§ Mr. George RobertsonTo ask the Prime Minister when he was first informed that Matrix Churchill was involved in the exports of machine tools to Iraq.
§ The Prime Minister[holding answer 23 November 1992]: As I said in my letter to the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) on 23 November, which has been placed in the Library, I first became aware of the investigation into Matrix Churchill in October 1990.
Some other papers in connection with Matrix Churchill were copied to my office at the Treasury in June and July of that year. Treasury records do not indicate whether I saw those documents, but I have no recollection of doing so. A meeting of Ministers under the chairmanship of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs was held on 19 July 1990 to discuss defence sales policy to Iran and Iraq. That meeting was attended from the Treasury by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Ryder). The public expenditure Cabinet was held on the same day and would have been my principal preoccupation at the time.
At the beginning of August 1990, following the invasion of Kuwait, I did see a copy of a minute about the implications of the invasion for trade with Iraq, which referred to Matrix Churchill as one company with potential exports that would need to be prevented.