HL Deb 21 June 1995 vol 565 cc20-1WA
Lord Kennet

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether full details of transactions and expenditures on research technology were made available to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee while it was reporting on proliferation, and whether the details will be made available to the House of Commons Defence Committee in its examination of ballistic missile defence.

Lord Henley

No such details were sought by, or provided to, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. We will consider in the normal way any request for information from the House of Commons Defence Committee in support of its examination of ballistic missile defence.

Lord Kennet

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether it is the case, as recently stated by the Director of the US Ballistic Missile Defence Organisation (BMDO), that the British taxpayer has contributed nearly half of the "foreign investment" in the research and development of the US BMDO, and what sum does this amount to.

Lord Henley

The director of the US Ballistic Missile Defence Organisation is acknowledging the fact that, of their allies, the UK continues to enjoy a special relationship in ballistic missile defence matters and that it has participated fully in collaborative research into such technologies to the extent that, wherever possible, US funded research in the UK has been met by a similar contribution from the UK. The UK is not in a position to quantify its contribution as a proportion of those of other US allies.

Lord Kennet

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether the UK taxpayer funded BMD technology that has been passed to the US has subsequently been passed by the US to Israel for the development of its soon-to-be-deployed ballistic missile defence system, or been directly passed to Israel.

Lord Henley

Research into ballistic missile defence technology has largely been undertaken on a jointly funded, collaborative basis with the US. The terms of the 1985 "Strategic Defence Initiative" Memorandum of Understanding, under which research into such technologies is undertaken, require the agreement of each participating nation should one wish to pass data to a third party. No such agreement has been entered into.