§ Mr. DalyellTo ask the Prime Minister pursuant to his oral answer of 22 October 2003,Official Report, column 636, to the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson), if he will place in the Library a note of the date when he was first informed that references in the Government dossier to 45 minutes and weapons of mass destruction were references only to battlefield weaponry. [134536]
§ Alan SimpsonTo ask the Prime Minister pursuant to his oral answer of 22 October 2003,Official Report, column 636, on Iraq, on what date he was first informed that references to the 45 minute warning about Iraq applied only to battlefield weapons. [134537]
§ The Prime MinisterAs my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs said on 28 January 2003,Official Report, column 769W, weapons of mass destruction are generally held to refer to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The term applies whether the weapons are delivered through battlefield or longer-range systems. As has been noted by the Intelligence and Security Committee in their report of 9 September 2003, the intelligence on the 45 minute point was issued by the Secret Intelligence Service on 30 August 2002. The Secret Intelligence Service report did not specify the particular delivery systems to which the time of 45 minutes applied. There was, therefore, no reference to battlefield or longer-range systems when the point was included in a formal classified Joint Intelligence Committee assessment issued on 9 September 2002, which I saw.