§ Lord Jenkins of Putneyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the figures for expenditure on arms given by international bodies; the American Central Intelligence Agency; NATO; the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union all show that American expenditure exceeds that of the Soviet Union and that NATO expenditure exceeds that of the Warsaw Pact and if so whether, as there is no estimate to the contrary, they agree that it is no longer reasonable to deny world consensus.
§ The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Glenarthur)As I made clear in answer to the noble Lord's Question of 26th July 1988, the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact refuse to produce any detailed figures for their defence expenditure. It is impossible therefore to know for certain how much they spend on defence or how their expenditure relates to that of the West, whose figures are made public. Any comparison between verified statistics and uncheckable estimates must inevitably be speculative.