§ Lord Jenkins of Putneyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they agree with the report of The Times Defence Correspondent of 21st October 1996 that Western intelligence agencies exaggerated the capabilities of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe)Within my department, I am satisfied that the Defence Intelligence Staff and its predecessors who were responsible for assessing Soviet military capabilities during the Cold War had no systemic tendency to exaggerate these capabilities. Soviet secretiveness made assessment of the military capabilities of the USSR a difficult task, particularly in the early post-war years; the relative accuracy of some assessments reflected these problems.