  0.3

  2.6

  Gartree

  1.7

  0.4

  2.1

  Grendon

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Kingston (Portsmouth)

  1.3

  0.0

  1.3

  Maidstone

  0.3

  0.8

  1.1

  Nottingham

  1.3

  1.9

  3.2

  Swaleside

  4.3

  1.1

  5.4

  Category C trainers

  1.8

  0.9

  2.7

  Acklington

  2.1

  0.2

  2.3

  403

  Rates of assault1 per 100 population, by Male establishments: April 1995-September2 1995

  MALES

  Assault rate per 100 population

  Staff/others

  Prisoners

  Total

  Aldington

  0.0

  2.2

  2.2

  Ashwell

  1.7

  0.0

  1.7

  Blantyre House

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Brockhill

  0.0

  2.3

  2.3

  Buckley Hall

  6.1

  0.6

  6.6

  Bullingdon

  12.6

  1.3

  13.9

  Bullingdon Oxford

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Camp Hill

  2.1

  2.5

  4.6

  Channings Wood

  0.2

  0.2

  0.5

  Coldingley

  2.3

  0.9

  3.3

  Downview

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Elmley

  0.9

  0.0

  0.9

  Erlestoke

  0.5

  0.5

  1.0

  Everthorpe

  0.5

  0.5

  1.0

  Featherstone

  3.5

  1.9

  5.4

  Guys Marsh

  2.3

  1.6

  3.9

  Haverigg

  1.1

  0.7

  1.8

  Highpoint

  2.9

  0.8

  3.7

  Holme House

  1.9

  1.0

  2.9

  Kirklevington

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Lancaster

  0.6

  0.6

  1.1

  Latchmere House

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Lindholme

  0.9

  0.9

  1.9

  Littlehey

  1.7

  1.0

  2.6

  Moorland

  7.0

  3.5

  10.6

  Mount (The)

  1.1

  0.6

  1.7

  Ranby

  2.1

  0.0

  2.1

  Risley

  1.1

  1.8

  2.9

  Rochester

  1.3

  2.5

  3.8

  Send

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Shepton Mallet

  0.0

  2.7

  2.7

  Stafford

  3.3

  1.2

  4.5

  Stocken

  3.7

  0.7

  4.4

  Usk

  0.0

  0.8

  0.8

  Verne

  0.7

  0.5

  1.2

  Wayland

  1.0

  1.5

  2.5

  Wealstun

  0.0

  0.8

  0.8

  Wellingborough

  0.9

  0.0

  0.9

  Whatton

  0.6

  1.9

  2.5

  Whitemoor

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Wymott

  0.3

  0.6

  1.0

  Young offender institutions

  4.5

  10.0

  14.5

  Closed young offender institutions

  5.0

  7.6

  12.6

  Aylesbury

  20.3

  24.6

  44.9

  Brinsford

  3.0

  4.0

  6.9

  Castington

  4.6

  6.0

  10.6

  Deerbolt

  1.9

  6.6

  8.5

  Dover

  3.2

  6.0

  9.3

  Feltham

  8.1

  11.6

  19.7

  Glen Parva

  3.4

  9.4

  12.8

  Guys Marsh

  4.5

  6.8

  11.3

  Hollesley Bay

  7.7

  10.7

  18.4

  Huntercombe

  0.0

  4.6

  4.6

  Lancaster Farms

  0.0

  1.5

  1.5

  Moorland

  10.1

  4.8

  14.9

  Onley

  3.6

  7.9

  11.5

  Portland

  0.9

  2.3

  3.2

  Stoke Heath

  5.2

  6.6

  11.8

  Swinfen Hall

  1.5

  5.1

  6.6

  Wetherby

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Open young offender institutions

  0.4

  6.5

  6.9

  Finnamore Wood

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  404

  Rates of assault1 per 100 population, by Male establishments: April 1995-September2 1995

  MALES

  Assault rate per 100 population

  Staff/others

  Prisoners

  Total

  Hatfield

  0.8

  2.5

  3.4

  Thorn Cross

  0.0

  12.0

  12.0

  Usk

  0.0

  11.1

  11.1

  Juvenile young offender

  institutions

  4.1

  20.3

  24.4

  Brinsford

  5.7

  26.2

  31.9

  Deerbolt

  4.6

  10.4

  15.1

  Feltham

  11.3

  18.9

  30.3

  Huntercombe

  2.3

  25.7

  28.1

  Lancaster Farms

  5.1

  15.4

  20.5

  Onley

  2.3

  29.9

  32.2

  Portland

  1.1

  5.3

  6.3

  Stoke Heath

  8.5

  22.7

  31.2

  Thorn Cross

  0.0

  33.3

  33.3

  Werrington

  1.2

  35.4

  36.6

  Wetherby

  1.3

  10.3

  11.5

  1 Assaults proven at adjudication, including attempting, inciting and assisting in an assault.

  2 Provisional.

  Rates of assault1 per 100 population, by Female establishments: April 1995-September2 1995

  FEMALES

  Assault rate per 100 population

  Staff/others

  Prisoners

  Total

  Adult Female establishments

  8.2

  3.9

  12.1

  Local prisons

  14.3

  5.7

  19.9

  Holloway

  16.6

  5.4

  22.0

  Low Newton

  7.7

  0.0

  7.7

  New Hall

  5.8

  1.7

  7.5

  Pucklechurch

  2.1

  14.4

  16.4

  Risley

  22.7

  9.1

  31.7

  Open prisons

  0.0

  0.7

  0.7

  Askham Grange

  0.0

  2.7

  2.7

  Drake Hall

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  East Sutton Park

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Closed training prisons

  2.6

  2.6

  5.2

  Bullwood Hall

  1.6

  1.6

  3.3

  Cookham Wood

  2.1

  2.1

  4.1

  Durham

  3.1

  0.0

  3.1

  Styal

  3.4

  4.8

  8.2

  Winchester

  2.2

  0.0

  2.2

  All Female YOIs

  8.2

  6.4

  14.6

  Open young offender institutions

  5.3

  0.0

  5.3

  Drake Hall

  6.7

  0.0

  6.7

  East Sutton Park

  0.0

  0.0

  0.0

  Closed YOIs

  8.8

  7.7

  16.5

  Bullwood Hall

  7.2

  7.2

  14.4

  New Hall

  15.5

  3.1

  18.6

  Styal

  3.3

  13.0

  16.3

  1 Assaults proven at adjudication, including attempting, inciting and assisting in an assault.

  2 Provisional.

  Prisons (Costs)
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the average cost of a place in each prison for the six months of the current financial year; and if he will make a statement. [16676]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Annex C: Performance against key targets: April to September 1995 Dispersals

  Establishment

  KPI8—net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Cost per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Frankland

  7,300

  447

  163,331.1

  447

  16,331.1

  399

  18,295.7

  Full Sutton

  9,400

  603

  15,588.7

  572

  16,433.6

  552

  17,029.0

  Long Lartin

  6,900

  457

  15,098.5

  365

  18,904.1

  356

  19,382.0

  Parkhurst

  7,300

  433

  16,859.1

  225

  32,444.4

  213

  34,272.3

  Wakefield

  8,200

  727

  11,279.2

  727

  11,279.2

  712

  11,516.9

  Whitemoor

  8,900

  534

  16,666.7

  531

  16,760.8

  519

  17,148.4

  Average

  8,000

  533.5

  14,995.3

  477.8

  16,742.2

  458.5

  17,448.2

  Male (Open)

  Establishment

  KPI8—net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Cost per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Ford

  2,600

  547

  4,753.2

  517

  5,029.0

  417

  6,235.0

  Hewell Grange

  1,200

  174

  6,896.6

  174

  6,896.6

  153

  7,843.1

  Hollesley Bay1

  4,700

  452

  10,398.2

  366

  12,841.5

  327

  14,373.1

  Kirkham

  3,300

  644

  5124.2

  644

  5,124.2

  482

  6,846.5

  Leyhill

  2,800

  410

  6,829.3

  410

  6,829.3

  364

  7,692.3

  Morton Hall

  1,100

  168

  6,547.6

  168

  6,547.6

  169

  6,508.9

  North Sea Camp

  1,400

  202

  6,930.7

  202

  6,930.7

  181

  7,734.8

  Standford Hill

  2,600

  384

  6,770.8

  384

  6,770.8

  344

  7,558.1

  Sudsbury/Foston

  3,000

  519

  4,859.8

  432

  6,944.4

  395

  7,594.9

  Average

  2,522.2

  388.9

  6,485.7

  366.3

  6,885.0

  314.7

  8,015.5

  1 Hollesley Bay includes Warren Hill.

  Category B

  Establishment

  KPI8—net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Cost per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Albany

  4,100

  436

  9,403.7

  436

  9,403.7

  422

  9,715.6

  Blundeston

  3,700

  408

  9,068.6

  408

  9,068.6

  382

  9,685.9

  Dartmoor

  5,500

  708

  7,768.4

  569

  9,666.1

  563

  9,769.1

  Garth

  4,700

  513

  9,161.8

  513

  9,161.8

  505

  9,306.9

  Gartree

  3,900

  360

  10,833.3

  304

  12,828.9

  313

  12,460.1

  Grendon1

  4,300

  455

  9,450.5

  446

  9,641.3

  418

  10,287.1

  Kingston

  1,700

  155

  10,967.7

  114

  14,912.3

  103

  16.504.9

  Maidstone

  4,800

  552

  8,695.7

  489

  9,816.0

  482

  9,958.5

  Nottingham

  2,700

  220

  12,272.7

  220

  12,272.7

  208

  12,980.8

  Swaleside

  4,500

  512

  8,789.1

  512

  8,789.1

  497

  9,054.3

  Average

  3,990

  431.9

  9,238.2

  401.1

  9,947.6

  389.3

  10,249.2

  1 Grendon includes Spring Hill.

  406
  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. Alex Carlile, dated 26 February 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about the average cost of a place in each prison for the first six months of the current financial year.
  Cost per place figures are calculated on a quarterly basis. The most recent figures are those for the second quarter of 1995–96, which are given in the attached tables, copies of which will be placed in the Library of the House.
  407

  Remand Centres

  Establishment

  KPI8—net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Cost per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Brinsford

  4,400

  476

  9,243.7

  476

  9,243.7

  456

  9,649.1

  Feltham

  7,200

  876

  8,219.2

  845

  8,520.7

  798

  9,022.6

  Hindley

  3,600

  334

  10,778.4

  276

  13,043.5

  250

  14,400.0

  Lancaster Farms

  3.900

  355

  10,985.9

  285

  13,684.2

  355

  10,985.9

  Low Newton

  2,500

  198

  12,626.3

  198

  12,626.3

  265

  9,434.0

  Moorland

  5,300

  620

  8,548.4

  620

  8,548.4

  608

  8,717.1

  Northallerton

  2,300

  151

  15,231.8

  151

  15,231.8

  189

  12,169.3

  Reading

  2,400

  182

  13,186.8

  182

  13,186.8

  170

  14,117.6

  Average

  3,950

  399.0

  9,899.7

  379

  10,418.7

  386.4

  10,223.2

  Young Offender Institutions

  Establishment

  KPI8—Net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Cost per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Aylesbury

  3,500

  297

  11,784.5

  230

  15,217.4

  217

  16,129.0

  Castington

  2,700

  300

  9,000.0

  300

  9,000.0

  289

  9,342.6

  Deerbolt

  3,700

  450

  8,222.2

  419

  8,830.5

  399

  9,273.2

  Dover

  2,700

  316

  8,544.3

  316

  8,544.3

  288

  9,375.0

  Glen Parva

  6,500

  852

  7,629.1

  752

  8,643.6

  769

  8,452.5

  Guys Marsh

  2,400

  300

  8,000.0

  290

  8,275.9

  290

  8,275.9

  Huntercombe1

  2,500

  346

  7,225.4

  274

  9,124.1

  256

  9,765.6

  Onley

  3,600

  520

  6,923.1

  520

  6,923.1

  487

  7,392.2

  Portland

  4,000

  532

  7,518.8

  381

  10,498.7

  415

  9,638.6

  Stoke Heath

  3,000

  368

  8,152.2

  316

  9,493.7

  279

  10,752.7

  Swinfen Hall

  2,100

  183

  11,475.4

  183

  11,475.4

  183

  11,475.4

  Werrington

  1,100

  114

  9,649.1

  114

  9,649.1

  113

  9,734.5

  Wetherby

  1,800

  196

  9,183.7

  160

  11,250.0

  138

  13,043.5

  Average

  3,046.2

  367.2

  7,917.9

  327.3

  8,883.7

  317.2

  9,168.1

  1 Huntercombe includes Finnamore Wood.

  YOI Open

  Establishment

  KPI8—Net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Cost per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Hatfield

  1,800.0

  180

  10,000.0

  180

  5,166.7

  169

  5,849.1

  Thorn Cross

  2,000.0

  303

  6,600.7

  253

  3,873.5

  158

  6,202.5

  Average

  1,900.0

  483.0

  3,954.5

  433.0

  4,411.1

  317.0

  6,025.2

  Female establishments

  Establishment

  KP1 8-net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Cost per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average Population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Local—Female

  Holloway

  7,100

  517

  13,733.1

  517

  13,733.1

  539

  13.172.5

  Pucklechurch

  1,300

  56

  23,214.3

  56

  23,214.3

  66

  19,697.0

  Average

  4,200

  286.5

  14,659.7

  286.5

  14,659.7

  303

  13,884.3

  Closed—Female

  Bullwood Hall Cookham

  1,700

  126

  13,492.1

  125

  13,600.0

  119

  14,285.7

  Wood

  1,300

  120

  10,833.3

  120

  10,833.3

  129

  10,077.5

  New Hall

  2,600

  207

  12,560.4

  207

  12,560.4

  203

  12,807.9

  Styal

  3,000

  251

  11,952.2

  237

  12.658.2

  236

  12,711.9

  Average

  2,150.0

  176.0

  12,215.9

  172.3

  12,481.9

  171.8

  12,518.2

  408 409

  Female establishments

  Establishment

  KP18-net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Cost per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average Population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Open—Female

  Askham

  Grange

  1,100

  136

  8,088.2

  136

  8,088.2

  99

  11,111.1

  Drake Hall

  1,800

  264

  6,818.2

  264

  6,818.2

  195

  9,230.8

  East Sutton Park

  700

  94

  7,446.8

  94

  3,617.0

  92

  7.608.7

  Average

  1,200

  165

  7,287.4

  164.7

  7,287.4

  128.7

  9,326.4

  Local/Adult Remands

  Establishment

  KP1 8—net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Cost per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Bedford

  3,600.0

  306

  11,764.7

  306

  11,764.7

  300

  12,000.0

  Belmarsh

  10,200.0

  841

  12,128.4

  683

  14,934.1

  597

  17,085.4

  Birmingham

  7,700.0

  737

  10,447.8

  631

  12,202.9

  852

  9,037.6

  Blakenhurst1

  4,188.0

  649

  6,453.0

  649

  6,453.0

  638

  6,564.3

  Bristol

  6,200.0

  490

  12,653.1

  474

  13,080.2

  502

  12,350.6

  Brixton

  8,700.0

  660

  13,181.8

  496

  17,540.3

  603

  14,427.9

  Bullingdon2

  7,000.0

  750

  9,333.3

  750

  9,333.3

  738

  9,485.1

  Canterbury

  3,000.0

  184

  16,304.3

  184

  16,304.3

  259

  11,583.0

  Cardiff

  4,600.0

  324

  14,197.5

  324

  14,197.5

  440

  10,454.5

  Chelmsford

  3,900.0

  250

  15,600.0

  250

  15,600.0

  369

  10,569.1

  Doncaster1

  5,407.0

  771

  7,013.0

  741

  7,296.9

  754

  7,171.1

  Dorchester

  2,000.0

  147

  13,605.4

  147

  13,605.4

  204

  9,803.9

  Durham

  7,200.0

  653

  11,026.0

  444

  16,216.2

  651

  11,059.9

  Elmley

  5,300.0

  637

  8,320.3

  637

  8,320.3

  604

  8,774.8

  Exeter

  4,400.0

  318

  13,836.5

  253

  17,391.3

  373

  11,796.2

  Gloucester

  3,000.0

  211

  14,218.0

  207

  14,492.8

  237

  12,658.2

  Haslar

  1,200.0

  164

  7,317.1

  164

  7,317.1

  144

  8,333.3

  Highdown

  6,100.0

  649

  9,399.1

  639

  9,546.2

  614

  9,934.9

  Holme House

  5,700.0

  649

  8,782.7

  649

  8,782.7

  610

  9,344.3

  Hull

  5,600.0

  328

  17,073.2

  322

  17,391.3

  355

  15,774.6

  Leeds

  9,300.0

  997

  9,328.0

  826

  11,259.1

  1,061.0

  8,765.3

  Leicester

  4,000.0

  202

  19,802.0

  202

  19,802.0

  330

  12,121.2

  Lewes

  4,200.0

  443

  9,480.8

  312

  13,461.5

  303

  13,861.4

  Lincoln

  5,200.0

  448

  11,607.1

  441

  11,791.4

  592

  8,783.8

  Liverpool

  10,200.0

  1,184.0

  8,614.9

  1,099.0

  9,281.2

  1,272.0

  8,018.9

  Manchester

  10,400.0

  971

  10,710.6

  899

  11,568.4

  985

  10,558.4

  Norwich

  5,000.0

  333

  15,015.0

  333

  15,015.0

  345

  14,492.8

  Pentonville

  6,700.0

  883

  7,587.8

  670

  10,000.0

  827

  8,101.6

  Preston

  5,500.0

  406

  13,546.8

  327

  16,819.6

  446

  12,331.8

  Rochester

  3,700.0

  424

  8,726.4

  410

  9,024.4

  318

  11,635.2

  Shrewsbury

  3,000.0

  176

  17,045.5

  176

  17,045.5

  281

  10,676.2

  Swansea

  2,900.0

  208

  13,942.3

  151

  19,205.3

  223

  13,004.5

  Wandsworth

  10,300.0

  1,216.0

  8,470.4

  1,038.0

  9,922.9

  1,084.0

  9,501.8

  Winchester

  5,600.0

  462

  12,121.2

  425

  13,176.5

  512

  10,937.5

  Wolds1

  3,366.0

  330

  10,200.0

  320

  10,518.8

  320

  10,518.8

  Woodhill

  6,300.0

  566

  11,130.7

  566

  11,130.7

  504

  12,500.0

  Wormwood Scrubs

  9,500.0

  932

  10,193.1

  713

  13,324.0

  797

  11,919.7

  Average

  5,680.0

  537.8

  10,561.4

  482.6

  11,768.5

  541.7

  10,485.0

  1 For contracted establishments costs include those which are charged to the Prison Service only.

  2 Bullingdon costs include Oxford.

  Category C

  Establishment

  KPI8—net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Costt per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Acklington

  4,600

  670

  6,865.7

  667

  6,896.6

  633

  7,267.0

  Aldington

  1,000

  133

  7,518.8

  132

  7,575.8

  121

  8,264.5

  Ashwell

  2,700

  404

  6,683.2

  404

  6,683.2

  385

  7,013.0

  410 411

  Category C

  Establishment

  KPI8—net current expenditure (£1000)

  Average baseline CNA

  Costt per place

  Average in use CNA

  Cost per (in use CNA) place (£)

  Average population

  Cost per prisoner (£)

  Blantyre House

  900

  105

  5,571.4

  108

  8,333.30

  96

  9,375.0

  Brockhill

  1,500

  165

  9,090.9

  141

  10,638.3

  116

  12,931.0

  Buckley Hall1

  4,730

  307

  15,407.2

  307

  15,407.2

  243

  19,465.0

  Camp Hill

  3,800

  469

  8,102.3

  388

  9,793.8

  395

  9,620.3

  Channings Wood

  3,900

  594

  6,565.7

  557

  7,001.8

  551

  7,078.0

  Coldingley

  3,000

  296

  10,135.1

  296

  10,135.1

  284

  10,563.4

  Downview

  2,400

  287

  8,362.4

  287

  8,362.4

  277

  8,664.3

  Erlestoke

  2,500

  270

  9,259.3

  270

  9,259.3

  262

  9,542.0

  Everthorpe

  3,000

  318

  9,434.0

  318

  9,434.0

  274

  10,948.9

  Featherstone

  4,300

  599

  7,178.6

  593

  7,251.3

  565

  7,610.6

  Haverigg

  3,500

  424

  8,254.7

  406

  8,620.7

  380

  9,210.5

  Highpoint

  4,800

  679

  7,069.2

  679

  7,069.2

  643

  7,465.0

  Kirklevington

  900

  100

  9,000.0

  100

  9,000.0

  89

  10,112.4

  Lancaster

  2,000

  261

  7,662.8

  324

  6,172.8

  233

  8,583.7

  Latchmere House

  1,100

  151

  7,284.8

  151

  7,284.8

  130

  8,461.5

  Lindholme

  5,100

  688

  7,412.8

  599

  8,514.2

  585

  8,717.9

  Littlehey

  4,000

  589

  6,791.2

  589

  6,791.2

  556

  7,194,2

  The Mount

  3,500

  501

  6,986.0

  461

  7,592.2

  472

  7,415.3

  Ranby

  3,100

  346

  8,959.5

  346

  8,959.5

  325

  9,538.5

  Risley2

  7,600

  826

  9,201.0

  788

  9,644.7

  744

  10,215.1

  Send

  1,200

  140

  8,571.4

  133

  9,022.6

  134

  8,955.2

  Shepton Mallet

  1,900

  158

  12,025.3

  158

  12,025.3

  201

  9,452.7

  Stafford

  4,900

  457

  10,722.1

  409

  11,980.4

  538

  9,107.8

  Stocken

  3,100

  396

  7,828.3

  396

  7,828.3

  396

  7,828.3

  Usk3

  2,500

  246

  10,162.6

  244

  10,245.9

  237

  10,548.5

  The Verne

  3,900

  541

  7,208.9

  541

  7,208.9

  539

  7,235.6

  Wayland

  3,800

  580

  6,551.7

  580

  6,551.7

  531

  7,156.3

  Wealston4

  3,700

  453

  8,167.8

  453

  8,167.8

  433

  8,545.0

  Wellingborough

  2,800

  344

  8,139.5

  329

  8,510.6

  298

  9,396.0

  Whatton

  1,900

  217

  8,755.8

  217

  8,755.8

  212

  8,962.3

  Wymott

  4,300

  816

  5,269.6

  432

  9,953.7

  421

  10,213.8

  Average

  3,270.6

  397.9

  8,278.5

  376.6

  8,748.6

  361.7

  9,107.1

  1 For contracted establishments costs include those which are charged to the Prison Service only.

  2 CNA includes Female Remand (154) and Category B Adult Male (185).

  3 Usk includes PRESCOED.

  4 Wealston represents Rudgate and Thorp Arch.

  Research Papers
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when Home Office research findings Nos. 23, 24 and 25 will be published; and if he will make a statement. [16660]

  Mr. Maclean
  Research findings 23 "Obscene, Threatening and Other Troublesome Phone Calls" and 24 "Young People and Crime" were published on 19 January. No. 25 "Anxiety about Crime: findings from the 1994 British Crime Survey" was published on 10 January. Copies are available in the Library.

  Fire Service College
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the future of the Fire Service College at Moreton-in-Marsh. [16665]

  Mr. Sackville
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) on 13 February, column 517.
  412
  Mr. Clifton-Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to publish the accounts for the national fire service college for the year 1994–95; and what was the overall financial result. [16731]

  Mr. Sackville
  The fire service college annual report and accounts will be laid before the House on 27 February.

  North Wales Fire Service Authority
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will visit the North Wales fire service authority at the Llandudno HQ. [17327]

  Mr. Sackville
  My right hon. and learned Friend has no plans to visit the North Wales fire service authority in the near future.

  Mentally Ill Prisoners
  Mr. Straw
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is(a) the number of prisoners waiting removal or transfer to a psychiatric hospital under Mental Health Acts provisions, (b) the number of prisoners

  413
  considered by prison doctors to be sufficiently mentally ill to occupy an in-patient bed in a prison health care centre, (c) the number of prisoners considered by prison doctors to require some form of mental health care but not removal or transfer to a psychiatric hospital or in-patient treatment in a prison health care centre and (d) the number of prisoners transferred to hospital by direction of the Home Secretary under sections 72 and 73 of the Mental Health Act 1959, sections 47 and 48 of the Mental Health Act 1983, or other provision in each year since 1979. [17008]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Richard Tilt to Mr. Jack Straw, dated 26 February 1996:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question seeking certain statistical information about prisoners suffering from mental disorders.
  On 20 January 1996, the most recent date for which such information is available is:

  163 prisoners were recorded as awaiting removal or transfer to a psychiatric hospital under provisions of the Mental Health Act 1983;

  853 prisoners were recorded as being sufficiently mentally disordered to be occupying beds in prison health care centres; and

  1380 prisoners were recorded as requiring some form of mental health care but not transfer to hospital or in-patient treatment in a prison health care centre.

  The attached table gives the number of transfers to hospital from 1979 onwards under sections 72 and 73 of the Mental Health Act 1959 and sections 47 and 48 of the Mental Health Act 1983. The method of producing these statistics was changed in 1994. The figures for 1992 and subsequent years omit prisoners transferred without the imposition of restrictions under section 49 of the 1983 Act. Such restrictions require the Home Secretary's consent on all matters relating to absence, transfer or, except where directed by a Mental Health Review Tribunal, discharge.
  This explains the difference between the figures for 1992, 1993 and 1994 provided in the former Director General's letter to you of 10 February 1995.

  Transfers of prisoners to hospital by direction of the Home Secretary under Sections 72 and 73 of the Mental Health Act 1959 and Sections 47 and 48 of the Mental Health Act 1983

  After sentence S72/S47

  Before sentence S73/S48

  Total

  1979

  70

  16

  86

  1980

  87

  19

  106

  1981

  86

  22

  108

  1982

  85

  18

  103

  1983

  91

  24

  115

  1984

  108

  47

  155

  1985

  100

  41

  141

  1986

  107

  53

  160

  1987

  127

  77

  204

  1988

  121

  85

  206

  1989

  131

  100

  231

  1990

  156

  181

  337

  1991

  193

  264

  457

  1992

  227

  378

  605

  1993

  284

  483

  767

  1994

  249

  535

  784

  19951

  254

  484

  738

  1 Provisional figure.

  Immigration (Carrier's Liability) Act 1987
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many carriers operating between Malaysia and the United Kingdom have incurred penalties under the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act 1987; what is the total number of(a) claims made, (b) penalties paid and (c) unpaid penalties to date; and if he will make a statement. [17333]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  Two airlines operate direct services between Malaysia and the United Kingdom. Both carriers have incurred charges on their routes from Kuala Lumpur. The amounts involved are:

  Incurred: £764,000

  Paid: £249,000

  Waived: £147,000

  Outstanding: £368,000.

  The amount incurred reflects 415 breaches of the Act.

  Correspondence
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when a reply will be sent to the hon. Member for Walsall, North's letter of 23 January, ref. 1671/96. [17160]

  Mr. Sackville
  A reply was sent on 22 February.

  Metropolitan Police
  Mr. Congdon
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department for each year since 1979(a) as at 31 March and (b) as at 31 December for the Metropolitan police what was (i) the number of police officers, (ii) the number of police constables, (iii) the man-hours available for beat duties and (iv) the number of civilians. [14719]

  Mr. Maclean
  In December 1995, there were nearly one quarter more officers on the strength of the Metropolitan police than in 1979. Police time on patrol is up by over one third compared with 1984, when such records began. Civilian strength has increased by almost one tenth since 1979 and over 2,600 posts previously filled by police officers have been civilianised. The more detailed information requested is given in tables I to III.

  Table 1: Strength, Metropolitan police1

  At 31 March

  At 31 December

  Year

  Officers

  Constables

  Officers

  Constables

  1979

  22,168

  16,247

  22,482

  16,542

  1980

  22,757

  16,811

  23,562

  17,618

  1981

  24,020

  18,076

  25,029

  19,055

  1982

  25,384

  19,406

  26,225

  20,022

  1983

  26,453

  20,279

  26,683

  20,321

  1984

  26,660

  20,250

  26,718

  20,125

  1985

  26,706

  20,102

  26,659

  19,886

  1986

  26,762

  19,971

  26,861

  20,048

  1987

  26,829

  20,058

  27,293

  20,621

  1988

  27,627

  21,004

  27,855

  21,282

  1989

  27,988

  21,439

  28,101

  21,411

  1990

  28,287

  21,575

  28,152

  21,274

  1991

  28,230

  21,271

  28,126

  21,026

  1992

  28,154

  20,990

  27,812

  20,738

  1993

  27,867

  20,815

  27,605

  20,803

  415

  Table 1: Strength, Metropolitan police1

  At 31 March

  At 31 December

  Year

  Officers

  Constables

  Officers

  Constables

  1994

  27,699

  20,975

  27,611

  21,139

  1995

  27,480

  21,179

  227,719

  221,378

  1 With the exception of the figures for December 1995 (see note 2) all the figures given are as published in the Home Office summary of police manpower, copies of which are placed in the Library of the House. They include officers seconded to the Met but not officers seconded out to regional crime squads and central service.

  2 Figures for 31 December 1995 are as notified by the Metropolitan police; Home Office figures are not yet available.

  Table 2: Deployment of officers on street duties

  Street duty mandays

  Percentage of overall1 mandays

  1984

  1,254,105

  27.42

  1985

  1,434,639

  29.69

  1986

  1,339,990

  28.81

  1987

  1,452,359

  30.66

  1988

  1,579,767

  31.12

  1989

  1,619,137

  31.77

  1990

  1,561,988

  31.95

  1991

  1,492,781

  31.75

  1992

  1,493,018

  32.29

  1993

  1,610,045

  34.64

  1994

  1,678,228

  34.86

  1995

  21,285,436

  35.03

  1 Source: Metropolitan Police. Percentages based on figures for the full 12 months period in each case except 1995 (see footnote 2).

  2 Figure given is for January to September 1995; final figures for 1995 are not yet available.

  Table 3: Strength, Metropolitan police civilian staff

  Year

  At 31 March

  At 31 December

  1979

  —

  15,653

  1980

  —

  16,965

  1981

  —

  16,711

  1982

  —

  16,618

  1983

  —

  16,542

  1984

  —

  16,582

  1985

  *16,134

  16,443

  1986

  *16,067

  16,521

  1987

  *16,115

  16,360

  1988

  *15,639

  15,884

  1989

  *15,503

  15,900

  1990

  *15,659

  16,720

  1991

  *16,485

  *16,939

  1992

  17,562

  *17,438

  1993

  18,051

  *17,380

  1994

  17,769

  *16,855

  1995

  17,348

  *16,928

  1 Figures for Metropolitan police civilian staff are published in the annual reports of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. They include traffic wardens and school crossing patrols. From 1992 the figures have been published as at 31 March, not 31 December. Figures marked * are additional unpublished Metropolitan police data; no figures at 31 March are available for the years prior to 1985.

  Scott Inquiry
  Mr. Janner
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what communication he received from the Secretary of the Scott inquiry, concerning the time needed by the Opposition parties to scrutinise the Scott report; on what date he received such communications; what was the nature of the contents of letters; and if he will deposit copies of those letters in the Library. [16632]
  416
  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to him by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade on 22 February at column 252.

  Mrs. Jane Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many persons and at what level in his Department were involved in considering the Government's response to the report of the Scott inquiry; [16558]

  (2) how much he estimates the cost of the allocation of persons in his Department to the consideration of the Government's response to the Scott report. [16646]

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to her by the Prime Minister on 22 February at columns 239–40.

  Mr. Janner
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how he responded to communications received from Mr. Christopher Muttukumaru; what were the dates of letters; and if he will deposit copies in the Library. [16549]

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: My officials have responded to a number of letters from Mr. Muttukumaru about evidence which they have given to the inquiry. Sir Richard Scott is free to publish any document he considers relevant to his report.

  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department at what hour and minute of which day the report of the Scott inquiry was delivered to his office. [16502]

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: A sealed copy of the report was delivered to my office at approximately 3.50 pm on Thursday 15 February.

  Mrs. Golding
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make changes in the personnel of his Department following criticisms contained in the report of the Scott inquiry. [16568]

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: No. I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to him by the Prime Minister on 22 February at column 239.

  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he first saw the report of the Scott inquiry. [16588]

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to her by the Prime Minister on 22 February at column 240.

  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the members of his Department who saw the report of the Scott inquiry before it was presented to the House; and when each saw the report. [16529]

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 22 February 1996]: No members of my Department saw the report before it was presented to the House.

  Press Gallery Writing Rooms
  Mrs. Jane Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which Ministers in his Department entered the writing rooms of the Press Gallery on 15 February. [16477]
  417
  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 22 February' 1996]I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to her by the Prime Minister on 22 February,Official Report, column 242.

ENVIRONMENT

  Departmental Officials (Interests)
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list the officials in his department who have declared a current interest; what requirements are placed on officials to declare relevant interests; in what form records of such declarations are kept; and if he will establish a central register of officials' interests. [16889]

  Sir Paul Beresford
  In accordance with the civil service management code, the Department's staff handbook requires that staff may not use or appear to use their public position to further their personal interests, or those of members of their immediate family or of any other person on the values of whose assets they advise. Should any potential conflict of interest arise, staff must disclose that fact to their line manager and ask that someone else should deal with the matter. Failure to comply with these rules is treated as a breach of discipline.

  Staff who disclose relevant interests do so on the understanding that this information, like all matters relating to their employment, is confidential between them and their employer.

  Housing Investment
  Mr. Alfred Morris
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is the total sum allowed for local authority credit approvals for housing investment in 1996–97; what were the figures for each of the last three years; and if he will make a statement. [15483]

  Mr. Clappison
  The total sum allowed for local authority credit approvals in England for housing investment in 1996–97 is £789 million. The figures for the previous years are given in the table.

  Year

  Local authority credit approvals (£ million)

  1993–94 (outturn)

  1,120

  1994–95 (outturn)

  872

  1995–96 (estimated outturn)

  869

  The figures exclude credit approvals for the estate action scheme, which has been subsumed into the single regeneration budget. The scheme has been grant funded since 1995–96. The supplementary credit approvals issued to provide cover for specified capital grants are also excluded.

  Council Tax
  Mr. Dobson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is for 1995–96 and 1996–97(a) the planned council tax yield for England, consistent with chapter 4 of HC30, (b) the level of those grants which,
  418
  together with council tax, fund local authority budget requirements in England as defined for 1996–97, individually and in aggregate, including within 1995–96, community care grant transferred into revenue support grant in 1996–97, and adjusting for changes in functions and (c) the sum of (a) and (b). [17033]

  Mr. Gummer
  The Government do not set plans for the yield of council tax, which depends on decisions made by individual authorities.

  £ Million

  1995–96

  1996–97

  (a) Estimated effect of those decisions on council tax yield, consistent with HC30, gross of council tax benefit

  9,780

  10,574

  (b) External sources of finance to the budget requirement, consistent with HC30

  33,610

  34,120

  Of which, grants:

  Revenue support grant to local authorities

  118,952

  17,999

  Police grant (principal formula and additional rule 1)

  3,036

  3,158

  SSA reduction grant

  261

  220

  Other external sources of finance:

  Non-domestic rates

  11,354

  12,736

  City offset

  7

  7

  (c) The sum of (a) estimated council tax yield and (b) external support

  43,390

  44,694

  1Includes £648 million community care grant, and £34 million adjustment for metropolitan rail services, net of £26 million for waste regulation transfer.

  Mr. Dobson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what calculations underlay his Department's estimate that the planned proportion of local authority expenditure funded by council tax would increase to 26 per cent. by 1998–99. [17129]

  Mr. Gummer
  The public expenditure plans for local government for 1997–98 and 1998–99 were announced at the time of my right hon. and learned friend the Chancellor's November 1995 Budget Statement. Under these proposals, aggregate external finance—AEF—would increase from £34.69 billion in 1995–96 to £35.70 billion in 1998–99 to support total standard spending, TSS, which would increase from £43.46 billion to £46.30 billion. The Government have assumed that the difference between these two aggregates could be met through local authorities' own resources, primarily the council tax. Our best current estimate is that this would imply that the proportion of TSS funded by council tax would increase from 20 to 23 per cent. between 1995–96 and 1998–99. Decisions on levels of council tax and therefore on the proportion of services funded locally are, subject to capping, for local authorities themselves.

  Pollution Inspectorate
  Mr. Rooney
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what performance target he has set for the inspectorate of pollution as regards answering letters from hon. Members. [16916]
  419
  Mr. Clappison
  Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution, as part of my Department, does not reply directly to the letters of hon. Members. Replies normally come from Ministers in my Department. However, if hon. Members' letters concern the work of HMIP, the inspectorate will advise Ministers on a reply. Usually a420
  reply should be received by an hon. Member within 10 to 15 working days. Under HMIP's citizens charter statement, any complaint from the public about a particular site is investigated promptly, and anyone making a complaint is informed of the outcome within 15 working days.

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.

The Lord Chancellor: Leave of Absence
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, before the commencement of business, I take the opportunity to inform the House that I am to formally open the magistrates' court at Bromley on Friday, 1st March. Accordingly, I trust that the House will agree to grant me leave of absence for Friday, 1st March.

Law of Murder: Report
2.37 p.m.
Lord Ackner Lord Ackner asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the review of the law of murder announced on 24th January 1995 has yet been completed; and if so, when a report of the review will be published; and if it is not yet completed what is the reason for the delay.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, the report of the inter-departmental group of officials has been received by Ministers and is at present under consideration by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and his colleagues. The issues are complex, but we hope that it will now be possible to reach final decisions and announce the conclusions of the review as soon as possible.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her Answer, though not quite with the degree of intense gratitude that I had anticipated. Will the noble Baroness confirm—perhaps I should have said "re-confirm" because she confirmed it on 24th October when I last raised the matter—first, that the inquiry was set up as a result of the unease experienced by the public in regard to the verdict of murder brought in against Trooper Clegg; secondly, the purpose of the inquiry was to decide on the merits of reducing from murder to manslaughter in those cases where excessive force was used in self-defence or in upholding the law; thirdly, recommendations that that should occur had been provided by the Criminal Law Revision Committee 16 years ago, by your Lordships' own Select Committee seven years ago, by the Law Commissioner in adopting it in the draft code six years ago, by the Court of Appeal
1220
of Northern Ireland in the Clegg appeal, and by your Lordships Appellate Committee on the appeal in the Clegg case—
Noble Lords: Question!
Lord Ackner:—when my noble and learned friend who gave the leading judgment said that the recommendations point all one way? Why should there be any further delay in announcing the conclusion?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I have given one reason and I believe that the noble and learned Lord hints at it; namely, that it is a complex and sensitive issue about which there are different opinions. The noble and learned Lord was absolutely right when he stated the reason for setting up the review. The review itself relates to the use of lethal force in self-defence or in the prevention of crime. The review focuses on the use of lethal force in the maintenance of law and order, including the use of the yellow card. I believe that the noble and learned Lord knows that the regulations about the yellow card are also being reviewed as part of this exercise. I can also say that the review did not consider the mandatory life sentence or the law of provocation. All the references made by the noble and learned Lord are being taken into account in coming to a conclusion.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, will the noble Baroness confirm that the review will be published?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I cannot give an absolute guarantee about that at the moment. What I can say is that the Government will come to Parliament with their conclusions and they may include the report or a summary of the report. I note the noble Lord's concern.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I was a member of the Select Committee. Whether or not the conclusions are published—I suppose that they will have to he—can my noble friend say that they will be considered in this House before any decision is taken to implement them?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, certainly my right honourable friend plans to bring his conclusions to the House. It will be for the usual channels in the House to determine how to take those forward.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, we have already been waiting for a substantial period for the report of this review. Why cannot the noble Baroness tell the House that it will at least be published? The Government constantly say that they are in favour of open government. Why cannot they give some demonstration of their enthusiasm for that by publishing this review?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am in a difficulty to say what information my right honourable friend will bring forward when he comes to his conclusions. It is highly likely that the information that he received and what he took into account in coming to a conclusion will in fact he made available to the House, but I am not able to say at this moment what form that will take.

St. Bartholomew's Hospital
2.42 p.m.
Lord Molloy Lord Molloy asked Her Majesty's Government:
How and when they will respond to the views of groups concerned about the future of St. Bartholomew's Hospital.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege): My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health has met a number of individuals and groups in recent months and has listened carefully to their views and concerns about the future of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He has made clear that he will not be re-opening decisions, announced in April 1995, on the provision of hospital services in east London.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Has a response been submitted to the report of the King's Fund Institute, which stated, "Keep Bart's open"? It also stated that, in addition, two smaller specialist units should be created near that great hospital which would be for the benefit not merely of Londoners but all the citizens of our country.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, the Secretary of State has met a number of groups recently. All have drawn his attention to the recommendations of the King's Fund Report on the future of the Bart's site. We have serious reservations about the report. It does not look at the wider context of population needs in east London. It starts from the premise, "Here we have a site. What can we put on it'?". It does not take into account the other services which are provided at University College Hospital, London, the Royal London and the Guy's and St. Thomas's sites. It does not even take into account the fact that medical schools have merged. The report itself states that it has not fully costed all the options. Indeed, it endorses many of the conclusions of the Royal Hospitals Trust's own business case for change.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many of us would regard it as tragic if this famous ancient and historic hospital were to be closed and can see no justification whatever for doing so? Will the Government reconsider the matter?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, it is people, rather than buildings, who contribute towards the special ethos mentioned by my noble friend. For years and years—indeed for centuries—people have looked at the health needs of Londoners. We know that they are not being met by the present state of the hospitals; by the way that they were planned haphazardly—indeed, hardly planned at all. Therefore, there is no question of revisiting these decisions. I am absolutely convinced that by bringing together the two great hospitals—the Royal London and St. Bartholomew's—we shall have a much stronger
1222
health service for east Londoners. Already, as a result of the merger, the cardiac unit is being enormously strengthened.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, will my noble friend comment on the plan to open an 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. service at the hospital, which will cover the period when most commuters might require medical attention in the City of London'?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, a minor injuries unit has already been established at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. I visited it on Friday and saw that it was being very well used. It is meeting the need that we thought it would. Of course, there are accident and emergency departments within a two-mile radius of the previous catchment area.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, why does the Minister refer to local needs as regards Bart's, as though it were a village cottage hospital? Is she not aware that when one visits Bart's one finds patients not only from all over this country but from other countries too and that it has a representation far beyond Shoreditch and Mile End? Has that been taken into sufficient account?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, yes, it has. No capital in the world can sustain I I teaching hospitals within a six-mile radius. We have been most anxious that the United Kingdom should retain its reputation as a centre of excellence in medical education, treatment and services. We know that if one fractures the services and has specialties in so many different places—13 cancer units, 14 cardiac units and so forth—one cannot retain the essential excellence that is required and is achieved by bringing the various specialties together. It is because we care about the leading position that this country has in the world, and because we care about the people of London, that we have had to take some very hard decisions.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I believe that the Minister took the King's Fund Report to task for not having asked the question, "Here is a site. What shall we put on it?". Would not the more apposite question have been, "Here is a site with something on it, which is well known to be useful and splendid. Why should we move it?"?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, we are convinced that, in order to strengthen services in London, we must bring them together. We must concentrate the expertise that exists. Bart's is a splendid building. We all recognise that and that is why my right honourable friend has set up a task force, chaired by Sir Ronald Grierson, to look at the site and to consider what can be made of the buildings. However, we are absolutely convinced that we should not start with buildings but with the expertise of the people who provide a service and then see how we can build upon that.
Lord Elton: My Lords, does my noble friend realise that she is widely supported in her premise that, with a fall in population in the capital, there must be a reorganisation of resources? The prime concern must be

1223
the service given to the citizens of this metropolis and that can best be done by manoeuvring the human and technological resources and not being pinned within ancient buildings?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that comment. He is absolutely right. It is not only the fall in population that affects London but the fact that superb services are now provided in all parts of the country. That is London's success. It is a result of the fact that people who were trained and set up departments in the famous London teaching hospitals have moved to other parts of the country. All over the country—for instance, in Sheffield, Liverpool, Leeds, and Exeter—better services are being provided locally, with shorter stays in hospital and better primary care. We must concentrate our services in London on better primary care.
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, in spite of the excellent performance of the emergency services, there is concern about the absence of a local accident and emergency department at Bart's in the City of London following the recent bomb outrages? Is it possible that the Government could look again at that matter? The Government were warned about the consequences of closing the casualty department at Bart's at a time of high security risk in the City.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, we have put an incredible amount of investment into accident and emergency departments of local hospitals; for example, Mayday, Lewisham, King's College, Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, and Greenwich Healthcare. That is proving to be successful. Nobody could criticise the way in which the recent Docklands bombing was dealt with. Indeed, when I visited the Royal London I was told that it could have dealt with three times the number of emergencies without any trouble at all. I believe that we have overcome the greatest difficulties in relation to accident and emergency departments and, indeed, the situation in London is now improving.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, in her first reply, the Minister mentioned the services being supplied by University College Hospital. Is it not a fact that the main building of that hospital has been lying idle and empty for months and months now and that no services are provided there?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, we are strengthening certain parts of that hospital. We are linking it much more to the university. It is a centre of academic excellence. But we shall see empty buildings in London and, indeed, we are also seeing new buildings in London. That is all part of the major change that is so necessary.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the magnificent and well deserved tributes that she has paid to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. It is difficult therefore to understand why she wishes to abolish it. Will the Minister consider holding a meeting with the senior staff, who would love to have an hour
1224
with her to explain the situation at Bart's; the possible creation of two new hospitals; and the fact that that would boost the morale of health service staff not only in London but throughout our beloved country?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, we are not abolishing Bart's. We are merging it with the Royal London Hospital. Its expertise will be strengthened. As regards senior staff at Bart's, it is interesting that we are now able to recruit staff to the new merged trust. Cardiac anaesthetists are as rare as hens' teeth but we have been able to fill three vacancies in the last year. The senior staff almost live at the Secretary of State's door.

Ukraine
2.52 p.m.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Lord Wallace of Saltaire asked Her Majesty's Government:
What actions they are taking, together with their partners in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, to reinforce the independence of Ukraine and to strengthen its political and economic links with the West.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, the UK is committed to an independent, democratic and prosperous Ukraine. Britain gives aid to Ukraine through the know-how fund, the IMF, the World Bank and the EBRD. Britain also supports Ukraine in the framework of the EU through TACIS and balance of payments aid. Ukraine is an active member of Partnership for Peace and the North Atlantic Co-operation Council. We plan further co-operative links. There are frequent high level contacts and visits.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that very helpful reply. Does she agree that the independence of Ukraine is crucial to the future stability of Europe? Does she agree also that, if it were to gain closer hegemony over the Ukraine, Russia would again become an empire? In view of that, does the Minister accept that we must maintain the closest possible links with Ukraine, including, in spite of our diminished aid programme, keeping Ukraine among the top 20 states to which we should provide assistance?
Baroness Chalker of Wallaseys: My Lords, there is no hesitation on the part of the Government to maintain the know-how fund and indeed to increase it from £5 million in 1994–95 to £7 million in 1995–96 and under the proposed Aid Framework to £9 million in the coming financial year. That is a threefold increase in the know-how fund programme for Ukraine since it began. We are also supporting major projects in all the fields where it most needs help. Therefore, the noble Lord cannot get away with his implied accusation on that score.

1225
As regards the relationship with Russia, we believe that the improvement in relations between Ukraine and Russia is not only very welcome but is likely to continue. President Yeltsin's visit to Kiev at the beginning of April should be another step forward. I know that there are remaining issues under dispute, but I believe that they can be settled in a spirit of co-operation and on the basis of respect for the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine, about which the noble Lord so clearly cares.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, will the Minister comment on recent newspaper reports that the Ukrainian Government are selling military cargo aircraft to drug traffickers in Colombia? Does she agree that that highlights the need for more western help with dismantling and running down Ukrainian military production, neither of which she mentioned in her earlier answers?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, first, I do not suppose that it is the Ukrainian Government who are selling off aircraft to anybody in the way that the noble Baroness described. I have not seen the newspaper reports and I shall investigate them. But the noble Baroness knows that we already give a great deal of assistance to counter drug trafficking and to stop money laundering. We do that not only with the Commonwealth countries, with which we have a special arrangement, but also with all others with which we have a development programme.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, will the noble Baroness say whether British expertise is being made available to Ukraine both in coal-mining and agriculture?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, that is certainly being done in agriculture. Indeed, we have given advice on coal-mining. We are deeply involved in the whole question of the restructuring of energy resources. Where we can help, we do, both bilaterally and through the European Union and the other bodies which I mentioned in my main Answer.

Northern Region
2.56 p.m.
Lord Dormand of Easington Lord Dormand of Easington asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have any additional proposals to improve the economy of the northern region.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Viscount Goschen): My Lords, the Government continue to support the vigorous development of the northern region through our national economic policies, effective partnership, including the private sector, and by continuing improvements in the local delivery of services to business.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, some of the recent developments in the region are welcome.
1226
But is the Minister aware that the northern region has the highest level of long-term unemployment in the country outside Northern Ireland? Is he further aware that some parts of the northern region have very high unemployment indeed because of their history and structure? When a pit is closed—and all the pits in the northern region are now closed—as many as 2,000 men may be put out of work. Does he believe that present government policies are dealing with that problem?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right to highlight the recent positive developments in the region, particularly in the field of inward investment, where the region has attracted some £4 billion worth of inward investment, which is clearly very good news indeed. Of course the region has suffered historically from its changing industrial base. That is why we have put considerable efforts into regeneration and into addressing the specific problems caused by the closure of the coal-mines. Through the work we have done with the TECs, British Coal Enterprise and English Estates, we have developed a wide range of policies to address specifically the problems caused by those changes.
Lord Elliott of Morpeth: My Lords, does my noble friend appreciate that those of us who live in the northern region are fully aware of its transformation caused by the influx of new industry and investment encouraged by the Government in recent years? Will be accept that at this time there are more young people than ever before doing some form of training in the northern region? Will be accept also that unemployment continues to fall, even though I recognise that it is still too high? Finally, does he appreciate that Newcastle United Football Club is at the head of the premier division?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I rely on my noble friend for my sporting information. On the more serious points, training is a very high priority and that area has been targeted through the TECs. Unemployment continues to fall in the region, and that is very good news indeed. My noble friend's remarks reflect the optimism that has been caused by that major injection of inward investment. There really has been a terrific boom in the region which attracts more inward investment than any other area in Europe.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, will the Minister join me in complimenting the local councils, which have been most instrumental in attracting inward investment? I should point out that most of those councils are Labour controlled.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, local authorities, in partnership with the Conservative Government, have succeeded in attracting those considerable levels of investment into the region. I believe that our overall enthusiasm for attracting such investment transcends even party boundaries. We feel that there is a strong feeling of partnership involved, and that is something upon which we have been working extremely hard.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I was a little disappointed to hear that the noble Viscount believes that the

1227
performance of Newcastle United is of minor importance. In fact, there is a fair amount of research evidence which shows a positive correlation between the performance of football teams and the local economy. However, that is an incidental point.
The Question actually refers to "additional proposals" rather than just proposals. Therefore, does the Minister agree that the persistence of long-term unemployment suggests that at least something more needs to be done? Aside from the excellent feelings about inward investment, that obviously does not greatly assist with long-term unemployment, which will often occur among older men for whom something additional is required. Do the Government have anything to say on that aspect of the matter?
Viscount Goschen: Yes, my Lords; clearly inward investment is extremely important. However, it is only part of the story. The other efforts that we have been making have been towards regeneration. We have been targeting funding through the single regeneration budget, with some £240 million allocated to projects in the north east to date. That is the largest allocation for any region outside London. The urban development corporations have also carried out extremely good work, and we have been pursuing the City Challenges, with six approved challenges in the north east and some £37.5 million guaranteed public support. In addition, there are enterprise zones. Indeed, there is a wide range of policies. The key challenge for the region now is to face the competitiveness agenda and to ensure that it takes forward its competitiveness into the next century.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, in his reply to me the Minister mentioned the TECs. However, is he aware that it was revealed over the weekend that three of the TECs in County Durham are now in the red? Surely something ought to be done about that situation. Further, and on an equally important matter, does the Minister accept that the Northern Development Company has a crucial role to play in the regeneration of the region, especially as it consists of the employers, the trade unions and the local authorities? If the noble Viscount agrees with that view, will be give the House an assurance that its government grant will not be reduced next year?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I should point out that TECs are extremely important in terms of training. The noble Lord and the House will be aware of the efforts that have been put into them to achieve the training objectives that we have set for the region. Indeed, they are extremely important. As regards the noble Lord's specific question, I shall endeavour to find the information and, if he will permit me, I shall write to him. On the question of development corporations—
Lord Dormand of Easington: The Northern Development Company.
Viscount Goschen: Again, my Lords, if the noble Lord will permit me, I shall look into the specific issues in terms of the funding of the development company. I understood him to be referring to the development corporations, which of course have been a tremendous
1228
success, have performed the time-limited role, and, indeed, have benefited from the noble Lord's services over a number of years.

Scott Report
3.2 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie)The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie) rose to move, That this House takes note of the Report of the Inquiry into the Export of Defence Equipment and Dual-Use Goods to Iraq (HC 115).
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity for a measured debate to consider the report of Sir Richard Scott, now that your Lordships have had the opportunity to study it. That was why, as indicated at the time of publication, the Government deliberately allowed 10 clear days to elapse between publication and debate.
We welcome the central conclusions of the report that there was no plot to arm Saddam Hussein secretly and no attempt to suppress documents which could have led to a miscarriage of justice. Those issues were central to the inquiry, and are now behind us. But today I want to look forward. I want to look in detail and with care at Sir Richard Scott's recommendations and criticisms, as he asked the Government to do.
Sir Richard's report rightly focused on the serious and defamatory charges that had been made and of which the Government now stand acquitted. But, in the Statement that I repeated 10 days ago, care was taken to draw attention both to the criticisms of Sir Richard and to his conclusions and recommendations on which I should like today to indicate more of the Government's thinking.
Mistakes were made. There are lessons to be learned. The Government have accepted the inquiry's criticisms concerning the distribution of intelligence material and have already taken action to improve it. We have accepted the criticism about export controls and licensing procedures and have already undertaken to publish a consultation paper on that, as recommended by Sir Richard Scott. We have already undertaken further to consider, and most carefully, his comments on the use of wartime export control legislation. We accept the principle of the need now for greater supervision by the office of the Attorney-General of Customs and Excise prosecutions in relation to export control matters—I shall say more on that—and we also accept many of Sir Richard's other recommendations.
I should like to turn now to those recommendations and, in particular, to those questions of openness in government and accountability to Parliament.
As the President of the Board of Trade said in his Statement, there is a continuing line of criticism running through the report of the conventions, long-established, whereby successive governments have undervalued, as Sir Richard sees it, the public interest in the disclosure of information.
This Government have a good record in improving openness in government; and the debate on how much further openness in Parliament might go should be seen in that context. For example, we have introduced or supported numerous measures opening up for the first time specific areas of government, even the most sensitive, as with the Intelligence Service Act 1994. More generally, we published the first White Paper on Open Government in 1993 and the code of practice it proposed a year later. As a result of all this and of other Citizen's Charter initiatives, there is now much more information released, whether on the background to government decisions, on medical and other records, or on school, hospital and local government performance data. Over 48,000 previously confidential public records have now been released.
We have avowed for the first time the Secret Intelligence Service and put it on a statutory footing and subject to a statutory Oversight Committee.
The Government have also published detailed lists of ministerial Cabinet Committees and Questions of Procedure for Ministers.
Closer to the issues of foreign policy and export controls, in 1991 the present Secretary of State for Social Security, Mr. Peter Lilley (then at the DTI), took the unprecedented step of publishing the detailed lists—70 pages in all—of the exports licensed for Iraq between 1987 and 1990.
However, despite that good record of government, we hope that we can go further down the route of open government. Indeed, further, as we have already gone, than in the traditional answers to questions on defence sales when answered by the Labour Government in the 1970s when, for example, Mr. Peter Shore stated:
"It has been the policy of successive Governments not to reveal information on the supply of arms to individual countries".
Moreover, Mr. Michael Meacher had this to say:
"The list of recipient countries is not published because defence purchases are regarded as confidential".
Erskine May sets out a number of subjects on which successive Administrations have declined to answer questions on grounds of public policy. These include discussions between Ministers or between Ministers and their official advisers; the proceedings of Cabinet or its Committees; security matters; operational defence matters; and details of arms sales to particular countries.
Here I come to the particular point that Sir Richard Scott raised in relation to parliamentary Questions on the sale of arms or defence related equipment. He said that that long-standing practice should be re-examined. This the Government are content to do. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has today placed in the Library of another place a document setting out the current position in relation to informing Parliament on the export of arms, together with an explanation of how that practice has evolved. I have arranged for the same document to he placed in the Library of this House.
I hope that your Lordships will find that document a useful basis on which to take forward the discussion. There are serious issues here. The Government's policy
1230
on defence sales is based on a respect for the right of other countries and sovereign states to protect their independence and to exercise their right to self-defence. That right is recognised explicitly by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The countries to which we export arms have a legitimate right to maintain the confidentiality of the strength of their Armed Forces and the equipment they have available. Strategically the export of defence equipment benefits our own defences through reducing the overall cost of equipment. At the same time the export of defence equipment is vital to the health of the British economy. Total defence expenditure, including overseas sales of equipment, provides employment for more than 400,000 people in industry in this country.
But despite our economic interests this Government maintain a strict policy on the control of defence exports, stricter indeed than any other country, even though this involves denying to British firms valuable overseas markets involving not just the sale of weapons for defence, but also non-lethal equipment, potentially dual-purpose goods, and with a knock-on disadvantage to purely commercial, civilian export opportunities, all of which our international competitors have no hesitation in exploiting.
Sir Richard has recognised the potentially divergent and conflicting policy objectives in relation to employment and trade as well as foreign policy and humanitarian considerations. These are conflicting issues with which all governments have to wrestle. Sir Richard himself recognises that the moral case for refusing to allow defence exports to a particular country has to be set against the damage to British economic interests. However, as the publication of the document placed in the Library shows, the Government are willing to play their part in public debate about the issues raised and would welcome the views of all who are interested in this issue, including in particular those of the Opposition parties.
Thus, in addition to being content that the parliamentary convention that the Government do not answer questions about exports of arms and defence related goods should be reviewed in the light of modern circumstances, as Sir Richard recommends, the Government are also willing to consider positively Sir Richard Scott's wider views about ministerial accountability and responsibility. This approach, taken with the significant decision announced in 1985 to inform the House of the guidelines on defence exports, established to assist Ministers and officials in appraising export licence applications against the uncertain and ever changing background of Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, is already in marked contrast to the approach of previous governments.
A major step forward in making ministerial accountability transparent was taken by the Prime Minister in 1992 when he decided to publish the guidance for Ministers known as Questions of Procedure for Ministers. It is worth reminding your Lordships that this had been a classified document under previous administrations. The section of Questions of Procedure for Ministers to which Sir Richard Scott refers states that, Ministers have the duty to give

1231
Parliament, including its Select Committees and the public, as full information as possible about the policies, decisions and actions of the Government. There are, and have long been, a number of conventions and accepted reasons why full information cannot be made public and therefore cannot be given to Parliament. As Sir Richard Scott says in his report,
"It is generally accepted, and rightly so, that there have always been and always will be some subjects in respect of which full information, or sometimes any information cannot be given".
These include, inter alia, matters that are sub judice, commercially confidential information, and sensitive security and foreign policy matters. I doubt whether those exceptions would be seriously challenged in your Lordships' House.
I turn to what he has to say about the role of Customs and Excise. He first addresses in his report the possible changes to the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 to clarify various powers and definitions. In addition to these and other specific legal provisions, Sir Richard Scott recommends a number of other changes to internal Customs and Excise procedures. As he recommends, there will be a review of the relationship between the Customs Solicitors' Office and the Customs Investigation Department. Sir Richard's recommendations relating to Customs' legislation and internal procedures are largely accepted by the Government, subject only to further consideration of some detailed technical legal matters.
Sir Richard also considered the position of the Customs and Excise as an independent prosecuting authority; a role that has remained unchanged for many years. He recommends the introduction of a formalised system of supervision by the Attorney-General of export control prosecutions. At the same time he affirms the important constitutional principle that a prosecuting authority should be independent and free from political direction. He considers the analogy with the Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions, both of whom are subject to the superintendence of the Attorney-General, whereas the Customs and Excise, as a prosecuting authority, is not. Sir Richard notes that acting in this capacity, the Attorney-General exercises a quasi-judicial role and does not act as a Cabinet Minister; his actions and decisions are not, for example, subject to Cabinet collective responsibility.
While the analogy Sir Richard draws with the Crown Prosecution Service and with the Serious Fraud Office is not an exact one, the Government nevertheless accept that there are benefits in Sir Richard Scott's recommendation that in future the role of the Attorney-General should include the exercise of increased supervision of Customs and Excise prosecutions in relation to export control matters. The Government are urgently developing proposals on the precise nature and scope of this increased supervision, and I understand that the Attorney-General will be reporting further in another place on this as soon as possible.
In relation to the use of intelligence by government departments, Sir Richard makes it clear that he does not feel qualified to make recommendations as to how the
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various systems and procedures might be improved. He acknowledges that a number of improvements have been made and sets out a number of areas in which he considers that problems existed. Since 1992 major reviews have taken place in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the DTI, the Ministry of Defence and Customs and Excise. As a result, modern information technology systems have been introduced and new internal distribution arrangements adopted. In addition, the requirements of users are now more fully reflected in the intelligence gathering process.
Sir Richard also makes a procedural recommendation, which he has not published for security reasons, concerning intelligence personnel, which will be discussed with the chairman of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. The Government also propose to inform the committee, chaired by Mr. Tom King, of other improvements which have been made. I have no doubt that this committee, which was specifically set up to deal with such matters, will want to satisfy itself, and in due course to reassure Parliament, that an adequate response has been made to Sir Richard's observations.
One of the key areas was, of course, that of prosecution procedures and PII certificates. The opening words of Sir Richard Scott's final chapter on PII certificates are,
"The law on public interest immunity in civil and in criminal trials is judge made. I do not believe that legislative intervention is necessary or, at present desirable".
The decision in 1994 in ex parte Wiley, Sir Richard Scott describes as providing,
"a sensible practical guide that any Minister or Official trying to decide whether or not a PII claim should be made … can easily follow".
With that observation I respectfully agree. However, the criticism in his report of the actings of the Attorney-General are not that he ignored or misunderstood that sensible practical guide which came, after all, some two years after the Matrix Churchill case, but that he effectively misunderstood the law as it then was.
In the course of the last 10 days I have had to set against the view of Sir Richard Scott that the law in 1992 was effectively no different from the present law, not only my own understanding of a range of prominent decisions but also the views of a current Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, the Master of the Rolls, my noble friend Lord Alexander of Weedon, a number of distinguished judges who were Treasury Counsel, prominent Silks who advised the Attorney-General at the time and three of the counsel who represented the defendants in the Matrix Churchill trial. I accept that others, in expressing their opinion, have gone the other way. However, the Government have good cause to believe that the preponderance of settled legal opinion at the time favoured the Attorney-General's view.
Sir Richard Scott may wish that the authoritative statement in Wiley had come sooner, but it would be a novel proposition to castigate the Attorney-General for failing to anticipate the evolution of the law some years before it was declared. Indeed, it would have been perverse if he had sought to do so.
It is now time to look to the future. There is, happily, little disagreement on the present law. The Wiley decision has had the effect of introducing into current practice a number of points made by Sir Richard. As a result of that decision, Ministers can now disclose PII documents without the prior approval of the court when they consider that that is in the overall public interest.
There is a further point on PII that I should like to make. PII claims have been made in criminal cases, both before the Matrix Churchill trial and since, and both on a contents and class basis. Sir Richard recommends that in future PII claims in criminal cases on a class basis should not be made. I understand from observations made 10 days ago that the Opposition would support that. If the public have been bewildered or bored by the apparent sterility of the legal wrangle, I trust that they will now be engaged in a coherent debate over what that might entail.
There could be a real risk of prosecutions having to be abandoned in, say, terrorist cases or in those related to drugs or weapons in prisons, where the issue was one of informants. Moreover, it should be appreciated that PII does not only apply to government documents and to confidential police information but also to the important work of other agencies such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in relation, for instance, to child abuse cases.
The law on public interest immunity is made by the courts, but the Government will consider Sir Richard Scott's recommendations in the light of developing case law, particularly given his view that the time is opportune for a collective reappraisal by Ministers. As part of that consideration, as the Attorney-General has announced this afternoon, the Government would welcome views on future developments in the use of public interest immunity certificates.
Sir Richard devotes two chapters of recommendations to export control powers and licensing procedures. However, before I come to his recommendations I should like to cover our policy regarding the export of defence equipment to Iran and Iraq.
Our policy was to remain neutral in that war. As Sir Richard recognises, no lethal weapons were sold to either side and the Government took vigorous measures to prevent the export of non-lethal goods which could have prolonged or intensified the conflict. A set of guidelines was introduced to assist the application of that policy, which was far stricter than those of our main international competitors. The guidelines were exactly that: they were guidelines, essentially for internal use, to assist officials in dealing with export licence applications. They had no legal basis and were not intended to set out a complete policy. As Sir Richard Scott acknowledges in his report:
"I would readily accept that, in relation to defence sales to Iran and Iraq, the Guidelines were not, and were never intended to be, an exclusive exposition of Government policy".
As the author of a different guide wrote about guidelines:
"They must not be allowed, by an over-rigid application that fails to take into account the consensus of each case, to become a constraint on effective and sensible case management".
Those words were penned last year by Sir Richard Scott himself in the preface to the Chancery Guide.
I turn now to Sir Richard Scott's recommendations. The Government accept that the current export control powers and procedures should be reviewed and that there should be wide consultation in the course of such a review. That review will take into account the points made in the report. We shall then produce a consultation paper covering those points, as Sir Richard Scott recommends. I should make it clear at this stage that the Government are committed to an export control system which is easy for business to use and understand yet which allows the Government to take restraining action where that is necessary for wider policy reasons.
There is one further point that I should like to pick up now. That relates to the extent of parliamentary scrutiny of export control orders. I should like to make it clear that the Government have no difficulty with the proposition that, if the current export control Act, which reflects the 1939 legislation, is replaced future legislation on export control should include provision for parliamentary scrutiny. The Government had previously indicated to the inquiry that they would expect to see that achieved through making export control orders subject to the negative resolution procedure. That would be entirely in keeping with the Government's approach of enhancing the transparency and openness of their activities where that is appropriate.
Sir Richard Scott's report contains some 50 pages of recommendations. He has repeatedly enjoined not only the Government but all those who wish to comment on the matter not to do so in limited soundbites. I have sought to lay before your Lordships' House that the Government accept that the report contains criticisms as well as the important vindication to which I have already referred. The Government have indicated that, in addition to those recommendations on which they have already taken action, they will consider carefully and positively Sir Richard's other recommendations. Not all of them are for the Government alone to consider. However, even where it is for others, including Parliament, to reach a view, the Government have been prepared to give a lead, as our placing of a document in the Library relating to informing Parliament about exports demonstrates clearly.
We are committed to pursuing the issues raised by Sir Richard's recommendations in a positive, detailed and co-operative spirit. We look to others to adopt a similarly constructive approach. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Report of the Inquiry into the Export of Defence Equipment and Dual-Use Goods to Iraq (HC 115).—(Lord Fraser of Carmyllie.)
3.28 p.m.
Lord Richard: My Lords, I begin by congratulating the Minister. It was a not inconsiderable achievement to spend some 26 minutes discussing the Scott Report without once mentioning the name of Mr. Waldegrave. His tactics were fairly predictable: he declared an acquittal in the first second and, having declared the

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acquittal, then spent the rest of the 25 minutes talking about something else. His Back Benches were enthralled by the pungency and vigour of his defence to the attack that is being made on the Government. If the Government think they can get away with that they underestimate the sense of outrage felt by the public outside.
I propose to talk about the Scott Report and the allegations that have been made and to try to put those allegations into context. There is no doubt whatever in my mind, having now read every word of the Scott Report, that Mr. Waldegrave misled Parliament deliberately, designedly and intentionally, not once but 38 times, in ministerial letters and in answer to many parliamentary questions. It is, frankly, breathtaking that he remains in office.
What I want to try to do today is to look at the facts. I think that they can be quite simply stated. Three Ministers—two of whom, Mr. Alan Clark and the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, (I am glad to see that he is to give us the benefit of his special knowledge in the course of the debate today), are no longer in the Government—decided to change the policy on the sale of equipment to Iraq. Having so decided, they then determined that the matter should be concealed from Parliament and the public. They drafted a revised form of the old guideline (iii) which was intended to incorporate that change of policy. In answer to many Parliamentary Questions and 38 letters from Members of Parliament and Members of your Lordships' House, they decided on a form of words that should be used in reply. That form of words was false.
I will, if I may, quote from some parts of the report—not just one half sentence of what Sir Richard Scott may have said at a press conference but perhaps a little more—so that before the House this afternoon is the full flavour of the consideration that Sir Richard Scott gave to the whole affair. It is important that we get the record straight.
First, was there a change in policy? What does Scott say on that'? He concludes in unequivocal terms that there was. He says this:
"Whatever subsequent events might show to be the result of the ,:hanges that were being discussed, the contemporary documents make it impossible, in my opinion, to quarrel with the expression 'a more liberal policy' as being a fair and accurate description of what die players, including Mr. Waldegrave, had in mind at the time… die words, 'a more liberal policy', describe in ordinary and simple language the reality of what he and his colleagues were discussing".
Later in the report, after an exhaustive analysis of the documents, and having heard the evidence—one should not forget that he is the only person who heard all the evidence—he concluded:
"The viewpoint"—
that there was no change—
"sis one that does not seem to me to correspond with reality … To describe [the] revised formulation as no more than an interpretation of the old, is, in my opinion, notwithstanding the many Advocates who espoused the thesis, so plainly inapposite as to he incapable of being sustained by serious argument".
On the following page he says:
"But, however the agreement reached by the junior Ministers be described, if the substance of the agreement was to change the ,criterion that would be applied to applications for licences to export
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defence equipment to Iraq, they were, in any ordinary use of language, agreeing on a change of policy. I regard the explanation that this could not be so because the approval of the senior Ministers and the Prime Minister had not been obtained as sophistry".
An acquittal, my Lords? An acquittal in the way that the noble and learned Lord described in the opening part of his speech? Some acquittal!
There are two further pieces of evidence in the report which have not been quoted quite so often but which seem to me to amount to massive corroboration of the conclusions reached by Sir Richard. On page 423 of the report there appears a minute written by Sir Timothy Daunt, then Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Defence at the Foreign Office, and sent to the Foreign Secretary's private secretary. The minute reads thus:
"It is now much clearer that in late 1988/early 1989 the three Ministers of State concerned … spent a lot of time discussing changes to policy on exports to Iraq. They agreed to change the guidelines to take account of the cease-fire; and at the same time that their application"—
the application of the guidelines—
"would be relaxed. They also made a conscious decision … not to make any announcement. Their reasoning appears to have been that any announcement, however carefully drafted, would upset somebody".
It most certainly would have, and that is why none was made.
Later Sir Timothy Daunt says:
"Much of the revision"
that is the policy resulting from revision to the guidelines—
"had clearly been implemented for the past 18 months and not announced".
That seems to me to be fairly powerful corroboration. However, if one wants a little more, there is an answer given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, who took part in this affair. He was examined in detail by Scott. He admitted this to the inquiry in a damning but little noted answer on Page 476. The report states:
"And, in answer to the question: 'The guidelines were reformulated were they not?' Lord Howe replied: 'Yes I think for practical purposes they were, but there was no disclosure of a reformulation. That was the last thing that people wanted to do".
So that is the answer to the first question. The evidence establishes beyond doubt that there was a clear agreement to change government policy which the proposed new guideline (iii) was intended to enshrine. Policy thereafter proceeded on the new, not the old, basis and it is that new policy which matters, not merely the drafting of guidelines.
Not unnaturally, your Lordships may think, Members of Parliament and Members of your Lordships' House were concerned at what seemed to be happening. A stream of Parliamentary Questions and letters followed. Many of those are set out in the report. I do not propose to weary your Lordships with over-quotation. However, let us take the letters first. There were in all not one but some 38. How were they dealt with'? The report states:
"A form of response to be incorporated in the letters sent to the MPs in question was settled in the FCO. The response included the following two sentences (or the gist of them):

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'British arms supplies to both Iran and Iraq continue to be governed by the strict application of guidelines which prevent the supply of lethal equipment or equipment which would significantly enhance the capability of either side to resume hostilities. These guidelines are applied on a case by case basis'".
That was the agreed form of answer. In many of the letters the formula was preceded by the statement that:
"The Government have not changed their policy on defence sales to Iraq or Iran".
In one letter there was even a reference to,
"our firm and even-handed position over arms sales to Iran and Iraq".
Scott concluded in these words:
"The reference in each of these letters to the criterion that governed the supply of non-lethal defence equipment to Iraq was not accurate … The inaccuracy should have been noticed by Mr. Waldegrave, who had been one of the midwives at the birth of this new formulation".
Later he states:
"The statement in the letters that 'The Government have not changed their policy on defence sales to Iraq or Iran' was untrue".
There then follows these damning sentences:
"Mr. Waldegrave knew, first hand, the facts that, in my opinion, rendered the 'no change in policy' statement untrue … The proposition that the Government's position over 'arms sales to Iran and Iraq' was 'even-handed' had been untrue ever since the decision, taken as a consequence of the Rushdie affair, to 'return to a more strict approach to Iran'".
In the face of those findings of fact, how can it be maintained that they did not know'? Is there any corroboration'? Let us look elsewhere, other than the parties directly concerned and their immediate documentation. Is there any corroboration that they did in fact know? Mr. Mark Higson was the desk officer in the Foreign Office dealing with Iraq. Of his evidence Lord Justice Scott wrote:
"Mr. Mark Higson, who gave evidence to the Inquiry, was, from 23 March 1989 until January 1990 when he left the ECG, the desk officer for Iraq within MED. One of his duties was to prepare drafts of the letters to be sent by FCO Ministers answering queries relating to Iraq".
Therefore he drafted some of the letters, and in particular one to Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman.
"In his oral evidence to the Inquiry on 15 July 1993, Mr. Higson made clear that he regarded the 'no change in policy' statement contained in the letter as untrue".
So are we supposed to accept that the desk officer knew that the answers were untrue but that the Ministers who signed the letters did not'? Are we asked to believe that Sir Timothy Daunt knew that there had been a change but that the Ministers who initiated and implemented the change did not know that there had been one? Are we asked to accept that Mr. Waldegrave genuinely believed in the truth of a statement of government policy which Sir Richard Scott characterises as:
"incapable of being sustained by serious argument"?
It really will not wash. I should be somewhat ashamed of putting such arguments on behalf of a defendant before an Old Bailey jury and, if I did, I think I would know what the jury would think of the arguments. Exactly the same applies to Parliamentary Questions. Sir Richard concludes that the answers given to Questions were neither adequate nor accurate.
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And so it goes on until we come to the final judgment of the report:
"The answers to [Parliamentary Questions], in both Houses of Parliament, failed to inform Parliament of the current state of Government policy on non-lethal arms sales to Iraq. This failure was deliberate and was an inevitable result of the agreement between three junior Ministers that no publicity would be given to the decision to adopt a more liberal, or relaxed, policy, or interpretation of the Guidelines, originally towards both Iran and Iraq and, later, towards Iraq alone".
Finally, the report states:
"In the circumstances, the Government statements in 1989 and 1990 about policy on defence exports to Iraq consistently failed, in my opinion, to comply with the standard set by paragraph 27 of the Questions of Procedure for Ministers and, more important, failed to discharge the obligations imposed by the constitutional principle of Ministerial accountability".
Some acquittal! However one looks at it, this is a damning indictment. It is frankly not good enough for the Government to allege that nothing is wrong because Mr. Waldegrave thought there was nothing wrong. Common sense, if nothing else, tells us that Mr. Waldegrave must have known that his answers were inaccurate and misleading. If he did, his actions are culpable; if he did not, his actions are incomprehensible, save on the basis that somehow he convinced himself of the truth of that which he already knew to be false. It is not merely the change in the wording of the guidelines that matters. It is the change of policy that matters more. To say that they believed that it had not changed when they knew that it had, when it was they who had engineered and implemented that change, is just impossible to accept.
Someone in the Government is responsible for this mess. We cannot just forget about it in the way that the noble and learned Lord invites us to, as if it were merely some trivial, inconvenient episode now to be put behind us. This misleading of Parliament was deliberate and prolonged. If Mr. Waldegrave and his other two colleagues were not responsible, who on earth was?
I turn now to the position of the Attorney-General. I shall not give way.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the noble Lord included me in the criticism which he made of Mr. Waldegrave. Like Sir Richard Scott, he has relied heavily upon the evidence of Sir Timothy Daunt and Mr. Higson. Will be remind me which of those gentlemen was at the meeting to which he referred'?
Lord Richard: My Lords, I do not think either was. The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, was, we know that. With great respect, I shall be interested to hear what he has to say. Of course Sir Timothy Daunt was not at the meeting, nor was Mark Higson. Higson was a desk officer in the Foreign Office who became so sickened at being asked to draft what he considered to be lying replies to Parliamentary Questions that he left the Foreign Office as a result.
Let me now turn to the Attorney-General. His activity, or rather the lack of it in respect to the Matrix Churchill case, is in marked contrast to that of his predecessor to Sir Patrick Mayhew in the supergun affair. The same point emerged there: namely, that the Government knew the objects for which the licence was

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requested. The then Attorney-General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, took the view that the prosecution would not succeed and the case should be stopped. Despite the objections by Customs when he gave them that advice, he threatened to enter a nolle prosequi if the prosecution were not dropped. It then was.
Contrast that with the behaviour of the present Attorney-General. He took no interest in the case until it arrived at the point where Mr. Heseltine refused to sign a PII certificate. That was on the grounds that he at least did not think that the documents should be concealed and that they were clearly relevant to the case for the defence. He also believed that disclosure would not cause any damage to the public interest. When told that he had to sign them, despite those views he queried the advice. It is at that stage that the Attorney-General comes into it. He wrote Mr. Heseltine a letter setting out the grounds on which he alleged that Mr. Heseltine was under a duty to sign. The Attorney-General did not read the documents, though he clearly should have. Indeed, he had not even read the documents by 1994 when he ,gave evidence to the Scott Inquiry.
Mr. Heseltine eventually signed the certificate under protest, requiring that his concerns he passed on to the trial judge. They were not. Indeed, Mr. Moses for the prosecution expressly told the judge that all the Ministers had signed on the same basis. Mr. Heseltine had written a letter to the Attorney-General setting out his concerns. Unfortunately, it seems that the letter remained unread by the Attorney until after the trial had started; that is, for at least three, and possibly as much as seven, weeks.
The two main grounds for complaint against the Attorney-General, according to Lord Justice Scott, are that he got the law wrong and that his advice as to the duty of Ministers to sign certificates was erroneous; and, secondly, that he was personally at fault in not ensuring hat Mr. Heseltine's views were passed on to leading counsel and to the judge. Those are powerful criticisms.
On Matrix Churchill, the position that emerges from the report, it seems to me, is this. First, the Government knew the purposes for which the tools were intended, just as they knew the facts in relation to the supergun and exports by other firms. Secondly, they tried to conceal that knowledge by the unprecedented use of class public interest immunity certificates in a criminal trial, although Mr. Heseltine and the intelligence services themselves had no objection to discovery of their documents. Thirdly, the Government, through Mr. Clark, clearly knew that Matrix Churchill, together with other manufacturers, had been given a nod and a wink as to how to frame their export licence applications.
Fortunately for the interests of justice, the judge in the trial decided that the certificates were in the main unjustified and that the documents should be disclosed. It was fortunate—I see a noble Lord nodding—because another judge could well have taken exactly the opposite decision and did so in the Ordtec case. It is surely wrong to elevate the judge in a criminal trial to be the arbiter of what is or is not in the public interest. In a case in which a senior government Minister, the Secretary of
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State, Mr. Heseltine, had expressed to the Attorney-General that he thought that it was in the public interest to release the documents, not to conceal them, that fact underlines the problem that the Attorney-General now faces. If the documents had not been made available, it would not have been possible for Mr. Geoffrey Robertson, appearing for Henderson, to have cross-examined Alan Clark in the way that he did and thereby bring the trial to an end.
The trial should never have been brought. Sir Richard Scott himself recognises that, though he says it with hindsight. However, it is not hindsight but the lack of foresight that I criticise. Defendants were placed in jeopardy as a result of the Government trying to conceal facts. For that the Attorney-General must bear some of the responsibility. He lifted not a finger to prevent it, unlike Sir Patrick Mayhew in the supergun affair. On the contrary, he aided the prosecution by pressing Mr. Heseltine and other Ministers to sign the certificates on a view of the law which Lord Justice Scott has found to be erroneous.
So there we have it. That seems to me to be a summary of the allegations set out in the Scott Report. I said last week that this was a murky and disreputable affair. So it is. Ministers lied to Parliament and apparently no one is responsible. Defendants were placed in jeopardy and apparently no one is responsible. Someone is responsible and they should accept that responsibility and face up to it.
The report reveals the workings of Whitehall in a way in which they have rarely, if ever, been revealed before. What it reveals reflects little credit on either the Ministers concerned or some of the government departments involved. The overriding objective was concealment. "When in doubt, keep it hidden", seems to have been the guiding principle, irrespective of where the truth lay or even whether defendants might be convicted, when in reality they should never have been tried at all.
The whole affair reveals a contempt for Parliament, the British people and indeed the criminal justice system which, in our view, was and remains culpable.
3.50 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: My Lords, it is almost impossible to imagine a greater contrast between the emollient speech which the Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, addressed to the House this afternoon and the aggressive partisanship of the Statement that he was caused to repeat 11 days ago.
Over the past couple of weeks I have fluctuated between the view that the Scott Inquiry and Report was simply the longest running of all the Whitehall farces, and the belief on the other hand that it was a further devastating nail in the reputation of this Government. What has increasingly swung me in the latter direction has been a mounting feeling of indignation—of anger even—about the Government's presentation of the report 11 days ago to Parliament and the country.
By that, I do not mean the ham-fisted nonsense about offering us incarceration in padded cells or sealed capsules. That was good for a two-day joke, but it would

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be an inadequate foundation in itself for a more settled view. But two weeks ago I rather innocently thought that the Government were guilty merely of a natural discourtesy, of which in my experience some parts of government are well capable. What did not then occur to me was that there was, on the contrary, a coldly calculated plan to give the Government eight days' license to prepare a deception of both Houses of Parliament, and through them the British people. In the race to the microphone, having given themselves several laps' start, the Government won. But it was a victory that has been corning apart ever since, and one which those who perpetrated it will regret.
There is no doubt that the Statement to both Houses of Parliament presented a distorted picture of Scott's conclusions; and there is no doubt either, now, that that is the view of Lord Justice Scott himself. I regard the Government's grossly partisan handling of the publication of the report as being almost as reprehensible as the evil into which Scott was set to inquire. It is a compounding of sins if ever there was one. I regard the dissimulation in the Statement by the President of the Board of Trade as being almost as bad as anything of which Mr. Waldegrave is accused.
But it is not just a question of individual Ministers—one reason why I have never thought that the rolling of a few heads would settle the matter. It is much more a question of the whole ethos of the Government. There has never in my experience or to my knowledge been a government who have set a lower premium on honour and a higher one on clinging to office at all costs.
The responsibility lies with the Prime Minister as much, or more, than with anyone else. He appointed Scott. I do not find the result of that appointment the most succinct, pellucid or even syntactically distinguished report. But that is another matter, and in any event is the responsibility of the judge and the appointer. The Prime Minister is very good at snatching at short-term solutions, whether it be Nolan, Scott or the Mitchell Committee, and then complaining when his own chickens come home to roost.
Mr. Waldegrave and the Attorney-General have also been lucky to follow in the wake of Ms. Harriet Harman's troubles. On the PM's form of a year or so ago, the two peccant Ministers would have been entering a great danger zone just about now. But Ms Harman was given blanket protection by Mr. Blair, and the Downing Street mood is "anything you can do, I can do better". It is not exactly what you would call leading from the front, but it gives a better support to those two Ministers than was received by those who were in the past promised undying sustenance.
In any event, I do not think that their fate is the central issue. The Prime Minister himself is nearly as vulnerable as they are. It amazes me that in a debate of this importance, with the life of the Government almost at stake, he should not intervene in any of the discussions—or indeed the Leader of the House in this House today. It is the general conduct of the Government that is at stake.
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The recommendations of the report had, until the last few hours one might say, until the speech of the noble and learned Lord this afternoon and presumably the speech made in another place, been almost totally swept away by the desire of the Government—not the most confident indication of innocence—to protect themselves at all costs.
Eleven days ago, I curdled in disbelief at the suggestion in the Statement that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, had to repeat; namely, that Mr. Cook ought to resign. Resign from what? It was not altogether clear—but from something at any rate. I hold no particular brief for Mr. Cook, but the proposition was childish. What is more important, it was wildly inappropriate for a ministerial Statement presenting a judicial report to Parliament. The so-called "information pack"—always be suspicious of an information pack; it is a term more appropriate to cheapjack advertising than to the objective presentation of facts—which was put out officially, I believe by the Cabinet Office, was also a disgrace. That, I fear, is an indication that 17 years of a one-party government threatens the integrity of an independent Civil Service which persisted from Palmerston to Callaghan (if the noble Lord will excuse me) and maybe for a few years after that. The correct response of officials responsible for the carrying on of that tradition ought to have been: "Put out your half-truths if you will, but do so under the stamp of Conservative Central Office, which is tailor-made, like most other party machines, for precisely that purpose, but not under that of high officialdom".
I turn to the position of the Attorney-General. The honour of the Attorney-General, it is said (and I half agree with that at least) is not directly at stake; although I must say that his failure even to read a letter from a senior Cabinet colleague, now Deputy Prime Minister, when a fair trial—which trial he ought not in any event have allowed to take place—turned on the luck of finding a courageous and non-executive-minded circuit judge, and then not to convey Mr. Heseltine's reservations, suggests that at the frontier incompetence and dishonour march fairly close to each other.
What is hardly in dispute is that the Attorney-General has been guilty of incompetence. I enjoyed his defence that he took the best legal advice. But the Attorney-General, if he is up to his job, is supposed to be the best legal advice. I simply cannot imagine the great attorneys, from Coleridge to Charles Russell to F.E.Smith to Douglas Hogg to Hartley Shawcross sheltering behind a formula of taking the best legal advice. They thought they were that, and on the whole they were. But Sir Nicholas Lyell, who in that respect is a modest man with much to be modest about, rested upon others and by so doing illuminated like a flash of lightning a new politico-legal landscape.
On performance, the Attorney-General certainly ought to resign. But there is one thought to give one pause. What Queen's Counsel is there in the other place who would be much better—on either side, or on all three sides, if one likes to be fair? The fact of the matter is that the race of great lawyer-politicians which has fortified our politics for two and a half centuries has become effectively extinct. From Erskine at the

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beginning to Shawcross or perhaps Monckton at the end, it underpinned our politics. Now it is dead; killed, I think, by the petty and excessive demands of modern constituencies. Brougham would not have been much good at coffee mornings. I would not set Sir Edward Carson to move from advice bureaux to bridge parties. One ought to recognise that the present holder is the last station on the line. Future governments, I fear—in itself I regret it, because the old system worked well—ought to look for law officers outside politics. It is only in that way that they will get Silks worthy of the tradition.s
We recently saw the spectacle of half the Bar—perhaps not quite half but a large part of it—and some of the judiciary lining up to say that Scott is wrong on PIls; and the other half and other judges indicating the reverse. Apart from the fact that the gravamen of the charge against the Attorney-General is not, in my view, that he misinterpreted the law of PIIs; there is the graver one that he did not stop the trial or pass on Mr. Heseltine's reservations.
Quite apart from that, the attempt to overturn Scott by weight of letters to The Times is surely a most extraordinary procedure for judicial gentlemen to engage in. Scott was specially chosen by the Government to pronounce upon this issue—to try the case, if one likes. He spent a rather excessive time doing so, in the course of which he must have become an expert on the issue. But now the Government say that he is just one opinion among many. It is as though an accused person, when informed of the sentence by the judge, were to say, "My Lord, your opinion is very interesting but I am informed that many other legal authorities take a different view. Until you have consulted them—have taken a poll of them—I do not propose to take any notice of your sentence."
I make one last layman's point in relation to this legal morass. I simply cannot accept and have not been able to accept from the beginning the absolute duty of a senior Secretary of State or other Minister to obey the instructions of the Attorney-General and sign automatically. I have always found that a good way to try to avoid excessive hypocrisy is to ask myself whether, as a Minister, I might have committed—I repeat, might have committed—the fault complained of. Quite often the answer is yes. One hopes that one would not have done so and one may believe that one would not have done so, but it is not unimaginable. That, however, is not the case with the automatic signature. I simply cannot imagine myself as Home Secretary, say, acceding to such an instruction from an Attorney-General. The two I dealt with in that capacity were better lawyers than Sir Nicholas Lyell; but, even so, I cannot imagine accepting such an instruction. If the duty is automatic, what is the point of the signature as opposed to a rubber stamp from a clerk'? If the duty is automatic, what right did Mr. Heseltine have to hesitate and make his reservations?
So we come to this debate, which has brought out such a remarkable attendance and participation. In my view there have been better reports; there have probably been greater deceptions of Parliament; but never in my experience has there been a more cynical handling of a major report produced at their own request by a British
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Government. What has been displayed is a partisan aggressiveness born out of weakness. Until the past few hours there has been no hint of lessons learnt or improvements to be made. Those changes which have now been announced give every impression of being made not out of conviction or even shame but out of fear—fear of further defections. My Lords, it is a very discreditable chapter.
4.7 p.m.?
Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, I hope that I am not the only one of your Lordships not to have read the entire Scott Report. But I can say that I have read the whole of the section which relates to the Matrix Churchill case—some 400 or 500 pages—and I have also read Sir Richard Scott's recommendations on public interest immunity. I should like to say a few words on that now. I speak as a serving Law Lord, and so naturally, as your Lordships would expect, I shall stick strictly to my last. I shall not trespass outside the law to discuss more controversial matters.
As to the law, ever since the great case of Conway v. Rimmer decided by your Lordships in their judicial capacity in 1965, a clear distinction has been drawn between two aspects of the public interest. The first aspect concerns the proper functioning of government. That public interest may require the withholding of certain classes of documents—for example, Cabinet papers or papers relating to the conduct of foreign relations. That is one aspect of the public interest. The other aspect is of course the administration of justice. The problem arises as to what is to be done where there is a conflict between those two aspects of the public interest—a conflict which quite frequently arises in all classes of case, both civil and criminal cases.
The way in which the courts have sought to resolve that problem is quite simple, in theory, at any rate. It is for the Minister to assert in the first place that the documents in question fall within a protected class, whatever that class might he. It is then for the judge to decide whether the interests of the litigant should, in the specific circumstances, prevail. It is for the judge to balance those two interests when they conflict. That, as many judges will verify and I can say from my own experience, is what happens in practice. I have often had to do it myself. I can assure your Lordships that Mr. Justice Smedley was not the first to have to make a decision of that kind.
There are two reasons why your Lordships may think it better that the judge should carry out that balancing operation rather than the Minister. The first is a purely practical one; that is, that Ministers are, one supposes, busy men and cannot be expected to have the detail of every case in their minds when they have to exercise the function that they exercise in that respect. In many cases, at the time when they have to exercise that function, the issues in the case will not yet have been clearly formulated. By contrast, it is the judge who knows the issues in the case and who will take account of them as they develop; it is therefore the judge who is the best and only person who is in a position to say which of the documents within the class are likely to

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be of importance to the litigants and must therefore be disclosed, and which are of little if any importance and therefore may be withheld. That happens all the time.
The second reason is perhaps more theoretical. If it were for the Minister to carry out the balancing operation himself, even if he could, it may be said against him—it almost certainly would be said against him—that he was picking and choosing; that he was disclosing those documents which helped his case and concealing those which hindered it. It is to avoid that very danger that the courts have held consistently that it is the duty of the Minister to sign a PH certificate when the documents in question come within the class in question.
That was certainly the law in 1992 when the Attorney gave his advice to Ministers. But it had been the law long before 1992. There has been much talk of the Makanjuola case—a decision of the Court of Appeal—and the language of Lord Justice Bingham in that case. But in that case the Court of Appeal was merely summarising the law as it had been stated by your Lordships' House in many great cases going back to 1965. I shall mention three. It was the law as stated in the Lewes Justices case in 1973; in the Burmah Oil case in 1980 and in the Air Canada case in 1983. There was nothing new in what Lord Justice Bingham said about it being the duty of the Minister to sign.
Then comes the next question. It may be said that that is all very well for civil cases, but what about criminal cases? Until the Matrix Churchill case, I had never heard it suggested that there was any difference. The reason is very simple; that is, that precisely the same principle applies whether in civil or in criminal cases. Of course, in a criminal case, the balance is much more likely to come down in favour of disclosure; it almost always will come down in favour of disclosure. However, the principle is the same. It is because the balance almost always comes down in favour of disclosure that there have been so few reported cases in which the point has been tested in criminal proceedings until the Osman case. The judgment of Lord Justice Mann in that case came as no surprise to any lawyer. It was plainly right and has been followed in a number of recent decisions by the Court of Appeal with the Lord Chief Justice presiding.
The Osman case therefore cannot be dismissed on the basis that it was only concerned with habeas corpus. It was making the point which was being made all along that there is no distinction between criminal and civil cases in that respect. My noble and learned friend Lord Woolf, when he was the Treasury devil, was asked to advise on that point as long ago as 1978. Without hesitation he advised that the same principle applies in criminal cases as in civil cases. One of the landmark cases, the Lewes Justices case, which is often cited, was itself a criminal case; it was a case of criminal libel.
When Sir Richard Scott says in paragraph G18.54 that the Attorney's advice as to the application of public interest immunity was based, as he puts it, on a "fundamental misconception", I can only say, with great respect, that I disagree. I believe that most judges—not all—would share my view. I differ with great regret
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from Sir Richard because he is a judge for whom I and all my fellow judges have the greatest admiration. The thought occurs to me however (and it may be an unworthy thought) that possibly he allowed his strong views as to what the law ought to be, to colour his view as to what the law actually was in 1992.
As to the future, as your Lordships have heard, the law has been taken forward by the recent decision in the Wiley case, to which I was a party. Some may think that we went too far in that case and others that we did not go far enough. Probably Sir Richard Scott would count himself in the latter category. It is not easy in these cases to know quite where to draw the line. However, as to what the law was in 1992 there can be no shadow of doubt. The Attorney-General was bound by the law as it then was, just as were all other Ministers of the Crown. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, it was not for the Attorney-General to change the law; that is for the courts. It was not for the Attorney-General to relapse the law in order to meet the needs of that specific case.
I wish to make one last point. I am glad to see that Sir Richard Scott does not think that legislation in this field will be either necessary or desirable. Like the Minister, I entirely agree with him on that. The trouble with legislation is that it tends to crystallise and ossify the law. If the law had been put on a statutory basis after the case of Duncan v. Cammell Laird in 1942, we should never have had the great liberating decision in Conway v. Rimier in 1965. If the law had been put on a statutory basis in 1965 we would never have had what I hope is a liberating decision recently in your Lordships' House in Wiley. That is an area above all other areas where the law should be taken forward as best it can be by judges on a case by case basis, as it always has been in the past.
4.19 p.m.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, I do not often trouble your Lordships these days in debate. This is due to the increasing frailty of old age and an ailing wife. I hope, therefore, that I may be forgiven for saying a few words on this occasion.
I cannot tell your Lordships with what admiration I have just listened to the speech of my noble and learned friend, if he will allow me so to call him, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. He spoke with far greater authority than ever I would claim to command but exactly stated a good deal of what I thought I was going to say but which I now will not say. He gave an absolutely authoritative and, so far as I know, absolutely correct statement of what the legal principles involved in this case are.
We are a House of Parliament, and it is in my mind to say how grateful I am to the two Front Benches for conducting this debate in a form in which no Division will take place. That is in contrast to what is taking place a little way down the corridor. Parliament is the Great Council of the nation. In order that we might retain our tradition as the Great Council of the nation, it is absolutely vital that we should retain—or alas I must now say attempt to recapture—the ability to conduct a

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civilised and important discussion in an objective way. Clearly we have differences of opinion; clearly we have different political parties; and clearly there must be freedom of speech and opinions strongly expressed. But the habit of civilised discussion is, in my judgment at any rate, fundamental to all parliamentary debate. I am sorry to say that some of the recent exchanges of opinion have not lived up to that requirement.
I wish to give one or two statements about this matter—shorter than I was going to give in the light of the immediately preceding speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd—reminding ourselves, as I think we should all do, that we are discussing a document in length rather longer than my copy of the authorised version of The Bible. In my copy, from Genesis to Malachi there are about 1,155 pages, and in my copy of the New Testament, from Matthew to Revelation there are another 255 pages. The Scott Report is a document weighing—I do not know how much. It costs £45 to the ordinary citizen, although most of us have been able to obtain a free copy. All quotations from it are, if Sir Richard Scott will forgive me for saying so, by their nature, and by the nature of what he has himself written, selective quotations. Having said that, there are just one or two remarks that I want to make about individual matters.
The first relates to personalities. I take, first, Mr. Waldegrave. He has been known to me for some years, both through his family and as a Fellow of All Souls. I would venture to say that he is and always has been the soul of honour. It greatly grieves me to hear the wild and sometimes unsubstantiated accusations which have been made about him in connection with this matter. I believe that the report, viewed properly, bears this out. Perhaps I may say this in speaking of Mr. Waldegrave. I was deeply moved to read the complete absolution given to him in the columns of The Times in a short letter by my noble friend Lord Carrington, a testimony all the more remarkable owing to his own selfless and absolutely flawless performance in relation to the Falklands dispute. His opinion carried all the more weight because of that.
I now turn to the Attorney-General and to the PII certificates. I am probably one of the very few Members of your Lordships' House who has had to sign such a certificate as a Minister. I may not be what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, referred to as one of the great lawyer-politicians, and certainly not up to the Douglas Hogg to whom he made previous express reference. But I was greatly troubled by this. I inquired as to the law and I discovered what the law was. I knew that there were certain types of certificate which related to individual documents. We can forget those because they did not enter into this case. But there were also class certificates, which is the type I had to sign.
I was greatly troubled as to what I should do, especially as the honour of one of the parties was at stake. I researched the law. The researches bore out exactly what my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd of Berwick has just told us. It is the duty of the Minister to ascertain that the documents belong to a particular class of document. He cannot shirk that duty and he
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must also satisfy himself that the class is one which attracts Crown immunity. What does he do then? The answer is that it is his duty in the main, as my noble and learned friend has just told the House, to sign the certificate. I was greatly worried before I did this—I do not mind saying that—but I had no doubt that the law was as I have just stated. It is true that it was much stiffer when Lord Simon was Lord Chancellor and the case of Duncan and Cammell Laird was decided, but since Conway v. Rimmer, and the powerful speech of my late noble and learned friend Lord Reid in that case, it has been the duty of the Minister to sign the certificate.
As I faced the issue I realised that if I tried to enter into the merits of the case I should be usurping the function of the judge. The Minister having signed the certificate, it is for the judge to say whether the interests of justice in the particular case where he has studied the issues override the class protection given to the class of documents for which the certificate is signed. That has been the universal opinion since Conway v. Rinuner and I do not myself regard the much later case of Wiley, which took place after the events we are discussing, alters that in the least.
I should like to add a few words of quotation from the defence counsel in the Matrix Churchill case, which is what triggered off this whole affair. In 1994, Mr. James Hunt and Mr. Michael Stokes in a letter and Mr. Gilbert Gray in an article, all in the columns of The Times, while the Scott Inquiry was going on and after the result of the Matrix Churchill prosecution was known, said the following. I quote first from Mr. Gilbert Gray QC, who was one of the defending counsel:
"It must be borne in mind that the prosecution was brought by Customs and Excise. The Attorney-General has no formal involvement in their cases, more's the pity"—
"More's the pity" would have been echoed by Sir Richard Scott—
"Too often, prosecutions by Customs and Excise are characterised by 'Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum' tactics. They behave like privateers with planks"—
I do not know whether that is just
"The prosecution case was not so conducted by Alan Moses, QC. He was the embodiment of fairness. The prosecution failed, but he succeeded. He sought no victory and suffered no defeat. Neither did the Attorney-General.
Now blame is being heaped upon the Attorney-General; it should not be. He is attacked in respect of the claims to protect certain classes of documents from production by means of public interest immunity certificates signed by ministers".
In the case of Mr. Heseltine's doubts, they were duly passed on to the trial judge—
Noble Lords: No!
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, this is what he said:
"The wording of the certificates varied, and that on Mr Heseltine's was drawn to the judge's notice by Mr Moses",
the prosecuting counsel.
"That was the first question for the judge. He decided that immunity was properly claimed".

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Mr. Gray goes on to say that the judge then considered that the interests of justice prevailed and that, with two minor exceptions, all the documents should be admitted. Mr. Gilbert Gray writes:
"How this narrative of fairness can be fabricated into an indictment of the Attorney-General, I fail to follow. I never had the impression that he stooped to conquer or tried to gag. The Bar esteems him greatly for his honour and integrity, and so do I. At no time did the trial judge ever suggest that the Attorney-General or Mr Moses could be criticised".
The two other defence counsel of one of the other defendants stated:
"The plain fact of the matter is that counsel for the Crown, Alan Moses, QC, said at the outset, when placing the public interest immunity certificates before the court, that the question of disclosure was a matter for the trial judge and not for the ministers concerned. Public interest immunity cannot be waived by either the prosecution or the ministers. It was for the judge to decide whether the interests of justice in ensuring a fair trial for the defendants outweighed those considerations of public interests referred to in the certificates.
"There was no question of anyone attempting to suppress evidence. In the event, the judge decided in favour of disclosure and the documents were immediately produced. Although views may differ as to the importance of the documents, the approach of counsel for the Crown to the question of public interest immunity was entirely in accordance with our understanding of the decided cases".
How in the light of those published documents at the time the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition in this House or the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, could have allowed themselves to make those attacks on individuals I simply do not understand.
There are two other points that I should like to make. One is that not only in the Matrix case, where the case was stopped at the request of the prosecution by Mr. Moses, not by the Attorney-General or by the defendants or by the judge in the first place (although the judge had to rule), and as the result not of the admission of the documents but of the fact that one of the witnesses changed his evidence in the cross-examination, was that dropped. In all the other cases, either at first instance or on appeal, the defendants ended by getting their acquittal. Our system of justice worked. In my experience, no system of justice is perfect, but our system of justice worked, and it worked for the benefit of the accused in every relevant case.
I turn briefly to one other and more political aspect. There is no doubt that the guidelines remained the stated policy of the Government. For what it is worth and contrary to what has been said hitherto, I am convinced that where the Government went wrong, if at all, was in sticking to the guidelines, because they had ceased to be predicated upon anything other than a shooting war which was going on at the time they were adopted in December 1984 between Iran and Iraq. Three of them were kept to the letter. The first was that we should maintain our consistent refusal to supply any lethal equipment to either side that is, to Iran or Iraq. That was kept. The second guideline was that subject to that consideration, we should attempt to fulfill existing contracts and obligations. That was kept. Lastly—I leave out the third guideline for the moment because I shall return to it—the fourth guideline was that in line
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with that policy we should continue to scrutinise rigorously all applications for the supply of defence equipment to Iran and Iraq. That was done.
All four of the guidelines, including the third which stated that we should not in future sanction new orders for any defence equipment which in our view would significantly enhance the capability of either side to prolong or exacerbate the conflict—that is, the conflict between Iran and Iraq—ceased to have effect after the ceasefire took place, and did not resume.
In my opinion, where people went wrong was in sticking to the guidelines and not reformulating them. I do not think that Parliament was deceived. I do not think that it was deceived at all, because it was obvious that all four guidelines were predicated upon the existence of a shooting war between Iran and Iraq. What we and all civilised countries were faced with was a regime in Iran and a regime in Iraq which did not live up to civilised standards in many respects. I can only remind the House of the abominable and blasphemous fatwa issued by the so-called Ayatollah Khomeini against Mr. Salman Rushdie. We need not go further into the record of Iraq leading up to the Gulf War because only yesterday or the day before there appeared in the press news of the abominable murders of two returning exiles who could have been led to return only by some promise of immunity.
The truth of this matter is that it was wrong to rely on guidelines predicated upon the existence of a shooting war between Iran and Iraq. We were faced with a constantly changing situation between two uncivilised powers which disregarded the fundamental rules of human righteousness and which could only be dealt with, and ought now to be dealt with, on the basis of agreement between the civilised powers of the world and one of their world organisations. There is the truth of the matter.
Boring as I may have been, I have tried to live up to the standards without recrimination of Parliament in discussing a most weighty matter. I am obliged to the House for listening to me so patiently.
4.40 p.m.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: My Lords, I do not know whether your Lordships will be relieved or not to hear that I do not intend to follow the two previous speeches. In any case, I would be quite unable to do so. I have heard more legal cases quoted this afternoon than I knew existed. Therefore, I propose—although perhaps I may be permitted a marginal note at the end of what I have to say—to carry us into the more familiar waters of policy and administration in which I guess that most of us feel at home. Therefore, I intend to return to the issues that I picked out of this meticulously written—perhaps too meticulously written—and mammoth document, which fastened my attention. Your Lordships certainly cannot expect any of us to take in every aspect.
The aspect on which I want to focus attention is concealment, which, in my view, cost the Government all of the matters which have so troubled Parliament and the people. Unlike my old noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham, who was an adversary for 50 years, I do not

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propose to resume bombing hostilities on this occasion. I go back to the beginning because the Government were in trouble from the start. Their practice did not conform to their public posture. Their public posture clearly announced that they were to be impartial, even-handed and neutral. I shall not give references for all that I am going to say because that would be too boring. If any noble Lord challenges me, I hope that I shall be able to respond by referring to the paragraphs of the report to which I am speaking.
The Government stated that their policy was not to license lethal weapons. They also said that they would fulfil existing contracts to Iran, basically in ships and spare parts for tanks. Having said that—this is the first criticism that I make and I shall try to maintain the standard—the Government have to be subjected to rigorous but fair criticism. Having said that they were going to be impartial and even-handed, paragraph D1:10 states that at a meeting of the Overseas and Defence Committee—and those minutes were never published—Ministers decided that,
"every opportunity should be taken to exploit … [the] sale of defence equipment"
to Iraq. It was not to be lethal equipment, but defence equipment. It was the policy that every opportunity should be taken to exploit the sales of defence equipment. In previous years we were supplying much more to Iran than Iraq.
How could that possibly gel with being impartial or even-handed? It was not. Indeed, in 1984 the situation reached the point when much more equipment was being sold to Iraq than to Iran, although at the start of the war the reverse situation obtained.
Nor were the Government consistent in their interpretation. It must have been a deliberate decision not to define the words "lethal" and "non-lethal". Illustrations are given in the report—which I assume cannot be challenged or they would have been—that in the case of one combatant the equipment was defined as "lethal" and for another combatant the same equipment was defined as "non-lethal". How can that he justified? Who were the Government deceiving? They were not deceiving Parliament, but they were deceiving their own policy in which they had stated that they were to be neutral, even-handed and impartial. I am not surprised that the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—I do not know who he was, although I am sure I could be told—was reported as saying,
"There is no principle here—only expediency".
Therefore, from the very beginning the Government's policy was deceptive in the way in which it was carried out as distinct from what had been said about it.
Ministers made an attempt to straighten things out. After this kind of comment from a Permanent Secretary, they decided that they should have a go at it. That is the reason for the guidelines; namely, that there could be some understanding as to the way in which these matters should be prosecuted. It was an attempt to reconcile what was being done with what was being said. I applaud the Government for doing that. Obviously, it was very correct that they should get rid of this mess
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into which they had dropped through the desire to sell as much defence equipment as they could to one of the combatants.
I believe that they then made the basic mistake—and this is where the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, is involved—which has troubled them ever since and which I believe has lessons for the future. With the agreement of the Prime Minister at the time, the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, he decided not to publish the guidelines but, through the briefing of friendly correspondents, to let them emerge. It was much more subtle than what was done last week. It was another 12 months before the guidelines were published.
Later, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, reminded us, they were amended. Originally the decision was made not to publish. However, the guidelines were published on the first occasion after a lapse of 12 months, but an amendment was not published on the second occasion.
I do not dispute that Ministers had arguable reasons for taking that course. Perhaps I may enumerate them. The United States was strongly opposed to the sale of any anus or defence equipment to Iran because they were holding American hostages. That was a perfectly valid reason. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, however, wanted us to sell a lot of arms to Iraq. They were frightened and they thought that it would strengthen their position if Iraq received more arms than Iran. The Government obliged and sold more arms to Iraq than to Iran. That would have annoyed a great many people if it had become known. It would have annoyed Iraq if it had been known that the Government were going to be even-handed, because our political relations with Iraq were then of such a character that Iraq was hoping very much that we would favour them in this particular matter. The British people themselves had a hand in this because of the treatment of the Kurds and the use of chemical warfare in the most horrible and barbaric manner.
There were all those reasons, and I can understand why the Government did not make the guidelines public. It was right to give them proper weight. The House may be slightly amused at another reason why this was kept private, but may not have much sympathy with it. There was an exchange during the evidence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe. With typical candour he was asked why he had not favoured publication. He gave some of the reasons that I have quoted. The questioner said: "Cannot this he explained to the public'?" The noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, said, "It is not easy. The scope for misunderstanding is enormous. Public debate will be emotional". Then came a follow-up question: "It is a sort of "Government-knows-best" approach, is it not'?". The noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, said, "Yes". Nothing like it has been said, since Hartley Shawcross told us, "We are the masters now". A Conservative Minister was saying that the Government know best in these particular matters. I do not take it too seriously but one can only admire the brutal frankness of that reply delivered to a mature democracy.

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Disclosure would have caused the Government a lot of bother. It would have been a very difficult decision to take. The arms trade is always a potential source of problems and difficulties. As has already been said, there are moral scruples to put on one side and jobs to put on the other. Where does one strike a balance? There are political disagreements, which undoubtedly would have come out. There is also the possible souring of international relations.
This is not the first government to have had such problems. We had them all the way through the Labour Governments from 1945 onwards. Certainly, individual contracts were not disclosed but a number of public issues involving the kind of difficulty that the Government have were disclosed. On the previous occasion on which I mentioned an historic occasion the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, said that he was only 16 at the time and therefore he remembered nothing about it—
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: I was 16 months old.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: My Lords, whatever age he was, I am sure that he looked as young and handsome as he does now! There must be some noble Lords who remember the refitting of the naval ships when I was Foreign Secretary and the fact that we considered that we had to fulfil past contracts. Noble Lords may remember the flack that I took at the time when we had a public debate about the matter, which is the difference. Now they are all hidden away. Surely the refitting of naval ships and sending them, as I did, to Chile, which was under a dictator, was almost on a par with what was being done as regards Iran and Iraq. We thought that it was the right thing to do and we took the flack. There was a public debate about it, and that is the difference.
The Government would have escaped from many of their problems had they not concealed the facts but exposed them to public gaze and public argument. If they had ridden out the troubles, they would have had far fewer problems since. They would have escaped all the wretchedness that has been connected with this business during the past four or five years. I believe that the decision not to publish and not to allow public debate on the issues got them into trouble.
When the guidelines were amended at the end of the Iran-Iraq war the Government did not admit that, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, said. The tenor of their replies led Members of Parliament and the public then to believe that the Government's practice was based on the first guidelines to he published. I do not believe that that can he disputed. All the answers that were given were directed to leading the receiver to believe that what the Government were talking about were the original guidelines and not the amended guidelines. That is the reason for saying that Parliament and the public were misled. That led to a number of evasive replies to parliamentary Questions.
Another serious point is that it led to the Government implementing a policy different from the public statements that they were making. The fact that the guidelines had been amended was discovered only by
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accident when an official giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee happened to say so, believing that it must have been known already. It was not. That was the way in which the amendment came out, but it was never admitted by the Government.
I turn to the problem which junior Ministers face. The action led to them almost taking control of the formation of policy in this area for at least two years without either let or hindrance. One Minister would give a nod and a wink indicating how to get round his own Government's policy, which ended up with some people being put in the dock in the Matrix Churchill case.
The action also led to Mr. Waldegrave stating:
"All applications for export licences … continue to be rigorously scrutinised to ensure that they fall within these guidelines".
It was not true and it is not true. I am sorry if Mr. Waldegrave is a man of honour, but the statement simply was not true. He may have deceived himself, but it was not true. Lord Justice Scott concluded that it was not true and one has only to read the paragraphs to see that it was not true. I do not understand how Mr. Waldegrave, an intelligent man, is lamely trying to defend the proposition that a change in implementing policy is not a change in policy. He has rightly been condemned for sophistry, as my noble friend Lord Richard said. I will not make too many quotations, but Sir Richard Scott said:
"I regard Mr. Waldegrave's view as being not even remotely tenable".
He also stated:
"I did not receive the impression of any insincerity on his part".
Let it be said in mitigation that there was no impression of insincerity, so if he was not a knave what was he, a simpleton?
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: Neither. He is a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford!
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: My Lords, perhaps then as a Fellow of All Souls he was a clever silly! That is it; I shall spend no more time on that point.
I repeat, I do not argue that every act of high policy can be revealed, excepting issues such as interest rates and exchange values. However, perhaps I may give an example that has not yet been mentioned relating to nuclear issues. Ever since we struck up a relationship with the United States in the early 1940s it was not the practice, in particular during the Cold War, for discussions to take place in Parliament about the nature of that relationship and the pacts that had been entered into. Indeed, the information was not always revealed to the Cabinet but was sometimes kept to a small group of senior Ministers. In respect of one particular narrow but important issue, the relationship with the United States was never disclosed because it was conducted on a personal basis between President and Prime Minister at the beginning of every term of office of a new Prime Minister. Your Lordships do not find me arguing that everything can be revealed; I do not accept that. But since the end of the Cold War circumstances have been much easier. It is possible to be more open even about this matter and greater frankness can be expected.

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However, no one can claim comparison between the measures in the public interest which were adopted in our relationship with the United States as regards nuclear issues, when the world may have been faced with a holocaust of a nuclear war, and the supply of machine lathes to Iraq or Iran. The two issues are totally out of proportion and, in my view, there is no reason in the public interest why the matter should not be fully and wholly known to us all.
I have no doubt that the Government could have been better advised to try to gather public support for what they were doing and to face the criticism that would undoubtedly come. They would have escaped the inquiry; but Ministers proceeded on their own.
I wish to make one further point. After the end of the Iran-Iraq war there seem to be little reference to the Cabinet or the Overseas Policy Committee giving much thought to the strategic consequences. I hope to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, comment on that. It was known that strategic issues had to be reviewed at the end of the war. Her Secretary, Sir Charles Powell, answered a letter in such terms in 1988, only asking that because those very important issues would have to be measured and decided, the Prime Minister should be kept informed. She was not. Perhaps for two months the letters passed but after that, they faded away. The junior Ministers took over. For a period of about two years, three junior Ministers were handling practically all those important issues. They were not qualified to do so in terms of the strategic issues which have to be answered. Only the Prime Minister and the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, together with their senior colleagues, should have done that. Why did they not do so? I hope that the noble Baroness will tell me why, when she was not informed of the progress, she did not follow that up when those important issues were involved.
In the absence of direction from the Cabinet, it was the three Ministers of State who were taking the decisions which led to Parliament being misled. They were an oddly assorted group. There was Mr. Waldegrave who was always pressing for restraint; he wanted to hold back. There was Mr. Alan Clark, with his devil-may-care attitude, who was concerned only with getting jobs and exports and was determined to do that because he thought that the guidelines were a lot of nonsense. Then there was the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who sits in this House. It is difficult to assess him. He was on the side of whichever department he was in. When he was at the Ministry of Defence, on the whole he tended to side with Mr. Waldegrave. When he went to the Department of Trade and Industry, he put off that robe and assumed a new raiment. He was then very much in favour of relaxing the guidelines as quickly as possible. Therefore we can presumably place him as a floating voter.
When one reads the minutes, it is quite clear that each peddled his own departmental interests fiercely but there was no one of sufficient authority—and I ask the noble Baroness why that was so—to settle policy on the main strategic issues that had been raised by Sir Charles Powell in the letter in which he acknowledged the first approach that had been made.
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Therefore, for two years events and matters were left in their hands. It was then that Nicholas Ridley raised the issue with the Prime Minister. He was the Secretary of State for the Department of Trade and Industry. He urged a thorough review. I note that the Chief Whip is attempting to rebuke me, but I have not yet heard any of these arguments put and I believe that they are worth putting. Nicholas Ridley urged a thorough review of export policy and the Prime Minister decided that Mr. Hurd should conduct such a review with the other senior Ministers. That was two years later. In the meantime, the Government were getting deeper into the pit because of lack of direction at the top. The most damaging consequence of the failure to grasp this issue firmly was the Matrix Churchill case.
The Government were mistaken in not developing the guidelines so that the public could judge. They allowed it to be thought that export applications were being rigorously scrutinised. As has been said this afternoon, they were not being rigorously scrutinised; they were being scrutinised with a view to seeing how much could be given to one of the combatants.
I have taken too long and I apologise to the House for that. There is a great contrast in the debate today compared with the debate last week. In my view—and I speak with as much fairness as I can muster—the Government have discredited themselves by what has taken place over the past few years in relation to this particular matter. What is worse, they have discredited most of the rest of us because we are all tarred with the same brush; namely, that we have all tried to keep things from people and have acted in our own interests or whatever may be the criticism. I have a feeling that the country will not put up with it for much longer.
5.4 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Lichfield: My Lords, I am grateful for an opportunity to speak briefly and to take up some of the issues which have already been raised. I should like to say a few words about arms sales; accountability in the light of the report; and I shall also attempt to be constructive.
In 1994 a Church report called Responsibility in Arms Transfer Policy was published. The report was prophetic in that it stated clearly that we need a national policy which is ethically responsible, transparent, publicly accountable and consistent. The coming now of this report brings back that prophetic side of the Church report in 1994.
With regard to arms sales, I suggest that we need to develop a society in which, as Cardinal Hume stated on numerous occasions, there is a moral presumption generally against arms sales unless the case for a particular transfer can be shown. I hardly need to remind your Lordships that arms are not like other goods. Of course they are designed to defend but they are also designed to kill, threaten and injure.
This report and inquiry provides an opportunity to set new standards in this matter because it is clear that in this particular affair the standards of truthfulness, accountability and honesty needed to be adhered to and,

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whatever the to and fro of this debate, are still not generally perceived to have been observed by many people among the general public.
Therefore, we are reminded that Ministers in positions of public responsibility should be seen to be accountable. That is still not crystal clear in the present state of this discussion. They have a duty to tell the truth—not half truths and not just a presentationally convenient part of the truth. There is a widespread perception that in recent years there has been something of a decline in standards in this matter.
In addition, Sir Richard Scott has shown that an overhaul of the licensing system and parliamentary accountability—both of those issues are mentioned in the report—are required. Technical details must be worked out with a clear need for openness, accountability and honesty. Sir Richard's report makes that clear.
As regards being constructive, I believe that the criteria outlined in paragraph K2.18 of the report presents a good basis for further development. Sir Richard makes recommendations in relation to complying with treaty obligations binding on the United Kingdom; the protection of our armed forces; the prevention of terrorism; and the avoidance of assistance to human rights abuses in foreign countries. Having worked for nearly 10 years in Uganda at the time of the Amin regime, I am particularly sensitive to the importance of that recommendation within the Scott report. He makes recommendations also in relation to avoidance of assistance to serious crime in foreign countries which is an issue that has already been referred to this afternoon; and the avoidance of assistance to aggression by foreign countries.
That clear statement of expert criteria and a recommitment to make such criteria the core of export policy is very much to be welcomed. The supervision of such policy will require vigilance and parliamentary control. Again, those are details which must he worked out.
In concluding my remarks, I should like to go further. I believe that there are other points in the Church report which could strengthen Sir Richard Scott's framework. First, there is the tug of war to which the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, referred—that is, the tug between commercial needs and what is right. The difficult tension of that struggle between truth, rightness and industrial prosperity must never be relaxed. In particular, the question of political and ethical judgment must always have the upper hand.
The Church report goes on to say that there should be clear separation between arms transfers and the provision of aid, and that there should be a refusal of arms transfers to regions of tension, except to countries which are adjudged by the international community to be under threat and insufficiently armed. There also needs to be—and the report upholds this—a rejection of arms transfers to countries guilty of grave and consistent violations of human rights and those which have an unnecessarily high level of arms spending.
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In taking note of the Scott Report, my own hope would be that your Lordships' House will see that there are such deeper issues to do with the arms trade itself and to do with the public perception of ministerial accountability to which I have referred. Principled decisions will need to bear the test of time, but they will always be preferable to the arguments of short-term expediency and quick profit. To take considered and decisive steps on the basis of Sir Richard's inquiry at this juncture would do much to restore confidence in our public institutions.
5.11 p.m.
Baroness Thatcher: My Lords, in order to keep to my 10 minutes, which I had understood to be the maximum time that we had, I shall not honour the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield; I shall get on with what I had intended to say. For some time now a great deal has been said about what has been misleadingly called "Arms to Iraq". Indeed, some of the Opposition and the media seemed to have made up their minds in advance that the Scott Report would attribute deliberate intent to the Government, both in breaking their own guidelines which prohibited the sale of lethal equipment to Iraq and Iran and in conspiring to send innocent men to prison. I never believed that Sir Richard Scott would make any such findings, and he does not do so. Indeed, he makes it absolutely clear that the Government did not authorise the sale of any lethal equipment to Iran and Iraq. By contrast, some of our competitors, particularly our fellow European Union members, showed no such restraint.
Nevertheless, the report raises important issues, many of which have been mentioned this afternoon, which merit full discussion and examination. I am sure that the Government will give both to them. As my noble and learned friend said, in that category are improved arrangements for the control of sensitive exports and improved handling of intelligence material in Whitehall—though I personally will always be on the side of those who wish to see the greatest care exercised in dealing with intelligence, remembering that carelessness can very easily put lives at risk. I believe that the Government have already taken action to deal with failure to ensure that Ministers responsible for decisions have access to all relevant intelligence and information.
On the question of public interest immunity certificates, there seems to be a divergence of view between lawyers, with many eminent judges, including the Master of the Rolls, Sir Thomas Bingham, and eminent and learned barristers, including my noble friend Lord Alexander of Weedon, supporting the view taken by the Attorney-General, as, indeed, I do. It is difficult when judges take different views. You might expect that of politicians and, of course, you would expect it in the Court of Appeal and in the House of Lords. But it is difficult when they take apparently different views on the subject.
I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for the clearest and most authoritative exposition that I have heard on all the law to date. If I had been in No. 10 I would have said,

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"Well, that's that; put it into the pipeline and abide by it". I am not quite sure what the pipeline is, but I hope that that will be the case and that we can accept that fact. I have always believed that a public interest immunity certificate could not be final; a judge had to have the ability to disclose documents to the defence. Indeed, you could not have justice otherwise. That does in fact turn out to be the case, as I hope will be made clear.
The most contentious area of Sir Richard's report, as far as it concerns my time as Prime Minister, is his conclusion that the guidelines for the sale of defence equipment to Iraq and Iran were surreptitiously changed in 1988–89 and that this was not reported to Parliament. On that matter, I differ from Sir Richard. The original guidelines came to me for approval in 1984, approval which I readily gave.
Thereafter, no proposal to amend them was put to me until 1990. Then it came in the quite different context of the worldwide relaxation of COCOM controls. When such a change was being considered in 1990, it was explicitly and rightly envisaged that Parliament should be informed. In the event, the change was not made because the Gulf War intervened.
Sir Richard's report shows that there were discussions among junior Ministers and officials about possible evolution of the guidelines in 1988–89. I was not aware of those discussions at the time, but I would not expect to be told every detail of the handling of the guidelines in the light of changing circumstances. You must take account of changing circumstances when applying guidelines. In any event, the report indicates that the discussions were not conclusive and no recommendations for a change were brought forward to MC or senior Ministers.
Equally, it must be remembered that the guidelines were precisely what their title implies: a guide to officials on how to handle applications for the export of certain sorts of equipment. Their core was the firm injunction against selling lethal equipment and that was scrupulously observed. But they retained an element of flexibility for dealing with non-lethal equipment.
That flexibility naturally took account of changing events, including the ceasefire between Iraq and Iran in 1988, as well as a number of other developments. The interpretation of the guidelines evolved to keep pace with those developments, without any need to change the guidelines themselves.
For example, on the big issues, the proposed sale of the Hawk trainer aircraft was rejected out of hand, while on the borderline cases, the Scott Report clearly shows Ministers and officials exercising enormous care in trying to reach decisions. Indeed, I believe that all fair-minded people would agree that the civil servants handling those difficult matters acted conscientiously and in good faith and should not be stigmatised.
If there was no change in the guidelines—and there was not—then the question of deliberately misleading the House does not arise. I am sure that there was never any intent to mislead on the part of Mr. Waldegrave or any other Ministers—and Sir Richard Scott himself concludes that there was not duplicitous intent.
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As my predecessor in No. 10 indicated, there will always he issues upon which Parliament cannot be as fully informed as might otherwise be desirable. I believe that he will remember that Parliament was not informed about the upgrading of Polaris to Chevaline. Doubtless there were good reasons for that, and I do not criticise that decision. Both Conservative and Labour Governments have found it necessary on occasion to be reticent with the House. I accept that the presumption should always be in favour of informing Parliament unless there are very strong reasons to the contrary But we should recognise that it will not always be possible, and that has been accepted by previous governments of both parties.
In summary, we should thank Sir Richard for the immense amount of detailed work which he put into the report and study very carefully all the lessons which arise from it. We should bear in mind that government does not always lend itself to the exactitude rightly sought by the law. I come from a period at the tax Bar, so I know what exactitude means; it is quite different from government—we make the law; we do not apply the law.
Finally, amidst the mass of detail we should remember that at the end of the war to liberate Kuwait—in which the British Government and Armed Forces played such a proud role no British lethal equipment was found among Iraqi supplies on the battlefield.
5.20 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we much appreciated the speech of the noble Baroness. We are fortunate to hear the experiences of two former Prime Ministers, and their speeches have made a significant contribution to the debate. We also welcome our new colleague here, the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, and we very much look forward to his speech.
This long and intricate report has attracted more argument and dissent than any that I can remember, but I think all of us would agree that the main conclusions and recommendations should be made clear to the public because they will not have the opportunity to read its 1,800 pages. For this reason I think Sir Richard Scott was right to intervene last Friday and to correct those who were arguing that he had said there was no conspiracy and no cover up, even though his report contained no such statements. This shows that the long and complex document should be studied with great care.
Sir Nicholas Lyell and Mr. William Waldegrave are in the most exposed position and it is very much in their interests and Parliament's that their actions should be clearly understood. As my noble friend Lord Richard has said, the Matrix Churchill trial lies at the heart of the report. Here three innocent men could have been sent to prison on false charges allegedly to suit the Government's objectives. The report makes plain, however, that the Attorney-General's advice to Ministers about signing the PII certificates was as follows,
"based on a fundamental misconception of the principles of P11 law and without sound legal foundation".

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It has been clear from this debate so far that there are differing legal views on Sir Richard Scott's ruling. There is also the additional point that the Attorney-General failed to inform the prosecution that Mr. Michael Heseltine had serious doubts and feared that the withholding of crucial evidence might produce a miscarriage of justice. Fortunately, the learned judge in the case threw out the certificates and the men walked free. The President of the Board of Trade made what I thought was a weak attempt to defend the Attorney-General in another place, though both he and the Attorney himself should have realised that the integrity of British justice was on the verge of being seriously damaged. That is a lesson which should be taught in every law school in the country.
I now turn briefly to Mr. Waldegrave. I find his activities difficult to follow, especially the 38 letters he wrote in 1989 which are held to have misled Parliament. I get the impression that Mr. Waldegrave was wallowing in a mishmash of uncertainty at the time. For example, in a draft Sir Richard Scott writes,
"Taken overall, the terms of Mr. Waldegrave's letters were apt to mislead the readers as to the nature of the policy of export sales to Iraq currently being pursued by the Government. Mr. Waldegrave was unquestionably in a position to know that that was so".
But in the report itself at paragraph D4.12 Sir Richard states,
"Mr. Waldegrave was in a position to know that that was so although I accept that he did not intend his letters to be misleading".
I also regret to say that I feel that Ministers and civil servants interfered far too much in the process and production of this report. The fact is that the Government spent more on monitoring and lobbying the Scott Inquiry, £1.9 million, than the total amount spent on the inquiry itself, £1.8 million. Furthermore, the Prime Minister's Office and other departments have been working full-time in preparing a reply to the report. This is not an attractive scenario. It reveals a nervous and uncertain Government searching desperately for a way out of a quandary. But here again the Prime Minister and his colleagues made things difficult for Sir Richard, who had an extremely difficult task.
Finally, noble Lords will remember that we spent many hours in this House in debates and at Question Time seeking information and clarification about the sale of arms to Iraq and to Iran. This is referred to in detail in the report, as noble Lords will have noted. I hope I may be allowed to read out a question which I put to the Minister at Question Time on 14th December 1989. It was a question which noble Lords in this House and in another place were asking then.
"Is it not the case that Iraq has an appalling record on human rights and that it is responsible for killing, torturing and imprisoning thousands of Kurds and members of opposition parties? It has imprisoned two British citizens and has not responded to representations made by the Government and others. Is it not further the case that the Government sell arms to this country and give it export credit? What kind of standards are the Government adhering to in these circumstances?".—[Official Report, 14/12/89; col. 1398.]
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I did not receive a satisfactory reply, although I was supported by a number of colleagues, including the late Lord Grimond on the Liberal Democrat Benches. The reply was inadequate, and the situation has never been made clear to us. This has been one of our problems in considering this report.
The report contains many of these government uncertainties. I am glad that the Prime Minister has agreed to accept and implement Sir Richard Scott's recommendations, as explained by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, in his opening speech. Yet this is a sad chapter in the Government's record and nor is it primarily a party political matter. When I entered this building 45 years ago I was immensely proud to become a Member of the world's greatest democratic institution. We do not want this Parliament damaged or its reputation destroyed. That is why we must avoid evasion and perversion when we deal with the Scott Report. Ministers will only gain respect if they face the realities and tell us and the people of this country the complete truth about all these problems. I appeal to them to do so.
5.28 p.m.
Lord Taverne: My Lords, it is, I understand, the tradition of this House—as indeed it is of another place—that maiden speeches should not be controversial. It may perhaps therefore surprise some noble Lords that I have chosen to make my maiden speech on the Scott Report whose publication has not been altogether without a measure of dispute. Let me therefore say that I hope to avoid controversy, certainly party controversy. If I stray into saying anything which may appear controversial—even designedly so—I assure your Lordships I have no intention to be controversial, and certainly have no duplicitous intent.
As many have observed, the Scott Report is somewhat contradictory. It reminds me somewhat of a verdict by a jury in Southend at a time before the drinking and driving laws were changed in 1967. In those days a jury had to decide whether a defendant was unfit to drive through drink. In that particular case the jury reached a verdict: "drunk but not unfit to drive". It was the kind of verdict that led to a change in the law. There will now, it seems from the noble and learned Lord's opening statement, also be changes in the approach to public interest immunity certificates.
I want to speak today as an ex-Minister rather than as an ex-lawyer. It is a very long time since I have practised law. It is also a considerable time since I practised as a Minister. I want to make a few comments on the Matrix Churchill case and ask where we should go from here. In order to see where we should go it is important to look at what happened.
It has been very strongly argued by the Attorney-General, and in this House by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, that Sir Richard Scott was wrong in the view that he took of the law on public interest immunity certificates. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, said that there was no doubt that the law was clear. I was a little surprised to hear him say so since other eminent lawyers, including the

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noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, felt that the law was clear in an opposite direction. The Attorney-General and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, have strongly contended that, if these certificates cover documents within the right categories, Ministers have a duty to sign them and they should not concern themselves with questions as to whether the actual documents for which the immunity is claimed should be disclosed to the defence.
Let me assume that the law was as the Attorney-General and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, say that it was. If that is so, it led to some very strange results. Was it really the case that Ministers must not concern themselves in these kind of circumstances with the issues of justice and the miscarriage of justice? Are questions whether someone may be wrongly tried or convicted perhaps to be regarded as questions too difficult or too technical to be considered by Ministers? Are they questions which should be reserved only for lawyers and the courts? That is what the doctrine seems to imply. Are Ministers to be, as my noble friend Lord Jenkins pointed out, rubber stamps? In which case, why do not civil servants sign the certificates? That is a question which was asked by Sir Richard. Indeed, it was a question asked by Mr. Heseltine.
No doubt there will be many cases in which Ministers will not be in a position to judge whether documents are relevant or should be disclosed. But the Matrix Churchill case shows how perverse the consequences of that doctrine can be. Here was a case which had had widespread publicity before the trial started. The Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Defence and other members of the Cabinet were kept informed of the progress of the case. Ministers in the Department of Trade were to he witnesses in the case. The documents for which immunity was claimed were documents produced by the Department of Trade and Industry. Yet Mr. Heseltine, the head of the department which was centrally involved, was solemnly told that he had to sign a certificate to exclude from disclosure to the defence DTI documents which he thought were clearly relevant to the defence. He was told that it was his duty not to express any view on relevance. That was for the experts—the lawyers—not for him. Even though he felt that the defence needed the documents, and that if they were not disclosed innocent people might perhaps he convicted, he was told that he could not say so in his certificate. He did not say so in the certificate in the end, and he was told that he had to sign it.
What are Ministers for? Contrary to popular belief, they do not see as their ultimate role model the right honourable James Hacker. Mostly they are concerned with justice. And issues of justice and injustice, relevance or irrelevance, are not always so difficult or technical that they are beyond the wit of lay Ministers to judge. In fact, in the Matrix Churchill case the Minister concerned, Mr. Heseltine, actually had a clearer view of the relevance of the certificates than prosecuting counsel, who argued that they were irrelevant.
If the law was as the Attorney-General and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, say it was, it is also not surprising that it led the Attorney-General into a rather
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embarrassing position. The Attorney-General accepted at a certain stage that he should take an overview of the case. That is something which he did not mention in his letter to The Times today, but it was an important feature. Nevertheless, he still felt no need to examine the documents which had caused Mr. Heseltine such concern. He did not find any need to mention Mr. Heseltine's concerns to the prosecuting counsel when he had a conference with prosecuting counsel a few days later.
If one was an ignorant outsider one might perhaps say that this was an extraordinary omission, that perhaps it was even negligent or irresponsible. But, good heavens, no, it was apparently his duty under the law as he saw it to see that the PII certificates were properly issued and signed and it was solely for the courts to decide whether they were relevant.
It has always been assumed that the judge was bound to look at the documents. However, on the best legal advice I have been informed that at that stage it was not customary for judges necessarily to look at the documents. Indeed, there have been some recent decisions in which judges have been told to be very hesitant about going beyond the certificates. In fact, counsel for the prosecution argued that there was no need for the court to look at the documents. He said, quite fairly, that he was happy for them to be disclosed, but he said that there was no need and he later argued that they were irrelevant. So Judge Smedley emerges as one of the two heroes of this rather sorry story.
If then, my Lords, the law was as the Attorney-General contends, and what it appears to be according to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd—and I realise that there are many eminent people far more learned than I who argue that that is the correct view of the law—and Sir Richard and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, are wrong in their view of the law, the conclusion seems to follow that the law was wrong. Indeed, an irreverent outsider who was not constrained by the inhibitions of making a maiden speech might even say that the law was an ass—but I could not possibly comment.
I welcome the fact that after the Scott Report there will now be a general discussion of PIICs. I hope that the Government, in the course of taking part in those discussions, will take into account the fact that Ministers cannot be expected simply to act as rubber stamps.
There must also be a sea-change in the whole culture of secrecy in government and Whitehall, not just this Government but all governments. It seems to me that the Scott Report presents a very powerful argument for a new freedom of information Act.
5.37 p.m.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, it is a real privilege to be the voice of your Lordships in congratulating the noble Lord on his admirable maiden speech. The noble Lord has had a distinguished career in the law and has been a distinguished departmental Minister in more than one department. He has also been concerned in commercial administration. Perhaps I may mention one other achievement which he brings to this

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House. He was one of the founders of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, whose activities have been so valuable. Indeed, he was its first president. So he comes to your Lordships' House bringing valuable gifts. Your Lordships will want to hear him again soon and will be all agog to hear him when he can be really controversial. In the meantime, I express the hope of all your Lordships that we may hear him speak again soon and often.
Important issues are raised by this report. The list of speakers is of great length and includes people whom your Lordships will want to hear on particular aspects. Therefore, I propose to confine my remarks solely to the question of the PII certificates and the advice given by the Attorney-General. In my respectful submission, that advice was not only given in good faith but was entirely correct in law. In that, I am reinforced by what has been said by my noble and learned friends Lord Lloyd and Lord Hailsham.
It was the duty of a Minister, clearly established as a duty and not a privilege or a discretion, to indicate clearly to the court the degree of confidentiality or secrecy which attached to any evidence, particularly documentary evidence, that might be advanced to the court. It was the duty of the litigant who desired to know the content of that evidence to urge the contrary. It was the duty of the court to weigh those two conflicting aspects of the public interest one against the other and to decide which should prevail. That is indeed precisely what the learned judge did in this case.
I need refer only to one of the seminal cases which has been mentioned today—Duncan v. Cammell Laird. I merely draw to your Lordships' attention that if the many documents—contracts, blueprints and so on—for which immunity was claimed had been divulged they would have shown a new type of torpedo tube fitted to the submarine. We were at war and that was highly secret. Therefore it is quite wrong to talk as though a class claim is merely a matter of a minute made by a minor official.
The law in that case was stated by Viscount Simon. He indicated that there were two categories: a contents document where the contents would be dangerous against the public interest if divulged; or a class of document which should not he divulged for the proper functioning of the public interest. However, he went far beyond what was necessary to decide that case. He said, for example, that the claim of immunity by the Minister was conclusive. He also stated broadly the claim on the class basis. That was lapped up with great glee by officialdom. It gave them a blanket cover. Professor Wade in his famous book on administrative law said that, that case having given officialdom a blank cheque, officials could hardly be blamed if they overdrew on the account.
I mention only one case where there was an overdrawing because it is relevant to the consideration which your Lordships have. That is Odlum v. Stratton in 1949. It was a libel action in which the professional competence of a farmer was in question. A series of reports on his competence was in the hands of the Ministry of Agriculture. The Ministry claimed that it
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was immune from disclosure except for two documents. Those two documents told against the plaintiff. He wanted to see the others, but those were the only two for which immunity was waived. The judge had no doubt at all, nor do I think would anyone reading a transcript have had any doubt, that the documents were divulged precisely with the objective of discrediting the plaintiff.
Does that not show how dangerous it is to leave to a Minister the right to pick and choose as to what evidence should be divulged to the courts? Fortunately the answer was given in the case of Conway v. Rimmer. It was not for the Minister to argue conclusively. It was for the court to decide, weighing on the one hand what the Minister said as to the degree of secrecy and confidentiality, and, on the other, what the litigant said as to why the document was germane to his case.
That was the leading case up until the time that the Attorney-General had to advise in the present case. In other words, the Attorney-General's position was that he was bound to advise the Ministers that they should not attempt themselves to judge where the balance lay. That was for an independent court. He could point, though he did not so far as I know, to Odium v. Stratton to show how partial the ministerial view might he. So it was vouchsafed to an independent judge. It was on that base that the Attorney-General gave his advice in the case which your Lordships are now reviewing. In my respectful submission, it was entirely right for the reasons that have been given by both my noble and learned friends.
Since then we have had later cases which have thrown more light, giving a greater discretion to the Minister. However, your Lordships may think that they should be viewed in the light of Odium v. Stratton, in which a one-sided view of where the public interest lay was vouchsafed by the Minister.
What is the correct position? It is for the Minister to say where, from his departmental point of view, the public interest lies; it is for the litigant to say why that is not sufficient; and it is for the judge to do his judicial duty and choose between them. That is what happened in the Matrix Churchill case.
There is this also to be said. The judge took his view in the light of all the circumstances. On the one hand, he weighed the public interest asserted by the Minister. and, on the other hand, the need for disclosure in a court of justice argued for by counsel; and he decided rightly and fruitfully that all the documents should he disclosed. That was for him and not the Minister. In my respectful submission, the view put forward by my noble and learned friends Lord Lloyd and Lord Hailsham was precisely right. It is for the courts to judge and not for a Minister, however well informed, because he is almost bound to take a partial view.
In my respectful submission, in this case the Attorney-General gave the right advice. It was then open to those who wanted greater scrutiny of the material to argue before the judge, as they did successfully. If the law is allowed to operate in that way, it will do so fairly, as it did in the outcome of the case under review. However, if there is partial interference, the law is liable to miscarry.

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For those reasons, it seems to me that the advice given by the Attorney-General in this case was right. We shall have to watch carefully if there is a partial divulgence by Ministers, lest they take an exclusively Executive view. It is far better that they should put forward their view, the litigant should put forward his view and it should be left to the judge to decide.
5.52 p.m.
Lord Howe of Aberavon: My Lords, I should not be one to argue that this case shows a pattern of conduct free from error. Whose can be so? Nor should I begin by trying to minimise the importance of the original crisis, the collapse of the Matrix Churchill trial. That was the cause of the original public dismay which the inquiry was designed to allay. The tragedy is that it has taken us so little distance along the way towards clarity in the matter.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, referred to his difficulty in analysing the conclusions. We much welcomed the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, who gave a rather harsh, if rather uncontroversial, judgment on it when he compared the case with the verdict of a Southend jury. I am not sure whether we look forward to the development of the noble Lord as a former lawyer or as a former politician, but we look forward to hearing him develop his talents in both fields.
The tragedy is all the greater because the story is one in which there are no villains and almost no villainy. I say "almost no villainy", because one cannot accept the reckless part played, I am afraid, by my honourable friend Alan Clark in the early stage in the matter. For the rest, all the actors were concerned only to promote or reconcile legitimate British interests or, at the least, interests which they were legitimately entitled to pursue. Yet we are left with many uncertainties. They are due to the form of and procedure adopted by the inquiry, about which I have said much in the past and to which I shall address myself again in a minute.
It is harder now to justify the procedure adopted even than when I first began launching my criticisms, if only to judge by the reactions that have followed publication of the report. First, there is shock, amounting almost to disbelief, at the length and density of the documents presented to us. Secondly, there is the universal difficulty in securing agreement on the substance of almost any of the conclusions, even on the law affecting PII. Finally, there is dismay—which I share—at the sharpness of Her Majesty's Government's reaction to the report. That was understandable, however much people may regret it, because the Government's defence had never been positively put forward in the course of the proceedings. The key conclusions positively in favour of the Government were scattered, buried in the body of the text. In Volume II, page 784 and volume III, page 1538, there were the clear acquittals on the key charges that Britain supplied no weapons to either side and that Ministers did not conspire to send innocent men to jail. Other misunderstandings are a consequence of proceeding, for example, by circulation of drafts from which leaking was almost inevitable, although the defence case at that time had never been heard. There
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were drafts where it was hard for the defence to secure the changes that they required. When they sought to procure the changes or even when Sir Richard Scott made them, the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, said that the Government were devoting efforts to getting at Sir Richard. They were intended to get at him in that way. In a newspaper headline shortly afterwards, the Independent said that Scott had been nobbled by the Government. But the procedure was designed to expose his thinking so that he might he nobbled.
It is less than satisfactory. The inevitable result has been confusion and unfairness because the procedures were fundamentally flawed by the standards of the Salmon Commission reporting 30 years ago. It is important to understand the background to that. Salmon designed procedures specifically to correct the faults of the inquisitorial procedure. He did so because of the concern at that aspect of the masterly report produced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, on the Profumo affair. The noble and learned Lord complained at having been required to act as detective, inquisitor, advocate and judge.
Therefore, Lord Salmon and his colleagues deliberately introduced elements of adversarial procedure, notably defined as:
"the elementary right of being represented".
It is for that that I was pressing, but not in this case essentially for the right to cross-examine because that was hardly necessary. Certainly those of us who gave evidence were subjected to nothing but cross-examination. We were all treated in the same way. Virtually all the public and press saw of that part of the inquiry was the case for the prosecution being presented by the tribunal against us. What I was pressing for above all was that the tribunal should hear counsel, argument and representations on behalf not only of individual Ministers like us but also on behalf of the great departments of state whose records were being examined by the tribunal. I urged the Government specifically to seek the same right.
It is hardly surprising, in the absence of their having done so, that so much of their case has gone by default and had to be recovered by intemperate methods when the report finally came out. But Sir Richard would have none of that. He gave a long lecture to the Chancery Bar Association, summarised in the report. Its conclusions may be summed up in one sentence:
"An insistence on an essential role for witnesses' lawyers in oral hearings is in my view unnecessary".
Lawyers before the tribunal could specifically he seen but not heard. The Secretary to the inquiry, in a letter addressed to me on 28th February (to be found in Appendix A, Part D) said that appearance by counsel would be "otiose and impractical". So there was the emphatic dismissal of the elementary right of being represented. That produced injustice to those who had to face years of critical and satirical tribulation—and I think particularly of William Waldegrave. Of all the Ministers, he was the most concerned to uphold the proper control of arms exports. Yet he, with other colleagues, has been exposed through three-and-a-half years to pre-emptive recrimination. But it was not only

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that about which I complain but also that the procedures disabled the inquiry itself by ensuring that the judge and those working with him were in a condition of almost total isolation from human exchange, dialogue or advocacy on behalf of the inhabitants of the outside world.
The inquiry went beyond that by making almost a virtue of such isolation. Mr. Muttukumaru gave a lecture, unusually, about the procedure while the inquiry was going on. He said that the judge had
"an unrivalled insight into the whole picture".
In the same letter to me of 28th February 1995, he said that the judge had:
"the best overall perspective on the matter".
It is hard to think of a better way of defining the claim to a panoptic vision denied to everyone else, but therefore, by definition, almost closed to advocates on the outside. That is true a fortiori, when one reflects, again unusually, that the judge was accompanied by no lay expert assessors at all. They are available in any form of inquiry. For example, in the Franks inquiry into the Falklands affair they were available, when it was set up in that way. They were available to me in a much more humble setting when I had to inquire into allegations of cruelty in Ely hospital in South Wales. There I enormously benefited from the presence alongside me of a hospital administrator, a senior nursing officer and a consultant psychiatrist. So I had lay experts. They were available to Lord Justice Edmund Davies in Aberfan. They were available to Lord Justice Bingham in the BCCI inquiry. In his report he paid tribute to the invaluable insights and guidance that he obtained from them. These are the deficiencies.
I do not believe that, had Sir Richard Scott heard oral representations from counsel and been equipped with lay assessors, it would have lengthened the proceedings. On the contrary, between counsel many matters could have been cleared up and the proceedings would have been substantially shortened. I venture to suggest that it would certainly have improved the clarity of the conclusions. I therefore devoutly hope that this pattern of inquiry will never be taken as a model for a future inquiry, and that it will not be taken as having overridden the crucially important recommendations of the Salmon Commission. That would be virtually to rule out any such inquiry in the future.
I now turn to the foreign policy aspects and, above all I am afraid, to the eponymously named Howe Guidelines. A necessary premise of this debate, mentioned by others, is that a state is entitled to defend itself, and for that purpose to manufacture or acquire weapons and to promote by trade the success, economic as well as military, of its own defence industries. For that very reason the Labour Government (with half its Cabinet scattered across a variety of Benches in this House) established many years ago for that purpose the Defence Export Sales Organisation. It is equally important, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield said, to ensure that that arms and defence equipment export trade is properly controlled: control over certain types of weapon; ruthlessly effective
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control, which we certainly upheld, on the supply of atomic, biological or chemical weapons; similarly for missile technology. One requires control also over the customers to whom these weapons go: whether they are hostile or potentially so; whether or not they are repressive of their own population. One has to recall also that regimes may change: from Simonstown, about which my noble and learned friend Lord Rawlinson and I advised many years ago, to Sharpville; from the Shah to the Ayatollah. As such changes take place, although the contract is still in existence, governments can and must adjust their attitudes towards them, in a fashion that takes account of people's sensitivity but also of the interests of the British people who have until that moment been making equipment to sell in those countries.
As the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, should recall very well, the truth is that international affairs are not only polygamous, but they are also kaleidoscopic. The noble Lord described the embarrassment that he faced in handling one, as it were, monogamous relationship with Chile. I gave that as an example to Sir Richard Scott: the defence in relation to Chile of the legitimacy of selling battleships but the illegitimacy of selling troop-carrying vehicles—the one for use on the high seas, the other in the repression of population. It requires a degree of duplicity to present that argument. In this field, there are few absolute rights and even fewer eternal truths. Governments are obliged to seek the best, not just of both worlds, but often of all possible fast-changing worlds. The implementation and presentation of policy is bound to be more than flexible and opportunistic.
Even so—and I do not quarrel with this at all—Parliament and the public are entitled to know, so far as possible, what policy Government are seeking to follow. But the key words are "so far as possible". Those responsible for the conduct of foreign, diplomatic and economic policy have always been obliged to safeguard a wide range of information: from many hostile or competing nations, institutions and individuals around the world whose principal interests include competing against, outwitting or otherwise damaging the interests of this country.
During the past 17 years, as the Minister said in opening the debate, this Conservative Government have made many moves in the direction of open government. It has to be said that they have not always been made without some prompting from press, Parliament and the European Commission of Human Rights. But we have made them. The awkwardness that we had when first we began talking about GCHQ we overcame. The Interception of Communications Act was put on the statute book by our Government; the Security Service and the SIS have also been brought into the outside world.
But even today, as the Leader of the Opposition has, I fancy, still to learn—and long may be await the opportunity!—the entire process of government cannot be conducted in a goldfish howl. Publication to Parliament is publication to a world that is often hostile to this country. So Parliament has on some occasions to be content with a picture that is less than complete and less than completely up-to-date. That is rightly and

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inevitably so. That is the fundamentally legitimate argument that is not really grappled with or fairly evaluated in this report, nor in certain circumstances accepted as it should have been.
There are two points at which it should have been recognised as legitimate. The first is on the timing of publication of the Howe guidelines. Remarkably enough, Sir Richard sets out in three separate paragraphs the reasons why the guidelines were not immediately announced in December 1984: fear of diplomatic and trade repercussions, adverse to British interests, from Iran's Arab neighbours (which might actually have prevented delivery of two Yarrow ships to Iran following pre-revolutionary contracts, at great cost in jobs and compensation). We were right to go ahead with that contract, but right at that stage not to publicise it. Yet by October 1985 it then made sense—again Sir Richard records this—to announce the guidelines to defend the fulfilment at that time of the remaining pre-revolutionary contracts for armoured vehicle spares. Characteristically, I am afraid, in one paragraph Sir Richard says that those reasons "appear clearly enough"; yet in another he finds them, "no easier to accept than previous explanations". The truth is, they were legitimate and should have been accepted.
The second place where Sir Richard equally misdirects himself relates to the way in which the guidelines were applied in May 1989. My noble friend Lady Thatcher dealt with that, and I endorse her remarks absolutely. There was no change in essential policy at that point.
I go further than that: even if there had been a "change of policy" (of which, even on his own analysis, Sir Richard Scott accepts I had no reason to know), I should maintain what Sir Richard himself describes as the "more realistic" defence which I then put forward to him that it would have been wrong to disclose such a shift.
Sir Richard says (paragraph D4.9) that he,
"can understand that the balance of British interests to which I referred".
might, in my judgment,
"have required that there be no public disclosure of the relaxation of restrictions on defence sales to Iraq or of the divergence between the defence sales policy being applied to Iran and Iraq respectively".
Of course he can understand that. A shifting from one side to another in response to particular grievances might have jeopardised the safety of British hostages in the Middle East and British prisoners in the gaols of those reprehensible countries. So Sir Richard in one paragraph can understand why that required me to accept no public disclosure.
Nevertheless, he goes on to recommend changes in the presentation of government policy which he says could have avoided any dissimulation but which could in fact well have revealed the very things which he accepts ought not to have been revealed. Improvement, perhaps but certainly not a subject for reproach. The criticism illustrates. I am afraid, the extent to which a judge sitting alone, however distinguished, can sometimes take insufficient account of the pressures of clay-to-day ministerial and official life.
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I told Sir Richard, and I astonished myself, that I calculated that during my six years as Foreign Secretary, taking home on average three boxes a night five or six nights a week 40 weeks a year for six years, the weight of paper that crossed my midnight desk was 24 tons. That is a rather different perspective from the attention with which members of the Court of Appeal can address themselves to the case then in hand. It is no wonder that my colleague in the United States, George Shultz, said that being Secretary of State was "like trying to get a drink out of a fire hose". The noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, will remember that well enough, and it is important for us to remember it.
That is why, as I told Sir Richard, other countries adopt very much the same position as ourselves. Even those that have freedom of information Acts exclude from the scope of those Acts information about export—export control; export licence applications. Where such matters have been disclosed to congressional committees, it has happened on terms that they be not further disclosed. In other words, so far as the inquiry troubled to look into that matter, it upheld the case that I have sought to make.
I make one closing point. There is some reason to fear that Sir Richard, during his three-and-a-half years, and the rest of us in different ways to a different extent, have been unexposed to arguments which could and should have been put forward by the Government to the inquiry itself. We have been exposed instead to a massively enthusiastic press, clamouring above all for openness before everything else, carried beyond limits which at one time even the press itself would have regarded as legitimate.
Early in this story—I quoted this to Sir Richard as well—the Independent, which is not notably today a champion of any restraint in this field, on 9th December 1993 said:
"The realities of foreign policy—and the tendency of public opinion to take impractical moral stands—may make it hard to debate the details of arms sales openly on the floor of the House of Commons. But outside the glare of publicity, there can be no excuse for keeping policy secret from two or three trustworthy and senior members of a Parliamentary Committee overseeing policy or intelligence on foreign affairs".
At that time, the Intelligence and Security Committee on which I have sat as a member in its first 12 months had not been brought into existence by this Government. It has been now and it becomes an appropriate vehicle for considering these matters. But it does not make it appropriate to go so far as to open them completely to public opinion.
My last remark is this. I warn against the danger for the judiciary as well as for Parliament of being swept unthinkingly too much further along that road. Soren Kierkegaard, writing almost 150 years ago—I ask noble Lords to listen perhaps with half a tongue in half a cheek—said:
"Complete publicity makes it impossible to govern … No one has understood that better than the daily press; for no power has watched more carefully over the secret of its whole organisation … as the daily press. which then continually cries out that the government should be quite public. Quite right; the intention of the press was to

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do away with the government—and then itself govern, and that is why it safeguarded the secrecy which is necessary in order to be able to govern".
Take heed, my Lords. Let us be warned.
It is, I am afraid, no surprise that Her Majesty's present Government, having placed their fate so exclusively for three years in the hands of a single Chancery judge, however distinguished, and having made no arrangements during that time for the case for the defence of themselves and their Ministers to be presented to that tribunal, should have ended up in certain difficulties. They cannot expect to be overwhelmed by sympathy. They do need our understanding. They certainly do not deserve our denunciation.
6.13 p.m.
Lord Merlyn-Rees: My Lords, this is a "take note" debate, which I imagine is undertaken in a quite different way from that at the other end of the building. That difference and the very nature of this House were exemplified in the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, and others have spoken. There will be no cries of resignation or calls for the fall of the Government. Noble Lords will not be accused of playing the orange card, as I understand will be argued at the other end of the building.
I shall concern myself with what went wrong, what was in the report and what changes should be made. My remarks will be based on my own experience. I do not want to warn in a grandiose way but I should like to ask noble Lords not to underestimate the effect that this report has had on opinion outside the House. It has reinforced views that cast politics in a light that I have never known in my lifetime. The report and the way in which it was handled when it first appeared at the Board of Trade 10 or 12 days ago was unpleasant and foolish. It was dealt with in the wrong way.
As a member of the Franks Committee—there were two Franks Committees, one of which dealt with the Falklands War—I shall make only one very brief comment about the report. Over the weekend, I have endeavoured to read most of the report and I wished that there had been a short report of 200 pages or so to front it, stating the views and referring to appendices, as we endeavoured to do with the Franks report. However, let that be as it may. I want to comment on what went wrong and what needs to be done.
I speak on the basis of experience as a junior Minister in defence relating to the Army and the Air Force, a junior Minister in the Home Office and later as Home Secretary and Northern Ireland Secretary. I had ample time to learn about the machinery of government. When the phrase "the machinery of government" is bandied about these days, I find that young people tend to say, "I have done an A-level course on the role of the monarchy, the role of the Lords and the role of the Commons." The machinery of government is more subtle than that and is about how government works in practice. Perhaps 1 may add—I shall speak further about
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it in a moment—that I worked very closely with MI5 in Northern Ireland. I was "responsible" for it when I was Home Secretary.
First, I refer to accountability to Parliament. When the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, spoke 12 days ago, he said that he had acted impulsively and looked to see whether he was referred to. I did not do that until I had read what he had said and then I did the same. I found that I had put down a parliamentary Question to the (now) noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, on this issue. His answer to me said that the Scott Report was not accurate, was false and misleading; the Government had changed their policy and it was a breach of accountability. I do not make that up. I do not read the Independent except on Thursday and then I read the rugby pages. But the Scott Report says that I personally was misled. I leave the matter there. It has provoked me to speak in this debate.
I know that there are many times when information cannot be given publicly. The security of the nation at this point of time would make it plain foolish for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to reveal what is going on with Sinn Fein and the IRA. It would be foolish for the Home Secretary to reveal the information that is available about proposed bombings in London. Things of that nature, let alone less important problems, have to he protected. So it seems to me, when I consider this report, that there was confusion in the mind of the Government or people in government between the public interest, the national interest and the interest of the Government. Reading through the report and between the lines, it seems that the machinery of government was befogged and not clear. It seems to me that there were departments which did not know what they were doing. So far as I am concerned, I am informed that I was misled.
With regard to the machinery of government, in the Franks Committee we were asked whether the Falklands War could have been prevented. We should have needed a great deal of hindsight to answer that question. However, we did say that the machinery of government could have been better used. This report refers to the machinery of government. So two reports have referred to the machinery of government. The Franks Committee referred to defects on the Joint Intelligence Committee, lack of resources, lack of co-ordination and lack of assessments at a different level. That is said in this report. So there are two things in common: the machinery of government and intelligence.
Let me refer first to the intelligence side. There was a failure to make proper use of intelligence information which could have come from MI6 (of which I know nothing). We hear that changes have already been made in defence intelligence. It may be that we should not be told of those changes. I only hope that they will protect future Mr. Hendersons and prevent cases such as the Matrix Churchill case. That should be borne in mind. Whose responsibility is it within government to ensure that relevant intelligence information is brought to the notice of Ministers?
So far as concerns the Home Office, for 200 years it has lived with intelligence of some kind. That is not true of the DTI or the Board of Trade, although the Board

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of Trade is a very ancient office which goes back into the 18th century and perhaps the 17th century. Procedures must be introduced whereby information that MI6 is used to keeping to itself—for very good reasons—is readily available, though it need not be circulated around the department. That certainly would not happen in the Home Office. That is where Ministers come in. Ministers who are Secretaries of State and not junior Ministers need to be advised of that information.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, referred to the changes that have taken place in relation to the accountability of the security services. That is absolutely right and I commend them for it. But MIS is used to working on the home front. It knows that there is a place called Parliament. Members of the department read the newspapers daily. That may not be true of MI6, cached up in Aden or the Yemen, whose members may not be used to parliamentary accountability.
When I read through the report and tried to read between the lines I sensed that intelligence officers did not realise the importance of reporting to Parliament in some way. I do not mean completely. "Realise" may not be the right word; perhaps they were afraid of so doing because of what they had read over the years when they were abroad, which did not put the House of Commons in too good a light in relation to that kind of thing.
The reason I raise that point is that I hope that this matter will not be dealt with in a "machinery of government" way. I hope that the Opposition will be consulted. It may well be that there will be a change of government within the next 14 months. They will be faced with a fait accompli as to the changes that have occurred and that will not be good enough. Incoming governments are faced with situations of fait accompli all the time. In the first few months they will be facing up to a new life, considering what they said in Opposition and what they are going to do now. They will not have time to worry about the machinery of government. I hope therefore that it will not be an internal inquiry in relation to intelligence. Just as the Franks Committee found that intelligence was dealt with wrongly, so have we found in this case, but at a different level.
I want to say a word about the machinery of government and public interest immunity certificates. I was grateful to read in the lecture given by Lord Justice Simon Brown to the Civil Service staff on this subject in 1994—it answered a question that I had been asking myself—that up until 1973 it was Crown privilege and in 1973 it changed to public interest immunity certificates. Crown privilege had its own certificates. I read on and the report showed how the situation has changed over the years.
I want to relate the report to the question of junior Ministers. There is always a danger in speaking about what a junior Minister is doing, particularly when one becomes a Secretary of State and forgets that one was Once a junior Minister. I observe that there appear to be far more junior Ministers today than there were previously. When one reads of the life of Rab Butler, who, for six or seven years, was a Parliamentary Secretary standing in more often than not for the
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Foreign Secretary, one realises that there was only one junior Minister in the department at that time. There are hundreds of them now; they are all over the shop. When one takes into account the PPSs, it is like the Portuguese Navy; everybody is an admiral.
However, there have to be junior Ministers and they perform a vital task. But I am clear on one thing that I learnt as Northern Ireland Secretary and Home Secretary: there are decisions that only a Secretary of State can take. Whether it is in relation to telephone tapping, detention in Northern Ireland or releasing from detention in Northern Ireland, only one person can do it. Reading through this report it seems to me that, quite apart from the proper functioning of a junior Minister answering Questions in Parliament and so forth, decisions of a legal nature are being taken that should only be taken by the Secretary of State, and I come back to the earlier point I made in regard to the DTI, in no derogatory sense of the term.
Since writing my notes I have asked myself the question—the one person who can tell me whether I am right or wrong has now appeared in the Chamber; he appeared at the wrong moment—whether I have ever signed a public interest immunity certificate. I can only remember signing one. I look for a nod from the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, to make sure that it was not two, but there is only one that I can remember. Is not that surprising? I spent nearly three years in Northern Ireland and nearly three years at the Home Office and yet signed only one public interest immunity certificate. In this report they seem to have been signed like confetti; all around are signing public interest immunity certificates.
Why are there so many PII certificates about these days? There has been a great change in that respect. But I signed one and what I remember about it is that the Permanent Secretary came and put the facts in front of me. He did not say that he had come via the Attorney-General, though it must have come via the courts because it was a case about telephone tapping in Colchester or some such place in Essex. I was not advised that the Attorney-General had a role. I was given the facts of the case and was advised that we had to protect the sources of the telephone tapper. I signed that certificate, quite rightly. But the Attorney-General played no part and I was not told that I had no option. That is one of the points that I find strange when I listen to legal luminaries talking. I was not told that I had to sign. I had a choice and I decided of my own free will.
I have had my time and the rest of what I intended to say is all very interesting but will go into the drawer where I have kept 30 years of speeches that I did not complete. I have advised my children that they can publish them one day and no doubt they will be read with great interest; but they should not expect to get any money out of them. The Scott Report does not show a conspiracy; it does not show villainy; it shows that a lot of people did not know what they were doing.
6.28 p.m.
Lord Slynn of Hadley: My Lords, I am conscious that many of the issues with which your Lordships are concerned in this debate are a far cry from the daily

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round of the Judicial Committee of your Lordships' House. But there is one matter on which it is appropriate that a Law Lord should comment—that is, whether the Attorney-General got the law wrong; whether he misunderstood the legal position in relation to public interest immunity certificates.
We have been told many times that judges and members of the Bar are divided—it has even been said 50:50—on this question and therefore it is right to declare my position. For more than six years as junior counsel to the Treasury, I advised successive Attorneys-General—four of them; two Labour and two Conservative—on matters of this kind. The subject therefore is not one with which I am entirely unfamiliar.
I wish to make only two or three points. I shall be brief in view of what has been said before and I shall try—he is no longer in his place—not to encumber the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, with the names of any further cases. First, I have the clear impression that some of those who are criticising what the Attorney-General has done, what was seen as the law in this case, do not give effect to the changes and developments which have taken place both in practice and in procedure. The noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, reminded us of the existence of Crown privilege. It is not so long since a claim to keep documents out of litigation and out of the public eye—a claim for Crown privilege—disabled a litigant from having access to those documents. Indeed, a claim in respect of a contents plea for Crown privilege was at one time virtually unassailable.
As we moved on, Crown privilege became known as public interest privilege, the name better indicating that documents should not be produced because it was contrary to the public interest, that they as a class, or because of their contents, should not be revealed to the parties to a dispute or to the world at large. We have moved on, and in the Wiley case to which reference has hcen made the Judicial Committee of the House recognises that changes need to be made. Ministers are apparently now to be encouraged not to claim the privilege in a very clear case. But even in that case I felt it right to leave open the question as to whether a claim to keep documents out of the papers in a case could include a class rather than the contents of an individual document. The changes which have taken place have been considerable. We must judge what the Attorney-General did by the law at the time.
Secondly, some of the comments which have been made seem to suggest that the decision for a Minister and for a judge whether public interest immunity should be claimed is a clear cut, black and white issue. But these questions have always been extraordinarily difficult. The noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, was lucky in that he was spared, apparently, a large number of these questions. As Treasury counsel, I found that the questions were very often extremely difficult. How should one balance, on the one hand, the desire of government departments and the need of the state not to give away sensitive information, the confidentiality of which needed to be
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preserved in the interests of good government, as against the need of the litigant to prove his case or to attack the case of a government department? In order to protect the citizen against unjustified claims I believe it was right that the examination of this question was entrusted to a judge. He knows in a detailed way what the case requires. He can be informed as to the conflicting public interest which is concerned in excluding the documents and he can then decide.
The noble Lord, Lord Taverne, whom I should like respectfully to congratulate on a polished maiden speech, appeared to regard these as essentially clear cut matters; it is not difficult to see what is essential for the trial; it is not difficult to know what is relevant. That, in some cases, is undoubtedly true; but there are clearly cases in which this is a difficult matter. Therefore the balance between the view of the Minister and the decision of the judge is an extremely important safeguard for the citizen who litigates.
The Master of the Rolls is reported as having said that he considers that the Attorney-General approached the matter, on the basis of the law as it stood, in the right way. I am in full agreement with that opinion. But even if the Master of the Rolls is wrong, which is unlikely, and even if I am wrong, which may be more likely, I consider that the Attorney-General's decision to let the matter go to the judge for him to decide was quite clearly and unarguably a way which was open to the Attorney-General to follow. I believe he took the right course in this case on the law as it stood in referring the matter to the judge, and in any event it seems to me that he was entitled to do it.
I have spoken so firmly, and I now conclude, because I am quite confident in my own mind that if the Attorney-General had been Mr. John Morris or Mr. Alex Carlile I would have said exactly what I have said up to this moment. It would be very unfortunate if the passions generated by the other questions which arise in this very serious debate and this serious inquiry should blind the country or drive the country and Members of this House to a conclusion on a particular issue which is both unfair and is wrong.
In the course of the discussions which have taken place—and even in your Lordships' House—some fairly harsh things have been said about the Attorney-General which appear to go beyond the particular issue with which we are concerned. I do not accept those broader criticisms of the Attorney-General, even leaving aside today's discussion. It ought to be said in this House that Sir Nicholas Lyell was a very successful Solicitor-General to Sir Patrick Mayhew as Attorney-General. No one in the law could possibly have been surprised when Mrs. Thatcher (as she then was) as Prime Minister and subsequently Mr. Major appointed him to succeed Sir Patrick Mayhew and to continue as Attorney-General. Let us not forget that he has rendered eight years of loyal and able service to the nation and to Parliament. In my judgment, leaving aside entirely the present dispute, he has been a good Attorney-General.
6.36 p.m.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, after three and a half hours of debate I suggest that we have rather lost sight of the central issue of the report which is the miscarriage of justice which was perpetrated on three employees of Matrix Churchill. Paul Henderson, managing director, was arrested in October 1990, locked up, interrogated, charged with criminal deceit and dishonesty, kept in suspension for two years, put through the ordeal of a six-week trial at the Old Bailey and ultimately acquitted—with his business in ruins, thrown on the scrap heap with 600 other employees and his character largely destroyed, a victim of a prosecution which Scott says,
"should never have been commenced".
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, said that our system worked. Well, it did not work and a human miscarriage of justice occurred for which someone must be responsible.
The sickening account peddled by responsible Ministers and the media—that everyone behaved with honour, that they laid all the evidence fairly before the judge and that a fair trial was obtained with a predictable result—is a travesty of the contents of Volume III of the report. Their cry has been, "We deserve an apology. We have suffered for the past three years". I am sure your Lordships' hearts all bled to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, left without a member of the Bar to represent him before Sir Richard Scott. Who is really owed the apology? Is it not Paul Henderson and his two colleagues? What is their injustice compared to the injustice to those three defendants'?
Who is Paul Henderson? He was, said his intelligence contact,
"a very brave man … an extremely brave man … Few people I've met would take such risks".
He was a spy in the land of Saddam. On hearing that evidence, Mr. Moses, the prosecuting counsel, had Sir Brian Unwin, head of Customs, asked whether it was proper in the public interest to continue the prosecution. Sir Brian's reply was that it should he firmly continued and, further, he penned a letter to Sir Colin McColl, head of intelligence, saying:
"We were extremely surprised to say the least at the nature of the testimonial given by one of your junior officers".
He then referred to the effect that that might have upon the jury. That is symptomatic of this prosecution.
Two months after his arrest, the Sunday Times carried an "Insight" article saying that Henderson had been tipped the wink by the Minister, Alan Clark, and gave the place and the date, 20th January 1988, where that encouragement was given. That led to a meeting between Alan Clark and the Prime Minister. Sir Robin Butler made a note of what was said and sent it to Mr. Alan Clark. Scott found that that note was "significantly" altered in such a way,
"that it was at least as consistent with the impression that Henderson and others received".
on that occasion. That vital note, filed by the Cabinet Secretary, a note which as good as proved Mr. Henderson's veracity, was never disclosed. It never got to the Old Bailey. In effect, it was suppressed throughout.
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Later, in August 1992, the Sunday Telegraph carried an interview with Clark in which he was said to have agreed that he tipped off the manufacturers. On reading it, Mr. Moses, the prosecuting counsel, demanded that Clark should be interviewed by his solicitors, for if what he read was true he would drop the case. Incredibly, that never happened. If it had happened, the prosecution would never have continued.
Scott finds that no investigation was made into MoD documents, that witnesses potentially favourable to the defence were not interviewed and that proofs of evidence of junior officials were altered by their seniors in order to reflect departmental policy. By October 1991, Customs and everyone officially concerned knew that Mr. Henderson was acting as an agent for MI6, yet no effort was made to get details of his 26 meetings with his contact or of his handing over blueprints of the very missiles which were going to be made. If that had been done, the prosecution would never have continued.
As we all know, as the trial date approached, Mr. Heseltine refused to sign PII certificates in relation to documents which he could see showed that what Henderson was saying was true. He said that it was in the public interest to disclose the documents. Then came the saddest moment of the whole story when the Attorney-General told his colleague that in law he must sign a certificate to say that his view was that it was in the public interest not to disclose those documents.
As a criminal lawyer and as one who is used to the criminal courts, I am amazed at the inability of civil lawyers to understand the fundamentals of the criminal law. Over and over again today there has been talk of "litigants". There are no litigants in criminal courts. There is the Crown on one side and the defendants on the other. If that was the law, then, not making a maiden speech, I can say to my noble friend Lord Taverne that I am prepared to say that the law was an ass. It was a monumental ass.
If I may say so to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, it is not a question of balance. It is not a question of going to a judge and saying, "On the one hand, but on the other", and of taking along 10,000 supporting cases; it is a question of using your eyes and seeing that a miscarriage of justice is about to occur. Surely any Attorney-General who has any knowledge of the criminal law would have given such advice to his colleagues. Like, I am sure, most noble Lords in the Chamber, I entirely agree with Sir Richard's description of that interpretation of the law as "absurd". If the Minister has no discretion, what on earth is the point of asking him to sign a certificate'?
The President of the Board of Trade signed under protest and on condition that his views were expressed to the judge at the trial. He reiterated that in a letter to the Attorney-General. In The Times today, the Attorney-General writes:
"Mr Heseltine's … letter thanking me … was not 'left unread'".
It was not a "thank you" letter. It was a letter in which a Minister reiterated his view that documents should be disclosed in a criminal trial and that he wanted them to he disclosed. As Sir Richard says, the President of the

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Board of Trade gave that letter a large circulation. Your Lordships may feel that that is curious in regard to a "thank you" letter. Scott says:
"I find it astonishing that a letter … from a senior Minister dealing with a subject of difficulty should have been left unread for a period of between three … and seven weeks".
The Attorney-General also writes this morning that he called a meeting with Mr. Moses and was,
"assured that the prosecution was … fair and proper".
Of course prosecuting counsel would not advance a case which was not in his opinion fair and proper. Scott finds that at that meeting Michael Heseltine was never mentioned. Michael Heseltine's letter was never shown to Mr. Moses. At that meeting he finds that Mr. Moses was not asked expressly about the contents of any particular documents but merely for an assurance that everything was all right. Can one imagine any Attorney-General behaving as Her Majesty's Attorney-General behaved and taking such a meek and hopeless course as that when, as I have said, a miscarriage of justice was staring him in the face?
The last matter which the Attorney-General raises in his letter today is vital. Kenneth Clarke, then the Home Secretary, released information involving intelligence which, of course, was subject to PII. He released it using his own discretion. That meant going against all the theory and all the law about which we have heard so much today which says that Ministers must never exercise their discretion. He exercised his discretion. Why? Because the Crown wanted the information, wanted a statement from that member of MI6 and wanted to call it in rebuttal of Mr. Henderson's defence. That is the point. The Attorney-General left the letter unread; left the documents unread; failed to interview Alan Clark; failed to read the intelligence reports; failed to interview Sir Robin Butler; failed to tell Mr. Moses to inform the judge; failed to apply the law even-handedly; failed to supervise prosecuting counsel; and instead of immersing himself in the niceties of the civil law of PII certificates, remained blind to the miscarriage of justice which was shining like a beacon from the Central Criminal Court. Dishonesty is not an issue in this report; the issues are incompetence, judgment and ignorance of the workings of the criminal law.
The last thing I have to say is that the Government have tried to say—and it has been said again today—that the prosecution case was perfect; that everything went according to the rules; that the documents were given to the judge and he was asked to make up his mind about them. That is another travesty of what happened, because prosecuting counsel spent more than two or three hours attempting to persuade the judge not to read the documents, not to release them and, as has already been said, that they were irrelevant to the defence. That is what happened in the trial.
The idiocy of having these PII certificates in a criminal trial is shown when Mr. Robertson, the defending counsel, had to argue for their release without having been allowed to see one of them about which he was making his submissions. That is the situation. He argued for a day, and, as a result the judge, being a
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robust judge, released one part of the documents. But he was adamant that the SIS documents should not be released.
At that, most counsel would have sat down, but not Mr. Robertson. He argued for another day to have the SIS documents showing Mr. Henderson's relations with his contact go before the jury because they would prove his innocence. In the end Mr. Moses, being a fair-minded prosecutor, saw another miscarriage of justice was on its way and submitted to the judge that he ought to release them. When that happened then at last the judge released those documents.
That is the reality of this sort of certificate. A circuit judge, faced with Pus eight or nine pages long, hearing argument in detail as to how the interests of the nation will suffer, how people's lives will be put in danger and so on, is then expected to say, "Here I am. I know nothing about politics. I have to balance the possibility that this man may go to prison for a year against people being killed and the interests of the country being at stake. How can I make such a decision?". Of course, in 90 per cent. of cases such a judge would simply say, "I do not allow these documents to be released". That is the reality and the mischief of these documents.
Now we have come to a situation where, after all these weeks, all this damage has been done to these individuals who all suffered from a prosecution which never, never should have been started and once started should never, never have been allowed to go on. I ask the Minister—who knows, as we all do, a great deal about justice—at the end of this debate to tell the House who is responsible for all of this and who is going to give an apology to Mr. Henderson and his colleagues?
6.55 p.m.
Lord Rippon of Hexham: My Lords, to the manifest disappointment of many people, including sections of the media, Sir Richard Scott's report was fairly summarised by he himself as no conspiracy and no cover-up. I believe that we can also say that there were no dishonest or dishonourable Ministers. Of course, a report of five volumes and weighing 171bs cannot be dealt with in a few sentences or even, if I may say so, in a few ounces of Hansard.
There are many difficult and complex issues of law and administration. They deserve careful and dispassionate consideration. As I understand it from my noble friend the Minister, that is exactly what the Government are doing. All this demands a much calmer approach than is currently provided by the politically motivated witch hunt against two Ministers of known integrity.
The original accusation was allowing innocent men to go to gaol. That has been completely destroyed. The noble Lords, Lord Richard, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead and Lord Hutchinson of Lullington said that the trial should never have taken place. I ask your Lordships to consider this: given Mr. Alan Clark's original evidence—and my noble and learned friend Lord Howe said that there is some evidence that he had behaved rather recklessly throughout—what sort of uproar would have arisen if the Attorney-General

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or the Government had attempted to interfere with the judicial process? We would then have had the name of Sir Patrick Hastings raised in almost every speech.
I am glad that my noble friend the Minister had something to say about Customs and Excise because there are no doubt difficulties where they are involved in a prosecution. I know that because I had a note left on my desk by my wife when we were negotiating to enter the Community. It says this:
"Crispin telephoned"—
He is Sir Crispin Tickell now—
"1. There is trouble over French cauliflowers.
2. Customs and Excise say principles are involved.
3. You are asked to telephone the Treasury and say either that no principles are involved or fresh principles must be found".
That was a difficult exercise. All I can say about it now is that I have no recollection about how it was dealt with.
The leading article in The Times of last Saturday was a particularly deplorable example of prejudicial media comment. It says that accepting that it was arguable whether the Attorney-General actually misread the law, The Times stated that Sir Richard Scott finds him "guilty" on this count. Presumably, any judge who is overruled by a superior court is guilty. In this instance, I suggest that the weight of legal opinion both inside this Chamber today and outside shows that the Attorney-General acted by the hook throughout on the basis of the law as it then stood.
The Times goes on to denigrate the legal competence of the Attorney-General. I am sure that many of your Lordships, as well as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, know as I do from personal experience that the Attorney-General is a first-class lawyer who has undoubtedly made a considerable financial sacrifice as a result of his public service. I believe that the editor of The Times, and some others, would do well to study very carefully the Priestland Memorial Lecture given last October by the noble Lord, Lord Habgood, which of course did not attract much attention in the media. In it he makes the point that the media—indeed all of us—should consider the damage done to our society by the culture of contempt. As he puts it, "What we are witnessing is more than a justifiable reaction against abuse of authority, but rather a reaction against the concept of authority itself".
There was a time when the other place could deal with matters concerning the conduct of its Members, whether Ministers or Back-Benchers, but, sadly, even the Select Committee on Privileges has faded away. I remember that Select Committee as being objective and non-partisan as well as being knowledgeable about parliamentary practice and the administration of government. It is no reflection on Sir Richard that he is inevitably not so familiar with these matters.
Then, in Volume I, Chapter I, I find rather puzzling what he describes in page after page as the,
"constitutional and democratic significance of not applying as a minimum die negative resolution procedure in the context of the Import and Export Control Act 1990".
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Your Lordships will know that the negative resolution procedure is hardly an effective way of controlling the Executive in matters of constitutional and democratic significance. Even the affirmative resolution procedure is not much good. In those circumstances, it could be argued that the Act itself should properly include any matter of constitutional and democratic significance and with primary legislation needed to amend it.
Sir Richard states that the Opposition as well as the Government fail to realise the constitutional and democratic significance of the negative resolution procedure in these circumstances. Your Lordships may think it appropriate for our Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee to consider and report on the value of Sir Richard's observations in that regard.
Enough has been said about national security and the need for some control over matters which are sometimes not even given to the Cabinet as a whole, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan. I recall that when I had responsibility for such things, I had to tell my new Minister that the custom was for me to give him an oral report on certain nuclear matters and for him to give an oral report to the Prime Minister. Probably no one else would have the information at all.
Finally, I wish to comment on the conduct of the inquiry. I fully share the anxieties expressed by my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon. I was disturbed by the confrontational nature of the hearings. I believe that my noble and learned friend's views on the shape and pattern of the inquiry deserve respect. He suggested—and I believe that he is right—a more conventional tribunal with lay assessors, free-standing counsel for the tribunal and legal representation and not necessarily cross-examination. Above all, I cannot understand why we should depart from the principles laid down by the late Lord Salmon. I agree also with my noble and learned friend Lord Howe that that might be fairer to all concerned and also more expeditious and effective. It could hardly be less so. I urge the Government to join my noble and learned friend in considering as soon as possible whether there is a much more effective way of dealing with the kind of matters that we are debating today.
7.3 p.m.
Lord Armstrong of Ilminsters: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, is incontrovertibly right in saying that we now have more junior Ministers than we had before the Second World War. As he referred to Mr. R.A. Butler, perhaps your Lordships will allow me a moment's diversion. I was Mr. Butler's Private Secretary when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. I remember that once when we were walking together he was carrying a cane with a silver head. He explained that in 1938, at the time of the events in Munich, he had been a junior Minister at the Foreign Office. He said, "It was very difficult for me. I had no responsibility for formulating the policy or deciding what the policy should he. I just had to explain it in the House of Commons because my Secretary of State was in the House of Lords. I had no share in saying what it should

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be". There was a pause and then Mr. Butler waggled his cane at me and said, "Since that time I have never carried an umbrella".
I share the views of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Rippon, that there is room for doubt about whether the inquiry should have taken the form that it did. When the reputations and livelihoods of people may be at stake it is questionable whether one man on his own should be asked to combine the roles of inquisitor, prosecutor and adjudicator. I know that it is said that a full-dress tribunal of inquiry under the 1921 Act would have taken even longer and would have cost even more, and I think that there is room for doubt about that. But should those be conclusive considerations when it is important that justice should not only be done but should also be seen to be done and should be felt by those most closely affected to have been done?
However that may be, there can he nothing but admiration for the thoroughness with which Sir Richard Scott pursued his inquiry and his determination that the evidence on which his conclusions are founded should be made as fully available as possible. His quintuply voluminous report will remain a quarry for analysts of government and students of British political history for many years to come. He has described in the minutest detail, paper by paper and meeting by meeting, not only the processes by which the guidelines for the issue of export licences for the sale of defence-related equipment to Iran and Iraq were set and reviewed but also the handling of a succession of applications for such licences. At every stage, if he considered that things should have been handled differently he did not hesitate to say, with all the benefit of hindsight, what in his opinion should have been done. I suspect that there are few administrative processes inside or outside government which would emerge unscathed from such an intense ex post facto scrutiny.
But the perspective and clarity of hindsight should not blind us to the fact that things cannot have looked anything like so clear at the time. For example, Sir Richard has drawn attention to deficiencies in the handling and communication of intelligence material. There were deficiencies and we are assured that steps are being taken to remedy them for the future. But the fact remains that, for this and other reasons, those who were having to deal with these matters at the time were operating in a fog of uncertainty. It is a familiar experience that when you are in medic rebus—an elderly retired mandarin cannot resist the occasional Latin tag—you have to do the best you can with the information that is available, even when it is incomplete or uncertain. Of course, you are probably having to do that when you are having to do many other things too.
Therefore, it comes as something of a relief that Sir Richard should be able to comment that up to the cease-fire in August 1988 the official processes for considering export licence applications conscientiously endeavoured to apply the then existing guidelines and that recommendations made and decisions taken were broadly consistent with the guidelines. I warmly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, that the
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conscientiousness with which the public servants concerned addressed these matters shines out from the report. I would have expected nothing less but I am nonetheless glad that it attracted the attention of Sir Richard Scott and, in today's debate, of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher.
What went wrong thereafter? The third guideline, which denied approval for exports of defence equipment,
"which would significantly enhance the capability of either side to prolong or exacerbate the conflict",
had been overtaken by events. All concerned thought that the cease-fire offered scope for some relaxation of the strict interpretation of the guidelines. The Department of Trade and Industry and to a lesser extent the Ministry of Defence, with the possibility of increased export sales, the need for British industry to be able to compete with its foreign rivals, who, as the noble Baroness said, were less inhibited, and with the implications for jobs in this country uppermost in their minds, wanted to allow greater relaxation than did the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which had considerations of foreign policy and international relations uppermost in its mind. I believe that that ambiguity at the heart of the policy was never resolved, at any rate in relation to Iraq and not at senior ministerial level.
The third guideline was provisionally rephrased so as to deny approval for exports which would be of direct and significant assistance to either country in the conduct of offensive operations. One may discuss how great was the actual significance of that alteration. But I am sure that some Ministers thought quite genuinely that that was no more than a necessary reinterpretation of the original third guideline to take account of changed circumstances. Others may have thought that it went further than that, although not nearly as far as they would have liked because they wanted to be freer to approve exports of non-lethal but still defence-related equipment.
But all settled for that rewording because they agreed that, while there was scope for some greater flexibility in the application of the guidelines, there were considerations of public policy, notably in relation to the constantly changing situation in the Middle East, which made it undesirable to indicate publicly that there had been any change in the wording of the guidelines or indeed any change in the application of the policy.
It was a messy situation and an uneasy compromise. Whether it would have been possible to resolve the situation in a way which would have enabled Ministers to have been more forthcoming in their public statements at the time it is now impossible to say. But the fact is that, from time to time, governments find themselves in situations where there is no solution which satisfies all the conflicting considerations.
Sir Richard Scott clearly thinks that Parliament should have been told and he seems to regard that as the overriding consideration. As in some other matters, Sir Richard Scott's opinion is extremely significant but not, I think, conclusive. I can only say from my own experience under Conservative and Labour

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Governments that situations may arise where that cannot be the overriding consideration and other considerations must be and are legitimately taken into account. I can understand why this was genuinely and honourably thought at the time to be such a situation.
I accept Sir Richard Scott's conclusion that there was no "duplicitous intent". It clearly was the case—self-evidently was the case—that Parliament and the public were not told of any relaxation in the application of the guidelines, let alone of a change of wording in the guidelines. Ministers are entitled to claim that, in their opinion at the time, there were valid reasons of public policy for that. It seems to me that that is the judgment which has to be defended.
The question of the issue of public interest immunity certificates is not one on which I propose to spend any significant time. I should he foolish to rush in where so many noble and learned angels are treading with such weight and distinction. I say only that what actually happened in this case coincided with what was my understanding, when I was in the public service, of what was supposed to happen. It was for Ministers to certify as a duty that documents were such, or of such a class, that they should not he disclosed as a matter of public policy, it was for the judge to say whether their disclosure was indispensable for the due administration of justice in a particular case; and, if the judge said that it was indispensable, then either the documents must he disclosed or, if the Government thought that that disclosure would he too embarrassing, the proceedings must be dropped.
As to what the law was at the time, I can say only that, if I were the Attorney-General and I had the noble and learned Lords, Lord Lloyd of Berwick and Lord Slynn of Hadley, the Master of the Rolls, the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Weedon, Mr. Justice Laws and Mr. Charles Gray, QC, to name but a few, on my side, I should feel reasonably comfortable.
There is one other point which I should like to make before I sit down. It has been argued this evening, notably by the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, in a maiden speech on whose eloquence, although not on whose completely uncontroversial nature, I should like to congratulate him, that this affair demonstrates the need for a freedom of information Act. There may be good arguments in favour of such legislation but this affair is not one of them. First, in any freedom of information Act there would be some categories of information which would he exempt from its requirements. Those categories would certainly include national security, prejudice to international relations and information which was commercially confidential. Papers about export licences for arms sales would be likely to be exempt on all three counts.
Secondly, a freedom of information Act should not extend to cover documents passing inside government while a decision or an issue is under consideration. As one noble Lord said, in government, just as in other organisations, decision-making cannot go on in a goldfish howl. It must be possible to carry on discussion in private. Only full and frank discussion in private gives people, and particularly Ministers, the opportunity
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freely to change their minds before a decision is taken. If the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, accuses me of plagiarism, I shall accept the charge willingly. Without that right to decide and if necessary to change one's mind in private, the collective responsibility on which, as we have seen so often lately, good government depends will unravel.
Of course Ministers are, and must be, accountable to Parliament. I favour greater openness in the sense that I should like to see fuller public exposition of the facts and considerations taken into account in making a decision when that decision is announced. It is not possible to give a full statement if that announcement is being made in the form of a Statement in this House or in another place because time considerations do not make that possible. Therefore, such a Statement should he accompanied by a parliamentary paper or some such other document which would give a much fuller account. In my view, that would make for both better government and better public understanding of public issues and policies. But an attempt to apply freedom of information legislation to papers relating to decision-making while the process of making a decision was taking place would for many reasons merely drive the process into channels which a freedom of information Act could not reach. That would be conducive neither to good government nor to public knowledge and understanding of public issues and policies.
7.18 p.m.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I know Sir Nicholas Lyell, the present Attorney-General. When I was chairman of the Bar Council, he was Attorney-General. I knew him as a colleague and still do and I think that it is fair to say that we had friendly relations. I do not know Mr. Waldegrave as well. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, said that in private life he is an honourable man and I do not dissent from that. The real question is: what has caused two otherwise decent men to be afflicted by this degree of considered criticism by Sir Richard Scott? I suggest that one reason—and it is a criticism of the Government as a whole—is that this Government, after too long, have become careless. They have become careless of the proposition that party political interest does not always perfectly coincide with the public interest.
What happened about the management—and many, including myself, would call it the mismanagement—of Scott's report; and, not least, what happened in your Lordships' House a few days ago was properly described as shameful. It will be a lasting shame to this Government. On that occasion, I was present when the suggestion was being put that a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary and the Leader of the Opposition in your Lordships' House, both Privy Counsellors, should not be subject to the insult of what was offered. They rightly rejected it. My noble friend Lord Callaghan of Cardiff, to whom I paid attention, said that it was an abuse of the parliamentary process.
Therefore, I wrote to the Minister with three simple questions, the second of which I shall read to your Lordships. It said:

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"Could you provide me with a definitive list of all those who received a copy of the report prior to its being made generally available in the Printed Paper Office? It would help me if you could indicate on what date each individual received his or her copy".
The Minister courteously replied on 22nd February saying:
"You asked for a definitive list".
I omit some words—
"I can tell you that the Report was received by the Government during the afternoon of 7th February"—
I knew that—
"I shall answer the rest of your question as soon as practicable".
I have had no answer. I see that the noble and learned Lord wishes to respond. I give way.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I am much obliged. Before the noble Lord expands on that theme, perhaps I could invite him to look at the parliamentary Questions that have been tabled in another place and, indeed, in this place. If I understand the convention of both Houses correctly, if there is an opportunity to give such information in a parliamentary Answer, then that will be the appropriate place to do so rather than to advance it to one particular Member or noble Lord. That is the reason for my adopting such an approach. I hope that the noble Lord will accept from me that I certainly did not have any intention of depriving him of that information for the purposes of today's debate.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I accept what the Minister says, but the question remains in my mind: if the material was fully available in detailed form, who had what and when; and why was it not possible to reply to my letter either indicating what the information was or where I might reasonably discover it'?
The third question in my letter outlined my concerns about the expenditure of public funds on representation before Scott. I wanted to know how much had been spent and who had been in receipt of legal assistance; that is to say, of taxpayers' money. The noble and learned Lord told me that the total of f1,210,000 had been paid. I omit some words from it, but the noble and learned Lord has a copy of his own letter. If I do not correctly paraphrase the contents, then I apologise in advance. However, I believe that I do. He said that the Government do not consider it right to identify the individuals who have received legal advice either directly or indirectly. Have the Government learnt nothing'? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllic, speaks on behalf of the Government. I do not attach personal blame to him of course; I am attacking the message, not the messenger. In opening today's debate, the noble and learned Lord said that this Government are devoted to openness. Well, well!
I propose, I hope at not too great a length, to give your Lordships some quotations from the report. They will not he selected quotations, because they lay the trail that I wish to follow for a moment or two. I have no animus against the Attorney-General; indeed, I am sorry for the position in which he finds himself'. I believe it to be an intolerable position and one which can only be
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properly resolved by his departure from his post. I regret to have to say that, but I am inevitably driven to that conclusion.
As long ago as September 1991, according to Volume III of the report at page 1268, the instructions from the DTI to then junior counsel Mr. Nigel Pleming (who is very experienced in that class of work) said:
"It is anticipated that Counsel for the Defendants will submit that the Government knew and encouraged the trade to be less than frank in their licence applications".
Those were the prosecution instructions. At page 1269 of the same volume it states that Mr. Pleming,
"thought it likely that there would he two strands to the defence; firstly, that DTI turned a blind eye to the military possibilities, and secondly that … HMG were in any event aware of the full facts".
I continue. Prosecuting counsel was Mr. A. Moses. He was assisted by junior counsel Mr. Grenfell and Mr. Calvert-Smith. Those counsel were kept in the dark. On page 1240 of Volume III, Mr. Moses said that,
"if that connection [referred to in the documents] was known at the time, I do not see how the prosecution could have continued. It seems to me to show not just suspicion but knowledge of the intended use. I do not understand why this information was not brought to my attention".
Similarly, on the same page, Mr. Grenfell said:
"I think (absent a satisfactory answer to the matters I have indicated would need to he investigated) that the prospects of conviction in the light of this material and its effect on the jury's views, would be so reduced that one would have advised the prosecution should not proceed".
On page 1241, Mr. Calvert-Smith said:
"I saw none of this nor was I told of it … I would not have advised a prosecution".
Because I do not believe that one should take party advantage of a mis-statement of what one believes the law then to have been, I entirely accept that it was reasonable to have a different view from the one which has subsequently been expressed by Sir Richard Scott. I refuse to join the bandwagon which says that the Attorney-General was inevitably wrong at the time. I believe that what the noble and learned Lords, Lord Slynn and Lord Lloyd, among others, have said, is certainly correct as one possibility of a view that could have been taken. I will go further because I do not think that one should take small-minded advantage. I think, with great respect, that the view expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, was the majority view then subsisting.
However, the majority view then subsisting was expressed at page 1260 in the case of Makanjuola. That ease is not in fact authority for the proposition that, once asserted, the right must be maintained. Makanjuola quite plainly says—and, indeed, the Attorney-General referred to this in correspondence—that in some circumstances it is not necessary for a public interest immunity right to continue to be asserted. Therefore, the criticism which I believe to be rightly made against the conduct of the Attorney-General is not that he got the law wrong; indeed, he may have got it right.
I believe that it is conscientiously fair to say that the majority view at that time would have supported the Attorney-General. I respectfully dissent from the

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proposition put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, that the Attorney-General is the best legal advice—that is not so in my experience. What he does, quite rightly and legitimately, is to go outside for other legal advice. That is what this Attorney-General did. He went to the present Mr. Justice Laws, Michael Kalisher QC, and others. Therefore, I do not fault him in that respect. Others may wish to do so for different and more ignoble purposes.
I believe that the case of Makanjuola is worth a second view. At page 1260 it says:
"This does not mean"—
that is, PII—
"that in any case where a party holds a document in a class prima facie immune he is bound to persist in an assertion of immunity even where it is held that, on any weighing of the public interest, in withholding the document against the public interest in disclosure for the purpose of furthering the administration of justice, there is a clear balance in favour of the latter".
The one person who read Makanjuola correctly was the then President of the Board of Trade. I believe that he presently holds a different job. But he got it right, and he got it right having looked at Makanjuola.
As has rightly been pointed out, the Home Secretary declined to be bound by the stricter view. He authorised the evidence to be given by a "Mr. T". "Mr. T"—not, perhaps, one of the usual suspects—was someone who was identified in that way for reasons of anonymity. Mr. T's statement was released to the prosecution because the Home Secretary (it may well have been a perfectly legitimate view because the Home Secretary of the time was Mr. Clarke) wished that material to be used by the prosecution; as, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, pointed out earlier.
Those are not lawyers' quibbles. The strength of feeling which I believe informed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, is that there was a serious danger not of a wrong view of PII law but of a negligent conduct of a prosecution. I am sorry to say this again against someone who has been a personal colleague, but that is the charge that I make and sustain against the present Attorney. That gives me no pleasure.
I give a few further examples. I refer to page 1352 of Sir Richard's production. The virtue of not having a summary is that it drives one to read it all. I refer to the reference to Mr. Heseltine on page 1352 in a note written by Miss Wheldon. I just pause for a moment. When the history of legal and parliamentary business in our time is read, if he has no other achievement he shall have gained the following one. It is stated on page 1352 that,
"Mr. Heseltine—the president—
as he was then called—
"apparently accepts the PII classes in question exist and indeed that it is in principle against the public interest for documents in those classes to be disclosed. The problem is that he thinks it is in the public interest for the documents in this case to he disclosed, despite the fact that they fall within a class. I gather that he is unhappy about the Customs prosecution and does not want to be party to the suppression of documents which are helpful to the defendants".
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The note written by Mr. Heseltine's assistant, Miss Wheldon, is again mentioned on page 1353,
"Miss Wheldon enclosed with her Note the whole file so that the Attorney General could see the extent of his office's involvement and warned that 'The prosecution may yet come to a sticky end—.
The Attorney-General endorsed that note. It was not a case of, "I was not there. I cannot remember. I was too busy"; he endorsed the note. At page 1353 he stated,
"I wish to take an overview of the prosecution to assess the pros and cons".
This is the whole substance and basis of what I regretfully press as a charge against him. The Attorney further stated,
"I have an overall responsibility and this problem having been drawn to my attention I think stock should be taken".
The Attorney sent a letter to Mr. Heseltine. The letter is reproduced on page 1353 and states,
"It would be quite wrong for you to make assertions which you believe to be untrue"
—that is in respect of a claim for PII.
At page 1354 the Attorney stated, having only a short while earlier said that he wished to take an overview,
"I have not myself read the documents in question".
He ought to have done so, particularly when the President of the Board of Trade had raised that issue. The latter was not a junior Minister or a clerk; he was someone who had considered this matter with care.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend would read the rest of the quotation.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I certainly shall. I am giving page by page references so that no one is misled. The Attorney stated at page 1354,
"I have not myself read the documents in question but the relevant classes are long established and important to the Government generally. The drafting of paragraph 4 of the certificate is unusual and the judge and defendants will be alert to its limited scope".
I am most obliged to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, for asking MC to read that out as I shall return to the matter later. The Attorney continued, referring to the limited scope of paragraph four of the certificate,
"which can if necessary be emphasised by counsel for the Crown".
We shall discuss in a moment or two whether counsel for the Crown was either put in possession of information to make that emphasis; whether he was instructed to make that emphasis; or whether he felt bitterly aggrieved that he had been kept in the dark. As I said, we shall discuss that matter in a moment or two.
Page 1355 concerns the Heseltine certificate. It states,
"In making this certificate I emphasise that my concern is only with the question whether the documents to which I have referred fall within classes of documents which are prima facie immune from production. Whether in fact all or part of any individual document or documents should be disclosed is a matter for the Court".
A letter written by Mr. Heseltine on 11th September is referred to on page 1357,
"I am glad that a way has been found of reconciling the fact that I am under a legal duty which I cannot waive, to claim immunity from disclosure of certain documents on grounds of public interest with the fact that, in my view"—
these are the words that matter—

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"at least some of them ought to be disclosed in the public interest".
Mr. Heseltine gave this letter wide circulation within the DTI. Copies went to junior Ministers and senior officials. He took steps to try to ensure that the other Ministers who had signed PII certificates were made aware of the limited nature of his own certificate. I have already referred to page 1357. I shall not quote further from that page but should noble Lords wish me to read further sentences from it I shall be happy to do so.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, will the noble Lord read the top of page 1357 before he leaves it?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: Certainly, my Lords. Page 1357 begins,
"Mr. Heseltine signed the Certificate in its redrafted form. Before doing so—"
as I have already indicated quite plainly—
"he read with some care the All England Report of the Makanjuola judgment and marked the passage at p.623 between g and h. The sentence … 'the ultimate judge of where the balance of public interest lies is not him [i.e the Minister] but the Court' was, said Mr Heseltine, 'the clinching part as far as I was concerned'".
He quite plainly therefore was saying that he felt driven to sign a certificate. Even then he signed an amended form and he signed it with reluctance.
There is a difference of view between the Attorney and the Deputy Prime Minister about what one had said to the other. Page 1358 states,
"The Attorney General has commented to the Inquiry that Mr. Heseltine had not put his concerns in the kind of language which he used in evidence to the Inquiry".
The conclusion that Sir Richard reaches is the following,
"I have already noted that Mr. Heseltine was not aware that he could. in a clear case, agree to disclosure. Having regard to the last sentence of the main passage cited above from Miss Wheldon's Note of 4 September (Mr. Heseltine 'does not want to be party to the suppression of documents which are helpful to the defendants'), it should have been obvious that Mr. Heseltine was indicating in layman's terms that, where (as he believed to he the case) the documents were helpful to the defendants, they ought to be disclosed".
I am assisted as always by my noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees in making me conscious of the fact that time is passing and that I must not trespass too long. However, these are important matters which perhaps might hear even a second or two more to he squeezed out of the orange. I have to omit some pages of the report but I shall continue as quickly as possible. Page 1369 states that Mr. Moses, QC, as prosecutor,
"asked repeatedly to be supplied with copies of the flagged documents … His exasperation is evidenced by a manuscript note dated 29 September 1992 … The note refers to Mr. Moses 'crawling up the wall' on account of his lack of instructions on PII … He has made the reasonable point that all documents relevant to Government knowledge ought to have been shown to him and that, to the extent that they were not shown to him, it was impossible for him to discharge his responsibilities as leading counsel".
That prosecution was being directed by the leader of' the Bar of England and Wales—the present Attorney.
I wish to refer to a matter in parenthesis. The noble Baroness, Lady Denton, was a junior Minister in the DTI at that time. She is now, of course, a well regarded—and affectionately regarded—and trusted
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junior Minister at the Northern Ireland Office. She was pressed to sign one of these certificates for several hours. On page 1370 it is reported:
"At the end of the meeting, Baroness Denton had decided 'she did not feel confident to sign the certificate' and would not do so".
There are many other citations I can offer.
The burden of the criticism against the Attorney-General is this. Alan Moses, QC, was not fully instructed. The Attorney-General recognised what was as plain as a pikestaff; namely, that he needed to take an overall view and responsibility. Indeed, he said that he was doing so. He failed to do so. The Heseltine reservations were not properly put before the trial judge. They were not properly put to Mr. Moses, who bitterly complained to Sir Richard Scott—rightly, as Sir Richard found.
I do not suggest for one second that Sir Nicholas LyeIl behaved in a wilfully wrong manner, that he was motivated by wicked intent or anything of that kind. I do not suggest that for a second, as I hope I have made plain throughout the last 22 minutes. However, he was derelict in his duty. The summary of Sir Richard Scott finds him personally to blame and constitutionally responsible. That is a thrust to the heart. Under an honourable government this Attorney-General would have had to go.
7.41 p.m.
Lord Rawlinson of Ewell: My Lords, two years ago I publicly expressed my anxiety about the procedures in the Scott Inquiry. That was long before the draft report, let alone the final report, was published. I have some experience of public inquiries. I was a witness in the Denning Inquiry into the Profumo case, which was a form of inquiry so condemned by Lord Salmon that we hoped we would never see it again. I have been counsel for a party in other inquiries and counsel as a Law Officer in several. Nothing I have learnt since has altered my opinion that this procedure was hopelessly flawed.
The judge sat alone, eschewing assistance. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe referred to various recent tribunals where there was assistance. I look hack to the Lynskey tribunal or the hank rate tribunal where again the judge would not have dreamt of sitting alone. Only in minor criminal cases before the stipendiary magistrate does a judge sit alone. If it is a serious criminal case he has a jury. In a libel action, where honour and repute are at stake, one is entitled to a jury because it is dangerous to trust the decision of one man. Therefore, I regretted that Sir Richard Scott made the decision to sit alone.
He then adopted Chancery procedures, with the written questionnaire, the reply and the accusatorial cross-examination by counsel. It was extraordinary that counsel should sit beside him. I have been counsel in tribunals, but I would not have dreamt of sitting beside the inquirers. It is strange that Sir Richard Scott should have permitted that.
Sir Richard then proceeded without allowing any confrontation by legal representation, public submissions or argument. That was an immense flaw. It

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is not a procedure for inquiries which should be followed again. It is axiomatic in our society, as it is in the United States' constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, that one is allowed legal representation to play a public part in proceedings. Sir Richard Scott's defence was that it would have been too unwieldy and was unnecessary. As my noble friend said, it would not have been as unwieldy as this exchange of documents. It would have been easy to identify those people who should be given representation.
Thirty years ago the Labour Government set up a D-notice inquiry by Privy Counsellors. It was said that the Daily Express had breached D-notices warning the press against publishing matters which were contrary to the public interest. The Daily Express published a report that overseas telegrams were read and examined before they were sent. There was a public outcry. The Government set up the inquiry under Lord Radcliffe with Selwyn Lloyd and Emanuel Shinwell. The outcome of the inquiry was that the Daily Express was exonerated and it was said that there was no breach of the D-notice. The Labour Government published a White Paper rejecting the report of the inquiry which they had themselves set up.
Years later Mr. Harold Wilson, as he then was, spoke to me. I had been counsel for the Daily Express and Sir Max Aitken, and had been allowed to make submissions and cross-examine the then Foreign Secretary, Mr. George Brown. That was an experience not to be forgotten. Mr. Wilson told me that he knew that he had made a great mistake in not ensuring that the Government had been represented at that inquiry by the Attorney-General to make public the Government's case which, he said, had gone by default. Fairness, he felt, had not been seen to apply.
Lord Radcliffe spoke in the debate on the matter because the Government had rejected his report. However, he did not give a press conference. It is a little rich for the ubiquitous secretary to the Scott Inquiry to complain that the press and Ministers had used soundbites when Sir Richard Scott had held a press conference and had not left his report to he read for itself.
I come now to the question of the Attorney-General. Apart from myself, only the great noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross—-who is now 94 and, I am glad to say, going strong—and Sir Patrick Mayhew have had experience of the role of Attorney-General. For those who do not know the office—one of my successors as Chairman of the Bar, who has just spoken—it is an immense burden. The Law Officers' Department is a very small department. It has a mass of business. In my time the Law Officers used to spend much time in court when major government interests arose and conducted major prosecutions. I accept, but regret, that that is now rare. There is now an immense burden of giving advice.
The advice of the Attorney-General is not based, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, seemed to think, on the Attorney-General's personal legal expertise. I have looked up the opinions of some of the noble Lord's heroes of the 19th century. They had a
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great deal of assistance from junior counsel. The advice that the Attorney-General gives is based on research and assistance from the lawyers in his department, by the lawyers of the Treasury Solicitor and government departments' lawyers, and also by Treasury Counsel, who are in private practice and chosen because they are pre-eminent in their field.
To illustrate the calibre of those who advise the Attorney-General, when I was Attorney-General, among those who gave me advice, which combined to form the Attorney-General's opinion, was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, who was my junior in common law. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, was my junior in the Revenue. Lord Justice Gibson was my junior in Chancery. Judge Edward Cussen was my Treasury Counsel in crime. They were specialists. That is what is meant by the Attorney-General's opinion. All those come together; whether it is Chancery, Revenue or crime, one gets the best assistance. Therefore, the Attorney-General's advice has a weight and authority which is usually greater than that of ordinary advice. But it does not always mean that it is right. As with all legal opinion, it is not always found to be correct. Nor is any judgment, until eventually we reach the noble and learned Lords on the Judicial Committee who eventually pronounce; and that then is the law.
I remember the Thalidomide case. It was a test case brought at the suggestion of Mr. Harry Evans, editor of The Sunday Times, on which I had not only advised but, strangely enough, had been also a party and counsel. We set off on that great chase. I won in the Divisional Court, with three judges on my side: three nil. I lost in the Court of Appeal, with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, and two others against me: three all. I was upheld in the House of Lords: five up. The decision of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, was reversed. Later that controversial court, the Court of Human Rights, criticised the United Kingdom law of contempt. But the point was not what the UK law ought to be but what it was meant to be at the time. So the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, got it wrong. The noble Lord and learned Lord, Lord Denning, was often reversed. The House of Lords was continually reversing his decisions. I am sure that opinions of Sir Richard Scott have been reversed. Are you meant to resign? Are you meant to leave office if you have been reversed because a senior and superior court has a different opinion? Of course you are not. It is utter nonsense.
One of the wisest statements in the report is at page 1536. I promise noble Lords that this will be the only part that I shall quote. Sir Richard Scott says,
"Judges are fallible".
By heavens, my Lords, so they are, as every judge knows.
So this inquisitor—because that is what he was—had to look, as he should do, at what the law was then. He should then have asked, whether or not he agreed with the answer in the end, "Was the Attorney-General's opinion a respectable, tenable opinion backed by the opinion of other distinguished lawyers and founded on

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reasonable interpretation of judicial decisions?" If it was, even if he disagreed with the decision, he had no right to make a condemnation. That was grossly unfair.
But was the Attorney-General wrong? Your Lordships have heard quite clearly today that he was not wrong. We have already heard from the noble and learned Lords, Lord Lloyd of Berwick and Lord Slynn of Hadley, that he was not wrong. They disagreed with Sir Richard Scott. To reach his decision, Sir Richard Scott had to disagree with the decision of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, when he was counsel; he had to disagree with Mr. Justice Collins when he was counsel (he later criticises him); he had to disagree with Mr. Justice Laws when he was counsel; with Mr. Kalisher QC, at that time chairman of the Criminal Bar Association; and with Mr. Richards, Mr. Charles, Mr. Moses QC, and Mr. Justice Hodgson. Over whether public interest immunity applied to criminal cases, he had to disagree with Lord Justice Phillips. With regard to there being a balancing exercise in criminal cases, he had to disagree with the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Justice Simon Brown; and he disagrees with Lord Justice Bingham and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson, and Lord Justice Mann in the Osman case.
In his tortuous paths—I fear that they were extremely tortuous—to prove that the Attorney-General's advice in 1992 was wrong, he rejects, or slides around, the opinions of many distinguished counsel and rejects the judgments of distinguished judges. He then comes out with the condemnation. To brand the Attorney-General as culpably incompetent, as suggested by the leader of the Opposition, is grotesque.
In the House of Commons on the Opposition Front Bench. I used to shadow Sir Elwyn-Jones, as he then was. As happens from time to time—I hope that it will not occur in a year or two—things change. I was on the Government Front Bench and Lord Elwyn-Jones on the Opposition Front Bench. As a matter of principle, we tried to keep matters of law apart from the rush and tumble of party politics; and that, I believe, is what ought to be done.
As regards Matrix, the Attorney-General has constitutional responsibility because he has the ultimate sanction of entering a nolle prosequi. As to his personal responsibility, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn. He must he allowed to rely on an experienced prosecutor—and there is no fairer and more experienced a prosecutor than Mr. Moses—and on the solicitors for Customs and Excise. He does not superintend, although I agree that he should superintend, the prosecutions of Customs and Excise, as he does the Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office. He should be able to superintend them because, as has been said, they are too much of a loose cannon.
He did not read the papers because he was asked a specific question on public interest immunity as to what was the duty of Ministers and what was the law. He answered that, and he answered it correctly. He saw prosecuting counsel and the Customs and Excise solicitor. He assured himself that the prosecution was fair. He was confident. The situation was not unique.
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Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, one would think that the position was extraordinary. It was not unique. Judges have to look at documents which are the subject of public interest immunity. He knew that the judge would have to do that.
Judge Smedley (now Mr. Justice Smedley) saw, as Mr. Kalisher QC, emphasised, Mr. Heseltine's certificate. Mr. Kalisher states that it makes Mr. Heseltine's views clear from its terms. All defence counsel save one—and he was the one the BBC, of course, paraded on television—stated in the clearest terms after the trial that the issue of disclosure had been properly, fairly and openly dealt with by the Attorney-General and prosecuting counsel.
Finally, I confess that with a report of an inquiry so flawed in procedure, so contrary to principles of natural justice in this country, I would be tempted to throw in my hand and return to the more rational, adult and certainly more lucrative life of the Bar. But I would do that not because I ought to but because I have been sickened by the misconceptions of the role and of the conduct of an Attorney-General by those who have never held the office and do not understand it. I have been sickened by modern party political battles which are so much less civilised than they were in my day. I have been sickened by the power of an ignorant, ill-informed, malevolent and unscrupulous television media, and some of the rather woolly minded columnists, one of whom I read today.
Sir Nicholas Lyell has decided to tough it out. That is the braver course. For that he is to be admired and not to be traduced.
7.58 p.m.
Lord Wilberforce: My Lords, my only excuse for addressing a few words—they will he only a few—to your Lordships this evening is that I find myself at three points very much in empathy with the Scott Report. First, many years ago I spent a period in the upper reaches of the Civil Service. Therefore, by contrast with most of my judicial colleagues, I have perhaps a little understanding of the way in which government works from the inside. Secondly, I had the honour to be a member of the judiciary for a short period in the same section as Sir Richard Scott.
Thirdly, I have presided over some inquiries under different procedures. That has given me, no doubt, an opportunity of appraising the value and the high quality of the Scott Report. It has also enabled me to form some opinion as to the procedure adopted in that report. I shall not go into that, but I must say that I find myself very much in line and in sympathy with what has been said by that formidable trio on the second Bench—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, the noble Lord, Lord Rippon of Hexham, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson.
From the period that I had in the Civil Service I learnt three things: first, the enormous complexity of the nature of government in the formation and carrying out of policy, especially where several departments are concerned. It is difficult to obtain a clear, consistent,

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easily describable picture. The whole thing is muddy and not transparent. Secondly, I received a clear impression which I retain to this day of the remarkably high standard of integrity—and that hardly needs saying—and also of concern in the Administration for constitutional propriety, especially in relations with Parliament, There is an almost obsessive care in securing the accuracy of information supplied to Parliament. It exists and always has existed. Thirdly, I recognise a degree of tension between the Executive on the one hand and the legal system and the judiciary on the other. There is the consciousness that out there, in the legal system, are methods of thought, sets of values, and conventions which are different and which above all use a different language from the methods, conventions and language used by those who form government policy.
One has to hear that in mind when listening to criticisms of the Scott Report. Of course, Sir Richard, as a highly intelligent judge, is quite conscious of the possible gap in the relationship and of the difference in methods of' thought between the two worlds. He has made great efforts to adjust to them, but the difference remains, underlying his approach. I shall return to it in a moment.
I do not wish to discuss the subject of public interest immunity. Your Lordships have heard an authoritative statement by my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd of Berwick. Other noble Lords have joined in and I have no doubt that any loose ends will be more than adequately gathered up by my noble and learned friend Lord Ackner who is to speak later. I leave it entirely to them.
I wish to say something about misleading Parliament which has occupied so much attention in the media, to the extent of becoming almost a witch hunt. It has been powerfully taken up this evening by the noble Lord, Lord Richard. It is quite clear that Sir Richard Scott, in his report, has accepted in full that Mr. Waldegrave had no intention to mislead Parliament. His honour is totally cleared; it ought never to have been impugned. What is in some dispute perhaps is whether what he said or wrote about the Government's policy was objectively misleading to Parliament. The Scott Report says yes, and that we have to consider for ourselves.
There we return to the difference in approach which l mentioned a moment ago. The lawyer's approach, which is basically the approach of the report, is to take the words used, compare them with a set of facts which is found to be established and then to judge whether there is a discrepancy between the two. If so, it is misleading. That is what Scott did in the report. He took the words used by Mr. Waldegrave, quoted them and said: "No possible reading of those words used could be taken to conform with the facts". That is what the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, described as legal "exactitude".
However, there is another approach which I believe the Government urge upon us and which was commended to us by the noble Baroness. It is an altogether broader approach. We must consider what was said in the context in which it was used. The context
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is of an accepted practice, known well to Parliament, that one does not give particulars of arms sales, especially where two different states are concerned. I need not emphasise to your Lordships that the states concerned are Iran and Iraq, which presented a situation of particular sensitivity all through the relevant period. We must consider statements in the context of the guidelines which were confessedly and purposely made flexible. We must consider that it was obvious to everyone, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, made clear that Guideline 3 could not continue to apply after the ceasefire. That was self-evident and therefore there had to be some change. In the admirable words of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, there was an,
"evolution of the guidelines",
under changing circumstances. That is 'hat existed and it was part of the context.
We must also consider that the context of what was involved was not the supply of weapons or what is called "lethal" equipment, but mainly machine tools. We must consider the context that what was relevant and important in the way of intelligence had not been made available to the Ministers concerned. All that was part of a complex system, worked out across the departments and known well to exist by Parliament, to whom the statements were made.
The system may be unsatisfactory. The very great value of the Scott Report is that it gives the arguments and the materials and it points the way for a change in approach if Parliament chooses to take it, in the direction of less secrecy or further examination by Parliament. But it would be wrong and wholly unjust to lay criticism, and still less sanctions, on those persons who, let us remember, were not centrally in the policy area and who bona fide—and I emphasise bona fide—had been working the system in what they saw to he the national interest. There is no dispute about it, in the end it was in the national interest. Again, I refer to what the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, said. On the issue, whatever we find in the Scott Report, I suggest that Parliament can and should take its own view. Let us hope that both here and in another place that view will be just.
8.7 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I totally accept all that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, said, particularly about the practical approach to the problem to which my noble friend Lady Thatcher referred. The report has great intrinsic value which lies in its findings and recommendations. They lead and have already led to better dissemination of intelligence reports, consultation as to how to update export controls, perhaps a review of the PII system, all-party talks on ministerial accountability, better disclosure of departmental documents and so on, in an effort to improve the ordering of government.
In that regard, Sir Richard has assuredly rendered an important public service and he is much to be congratulated. That is the purpose for which an inquiry of that nature is set up. It is not to put Ministers on trial

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and convict them for misconduct, as is recognised by the absence of any summary of conclusions. The leader in The Times entitled "The Bad Attorney", referred to by my noble friend Lord Rippon of Hexham, found Mr. Attorney guilty of incompetence which rendered it his duty to resign. That was a vilification. It was based on a series of erroneous assumptions of fact, corrected by Mr. Attorney in his reply in The Times today.
Adverse comment, based on a wholly erroneous substructure of fact, albeit on a matter of public interest, may never be considered as fair. Talk about trial by the newspapers. This about takes the biscuit! On the same substructure of erroneous fact adopted by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, we have trial by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, who also finds the Attorney-General guilty, and Mr. Waldegrave as well. That was a similar order of trial, and was similarly unfair.
At least, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, did not set out on a head-hunting expedition to find his scalps after the fashion of the noble Lord, Lord Richard. However, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, fell into serious error on one or two occasions. He referred to Scott being appointed "to try". Scott was never appointed to try anything. He was appointed to inquire, report and recommend. The noble Lord referred to the duty to sign being automatic. It is nothing of the sort. The Minister had to decide for himself—nothing was automatic—whether the documents fell within the class. However, there is no merit at this hour in picking out small objections.
The purpose is to assert that the conduct of the Attorney-General was totally correct, as was his advice; and that the integrity of Mr. Waldegrave has been unjustly impugned; that there was no ministerial conspiracy to cover up; and that the proceedings were properly instituted. To make good those assertions one has to enter a sort of maze of pick-and-choose, indulge in a novel pastime and selective interpretation of passages in a voluminous report to seek to establish which findings are made in which context and which inter-relate. Already, this sodden field has been trampled into a quagmire. And already, the order of contention has reached a storm in a very nasty, very dirty political tea-cup, from which the papers and other media avidly imbibe—today, alas, in company with the noble Lord, Lord Richard.
Before entering the maze, noble Lords may wish to consider whether the findings in this inquisitorial process are apt to found serious allegations of misconduct on which to hound my right honourable friends out of office. There has been no finding of misconduct by any recognisable judicial process. Under this inquisitorial process there is no specific charge of misconduct to answer. The inference of misconduct was nebulous and evolved, or emerged, from the answers of witnesses under sustained adversarial questioning, to which my noble and learned friend Lord Howe and my noble friend Lord Rippon of Hexham referred. That is a potent ground of appeal if adopted by a judge in any judicial proceedings. There was no opportunity for the witness to question the questioner, or any other witness. There was no legal representation. There was no
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opportunity to answer any specific charge of misconduct, and none was ever formulated. An opportunity to comment on or correct a draft was not offered.
It is not the inquisitorial process as such that is open to criticism, but the manner in which it was applied. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe, my noble friend Lord Rippon and the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, referred to that, and I agree with them. But most of all the problem is the use to which these findings have been put since publication of the report: using such findings as definitive judicial determinations of misconduct. That is a use to which they were put today by the noble Lord, Lord Richard. They are not, and could not properly have been, anything of the sort.
As to the findings in the report critical of the advice given by the Attorney-General as to Ministers' duty to sign, enough has been said by those who carry far more authority than I could ever master.
I turn to the conduct of the Attorney-General. That has been criticised, and there is no cause for such criticism. There was no cause for the Attorney-General to read the papers, for the reasons already given. He was asked what was the position in law, and it was his duty to answer. It is the judge who reads the papers and forms the view. There was no basis before him on which he could have entered a nolle prosequi. The Attorney-General has no statutory supervisory duty over the C&E, but he did satisfy himself that the proceedings were fairly instituted. He reasonably assumed that his correspondence with my right honourable friend Mr. Heseltine would have been available in court, as copies were sent by him to the Treasury Solicitor and, as my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham said, apparently they reached the judge. The Department of Trade and Industry did not reply to the Treasury Solicitor's letter suggesting that counsel should be instructed to make representations to Mr. HeseRine. When the newspaper report suggested that Mr. Alan Clark had given a nod and a wink to breach the guidelines, the Attorney-General saw to it on his own initiative that Mr. Alan Clark should he asked whether his written statement, in which no mention was made of this, was correct. This was done on 18th September 1992 by telephone, because Mr. Clark was busy and for some reason could not come to London. Again, on 11th October, the day before the trial, Mr. Alan Clark confirmed that his statement was correct. It was confirmed twice: on 11th October and 12th October. Before the trial started on the 12th, all the relevant material had been disclosed to which the certificates were related.
It was suggested that in relation to the guidelines Mr. Waldegrave lied to Parliament and did so deliberately, and that he also lied in certain correspondence. Sir Richard found as a fact that my right honourable friend regarded the relaxed interpretation of Guideline 3 as revised (when the old one was overtaken by events) as being a justifiable use of flexibility believed to be inherent in the guidelines. The rectitude of such belief was subsequently affirmed by a Cabinet Office paper on 15th February in the government information pack. Sir Richard also found as

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a fact that my right honourable friend did not regard the agreement that he had reached with his fellow Ministers—namely, the revision of Guideline 3—as a change of policy towards Iraq. Sir Richard also found expressly that there was no insincerity in any of his answers.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, as usual, probably holds the key; namely, from which end of the telescope does one look at the matter? Does one take the lawyer's approach or the practical, ordinary, commonsense approach? On the practical, ordinary and commonsense approach is not the noble and learned Lord totally correct? Here there is a system in which for years there has been a policy of no information on arms sales for various reasons—foreign policy, trade policy and all sorts of policy. There are guidelines in force and flexibility. Is one to suppose that a Minister of State, who does not look at matters like a lawyer but as an ordinary, commonsense person, would think that there had been a change of policy? Anyway, that did not happen. My noble friend Lady Thatcher says that there was not. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe says that there was not. Good heavens, I should have thought that that alone would be enough. But Mr. Waldegrave says that there was not and my noble friend Lord Trefgarne says that there was not. The only person who says there was is Mr. Alan Clark. That was a fanciful suggestion made to an answer in cross-examination which was wholly misconceived.
One wonders whether those who maintain that Mr. Waldegrave deliberately lied to Parliament are entirely familiar with the guidelines and in particular Guideline 3, which was revised after the ceasefire. It has been referred to already. That revision, as noble Lords may not remember, was proposed by Mr. Alan Clark, who discussed it with Mr. Waldegrave and with my noble friend Lord Trefgarne. It was approved by the Secretaries of State, the DTI, the FCO, the MoD and the Prime Minister.
The Matrix Churchill application for the licence stated that the end use was for civilian purposes, which it was not. But Mr. Waldegrave, whose integrity I seek to defend, would not have granted it in any case if he had seen the intelligence reports. At no time has a deceitful application been allowed, encouraged or condoned. All suggestions of Mr. Alan Clark to the contrary, under cross-examination, were misconceived.
The flexibility is self-evident in the guidelines and in particular in Guideline 3. The exercise of discretion took account of such matters as the ceasefire, the fatwa, the execution of Bazoft, hostages in the Lebanon, the capability and likely use of equipment, the viability of engineering concerns (and employment) in competition with those in other countries which had no export restriction, and so on—a myriad considerations. It was found by Sir Richard that the overriding and determinative reason was to protect British industries.
I ask your Lordships whether it is realistic to maintain that, in answer to a parliamentary Question in either House at that time, the guidelines should have been disclosed together with the case-by-case manner of discretionary enforcement. Even if Sir Richard's finding
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were correct, surely this was the kind of special situation in which, having regard to the other factors taken into account, the withholding of information could well be justified apart from the intelligence factor, which was not known to Mr. Waldegrave. On this matter, is it not reasonable to accept that the agreed response to parliamentary Questions and correspondence gave an adequate description of government policy: that the,
"guidelines are kept under constant review and are applied in the light of prevailing circumstances, including the ceasefire and developments in the peace negotiations",
as indeed was the case? Reference has been made to Erskine May. My noble and learned friend Lord Fraser of Carmyllie referred to it. These guidelines, as the term expressly recognises, have no legal efficacy or mandatory effect and had inherent flexibility.
The question of the conspiracy seems now to have been dropped. I conclude with a short word about the institution of proceedings. Matrix Churchill applied to export to Iraq two machine tools: one computer programmed to make shell cases and fuses and the other to make multi-parts for a multi-launcher rocket system. The end use to which such dual purpose, non-lethal defence equipment was to be put was one of the main factors which had to he taken into account in granting the application. The application falsely stated that the end use was for civilian purposes. If the true purpose had been stated, no licence would have been granted. The licence was obtained by serious and material deception. The Customs and Excise had no way in which they could not prosecute.
8.27 p.m.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: My Lords, despite the intervening speeches and the passage of time, I hope that your Lordships will understand that I cannot forbear to mention the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Taverne. We have been close friends for almost 50 years, though it does not seem like it, and political allies in many battles. It is a very great personal pleasure to find him here. I thought that his speech was marked by great clarity, conviction and intellectual strength. I know that the qualities seen today are qualities that he will bring to your Lordships' House in the period ahead.
As many other noble Lords have done, my noble friend spoke about Volume III of the Scott Report. My text is contained in Section D of the report, and particularly Chapters I, 3 and 4. They are all to be found in the first volume between pages 151 and 507. They concern defence policy. Many differing views have been strongly expressed in this debate, as one would expect. No doubt they and more views expressed in another place will he widely reported in tomorrow's newspapers. But I ask those who do not trust politicians any longer—they are many—and those who do not trust newspapers either, to read the report or at least read parts of it. Certainly, I should be happy to leave the final verdict to those who read the report.
I do not find Volume I of the report wordy, obscure or too long. It has a powerful internal momentum and a cumulative force. Its message is plain. Section D of the report sets out to answer two simple questions. First, was the policy on defence sales to Iraq changed after

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the ceasefire? Secondly, if the policy was changed, was Parliament told? To the first question Scott answers yes and to the second no.
I listened carefully to those who spoke today in defence of Ministers and the Government's position. I cannot understand how anyone reading the evidence in the report can disagree with the verdict of Sir Richard Scott. It is not a question of whether the guidelines for defence sales to Iraq should have been changed; there may have been a case for that. The question is simply whether they were changed.
If the guidelines were changed, it cannot conceivably be claimed that Parliament should not have been told. After all, the Howe guidelines were reported to Parliament, even if almost a year late. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, is not in his place, but I have to say that I found his reasons for the delay quite unconvincing. However, Parliament was at last told in October 1985. If indeed the Howe guidelines were reported to Parliament, then any change in those guidelines, however that change is explained, should have been reported as well. Sir Richard Scott's view on disclosure is unequivocal. It has already been quoted, so I shall not repeat it; it is to he found in paragraph D1.165 on page 221. His view is beyond dispute. Scott's view is also unequivocal and beyond dispute on the question of the change in policy.
I should tell the House that for two-and-a-half years in the mid-1970s I was Minister of State for Defence and directly involved in the procurement of equipment and in defence sales. Earlier I had served in both the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade, or the DTI as it became. The briefings, the exchange of minutes, the meetings described in the report by Sir Richard Scott are entirely familiar. There is nothing surprising about the course of events, except the foolishness of it all.
First, there are the remarks of an official, Mr. Simmons, of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who says in paragraph D3.7, page 374:
"The first phase of changing our approach would take the form of a relaxation of our interpretation of the guidelines".
The later claim that,
"a relaxation of our interpretation of the guidelines".
did not mean a change of policy is surely logic chopping. Everyone who has served in government will know exactly what that meant. That was followed, in paragraph D3.30, by the briefing from Mr. Waldegrave which stressed the need,
"to update our policy in the light of the ceasefire…
There was a later reference in the briefing to "shifting policy".
Finally—it has been referred to and is a major feature of the report—there was the ministerial meeting on 21st December between Mr. Waldegrave, Alan Clark and the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. The important text, reported in paragraph D3.36, refers to the minutes of the meeting contained in the letter written by Mr. Waldegrave's private secretary, which said:
"The Ministers agreed after discussion that it would now be right to consider modifying [the guidelines)".
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Reference is made to "adjusting our public policy" and to "the attached revised guidelines".
I do not believe that anybody reading the report and following that course of events can doubt that there was a change. It is entirely perverse—and a remarkable argument—to argue that, as any change of policy should have been sanctioned by senior Ministers and the Prime Minister, and such a sanction was not asked for, no change of policy had occurred. That simply does not stand up in the way that government works. Scott called it "sophistry"; I simply call it laughable. Of course senior Ministers should have been told. If it were not the Ministers of State themselves who conveyed the message, it should have been their private secretaries. Ministers of State—I served as one in three different departments—were out of control if they did not report to their Secretaries of State the decision that they had reached, or their private secretaries failed to do so. It is quite foreign to all my experience of government.
The best summary of what happened in this case was given by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, when he referred to the minute to the Foreign Secretary from Sir Timothy Daunt, Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Defence in the FCO, dated 18th November 1992. I shall not repeat it now. I say only that that was confirmation from the Foreign Office itself, if confirmation were needed, that there had been a change. I say that again without prejudice as to whether or not the guidelines should have been changed.
I believe that I have some experience of the context in which Ministers—in this case Ministers of State and particularly at the Ministry of Defence—make their decisions when arms sales are at stake. First, there is an exaggerated climate of secrecy in which defence matters are concealed from Parliament and the public that are harmless and common currency in discussions, for example, in Washington. The noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, referred to the development of Chevaline, which was reported to Parliament as updating Polaris. The noble Baroness was quite right to quote that as an example of a government in which I served using such language. But I thought then, and I say now, that it was quite unnecessary to fail to report to Parliament those most important developments on nuclear policy when they were fully understood and talked about among our NATO allies.
Secondly, there was a question of commercial confidentiality, which is invoked at all times to justify the denial of information to Parliament. The Minister referred to that today. Though there is sometimes justification, it is greatly overdone.
Thirdly, there is immense pressure from the defence industry, including the trade unions within it, to maximise the sales of defence equipment. I accept the Minister's figure that there may be up to 400,000 employees of such firms.
Fourthly, Ministers who hesitate to give approval to defence sales are always told, "The French will sell to anyone, so what is the point of giving the market to them?" That is a way of persuading them, quite often, to act in a way which otherwise could not possibly be justified.

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Fifthly—there is a whole story in this which I cannot develop tonight—Ministers are also told that the export potential of defence sales will be enhanced if they first buy the equipment, despite budget restraints, for our own Armed Forces. There is a circle of persuasion, which in my view is very dangerous and seductive.
Finally, the Head of Defence Export Sales is a powerful voice in the department, with a large staff behind him. It produces a tough culture of its own, where selling arms is almost a patriotic duty which marks off the men from the boys. In those circumstances, Ministers must always stay cool and never forget their obligations to Parliament.
I am not against defence sales in principle. As I said, I participated in the making of policy many years ago. But as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield said, it is important that the political and moral case always has the upper hand. It must never be forgotten by Ministers, whatever the pressures upon them.
There are many countries in the world to which we can sell arms. It would be foolish not to sell arms to our NATO allies. But beyond that there must be clear and precise guidelines for defence sales; those guidelines must be agreed at the highest level of government; they must be put on record by being fully and promptly reported to Parliament; they must be implemented in the letter and the spirit without gloss or interpretation and any changes must be treated in the same way. Against such criteria it is clear from the Scott Report that the Government failed in the period 1984 to 1990 and particularly in 1988 and 1989. As others have said, it would have been far better if the Government had admitted that, both in their evidence to the inquiry and since. In refusing to do so, they have made a rod for their own back.
8.39 p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, I thought it would be useful if I explained why I am speaking in the debate, what I have learnt and my conclusions from that. I was concerned 10 days ago about the Government's Statement suggesting that everything was all right. I was also concerned about the Opposition response to that Statement which suggested that everything was all wrong. As a result of the exchanges on that day I determined to read the report and make my own judgment. I would also say in passing that I put down a Question for Written Answer asking who in the Government had had access to the report beforehand, for how long they had had it and on what terms they had had it. I can report to the House that I am still awaiting a reply to my Question.
The Scott Report is very even-handed. I liken it to a judge summing up at the end of a criminal trial. A judge who is summing up at the end of a criminal trial has to be careful that he explains the whole case even-handedly and does not sum up in favour of one side or the other—otherwise he would be subject to appeal. The report itself reads like a thriller. It is not quite as snappy as the TV programme "The A Team", where good guys like Mr. T hammer the had guys. The report is nevertheless a thrilling read. I am only sorry that more Members of
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your Lordships' House who have contributed to the debate have not read the report. We are the jury. Initially, we parliamentarians have to decide who the good guys and the bad guys are. But ultimately it will be the British public who will decide in a general election.
I had two central questions to which I sought answers in reading the Scott Report. First, did Ministers mislead Parliament? Secondly, did government action through withholding evidence for the defence put at risk the liberty of innocent men? Having read the Scott Report, I find the Government guilty on both counts. I shall not quote directly, but Volume I makes it clear that in February 1989 the guidelines were changed by the three junior Ministers, only one of whom is still in the Government, and that through 1989 and 1990 Parliament—-Conservative Members, Labour Members and Liberal Democrat Members in both Houses—was advised that the guidelines had not changed. Parliament was misled.
With regard to the second charge. Volume III of the report sets out the whole shabby story. Again I shall not weary your Lordships by quoting chapter and verse. That has been done quite adequately by a number of noble Lords on this side of the House. I was curious how the Government could insist that Ministers had a duty to sign public interest immunity certificates. The way it came across was that they had no discretion in the matter--they were required to sign pieces of paper put in front of them without any regard to their own judgment. The advice given by the Attorney-General was that Ministers had to sign the PlICs as a matter of duty.
I started asking myself: a duty to whom; a duty to what; what kind of duty was it that compelled someone to sign the document using no judgment of their own'? However, the reality is a little different. As I understand it—it comes through clearly if one reads the report—it is the Minister who has to make a judgment whether a document should or should not be disclosed in the public interest. It is not Law Officers but individual Ministers who have that duty. If the Minister makes a judgment that the document should or should not be disclosed, then be has a duty effectively to make that public by signing a public interest immunity certificate. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, from a sedentary position, says that I am wrong. I call in aid Lord Justice Scott and also the interpretation that Mr. Heseltine clearly had. He felt that documents should be made available to the court but was wrongly advised by the Attorney-General that he had to sign a PII certificate about them. Mr. Heseltine was right and the Attorney-General was wrong. It was luck rather than judgment that innocent men did not go to gaol. That is not good enough.
I come now to my conclusions. Because of the way that this Government have acted we live in a world of mistrust. Parliament cannot trust Ministers to give honest answers. The courts cannot trust the public interest immunity certificates that are signed by Ministers. Effectively, every judge who has a PIIC placed in front of him has to read all the papers. He cannot trust what the Minister has signed for. The prosecuting authorities cannot trust what is government

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policy and therefore in terms of the 1939 Act—now the 1990 Act—the government policy determines what is a criminal offence. This goes to the kernel of the problem. By operating a policy which determined the criminality of an action, in secret—without publicising it—the Government laid themselves open to a situation where an independent prosecuting authority—Customs and Excise—was required to operate its public duty to prosecute but was unaware, because it was never divulged, that the criminal law was different from its interpretation of it. That is an unsatisfactory affair.
Last but not least, the ordinary citizen cannot trust this Government either to tell the truth or not to subject him to arbitrary diktat. I stand here not as a party man in this case but as a parliamentarian. I judge that the Government have misled Parliament and were prepared to see innocent men go to gaol. We have had no word of apology and no sign of contrition from the Government. The whole matter was crystalised for me by the evidence given by a member of the security services, a Mr. T, when be described Mr. Henderson, a defendant in the Matrix Churchill trial, as not only "a brave man"; as not only "a very brave man"; but as "a very, very brave man". In the vernacular, Mr. T iced the bad guys. The bad guys in this case are the Government.
8.49 p.m.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, today we have had the privilege of hearing some exceptionally fine speeches. It is a great pity that the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, was clearly not listening to them or he would not have made the speech that he did. He failed to understand a single word said by the most distinguished lawyers of this country whom we have had the privilege of hearing today. It is a pity that the noble Lord did not rewrite his speech since, presumably, hearing those noble Lords speak.
I was fascinated earlier when I heard the speeches of the two ex-Brussels Commissioners, both of whom declared themselves in favour of open government truly a most wonderful change of attitude since they returned home from the Continent. What is more, I fell to wondering what Sir Richard Scott would make of the proceedings in Brussels were he to be unleashed into that place where there is so much corruption, as we know from every year's report of the Court of Auditors. If we had to find another little job for Sir Richard, it might well be to send him across there to make another report which would give us all a great deal of enjoyment. In fact, hearing those two noble Lords I felt that I had never before heard two such blackened old pots pointing fingers at saucepans.
I was immensely impressed by the speech of my noble friend Lady Thatcher, which was so short, so clear and so absolutely to the point. I was also impressed by the speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Howe. I do not think that I have heard him in better form in all my life. He was clear, to the point and immensely impressive in all that he said, as were many other noble Lords, but as I do not want to detain the House I shall not refer to them all.
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I wish to confine my remarks to a relatively restricted area for I have no personal insight into the events in which my right honourable friends William Waldegrave and Sir Nicholas Lyell were involved. As far as I can see from scanning the report, William Waldegrave was not involved in any dishonourable act—nor would I have expected him to be for I know few men in politics more concerned to take all of their decisions in the light of what is the best possible practice and to do so in the most honourable way.
As to Sir Nicholas Lyell, the report, the comments on it and our debate today demonstrate the truth of the old adage that he who consults two lawyers is likely to get three opinions. Today the lawyers who gave opinions favourable to the Attorney-General were the ones I have always found the most impressive.
I should like to raise one point of criticism of the Government; perhaps it is not so much a criticism as something that I still do not understand. I still remain puzzled as to why the prosecution against Henderson and others was not stopped before it ever started. I ask myself which Ministers had responsibility, through their responsibilities for MI6, for protecting those who were acting on behalf of the Government.
I do not know the answers to that question, but I do know something about Part 1 of the report which deals with the export control system, having been a Minister responsible for that matter. I noticed that on 1st November 1994 the Secretary to the Scott Inquiry wrote to the Prime Minister's Private Secretary saying:
"this section … underpins much of the Report which follows it".
He was wrong. It does not underpin it. That section of the report is fatally flawed. Indeed, it rather undermines Sir Richard Scott. I regret to use of Sir Richard words as harsh as those which he uses of more than 20 senior Ministers of both parties. Nonetheless, it is clear to me that through his unwillingness to look fairly at the evidence—indeed, by a willingness to reach conclusions without hearing the evidence—Sir Richard prejudiced himself at an early stage of his inquiry into the matter.
Those are hard words, so I must justify them. In May 1993 Sir Richard sent to the Government a paper concerning the framework for the control of exports. In that paper on page 2, Sir Richard states:
"It appears to me, however, that the powers, now permanent, conferred on the Government by the 1939 Act, are totalitarian in concept and effect".
I repeat that the word used by Sir Richard was "totalitarian". I sent Sir Richard the definitions of that word from the leading English dictionaries and I asked him which he had in mind when writing that letter. Sir Richard never replied.
So here it was that at the beginning of his inquiry Sir Richard began to "underpin" much that followed in his report by a view that is unsustainable except out of prejudice. He began with a false premise—the quite bizarre belief that for half a century Labour and Conservative majorities in Parliament, horn out of free and fair multi-party elections, connived to operate—let me use the Oxford Dictionary definition:
"a system of government which tolerates only one political party, to which all other institutions are subordinated, and which usually demands the complete subservience of the individual to the State".

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It was on that foundation that Sir Richard built his report. Totalitarian? Did noble Lords opposite know that they were members of a "totalitarian" regime when they were in office? Sir Richard apparently thinks that they were. And nobody—not Parliament, not the BBC, not the press, not the National Council for Civil Liberties, not the Church, not the CBI nor the TUC—noticed that we were using "totalitarian" legislation until Sir Richard found it out for himself one afternoon. That is what Sir Richard says underpins his report.
Sir Richard finds that:
"From 1950 at latest until December 1990 there was in my opinion a reprehensible abuse of executive power by successive administrations".
I should say that I am grateful to Sir Richard who responded to some robust letters from me by rewriting certain sections of his report to remove the very personal criticisms which he had made of me and my Minister of State, Paul Channon, in the first draft. In his final report Sir Richard now makes it plain that I am no more—nor any less—a totalitarian abuser of power than my 20 or so predecessors and successors in the office of President of the Board of Trade. Perhaps I may list a few of those who held that office between the end of the Second World War and 1990. This is a list of reprehensible abusers of power who used totalitarian legislation. The list includes Lord Wilson and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross, who was so praised today from the Liberal Democrat Benches; Lord Thorneycroft and the noble Lords, Lord Jay, Lord Mason, Lord Walker and Lord Cockfield; Sir Edward Heath, Anthony Crosland, Peter Shore. Sir John Nott, John Biffen, Sir Leon Brittan and the late John Smith. The man who finds them all guilty of reprehensible abuse of power is himself at least guilty of reprehensible abuse of language or, more likely, a serious lack of judgment.
Sir Richard came to his conclusion believing that the Cold War was not an extension of the hot war of 1939-45 and that Ministers had no need of the powers which were conferred by the 1939 Act. I explained to him that he was wrong. I gave him an example of why the powers had to be wide and immune from delaying tactics. I shall give the House the same example this evening.
While I was Secretary of State my department had granted a licence for the export of certain machinery to Czechoslovakia. We believed that it was not capable of use detrimental to the security of the West. We later became aware, through the activities of an intelligence agency, that we were wrong and that in fact the machinery was vital to the development of the Soviet Union's nuclear missiles. I inquired what had happened and I was told that some of the machinery had gone, but not all of it, and that the most vital parts had not left the country. I did not have long to act: I did not have time to play around. I had to act that day and stop the export of that material. Had there been the possibility of the seeking of injunctions or judicial reviews of my action, that equipment might well have gone to the Soviet Union. That is why we needed powers of that kind.
I do not even know whether the secretary to the inquiry who dealt with all correspondence, ever even told Sir Richard Scott or let him see my letter, for I was
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never called to give evidence. Sir Richard talks of the abuse of power by more than a score of Cabinet Ministers over nearly half a century. If that had happened, I would have expected there to be an appendix to the Scott Report listing all those who had been outraged by this abuse of power. It is not there. Sir Richard lists three cases which went to law. In each case the Minister was upheld. Sir Richard is unabashed. It seems that the facts should not be allowed to distort a conclusion already reached. He simply says that the cases were not well brought. He says that if they had been brought on other grounds the plaintiffs would have won. I suppose it is always easier to be confident of the outcome of a case if one has not been confused by the evidence.
I have no hesitation in saying that this section of Sir Richard's report is a shoddy document. It attacks the reputation of more than 20 Ministers of both parties, two of whom became Prime Ministers and another, John Smith, who led his party. Few were invited to give evidence. Sir Richard reached his conclusions by being economical with the evidence. He reached a nonsensical view that Parliament allowed a totalitarian measure to be used for nearly half a century. He says that there was no parliamentary procedure to check its use. No parliamentary procedure!
Those of us in particular who have served in another place are aware of the potency of the House of Commons; the ability of Back-Bench Members to defend the interests of their constituents or employers in their constituencies by searching parliamentary questions, adjournment debates and the Select Committee procedures. If ever the Conservative or Labour Opposition had thought that there had been a serious abuse of executive power, they could on a Supply Day, have brought a Motion calling the Ministers concerned to account. In nearly half a century it never happened. Sir Richard's conclusion is that that is because Parliament does not work. My conclusion is that it is precisely because Parliament does work and it is Sir Richard who does not understand how it works. It is not surprising. I would never suggest that I should be appointed to head a law commission.
If there is one lesson to be learnt above all from this affair it is a very simple one and it was hinted at by my noble friend Lord Rippon and indeed by my noble and learned friend Lord Howe; namely, that alleged public scandals involving matters which are not in themselves justiciable, would be better resolved by practitioners of standing in government rather than by judges.
9.6 p.m.
Lord Wright of Richmond: My Lords, I decided to add my name to the long list of speakers in today's debate in view of my involvement in some of the matters during the period covered in Sir Richard Scott's report, first, as ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1984 to 1986 and, secondly, as Permanent Under-Secretary in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1986 until my retirement from the Diplomatic Service in 1991. I should add that I am not the Permanent Under-Secretary referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, although I am the Permanent

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Under-Secretary who should probably apologise belatedly to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, for having added so significantly to the 25 tonnes of paper that he took home every night.
I do not propose to enter into the political controversy about ministerial, or indeed official, responsibility for the mistakes and confusions criticised in the report beyond saying that, having worked with the right honourable gentleman Mr. William Waldegrave throughout his time as Minister of State in the Foreign Office, I wish to associate myself fully with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, in his letter to The Times of 20th February. I would add that many of the officials named or criticised in the report are former colleagues and personal friends of mine about whose integrity and conscientious attention to duty I have no doubts whatever.
The point that I would like to address tonight relates principally to the guidelines covering the export of defence-related equipment to Iran and Iraq, both before and after the ceasefire between those two countries. It is perhaps understandable that the Scott Report should give paramount importance to the role which the guidelines played in decisions being reached on the export of equipment, since that was part of the inquiry's remit. Although there are frequent references in the report to other considerations which Ministers and officials had to take into account in reaching their decisions, the impression emerges that the overriding consideration at all times, whether before or after the Iran/Iraq ceasefire, was a virtually automatic and rigid application of the guidelines. That, no doubt, explains the heavy emphasis given in the report to the Government's failure to publicise the modification of the guidelines after the ceasefire.
The fact is that a host of other considerations had to be taken into account on each occasion by both officials and Ministers in reaching decisions about the export of equipment to Iran and Iraq. These included foreign policy considerations, including the effect which both individual exports and any apparent departure from the guidelines might have on our political and commercial interests in the Gulf and with our allies; treaty commitments on the control of exports under COCOM, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Australia Group on Chemical Exports; consular considerations, including the threat to our hostages in the Lebanon and to British subjects in Iran and Iraq; the possible threat to our Armilla Patrol in the Gulf; the human rights record of both countries, including the flagrant abuse of human rights by Iraq in Kurdistan; the continued restriction of arms exports to Israel arising from the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon; technical considerations of whether potential exports were, in fact, licensable under existing legislation; and, of course, the effect which refusal of export applications would have on the British firms concerned and on British commercial opportunities in the Gulf set against the willingness of others to supply.
Those were only some of the considerations which officials and Ministers had to weigh up on each occasion and, indeed, which ambassadors in the region such as
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myself had to bear in mind in making our recommendations. A telegram which I sent from Riyadh, arguing against the supply of helicopters to Iran, and which the report claims carried weight in ministerial discussions, reflects only one aspect of the heavy and constant pressure to which I was subjected by the Saudi authorities to restrict even further our exports to Iran and to relax our exports to Iraq; pressure which, somewhat ironically in the light of the subsequent Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, was reflected in other Gulf posts.
I recall, in particular, a long-running dialogue which I had with Prince Saud, the Saudi Foreign Minister, on the meaning of the word "lethal", with the Saudis arguing on one occasion, with, I am bound to say, some logic, that large tyres for lorries should not be exported to Iran since they could be used to ferry Iranian guerrillas across the Shatt al Arab. In considering cases of this kind, the guidelines can have served as no more than a kind of rough benchmark; the political and other considerations to which I have referred will have had much greater influence on the final decisions taken by Ministers.
The only other point on which I would like to comment is the report's criticism of the failure to inform Parliament of the modification to the guidelines after the ceasefire. I can recall countless examples during my 36 years in the public service when ministerial Statements or replies to Questions in Parliament have had to be constrained by the effect which fuller disclosure could have had on our political and commercial interests abroad and occasionally on the security, if not the lives, of British nationals.
I believe that those who agree with Sir Richard Scott that any modification to the guidelines should have been publicised and reported to Parliament missed the point. The guidelines were—and rightly in my view—designed to be flexible. No British Government could have hound themselves to a rigid set of rules in such a complex and changeable situation. Least of all would that have been sensible in circumstances where the Government had constantly to take account of and adjust to the shifting range of the foreign policy, commercial and strategic considerations which I have described, many of which were the subject of frequent Statements and replies to Parliamentary Questions and of consideration in the Foreign Affairs Committee of another place.
In summary, foreign policy is not a matter of following rigid or immutable guidelines. It is a matter of exercising judgment and reacting in a flexible, responsible and considered way to rapidly changing international circumstances in a way that will best promote and protect our national interests.
9. 15 p.m.
Lord Carlisle of Bucklow: My Lords, one of the disadvantages—or your Lordships may think that it is an advantage—of being the 26th speaker in a debate of this nature is that practically everything that one intended to say has already been said. I am conscious of the fact that it is now a quarter past nine and there are still 12 of your Lordships to take part in the debate. Therefore, I propose to be very brief in my remarks.

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However, I wish to challenge the conclusions reached by the noble Lords, Lord Williams of Mostyn and Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, as to the attitude of the Attorney-General. As we know, the Attorney-General has been attacked on two grounds. First, he was attacked because it was said by Lord Justice Scott that he was wrong in law to advise Ministers that they had a duty to sign the public interest immunity certificates when the documents that they were facing fell within the class which is normally caught by public interest immunity.
I was surprised by the view which Lord Justice Scott had taken. I had always thought and believed that it was the view of those practising at the Bar that, where the issue of public immunity arose, if the documents came within the class upon which Ministers are advised that immunity should be taken, then the Minister had a duty to sign those documents and leave it to the judge to weigh against that claimed immunity the interests of justice which require that a document should be disclosed.
That argument has been advanced with eloquence by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Lloyd and Lord Slynn. If I take a momentary move into fantasy and imagine myself sitting as a third member of the Judicial Committee of your Lordships' House, I need add no more than to say that I agree and have nothing to add.
The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, appeared to deride those noble Lords who have taken a different view by saying that they did not really understand the workings of the criminal courts. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, read out a list of judges to your Lordships. It is not those judicial figures only with whom Lord Justice Scott is finding himself in disagreement. As one may have seen from the correspondence columns of The Times over the past week, he is at odds with the views expressed by each of the last four senior Treasury counsel at the Old Bailey, with the views of the current chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, with the views of the previous chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, with the views of my noble friend Lord Alexander and in fact with the views of at least one other—Mr. Robert Seabrook, chairman of the Bar Council.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, will at least give credit for the fact that he would respect those people, with whom he has often done battle in the past, as men of honour and integrity and accept that they also, as criminal practitioners, believe that what the Attorney-General did was right. But I leave that part of the argument because, as the noble Lord, Lord Williams, said, it is to some extent irrelevant, except that I am sure that he will agree with me that if criticism is based on a misconception of the law, it follows that any criticism which flows from it must be both unjustified and unfair.
I turn to the second part of the complaint that is made against my right honourable and learned friend the Attorney- General. That is to be found when Lord Justice Scott suggests at paragraph G13.125 that the Attorney-General was personally at fault in failing to be sure that, for example, the reservations made by the President of the Board of Trade had been conveyed to Mr. Moses. In fact, I believe that that criticism is unfair
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because it ignores the steps that the Attorney-General took. Above all, it ignores the pressure under which the Attorney-General works. Indeed, your Lordships have had the good fortune to hear my noble and learned friend Lord Rawlinson remind us of some of those pressures.
However, if I may speak from my own position—not as someone who has been a Law Officer, but as someone who has been a Minister of the Crown—I believe that the pressures upon a judge and the pressures of time upon a Minister are two matters of a totally different nature. I sit in the Court of Appeal in the Channel Islands. There, you can concentrate on one case with all your attention for the whole of the time. But a Minister of the Crown, the Attorney-General, has at any moment many different matters passing across his desk.
So what did the Attorney-General do in this case? Aware of the views and the concerns expressed by the Lord President, aware of the views expressed over what Mr. Alan Clark may or may not have said, he decided—I believe in his own words—to take an overview of the case. It is clear from the report of Lord Justice Scott that he had a meeting with Mr. Moses. Perhaps I may remind the noble Lord, Lord William of Mostyn, of what the Attorney-General said. It is to be found at page 1362 of the report, where he said:
"I have absolutely the clearest recollection of asking Mr. Moses, (because it was critical—we were, after all, talking about documents for PII and my wish to take stock of the case) quite expressly. 'Is there anything on the documents which renders it unfair to prosecute this case', and I got a clear answer that there was not".
That is confirmed by Mr. Moses on page 1364, where he says:
"I am confident that the Attorney-General's views in relation to this case, were dependent upon his reliance that I would not be proceeding with the prosecution had I believed that there was anything in the documents which I had seen, or in the exhibits or statements in the case, which rendered it unfair to prosecute. Indeed. had I been of that view I would have advised against continuing with the prosecution … The responsibility for considering whether. in the light of all the documents that I had seen, it was fair to continue was mine, and the Attorney-General would have been reassured by the fact that I understood that responsibility, and was attempting to discharge it".
I believe that it is reasonable that the Attorney-General should have taken the steps that he did. I also believe that he is entitled to be satisfied by that which he was told.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, said that Mr. Moses had complained that he had not been informed of Mr. Heseltine's concerns and, therefore, had not been able to convey them to the judge. The noble Lord said that it was a great pity because, although the Attorney-General had not read the documents himself, he had said in his letter to Mr. Heseltine:
"the drafting of paragraph 4 of the certificate is unusual and the judge and the defendants will be alert to its limited scope, which can if necessary he emphasised by counsel for the Crown orally".
The noble Lord said that that was not done. I do not think, with respect, that that was so. Mr. Moses said to the judge in court,
"Your Lordship will have observed that in the certificate of the President of the Board of Trade he makes it quite clear what he is doing, that is making a class claim. It is very useful that he does so.

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It does illustrate the fact that it is no part, of course, of the prosecution or any of these departments to do more than exercise their duty to assert this claim".
I believe Mr. Moses made it absolutely clear in what was said on that occasion—this has been confirmed in the article written by Mr. Gilbert Gray, and the letter written by other counsel at the time—that he desired and wished that the judge (indeed, Lord Justice Scott accepts this) should read all the documents himself. Mr. Moses accepted that, if the judge took the view that any of the documents were relevant to the defence, they should immediately be shown to it.
I said that I would speak briefly but I have failed in that regard, in that I have already spoken for 11 minutes. I respect the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, as regards his personal relationship with the Attorney-General. I accept that he, like me, accepts that the Attorney-General is a man of principle and integrity. However, I believe that the noble Lord is quite wrong when he argues before this House that the Attorney-General was at fault, either constitutionally or personally, in a way that he suggests should lead to calls for his resignation. My learned friend the Attorney-General is respected throughout the world. I believe that he has been sorely traduced not by Lord Justice Scott but by much of what has been said in the press and by certain spokesmen of the Opposition about his willingness to see innocent people go to gaol. I believe those charges have been proved to be unfounded. I believe, and hope, that he will continue in office.
9.27 p.m.
Earl Russells: My Lords, my respect and indeed my affection for the noble Lord, Lord Rippon of Hexham, are as great as for any noble Lord in this House. But when the noble Lord said tonight that the charges brought against the Government are a politically motivated witch hunt, I am afraid he was mistaken. I have listened to conversation about this report and its aftermath from a considerable number of ordinary people about the shops in my neighbourhood. Being a fair-minded man, even I have been constrained to tell them that the Government are not as black as they think. Ministers do not know when they are well off.
It will not surprise the House to hear that that does not mean I think the Government are anywhere near in the clear on this matter. On the affair of the guidelines, I ask the House, if I may, to listen to one passage in the report which I think illustrates that, although we all understand the force of the arguments for confidentiality in some cases—I listened with care to the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond—in this case it was a secrecy vitiated by not having given enough attention to the basic intelligence principle of the need to know. The number of people who needed to know was too great to make the task of keeping it secret from Parliament at all a practical proposition. For example, the Embassy in Baghdad—if anybody—needed to know. The Ministry of Defence appears to have tipped it the wink. As a result, it received a telegram from the Baghdad Embassy,
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"I understand … that guidelines on defence sales to Iraq have been modified: this involved not just a liberal interpretation of existing rules but a new form of words. not as yet made public. I have not yet seen the new criteria".
An official in the Ministry of Defence, whom I shall not name because he cannot answer for himself, reading that telegram annotated it "Oh dear!". He added, in case there should be any chance of misinterpreting that comment:
"We can expect trouble … as there is a chance of this leaking. It is marked CONF however".
That was a futile attempt at whistling in the dark.
British business needed to know, both about the first and the second guidelines. The first guidelines were briefly reported in British Business several months after they came into effect with a reference to existing contracts, which was misleading because it appeared to date from the date of the announcement when in fact it dated from six months earlier. Sir Richard comments:
"The Government was, in a sense, hoist with its own petard of secrecy. Once the decision had been made not to announce the Guidelines. the Government could not say that 'existing contracts' meant pre-December 1984 contracts without disclosing the existence of the guidelines".
I understand the need for secrecy, but this was unintelligent secrecy because it was secrecy for the Government's own convenience rather than secrecy based on genuine reasons of state. If one is judge in one's own interest of when one is entitled to be secret, that is a mistake it is extremely easy to make.
We have heard a very vigorous reaction to this report. Executives are a little like two year-olds: when they do not get their own way they throw a tantrum. Since I have been in this House we have heard tantrums aimed at the judges, the European Union and the press. When have we heard tantrums aimed at Parliament? I am not sure that we should be flattered by the silence. The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, said a few minutes ago that he would rather be judged by a politician of standing than by any judge. Those among us who are politicians of standing should not be flattered either. The crucial point which emerges if we consider the answers which Sir Richard was able to get from senior Ministers, and which we are not able to get, is that because of the judicial powers of contempt judges are able to get answers with a freedom which I fear is sadly lacking in this House.
So if we ask who is to blame I think in the end Parliament is to blame. When I say Parliament, my Lords, I mean you and me. If we had been able to get answers, it would not have been necessary to set up this inquiry in the first place. If we had been able to call Ministers to account when the story came out, again it would not have been necessary to set up this inquiry in the first place. We are using the judiciary to do what should have been our work. That is a matter on which we need to do a good deal of thinking.
We should not merely blame Ministers for the fact that answers to parliamentary Questions are not always informative. That is a culture, and that culture stretches far wider than the area covered by the report. In fact, it is a general problem. Most of us can remember, when we were at school, being in trouble for things for which

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our defence, spoken or unspoken, was that everybody does it. If we were wise, that defence was much more often unspoken, because the speaking of the defence can only inflame the authorities.
I am not just talking about the plain failure to answer questions covered in clear categories in Erskine May. I am talking about answers which, as my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Hillhead once put it, are bland rather than informative. I could have taken a good many examples from answers that I have had since the beginning of this Session. But I would not wish for one moment to cast imputation against any particular Minister for doing what is at present culturally acceptable. So I have taken a hypothetical question. Why did the Government take this decision? Answer: The Government took this decision after the most careful consideration of all relevant factors. We have all received answers like that. Having answers like that makes it very difficult indeed to call Ministers to account. If we cannot call Ministers to account now, we have to take account of the growing public dislike for Parliament, and often contempt, which is felt outside these walls. We have to take account of the fact that there is a growing sense among the public at large that it is much better to have Ministers accountable to judges ruder a constitution than to have them accountable to a parliament.
Warts and all, I love this place. But it is pretty nearly our last chance to save ourselves —to see whether we can do something now. If we cannot, the responsibility will be taken away from us and 1, for one, would deeply regret that.
I have considered with some care the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan of Cardiff, on the Thursday before last. How did it come about that Mr. Waldegrave, who has so much ability, was nevertheless able to convince himself that he was not misleading when in effect he was? This is where things get interesting, and where the application again goes a great deal wider than the report itself. The key word here is flexibility. We have all heard arguments about flexibility. We have heard the standard defence of Henry VIII clauses over and over again in terms of flexibility.
Let us look at the original grounds for the Howe guidelines. This is again Sir Richard speaking. He states:
"This use of 'flexibility', in order to permit an apparently objective guideline to change its meaning according to the exigencies of the moment, will ring a bell of recognition for those who have attempted to follow the manner in which the Howe Guidelines were interpreted and applied".
That bell of recognition will be heard among a great many people other than those who have been involved in this specific issue.
I heard the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond. I understand that there is a need for flexibility in foreign policy. If Parliament is ultimately to be sovereign, some account has to be given to it of the grounds on which that flexibility was exercised.
The noble Lord's arguments reminded me vividly of the arguments used by Queen Elizabeth I against allowing Parliament to have any say in foreign policy. In their wisdom, our ancestors decided otherwise, and
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since we find ourselves in this situation we have to work in it as we find it. On Privy Counsellor terms it is possible sometimes to tell people that it is not in the national interest to press specific questions, and those terms must be respected or nothing will work.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, at one point described the guidelines as ectoplasmic. I think that I understand what he meant. But it is that flexibility which tended to emancipate them from parliamentary control. It is like a Minister changing the law by regulations under a Henry VIII clause, rising in the House to say that the law is unchanged. There is a sense in which what he says is true, but that sense is liable to mislead.
Let us take the passage which Sir Richard Scott described as "sophistry", to which the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, referred earlier this evening. Mr. Waldegrave said that the guidelines could not be changed without the Prime Minister and senior Ministers being notified. They had not been notified, ergo the guidelines had not been changed. That reminds me of an old Oxford story which I am sure is as well known to Mr. Waldegrave as it is to me. A train not scheduled to stop at Oxford Station came to a halt for a signal opposite the station platform. An undergraduate leapt out. A porter rushed up to him and said: "You can't get off here, sir, it doesn't stop", to which the undergraduate replied: "Well, then, I haven't got off —. That is the argument that Sir Richard Scott described as sophistry and the description is entirely fair.
Beyond that, we have more and more of the business of flexibility. I shall not say any more about it but will only touch on the rule of political resignations —forced resignations on issues of policy. I believe that that rule has operated for 620 years, since the origins of impeachment. It is that the need for ministerial resignations is in inverse proportion to the ease of persuading people that the underlying policy has changed.
Here, the underlying policy which is complained of is secrecy. When I look at the publication of the report, I am not reassured. The report has taught us to look for managing power by withholding information. The late Richard Crossman taught us to look for hanging on to power by giving out too much information all at once, so that it could not be digested. I never thought to see both those policies in operation at once.
9.42 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, in rising to take part in the debate, I start by saying that I am not among those who criticise my right honourable friend the Prime Minister for setting up the inquiry in the first place. Following the ending of the prosecution of Mr. Paul Henderson and his colleagues, there was widespread public concern about the issues. I have no complaint about my right honourable friend's decision, expecting, as I did, that I should be asked to give evidence. I was content then, as now, to have my words and actions of the time fairly judged.
It was soon clear that Sir Richard would have access to an immense volume of papers and the testimony of numerous witnesses. I took some time to make up my

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mind as to whether or not I should appear. Your Lordships will recall that when the inquiry was set up my right honourable friend the Prime Minister made it clear that serving Ministers and officials were required to attend, while others like me, no longer in office, could decide for ourselves.
I wondered whether there was anything I could usefully add to the huge volume of evidence —not least my own lengthy written submission and, in particular, the evidence of my right honourable friend Mr. Waldegrave. I was concerned too as to whether the procedures which Sir Richard had decided upon were such as to allow witnesses appropriate safeguards and protection which had been regarded as essential ever since the report of Lord Justice Salmon, to which my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon referred.
My fears proved to be well founded, but I eventually decided that a refusal to appear would have exposed me to the criticism that I had something to hide or that my former colleagues and friends had something to hide. That was a risk which I did not wish to take. Furthermore, Sir Richard eventually agreed to certain procedures, and gave me certain assurances which allowed me to hope and believe that my concerns had been largely met.
That correspondence between my solicitors and Sir Richard's officials was somewhat lengthy. As I said, Sir Richard in the end agreed to most of the safeguards that I sought and I eventually appeared, accompanied by counsel and with the right to make opening and closing statements. I was, I believe, the only witness accorded all those facilities (which should of course have been available to all witnesses) although I gather that Sir Richard has since suggested that anybody else could have had them if they had asked.
Be that as it may, I was I must say very surprised to read the speech by Sir Richard Scott to the Chancery Bar Association on 2nd May 1995. In that speech, Sir Richard referred in somewhat derogatory and less than wholly accurate terms to the correspondence between my solicitors and his officials —all this in the course of his inquiry and at the very time that he was deliberating upon his evidence and preparing his report. He referred to what he described as a "tediously lengthy" correspondence and then suggested that my solicitors (a leading City firm) had misunderstood the nature of his inquiry. He went on to say that they eventually "subsided".
I do regret that Sir Richard chose to refer to that private correspondence in public, as he did. The fact is that, far from "subsiding", my solicitors eventually got virtually everything that I wanted and it was he who gave in. As well he might. At one point during that correspondence, the inquiry actually wrote to the effect that it really did not matter whether or not I appeared because the judge was already able to make up his mind on my involvement from the papers he had seen. When my solicitors inquired the nature of those conclusions there was, needless to say, a rapid hack-peddling.
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I turn now to those parts of the report which concern me and to the evidence that I submitted. Like most witnesses, I received more than 100 pages of questions relating to my time first as Minister for Defence Procurement and later as Minister for Trade, and I spent many long hours and weeks refreshing my memory from the relevant departmental papers and preparing my written response.
At various points in the questionnaires, questions were put that invited me to criticise the actions of officials or others who were advising me at the time, either by implication or directly. I did not think it right to do that. I consider now, as then, that my two principal advisers on export licensing matters at the Ministry of Defence, Mr. Macdonald and Mr. Barratt, were both first-class officials who offered me excellent advice doing their best to take account of all the relevant information on complex and difficult issues. At the DTI the three principal officials who advised me on these matters were Mr. Beston, Mr. Coolican and Mr. Steadman, all of whom gave evidence to the inquiry. As Sir Richard acknowledges, those officials were working in a department, as I was, whose raison d'être was the support and promotion of British industry and British exports, but of course within the context of government policy. I wish to record my appreciation for the work that they did and the advice that they gave me on these subjects at the time, in circumstances no less difficult than those that prevailed at the Ministry of Defence.
I turn now to the guidelines originally enunciated by the then Sir Geoffrey Howe, now my noble and learned friend, and the consideration given to these matters by my right honourable friends Mr. Waldegrave and Mr. Clark and myself. Noble Lords will recall that these guidelines were set in place to assist officials in considering and advising Ministers in connection with defence related export licence applications to Iraq and Iran. The firm and unequivocal evidence of myself, Mr. Waldegrave, and indeed the contemporaneous papers, is that the guidelines were not changed but that we three asked for them to be interpreted more flexibly in the light of the rapidly changing situation at the time. Noble Lords will recall that a ceasefire had been agreed between Iran and Iraq which clearly created a new situation and there were other developments, too; for example, the declaration of the Fatwa in connection with Mr. Salman Rushdie, and subsequently the execution by Iraq of the journalist, Mr. Bazoft.
Guidelines, as their name implies, are not rules. They are designed to guide and not govern. So there was always a degree of flexibility available even before I and my colleagues considered the matter. We all knew perfectly well that to change the guidelines would have needed Cabinet level approval —which in turn would have needed to take into account wider considerations including, for example, the effect of a change upon our relations with other friendly countries in the region and the implications for the British hostages incarcerated in Beirut. The hostages were of special concern to me because I attended the same school as John McCarthy and at that time I had been endeavouring to get letters through to him on behalf of the school.

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So I wish to declare in the strongest possible terms that, contrary to Sir Richard's opinion, the guidelines were not changed and thus the line which Ministers subsequently took was entirely justified. I reject outright any suggestion that any of us misled Parliament or anyone else in the matter.
Sir Richard appears to have relied rather heavily (as did the noble Lord, Lord Richard, earlier this afternoon) on the evidence of Mr. Higson, a disaffected Foreign Office official, and Sir Timothy Daunt's subsequent minute. Sir Timothy is a senior and very distinguished member of the diplomatic service. His minute was written in 1992, I think. At the time of the discussions in question, he was our ambassador in Ankara —not exactly the best place from which to draw conclusions in this matter.
I make one final point with regard to the guidelines. Sir Richard appears to be saying that calling for more flexible interpretation of the guidelines, as we did, was tantamount to changing them. But in other cases, Sir Richard appears to take a different view. My right honourable friend Mr. Waldegrave referred to one such in a recent contribution to the Sunday Telegraph. My right honourable friend refers to Sir Richard's own words, where guidelines are:
"intended to be used as tools to achieve the desired purpose. They must not be allowed, by an over rigid application that fails to take into account the circumstances of each case, to become a constraint on effective and sensible case management".
Those are Sir Richard's own words. Again, in this very report, at paragraph B2.31, he refers to the now celebrated Salmon recommendations and castigates commentators who:
"regard the six cardinal principles not as recommendations but as rules".
Sir Richard cannot have it both ways.
I should like to conclude this passage of my speech with the simple assertion that the conduct of our export licensing arrangements, in so far as my right honourable friend Mr. Waldegrave and I were responsible for them, was entirely proper and carried out with due care and regard to all the relevant information. I do not claim that we always got it exactly right; and of course with hindsight it may be possible to conclude that perhaps we should have given greater weight to this or that consideration. I leave that to your Lordships. My right honourable friend and I were responding in difficult and changing circumstances to the often conflicting interests of British foreign policy, British trade and British security. It is the amalgam of those three that represents the national interest. I think we fully upheld it.
I turn now to the question of the Matrix Churchill trial, which involved the prosecution of Mr. Paul Henderson and his colleagues for alleged offences against the export licensing regulations. I was not involved in the issue of the public interest immunity certificates; but I did make a sworn statement and was prepared to give evidence in the case. But, in the event, the trial ended before I was called.
My own position in this matter is entirely clear. Mr. Henderson came to see me in connection with the relevant export licence applications and assured me that
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his machines were intended for civil use. Indeed, as Sir Richard accepts, letters from Mr. Henderson before and after that meeting reflect that assurance. I did not know, nor was Mr. Henderson entitled to think that I knew, that he was in touch with the British secret service. By contrast, Mr. Henderson did know that as Minister for Trade I was the Minister ultimately responsible at that time for the issue of export licences; and, as I now know and Sir Richard accepts, he lied to my face. I refer your Lordships to paragraphs D6.141 and G3.16 of the report which endorse my position.
Therefore, I agreed to make a statement about our meetings and to give evidence in support of that statement if called upon to do so. I quite understand why it was necessary to stop the trial; but equally, I understand why the charges were brought in the first place. It is a great pity that Mr. Clark was not able to make up his mind about his evidence at an earlier stage.
I turn to the way in which Sir Richard chose to conduct his inquiry, and I regret that I must be rather critical. It would seem that, having reached some preliminary conclusions following his early reading of the papers, he developed what has been described by my noble and learned friend Lord Howe as an,
"unquenchable enthusiasm for his own views".
He was apparently determined to ensure that no witness appearing personally should be allowed to upset his first thoughts. Although I cannot claim to have been treated unfairly in cross-examination myself (but then I was —uniquely —accompanied by counsel) many witnesses were indeed treated at the least extremely discourteously. I feel particularly keenly that the treatment meted out to some middle-ranking officials, who were there only because they had been ordered to attend, was grossly unfair.
For example, there was widespread indignation at the way Miss Baxendale treated Mr. Steadman and Mr. Barratt, indeed almost all the official witnesses who, I remind your Lordships, were there because they had been so directed. I make no complaint about that; the inquiry would have been difficult without them. But in the circumstance of their compulsory attendance it was, I believe, incumbent upon Sir Richard and Miss Baxendale to have been hypersensitive to the position of witnesses. They were not, and I consider that the reputation of Miss Baxendale emerges just as tarnished as that of Sir Richard.
Not every witness was ill-treated as I have described. Mr. Higson, a former Foreign Office official to whom I referred, was one of the few witnesses who actually agreed with Sir Richard's first conclusions and who claimed that he found it distasteful to draft letters which did not accord with his view of the facts. I gather that he was treated with kid gloves. My right honourable friend Mr. Clark also got off pretty lightly in the circumstances. What a pity his sworn statement and subsequent oral evidence to the Matrix Churchill trial were not more consistent. Of course, I neither saw his statement nor heard his cross-examination. But from what I have read, they could not both be right.
I summarise my speech as follows. Contrary to the process of natural justice, Sir Richard Scott formed his conclusions from a preliminary and incomplete reading

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of the papers and then proceeded to reject, for no good reason, a huge mass of evidence which pointed in a different direction. The process by which he chose to gather his evidence, especially his oral evidence, was unjust. The witnesses were, for the most part, brought before him by order and were then bullied and hectored by Sir Richard and his counsel in public without even the most elementary protection. No doubt because of the flawed process by which Sir Richard gathered his evidence, he misinformed himself, at least in part. The guidelines were not changed and thus the question of misinforming or misleading Parliament did not arise.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, he referred to the fact that the "guidelines were not changed". Is the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, saying that, following the ceasefire between Iran and Iraq, the guidelines remained the same as when they were promulgated by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, yes.
9.58 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, there has been more heat than is customary in this Chamber over this issue. That is probably due to the fact that we have not been discussing the important issues at all; we have concerned ourselves with individuals and their frailties on one side or the other.
I do not regard the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, whom I have known for many years, as a villain. The idea that the man selected by the Prime Minister, and his assistants, are the scoundrels presented to us is not according to my experience. I readily grant that I was not present as often no doubt as the noble Lord. But we have got on to the wrong level and the business of traducing people on either side is a waste of time and unworthy of this Chamber.
I came across an article in tonight's Evening Standard by Mr. George Walden, the Conservative MP for Buckingham. The article is entitled, "Why I won't vote with the rebels tonight", so I thought to myself that there was nothing in it for me. But I was wrong. At the end of his article Mr. Walden comes to the conclusion that he will not vote with the rebels tonight because he thinks that the wrong Motion is being debated. His idea of what is the right Motion is certainly my idea, and I think it may be the idea of quite a large number of Members of both Houses —on both sides of the gap we have drawn between ourselves.
The Motion that Mr. Walden thinks should be debated is:
"This House deplores our over-dependency on the defence industry".
That is true, is it not? It really is the cause of the whole trouble. Because of this overdependence on the defence industry all the problems occur. That is why we are making exports abroad. We are dependent on the defence industry. That is why even in opposition we on the Labour side are saying —not as George Lansbury used to say that pacifism is the line —that we shall have
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a stronger defence industry, the reason being that we have become economically dependent on it. This over-dependency on the export of the merchandise of death is morally wrong, a point touched on briefly by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield and other noble Lords. Those are the two issues which we ought to have been talking about, but we have not been talking about them at all.
It seems likely that the Prime Minister would not have set up the Scott Inquiry if he had realised that it would end in the kind of disputation that has occurred. The truth of the matter is that it is difficult simultaneously to sustain with honesty the roles of mass exporter of armaments and of upholder of international agreements barring such exports to different countries. It becomes a struggle between the interpretation of international obligations and acceptance of or resistance to internal compulsions. The internal pressures carry the votes. They also carry the employment. But if they win entirely, morality goes out of the window.
The major exporting countries seem to find ways and means to bend the rules. So it means nothing when Ministers claim that we are more honest than others. In the arms trade there are no degrees of honesty. So long as this trade remains a major part of our production it would be naive to suppose that a Labour Government could be immune from its immense influence. They could hardly be so inept as the present blunderers, but the pressures on Labour would be no less than those which have persuaded other governments and other Ministers, here and abroad, to say one thing and do another. If one compares the morality of George Lansbury with the stated intention of New Labour to maintain arms production at even greater strength, one can see that even in Opposition power can persuade conscience that wrong is right.
Given the time, I shall devote the rest of my speech to showing how this appalling situation has come about. That is necessary if we are to try to find a way out of it. In the aftermath of the dramatic carnage of the First World War, the arms trade was despised and rejected. Those who plied it were called "Merchants of Death". In that war and after, pacificism grew in the Labour Party and Lansbury, Fenner Brockway and others went to prison rather than take part in the war. Even before that, during the build-up to that war, George Bernard Shaw in his play Major Barbara foresaw the philosophy of the merchants of death —that philosophy prevails even today —and gave Undershaft the best line. When challenged to state his faith by the Salvation Army Major, Barbara, the Merchant of Death says —I shall quote only one rather long sentence:
"My faith? Why, it is to give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles; to aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man. white man and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes".
That is a pretty good statement of the compulsion which exists when you rest your economic prosperity on the arms trade.

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According to a research article by Gordon Macdonald in the October issue of the journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, in the 1960s Prime Minister Wilson and Chancellor Healey decided,
"to establish the U.K. as a major arms exporter".
Clearly, they did not foresee that they were creating a monster which could command government foreign policy and corrupt the thinking of hitherto percipient politicians. As Scott puts it, export promotion received a higher political priority than export control.
For example, turning to paragraph D6.326, in 1990 the export of some special furnaces to Iraq was being questioned because they could be used to enhance the country's nuclear missile aspirations. The question was put to Mr. Waldegrave, who I agree is an honest man. All men in this issue have merely been doing their duties as they see it —and more damage has been done in the world by men doing their duty as they see it than anything else of which I can think. Mr. Waldegrave ruled that the furnaces should go to Iraq, but in the event they did not because just then, in August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. All exports were then stopped worldwide. But for that, Saddam Hussein might now he threatening the world with nuclear missiles and, who knows, perhaps not only threatening. Sir Richard Scott clearly regarded it as beyond his remit to examine how the United Kingdom in particular and the world in general can get out of this mess.
I must not take up any further time except to make two more brief statements. I hope that the Government will accept the proposals that Scott makes for bringing the present system under better control. What the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, said in his opening statement leads me to believe that that hope may not e entirely misplaced.
I also hope that he will recommend that the Government consider the recommendations of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade for an end to the huge financial support that the Government give to that trade. There is another proposal —and here again I may be pushing at an open door —for an annual report to Parliament on the arms trade. The great need is for recognition that this trade is causal and that if the developed world does not bring it under international control, the merchandise of death in its modern forms will not only destroy morality, it may well destroy civilisation itself.
10.11 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure, for the first time that I can recollect, to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney. I believe that the time of the House would have been much better devoted, for instance, to examining ways in which British industry can be made less dependent on armaments and more dependent on civilian production. How that can be done is not something which either the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, or any other economist from any direction, has yet been able to suggest.
But if one asks why we are not discussing this and other serious topics raised in our minds by the report that we are considering, the reason is perfectly apparent.
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It is that for the past three years a campaign has been waged around the notion of the Scott Report whose purpose has been to destroy the careers of two Ministers in order to advance the cause of the two Oppositions.
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Beloff: My Lords, it was said and the evidence was given by the noble Earl, Lord Russell. He said that when he went among ordinary people —I am not quite sure what an Earl means by "ordinary people" but let us say the kind of citizen he might meet in a pub, if he ever goes to one —they were horrified by the evidence of malpractice by Ministers. So the campaign was merely reflecting popular indignation. I submit to your Lordships to the contrary: that the indignation which the noble Earl found had been stimulated by a political campaign through the media and in other ways, which has been wholly governed by party political considerations.
Perhaps I may enlarge further on that. As has been referred to in several speeches, when one looks at the discussions that went on about the export of arms —perhaps I may mention the mere fact that we talk about arms for Iraq when no arms were exported there —and defence-related equipment, it has become clear, and it is generally accepted, that the Minister who pressed most strongly to ignore moral or political considerations in relation to permitting such exports, was Mr. Alan Clark. One might ask why Mr. Alan Clark has not been the subject of a campaign from the Opposition. The answer is simple; Mr. Alan Clark is no longer a Minister. Defaming Mr. Clark would give no political assistance to the Opposition. They have concentrated not even on my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, who has moved on and who would have given as good as he got, but on the two people involved who still happen to be Ministers of the Crown.
I too must confess an interest. We must always confess an interest, which has become a post-Nolan fashion. Like Mr. Waldegrave, I am a Fellow of All Souls, which means that I have known him for a very long time. Unlike some noble Lords who come from the legal profession, I see no reason to read portions of a report which I assume all noble Lords who take part in the debate have already read. As I read the report it occurred to me that the one Minister who constantly called the attention of his colleagues in writing to the difficult international problems, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wright, and to the moral problems of arms exports was Mr. Waldegrave, as one might have expected. The attack on Mr. Waldegrave, which was prolonged today in what I thought were the least responsible speeches I have ever heard opening a debate from the Opposition Benches, from the noble Lords, Lord Richard and Lord Jenkins of Hillhead —it was a

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personal assault upon a Minister of honour purely in order to score a passing political objective —is something which I believe they will come to repent.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: My Lords, if the noble Lord will do me the honour of reading my speech tomorrow he will see that I made no point against Mr. Waldegrave.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I agree that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, did not. On the other hand, a Member of his party in another place, Mr. Menzies Campbell —
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: Order, order!
Lord Beloff:My Lords, I am allowed to refer to other Members of Parliament. I am not allowed to quote them and I shall not. However, Mr. Menzies Campbell and Mr. Cook, who has been the engine of the campaign, appeared together on television to denounce Ministers.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: My Lords, I rarely interrupt in your Lordships' House but the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, referred especially to my speech as one of the most irresponsible he had ever heard because of an attack on Mr. Waldegrave. I pointed out to him that I made no mention of Mr. Waldegrave, except for one passing comment. I made no attack on him at all. As the noble Lord then shifted his ground and merely referred to somebody else I believe that he is being discreditable himself.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord if he feels that I have defamed him. My impression certainly was that it was not an appeal to the House to consider the issues that arise from the report. They are issues of government organisation —"the machinery of government", to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees —the place of the intelligence services and other issues of major importance to which we could have given a lot of attention had it been the intention of the opening speakers not to concentrate on political issues.
My noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham compared the report with the Scriptures as regards its length and weight. It seemed to me, as I read it, to he something rather different. I would call it the rich man's Le Carre. It is full of the most exciting and interesting sidelights on the problems that arise within governments when major issues depend upon the circulation of information, upon the briefing of individuals and upon cohesion of attitudes. Those are important issues and in opening our debate this afternoon, my noble and learned friend Lord Fraser of Carmyllie indicated ways in which some of Sir Richard's suggestions or hints were being taken up within the machinery of government relevant to those problems.
Those are the matters on which we should have concentrated; but we did not. We have not had as much help as we could have had except from the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, and to some extent from the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Recs. The House has been
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forced into a political controversy which was strictly unnecessary and I hope that the time to discuss those issues will come on another occasion.
10.21 p.m.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, I gather that there is a score in the test match which is being played in another place; that is, 319 to 320 in favour of the Government. I mention that in order immediately to capture the attention of the House for what I have to say.
Politics is a blood sport, so I was informed by my noble friend Lord Weatherill some years before I had the privilege of joining this House. He told me that merely the scent of blood was sufficient to result in a mad rush by the respective parties for the inevitable kill, irrespective of the damage which unintentionally they would be causing in the process.
The baying for the Attorney-General's blood began before the Scott Report. That the media should lead the pack was totally foreseeable because it falls to the unfortunate Attorney-General to be responsible for prosecuting cases of contempt of court and the media never forgive. In fact, since I have on occasion been critical of the media, I have taken the precaution of informing my wife that on no account should she ever read my obituary.
It is really quite startling that the attack upon the Attorney-General has continued despite the fact that the basis for that attack in relation to PII certificates has been totally destroyed. I should like to go straight to the very few references to the report that I intend to make. I start at page 1257 where Sir Richard Scott says:
"It will be necessary for me to consider the state of the law on Pll both at the time the Matrix Churchill trial was in preparation and also as it now stands".
That was a very pertinent observation. It was necessary to consider the state of the law as it was when the trial was in preparation for the very simple reason that it could only he on the basis of the law as it then was, or was understood to be, that the Attorney-General could be criticised. The law as it now stands is something that could be the subject matter of recommendations for its change, but it would not relate to the basis for any valid criticism of the Attorney-General.
Sir Richard Scott then traces the development of the law until he comes to a case much relied upon in 1992 —namely, Makanjuola v. Commissioner of Police. He sets out on page 1260 of Volume III a fairly sizeable portion of the judgment of Lord Justice Bingham in which it is stated:
"But it does, I think, mean: (1) that public interest immunity cannot in any ordinary sense be waived, since, although one can waive rights, one cannot waive duties; (2) that, where a litigant holds documents in a class prima facie immune, he should (save perhaps in a very exceptional case) assert that the documents are immune and decline to disclose them, since the ultimate judge of where the balance of public interest lies is not him but the court; and (3) that. where a document is, or is held to he. in an immune class, it may not be used for any purpose whatever in the proceedings to which the immunity applies, and certainly cannot (for instance) he used for the purposes of cross-examination".
He does not there refer to the case of Air Canada v. Secretary of State for Trade in 1993.

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I shall read a small excerpt from the All England Reports at page 446. I do so because it is part of the speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Scarman who was cited as being on the side of Sir Richard in relation to the criticism of the Attorney-General. My noble and learned friend said:
"The Crown when it puts forward a public interest immunity objection, is not claiming a privilege but discharging a duty. The duty arises whether the document assists or damages the Crown's case or if, as in a case to which the Crown is not a party, it neither helps nor injures the Crown. It is not for the Crown but for the court to determine whether the document should be produced".
Then, a little later on the same page, my noble and learned friend said:
"It is its duty to bring the objection, if it believes it to be sound. to the attention of the court. It is for the court, not the Crown, to balance the two public interests, that of the functioning and security of the public service, which is the sphere within which the executive has the duty to make an assessment, and that of justice, upon which the executive is not competent to pass judgment".
I believe that a reference was made both by the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, and the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, to the fact that there were differing views between the judiciary and counsel. I can find no trace of any differing views right up until the case which was last pertinent in relation to the Attorney-General's action; namely, the Makanjuola case in 1992. The suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, that perhaps the majority of the opinion favoured that which was adopted by the Attorney-General just is not right. There was total unanimity. There has been no ability by anyone to refer to any authority that casts doubt upon the law as it was set out right up until that date. What is very odd is that on page 1260 Sir Richard Scott states,
"In the dictum above cited, Lord Justice Bingham was dealing with documents. The remarks would, however, be as applicable to information".
Then there is this observation:
"The question that arises from the dictum is whether a Minister is. save in exceptional cases, bound by law to assert a PII claim whenever production is sought of documents, or whenever information is sought, which fall into a class for which P11 class protection has in some previous case been allowed".
It looks as if Sir Richard has slipped a gear because the question that arises is not whether the dictum is correct; the question which arises is whether the dictum expressed the law as it then was, because if it expressed the law as it then was, that is the end of any potential criticism against the Attorney-General. That is the point one would have expected at that stage Sir Richard would have concentrated on before turning his attention to his detailed analysis as to whether the Master of the Rolls, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, and others had misunderstood the law and that it was therefore a matter upon which he should make a recommendation for the future.
There were two bases upon which the Attorney-General could be acquitted of any criticism on PII certificates: the one was that he in fact followed the law as it then stood, and in my submission he clearly did; or, alternatively, if the law was in any doubt —and Sir Richard does not suggest it was; he merely suggests it was wrong —whether the Attorney-General followed a course which a reasonable Attorney-General, on the
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state of the doubt as it then existed, would have followed. Those were the vital matters upon which one would have expected Sir Richard to have concentrated. One gains the impression, as one reads on and on and on, that he became fascinated with the detailed analysis which, with his great ability, he focused upon what was said to be the existing law, and ultimately reached a conclusion, which is by no means shared by the judiciary, that the law had been in some way misunderstood —a contribution which obviously deserves careful evaluation but not a contribution which has the slightest relevance to the criticism of the Attorney-General.
Your Lordships have heard —and I shall not repeat it —that certainly among the Law Lords who have spoken (and I include the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, having confirmed with him, as was obviously the case, that he shared the views of those who had spoken) there is total unanimity that the basis of the criticism levelled at the Attorney-General was quite unjust. I hope that it will not be persisted in in any further part of this debate.
10.34 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I arrived early this afternoon in your Lordships' House, as is my custom. I was looking forward to having a debate on the substance of the Scott Report. I am somewhat disappointed to find —I have been here for most of the hours in which the debate has been going on —that what we really had today is the trial of Sir Richard Scott in absentia. This seems to me to be a little remarkable.
I was present when the Statement was made following publication of the Scott Report, under somewhat peculiar circumstances. There was wide praise from the Government Benches for Sir Richard Scott's perspicacity, intellect and power. Indeed, the Statement from the same Government Benches here was that he had comprehensively dismissed all charges that had been made against the Government.
I know that seven days is a long time in politics, and nine or 10 days is a wee hit longer, but never has there been so rapid a transition by a judge. He was conducted to the gates of heaven by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, but has made a sudden descent to Hades, to which everyone has been willing to consign him today. That seems to me to be a little odd.
Surely what really happened is that, when the full enormity of the report began to sink in, a new enemy had to be found. Instead of continuous and indignant demands for the resignation of the Shadow Foreign Secretary in the other place, this afternoon we have had an almost continuous denigration of a distinguished judge. I speak as a mere chartered accountant who, with my colleague the noble Lord, Lord Shaw, is interested in the ascertaining, marshalling and presentation of fact. Speaking for myself, I am not well versed in the complexities of the law that have been made clear to us today. I find this all very mysterious.

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I did not make any demand for an inquiry. I did not denounce anybody. I know the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, very well and I have nothing against him. I did not ask for his resignation. Why should I suddenly he attacked for even looking at a report of this kind?
I was even more puzzled because, when the original Statement was made in which Sir Richard Scott was so warmly praised as having dismissed all the wicked canards against the Government, I said to myself that perhaps he was a very good judge. After all, he was made Vice-Chancellor of the Chancery Division only three weeks ago. That is a not entirely uninfluential post, which has gone to what must be a most distinguished lawyer. We have had a chorus of other distinguished lawyers today.
What have we really learnt from this? For that we should go to the Prime Minister. It was the Prime Minister who appointed the inquiry. There was no pressure on him to do what was done by the Labour Government of 1945 to 1950, which appointed a tribunal to investigate the goings on of Mr. Belcher and one or two more. There was no demand for a tribunal, in which anyone called before it could have the benefit of counsel. Nobody raised a comment at the time, either about the Prime Minister's choice of the person to conduct the inquiry or the manner in which he conducted the inquiry. Nobody complained.
I speak as an outsider, without malice and without rancour, but as time passed it appeared to me that perhaps Sir Richard was getting too near to the truth for comfort. The noble Lord, Lord Howe, criticised the way the inquiry had been conducted and how inquisitorial it was, and how he had had no right to have counsel, or anything of that kind. At the same time, he did not say that any preliminary findings that were made by Sir Richard were forwarded to him to obtain his agreement with or concurrence in, or to pass comment on what was said. That seems to me to be a very fair thing.
Let us go hack to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister immediately acted as he did. He said that Whitehall was already reviewing the code on open Government; he was considering a form of export controls, in particular as regards arms; he was tightening the rules for Ministers answering Questions in the Commons; he was going to curb the freedom of Customs and Excise to bring prosecutions; he was going to redefine the role and powers of the Attorney-General and the Treasury Solicitor; and he was going to review procedures to prevent future inquiries dragging on for three years or more. Something must have stirred the Prime Minister into action. If everything was so wonderful, so open and above hoard, why is it in need of reform? From the speeches one has heard this afternoon, one would think that everything was already perfect, or as near perfect as goddammit, and that it was a little irritating that Sir Richard had disturbed the sepulchral calm in which a non-political, non-party Government found themselves after some 16 years. That is how it appeared to me. Yet something must he wrong.
I must say how much I concur with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson. He went right to the root of the matter. How did it start? All noble Lords know.
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We heard the evidence given in front of the trial judge, Judge Smedley, in this case. There was skilled cross-examination by, I think, a Mr. Robertson acting on behalf of Mr. Henderson (or one of the defendants). He gradually questioned Mr. Clark to a point where Mr. Clark suddenly admitted that, like his mentor, the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who is unfortunately not present —he coined the phrase "economical with the truth" —he, Mr. Clark, had been "economical with the actualite". From that point the whole case collapsed. It did not collapse because of any admission of the Government. It did not collapse because someone had got the PIIs (or whatever they are) wrong. It did not collapse because 101 legal arguments had been adduced. It collapsed purely because Mr. Alan Clark —to put no finer point on it —admitted that he had lied.
Mr. Alan Clark is very engaging in these matters. I have informed your Lordships from time to time about when he was a Member of the Council of Ministers. I could continue with more stories about when he was at the Department of Employment busily fiddling the employment figures. I use his own words. He is a very colourful person. But he was the person who actually caused the trial to collapse and thus fortunately avoided the possibility —I put it no higher than that; noble Lords know me: I am not given to hyperbole —that two innocent people might have gone to prison.
What really is the trouble? I entirely agree with the noble Earl, Lord Russell. This matter is not shaping well at all. It is extremely unfortunate, but there are lessons in it for us, as implied by the Prime Minister. He proposed to tighten the rules for Ministers answering Questions in the Commons. I hope that the Lords may be included in that. One observes from time to time that the replies received from the Government, both in another place and here, tend not always to be as informative as is desirable in a democracy. To use the words of one civil servant who gave evidence during the proceedings before Sir Richard Scott, answering questions of Members of Parliament tends to be an art form. It is quite permissible to give the minimum information possible; it is part of a tradition.
The reason for that is simple. It is that the powers of Parliament and its Members have declined progressively over the past 20 years. The contempt that Members of the party opposite hold for Parliament has grown proportionately. They almost treat Parliament as though they are above party politics, they are a superior race, not given to the human emotions that assail us from time to time when we pursue a political idea or a course of political action. They are above such things. Your Lordships opposite may have to face it, you have been so arrogant that you have treated Parliament with contempt. In a way, Parliament has deserved it, because Parliament has let power he taken away from it, not only in terms of the persistence in bringing in large chunks of secondary legislation but also in allowing its powers to be abdicated to the Commission in Brussels and the European Union. I know that there I carry the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, with me. The power of the British Parliament has been lessened.

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Our problem today is that, without being jingoistic in any way, without being flag-wavers or anything of that kind, we must restore to Parliament the power that it ought to have. That is the power which great politicians and statesmen like Winston Churchill fully acknowledged. He was a servant of Parliament, he never presumed to dictate to it. Exactly the same applied to my colleague, Aneurin Bevan, who always treated Parliament with the utmost respect.
The fault of the Government and, after many years, senior members of the Civil Service and members of the establishment that serve it is that they have come to regard themselves as being in power in perpetuity. It must stop. If the lessons that can be learnt from Scott are to have any effect, those of us here and in another place who have the privilege of being Members of one of the greatest Parliaments on earth will have to exert ourselves to ensure that our powers as parliamentarians representing the people, as we do in many ways, keep an effective check on the governments that are elected.
10.48 p.m.
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I must admit that until about five o'clock this afternoon I felt extremely confused by the events of recent weeks since the publication of the Scott Report. I admit that I have trawled though it, ploughed through it, harrowed through it, read most of it and understood a little of it. I am confused. It is as though we are seeing a strange pantomime emerging before us, a hit of Gilbert and Sullivan or for me Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and that lovable character, cunning old Fury. He said:
'".I'll be judge. I'll be jury,
'I'll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death'".
There were two cunning old Furies sitting on the Benches opposite, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, and the noble Lord, Lord Richard. I ask myself what is this debate about, and what are the conclusions. Where is the body? Where is the motive? If it is about public accountability, I do not have the ability to comment on that. But I believe the words of my noble friend Lord Trcfgarne and of many other Ministers that there was no attempt to deceive Parliament. If it is about perverting, distorting or corrupting the course of justice, I have no ability to comment on that at all; except I noted today a score of noble and learned Lords all of whom seemed to say that there was nothing illegal.
It worries me a little that I have always thought I was in the wrong business. It was a tradition in my family that we gave advice, passed down from father to son, that there were only three things that a man could do. First, he could help people to do it —in which case he became a lawyer and joined the professions. Or he could take the credit for them that did it —in which case he became a politician. Or, if he was a man, he went into foreign trade.
I have been involved in trade. I thought originally that trade sparked off this report. And yet, when I read through it, very few people who knew anything about trade were involved. This is not really a criticism of government, but noble Lords will be aware that, perhaps since 1974, there have been 55 different Ministers in the Department of Trade and Industry. In general, civil
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servants, ambassadors and others change their jobs every three years. There may have been a continuity of policy, but not necessarily a continuity of experience.
Those of us who have been involved in trade are now forced to disclose, as I would do anyway, our relevant interests. I apologise for boring your Lordships, and I will try to be as brief as possible. From 1979 to 1986 I was chairman of the Committee for Middle East Trade, the body that advises government on trade. I was on the BOTB from 1983 to 1986 on general trade. I was on the East European Trade Council for a few years. (I mention that only in relation to defence sales at that time.) I am president of the British Exporters Association and have been for some six years, trying to promote the development of trade, and I chair the international side of the Engineering Industries Association, which deals with small engineering companies that need overseas orders. All those jobs have been unpaid, but I had a pretty good team around me.
On the more commercial side, I am afraid that for many years I worked with Midland Bank, the main correspondent bank for most of the countries in the Middle East. We were also the bank for principal correspondence with Iraq and Iran. We had within our group Thomas Cook, which since 1927 was established in Baghdad and was the only British company to be established there. More than that, we were the managers of the £750 million line of credit backed by ECGD that has been responsible for some of the debts.
I have to disclose another interest. I have been to Baghdad many times. I went there recently. Noble Lords will be aware, and it is reasonable to point out, that you are not allowed to talk to Iraq if you are British without the amazing piece of documentation called "a permission to speak". I am probably the only Member of this House today who has a permission to speak. We have to be extremely careful when we speak, because the permission to speak comes from the Department of Trade and Industry. It states:
"The Secretary of State, in exercise of powers conferred by Articles 3 and 9 of the Iraq and Kuwait (United Nations Sanctions) Order 1990 (a) ('the UN Sanctions Order'), hereby grants the following Licence… Any expression in this Licence shall have the meaning it has in the UN Sanctions Order or the Import, Export and Customs Powers (Defence) Act 1939 (b)".
I make that point to illustrate that this country makes it extraordinarily difficult for anybody to do anything. Eighty per cent. of the expenditure of the Department of Trade and Industry is spent stopping you doing things. Lawyers, with great respect, seem to try to stop you doing things as well; and politicians cut the ground from under your feet.
But on the subject of trade, it is vital to our nation. I shall take noble Lords hack in time and try to emphasise the reason why. Why is the Middle East important to us and why will it be important to us in the future? I go hack to the late 1950s when post-Suez a decision was made that we should no longer seek to promote and protect any interest east of Suez. That decision, for whatever reason, sent a wrong signal to many parts of the world that we were no longer interested in an area that for many years had been under British rule or British protection. Our captive markets

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started to fade away. We were always blamed for drawing the lines in the sand in the wrong places. That was not necessarily true. But when suddenly in 1974 there was a sharp increase in oil prices and that area took off, we saw a major transformation whereby the British were far too far behind and our industrial competitors seized many of the market opportunities from us.
I illustrate the point by pointing out that in the early 1970s OECD exports, which comprise the bulk of exports to the Middle East, were about 15 billion dollars a year and last year they were 108 billion dollars. Our own trade at that time in visibles, on which I concentrate as they have always been about two-thirds or more of all our business, were about 4.4 per cent. of all British visible exports. That figure then rose last year to something around 11 per cent. Significant to our economy is that for many years we had a surplus invisible trade, until maybe 15 years ago when things started to go wrong as our manufacturing base was eroded.
Last year in the Middle East we had a surplus of about £4 billion and a deficit overall of about LID billion. That means that without Middle East trade our manufacturing sector would have been in deficit to around £14 billion. That is all significant. But I go hack to my own involvement at that time.
As chairman of the committee, my job was to try to persuade industry and government to promote and develop trade with the Middle East. That was no easy task, since nobody was interested in the Middle East. It was made even more difficult because many of the countries which we thought had great potential were, to some extent, off limits. We had on our committee the head of the Middle East side of the Foreign Office, the head of the Middle East side of the Department of Trade and Industry, the Bank of England ECGD and many great luminaries from industry and elsewhere. We had a very private and friendly operation whereby we sought to promote and develop trade.
I return now to Iran and Iraq. Under the previous governments we sold substantial arms to Iran. With the change there and a major cutback in trade, we looked at the Middle East as a whole and we recognised that until a peace process was well under way or until there was a just and lasting peace, there would be the permanent problems of negative certificates of origin, the Arab boycott and so on. We looked at markets that were important and one of them was Iraq.
Iraq had few relationships with the United Kingdom. We wanted to see what we could do to encourage those. It was difficult because the Government always dragged their feet. In the end, my noble friend Lord Carrington stopped off in Baghdad on the way hack from India, and immediately that brief political gesture opened up trade. I was asked to lead the first trade mission out there, which, I have to say, was not a particularly easy or pleasant experience. I was not used to being attacked and accused of being a lackey of the capitalist American pro-Zionist policies that had destroyed the stability of the world, and much of the usual rhetoric. I had not yet rehearsed the reply.
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But Iraq and many countries of the Middle East have always felt securer under strong regimes. At the moment there is a strong and ruthless regime. There have been strong and ruthless regimes in other areas. We may not necessarily approve of the regime, nor need we have approved of it at that time, but the potential for trade was there. There was no Iran-Iraq war, and we started to trade in almost everything. Our trade went from virtually nothing to £500 million a year.
At that time there was a worry about defence. We suddenly found that defence sales had overtaken the sales of all other industrial equipment in the Middle East. So we wrote to the Secretary of State for Defence asking for guidance. The decision was made that, as we had trading relationships with Iraq, we could more or less trade in anything we wanted; but there were certain rules.
Those rules were not really guidelines. Guidelines were almost directing principles. It was what people felt was right and what was wrong. Directing principles go hack a long way, and I should like to quote the original ones that I have always enjoyed and commend to your Lordships' House —those of 1st August 1650, known as the Instructions to the Council of Trade. There are 12 principles and I quote but one:
"Ninthly, they are to take into their consideration whether it is necessary to give way to a more open and free trade and in what manner it is finest to be done: wherein, notwithstanding, they are to take care that government and order in trade may be preserved and confusion avoided".
We discussed the issues at that time openly with government departments and others. Again I disclose an interest in that many of the Ministers and officials became good and close friends. It is absolutely impossible, in my view, that the Department of Trade and Industry could ever have encouraged someone to do anything illegal or wrong. Our difficulty was that our Government and government departments, unlike those of our industrial competitors, tended to drag their feet and make decisions rather late in the day. I believe that our standards of trade were extremely high —and are still higher than those of any other nation, which is demonstrated almost by the requirements that we have under the UN sanctions to have a permission to speak before discussing issues on Iran.
When I ceased those various jobs, I thought that the same relations that one had might be used to develop trade and that we should be looking to the future. Some 18 months ago I went to Baghdad, on my own, with full authorisation and knowledge, to look to see what would happen in the future. I went principally to discuss how we would recover the £1.2 billion debt that we were owed and also how developments might take place if and when Iraq conformed to the requirements of the United Nations.
As we know, the Iraqis are a tough hunch. They are not without a certain sense of humour. Most of them have been trained in the United Kingdom, usually in the Manchester area and are supporters of Manchester United or Manchester City. All of them have televisions in their offices and watch CNN and Sky. They respect strong government and I believe that they have a respect for us and believe that the British could play a greater

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role than we are able to at the moment in solving the problems of the Middle East, in particular those of Iraq and Iran.
Why that is relevant —I regret doing this —is that in the course of my discussions I was told that some debts were owed to them. That related to an organisation that I was sent to see, and I had no idea who I was going to see, called the parent company of Matrix Churchill. This is relevant to some points made by noble Lords opposite, because I am not quite sure what to do about it. In a report I made I said:
"I suppose it was inevitable that the Matrix Churchill business should appear somewhere on the agenda: and it did. I was asked if, under the heading of 'debt'. I could speak with a company which was owed some $65 million … and wanted to use this amount to purchase drugs for humanitarian purposes, as permitted by the UN.
To my amazement this turned Out to be the former parent company of Matrix Churchill. The two directors explained that they had reached agreement to sell their stake to the minority shareholder and contracts had been exchanged. but they had not received the payment due. A legal action had taken place in the UK, but judgement had been given against them. The UK consultant was now advising that they should take further legal action to try and recover the debt and they asked for guidance.
They told me that they did not think they or the company had broken any British Law, and they had deliberately tried to keep Matrix Churchill going to prevent the loss of some 600 jobs. However, if under law they were owed money what should they do".
If they are owed money, I suppose it gets taken into account in the debt. But I explained that there had been so many material adverse changes that there was nothing that could be done on that.
Over time, in dealing with Iraq, one has had some amazing ups and downs. But overall I know full well that there have been no trade breaches in terms of lethal weapons. To the best of my knowledge, we had discussions about it with them before the Iran/Iraq war. I believe that the British Government's policy has been constant, strong and firm and is respected. I hope that when this debate is out of the way we will be able to turn again and look to the future of the development of our trade with the Middle East.
11.5 p.m.
Lord Bridges: My Lords, at this stage of a long debate I must be as brief as I can, and in that I have been assisted by the admirable speech of my noble friend Lord Wright of Richmond, who has provided us with the essential background to the fluid politics of the Middle East which, while not covered in the Scott Report, are an essential part of the whole subject. So I shall speak very briefly on two matters which. I think are relevant.
The first concerns the format of the report. Sir Richard's determination and the accumulation of detail are very impressive. But there are disadvantages in presenting the results in this way. A document of this importance should be readily accessible to legislators, journalists and the public; something that can be read and absorbed within a day or so. I do understand Sir Richard's dislike of the "executive summary", as he said recently, and I fully share that. But even so, a single volume could have contained the essence of his
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investigation and the conclusion. The present form is rather indigestible, and there can be few of us who have had the time to study it carefully, and fewer still members of the public who were able to pay £45 for the privilege. This has meant that much of the initial comment on the report was based on the Government's own summary. I do not think that is an ideal way of doing it. Let us hope that future inquiries on this scale commissioned by the Government will be presented rather differently. I hope I may be forgiven the reflection that if Sir Richard had been more economical —not with the truth but with words —he might have had less cause to complain at the summaries made of his remarks by others.
My other comment relates to a matter which has been referred to, but not in any detail, by noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. It concerns the future system for the control of our exports. Sir Richard is surely right when he suggests that the legislation on this subject needs a thorough review. I was very glad to hear what the Lord Advocate had to tell us in opening the debate. I agree with Sir Richard that the 1939 Act should be replaced. But I am not in agreement with a number of his other suggestions on this matter. Clearly, Sir Richard would like to see a tightly prescribed procedure, defined in precise legal terms, about the way in which export licences should be applied for, processed and issued. He thinks that an exporter should have the possibility of a formal appeal against the refusal of a licence. He is clear that the body responsible should not be the Department of Trade and Industry, although the department knows a great deal about the subject. Nor, he thinks, should foreign policy considerations play any part in the issue of licences. I should like to quote one sentence from his report. It is to be found in Volume IV, K2.20 on page 1,766. These are his remarkable words:
"I would doubt whether the maintenance of a technology gap between the United Kingdom … on the one hand and eastern bloc or third world countries on the other hand can still he regarded as a legitimate purpose of export control".
I find that remark rather alarming. The sentence I have just quoted does not seem to me to resemble the world in which we have been living or live now. To my knowledge, it has never been our object to hinder the transfer of technology to the third world. There has of course been a vigorous debate about the best means of transferring technology and what would be the best sort to transfer.
As to his remarks on the eastern bloc, first, it has ceased to exist, for the present at least. The reasons for seeking to control our exports of technology there in the past had to do with the maintenance of our own security. The objective was sensible, even if we did not always succeed. Some of the other suggestions look off target to me, not least because we live in a world where, happily, the need for export controls is steadily diminishing and covers only a very small fraction of our external trade. Building a large, new, legalistic edifice does not seem the best way to proceed.
Nevertheless, I agree that the statutes need a fresh look and I hope that the Government will pursue that suggestion, as they evidently intend. A practical

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suggestion might be to work for a new Act which would embrace both the powers under the 1946 United Nations Act and the authority to enforce EC legislation contained in both the 1972 Act, Treaty of Accession, and the 1955 regulations. Additionally, I believe that we need the power to act on our own, as well as by enforcing the economic sanctions of the United Nations and the European Union. That would be an emergency power, perhaps by means of an order requiring a negative or affirmative resolution. It would be for use on rare occasions; for example, if a foreign dictator were to take British hostages and to threaten action against them. The case of Idi Amin comes to mind. Normally we would expect such sanctions to be agreed and imposed by the European Union, but that might not always be possible, or not possible speedily enough. Sir Richard's suggestion that no foreign policy considerations need be entertained in considering export controls is unrealistic practically since trade and foreign policy are always closely connected —and so they should be if we are to support our exporters as we wish to do.
I have spent some time on a subject which has not attracted much attention in the debate so far; but I suggest that the Government will wish to study Sir Richard's recommendations with their customary mixture of caution and scepticism.
11.12 p.m.
Lord Rees: My Lords, it is fashionable nowadays to declare interests both conceivable and inconceivable. I should therefore like to follow briefly the example of my noble friend Lord Selsdon in declaring that at one brief stage in my career after 1983 I was Minister for Trade and was encouraged to take a delegation of businessmen to Baghdad. I reassure the House that the businessmen were, as far as I can recall, entirely from the construction industry and I have never heard that any of them engaged in building barracks or gun emplacements for the Iraqi regime. I hope therefore that I start this debate with a reasonably clean sheet.
Perhaps I may turn briefly to the report. Like other noble Lords, I find it difficult to thread my way through it. Sir Richard was admirably painstaking and thorough, but I suspect that a report of a quarter of its size would have attracted more than four times the interest and comment.
Picking up on a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, about how Sir Richard came to be in favour at one moment but out of favour at another, and speaking entirely for myself, I find it difficult, but not impossible, to cavil at his findings of primary fact, but I find it relatively easy to diverge from his conclusions of law —I find myself in very good company there —and from his conclusions on political practice and political phenomena. All that leads me to suspect that in other circumstances future Administrations will be very cautious about setting up a similar inquiry, unless with very much more restricted terms of reference.
I am sure that we were all deeply impressed by the
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robust speeches of my noble friends Lord Howe of Aberavon and particularly Lord Trefgarne, both of whom "suffered", if I may use that expression, by being called personally to explain their conduct and that of the Government, before a slightly inquisitorial —although not "slightly" because that was its design —tribunal.
With that, perhaps I may focus on the substantive issues. At this hour of the night and after over eight hours of debate, the ground has been pretty well tilled. Therefore, I hope that the House will forgive me if I treat the issues which I find important a little summarily.
The first is this: was the prosecution of the directors of Matrix Churchill properly brought? Secondly, did Ministers, and particularly the Attorney-General, by action or inaction, attempt to prevent a fair trial? Thirdly, did Ministers wilfully attempt to mislead Parliament or Members of it? On the first issue, it would be quite inappropriate now to consider raking over the facts to determine whether there was possibly a prima facie case against the company and its directors. What I believe is fairly clear is this: was the statement of the then Minister of Trade — I do not suspect his motives at all and in one sense I believe that they were of the best, seeking, as he saw it, to promote British trade in a very delicately balanced part of the world —to the MTTA likely to mislead or encourage the directors of Matrix Churchill to undertake the transactions in which they were engaged? Equally, were the contacts —again, it is impossible for anyone not involved in that aspect of the inquiry to judge this completely accurately —with the intelligence services enough to warrant a great deal of reflection before any prosecution should be brought?
I shall merely state briefly at this hour of the evening that I believe that the prosecution should not have been brought. I was not, and am not, entirely reassured by the fact that counsel for the prosecution very honourably and properly withdrew the case with the concurrence of the judge. The question that needs to be considered now, which was identified by Sir Richard Scott, is the role of Customs and Excise as an independent prosecuting agency. Indeed, there may be other independent prosecuting agencies that need to have their role considered against this background. In particular, what about the relations between the prosecuting agency and other Departments of State? Of particular importance in this case were the Customs and Excise, who were enforcing the regulations of another department. The policy was not theirs. Indeed, nothing I say is intended to reflect on the integrity, energy and ability of the Customs and Excise, for whom, at another stage in my life, I had the privilege of answering in another place.
I believe that this was touched on in the opening speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Fraser. It is important to consider whether a Minister, presumably the Attorney-General, should be more closely involved, particularly where government policy is at issue. As I said, that can be explored at leisure and I hope that my words chime in with what my noble and learned friend said in opening. He is nodding, I am glad to say, so may I leave it at that.

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The second issue which I identify and which concerned me is, did Ministers, and in particular the Attorney-General, attempt to prejudice a fair trial? I believe it was a finding of fact that cannot be gainsaid that there was no question of a conspiracy here. Indeed, I do not believe that anyone in this House has attempted to argue for that. The question was perhaps the existence of the PII certificates. It must be established clearly by now not only inside but outside this House that the PII certificates are not gagging certificates, but merely pass to the judiciary the responsibility, which may be an onerous one, of striking a proper balance between the interests of government and those of justice. Beyond that there has been much very unfair criticism of the Attorney-General. More able voices than mine have come to his defence.
I understood that at an earlier stage, not in this House, the principal criticism was that he had totally misunderstood the law and was incapable and incompetent of discharging his proper functions as Attorney-General. The overwhelming weight of opinion from noble and learned Lords has persuaded me that almost certainly the Attorney-General got the law right. I know that two voices speaking from Opposition Benches have taken a different view. I can say only that I was not persuaded by what they had to say.
Perhaps the matter can be looked at again. Indeed, there is a case for looking at the whole question of the certificates and seeing whether the process can be reviewed and made a little more humane. I appreciate that the defence in a criminal trial must be extremely constricted if it is uncertain as to whether it can get its hands on something which may be directly material and relevant to its case. I believe that in this regard, too, further action and reflection are necessary. I am extremely pleased that the trial judge, to whom I wish to pay particular tribute, took a very robust view, with or without the Attorney-General's assistance.
I turn finally to the third issue: was Parliament misled? It is unfortunate and unfair that the accidents of public life leave the Chief Secretary alone in the firing line. I fully appreciate that my noble friend Lord Trefgarne and others have been through the mill but they at least have the minor reassurance not only that they have been cleared but that their political careers do not turn on the outcome of today's debates.
Sir Richard Scott's conclusions leave the Chief Secretary's integrity intact, even if his judgment was called into question. However, we cannot do justice to the whole issue unless we view it in its true perspective. There was no question of personal or pecuniary interest; there was no Marconi scandal here. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, whose grasp of history is so acute, will recognise that there is nothing of that kind to taint this administration in this particular context. No personal frailties have been disclosed, and the media would certainly have done their best to enlarge the field of debate and inquiry had there been a hint of that.
It emerges clearly from the report that all the Ministers were concerned solely with national economic and foreign policy objectives. The Howe guidelines, if my noble and learned friend still accepts the paternity
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of those guidelines, were concerned not so much with the formulation of policy as with its implementation. The policy itself was to maintain even-handed neutrality between the interests of Iraq and Iran. What has emerged beyond argument from the evidence is the scrupulous regard with which the Minister tried for a considerable time to maintain that balance.
I was deeply impressed by the speeches of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne and the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, who gave us the Foreign Office background and implications of the issues which are the subject of these debates. Those speeches emphasised the fact that the guidelines were just that; they were not Holy Writ and they were not law to be applied rigidly. They were the background against which complex cases had to be judged and decisions reached. As so often in government, Ministers and civil servants were dealing with shades of grey and not with black and white questions.
Therefore, I reject utterly the accusation that there was a gross betrayal of the principles of parliamentary life. I am not attributing that to Sir Richard Scott but I do attribute it to some of the grosser attacks which have been made during the past three years and in particular, over the past three or four weeks.
I hope too that the country will recognise that all those decisions made by Ministers at the time had to be taken against a background of what our neighbours were doing. They were unashamedly selling not dual-purpose artefacts but nakedly military equipment. Really we were on the fringe of that trade during the relevant years, as I read the position.
I am bound to say that there is an element of hypocrisy in our national life at times which leaves our neighbours amused and even astounded. Therefore, while I hope that the Government will take very careful note —and I am sure that they will —of the points raised as regards the areas of public policy and practice which need review, I see no case for butchering two able and conscientious Ministers to make a Roman holiday.
11.26 p.m.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, this debate is showing signs of becoming as long as the report with which it deals. Despite its length, it is still an impressive occasion. We have heard from two former Prime Ministers, one former Lord Chancellor and a former Attorney-General. And, of course, we have had a very notable maiden speech from my noble friend Lord Taverne.
The legal profession is always profusely represented in your Lordships' House. I am bound to say that the way in which they rallied round the Attorney-General in another place today rather reminded me of the boilermakers' union in the old days dealing with somebody who had been victimised on the shop floor. The Attorney-General certainly has plenty of friends on the Benches opposite. I do not think that Sir Richard Scott, as another distinguished lawyer featured in today's debate, has had as many friends on those Benches. I believe that the Government have treated Sir Richard Scott fairly shabbily. The Prime Minister

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invited him to take on a very heavy and onerous inquiry and at the end of the day, as I say, the Government have treated him fairly shabbily. They may very well find it a good deal more difficult in future to persuade distinguished judges to take on such a heavy task in the light of the way in which they have sought to discredit Sir Richard.
However, in general this has been a very different debate from that which took place 11 days ago when feelings ran very high because of the extraordinary behaviour of the Government regarding the publication of the Scott Report. I do not know whether it was a Minister or civil servant who coined the phrase "a controlled environment" as a device applying to a parliamentary opposition doing their job, but I am sure that he will earn his place in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Now that the dust has settled, as is usual in this House, your Lordships have delved into some deeper issues. The question whether Ministers in another place should resign is essentially for another place and I leave it there. But 11 days ago the Government, in their Statement which was repeated in this House by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, relied on two lines of defence. First, they relied on the words which they put into Sir Richard's mouth, as it turned out, at a press conference and then took out of context. I believe that Sir Richard has dealt with that properly and in a way which adds to the sense of shame of the Government over this affair. Their second line of defence was to rubbish the Opposition. Of course, when you have a weak case, abuse the plaintiff's attorney. I am inclined to agree with a letter which I read in The Times the other day by Sir David Crouch, a highly respected former Tory MP whom I know well. He said:
"Things have surely come to a pretty pass when the Government expects the Opposition to apologise for criticising it. What do they think the Opposition is for"?
I do not intend in any way to retrace the ground covered by other speakers as regards whether or not Parliament was misled either in letters or in parliamentary Questions. However, 1 am hound to tell the Minister and those on the Benches opposite that if one wants evidence of the willingness of the Government to mislead Parliament —one cannot say "conspire" to mislead Parliament, because it was a very open conspiracy —one has only to look at the Government's Statement on the publication of the Scott Report and the press pack that was delivered to Peers at the same time.
Over the following weekend, politicians, the press and interested citizens had the Opportunity to look at the report in the round and discover what a glaring gap there was between the Government's special pleading and the reality of the report. For my part, I found it deeply disturbing to discover at the beginning of the press pack a sheet of paper headed simply "Cabinet Office". That page began with the following words:
"Sir Richard Scott's Report completely exonerates all Ministers and Civil Servants from any sort of conspiracy or cover-up in relation to the sale of arms to Iraq".
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In my view that Statement —and I well understand the feeling behind it —together with the series of sound bites which followed it, and which it is perfectly legitimate for a Government to put forward in their own defence, should have been headed, "The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister" and not "Cabinet Office".
I have here a letter which the Minister sent to my noble friend Lord Harris on the arrangements regarding the publication of the report. My noble friend asked about the number of officials who had an opportunity to see the report before the press pack was compiled. The answer that was given stated that there was,
"a very small number of officials in the main Departments concerned in accordance with the procedures agreed with the Scott Inquiry. However, the Scott report covered a wide range of policy issues, and a number of other officials will have contributed to preparation of the Press Pack without sight of the report. It is not therefore possible to give a number".
It now turns out that, apparently, an uncertain number of officials helped to compile the press pack without ever having seen the Scott Report. I do not quite know what one can conclude from that fact.
The Scott Report is the second major report into public concerns about standards in Whitehall and Westminster. It follows the report of the Nolan Committee upon which I served, although I am speaking tonight entirely on behalf of my party and not in the least on behalf of that committee. In that report, we dealt with the duty of Ministers:
"To refrain from asking or instructing civil servants to do things which they should not do".
That is in fact a quotation from the document, Questions of Procedure for Ministers which the Prime Minister, to his very great credit, made public for the first time in 1992. The Nolan Committee recommended that the section which I quoted should be strengthened with, for example, (and I quote from our report) a provision that:
"Ministers must not mislead Parliament … Ministers must keep their party and Ministerial roles separate. They must not ask civil servants to carry out party political duties or to act in any other way that would conflict with the Civil Service Code".
Indeed, the Nolan Report emphasised that:
"The political impartiality of the civil service must be protected".
The Government have accepted those recommendations.
I am hound to say that the grotesque gloss of the press pack on the Scott Report puts a great strain on the concept of the political impartiality of the Civil Service. It seems to us to be further evidence that the present Government have been the political masters of the Civil Service for too long. They have placed the leadership of the Civil Service under unprecedented pressures. I believe that it would have been better if successive Cabinet Secretaries had taken a leaf out of the hook of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, who, I am sorry to say, started the process, and said to successive Prime Ministers, including the noble Baroness, "No, no, no!"
However, until today, the Government have largely refused to concede that there were any errors in their behaviour in the matters investigated by Scott. Any concessions seemed to be regarded as a sign of' weakness, and it is only really today that they have spelt out their attitude on the practical recommendations that Sir Richard makes to deal with the weaknesses in

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Whitehall which he identified, and to encourage a more open system of government. We, of course, welcome what the Government have said even if it is a little late in the day.
The starting point for reform in this area of government policy has to he, as has been mentioned by one or two noble Lords, the murky business of the international arms trade. Short of world disarmament, the arms trade is a necessary evil and the Prime Minister again deserves credit for his part in establishing a United Nations register of arms sales. Smaller, developing countries have the same right as the rest of us to security and self-defence. The trouble is that the arms trade tends to corruption, both morally and sometimes criminally, encouraged by the secrecy which surrounds it. The other day I came across a new organisation called Transparency International, set up recently in Berlin, with a section in the United Kingdom. It is seeking to establish with both governments and industry —I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, may be interested in this —an international code of conduct and openness to prevent corruption in international business transactions. It deserves a fair wind. I very much agreed with what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield said in drawing attention to the Church's report on these matters. It is important in terms of the arms trade to make sure that there is an open, moral purpose at the core of export policy in this field. I echo the comments of my noble friend Lord Rodgers in this respect.
Transparency, both national and international, is the real lesson the Government should learn from the Scott Report. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Wright, explained to us, there are limits to how far freedom of information can go in conducting foreign policy or foreign trade. Indeed, I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, that there are limits as regards a freedom of information Act in terms of internal decision-making processes. But I must say that all the evidence of the Scott Report is that we still have some way to go before we reach any of these limits. This report shows Whitehall not only in the grip of the culture of secrecy to which my noble friend Lord Taverne referred, but actually divided into separate baronies, each competing with each other in terms of secrecy. The intelligence authorities keep their cards so close to their chest that the Customs authorities are ignorant of their reports. The Customs authorities in their turn cherish their sovereignty as an independent prosecuting authority which does not need to tell the Crown Prosecution Service or the Attorney-General what it is up to. The Attorney-General, in turn, is the guardian of the arcane theology of the public interest immunity certificates. Noble Lords will be relieved to know that I certainly do not intend to enter into that territory at this time of night.
However, I am hound to tell the Minister that I thought in many ways the most powerful speech in this debate was the speech made by my noble friend Lord Hutchinson of Lullington. It requires a serious answer from the noble and learned Lord. If I may say so, it deserves an answer from him in his role as a distinguished Scottish lawyer rather than in his
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immediate role as a Minister in his own department. Ministers and officials are reinforced by all this, and they themselves play their cards close to their chest with Parliament. Apart from the legitimate considerations that have been mentioned in the field of foreign policy and international trade, the truth is that they have been frightened of being frank with Parliament for fear of the democratic debate it would provide. The Government have been in office now far too long. They have become sloppy in their standards and obviously rattled in their judgment. They have failed to learn that the public mood of today demands much more freedom of information than was true in the past.
The noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, was absolutely right that the rot started with the decision not to publish the guidelines when they were originally put together. Everything followed from that decision. There has been far too much of what my noble friend Lord Russell called unintelligent secrecy about the Government. If only they had been ready to learn the lessons of seeking a much more open society earlier, Sir Richard Scott and his team might have been saved their magisterial and marathon labours, and we would all have been saved a very long read.
11.40 p.m.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I start my speech with a health warning. Some of my remarks about the speeches of noble Lords opposite will be disobliging, even to the point of being downright nasty.
I shall start immediately with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff. The noble Lord accused my noble friend Lord Richard and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, of being political. I nearly fainted away at the use of the word. I was shocked. The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, might care to reflect on the lives of noble Lords I am looking at now who are sitting on the Government Privy Council Bench. What business have they been in all these years? I thought they were in politics. I never thought there was anything wrong in that. What is wrong with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, and my noble friend Lord Richard being in politics? I am above that kind of thing, but that is another matter.
Where is the best place to start? The best place to start is with the Prime Minister. He said:
"My interest is in the facts, which is why I have set up an inquiry. Whether Ministers themselves breached their own guidelines is one of the things that will be established by the Scott Inquiry".
I shall go to another authority I hold in the highest esteem, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. He said in reply to a noble Lord:
"The noble Lord will not be surprised to hear that I have the fullest confidence in Sir Richard Scott. He is conducting an inquiry in circumstances and according to a procedure which he has explained publicly". —[0fficiai Report, 20/6/95; col. 147.]
In the light of that statement, noble Lords should not be surprised that I regard many of the interventions I have heard as deplorable.
The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, in particular referred to Sir Richard Scott's reputation and that of Miss Baxendale as tarnished. There are some tarnished

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reputations, but they are certainly not theirs. I was sitting here reasonably quietly, nearly asleep, but that remark woke me up.
If I have to choose between the judgment of Sir Richard Scott and that of the apologists for the Government whom I have heard today, I have no doubt whom I trust and believe. More to the point, I have no doubt whom the public trust and will believe.
I gather that I am in a minority, but I regard the report as absolutely fascinating. I regard it as a great achievement, in its uncovering and mastering of the facts, its balanced judgments and its analytical skills. In particular, I appreciate its understatement. I disagree with those who wish it was shorter. I wish that some of the speeches today had been shorter, but that is another matter. I shall continue for quite a long time, so noble Lords may get used to that idea. I have sat through all the speeches, and I feel I have an investment which I am entitled to cash in.
I disagree with noble Lords, including many on my own side of the House, who wanted a simpler account of ministerial failure and incompetence. The essence of this report lies in the detail and the building up of the case. That case is overwhelming. When the history of this Government is written, the Scott Report will be a document of overwhelming importance. The Government's initial response will always he looked at, as will some of the speeches today.
Let me turn immediately to the colleague of noble Lords opposite, Mr. Heseltine. We have discussed quite a lot about the PII certificates and the details. I shall say a word or two on that although I have no legal expertise. In reflecting on some of the views expressed, I wonder whether noble Lords appreciate that they are also saying that the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Heseltine, was completely mistaken. My reading of the report is that, apart from Sir Richard Scott, one man who stands out as a human being was Mr. Heseltine. Mr. Heseltine was not going to be pushed around; he was not going to be an apparatchik. He wanted to think for himself. He sensed there was something wrong here.
However, I take it that what noble Lords are saying is that Mr. Heseltine was mistaken. The report states that at first he refused to sign any certificate. He seemed to think it would be unjust to the defendants. To put it in Americancse: "You're damned right he thought it was unjust to the defendants". That is the way in which any ordinary person not expert in law would respond. I have to emphasise to noble Lords that in expressing some of their views, they are saying that their rather distinguished colleague, acting as a decent human being, simply was wrong.
I am left slightly puzzled subsequently by the Deputy Prime Minister. He emerges from the report (if I may use the expression) smelling of roses. He showed common sense and human decency to the highest degree. He reflected on what he was asked to do by lawyers and could hardly believe that what they wanted was right. No one denies that; he could not believe that it was fair and that it would lead to justice.
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What I do not understand is how he continues in his current role, a glorified PRO for the Government. Having himself done the right thing, why is he defending his colleagues? When we read his memoirs —I assume that they will be written fairly soon now —we shall perhaps have some enlightenment on that.
Like other noble Lords, I have no intention of intervening on what the law is. If distinguished lawyers tell me that that is the law, I figure that that is the business they are in and I shall not argue with them. I have my views on certain philosophical aspects of the relationship between what they tell me is the law and what I might call justice, but that is another matter and I can save it for another day. What cannot be doubted is that the Attorney-General acted without reading certain important documents, and we know that he did not reveal Mr. Heseltine's doubts to the judge. Those things are established.
Although my question cannot be answered now, noble Lords can take me to one side later. Noble and learned Lords who have spoken today have sought to defend the Attorney-General, mostly on the ground that he is a nice guy —as though that had anything to do with the substantive issue before us. That has nothing to do with the matter. Will the noble and learned Lords who have spoken on this tell us whether they regard what he did, or what he failed to do, as showing appropriate professional behaviour? I am not talking of the law but of his role as a professional person. Separate from the law itself, if those noble and learned Lords were lecturing to some young lawyers, would they recommend the way in which the Attorney-General conducted himself as an appropriate model for those young lawyers? I do not ask the question rhetorically; I should like to know the answer.
It has been suggested that there is something obscure about certain aspects of the Scott Report. My difficulty is that the report seems extraordinarily clear. I refer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe. Perhaps I may establish the ground rules. I believe that one can hold someone in high esteem, as I hold the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and still say that what he says is wrong. I hope that we can distinguish between those two matters. However, on the question of guidelines, Sir Richard regards the noble and learned Lord's attempt to distance the guidelines from policy as no more than a play on words. That is a devastating remark. Scott then says that the letter from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, to the Prime Minister referred to the guidelines as new "policy".
"The guidelines were frequently publicly referred to by Government spokesmen as policy. Lord Howe himself so referred to them, the Prime Minister too so referred to them".
There can be no doubt that underlying all that was exactly what Scott established: a change in policy. That is the central point.
I said that Scott believed in understatement. That is what some people objected to, be uses his language carefully, it is understated but it is more devastating because of that. He uses such expressions as "not accurate",
"could not truthfully have been made and should not have been made",

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"The draft answer and the actual answer were in my opinion misleading, the draft answer more blatantly so."
For the Government to respond to that with: "Well, that's all right then" is appalling, especially bearing in mind the persistence and the scale of the "not truthfullies", "not accurates" and "misleadings". I reiterate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, and many others. The Statement made to your Lordships last Thursday was a disgrace. It was an example of what the report was set up to avoid.
Lord Strathclyde: Oh dear, oh dear!
Lord Peston: It is not "Oh dear, oh dear!" The Government might as well hear what someone thinks of their behaviour, it will do them no harm because they might learn something from it. When I heard the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, repeat the Statement last Thursday, my immediate response was: "What's all the fuss about? Why are we wasting our time?" I was sitting here; happily I was not responsible, my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition was dealing with it. I was absolutely bewildered. However, once I had my copy of the report, it took me no time to be able to answer my question. We have here the largest parliamentary scandal of our time and it is fully documented.
The noble Lord, Lord Rees, said that this was no Marconi scandal. He is quite right, it is the arms to Iraq scandal, that is what will be in the history hooks. It is a scandal. I beg noble Lords' pardon, it is the Export of Defence Equipment and Dual-Use Goods to Iraq and Related Prosecutions scandal. I am so glad noble Lords asked me to spell it out in detail.
One of the things that has horrified me is the use of language not just in the report but in the whole area. We use words like "non-lethal weapons"; the word "defence" is always used when we mean "attack". No weapons are ever used to kill anyone. It is weasel language when we know what it was about. It was about getting weapons.
In terms of how badly the Government behaved, it is worth considering what the alternative was. That is the central question that concerns me. The Iraq-Iran war was over. The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, makes it clear, and I agree, that profitable possibilities existed or were coming into existence of selling military equipment or whatever words one likes to use, in that area. It seems to me that he was right and therefore I do not entirely agree with some of my friends. It was right that British industry ought to be able to go into the market, especially as many of our competitors would do so. That is clearly stated in the report, and I have no objection to it.
However, in order to do that, policy changed. My noble friend Lord Callaghan made the point which was connected with the points made in the brilliant maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Taverns. The important and correct action was to say that policy had changed and to argue the Government's case. That seemed to me the correct thing to do. There would have been a terrible row in some quarters, I have no doubt. There would have been what Saddam Hussein might call "The mother and father of a row", the Government might even have
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been weakened, but I doubt whether they would have collapsed as a result. In choosing the path of openness, the Government would have done the right thing. In particular, they would have behaved like a government. Instead, however, they chose the covert route and, with almost the inevitability of a Greek tragedy, we are where we are today. It has been such a waste, such a destruction of ministerial reputations and all that sort of thing.
I am reminded of something my late mother once said to me. She said, "Really, you mustn't lie". When I inquired why I must not lie, I did not receive a very philosophical answer. I got the answer: "You'll always he found out". You will always he found out.
Finally, one question has not been asked, and must be asked. It relates to the revelations of the report about the behaviour of Ministers and officials. Incidentally, although the report is full of problems to do with officials, I hope that if not a single Minister accepts responsibility, and not a single Minister apologises, no one will launch an attack on officials. It would be outrageous if officials had to carry the can when no Minister is willing to stand up and be counted. The question is whether this kind of behaviour is specific to this case; or is it endemic in Whitehall today?
Our system of government depends on certain standards of honesty and forthrightness, many of which are implicit and need not be articulated. Noble Lords take it for granted that when they ask a Minister a question they will receive an honest answer. I certainly do. They assume that the ministerial statement is factually correct. Of course we all know that we have to ask the right questions and that, when we do not, we may fail to elicit what we want to know. That is part of the game. We understand that. But what is vital is that we receive a factually correct answer.
Let me go further. The noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, made this point. I accept that Ministers will wish their actions to be viewed favourably. I have no objection to that. It would be silly if they did not. Certainly, they will want to put a gloss on them. But it must be no more than a gloss. What has happened here is far more serious.
Scott demonstrates —I cannot understand those noble Lords who disagree —that Parliament was misled. He demonstrates that it was misled time and again. He cites example after example. If it were not so late, I would read all of them out. He demonstrates that Ministers at that time were less than frank. I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wright. One must sometimes conceal things from the public, in the national interest. There is no doubt at all about that. In fact, I am rather staggered at how much is told about spying and such matters which it horrifies me suddenly to discover set out in the report. But this was not to do with the national interest. This was not a question of not telling people because it was a threat to the security of this country. This was (to use the term that upsets the noble Lord, Lord Beloff) pure politics.
That places noble Lords in serious difficulties. Are we from now on to scrutinise what Ministers say more severely? In particular, from now on are we to work on

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the assumption that if a ministerial statement in any form cannot be proved to be true, we must assume it to be false? I have to tell the House that that would be a temptation; but I am not yet willing to accept defeat on quite that scale. However, it emphasises the terrible risk that the party opposite has taken with our system of parliamentary democracy.
11.59 p.m.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I must begin in traditional fashion by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, on his maiden speech and on his eloquence. The noble Lord has long and varied political experience, and I have no doubt that in the fullness of time he will enrich our debates. I particularly admired his audacity in asserting that a speech on this issue was not a controversial one. Although I mention him specifically, I trust that I shall be forgiven, after more than 35 contributions, if I do not mention all the others who have contributed to this debate —and, my Lords, that is a threat.
Let me first repeat what I said when I repeated the Statement. I defy noble Lords to look at anything that I said last week or anything that I said today in opening which can be construed as an attack personally on Sir Richard Scott in what he undertook. I note particularly what he has to say in paragraph A2.10, where he points out that it was a unique decision to leave to him the discretion to publish the report. As he explains, the reason why that was allowed was because of the allegations that had been made outside this House of a cover-up.
Noble Lords may wish to turn to paragraph G18.106, where the report spells out the charges that have been made: that there was a cover-up; that there was a secret conspiracy to sell arms and weapons to Saddam Hussein and to send innocent men to prison to cover that up. This is not a matter of putting up phoney charges and then knocking them down. Charges were made and made in such a serious fashion that Sir Richard Scott considered that he had to address them specifically in his report. What he did at the end of the day was to emphasise the falseness of those charges.
I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Peston, made a quite uncharacteristic speech. I felt that we might have encountered from him for the first time in your Lordships' House something of the honour of the shadow Attorney-General, who, so far as I am aware —I have not heard the debate in the other place this evening —is the only Member of the Opposition Front Bench to acknowledge that the core charges made at the outset when the inquiry was first set up were without foundation. I am very disappointed that no one else has been prepared to do so.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I am sorry that my speech disappointed the noble and learned Lord. I shall do better tomorrow when we discuss chemical weapons. I
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understood that the shadow Attorney-General did ask for the resignation of Sir Nicholas Lyell. He may note that I did not, but I think that my honourable friend did.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: The noble Lord should read Hansard and make a more careful examination of what was said. (I wonder whether the noble Lord would be silent for a moment when I am trying to address a point made by his noble friend). If he looks at the report of Question Time last week, he will see precisely what the shadow Attorney-General said with regard to a number of the charges that were made against the Attorney-General.
The noble Lord, Lord Richard, upbraided me for taking time to spell out what we accepted of the recommendations put forward by Sir Richard Scott and what action we intended to take. He criticised me for doing that. That is about the most astonishing criticism to which I have ever been subjected. Can your Lordships imagine the position if, in opening the debate, I had given no indication whatsoever of the recommendations that we accepted and the action that we intended to take on them? I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, who listened to what I had to say and acknowledged that there were a number of areas where we had indicated that we wished to take action. I am grateful also to my noble friends Lord Rippon and Lord Beloff, and, surprising as it may seem, to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for recognising that we did seek to address a number of the recommendations made by Sir Richard Scott.
I accept that I did not mention my colleague William Waldegrave in my opening remarks. But, if I had done so, I should have quoted in full what Sir Richard Scott had to say about him. I can think of few more obvious examples of tendentious and selective quotation than that by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, who quoted from D4.6:
"Mr Waldegrave knew, first hand, the facts that, in my opinion, rendered the 'no change in policy' statement untrue".
That is where he stopped. The very next sentence is:
"I accept that, when he signed these letters, he did not regard the agreement he had reached with his fellow Ministers as having constituted a change in policy towards Iraq".
Lord Richard: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord give way?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, if the noble Lord wishes me to quote at length I shall do so. I am pointing out that he stopped before reading the next sentence. He certainly did not go to D3.124, where he knows that my right honourable friend Mr. William Waldegrave and his ministerial colleagues were acquitted of having any duplicitous intention.
Earl Russell: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord calls for completeness of quotations. But the one he used runs on,
"But that that was so underlines, to my mind, the duplicitous nature of the flexibility claimed for the guidelines".
Will the Minister address that point?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, that arises in D3.124, which should be considered in its entirety. If

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the noble Earl wishes me to quote in entirety every passage on which I want to rely, the noble Earl will be here for a very long time, and I suspect that there will only be the two of us present to hear what I have to say.
I do not need to say anything more about my right honourable friend Mr. William Waldegrave because not only have political colleagues sprung to his defence and stated what an open and honourable man be is, but also a number of political opponents similarly acknowledged that he has that clear and obvious characteristic. That was confirmed also by a number of distinguished public servants who have worked with him in recent years.
The critical feature on which we should focus is that of the Howe guidelines. Of course the guidelines contained a degree of flexibility. They were constructed in that form to allow for just that flexibility. If those who read the report carefully reflect upon it, they will appreciate that from the very beginning, when the guidelines were in their embryonic state, there was the beginning of the idea of flexibility. It is clear from Sir Richard Scott's analysis that he attacked the idea of their having any flexibility built into them at all.
I do not believe that I can usefully elaborate on the arguments that have been fully advanced by my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham, my noble friend Lady Thatcher, my noble and learned friend Lord Howe and my noble friend Lord Trefgarne. If they will forgive me, it seemed to me that what was more interesting in some respects was the contribution offered on the matter of whether this was an issue of opinion or interpretation. The arguments advanced in that regard by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, and the noble Lords, Lord Armstrong and Lord Wright, need to be clearly appreciated.
There was a difference of view on whether what was said was within the guidelines; within the flexibility that they allowed for, or outwith them. That is a matter of interpretation or opinion. However, it is important to grasp that, once Sir Richard Scott reached the view that they fell outwith the guidelines, he then proceeded to say that there was then a misleading of Parliament. It all flows from that. But at the same time —and I shall quote for some considerable time if necessary —time and time again he acknowledges, on behalf of those who were central to the consideration of the change following on the ceasefire, that there was no intention to mislead.
I leave this matter simply by saying this. It is only right that we emphasise again the context within which the eponymous guidelines of my noble and learned friend Lord Howe were first constructed. We were acting in a fashion that was unique in terms of providing equipment of any sort to those combatants in the foulest of wars.
I turn to the issue of PII certificates. I do not believe that I have ever made an assertion in law which secured the unequivocal support of such distinguished lawyers as the noble and learned Lords, Lord Lloyd, Lord Simon, Lord Slynn, Lord Hailsham, Lord Bingham, Master of the Rolls, Lord Ackner and implicitly Lord Wilberforce. Had that happened to me in private practice, I would be doing a lap of honour, continued indefinitely.
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Against that background of opinion it is time once and for all to leave aside the argument which, frankly, has been disgracefully addressed at the Attorney-General. Furthermore, it is a mischievous misrepresentation of the matter to say that he took no interest in the prosecution. He had a conference with Mr. Moses, the prosecuting counsel. Specific reference is made to that meeting; specific reference is made to the form of certificate that was particularly fashioned for Mr. Michael Heseltine. All that was in discharge of the Attorney-General's overall responsibility for prosecution with regard to Customs and Excise. If noble Lords believe that the Attorney-General should have taken on a more interventionist role, I would have anticipated in the course of the debate that they would have welcomed what I said when I indicated that we are developing proposals on the precise nature and scope of the increased supervision of Customs and Excise that Sir Richard Scott recommended. However, I am bound to conclude, with a number of my noble friends, that the attack on the Attorney-General is nothing to do with his conduct; it is, allied with the attack on William Waldegrave, all about trying to secure the maximum political embarrassment for the two Ministers still in office who had any part to play in these affairs.
The most breathtaking contribution in your Lordships' House during these eight and a half hours was that of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of HilIhead. He savaged senior Secretaries of State for appending, if I noted him correctly, what were described as automatic signatures to PII certificates. I have to tell your Lordships that the right honourable Roy Harris Jenkins, on or about 3rd June 1966, signed the most famous PII certificate in history; namely, the PII certificate which gave rise to the decision in your Lordships' House in the famous case, repeatedly referred to today, of Conway v. Rimmer. He said:
"I personally examined and carefully considered all the documents and I formed the view that these documents fell within a class of documents comprising confidential reports by police officers. In my opinion, the production of documents of each such class would be injurious to the public interest".
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for signing that certificate. Had he not done so, the law would not have developed as it has. More seriously, I make no criticism of him for doing that because, as the Attorney-General and Ministers did —on that occasion in the Matrix Churchill trial —he followed the advice that was proffered to him. The advice that was proffered to him on that occasion came from the late Lord Elwyn-Jones, who in fact appeared as counsel in the case. He did nothing wrong in doing so. He followed through the advice that was proffered to him.
My noble friend Lord Tebbit focused on a particular feature of Sir Richard Scott's report and the broad criticism of successive Administrations. The noble Lord, Lord Peston, indicated that Sir Richard Scott understated matters. Sir Richard Scott says in C1.67:
"The impropriety in using in peacetime wartime powers of subordinate legislation without Parliamentary control became entrenched de jure".
That was with regard to the 1990 Act. All of us who were in Parliament in 1990 then stand accused of impropriety by Sir Richard Scott. At C1.96 he says that

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the provision for negative resolution procedures is the minimum that constitutional and democratic propriety required.
Far from using understated language, time and time again Sir Richard uses the most vigorous and robust language, as he is perfectly entitled to do. However, what I think will most surprise noble Lords who have read the passage carefully is the deafening silence that there has been from Mr. Gordon Brown and Ms. Joyce Quin in terms of their participation in the discussions about whether or not it would be appropriate for a negative resolution to be included in any Bill to come before your Lordships' House.
I regret if I caused the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, any upset by failing to give him a full reply to his letter. I hope that my intervention explained why that came about.
I must nail one canard. It was no civil servant or Minister who dreamt up the arrangements for access prior to publication for a number of Ministers and other party leaders who wanted to see the report. Sir Richard Scott either required or agreed to all the arrangements that were made. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon sought to have access to the report prior and was refused it, as was my noble friend Lord Trefgarne. There has been some pleasurable fun at the term "controlled environment". That term was before Sir Richard Scott and was agreed to by him.
I readily recognise that we cannot deal with this matter in terms of soundbites or catch-phrases, but I should have thought it appropriate for the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, to refer to the further letter from Sir Richard Scott which was copied to his colleague, Mr. Menzies Campbell, in which he said:
"The Vice-Chancellor has asked to make clear that his concerns extend to all and any attempts whether emanating from government or opposition spokesmen or from the media to compress the conclusions expressed in the report into soundhite or catch-phrase form".
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That was not simply a criticism directed at government Ministers but a concern that Sir Richard Scott expressed time and time again. He wanted everybody to read his report in its entirety.
Finally, I turn to the issue of the inquiry procedures, about which some forceful observations were made by my noble and learned friends Lord Howe and Lord Rawlinson and by my noble friends Lord Rippon and Lord Trefgarne. I understand that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has today indicated that, if anyone wants to put forward views on the proposals offered by Sir Richard Scott on how we should re-examine the way in which inquiries are conducted, he would be pleased to receive them. We are conscious of the criticisms made by my noble friends and want to ensure that the detailed arguments on the proposals are properly addressed. I hope that there will be a positive contribution to that debate.
I conclude by saying that there have been something like nine hours of debate and some very distinguished contributions. I am very grateful to noble Lords who have contributed. I wish that there had been more speeches like that made towards the end by the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, who indicated that he wished to look at the exchange control legislation. I anticipated that that would have flowed from the opening remarks that I made. Far too much of what we have been subjected to has been a phoney attempt to bring about some political embarrassment to the Government. I believe that nine hours of debate have simply revealed that that attempt has failed.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Asylum and Immigration Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to he printed.

Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
Recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at twenty-one minutes past midnight.

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