§ Mrs. EwingTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence what changes have been(a) made and (b) proposed to tighten the regulations on chemical and biological weapons since May 1997. [55048]
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§ Mr. George RobertsonThe United Kingdom is a State Party to both the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). These Conventions prohibit, respectively, biological and chemical weapons. They are applied in the UK by the Biological Weapons Act 1974 and the Chemical Weapons Act 1996. The 1997 Annual Report on the operation of the Chemical Weapons Act was laid before Parliament in February 1998.
The White Paper on Strategic Export Controls, presented to Parliament by the then President of the Board of Trade on 1 July 1998, includes proposals to strengthen the Chemical Weapons Act by making it an offence
to aid, abet, counsel or procure a foreigner overseas to develop, produce or use a chemical weapon".The White Paper also proposes that prohibitions in relation to biological weapons should be brought into line with the strengthened Chemical Weapons Act.
The UK is playing an active role in the current negotiations in Geneva on measures to strengthen the BTWC, as set out in paragraph 37–38 of Supporting Essay 5 of the Strategic Defence Review. Implementation in the UK of these measures when agreed is likely in due course to require further domestic legislation. The content of that legislation will depend on the content of the agreements reached.