To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if, pursuant to his reply on funding of the atomic weapons establishment of 12 December, Official Report, column 431, he will set out the policy considerations behind the practice of giving details of funding for the chemical defence establishment but not of funding for the atomic weapons establishment.

It is Government policy to make information available wherever possible without detriment to the public interest. Data on the funding of the atomic weapons establishment would, however, allow judgments to be made on the scale and scope of the United Kingdom nuclear weapons programme which it would not be in the public interest to disclose.