I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This measure consolidates the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1960. The report of the Joint Committee on Consolidation &c. Bills is to the effect that the Bill, as amended by the Joint Committee, is pure consolidation. Amendments were required to ensure that clause 42 of the Bill conformed to the existing law. As originally drafted, that clause would have made improvements to the law, but since the scope of the Bill is confined to pure consolidation, the Committee was unable to allow the changes to be made.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is a pure consolidation Bill, which comprises six complete Acts and numerous amending provisions. I will not list all the enactments involved, but those hon. Members interested will find a complete list set out in the table of derivations, running to some eight closely printed pages. The Bill contains most of the statute law as to the preparation, advertising and sale of food for human consumption.

The Bill has been considered by the Joint Committee, which is satisfied that the Bill as amended is pure consolidation, and will represent the existing law, on the assumption that the Public Health (Control of Disease) Bill, also at present before the House, receives the Royal Assent first.

Although the House is concerned only with the Second Reading today, I should mention that there will be one technical amendment to be moved in Committee, but this will not alter the character of the Bill as a strict consolidation measure.

I beg to move, That the bill be now read a Second time.

The Bill seeks to consolidate those parts of various enactments relating to public health which are concerned with the control of disease. Besides the general regulatory provisions for preventing the spread of disease, it contains certain provisions about disease in common lodging houses, provisions about burial and cremation, and provisions about the regulation of canal boats, which have practical force only in relation to the control of disease.

To produce a satisfactory consolidation, the Bill gives effect to the recommendations of the Law Commission which have been considered by the Joint Committee in the usual way.

The Law Commission reported in its third report of 15 January:

"The Committee are of the opinion that, apart from those parts of the Bill which are the subject of the Law Commission Recommendations, the Bill, as amended, is pure consolidation and represents the existing law. They are satisfied that the Recommendations are necessary for the purpose of producing a satisfactory consolidation of the law and that the amendments which the Bill proposes to make to the existing law give effect to those Recommendations."

The report continued:

"The Committee note that there is no definition of the disease 'plague' referred to in Clause 10 of the Bill. They have also questioned the policy of excluding Clause 46 from Part VI of the Bill as provided by the definition of 'relevant provision of this Act' in Clause 74.

There is no other point to which the attention of Parliament should be drawn."

The Committee could not alter the Bill to deal with these matters because it is not entitled to make amendments which would have the effect of changing the law. What it has done, therefore, is to draw attention to these two points so that consideration can be given to making substantive amendments to the law in due course. For the moment, however, the Bill represents the existing law with those permitted amendments which give effect to the recommendation of the Law Commission.

Upon that basis, I commend it to the House.

We accept that this is a pure consolidation measure. The Joint Committee was correct to draw attention to the absence of a definition to the word "plague". As the Attorney-General has informed the House, because of the tightness of the consolidation rules, it was impossible to insert such a definition in this consolidation measure, yet it seems less than satisfactory that it has to be done in this way to draw attention to the fact by means of the Committee report.

I suggest to the Attorney-General that some consideration be given to a case like this, where a relatively minor matter would lead to an improvement in the Bill. where there is general consent that there should be such an improvement, perhaps the rules might be made less restrictive.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Second time.

This is a straightforward consolidation Bill. Part I is concerned with residential care homes and consolidates the provisions of schedule 4 to the Health and Social Services and Social Security Adjudications Act 1983. Part II is about nursing homes and mental nursing homes and derives from the Nursing Homes Act 1975, as amended. The remainder of the Bill is concerned with related provisions, including registered homes tribunals.

The Bill has been considered in the usual way by the Joint Committee for Consolidation &c. Bills, which has made some minor amendments to improve the form of the Bill, but is satisfied that it represents pure consolidation.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House. —[Mr. Major.]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. This Bill consolidates the law relating to the General Dental Council and to the training, registration and disciplining of dentists and dental auxiliaries in the United Kingdom. It is a pure consolidation measure.

We have now considered a list of consolidation measures, and on behalf of the House I should like to express our gratitude to the Joint Committee on Consolidation &c., Bills which examines such measures in detail. Its detailed and conscientious deliberations make the task for the rest of us easier.

I also pay tribute to the Law Commission for its constant endeavours to keep the statute book in good order, in terms both of consolidating existing law and of pointing to improvements were necessary.

I beg to move,

That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 6386/83 on the combating of air pollution from industrial plants; and affirms the need for a consistent framework for air pollution control within the Community.

There are two proposed directives for the House to consider in this debate. Directive 6386/83, which is referred to in the body of the motion, was considered at the Environment Council on 1 March and hon. Members will know that the Council agreed a text on that occasion subject to a United Kingdom reserve as Parliament's consideration of the document had not been completed. Copies of an amended version of directive 6386/83, in the form in which I believe it now stands, were deposited in the Vote Office and my comments will generally be addressed to that version.

Document No. 11642/83 is also relevant. It is a proposal by the Commission to the Council for a directive on the limitation of emissions into the air from large combustion plants which, in the interests of brevity, I shall refer to as the large plants directive.

I think that it would be better for me to ask a question now rather than later. The motion refers only to the first document, No. 6386/83, and the second document is relevant to the debate. Am I right in thinking that the Minister is not suggesting that today's discharges the Government's responsibility in relation to the large plants directive?

I confirm that. I shall explain the Select Committee's position. Members of the Select Committee are abroad investigating the matter. We shall want to debate the large plant directive when the Select Committee has presented its report to the House.

A draft of document No. 6386/83—whch is generally referred to as the air pollution framework directive— was passed to the Council by the Commission in April 1983. The proposal was made against a background of increasing concern about industrial emissions in Europe occasioned mainly by German anxiety about forest damage.

Hitherto, the Community's interest in control of industrial air pollution has been expressed in two directives on air quality control and in a directive on control of the sulphur content of gas oil, together with a few other instruments of less significance. The framework directive therefore represents a new course of action within the Community, in that it proposes the institution of a system of control of industrial emissions at source.

The essence of the system proposed was a requirement that industrial plant likely to give rise to air pollution should be subject to prior authorisation; that technology conforming with the "state of the art" should be applied to prevent emissions; and that, if necessary, emission limits should be fixed at Community level. These elements feature in the amended text, although with significant amendments to which I shall refer later.

In the Government's view, the proposal represented a sensible way forward for air pollution control within the Community. Almost any system of control of air pollution depends eventually on the ability to reduce emissions and the UK system of control has long reflected this. The Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate in England and Wales and its equivalents in Scotland and Northern Ireland—a Scottish Office Minister is in the Chamber—require the best practicable means, universally known as BPM, to be used to prevent emissions, or, if prevention is impracticable, to render emissions harmless. In order to be in a position to check that BPM are being properly applied, the inspectorates lay down emission limits—known as presumptive limits. A process which fails to conform to the limit is presumed to be failing to match the BPM requirement. I should stress, however, that the main requirement is to comply with what the inspectorates adjudge to be BPM and this applies to the whole process, not only to the emissions which can be measured and to which emission limits can therefore be applied. In practice, the system is flexible and responsive to the varying needs of pollution control and to the complexity of industrial processes. Moreover, it is progressive in that it enables control to be tightened consonant with economic feasibility as control technologies improve.

The legislative base in other countries is different. Most countries lay down standards, including emission limits, in law. They do not require the use of BPM nor do they have a central inspectorate. They tend in our eyes to be rather rigid systems and flexibility is provided by provision for derogrations.

In practice, controls exercised in the UK and those exercised in other countries do not differ greatly and similar control decisions are reached. Since the technical constraints are similar this is perhaps not surprising, but it is an important point, as it meant that, from the outset of negotiations, there was the possiblity of finding a compromise text which could be put into effect in all countries. What is more, there was no question of seeking alternative control systems as in the case of control of discharges to water.

I deal now with the text. Article 3 is of obvious importance. Here the House will see that there is a significant change in the amended text from the Commission's original draft. The requirement to grant prior approval has been limited to the plants listed in annex I. These plants are broadly those controlled by the inspectorates in the United Kingdom and are the ones which give rise to the major emissions. One or two types of plant are included which are not controlled by the inspectorates and are therefore not subject to prior approval. We will have to introduce legislation to cover this matter and I shall refer to it later.

In article 4 there are some subtle but significant changes in the amended version of the directive. The first draft would have required conditions to be fulfilled before grant of authorisation. The amended version requires the competent authorities to be satisfied that certain measures will be taken. I think the House will appreciate that this conforms more readily with practice in this country. Further, the absolute requirements of the first draft—for example that plants

"will not entail any danger"

have been dropped, and the preventive measures to be taken are no longer related to the state of the art, but to the best available technology, with the reserve that there should not be excessive costs. This formula accords well, I believe, with the concept of BPM. A corollary to these changes is that the definition of "state of the art" has been dropped from article 2.

I pass now to article 8. I have explained already that United Kingdom practice and that of other countries is very similar, although the legislative base differs. We have an ingrained distaste in the United Kingdom for the rigidity of emission limits, although we do use such limits on a non-mandatory basis and, in fact, we have a few such limits in law. The Commission's first draft of the article entailed the fixing of limits by majority vote and without reference to any criteria. This was quite unacceptable. What we wanted, and what I believe we have now got, is a text which recognised that emission limits are too important to be fixed by majority vote, and which recognised that they must strike a balance between environmental needs—which, of course, are paramount —and the availability and cost of controls. The text also recognises that limits should be fixed "if necessary" and I believe that, in the light of negotiations, the Commission has full regard to whether limits are in fact necessary on the basis of evidence about the pollutants or industries concerned before it makes any proposals.

Article 12 and 13 in the amended version correspond to articles 12 and 14 in the Commission's first draft. Article 12 requires member states to review the development of technology and, in effect, tighten controls on plants as technology improves, subject, of course, to avoiding excessive costs. This accords well with our approach in the United Kingdom. The continuing BPM requirement has often been described as an ever-tightening belt.

Article 13 spells out how existing plants might be brought within control in an altogether more appropriate way than the equivalent article — article 14 — in the commission's first draft. The article is likely to have little impact in the United Kingdom, as most plants subject to the directive are already under control, but the text accords well with the way in which the inspectorate brings existing processes within control when such processes are added to the schedule which defines industries with inspectorate control.

A final point on the text which may be of interest to the House is that it will be noted that the provisions which were included in the Commission's first draft for the setting up of a technical adaptation committee have been deleted. There was a general feeling that such a committee was inappropriate to such a directive.

The directive as it now stands naturally represents a compromise between the various practices of member states. It is, however, a compromise which fully reflects United Kingdom practice. It lays stress on the

"best available technology which is economically feasible"

which we believe to be fully in line with BPM, and it makes provision for emission limits to be devised in a way which we adopt in the United Kingdom. Overall, it provides a sensible and consistent framework for future industrial air pollution control within the Community, without requiring us to dismantle our well tried and widely accepted system of control.

I mentioned earlier that some legislation would be needed. In particular, it will be necessary to legislate to bring local authority powers into line with those of the inspectorates, but, as our response to the fifth report of the Royal Commission on environmental pollution made clear, we have it in mind to do this in any event. We are reviewing the legislation and, in due course, intend to publish a consultation paper on new clean air legislation.

I turn now to the large plant directive, No. 11642/83. Preparation of this draft proposal commenced at much the same time as that of the framework directive, but the proposal did not appear until the end of last year. Serious negotiations have yet to begin.

The proposal deals with the particular problem of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from large combustion plants. It also includes proposals on dust emissions. It is clearly based on German legislation which was enacted last year, and reflects the particular concern of the Federal Republic about air pollution in the light of forest damage. This damage is widespread and a matter for serious concern. The Government share with other members of the Community the view that it is essential to identify and overcome the causes of damage and, indeed, other damage that may be attributed to air pollution elsewhere. It is very difficult, however, to disregard the scientific uncertainties in this case. Sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are certainly transformed in the atmosphere into secondary pollutants which give rise to acid deposition, but we know that other pollutants are associated with these processes and may have significant effects on them. We also know that there are many causes of environmental acidity. Finally, we know that ozone, which may also be caused through complex processes in the atmosphere involving various emissions including emissions from car exhausts, may have adverse effects on trees.

I do not think that the House will wish to discuss the general issues today, because, as hon. Members will be aware, the Select Committee on the Environment is currently conducting an inquiry into the problems associated with acid rain. It has visited, as I have, the CEGB's research establishment and taken evidence from the board. It has also been to the Federal Republic of Germany — as I should like to do —to learn about German experience of the effects of acidification on the forests and also about the control of emissions from various sources. It has seen for itself the die-back of trees in the Black forest. The Committee is presently in Scandinavia investigating ecological effects on water and fish life, and subsequently intends to visit the Lake District and Scotland to study the effects attributed there to acid rain.

My hon. Friend for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi), the Committee's Chairman, tells me that it is too early for the Committee to give any indication of its final conclusions, although some apparent conflicts in evidence are beginning to resolved. He hopes that the Select Committee will complete its inquiry in time to publish a report to the House before we rise for the summer. The Committee will then welcome an opportunity to participate in a full debate on the issues and the course the House might take — which circumstances prevent its doing today, much to its regret.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has assured the Chairman of the Committee that he will do his best to find time for a debate on the forthcoming report. Perhaps the House might wish to suspend judgment on the acid rain issue, save for the purpose of formally approving —or disapproving—the motion today, until it has had the benefit of considering the findings of its own Select Committee.

I appreciate that this is not the Minister's responsibility, but more that of the Leader of the House, but why was it not possible to delay today's debate until members of the Select Committee were present? We could then have dealt with all the matters at one time rather than having two bites at the same cherry.

A constraint on us today was to gain the approval of the House for the framework directive before the meeting of the Council of Environment Ministers the week after next. It was thought to be for the convenience of the House to look at the two documents together, and I should like to go to the Council of Ministers with the backing of the House to remove our Parliamentary reserve on the framework directive.

As I said to the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), the substantive negotiations on the big plant directive have not yet begun. There is no hurry. If the Select Committee produces its report by the summer, we will be on course for having a debate in the House at the right time.

The Government have yet to complete their consideration of all the technical implications of the draft directive. There are, however, a few major technical points. For example, the bulk of the plants to be covered by the directive would be steam raising boilers. It would also cover many process heating plants, control of which raises many complex technical issues. There is, in general, uncertainty about the availability of control technologies. There is one well tried technique for controlling sulphur dioxide, but new and possibly cheaper techniques that are being developed have yet to be tried. Technologies to control nitrogen oxides in United Kingdom conditions have yet to be developed and work is in progress. Another technique is the continuous monitoring of flue gases, which would be required by the directive. This would be extremely expensive and we believe that it may be difficult, even with the best will in the world, to produce comparable results for all members states.

I mention those points to show that, apart from the policy issues, there are major problems to be considered on this directive. We are receiving comments from interested bodies and I especially welcome the opportunity provided by this debate to hear the views of hon. Members on this significant, but potentially very costly proposal. This debate will by no means be the last opportunity for hon. Members to consider this major issue, and I commend the documents to the House.

I am glad of this opportunity to discuss these documents. Too often we are unable to discuss serious environmental problems. It is good to be able to do so on this occasion knowing that, with a full day ahead of us, there is no pressure of time.

As the Parliamentary Under-Secretary pointed out, although we are discussing the framework document, we are at the same time discussing what we might call the large plants document which raises some serious policy problems, not only for the UK and Europe but for the whole world because, as the Royal Commission pointed out in a recent report, some of the most serious environmental problems concern air emissions and control.

I was interested in the intervention of the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) about the Select Committee. I took the same view as that hon. Gentleman to begin with. I concluded, however, that it was preferable that the House should have two opportunities to discuss the problem. We are, therefore, able to set out our stall now, consider the report of the Select Committee and perhaps change our views if we consider that new evidence has been forthcoming.

The Select Committee is now in Norway and Sweden. Like the Minister, I have had opportunities to go there. About six weeks ago I met the Norwegian Minister of the Environment and members of the directorate and discussed the problem of acid rain and air emissions as they affect Norway and, indirectly, Sweden. I found that a valuable experience.

It is no secret that I am largely a sceptic on matters affecting the EEC. Too often, harmonisation means little more than keeping a tidy filing cabinet, often resulting in the loss of the individual characteristics of a region or nation. But when it comes to environmental pollution control and matters such as we are discussing today, it is an apt forum for the introduction of controls.

After all, polluted air—that, basically, is what we are discussing — recognises no national boundaries. Indeed, the EEC regulations can be regarded as only a beginning because the boundaries are not restricted to the Common Market. I referred to the Nordic countries, but one must think of eastern Europe, too. Therefore, it is right and proper that the EEC should be involved with these problems.

The Minister conducted us technically, if narrowly, through the main framework legislation, and we accept the basic thrust of his argument. I was less than happy with his more general approach to the documents, especially No. 11642/83, because it seemed to be the familiar story of the Government saying, "We recognise that there is a problem, but we shall do nothing about it. We do not have all the evidence and what action we might take would cost a lot of money." We had the usual wringing of hands followed by lame excuses.

It must be said that this Government's record on environmental matters is the worst of any post-war Administration, Labour or Conservative. Their Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, for example, heralded as provisions to safeguard our natural environment, is little more than a blueprint for people to ignore conservationists and destroy the countryside.

It is sad, knowing that the Minister understands and cares about these problems, that we should have had the type of response from the Government that we have had today, a response that is all too common nowadays. After all, we have earned the wrath of all who are interested in the environment. From the way in which I judge the mood of the Minister — I hope that I am wrong — the Government will not push hard for the implementation of 11642/83 document. I admit that it is at an early stage, but the Germans and Continentals are pushing it, and it is widely known in Europe that the British Government will slow matters down by dragging their feet on these international environmental matters.

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is trying to enliven a debate which might otherwise be thought to be unusually calm for the type of debates in which the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) and I normally take part. We do not have the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) with us today, which is unusual. The hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) is being unfair. He and his hon. Friends would, surely, wish us to go carefully before taking action which might add £8 per tonne to the price of coal. We shall take action if the scientific evidence and means are there, but we must take such serious decisions with great care.

I agree that we must take such decisions with great care. The hon. Gentleman has added a dimension to the debate that was not contained in his introductory speech, and I shall come shortly to scientific evidence.

As for the Minister's comments about coal, it is ironic that this Government should give less subsidy per tonne to the British coal industry than is given to any other coal industry in Europe. In other words, for the hon. Gentleman to talk about coal subsidy is remarkable, and I shall return to that, too.

The Minister, perceptive as always, has realised the key issue to which these directives address themselves. I repeat, when it comes to environmental matters, this Government's record is not good. Indeed, on the international scene, my hon. Friends and I can be seen to be the good Europeans and good neighbours. By taking a negative attitude, the Government are not only being bad neighbours but are doing irreparable damage to our own environment and countryside. I trust that if my information and evidence is wrong, the Minister will, today or on another occasion, correct me.

The point of today's debate is to enable us to look at the scientific evidence. I came across the problem of polluted air, SO₂ and carbon emissions, many years ago, though not quite so long ago as Mr. R. A. Smith who, as the Minister will be aware, wrote a book in 1872 entitled, "Air and Rain." I came across the problem about 15 years ago when, having worked in the forestry industry, I felt that there was a good case for some limited afforestation in parts of the Pennines.

I put forward a scheme and had discussions with the Forestry Commission, which was experiencing great difficulty. We tried a pilot scheme on the Pennines and found that the traditional pines above the moors—above Mossley and that area of Yorkshire and Lancashire— would not survive. At first it was thought that carbon from the mill towns of south-east Lancashire was responsible but, on examining the matter more closely, we discovered that that was not so. The basic problem, we found, was acid rain—H₂SD₄ as it becomes when it falls—and that was someting new to me 15 years ago.

In everyone's naivity at that time, we were happy with an assurance that we got from the CEGB. "Do not worry. The problem will be solved," we were told, because the CEGB intended to build tall chimney stacks so that the SO₂ would not fall on the northern Pennines but go into the stratosphere and disappear. We accepted that and thought that it would be grand.

That is exactly what happened, and the rate of SO₂ deposition on the Pennine hills was considerably reduced. The tragedy has been that there have been increased emissions. They do not fall on the Pennine hills or on our landscape. Much of it is exported across the North sea.

I accept that the Pennine phenomenon is exactly as the hon. Gentleman describes it. He made what was perhaps a slip of the tongue when he said that there had been increased emission. Great Britain is the only country in Europe which, since 1970, has sharply decreased its overall emissions—by 34 per cent. That is a considerable decrease. The percentage of total emissions in Europe contributed by Britain is smaller than it was 20 years ago.

I fully accept that. The Minister has made a fair point. We have perhaps increased our export of emissions to the Scandinavian countries over the past 15 years, but I accept what he said about the 34 per cent. reduction over the past few years.

I emphasise that most, if not all, the emissions go to Scandinavia, and there are still major and growing problems in this country. We must not debate the issue too narrowly. It is worth reminding ourselves and the British public of the effect of these air emissions — I believe that this is the best term to use—on our neighbours. In our case it is our Scandinavian neighbours, who are not covered by the EEC treaty.

Many British people take their holidays in the Scandinavian countries and wonder at the landscape, the lakes and the forests. It must therefore be realised that the forests and lakes in Norway and Sweden are dying. The Minister says that there is scientific uncertainty, and that is true. It is difficult to work out, when considering the damage to lakes and forests, whether the air emissions are the cause of the stress factor. Those are the key scientific connotations.

There is no doubt that air emission is, to a large extent, responsible for the damage to the forests in Sweden and to the lakes in Norway and Sweden. In Sweden, 18,000 lakes are acidic, and 4,000 are so acidic that nothing lives in them. They are sterile and dead. Where there used to be fish and plants, there is nothing. In Norway 13,000 square kilometres are affected and 1,500 lakes are dead. There is a reason for that. A great deal of research has been done to try to ascertain the reason, and millions of kroner have been invested in research into the problem.

The Minister talks about scientific uncertainty. I accept that scientists never agree. They are almost as bad as economists. One must look at the wealth of scientific material that is available. I have summaries and synopses of report after report. In Norway a massive eight-year interdisciplinary study was made. It concluded that despite all the complicated chemical interaction of nitrogen-oxide, SO₂ and aluminium, the problem was air emission. Similar studies in Sweden have come to the same conclusion.

The studies have proved that, without doubt, air pollution is the cause of most of the acidic damage. That pollution originates in the industrial areas of Europe, especially the United Kingdom, West and East Germany, France and northern Italy. Scientific studies of great magnitude have been done by the British and many other Governments and independent bodies. They have concluded that the air emissions are antisocial and irresponsible. We cannot continue to say, as the Government do, "Let us leave it a little longer, let us leave it two or three years". We cannot wait that long. Our European colleagues, too, have concluded that we cannot wait that long.

In his earlier intervention, the Minister was perceptive and rightly raised the key issue. He mentioned cost. Of course it will be costly to tackle the problem. No one could deny that. We must offset that cost against the cost of the damage being done. A report to the European Parliament suggested that the annual cost of air pollution damage in Europe was £33 billion. I heard a report from a scientist at the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology who estimated two or three years ago that the cost in this country of lost agricultural and horticultural production was roughly £120 million per year. We are talking about the great cost to this country of inaction. It is against that background that the cost of trying to solve the problem must be set.

I accept that the cost would lead to price increases. The Central Electricity Generating Board talks about an increase of about 10 per cent. in the cost of electricity to bring in measures to clean air emissions. I am doubtful about that estimate, but even if it is right I find it odd for the Government to say that is too much, especially when the Government put a 10 per cent. tax on gas and electricity from 1979 to 1981 We could bear the cost then. I do not see why we should not bear it now, although I have grave doubts as to whether the cost will be that great.

I mentioned the damage to Scandinavian and other European countries caused by air emissions in this country. The time has come to start examining the evidence of the effect of air emissions on this country because it is for this country that the Government and we as parliamentarians are primarily responsible. Even if the Government feel that they have no obligations to our European neighbours, they must recognise that they bear some responsibility towards our citizens.

If the Government are coy about telling the British people the truth, the Opposition intend to take the opportunity to explain the position, on the evidence that we have. I put this challenge to the Government—if our evidence is wrong I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity now or as soon as he has checked the evidence —to reassure us and say that it is not the case.

Unless the Government are prepared to take some action, through this document or some other means, the slow death march across the environment of Great Britain will continue. It affects not just rural areas. Town dwellers may think that it does not affect them. It affects urban areas just as much. It affects this great Parliament where we are having to spend millions of pounds on a refurbishment and a facelift. We have only to look across the road to Westminster abbey to see that much of the detail of the building has disappeared through acid rain. St. Paul's cathedral has lost 30 mm. of Portland stone. Cleopatra's needle has lost more detail in 80 years on the Embankment than it lost during the previous 3,000 years in Egypt, despite the harsh climate, the sand and the wind.

The problem affects the whole country. It affects the town dweller as well as the country dweller. Stones can be refurbished and replaced but it is much more difficult to bring to life a dead lake and to make fertile again a forest that may be dying. That is the rural problem. The problem unfortunately seems to be more acute in areas of natural beauty. The evidence that I have shows that dozens of Scottish lakes are being affected. I don't know whether the Minister will deny this, but I understand that the Government are suppressing a report of The Nature Conservancy Council in Scotland which says that Scottish lakes are being affected. I understand that Loch Grannoch in Galloway——

That is out of the question. No information is being suppressed by my Department or that of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. My hon. Friend's Department is rapidly increasing its expenditure on resources. Everything that we have commissioned so far has been published. There is no question of secrecy.

I take that as an assurance that, before long, the report by the Nature Conservancy Council in Scotland which has been completed for some time will be published in full, unedited, so that we may have a look at it.

Loch Grannoch in Galloway is reported to be dead. Perhaps it is Britain's first dead lake. Loch Enoch and Loch Fleet have lost all their fish. If that is right, it is a serious matter, and we need reassurance from the Government. In north and central Wales water courses are affected, as the Royal Commission reported recently, when it suggested that the Llyn Brianne reservoir was seriously affected.

The Lake District is also affected. Mr. David Kinsman told the Royal Society in September 1982 that

"Several of the large Lake District lakes are now at risk. It would take only minor changes in rainfall acidity to make them more acidic, when there would be considerable biological changes."

In our most sensitive landscapes in Scotland, England and Wales, there is serious evidence of acidic damage from air emissions, and action is needed now. According to the Department of the Environment's sponsored study, rainfall in the United Kingdom is becoming increasingly acidic. It is four to five times more acidic than normal. In Bush in Scotland, it was found on one occasion that the rainfall was 100 times more acidic than it should be. In places such as Banchory in Aberdeenshire, in the Grampian region, there is, because of the dry summer and the concentration of rain after it, a major problem.

I wish that the Government would take this on board. The Minister mentioned technical problems. Of course, there are technical problems. When I met the CBI technical committee recently to discuss the problem, I said that I was frankly amazed at its lack of confidence in tackling it. There was a time when this country led the world in pollution control. At that time, we had the leading technology for control. Unfortunately, we have lost that initiative. These problems can be solved by technology. That is a challenge for industry. The problems are worldwide; the markets are worldwide. British industry should try to tackle the problems. It will not do it on its own, so it must be persuaded to do so. That can be done by domestic legislation to encourage a domestic market, so that people's skill and expertise could be used, and we could export the technology to other countries. In that way we could get the industry going again and tackle the severe environmental problems that we face.

We do not even have to tackle the problem on our own. It might mean economic disadvantages for the large plants, but even so, it also means that our main European competitors have the same disadvantages and economic difficulties. Therefore, we are four square with our main competitors. For that reason, we believe that the Government should grasp the problem.

We feel strongly that the Government are listening far too much to the CEGB. We recognise that it has a vested interest. It is legitimate for it to put forward all the difficulties in tackling the problems that we are addressing in these documents, but it is the Government's job to go wider than that and to see what is not only in the national but in the international interest.

The document calls for a reduction in sulphur emmissions to 60 per cent. The Minister said that in the past few years we have had a good record in the reduction of sulphur emissions. Why not continue with that? Why are the Government not prepared to go along with our European neighbours, the Nordic countries and Canada and sign the Ottawa declaration of earlier this year? That calls for only a 30 per cent. reduction in the next 10 years. Have the Government costed that? I do not believe that it would cost a great deal. The Labour party believes that we should sign that declaration. I hope that the Minister will respond to those points, if not today, perhaps at a later date.

Although the two directives that we are discussing are technical, they are a provision to try to tackle one of the greatest environmental problems that we face. We must face up to the challenge seriously, as the Minister suggested. We cannot tackle it alone; we must do so internationally. The documents provide us with that international perspective.

I hope that the Minister, as well as Conservative Members who share our view, will take on board the Opposition's message to the Council. We want Britain to be in the lead, and not to be the laggards. If the Minister is prepared to accept that, I shall give him the Opposition's blessing. We do not want to carp—this is above petty party politics. It is a major issue. We urge the Government to take a much more positive line than the Minister has taken.

I rise, not in the hope of being able to match the expertise shown either by my hon. Friend the Minister or by the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark), but because it is not inappropriate to let the House know that a growing number of hon. Members, at least in the Conservative party, are at the beginning of their learning curve on matters such as the details of acid rain and are becoming increasingly concerned at the lack of progress in controlling such a damaging phenomenon.

I—and I am sure that this applies to many of my hon. Friends—have been impelled into the debate partly through my own interest and partly because the subject commands as large a share of my correspondence as any other subject. I come from a constituency which has a large area of outstanding beauty. Although none of us is particularly at risk from acid rain at the moment, none of us feels confident that we will not be at risk, and a variety of environmental threats concern us. That is part of a wider picture.

I took a different message from the Minister's speech from the hon. Member for South Shields. I did not recognise in my hon. Friend's remarks an unwillingness either to take the subject seriously or to look for opportunities of leading the field in tackling it. What I think my hon. Friend was saying—I agree with it—is that we must be careful about leaping into expensive international obligations when it may prove that other methods of dealing with the problem, when more evidence is available, are more appropriate. However, I, too, strongly urge him to make clear this country's passionate interest in this great problem.

The hon. Member for South Shields was absolutely right to widen the implications of the problem to the whole world rather than confine it to the EEC and our Nordic neighbours. The problem is twofold. First, pollution knows no boundaries. Secondly, any steps taken in this country or the EEC which increase industrial costs make us enormously vulnerable to competition from other countries which may not at this stage be aware of the need for, or be able to take, similar measures.

It would be tragic irony if we impoverished ourselves only to see our markets taken by countries not at the same stage of sophisticated concern. We have been too ready for too long to accept the view that because Europe is enormously rich and much of its industrial plant is older than the rest we can with impunity take measures which do not apply to the rest of the world. Therefore, although it is essential that the EEC should take a lead and be seen to be doing so, I very much hope that by all kinds of efforts — including, for example, demanding the same standards for emissions from foreign vehicles as we shall gradually demand from our own—we shall make it clear that the problem and the obligations are world wide.

As there will be costs and problems, we must be aware of the great need to educate the public so that they fully understand the issues. I am sure that other hon. Members also receive letters complaining about the growth of the nuclear power industry from the same people who complain about emissions from conventional power stations. One way to deal with the pollution caused by electricity generation would be to have more nuclear power stations, but it would be very difficult to sell that argument to those in my constituency who are concerned about environmental pollution. A great deal of public education is needed on this and on costs. There is a growing understanding of the need for action, but I do not think that the public have yet come anywhere near understanding the possible implications on their short-term standard of living of taking adequate measures to protect their long-term future and that of their children.

I wish to make a preliminary comment on procedural matters. The House frequently debates at large matters that have been causing public concern. This may be done in a debate on the Adjournment or it may be a matter of responsibility for a Minister—perhaps a reduction in his pay—and everyone knows what it is about because there is a motion on the Order Paper.

I believe that the issues before us today are of that nature. My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) and the cautionary remarks of the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) have admirably illustrated that. We must ask ourselves whether using the peg of legislation is the right way to achieve the kind of debate which the country expects of us today. I make no complaint about the fact that we are discussing legislative proposals— that is what we are here for—but I suggest that it might not always be appropriate to link legislation, rather than a White Paper, with the broad canvas with which the country requires us to deal.

For that reason, I was most disappointed with the Minister's general approach. I had thought that he would begin by dealing with the broad canvas on a matter of such great public concern throughout the country before coming down to the narrower legislative proposals with which we properly have to deal. Instead, he went straight into a quite proper, but highly technical, exposition of one of the documents—the framework document, No. 6386/83, I have a passing acquaintance with that document, but I still had difficulty in following the Minister's references. His comments thus fell far short of what we expected in respect both of the broad canvas and of the detailed draft proposals.

I perceive that we have today a somewhat unusual opportunity to debate these matters at greater length than we might have expected, so I shall now deal with a matter related to my semi-judicial role as Chairman of the Select Committee on European Legislation, following which I shall make some personal comments.

The framework document, No. 6386/83, is the subject of our take-note motion and a matter which the Minister will have to discuss at the Council of Ministers fairly shortly. It first came before the Select Committee in November and is dealt with in paragraph 5 of the eighth report of the Select Committee, HC 78-viii, published on 30 November 1983. I wish to draw attention to some of the points that we made. I was disappointed to note that the Minister did not refer to them in his remarks.

The Select Committee report states that the document

"lays down the elements or framework of a system of control to facilitate the preparation of a series of subsequent Directives containing precise requirements for specific categories of plant."

In other words, the document lays down guidelines and principles for later legislation. It is not a legislative instrument as such, but the beginning of a process. It lays down principles for subsequent action.

The report further states:

"The proposed Directive would be made under Articles 100 and 235 of the Treaty of Rome."

A directive requires further legislation, so if the Council of Ministers adopts this proposal further legislation will come before the House, but it will not be at large because we shall have to keep within the limits of any document agreed by the Council of Ministers.

Article 100 of the Treaty of Rome deals with the need for regulations in respect of creating a common market. I suppose that it could be said that to ensure proper competition and safety thresholds in relation to energy production, chemical plants, and so on, one must start from a common basis. Article 235 relates to the objectives of the treaty and the implementation of anything relating to them. There might thus be some debate about the extent to which those articles provide a basis for what may or may not be contained in the final document.

As the Minister said, the proposals accord broadly with United Kingdom practice, except in the provision for Community-wide fixed emission limits. That is something of an understatement. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields that limits need to be fixed, but limits laid down from above may be arbitrary and may not produce the best value for money. We all want action, but we also want value for money.

The report further states that

"there is a general objection to the fixing of standards at Community level and to the use of qualified majority procedures for this purpose."

When he replies to the debate, I should like the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to say whether that is one of the changes which have occurred in the two forms of document that he mentioned. When the Minister mentioned the changes, I do not think that he referred to any change in this respect. Majority voting in the EEC, which can cause problems on any matter, could do so particularly on this one. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether that is still contained in the legislative instrument.

The Minister referred to the new articles of the instrument as they are now presumably to be discussed at the Council of Ministers. The document supplied to the Vote Office calls itself:

"Illustrative Text of Draft Council Directive".

What exactly does that mean? the Minister referred to the changes and to the articles in fairly definite terms, but if this is only the illustrative text of a draft, there is some room for slippage. In its capacity as a legislative Chamber, the House should not be satisfied with that.

It would be helpful if, when the Minister has been advised by those who are here to help him, he could tell us exactly what is the status of the second document before us. It is important to know whether the document to be on the table in Brussels later this month is the second draft, and whether those are the words about which we are now concerned. There are substantive changes, some of which have been referred to. It would be helpful to know the formal status of the document.

The hon. Gentleman underlines an important point. We are legislating for a possibly sensitive domestic issue by what amounts almost to blanket approval. Within the framework which the House has accepted that may be inevitable, but we must be very careful about the substantive documents.

I hope that I can lay that worry to rest. The form of words is standard. It recognises that if the House did not approve the motion the text would not be in its final form. However, the substantive negotiations to produce the document have taken place. I am advised that the procedure is standard.

I do not doubt that this is a standard procedure in respect of the take-note motion, but there is something which I do not think I have come across before. I stand to be corrected, because this is a labyrinthine area of legislation. The whole heading is:

"Amended Version of European Community Document No. 6386/83—Illustrative Text of Draft Council Directive on the Combating of Air Pollution from Industrial Plants".

That does not sound definitive. It may well be that it is standard procedure to have a flexible document on which the Minister then negotiates, but if that is so, let him say so.

I have just made it clear to the hon. Gentleman that the opposite is the case. This is the document which we negotiated. We leave room to accommodate the opinions of the House, should the House tell us to make any changes. However, the document before the House today is the document negotiated and agreed at the Council of Ministers.

I am grateful for the Minister's assurance, but the title does not give that impression. I shall leave the matter there for the moment.

As well as the framework directive, there is a much bigger document—No. 11642/83 COM(83)704. That is the big plant emission document, to which the Minister referred. This document came before the Select Committee on European Legislation earlier this year. The Committee asked many bodies in the country to provide written evidence, and we shall publish a full report on the document in the forthcoming document HC 78-xxvii on our deliberations on 23 May.

We had evidence from many important bodies, including the Association of District Councils, the Central Electricity Generating Board, the Chemical Industries Association, the CBI, the National Society for Clean Air and the Institution of Environmental Health Officers. That evidence is in the Library. At some stage that evidence, the report of the Royal Commission on environmental pollution and, perhaps, the findings of our Select Committee should be debated in the House. I was glad to hear the Minister say that there would be such a debate, and I know that the nation will expect the debate to be properly conducted.

I have spoken in my formal capacity as Chairman of the Select Committee, and I make no apology for being pernickety about procedures. This is a legislative Chamber. I shall now give a more personal view of the matters before us. I was disappointed, personally, at the scope of the Minister's speech. Instead of tackling the matter in a broad way, bringing us down only in the end to the necessary minutiae of technical legislation, the Minister failed to paint the big picture. I hope that the Government will do so at some later stage.

I understand that in doing that the Minister would face certain problems. First, there are some of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields. There is the question of international competition. It is not only the EEC which is involved. The EEC is not Europe, and EEC instruments do not apply to the whole of Europe. Norway and Sweden are not members of the EEC. The meteorological charts show that the winter high pressure area extends over both eastern and western Germany, and so the eastern COMECOM bloc countries are involved as well as the western economic summit nations or the free countries of Europe. The COMECOM countries certainly affect West Germany by their consumption of lignite and soft coal.

This is a world matter. Even if the nations of Europe, including East Germany and Russia, came together to consider the effects of pollution on the meteorological systems around Europe, there is nothing to prevent someone in Taiwan, South America, Malaysia or Korea from setting up some chemical plant or process which should necessitate a great deal of expenditure on the protection of the environment. Such a plant could cut into the markets of the rest of the world.

The EEC approach may be welcome, but it may not be enough. The EEC regulations will have to comply with some world agreement on the issue, but EEC regulations and ideas concerning, for instance, agriculture and food do not fit into world patterns. If we go ahead on an EEC basis, we must ask to what extent any EEC agreement will fit into the world economic scene. A satisfactory Europe-wide arrangement would be no good if countries on the other side of the world could undercut us and thereby disrupt not only industries but also societies in Europe.

Perhaps the biggest philosophical problem that faces the Government is that the exploitation of our national resources can have unexpected disadvantages. I am glad to see the Minister nodding assent. Moreover, technology can exploit man. If there is to be the worldwide competition that the Prime Minister occasionally tells us she favours, there must be some form of worldwide arrangement between Governments to ensure that neither nature nor man is exploited. Without such an arrangement we shall be in trouble. It might be possible to get agreement on such issues, but those who are involved in international affairs know that it is difficult to get it. Flags of convenience and the exploitation of seafarers is a well-known example.

I fear that we cannot be sure that every Government will have the same standard when it comes to lives being threatened by asbestos or polluted waters. At least we can measure the pH value of water in lakes and rivers and assess how much hydrogen sulphide is in the atmosphere — although our report shows that that is not always easy. Scientists do not always agree on quantities which seem to be measurable. Moreover, I do not think that it is possible to measure the effect of competition on the societies which sustain the industries with which we are dealing. That is why it is difficult for the Government to approach these matters philosophically.

With regard to the breaking up of societies reliant on the coal industry in Britain, it is possible to measure the quantitative effects and to impose rules worldwide about the quantity of production, but it is extremely difficult to measure exploitation in terms of the quality of life in a society. However, it is the quality of life that becomes an increasingly critical problem in view of ever-growing competition, exploitation and technology.

My hon. Friend is drawing the House's attention to a pertinent point. I am sure he agrees that we must tackle the problem stage by stage. Although the documents are a useful starting point, they must be built on. I should like to remind my hon. Friend that, in Ottawa, Austria, Canada, Denmark, West Germany, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland—many of which are not members of the EEC—took some first steps. We should have been there and added our signature to the document. There is deep anxiety in East Germany, Poland and Hungary, and I understand that Russia is interested in having discussions on the Ottawa agreement. I hope that the Minister will take my hon. Friend's point on board.

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the international discussions that are going on. The Minister has rather better means of finding out what they are.

Perhaps the framework which the documents will produce are compatible with the international consultations which my hon. Friend has outlined. I strongly hope that they are. If they are, the House and the interested public will rest content. If, however, they are incompatible, and agreement in the EEC or within the European continent does not accord with the trend in international agreements, we should know about that, as whatever we do here could be upset by the increasing rate and pace of international trade.

The phrase "acid rain" has come to mean more than those two words. Most people know that rain is naturally acid—its pH should be about 5·6, whereas neutral is 7. All rain is therefore slightly acid in a world without chemical works and power stations. We must assess how much rain's natural acidity is influenced by man's activities. The dead lakes and rivers which my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields mentioned are not created solely by acid rain. Much happens in soil and the environment during the precipitation and collection of rain. My hon. Friend mentioned his experience with the Forestry Commission. He will know that the acidity of coniferous trees reinforces acid soil or naturally acid rain. It would be stupid to suggest that dead lakes have been caused by afforestation, but I am sure my hon. Friend agrees that acidity in lakes, ponds and streams can be caused by factors other than acid rain.

Acid rain and acid deposits in the United Kingdom have been the subject of a report by the Warren Spring laboratory. I am sorry that the Minister did not mention it. Its report sets out a list of recommendations. The Government might have given their response to those recommendations—if so, I have missed them. As this is the only debate that we have had on the subject, I should have thought that we could be given the Government's general view on these matters.

I should like now to deal with the issue of hydrocarbon emissions being the main or only source of increased acidity in rain. There is little doubt that the major emissions from hydrocarbon power stations are a significant factor, but they may not be the only ones. One criticism that has been made of what I might call the emissions document, which we shall discuss later, is that it deals only with power staton emissions and ignores many other phenomena of which we are not so well aware. There is hardly any smog in London nowadays, and the clean air of our city is remarkable. One can see views now that one would not have thought possible years ago. However, other scientific papers, with which I shall not bore the House now, show that other things happen invisibly. We are burning much more gas. One need only visit Los Angeles to see what happens as a result of motor car exhausts. I do not say that they are the main cause of acid rain, but they could be a contributory factor.

The Friends of the Earth organisation has produced an interesting and worthwhile document called, "Acid Rain: The Politics of Pollution". I do not endorse everything that it says. The organisation might have concentrated on one cause, and we may be tempted to rush in to deal with one cause without considering the others. We should consider this matter more widely. If the Minister has not already done so, I ask him to examine this document and to refer to it during his closing remarks.

I say that because, to some extent, there have been trailers in the press—I shall not call them puffs—that the Prime Minister is becoming more interested in this issue and that the Conservative party is becoming a little green at the edges, at least in its publicity if not in practice. One reason why the Green Movement has not made political advances in Britain similar to those in other European countries is that all British political parties pay some attention to such matters. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forman) is not here today, but I am sure that he frequently expresses his views on the matter in the Conservative party.

I have the honour to be president of the Socialist Environmental and Resources Association, and for about 10 years there has been a strong green pressure group in the Labour party. No doubt we shall hear from hon. Members of other parties contributing to the debate about their views on the matter. We can be glad that in Britain people of all political persuasions understand the issues. Parliament should discuss them more often. That is why the statements from the Government, as distinct from the statements from parties, are so amazing. In this debate the Government could have set out their policy on air pollution in general; indeed, we partly expected them to do so. However, we got nothing of the sort.

Before the hon. Gentleman gets carried away with this line of argument, I remind him that his Committee recommended that the documents should be considered by a Select Committee, not on the Floor of the House. He knows that the Select Committee is away, as I explained, and it would be wrong to make this the occasion for a major debate before the Select Committee has reported. That would be a insult to the Select Committee.

I made it clear that the latter part of my speech would be a personal view unrelated to the Select Committee on European Legislation. However, I take the Minister's point. The Select Committee on the Environment is considering this matter, especially acid rain. The Committee is presently in Norway or on the continent, but that does not mean that the Government could not have given us an outline of the way in which they approach such matters. The Minister did not take the opportunity to do so.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned automobile emissions. Does he agree that the Government have moved rapidly on the subject of lead in petrol, have given an example of their anxiety about environmental matters, and are working in a European context to promote environmental matters in that way?

I agree that the Government have moved, but I am not sure whether the adjective "rapidly" is appropriate.

I gave way to the Minister during a peroration, and now I shall have to crank it up again. Although there is considerable and proper concern among Members and supporters of all parties in the House, one reason why the Government are not reflecting that concern is that the Chicago school of economics and proper concern for the protection of the environment do not mix. Chicago economics measure only the strictly quantitative in respect of balance sheets and profits. They cannot take into account the qualitative, even within the confines of one private enterprise company. Therefore, the Government cannot have regard to the qualitative, on a national or an international basis, relating to the protection of the environment, let alone the protection and quality of society. The Prime Minister and the Cabinet cannot move on genuine environmental matters because their political philosophy, not necessarily that of all Conservative Members, will not permit them to do so.

I am glad to have the opportunity to take part in this welcome debate on environmental pollution in Europe, and I welcome the fact that some first, tip-toeing steps are being taken by the European Community to draw together the approaches of all Community countries to what is a European-wide, indeed a world-wide, problem.

I deplore any attempt to lower the level of the debate to one of party political difference. It must be clear from the number of Conservative Members present today that the Conservative party has a strong interest in the environment.

Six times more than the other side.

Yes my hon. Friend is quite right, six times; but I too should be descending if I followed that remark by my hon. Friend!

The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), whose interest in the subject is well known, said that the Conservative party is becoming green at the edges. I am happy to accept that description. Conservative Members are not only green at the edges, but have veins of green running through our philosophy, because as Conservatives we do indeed believe in conservation. That applies to the environment as it does to anything else. We believe in a balanced approach to the matter, not in hysterical shouts for billion-dollar solutions before the problem has been properly examined. However, we should not flinch from expensive solutions if those solutions will in the end be cheap in relation to the huge benefits that they may confer.

There is much ignorance about environmental pollution. As the hon. Member for Newham, South said, all rain is mild by acid, and it is far from clear what the major casue of acid rain is. Is it the large coal-fired power stations of Britain and the rest of Europe? I see the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) shaking his head; he may be right because it might not be those power stations. Is it caused by emissions from vehicles? The Germans are beginning to recognise, with their serious problems in the black forest, that vehicle emissions might play a major part in the problem. Is it the increasing emissions of ozone and its effects on the atmosphere? We do not really know. We must find out, because this is a problem that is likely deeply to damage our environment. It is incumbent upon us, in the United Kingdom, in Europe generally and, insofar as we can encourage it, worldwide, to employ large resources on discovering what the real causes are and then directing whatever is needed to overcome the problem.

While there is scientific discussion about the effect of acid rain on lakes and the environment, there is no doubt what causes it. The CEGB acknowledges that its power stations are responsible—as are motor emissions—for the vast majority of acidic pollution put into the air. There is no dispute about where that comes from, as the Minister would agree, but there is disagreement about its effect on the ecological balance.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I agree with him. Certainly, the amount of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides being emitted by power stations are increasing the acidity of the rain, as we all recognise. What is not known, and what the hon. Gentleman has highlighted, is the reason why lakes in Scandinavia are becoming sterile, and why forests are dying. There are suggestions, too, that forests in Scotland are being damaged. We must discover the causes.

I welcome the Prime Minister's answer to a recent question in which she pointed out that the CEGB and the National Coal Board are funding a five-year study at a cost of £5 million to investigate these matters. I should like to push the Government further on this, because I am a little worried that the two bodies that find themselves in a corner on this matter are the only ones to be taking the lead in the research into that problem. I see that my hon. Friend the Minister is shaking his head and I am delighted to think that he will be able to enlighten me about further important measures about which I should already know. This matter requires a study under the full impetus of Government so that it is a balanced study, and so that it does not come simply from the two vested interests in this matter.

My main point is that the costs arising from the problem and the benefits that may come from particular solutions should be carefully evaluated across the board. We tend to concentrate on ordinary power stations the cause of these emissions, but I suspect that simple domestic central heating produces a great deal of SO₂, for example, into the atmosphere of London. It may not produce smogs such as the ones that we remember from 1956, but it probably causes a great deal of damage. It is recognised that vehicle emissions cause a great deal of damage as well.

When we are looking at the way that we generate power, we should do a careful comparison between nuclear power and power from conventional fuels. A great deal of attention has recently been directed at the nuclear industry and its potential pollutant effects. I have a strong constituency interest, as my hon. Friend the Minister knows, in seeing that we get the right answer to these problems. In Mid-Bedfordshire, we do not particularly wish—that is a gross understatement—to see even the low and intermediate level of nuclear waste dumped in our area. I ask the Government carefully to cost the pollutant effect of these different industries so that we can spend our money in the wisest possible way to generate the power that we need for the coming decades, while at the same time being careful not to ruin our environment.

I suspect—here is a further plug about nuclear waste — that for comparatively limited cost, we need not worry our citizens, and those of other countries following the same route, by distributing nuclear waste around the country and dumping it in the soil, with potentially harmful long-term results. Compared to the overall expenditure of power generation, the cost of finding a more acceptable solution will not be excessive.

To return to coal and standard forms of power generation, we must not allow the NCB and the CEGB simply to say to us that we are proposing a billion-dollar solution to a million-dollar problem, and they cannot afford that. It is not a question of Chicago economics but of particular industries not wanting to have to add to their costs when other industries are getting away with it more cheaply. We are discussing a very important problem, on which my impression is that we are still much more ignorant than we should be.

I ask for further Government impetus and, if necessary, whatever reasonable sums of Government money are required to ensure that the study of what are now recognised to be major problems are carried out as swifly as possible in an impartial, scientific and effective way; then we can apply the right solution.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, even though there are reservations about the way that this debate has been initiated, and to put the position of the Liberal party and its allies on the record. I join those in all parties who are increasingly concerned to put pressure on the Government to make sure that the right things are done, not only in the House, but in negotiations and decision-making, particularly in the European Community.

The question that I asked earlier was intended to elicit from the Under-Secretary the fact that we are debating this matter today because in two weeks' time he is going to an important meeting of the Ministers in the European Community concerned with environmental matters. We hope that that will now be given greater importance by the Government of the United Kingdom as a result of the meeting, to which the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) referred, that we understand the Prime Minister called at Chequers recently to discuss environmental matters and Government policy. I hope that the European meeting will be an opportunity, which the Government will seize, to redeem our position as it is perceived by our allies and partners in Europe.

Objectively, the United Kingdom is seen not as leading the way, but as a laggard partner in environmental protection. There are two obvious sources for those criteria of objectivity. One is the report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and the other is a simple statistical table, which shows how we rate, compared to other countries and neighbours, on environmental pollution.

I recall that the Under-Secretary said that he hoped that the Government would produce their response to the Royal Commission report at some stage before the end of this Session. I hope that that means that there will be a full opportunity to debate not just air pollution, a subject which will have to come back to us after the Select Committee has considered its deliberations, but also the wider issues of pollution control and environmental protection, to which the Government are preparing their response. It is a response that needs to be made to the strong criticisms of the Royal Commission. I hope that the Minister will realise that we need to make much progress if such criticism of us is not to be valid.

Paragraph 3.26 says:

"The United Kingdom may well have been justified in the past in resisting and seeking to modify some of the more impracticable proposals emanating from the European Commission, but we believe that it needs to demonstrate a more positive attitude towards environmental measures in its international negotiations. Whilst the United Kingdom may not have gone so far as to argue that its philosophy, evolved in the context of a unique combination of legal system and geographic al features, is universally applicable, we nevertheless believe it has to some extent over-protested in favour of domestic practices. If only in the interests of international co-operation, the United Kingdom must respond to the views of its European Community partners, and it should do so in a way that ensures that constructive criticism is not mistaken for obstructiveness."

The last part that I wish to quote from the report comes at the end of that paragraph, where it says:

"The United Kingdom cannot easily put its considerable experience in pollution control at the service of the Community as a whole if it continually places itself on the defensive. We would like to see the United Kingdom playing a positive and leading role in international forums, including the European Community, encouraging and formulating further measures for environmental protection. In pollution abatement, as in many other fields, there can also be commercial advantages for a country that is in the lead and has an anticipatory and continuous policy."

I hope that that is the attitude that will be manifested by the Under-Secretary of State and his colleagues when they debate environmental matters in future.

Hon. Members have made it clear that air pollution, and particularly acidification or the problem of acid rain, is, to use the words in the title of the booklet that we have received from the Swedish Ministry of Agriculture, "a boundless threat to our environment". As the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) said, the problem knows no natural frontiers. By its nature, it cannot be limited, because it is governed by the wind and geographical factors rather than by political developments. It is a sad fact that the problem has been getting worse, not better.

Two years ago I had the pleasure of visiting Poland where I witnessed the tragedy of the destruction of the physical environment of Cracow — a European city of great beauty which is being polluted away. The best buildings are crumbling almost before one's eyes. I was told that in another 10 years it is highly likely that some of the best buildings in central Cracow will no longer be there. That tragedy is repeated in the physical environment of large parts of Europe.

The book from the Swedish Ministry of Agriculture has an interesting illustration of a statue on the outskirts of the Ruhr area at the castle of Herten—a statue which dates from 1702 and is made of sandstone. The photograph shows the statue clear and well-defined in 1908 but in a photograph taken 60 years later the statue—it my be an angel but it look like a slightly more human creature— has no features at all. We have the same sort of problem in Britain, as we know from the work that is going on around us. Buildings put up by man deserve to be protected and preserved, as does our natural environment —our rivers and lakes.

The table to which I referred shows levels of sulphur deposition in Europe. The total emissions of all the countries shows that the United Kingdom is clearly in the lead. We are clearly and sadly the greatest culprit. Second to us is East Germany. However, we are not nearly as bad on deposition from inland sources, because we export what we have by way of deposition elsewhere. Other countries, primarily Scandinavia, and the north of Britain, receive them by virtue of the way in which the winds blow. Not until we can considerably reduce those statistics which put us in the unsatisfactory position of first in the league table of those contributing to emissions in Europe can we be at all happy that we are going in the right direction.

What the hon. Gentleman says may be right in itself, but does he not agree that it is better to put it in context? Is it not correct that in 1950, not quite 35 years ago, we were responsible for about 25 per cent. of all the emissions in Europe. We have reduces our SO₂ emissions by 34 per cent. over the past decade or two and are now producing only 11 per cent. Should not that real improvement be recognised widely by our colleagues in Europe?

The hon. Gentleman is correct—we have made substantial improvements—but I am sure that all will agree that we are still the worst contributor. That does not mean that we have not been trying hard, but it does mean that we have to try harder, because at the moment we are the country in the dock. As long as that is the position, our environmental status among our partners will not put us in the best light. I accept that we have made considerable improvements. Because of our industrial heritage, we started from a much worse position. Our industrial expansion in the 19th century was not paralleled in many Scandinavian countries. However, we must recognise that we must do the most work in the years to come.

My party takes a different view from that put forward this morning by the hon. Member for South Shields on behalf of the Labour party. We believe that in many issues the appropriate forum for deciding matters is one that does not recognise national boundaries. They are new. It is only since Napoleon that passports and the like have restricted travel in Europe. National boundaries have only added to the problems in the past 150 years. All the arguments that Britain has this great sovereignty, that we are in control of everything, is largely untrue. The EC is part of the continent of Europe and the rest of the land mass to which Europe is attached is part of that same area, in which many problems are common to us.

Although the EC treaties, the preamble to the directives and articles 100 and 235 make it clear that the reason for dealing with environmental matters — which is not specifically dealt with in the treaties of the European Community—is to produce a better Common Market, to reduce barriers and to bring about economic harmonisation. None the less, we believe unreservedly that it is in the context of the EC that we have the best legislative opportunity to agree and enforce measures. It is not perfect. The hon. Member for Newham, South made it clear that the European Community is composed of 10 countries. The Council of Europe includes 21 democratic contries of Western Europe. That is another forum that needs to work on issues such as this. Good work has been done since 1948 in dealing with environmental and transfrontier matters. It has been done by conventions which we should support and encourage. Conventions are a means to progress. It is proper and right in this, as in many other areas, for Europe to be the context of our prime efforts.

Does the Minister accept that just as, for example, in competition policy in the EC the inspectorate is an EC inspectorate, it is time for the Government to say that environmental inspection should be carried out by an EC inspectorate? We could trust it to be more impartial than a body based in Whitehall.

We welcome the progress and the European resolution agreed in February last year which sets out the third action programme on environmental matters. That is a considerable improvement on the earlier two programmes, because it sets out specifics. We look forward to speedy action to fill in the specifics in the framework directive that we are debating today.

I share the concern about the confusion caused by the naming of the second draft of the directive which does not make it clear that it is a second draft agreed by the Commission. In the first draft, implementation was to have been by 1985. The proposed timetable in the second draft, which needs legislation in each of the member countries, is three years after the introduction of the directive. If the directive is agreed in June, implementation will be by 1987. That represents a two-year slippage. How much are we to blame for that? The explanatory memorandum issued in July last year on the draft directive as it was then states:

"The Commission has proposed that a decision on the directive should be taken by the end of the year".

That was last year. It accordingly suggested that opinions should be delivered in October.

On behalf of the Department, the Minister says:

"Given the scope of the directive and the impact it could have on a number of countries' control systems, this is an ambitious timetable. It seems unlikely that a decision will be possible before June 1984."

It is June 1984 and the decision will now be taken. Which other country asked for more time? May we be assured that not only the United Kingdom held things back?

Several improvements have been made on the first draft. One of them is the deletion of that wonderful Eurocratic phrase "state of the art". When a document is drafted originally in French and is translated, many contrived, non-English phrases appear. We are well rid of that phrase.

Articles 3 and 4 are the key articles because they contain the mandatory rather then permissive provision. The Minister obviously accepts the establishment of prior authorisation for plants. Does the Minister accept the recommendation made in the previous Royal Commission report in 1975 that one body should deal with all related matters rather than local authorities being asked to deal with some and the Government with others? This year's Royal Commission report continues to press for a unified agency. Does the Minister accept the need for such a body instead of the present inspectorate?

Article 4 uses some words in general terms and the fear is that its provisions might not bite. We must see the later directives to discover how effective they will be. The article refers to the "emission limit values" and "air quality values applicable". As a result, preventative measures could be regarded too generally. The Liberal party accepts that the definitions formulated in Britain, including that on the best application of available technology, are correct, but we are worried about loose definitions which use such phrases as

"provided that the application of such preventative measures does not entail excessive costs."

We must balance immediate cash costs and long-term cash costs. Environmental damage costs millions of pounds. Pollution causes the destruction of natural flora and fauna and the physical environment which cannot be replaced. We shall be unhappy if "excessive costs" are used as an excuse for saying, "We are sorry, but we cannot make any progress now because it will cost too much."

My reservation about the report from the Select Committee on European Legislation concerns what the chief industrial air pollution inspector said. He said that he considered that the enforcement of the proposed scheme could be achieved by the inspectorate only at the expense of other work. If that is true, will the Department ensure that the inspectorate or its replacement will be given the resources to do the work? It is no good saying that we shall go along with the Community directive and pass legislation, but fail to give the enforcement agencies the material and tools to do the job. That is the professional view of a body that has done a good job over the years, and the Government need to respond to it.

Article 8 has been altered and now refers to unanimous rather than majority decisions. The Liberal party believes it inappropriate for fixed emission limits to be arranged at a European level. On some occasions it is appropriate, but we do not believe in fixed emission limits for all seasons. The evidence submitted by the Liberal party environmental policy panel to the Select Committee explains that.

It is probably appropriate to require unanimity if emission limit values are to be fixed, but it cannot be argued that the Council needs unanimously to stipulate measurement and assessment techniques or the ways in which it evaluates countries' performance. It appears that the Government insist on unanimity at the European Community level in all circumstances when in most circumstances it is not necessary and is not in our general interest. Why is it thought that we need unanimity when establishing monitoring techniques and forms of assessment when that involves an objective, scientific or engineering method which has no immediate implications for national sovereignty?

Article 15 states:

"The Directive does not apply to industrial plant serving national defence purposes."

That could be too open-ended. In the appendix, most matters appear to be covered, but is the Minister satisfied that we can leave the Ministry of Defence to pollute as much as it believes necessary? We do not agree with that. We do not understand why national defence should cause pollution. The premise must be that it should not pollute. Perhaps the Minister could explain why we should give a carte blanche. We will be interested to hear, although not necessarily convinced by, his explanation.

The Select Committee referred to the fifth report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and asks when the Government will give their response to questions in it. Will we get a response, and if so can we have it soon —ideally, today, but certainly during the fuller debate that will be held shortly?

The National Society for Clean Air made some suggestions to the Select Committee, not least that further attention should be given to the procedure for the measurement of emissions. did not attend the Select Committee, but I deduce it meant that we should provide money for research. The hon. and learned Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lyell) made it clear that we should quickly be in a position to carry out accurate monitoring. Otherwise, it might be thought that the Government were dragging their heels if they had to negotiate for ever in Europe about the effectiveness of controlling pollution.

Why has not the Select Committee's suggestion been incorporated? It suggested that the annexes should include open cast mining and other pollutants. Surely the principle should be that all potential pollutants from industrial energy should be covered. Has that matter been considered by the Government, and will it be raised at the meeting at the end of the month?

I want to describe the position that the Liberal party believes the country is in, and from which we need to escape as soon as possible. There is increasing concern among the environmental lobbies and pressure groups that provide us with the good information with which we can challenge the Government. The Friends of the Earth is prominent among those groups, but there are many others. Their information shows that we need rapidly to make progress on the real directives that will fill in the framework. Can the Minister give an undertaking today that when, later this month, we can put on the table the directive that will allow us to legislate to bring ourselves into the framework, we can quickly have the specifics of the later directives? One of them, mentioned on the Order Paper today, is the large plant directive. I have not spent much time talking about that, as there will be a further opportunity to debate it. It is the first of several anticipated directives.

Please can we move quickly? Where it cannot be argued that this will cost us a fortune, can we get on with the job of setting the limits and controlling and enforcing them? Can we please redeem our position in Europe, of which we cannot be proud?

I apologise for having missed some of the opening speeches. It was unavoidable, but I appreciate that because of that I must be brief.

It was pleasing to be told by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lyell) that the Conservative party has veins of green running through it—it makes me think of sage Derby cheese. As the Member for Derbyshire, West, I suppose that that is appropriate.

I wish to take up a point made by the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing). It was a somewhat partisan point, and he was wrong. He said that the market system was incapable of taking qualitative judgments and values properly into account. Any economic system has difficulty in dealing with qualitative judgments. It is hard to put a quantitative value on them. That does not mean that we are not obliged, either explicitly or implicitly, to put quantitative values to qualitative judgments. Whether one is a Marxist, a Social Democrat or a Conservative, when it comes to taking decisions about the environment we must attach quantitative judgments to the proposed measure.

If we are dealing with acid rain, we must in our minds attach a rough quantitative judgment to what we think will be the damage done to the environment. Until we have done that we cannot know whether we are justified in paying the costs—and they are quantitative costs—of minimising the damage.

The problem of attaching quantitative values to qualitative judgments faces any politician, any economist or anyone involved in running a country. It is not a problem specific to what the hon. Gentleman called the Chicago school.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has taken up my point. Ultimately, it is the heart of the problem. Any political system will have to put a quantitative value on a qualitative judgment. Chicago economics, as expounded by the Government, do not even admit the possibility of putting that into effect. The Government are not prepared to say, "Yes, in strict money terms we will not do that because … but because of the environmental risk or because of the damae to communities, we shall nevertheless … " The Government do not include that possibility within their philosophy.

The fact that the Government include that possibility is proven by the fact that we are having this debate today and are hoping to take measures and make progress. I suppose that we could find an exposition of Friedmanite economics that would accord with the characterisation given by the hon. Gentleman. However, I do not think that anyone in the Conservative party feels that we are bound as slaves to so ideological or unthinking an economic view. The hon. Gentleman must do us the credit of accepting that we will listen to Friedman and to Chicago and make our own judgments. I do him the credit of knowing that he will listen to what the coal mining industry may say abut the future of coal, but will make his judgment in the end. We all make independent judgments at the end of the day.

I wish to make one point about the attaching of quantitative judgments to qualitative values. I shall bring the debate down from the realms of world diplomacy to spaghnum moss on the moor in the High Peak. The House may know that my constituency includes part of the Peak District national park. One of its problems is moorland erosion. There is little doubt that a principal contributory factor to that is acid rain. If hon. Members ever have the opportunity to climb Kinderscout in the High Peak, with an altitude of about 2,000ft, and look at what has been happening to the moors, they will see a devastating and dramatic example of the effects of acid rain. It is not a new problem; it has been going on for many years. Some people say that it has been going on for more than a century.

The spaghnum moss that is important to the generation of other moss and plants is being killed. There are huge, bare areas on the moors. It looks rather like the surface of the moon. The hon. Gentleman may say that that is a qualitative judgment, but it is not, because the national park and the National Trust have been negotiating the purchase of large areas of the moors to try to reclaim them. Ultimately, much of the cost of that purchase, if it goes through, may fall on the Government.

That is a cost which the Government will have to pay, because we and they want our national parks, which are valuable for the heritage of the country. Therefore, there are quantitative values that can be put on qualitative judgments. I know that it is difficult and vague, and that much guessing is involved, but guessing is all that we can do. We do this in all parties in the House. The fact that the House is debating this matter now is evidence of the Government's good faith and intentions in dealing with this problem.

I am grateful for the opportunity to reply to several of the comments made by Conservative Members.

I shall tiptoe into the dispute between Chicago economics and what I suggest to the hon. Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Parris) is almost Yale economics. I took the point that he made about the effect on moorland. I had referred to parts of the moorland in the Peak Disrict, although not in his constituency. He is correct in what he says. Anybody who goes to the Peak District, especially a little further north of his area—and this applies also in west Derbyshire—will see layers of peat several feet thick. If one looks under that peat, and up the base, one finds the remains of trees.

At one time that area, which is now bleak—and we rather like it bleak, because we have become accustomed to it—was afforested. As a result of the industrialisation of the Staffordshire and Lancashire areas, there came the acidification and the damage. I said earlier that we had started to export much of that acidic deposition from our country. It falls not so much on our areas now, but is going overseas. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making the point, because it fortifies my earlier argument.

We have had a good debate. Several Conservative Members have correctly said that if we went nuclear for electricity generation much of the problem would disappear. At base level, that is obviously right, although the problem then arises of what one does with nuclear waste, and I know that in the case of mid-Bedfordshire I need not spell that out.

I come next to another problem that arises. It makes sense to generate our electricity with a large coal contribution, and this brings me back to a point that I made earlier. The Government must give the lead to industry to develop the technology. Everything that is going on, such as dilution, fuel desulphurisation, the desulphurisation of fuel gases and so on, needs a little extra shove by the Government to firms like NEI and Babcock Power. They will respond if we give them a lead.

I thought that one or two Conservative Members had been somewhat influenced by a report in The Daily Telegraph in March this year. The report cast doubt on the voluminous research done in Scandinavia. The Daily Telegraph ran the headline:

"Acid rain theory may be wrong, scientists admit".

This really was an example, I assure hon. Members, of The Daily Telegraph—and I may ruin my case by saying this to Conservative Members — as usual, getting it wrong. This was picked up from the Svenska Dagbladet of 18 February, and The Daily Telegraph used it in March. The two authors of the original document, who are university professors, denied The Daily Telegraph report altogether, and said:

"The article in The Daily Telegraph does not correspond at all with our actual statements. The person who wrote it has quoted from our article as the Devil quotes Scripture. They pulled isolated statements out of context and then drew their own conclusions."

Will the Minister give the House an assurance that he will look again at some of the evidence, even if only an abstract, of all the work done by international scientists on the problem in Germany and in Scandinavia in particular? There are volumes of research, and there is some doubt about the interaction and the knock-on effects, which everybody accepts.

There is basic agreement that the problem is acidic emissions. The message from both sides of the House to the Minister is that there is grave disquiet over the Government's attitude. I think that even the Minister's own supporters recognise the mood of the British people. We do not want to be laggards in this exercise. We want the British Government to be in the lead in Europe in sorting out the problem of emissions. I urge the Minister to heed both his hon. Friends and the Opposition. I hope that in two or three months' time, after he has met his fellow Council Ministers, the Minister will be able to say that it was the British Government who were trying to push the other Governments to come up with a European package, and I hope, too, that he can come to some agreement with the Ottawa conference.

I shall resist the temptation to irritate hon. Members who are waiting to debate other matters by filling the rest of the time, which I could easily do, with a review of that part of the scientific evidence with which I am personally familiar, although I am no scientist. Indeed, it was a member of my own college, who, when sitting next to Einstein once at dinner, told him that, if one had studied Greats, it would take only a couple of weeks to "get up" science. I do not take that view, and I recognise that I am an amateur in these matters.

I assure the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) that I am familiar not only with the outlines. I and other Ministers are well advised not only by the chief scientist in our own Department, but by the scientists working for the Natural Environmental Research Council, and many other bodies and universities. There are some strong teams in universities such as Imperial college who are expert on these matters.

As more resources go into the matter, it becomes more interesting and more complex. I know that the Swedish scientists now recognise that the original 1972 hypothesis is far too simple. It is not just a matter of sulphur dioxide up, sulphuric acid in the rain and acid down—thus, damage to trees or lakes. The Swedish scientists are in the lead in showing how much more complicated some of this is. I assure my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lyell) that, although I welcome the commitment of resources by the National Coal Board and the Central Electricity Generating Board, and in particular the way in which they have put those resources under the control of the Royal Society and the Scandinavian royal societies, and have stood back from direction of the project, those resources are small compared with the resources that are being applied in this country. In NERC and in my Department, we are spending every year about as much as that five-year programme. Thus, plenty of other resources are being applied, and it is essential to ensure that they are co-operatively applied. Several Members made this point.

Just before the meeting of the Council of Ministers, I am off to Munich where, with representatives from a wide spectrum of nations, including, we hope eastern European nations, we will be reviewing evidence and looking at the German forest that I mentioned. It is essential to co-operate. The evidence gathered and the scientific work done shows that the problem is much more interesting than the original hypothesis. For example, it is clear that acidification in the atmosphere is one of the contributory causes of many of these phenomena, but is the process irreversible? If a loch or lake is poisoned, which is probably done by changes to the calcium levels and the aluminium levels in the water, and may have been caused by an increase in the acid deposit in the watershed, does one reverse the process by simply reducing the acidification in that watershed by the same amount?

We must be sure about these matters because, for example, if we spent large sums on reducing the ambient acid level, we might not reinstate the damage. Thus, the first step might be further work on how to reinstate the damage. We must not regard the CEGB as the villain of every piece. It has working for it some of the best ecological scientists in this sphere at its Leatherhead laboratory. They are doing work on how to reinstate lakes. I am not saying that the CEGB may not have been involved in the cause of the damage in the first place, but it is obviously sensible to consider whether, for example, by liming in a careful way, it might be possible to reinstate the damage.

There is, too, the whole connection with the subject of hydrocarbons, ozone and the less efficient combustion sources which put out hydrocarbons. There are also the well known photochemical reactions which can produce further acidification and perhaps also produce direct actions which create damage to trees. The scientific consensus is beginning to say that forest damage is not just a simple story of acidification and that the various chemical reactions are of great importance too.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire made a good point when he said, in effect, that we will lead so long as we are sure that we are leading in the right direction. If we commit large resources, only to return to our citizens 10 years later and say, "We have spent several billion pounds but we cannot measure the improvement," our citizens will not thank us. We must be sure what we are doing.

Suppose that the hydrocarbon and ozone route is the trigger that might unlock the damage. I am not saying that that is the story, but if it were, it would be worth waiting a relatively short time—18 months to two years—to see if that is true before committing the resources in that direction. As has been pointed out, we are already one of the leaders in cleaning up motor car emissions, and there are further steps that we can take in that direction. Others in Europe are pressing us on that, anyway.

We may find that there is a much quicker reaction in dealing with forest damage. Just because one can see 15 high stacks on 15 big power stations in Britain, it is simple to say, "Clean up those stacks", and launch a campaign costing perhaps £2 billion. Having done that, we might then have done precisely nothing to the environment. We should not take decisions on the basis of what it is easy to campaign for but on what will achieve the best results.

The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) quoted from a nicely produced Swedish pamphlet which I have studied closely. It contains a picture of appalling damage to a sandstone statue. One can see much the same in Wells cathedral, which I know well. Such undoubted damage, which can be seen—one can feel the stone; it is friable—is almost certainly the result of traditional intensive and localised air pollution, and it still goes on in some places.

A problem which the Germans have in their eastern forests is that, across the border from Czechoslovakia, comes old-fashioned smog with sulphur levels of the kind that we used to have. Because of that, the Germans have two different targets. They must try, in their eastern forests, to persuade their eastern neighbours to take action which was taken years ago in other places. The surges of that smog when it comes across the border certainly damage forests, and would damage buildings if there were any in their way. Loch Grannoch, which is dead, may have been poisoned by the localised pollution of 100 years ago, when, with a different industrial structure, there were many low chimneys from coal-fired plants nearby. My Department is now financing some interesting research aimed at dating exactly the process of acidification, which can be done by looking at the remains of microscopic organisms in the sediment. That will help us to advance our knowledge of this matter.

I have responded initially to some of the general points that hon. Members raised. We did not think that this was a suitable occasion for a wider general debate on acidification, for the reasons that I gave the hon. Member for Newham, South, and I stand by that. I am being diverted by my enthusiasm for the subject, but I shall not be diverted from pressing the Leader of the House—he needs no pressing—for a wider debate in due course on the Select Committee's report.

I am sure that the Minister's speech in answer to the debate will be found more interesting to the House and the country than were his opening remarks. I would not expect him to exclude matters of legislation, and I raised that procedural point in my remarks. I had hoped that he might have dealt with both issues in his first speech, particularly the matters of great interest which he is now adducing.

I am glad that I am pleasing the hon. Gentleman now. I only tease him by saying that his European Committee suggested that this should be discussed in a Committee upstairs. He is, therefore, being a little unfair to me.

I am tempted to join in the debate about Chicago economics. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire warned us against the dangers of party politics, before pointing out that there were six times as many hon. Members on the Government Benches than there were on the Opposition Benches. That was not party politics but a simple matter of fact. Perhaps I should add that not one member of the SDP is present.

The Minister should be aware that his hon. and learned Friend's analysis was inaccurate, because at the time there were four hon. Members on the Opposition Benches and 10 on the Government Benches. To say, therefore, that there were six times more hon. Members on the Government Benches was not a particularly accurate statement for someone who is good at maths, although I accept that he may be good at science.

The hon. Gentleman overlooks the qualitative aspect.

My hon. Friend says that it is qualitative. I was about to say the same thing in a different way by commenting that I had not included the occupants of the Front Benches in my calculation.

I should make a philosophical comment about which kind of economics is better suited to this matter. The kind of political power base which is least suited to a proper concern for the environment is one based on producer power. In my view, a liberal system, where the individual citizen is the source of the power—and not what might be called soft syndicalist groups of producers, who are not so concerned about the impact on the externalities, the impact outside their own industries — is the type of system which is better able to represent the externalities in the political process. That is why the liberals—of whom there are many in the Conservative party and a few even in the Liberal party—need have no fears that that sort of liberal philosophy can represent the environment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) referred to the growing number of Conservatives who are concerned with these matters, and that is correct. Some powerful pamphlets have been published by some of my hon. Friends recently, in particular one by my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Carlisle). The Government welcome that interest.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent rightly made the point that the eastern Europeans are closely implicated in this matter, and the hon. Member for Newham, South made much the same point. We are indeed committed to the necessity for forums wider than the European Community. The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey commented on that. We are signatories to the United Nation's-ECE trans-boundary convention, which was signed in 1979 and came into force in 1983. That convention, without containing numbers, calls for a major improvement in this area. My representation of the Government at the Munich conference will, I hope, encourage Opposition Members to believe that we indeed take seriously the need to look at this whole issue in a wider, rather than simply an EEC, forum, although obviously the European Community, to concert our activity in the western European countries, is extremely important.

I do not know whether the hon. Member for Newham, South believes that I am painting on a broad enough canvas, but he has withdrawn his accusation that I am merely a miniaturist in these matters. He reminded me that Conservative Members cannot complain because it was a leader of our party who said that it was the duty of an Opposition to oppose. We have made considerable progress in the agreement, subject to the approval of the House of the framework directive. We do not expect the Opposition to thank us for it; we expect them to criticise us immediately and say that we have not done the next thing. We will do the next thing next. That is the logical way to proceed.

The House might be willing to give us credit for having negotiated an important step towards pollution control in Europe. It showed us not to be adopting the attitude for which we were criticised by the Royal Commission in the passage read by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey. We have not sat grumbling saying, "Our system is different so we must be entirely separate." We have said. "Our system is different, but it amounts to the same thing in the end. Surely we can find a framework in which the systems can be sensibly harmonised."

The hon. Member for Newham, South is a formidable proceduralist and one with whom I should not wish to tangle, especially in the presence of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) who is equally formidable. The hon. Member for Newham, South made a number of comments about the heading of the document. If there is any confusion, I apologise. The text of the directive was agreed on 1 March by Ministers. It was not adopted because of our parliamentary reserve. The text that we provided to the House only illustrated the Government's understanding of how the text will read. The text that we deposited in the Vote Office was therefore headed, "Illustrative text". There will be no further substantive negotiations. If the House agrees the document, it will be agreed in the form in which it now is, allowing for translation difficulties which happen sometimes.

The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey said that the Commission will have to come forward with other directives on specific points. He asked us to hurry, but it is for the Commission to bring forward further directives. I have no doubt that it will do so. We have agreed this directive on the assumption that it will. We start with important matters and then there will be further debates to see whether the specific directives contain the right remit.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire, to whom I keep referring—I hope I do not embarrass him—said that the party had green edges. That is right. He said also that we must remember—my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent made the same point—the costs involved. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire said that we should compare the energy costs of different sources of power. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent said that we must not forget the industrial costs in our competitive circumstances. Indeed we do not. If one could coin a phrase, the blue of the Conservative party is green, but it is the gold that makes it go green. I apologise for that scientific allusion.

It is the brass.

My not too silent Whip says that it is the brass. I have answered the point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire about resources spent on research, and I hope that I have met him on that.

The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey asked a number of detailed questions about the framework directive. I said that majority voting was unacceptable to the Government. I am sorry if I did not say that loudly enough for the hon. Member for Newham, South. It is not just the defence of sovereignty, with respect to the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey, which makes us wish to retain our capacity, if necessary, to stop something by voting against it, even if in the more technical areas only.

One of the matters which worries us constantly about European environmental control is that some countries will agree measures but not enforce them. That is a difficulty. There is a danger of matters being broadly agreed in the early hours of the morning; we return and enforce them, and so do many other countries, but sometimes one wants to be able to say stop, because we want to be sure that there will be sensible enforcement.

If the enforcement agency was European, it might be possible to overcome that problem, somewhat undermining the reservations on the other arguments.

That has some problems, but I see the arguments. We have promised a revision of clean air legislation in response to the Royal Commission and it will also be necessary to meet the directive. We will be publishing a consultation paper and some of these issues may be better addressed there.

The inspectorate's comment related to the Commission's original text. I am advised that the new version will not give rise to the same amount of work. The problem should not be so great, although it is necessary to have proper resources. Article 15 relates to the defence exception, which appears in many environmental directives. It is not one for which we pressed, because in this contry we apply the law to Government buildings, including defence buildings. Open-cast mining is controlled in the United Kingdom through planning mechanisms. Different considerations apply to the control of dust from those workings. That is not included in the directive, because it applies to industrial plants.

The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey also asked about timing. We asked for more time because legislative changes are necessary. We shall have to bring primary legislation before the House. We also want to do a number of other things in response to the Royal Commission. It would be unfair of me to say what the negotiating positions of other countries were. We do not normally do so.

An interesting point was made about sphagnum moss, which itself is acid, as far as I remember. My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Parris) mentioned it, and I shall study the point. I visited the Peak park, for which I have great respect, and I was grateful to hear him support it. The officials did not mention the moss on my visit. It may be the result of localised intense, probably thy, deposition from the past, but we will study that matter.

The House has shown, with varying degrees of grudgingness, that the framework directive is welcome. It shows the interest that the House will take in the difficult, major decisions that will need to be taken about the big combustion plants. The House has shown a growing awareness of the complexity and importance of the issues, which is welcome to the Government. I commend the document to the House.

Two years ago this month the guns stopped firing in the south Atlantic. Since then, depressingly little progress has been made in patching up our quarrel with Argentina. I therefore welcome this opportunity to debate in the House of Commons Britain's foreign policy for the south Atlantic and to put forward ideas, which I believe will find support in all parties, on what action the Government should take.

One major event has taken place during those two years. It is a most ingenuous paradox that the invasion of the Falkland Islands, which was designed to buttress the military regime in Buenos Aires at short notice, in the event led to its unexpected and welcome downfall. Today, Argentina is blessed with one of the most liberal Governments in South America. It follows that hon. Members on both sides of the House have a natural interest in welcoming and supporting the return to democracy in Argentina.

The Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, following our visit to the Falkland Islands early in January 1983, reported to the House a year ago in these words:

"Your Committee do not believe that present policy, however necessary it may be in the short term, offers a stable future for the Islands. Not only are its material and political costs burdensome, but the policy itself is reactive and inflexible, and carries with it unfortunate implications for the wider conduct of foreign policy both now and for the future."

The passage of time has made the shortcomings of the present policy more apparent. It runs the danger of delivering the initiative to Argentina. Starting from a position of moral and military strength, in some ways we now find ourselves on the defensive. Sir Anthony Parsons was recently reported as saying:

"I think the international community will be waiting to see how much willingness we are showing to improve the situation. I do not think that means people are necessarily expecting us to make concessions which we would regard as being against our principles and interests. I think that what the international community, which is sympathetic to us, would like to see, would be progress towards normalisation of our relations with Argentina."

That is the theme of my brief comments.

It is a fact that every year this topic will come before the General Assembly. It is important that the number of countries supporting us does not start rapidly diminishing. I believe that our friends and allies want seriously to see whether we are behaving as we have traditionally in the past when we have had disputes with other countries, or whether we are suddenly and curiously becoming intransigent.

During the crisis the European Community was helpful, although some countries, particularly Italy, had close political ties with Argentina. I am told that even France, last time the subject came before the General Assembly, at one stage was seriously thinking of not supporting us. One must have regard to the position of the United States. I gather that it is still extremely unpopular in Argentina; it will wish to patch up relationships with that country and others in South America. No doubt it will say to the British Government that it hopes they will play their part in patching up their quarrel.

While I am grateful for the help given by the protecting powers, direct talks between diplomats from the United Kingdom and Argentina are long overdue. That view has been supported in an early-day motion, which I tabled, by over 30 of my hon. Friends.

Sir Anthony Parsons was also reported as saying:

"In my United Nations experience, intermediaries ultimately develop a momentum of their own, and become part of the problem."

The impression has been given in this country and abroad that we are one beat behind the band. Opinion polls have shown regularly for over a year that Government policy is out of step with public attitudes. I am sure that the Foreign Office will have the information to back up that statement. In January 1983, The Daily Telegraph reported a Gallup poll which showed that 63 per cent. of Conservatives felt that attempts should be made to reach agreement with Argentina. The public suspect that there is a way forward, but wonder whether there is a will.

For two years a number of commercial and industrial concerns which had previously traded successfully with Argentina have suffered and jobs in this country have been lost as a result. Meanwhile, other countries have been able to take advantage of our weak position in that country. My hon. Friend the Minister will be in a better position than I to report on the huge potential market for British goods in Argentina and in South America generally as other South American countries tend to take their cue from their important and powerful neighbour.

I wish to deal briefly with what is becoming a hobby horse for me — the defence aspects of Fortress Falklands. Defence correspondents suggest that about five destroyers or frigates are regularly deployed around the Falkland Islands. We send the latest and best of the approximately 55 that we now have, to be reduced to about 50 in the next few years. Buffeted by the Atlantic gales on the 8,000-mile journey south, on patrol, and on the homeward journey, the vessels have to spend some time in dock on their return. Meanwhile, Admiral Sir William Stavely, Navy Commander-in-Chief, Channel and Eastern Atlantic, complains that he has only half the ships needed to cover his NATO responsibilities, and BAOR brigades go on exercises in Germany without their sapper squadrons, which are doing a magnificent job in the Falklands. There are also strains on the Royal Air Force, which has coped brilliantly with the problem of the air bridge, and a new base is being built on the Ascension Islands to help with the problem.

Throughout the past two decades there has been a steady withdrawal by defence forces to north-west Europe and the north Atlantic. I fear that if we are not careful Britain's defence policy will become seriously distorted. For all too long in the post-war period the politicians have given the forces too many commitments and too few troops. Let us make sure that we do not make the same mistake in the 1980s and the 1990s.

That historical withdrawal took place partly for economic reasons and took into account our international industrial performance. Yet Fortress Falklands has opened up a vast new area of public expenditure at a time when restraint and cuts have been the order of the day. The House of Commons Library research department tells me that this financial year every taxpayer in Britain is paying about £40 for Fortress Falklands. That is an expensive way to carry out our obligations to some 350 families and I cannot help thinking that in due course my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, or some future Chancellor, will wish to move in on that obvious growth area of public expenditure.

There are three clear stages before us. First, we must restore diplomatic and commercial links with Argentina without further delay. That would be in Britain's interest. It would be in the interests of the Falkland Islanders, as it would reduce tension and assist development. It would also be in the interests of President Alfonsin, who needs to cut his defence budget so as to make more money available for health and welfare and to pay off his country's vast debts.

When that stage has been reached, we shall need a new communications agreement between the Falkland Islands and Argentina, as Lord Shackleton made clear in his two admirable economic studies. The Select Committee on Foreign Affairs stated:

"The present situation poses other problems for the population of the Falkland Islands themselves: they are cut off from air links with the South American mainland, deprived of the local educational, health and communications services previously available to them, and dependent for all these, and for the continuation of their normal economic activities, on an expensive, complex and time-consuming life-line over 8,000 miles of ocean to the United Kingdom."

May I, as one who has the greatest respect for the hon. Gentleman, say that those who have followed this subject seriously think it is a crying shame that, after all the work he did and the integrity that he displayed, the hon. Gentleman was not re-appointed to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that comment.

Finally, although probably not until the 1990s, there will have to be moves towards fruitful negotiations between Britain, the Falkland Islands and Argentina so that a just, honourable, lasting and peaceful solution to the problems of the south Atlantic can be found.

The previous Select Committee put forward various long-term options, and I suspect that the present Select Committee will do the same when it reports to the House of Commons in a few weeks' time. The present position is artificial. Undoubtedly, and rightly, the House of Commons will always insist on protecting the British way of life of the islanders.

My hon. Friend will know that the South Atlantic Council, which embraces all political parties, and includes business men, academics, former diplomats and churchmen, is determined to play its part in working towards a peaceful solution. To this end, on two occasions, we have had talks in the United States with members of the Argentine Council for International Relations. On the most recent occasion, in April, we welcomed two Argentine Congressmen to our deliberations. The hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) and I discussed in detail with them the possible moves that might be made by both sides to get round the present impasse. It is incredible that, although President Alfonsin has been in power for six months, the Foreign Office has still not been able to arrange a visit to the Argentine war graves on the Falkland Islands under the sponsorship of the Red Cross. I hope, too, that it will be made easier far Argentine fishermen to fish their traditional fishing grounds inside the protection zone.

It has been suggested to the Argentines that they should declare, first that they will not use force again and, secondly, that there is now an official end to the hostilities. On the second point, the Argentines are inclined to remind us that the United Kingdom did not sign a unilateral cessation of hostilities after Suez in 1956. The United Kingdom adhered to a United Nations pronouncement.

On the former point, the President and Dr. Caputo have on a number of occasions made statements on the lines that might have been expected. For example, according to The Daily Telegraph, during his visit to Venezuela, Dr. Caputo said:

"We commit ourselves formally before the international community not to use force except of a dissuasive or defensive character".

Again, he was quoted in a Chilean publication as saying that Argentina

"shall not take initiatives in the sense of using force to recover the Malvinas islands".

During a visit to Mexico, Dr. Caputo said that Argentina

"shall try to make her sovereignty over the Malvinas effective by diplomatic means, not by force".

What more could one expect him to say?

During the week beginning 25 June I hope to be in Buenos Aires with the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) and Lord Kennet as part of a delegation from the South Atlantic Council. Our hosts will be the non-governmental Argentine Council for International Relations, which has been most helpful. We want to meet as wide a spectrum of public opinion, within and outside the Government, as possible. We hope that a goodwill fact-finding visit by parliamentarians at that time will assist the discussions being carried out through the protecting powers. We look to the future rather than to the past.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State will be a little more forthcoming than have previous Foreign Office Ministers about the present state of the discussions. Of course there are continual comments in some detail in the papers, but the House is worried at the apparent lack of progress. When does he feel it will be possible for British diplomats to be able to talk direct to Argentine diplomats, rather than through Brazilian or Swiss diplomats? Surely he agrees with the reported remarks of Dr. Caputo that

"the important thing is to get around the table".

It is clear that our diplomats are more than capable of solving the problem of what is on the agenda. The House is anxious to learn of agricultural and economic progress in the Falkland Islands. The Select Committee on Foreign Affairs advanced several proposals on constitutional reform. I understand, at least from the press, that movement has been extremely slow. Why?

I was surprised to read in The Observer a quotation of David Taylor, the new and able chief executive of the Falkland Islands Government, who said:

"I cannot say that I have any clear vision of what this place will be like in 10 years' time."

Above all, I believe that the House and the country will want to hear how and when we shall restore diplomatic and commercial links with a country with which we had extremely cordial relations for more than 100 years.

I believe that this is a period of opportunity. The present time is propitious for normalising relations, and the Government of President Alfonsin is well supported throughout the country. The military is discredited—many of its former serving officers are in prison awaiting trial. Of course there could be substantial areas for disagreement, but let us have courage, offer hope and end this disastrous trip into deadlock.

It is strange for me to be here on a Friday. In the 10 years during which I have been a Member of Parliament, I cannot recall being here more than three or four times on a Friday.

I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate. It is rather unexpected, as it has come about because of previous business collapsing.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) on his initiative and courage in raising this matter. It is two years since the Argentine invasion and the British response to it. Two years is a long time in politics. I vividly recall and shall never forget the Saturday morning debate immediately after Argentina's invasion. The House assumed an exited response. Although the Government's action was greatly supported, the House was not at its rational best. I had just about completed an academic paper for a conference on the role of the legislature in foreign policy and defence decision making. Before the paper was typed, my conclusions were that the legislature should play a much more significant role in foreign policy making, defence decision making, the cessation of hostilities, the starting of conflicts and ratifying the treaty afterwards.

After the Saturday morning debate, I telephoned my secretary and told her not to type any more because I was changing my conclusions. Having seen the House that morning, I felt that a legislature, in the immediate aftermath of an event such as the invasion of the Falklands, was not the best body to make a rational decision. I was highly sceptical about sending the task force. I opposed it being sent, not on pacifist or neutralist grounds or because I regarded the Argentine action as legitimate. That action was repugnant and illegal. It is ironic that those who perpetrated the invasion are paying a heavy price for their illegal action. The trouble is that more than 1,000 people are lying dead in the sea or on the Falkland Islands, having paid the heaviest price for General Galtieri and his junta's decision.

My scepticism about the sending of the task force was based on an analysis of the military dimension and a consideration of the forces available to us. I realised that our naval forces had been run down and that during the past 20 years we had concentrated our defence effort on Europe and NATO and had abandoned our out-of-area commitment to police the world. When I saw the forces available to the Argentines, I came to the reluctant conclusion that the consequence of meeting violence with the threat of violence could have been a complete disaster for the British armed forces. Although we were humiliated when our tripwire philosophy patently failed, the consequences of military failure—we could have failed—would have rendered that initial humiliation almost trivial in comparison.

Thanks to good fortune and to the great qualities of our armed forces—good luck played a great part in it—we survived and achieved our objectives with, in terms of past battles, limited loss of life. That sounds callous, but if one examines wars of the past and foresees wars of the future, the loss of life in the Falklands was limited—although that is no consolation to the families of the 260 British servicemen who died. We were exceedingly fortunate.

Although I was nowhere near the Falklands on that occasion—I visited it subsequently with a parliamentary delegation—that experience scarred me. I do not want our forces to be engaged in such a venture two, five 10 or 20 years from now, because next time we may not be so fortunate. I am privileged to be a member of the Select Committee on Defence, which is just completing its third inquiry into the Falklands. The first was on the relationship between the media and the Ministry of Defence; the second was on the defence of the Falklands; and the third inquiry considers the lessons to be learnt by our armed forces from that war. My conclusion is that we were lucky to get away with it and I do not want our troops to be put in such a position again.

The Committee has analysed the lessons of the war and tried to capitalise on the experience gained, and the Argentines have been doing likewise. Although President Alfonsin has significantly cut defence expenditure, and although the military is rightly in disgrace and believed to be completely incompetent, the Argentines have nevertheless completed an inquiry into the war. They have learnt their lesson and have paid a heavy price for their foolishness.

Although Argentine defence expenditure has been cut, much of the equipment lost in the Falklands war has been replaced. I wrote to the then Secretary of State for Defence immediately after the Saturday morning debate telling him that, although he might not know it, I had just returned from the Dassault factory in Merignac and had seen 12 super Etendard aircraft with Argentine flags on their sides ready for delivery. Thankfully, those aircraft were not delivered. Had they been, most of out navy would be at the bottom of the south Atlantic. That was the difference between magnificent victory and total humiliation. The Argentines have learnt the lessons; they have rearmed to a certain extent, and the recipe for a conflict five or 10 years' hence is apparent for all to see.

My hon. Friend will recall that when the delegation was turned back with a great fanfare of trumpets on the instructions of President Mitterrand, it returned to the factory at Bourges and made a seven-hour telephone call to the engineer at Bahia Blanca, whose name was Mr. Hervé Colin, giving him instructions on how to marry a surface-to-surface Exocet to the wing of an aircraft. The French arms manufacturers perceived where their long-term interest lay, and it was not with us.

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. However, while the French are well known for their arms exports—although they have been less successful recently than in the past —the co-operation that the French gave to the United Kingdom during the Falklands conflict has not been well publicised and rightly so. We should not kick the French over their actions—quite the reverse. President Mitterrand ensured that the arming of the Exocets was not done officially. It was done unofficially. We should pay tribute to what the French did, but some of it is best left unsaid.

It is my scarring experience and my worry every day that our navy would end up at the bottom of the sea that has coloured my analysis of the position in the south Atlantic. Like the hon. Member for Bexleyheath, I was privileged to go to a seminar a couple of months ago organised by the university of Maryland. It was not an official meeting, and we did not seek permission from anyone to attend, but we had interesting discussions over three long days with Argentine parliamentarians.

It was obvious that there is a great difference between our respective Governments, and between ourselves and them. We were on the British side in no frame of mind to say to them that what they had failed to secure by the sword, if they would wait a little while they could secure by the pen. We put it to them clearly, and left them with on illusion, that if they wished to proceed, it should be only by patience and negotiation.

The Argentines were exceedingly patient over many decades in negotiation. I am not putting their case for them, but if we do not give President Alfonsin the possibility of genuine negotiation, we shall have a re-run of the inevitability in Argentine politics. I hope that that has been broken, but we may again see the military, who are sulking and skulking in corners, return, if the Argentine economy continues to deteriorate. Their excuse will be that the democratic Government had done nothing to secure the position of the Falklands. The military will be back in office and we shall have son of Galtieri or grandson of Galtieri. The consequences could be disastrous.

Perhaps not immediately, but soon, there should be a move towards negotiations. We still have strong and vivid memories, and the British public would not countenance any British Government in the immediate future seeking what might be construed by the The Sun or some other rag as a sell-out. Any Government, even if they were willing to negotiate, should be wary of doing so under the present circumstances. However, the Government are not willing to negotiate genuinely.

It is obvious from a number of public opinion polls commissioned over the past 12 months, that the public realise that things have changed. There is a greater willingness to enter into a dialogue with a democratically elected Argentine Government. Few British people would want to negotiate with an Argentine dictatorship. The Labour party policy on the Falklands and Argentine before the last general election made it clear that there should be no negotiations with an authoritarian Government.

The Government of President Alfonsin is different. They are a democratic Government struggling to eliminate the stranglehold of the military in Argentine political, social and economic life. The British Government would be unwise to isolate that man and his Government, thereby giving the military a chance of a comeback. People should realise that we should never sell the Falkland islanders down the river. That would be unwise and immoral. But I hope that we shall not fail to recognise that, while the wishes of a handful of islanders are important, they should not be paramount. Our interests are important as well as theirs. We should try to secure a solution that would be in the interests of the British public, the Falkland islanders and—dare I say it?—the Argentine population.

Some might misconstrue those words as a sell-out. I would not argue for a sell-out. In our discussions at the university of Maryland we unofficially explored where negotiations within certain parameters might lead at some stage in the future. Some constitutional opportunities one would dismiss completely but there are some parameters within which future negotiations could be concentrated. We need what in military terms is known as a window of opportunity. That happens rarely. It is like the eclipse of the sun. It happens at certain times, the difference is it is unpredictable. When that window of opportunity is created, I hope that there will be sufficient co-operation between the British and the Argentine Governments and between the British and the Argentine public to be able to capitalise upon that opportunity. That means that there must be an incremental and patient approach. It means first developing cultural and sporting contacts and the gradual exchange of diplomatic officials. It means that unofficial meetings will have to take place and a gentle process of resuming what has for much of the time in the past been a good relationship with the Argentine republic.

That better feeling or better ethos of a relationship will have to be built upon slowly. When the right opportunity emerges, negotiations may be possible. They will not be dramatic. They will not come this week, next week or next month, but I hope that they will come in the not-too-distant future. The British Government must realise that there are many arguments against the maintenance of existing policy. We pay a heavy price in diplomatic terms. Our ally the United States has paid a heavy price in relation to its own Latin American policy. We are paying a heavy price in terms of our defence policy. Why should we have much of our Navy deployed in the south Atlantic when the principal threat to the United Kingdom is not there but in the north Atlantic. We pay a heavy price economically and domestically. The arguments against a perpetuation of the fortress Falkland policy are overwhelming.

Therefore, I hope that this Government, or the next Government, will not set their face against negotiations with Argentina but instead ask how we can proceed to negotiate. My solution—it is not an easy one—hovers around a lease-back arrangement. There could be joint titular sovereignty for Argentina for a long period, subject to negotiation. We would argue for 99 years, they would argue for five years and perhaps we could settle on 40 years. I am not putting that forward as a solid proposal but that is the sort of proposal that could be contemplated in the future.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) on his speech. I hope that the words of those who argue as we do are not misinterpreted. They are meant to be in the best interests of the Falkland islanders, who cannot gain from having their security protected by thousands of soldiers. A defence policy is more than the counting of soldiers and warheads. It is a combination of foreign and defence policy — what one might call a national security policy. Wise diplomacy can ensure that the security of the islands is guaranteed without recourse to the Army, the Air Force or the Navy, which ought to be elsewhere.

Diplomatic skills remain, on both sides, and I am sure that at some time in the future the window of opportunity will appear. When it does, I hope that we have the courage and intelligence to capitalise upon it and create genuine security in the Falkland Islands and south Atlantic.

War is a disaster for all concerned. I do not want British forces to be involved in another war in the south Atlantic, because that might result in far more than 260 casualties.

The House should be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) for choosing this vital subject.

When one day, now remote, the complete and unexpurgated political history of the prolonged Anglo-Argentine crisis and eventual conflict over the Falkland Islands is related—it will certainly not be anticipated with eagerness by all who were involved in that saga—that historian would be as justified in entitling his work "The Unreal War" as Churchill was in describing the Second World War as "the unnecessary war".

Over the entire affair, until harsh and cruel reality manifested itself, there hung an atmosphere of unreality that has still not fully dispersed. At that time it was difficult to believe that the unthinkable was happening; that the Royal Navy was experiencing its first major battle since 1945, and was re-learning very painfully and valiantly some very old lessons; and that on land, sea and air, war was actually taking place 8,000 miles from these shores, in which personal friends and relatives were engaged and being sorely tested. Behind the gung-ho patriotism—sometimes carried to excess by some of the popular press—there lay a strange and unforgettable admixture of an intense and serious national determination to win, coupled with unhappiness that it was happening at all. Looking again at the video recordings of the conflict and re-reading the debates in the House and the truly excellent account by Mr. Simon Jenkins and Mr. Max Hastings in "The Battle for the Falklands" is in itself a strange and salutary experience. Did it really happen? It is there on film, on paper and in the records. But did it really happen?

The fact is, of course, that it did happen. Even if it was, as the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) emphasised, like Waterloo, "a damned close-run thing", we won, although when one meets the widows and children of those who died it makes one ponder again upon the nature of victory. The conflict itself was a triumph of political leadership in Britain and was a military epic which engrossed and astonished world opinion. But although the full story, from both sides, cannot yet be related, the time has surely come for a sober reassessment in Argentina and in Britain of that conflict, its antecedents, and the situation that we now confront.

The odious military junta, the butchers of their own countrymen and children, have fallen. For the time being the Argentine military is humiliated and reviled. In President Alfonsin we have a man who was one of that relative handful of brave Argentines who publicly denounced the invasion of the Falklands — which required real courage, and not only political courage.

In that stand he was joined by the former Foreign Minister Oscar Camilion, the present Argentine ambassador to the United States and the then head of the west European desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They were all heard with the same impatience and scorn with which my right hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury, now the Secretary of State for Transport, was heard in the House on that deadly day, 2 December 1980, when he was excoriated by official Labour and Liberal spokesmen and some Conservative Members when, among other things, he spelt out the possible option of lease-back for the islands. It made a great deal of sense at the time, but when my right hon. Friend said in private at a meeting that a failure to settle would result in war, no one believed him. He left the Foreign Office nine months later on promotion to the Treasury. Camilion was deposed as Foreign Minister at Buenos Aires and we were on a slither to a war that was unnecessary and tragic, and whose cost in lives and treasure is literally incalculable.

No one imagined that a British Prime Minister would send the battle fleet as a result.

Looking back, and with all the wisdom of hindsight, I have no doubt that, notwithstanding the debacle of 2 December 1980, we should have stuck with the lease-back option. For one thing, it might have prevented the arrival of Galtieri, the satanic Costa Mendez and all that, and given heart to the responsible elements in Argentine politics and its Foreign Ministry.

The simple fact is that we lost our political nerve and dropped the best opportunity we had for a sensible settlement. The cruel madness of the Galtieri regime in invading cannot entirely mitigate our responsibility. We should have persevered with lease-back. All that is history, although recent history. The fact that the war, however unhappily and unnecessarily, did take place, is the cardinal political reality. Lease-back today is as unreal in British political terms as is the abandonment of the claim to the islands by Argentina. Neither Government could survive politically if either or both followed such a course. But dark forces in Argentina are watching the democratic experiment of Alfonsin with eagerness to pounce, and it is in British and western interests that that experiment succeeds. Re-equipment of the Argentine armed forces is under way. If we have learnt a great deal from the conflict, so have they. The resumption of the war for the islands is not immediate, but in my judgment it is inevitable one day unless two countries and Governments, which now have so much in common, move together.

Sovereignty of the islands is now impossible as a subject for discussion, let alone negotiation. The Argentines, whatever they may say in public, know that very well. They also know that the conflict left remarkably few scars between the nations. Although wars usually leave long-standing rancour, especially with the defeated, it should be noted that this war did not. The Argentines treated the islanders badly, but not cruelly. Their worst humanitarian crime was to scatter mines indiscriminately once they knew that they would be defeated. The almost suicidal courage of the pilots of the Argentine air force salvaged at least some national pride from the abject performances of their navy and army. There is real and sincere praise in Argentina for the professional skill, valour and humanity of the British armed forces and medical staffs.

Argentines are in a similar psychological condition to the Germans in 1945. The nightmare of brutality, murder, military despotism and civil war is over, and it was so ghastly that they also have a sense of unreality that it ever happened. As one of the victims and real heroes of the Argentine resistance, Jacobo Timerman, has recently written:

"Like the Germany of 1945, the Argentina of 1984 asks itself about guilt: Who should be punished? And it asks itself about causes: Where was God?"

Above all, there is real gratitude in Argentina for the indisputable fact that their defeat in the Falklands conflict brought down a terrible regime, and led to democracy. It is a fragile plant in that soil, and one which we should nurture and assist, building upon an infinitely greater respect and goodwill than we have ever had before in Argentina or South America.

Thus, out of the unreal war, something strong and durable could be created. This requires on both sides real statesmanship and imagination. The Prime Minister's congratulatory letter to President Alfonsin—however ill-recognised publicly by that Government — and our support of a relaxed view of Argentina's formidable external debt problems have been noted and appreciated, and private contacts at all levels have been discreet and positive. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has referred to some in which he was involved, and I have been involved in others.

Thus, we have the basic elements for the renewal of full diplomatic relations, but whose first steps—they will be large ones—on the Argentine side must be a firm and categorical assurance of the end of military tension, deliberate harassment and vindictive pettiness, not least in public statements and posturings that are foolish and hurtful; postive assistance in the clearance of the minefields, and a courageous acceptance, with whatever reservations, of the status quo in the islands.

For our part, we must respond with the hand, if not of friendship — it is too soon to do that — at least of understanding. In spite of the arrival of a democratic: Government in Argentina, it remains a South American and international pariah. It feels this acutely, and we are in the best position to assist Argentina to return to the comity of nations with respect and honour. None of this will be easy. We cannot pass an act of oblivion on what has occurred, nor should we, but we are dealing with a new Argentine government, not the old one.

Above all, what is required is a willingness on both sides to agree that the finest memorial to those who served and suffered in the war over the Falklands would be a lasting and understanding peace between our countries, whose principal and immediate beneficiaries would he the Falkland islanders.

Let us open a new chapter while we have the opportunity before another and uglier one may be opened by others. To quote Timerman again:

"The whole country seems to be the antithesis of George Orwell's 1984. Debate is intense and open. Pluralism explodes into a broad spectrum of ideas and positions … Everyone is amazed … After half a century of militarism, a great democratic possibility has opened up."

There is no harm at all in repeating one of Winston Churchill's favourite quotations:

Agree with thine adversary quickly whilst thou art in the way with him."

In recent weeks I have been invited on three occasions to the county of Kent to speak on the subject of the Falklands, once to the south Thanet constituency Labour party, once to the Royal Tunbridge Wells constituency Labour party and once to the political school of my sponsoring trade union, the National Union of Railwaymen, at Frant.

On each occasion I said to them what I repeat now, which is that on this subject—indeed, on some others too—I have nothing but respect for the guts, courage, integrity and application of the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend). In other words, I say nothing here on this subject that I do not say to my party and trade union.

I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James), the author of a distinguished book on Albert and of a great book on Lord Roseberry, whose son, the late Earl of Roseberry, was kind to me as a young hon. Member, whose grandson is my constituent and friend and whose great granddaughter's wedding I shall be attending on 23 June.

The hon. Member for Cambridge and I part company on some important matters in relation to the Falklands, but I cannot emphasise enough what he said when he turned to those dark forces, for the truth is that President Alfonsin has not been able to stop the level of military spending. Is it not a fact that they have spare parts for the Skyhawks; that they have access, heaven help us, to American Sidewinders; and that they have Otomelara mines, those awful mines which can be activated from 30,000 feet? It is certain that they have Meko 360 and Meko 140 frigates powered by Rolls-Royce engines, with David Brown gearboxes and Decca navigational equipment, all made by us. These are formidable weapons. We also know that they have German submarines built by Blohm and Voss. They have two of those, with possibly six under licence in Buenos Aires yards. When, therefore, the hon. Member for Cambridge said that time was not on our side, he could not have been more correct.

The Minister will have my ineradicable respect, whatever else may happen between us, for what he did from the fourth Bench back on Saturday 3 April 1982 when, courageously, he spoke his mind in the most difficult of all circumstances. I wonder where now are some of those who barracked him on that occasion?

I ask that because those of us who have remained with this subject were not among those who shouted on that occasion. Neither the hon. Member for Cambridge nor the hon. Member for Bexleyheath shouted.

It is worth recalling that many of those who were the most strident in their criticism—and who took part in Parliament, as the Prime Minister is always telling us, in despatching the task force—have gone to other political pastures.

It is interesting to note that those whose interest has remained have reached a certain common ground, though I would not put it higher than that.

I begin with two questions relating to books which have recently been published. I do so because the Falklands has become a chronicle of deception which has besmirched the name of our country. If, in this debate, we are talking about the future, let us be clear that until we are honest with ourselves about the past, we shall not be able, as the hon. Member for Bexleyheath said, to concentrate our minds on looking to the future.

Bluntly, there is no chance of forcing the Prime Minister to go down the road that the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and I would wish her to go down, and start negotiating, unless, by an exhumation of the past, she is forced to do so. She has got to be forced to do what has to be done to secure a safe future for the Falkland islanders, a less expensive future for the British taxpayer and, above all, peace.

My first question is specific. It relates to a biography of the Prime Minister that has been published by the reputable London publishing house of Hamish Hamilton. The author is Bruce Arnold. On page 72 he says:

"Truth wrestled with fact, in that 'Nationwide' exchange on May 24th, and truth triumphed. Margaret Thatcher told a lie. Just one. But a lie, nonetheless, visible, inescapable, related to an issue which should have been part of the campaign, but had been hardly mentioned".

What will the Prime Minister do about that? Hamish Hamilton has libel lawyers, and I cannot imagine that that publishing house would have allowed that to go into print under its imprimatur unless it had believed it to be true. The issue is the veracity of the Head of Government, and that is an important matter for the House so long as she occupies No. 10 Downing street. The truthfulness of a British Prime Minister, as long as she is there, is a matter of consuming importance to every Member of the House.

I tried to raise the matter with the Leader of the House. He said that he would refer the query to No. 10 Downing street sometime after the summit. There should be a statement about what action will be taken. I understand why Prime Ministers are unwilling to become embroiled in the courts, but when there is a direct accusation of lying, it cannot just be left. Something must be done. At least an apology should be asked for if the Prime Minister does not wish to go to court.

The second book to which I refer is published by the publishing house, no less reputable, of Macmillian. The book is by Michael Cockerell, Peter Hennessy and David Walker. It is called "Sources close to the Prime Minister requires some action. On page 182, the authors write:

"When she finished reading the Franks Report, the Prime Minister was greatly relieved at its conclusion. She wanted to ensure that these would be what the press and broadcasters stressed. Mrs. Thatcher decided that no embargoed copies of the report should be issued in advance to the press or journalists. The ban she had imposed over the Falklands honours list would stay in force. Instead, the report would be issued at 3.30 p.m. on 18 January, at the same time as Mrs. Thatcher unveiled it in the House of Commons. And Mr. Ingham was encouraged to arrange a special meeting for the Lobby correspondents at 2.45 at which he planned 'to point out the important paragraphs in the document'."

There is a great deal more but I do not want to abuse the time of the House by reading the book. I shall, however, turn to page 186, which says:

"Three weeks after the Prime Minister and her press secretary had achieved their considerable presentational success with the Franks Report they decided to restore the embargo system. In the run up to the general election, the government wanted to re-establish the normal cosy relationship with the Lobby correspondents and to ensure maximum publicity for White Papers and ministerial statemens. All such material would be carefully prepared with a single purpose in minda second term of office."

It is stated on page 187:

"Mrs. Thatcher's office requested the BBC to assign Mr. Brian Hanrahan to cover her general election tour. The BBC declined and sent Mr. Nicholas Witchell, who had been with her in the Falklands, instead. Hanrahan was sent to cover Mr. Foot's tour."

Some comment is required on that, particularly in view of the statement in paragraph 152 of the Franks committee report, in a part of the report that is not often looked at by those who did not have time to read it properly when it was published:

"On 3 March, the British Ambassador in Buenos Aires had reported further comment in the Argentine press on the unilateral communiqué — (see paragraph 139). When the Prime Minister saw this telegram, she wrote on it, 'we must make contingency plans'."

In answer to oral question No. 4 on 12 May 1983, which was not an open question, but was specifically about the Falkland Islands, the Prime Minister said that she did not know about the Falklands invasion before it came out of the blue on Wednesday 31 March. How could the right hon. Lady say that? The issue is the veracity of the Head of Government. Just as this has become a topical issue in another context that I shall not stray on to, it is very important, as I said to the Leader of the House at business questions, that a statement is made soon about the truthfulness of the head of Government. I leave it at that, because there are specific matters to be raised.

Is there a lower standard for other Members of Parliament?

All of us are accountable for what we say in public. This is an interesting and legitimate question, because politicians who tell untruths should face the music—even more so when the occupant of No. 10 Downing street is concerned. There may be explanations, but we are not doing our jobs properly as members of the House of Commons unless we extract those explanations. I hope that I do so in courteous terms.

I reply thus to the hon. Gentleman. If truthfulness is not to be the standard below which Heads of Government do not fall, does that not do great injury to democracy? If I were untruthful as a Member of Parliament, it would be pompous to suggest that that was an injury to democracy. If I were untruthful, I would take the rap, face the music, and possibly be shoved out of the House of Commons, but that is another matter. However, with the Head of Government, it becomes almost a matte of sacred principle in being whiter than white.

In the detailed and complex subject surrounding the sinking of the Belgrano and the much more identifiable and, possibly, more straightforward subject of what was done in relation to the miners' dispute, it seems that standards have fallen. There may be explanations, but on the Belgrano and the Daily Mirror article on the miners it is important, in the view of many of us—I speak for many of my colleagues who are in their constituencies or on the Euro-campaign—that there should be a candid statement from the Dispatch Box next Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, or whenever, explaining those things. Heads of Government should not be tainted, or democracy in this country is injured.

Time does not usually permit the arguments to be fully deployed and often they are truncated to the point of distortion. Unless the full argument is properly deployed, it may not be possible to force the Prime Minister to think again. Therefore, I make no apology for going back to the year 1910. In that year, as the Minister will recollect, the then British Ambassador to Buenos Aires asked for guidance as to what he should do about an exhibition in which India, the Sudan and the Gold Coast were all in red but the Falkland Islands were not. The matter went as far as Asquith's Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, later Lord Falloden, in whose career I confess to having a special interest as he was my mother's godfather and the family knew him well during her childhood at Foulden in Berwickshire.

Sir Edward Grey and his senior officials asked for a lawyer's report and Gaston de Bernhardt produced a 17,000-word document which basically came down on the side of the Argentine claim, to the great consternation of senior Foreign Office officials. In this context, I refer to the scholarly work of Dr. Peter Beck who, I believe, has not been accorded the full honour due to him for his work on this. He said:

"The effect of these surveys, which were used as the basis for policy formulation, was to shake official perceptions regarding the strength of the British case. For example, in July 1911 Ronald Campbell (assistant secretary) minuted that 'the only question is who did have the best claim when we first annexed the islands … I think undoubtedly the United Provinces of Buenos Aires, while in December 1927 Sir Malcolm Robertson, the British ambassador in Argentina, wrote 'if you read with care the Foreign Office memorandum of December 1910 you must surely have realised that the Argentina attitude is neither ridiculous nor childish …'."

Against that background, it was astonishing to hear the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Parkinson) say on the so-called Panorama "Traitorama" that the British claim was "rock solid". The Foreign Office was perfectly aware that Jules Goebel's 470-page book of turbid history and law published in 1927 came down on the side of the Argentine claim and that in the 1930s Britain would not go near the international court because, as Gerald Fitzmaurice, then legal adviser to the Foreign Office, said on 6 February 1936, in the language of tactful understatement for which the British Foreign Office is so famous,

"Our case has certain weaknesses."

In 1940, the Willingdon commission produced

"proposals to re-unite the Falkland Islands with Argentina."

I have been told in a parliamentary answer that that file, entitled "Reunite," is not to be made available until 1991. I do not know why it should not be made public after all this time. It would be far better to open up all the files. It cannot be claimed that the case is rock solid. Lord George-Brown recognised that when he was Labour Foreign Secretary and I believe that it is now accepted that a senior Foreign Office official indelicately put it to the Argentines that whereas rape was unacceptable, seduction was to be encouraged. That was the background which led Tony Crosland, when Foreign Secretary, to suggest that he would really have to grasp the nettle. I talked to Susan Crosland, who wrote a very good biography of her husband in which there is a brief reference to his determination, shortly before he died, to do something about the Falklands. I was chairman of the education committee of my party when Tony Crosland was Secretary of State for Education, and, knowing him as I did, I know that he would indeed have done something about the question. For many reasons, it was a sheer tragedy that he met a premature death.

I should like gently to ask the Minister a question. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan) claims that, in 1977, when he was faced with a tricky situation and intelligence that there might be Argentine action, he sent a submarine. I am asking for a letter or a reply as to what is now the view of the Foreign Office of my Prime Minister's claim. In particular, does the Foreign Office think that the Argentines received any warning about the submarine—assuming that it was sent? I do not doubt my right hon. Friend's word. He is indeed a right honourable Gentleman. However, this is a historical point that ought to be cleared up one way or the other for the sake of future progress.

I have now no doubt whatever that the plans for moving equipment to the south and the first discussions of an Argentine invasion of the Falklands, which was decided on on 12 January 1982, was known very early to our intelligence services and was probably leaked to them. I must here refer to the famous statement by my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) during the debate on Saturday 3 April 1982. My hon. Friend said that he had a disclosure to make. He said that we had been reading the enemy's telegrams for years.

That was the subject of the Prime Minister's outburst on "The World this Weekend". It is interesting in passing, to note that politicians are often more enraged by leaks that are embarrassing or potentially embarrassing to ourselves than by finding that information has been passed to, say, the Russians.

If we had been reading their telegrams for years, are we really saying that in January 1982 we did not have an inkling of Argentine intentions? I believe and I assert that we had such an inkling, because I believe that the British intelligence services, then as later, did not fail to do their job. I also assert that the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service knew in February 1982 that there was every possibility of going to the Falkland Islands. Anyone casting a critical look in my direction should remember what John Nott said in his reply to the debate on Saturday 3 April 1982. In a little-noted passage at the end of his speech, he made it clear that preparations had been going on for weeks.

I refer again to paragraph 152 of the report of the Franks Committee. Despatches had arrived from the ambassador, Anthony Williams, on 3 March, and had been noted in the Prime Minister's own handwriting. I gather from Lord Hunt, a former Cabinet Secretary, that what the Prime Minister writes in the margin of such a despatch from an ambassador has the force of a Cabinet minute. It is extraordinary that the Franks committee, to which I gave evidence, should regard these matters as matters of exoneration.

I am often asked, "Why rake over these issues again?" I shall answer that question by reading a letter that I have permission to read from Patricia Potter of Oriel Cottage, Stafford road, Fordhouses, Wolverhampton, dated 8 March 1984. She wrote:

"Dear Mr. Dalyell, Thank you for your unswerving determination to keep up the pressure on Mrs. Thatcher regarding the sinking of the 'General Belgrano'. My dear nephew, Adrian Anslow (Fleet Air Arm) aged 20 years was lost at sea when the 'Atlantic Conveyor' was sunk by an Exocet missile on May 25. This was in direct retaliation for that dreadful act, which successfully put paid to the Peruvian peace plan.

It was apparently chaff on the 'Invincible' which deflected the missile from its intended target. The Conveyor was a sitting-duck, as were so many of our ships. Sheer luck prevented our losses from being greater. Many of our lads had virtually no protection.

I expect that sometimes it must be hard to withstand the guffaws from hon. Members when you broach your questions. Many people I am sure join me in gratitude to you for your persistence and doggedness to secure some answers.

The Falklands have become unfashionable now. Jingoism is hard to sustain over two years. For some of us we can never forget those calamitous days. Adrian wrote letters which we received after his death asking, 'When will politicians make up their minds? A lot of young men are going to die.'

It is in his memory, a fine young man of the highest principles, that I write to you today. Please do not give in. You speak for him and us."

There are other letters of that type that I could read.

The whole shame-making story of the sinking of the Belgrano has been exposed in an unanswered book printed by the reputable publishing house Secker and Warburg and written by Arthur Gavshon and Desmond Rice. There has been no answer to what they have said. Because the Select Committee will consider these matters, I want to put on the record quite clearly, the different explanations that have been given for the sinking of that ship. The first was given by John Non in the House on 4 May 1982. He said:

"The next day, 2 May, at 8 pm London time, one of our submarines detected the Argentine cruiser, 'General Belgrano', escorted by two destroyers. This heavily armed surface attack group was close to the total exclusion zone and was closing on elements of our task force, which was only hours away."—[Official Report, 4 May 1982; Vol. 23, c. 29–30.]

Only two torpedoes were fired at the cruiser.

The second explanation was given in the Ministry of Defence White Paper "The Falklands Campaign: The Lessons" which was presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Defence in December 1982. It said:

"On 2 May HMS Conqueror detected the Argentine Cruiser, General Belgrano, accompanied by two destroyers, sailing near to the total exclusion zone. Other Argentine ships were also thought to be probing our defences to the north of the zone. The Belgrano, and her escorts armed with Exocet missiles, posed a clear threat to the ships of the task force. She was therefore attacked and sunk by torpedoes".

The third explanation was given by the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym) at a press conference on 1 May 1982 in Washington D.C. The official Foreign Office transcript says:

"I would like to say here that you can count upon the truth and validity of any communique that we issue from the Defence Ministry in London".

The fourth explanation is given on page 16 by Commander Wreford Brown in "Our Falklands War" by Geoffrey Underwood.

"We were tasked to look for and find the General Belgrano group. It was reported to consist of the cruiser and escorts. We located her on our passive sonar and sighted her visually early on the afternoon of May 1. We took up a position astern and followed the General Belgrano for over 30 hours. We reported that we were in contact with her. We remained several miles astern and deep below her. We had instructions to attack if she went inside the total exclusion zone … She was 20 to 30 miles outside the TEZ and, in everyone's eyes, posed a threat to the Task Group. The scenario changed from one of following to one of going in for an attack."

The fifth explanation was from the Prime Minister in her letter to my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) on 4 April 1984:

"HMS Conqueror, on patrol south of the Falkland Islands, detected an Argentine oiler auxiliary which was accompanying the Belgrano on 30 April. She sighted the Belgrano for the first time on 1 May when it was accompanied by two destroyers armed with exocet missiles … The essential point is that it was on May 2 that we had indications about the movements of the Argentine fleet which led the Task Force Commander, Admiral Woodward, to request a change in the rules of engagement to permit the Belgrano to be attacked outside the TEZ."

The sixth explanation was from John Nott in the House of Commons on 5 May 1982. He said:

"The actual decision to launch a torpedo was clearly one taken by the submarine commander." —[Official Report, 5 May 1982; Vol. 23, c. 156.]

Explanation No. 7 was from Admiral Woodward at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies lecture on 20 May 1982, quoted in the Prime Minister's letter to my right hon. Friend, the Member for Llanelli on 4 April 1984. He said:

"Early on the morning of 2 May, all indications were the 25 de Mayo, the Argentinian carrier, and a group of escorts had slipped past my forward SSN barrier to the north, while the cruiser General Belgrano and her escorts were attempting to complete the pincer movement from the south, still outside the TEZ. But Belgrano had Conqueror on the trail. My fear was that Belgrano would lose the SSN as she ran over the shallow water of the Burdwood Bank, and that my forward SSN barrier would be evaded down there too. I therefore sought, for the first and only time throughout the campaign, a major change in the Rules of Engagement to enable the Conqueror to attack Belgrano outside the Exclusion Zone."

Explanation No. 8 came from Lord Lewin on the BBC radio programme "The World This Weekend" on 30 January 1983. He said:

"The Belgrano was a media embarrassment. But it was a necessary thing to do … (On 1 May) there was an air attack (on the Task Force ships.) We assessed from intelligence reports that this was part of a co-ordinated attack plan … which would include aircraft from the carrier, which we knew was at sea, with escorts, an attack from the surface ships from the Argentinian navy, all of which were equipped with exocets, surface to surface missiles, and perhaps also a submarine attack. The first of these took place, the air attack took place. And then we had this report from one of our submarines, the Conqueror, that she was in touch with the Belgrano … The Conqueror found the Belgrano with its two escorts heading towards our Task Group. The escorts were equipped with exocets. The Belgrano was just outside the total exclusion zone. And the rules of engagement we had given to our submarines did not permit them to attack outside the exclusion zone, at that stage. They had to report that they were in touch with the enemy and they would then get instructions. I got this information when I was calling in at Northwood to get the up-to-date intelligence on my way to Chequers for a War Cabinet meeting. So I went on to Chequers, reported the situation, and requested approval to change the rules of engagements to allow the Belgrano to be attacked. Because she was without doubt a threat to our Task Forces and had hostile intent … I got approval for the change in rules of engagement, I telephoned it through to Northwood, it was immediately passed to the submarine, and a few hours later the Belgrano was sunk. The approval was immediately forthcoming and was taken with legal advice in terms of international law. We were within international law and the attack was justified under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which permits you to take action in your own self defence."

The interviewer then asked:

"From the time that the Conqueror sighted the Belgrano to the time that it sank the Belgrano, how long did it take?"

Lord Lewin said:

"A matter of hours. Communications with nuclear submarines are not continuous and a hundred per cent. because this would restrict the nuclear submarine's operations. But on this occasion the communications worked very quickly. What I would say is that the effect of the Conqueror sinking the Belgrano was that the Argentinian navy never again came outside its twelve mile limit. And so it was justified by that alone."

Explanations Nos. 8 and 9 are somewhat different. The Prime Minister said in May 1983:

"The Belgrano was sunk for military reasons and the threat was real. News of the Peruvian proposals did not reach London until after the attack." —[Official Report, 12 May 1983; Vol. 42, c. 918.]

That is a bit different from what Lord Lewin had said. The hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow), the Minister's predecessor said:

"a thorough investigation of the records confirms that an outline of the American-Peruvian framework proposals was first communicated to London in a telegram dispatched from Washington at 22.15 GMT on 2 May, over three hours after the attack on the Belgrano. I can tell the hon. Gentleman further that … 15 minutes later, our ambassador in Washington specifically stated that my right hon. Friend"—

that is the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East—

"was on his way from Washington to New York … It is clear that there was no telephonic consultation … Why does anyone suppose that my right hon. Friend should have felt compelled to leap to the telephone to tell his colleagues in London about a rough scheme of ideas, by no means fully elaborated or fleshed out that Mr. Haig had outlined to him, as if it represented the one and only opportunity for peace in the south Atlantic". —[Official Report, 13 May 1983; Vol. 42, C. 1038.]

That was said from the Dispatch Box, but we now know from "Panorama" that there is a different story. Sir Anthony Ackland, the Permanent Secretary to the Foreign Office, was permanently there, reporting back the whole time. There was constant telephonic communication. What kind of stuff was served up from the Dispatch Box on 12 and 13 May 1983? I object to any Ministers misleading us from the Dispatch Box.

Explanation No. 11 comes from a confidential Foreign Office document dated 27 March 1984. It says:

"On 1 May, Mr. Pym flew to Washington to discuss with Mr. Haig the new situation created by Argentina's rejection of Mr. Haig's negotiating efforts. During their brief discussions the following day, Mr. Haig gave Mr. Pym a brief outline of new ideas which he said the Americans and Peruvians were discussing, but agreed with Mr. Pym that further clarification was needed. Mr. Pym also made it clear that he would have to discuss any new proposal with his colleagues in London on his return. The results of these discussions were telegraphed to London at 22.15 GMT, thereby providing the British government with the first news of the new proposals. Three hours ealier, in response to the perceived military threat, the Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano, had been attacked in the South Atlantic. Meanwhile Mr. Pym flew to New York for discussions with the UN Secretary General."

The difficulty is that these 11 explanations do not add up with what we now know. I shall start with my visit to Peru on 20 October. I make it clear that I paid for it myself, so I am nobody's preacher. For 75 minutes, President Belaunde Terry sat in his office explaining that the British knew at every point that various changes were made in the Peruvian peace proposals. I sat in the House of Manuel Ulloa, the Prime Minister of Peru at the time, in the Mira Flores district of Lima, Peru in the avenue Calderon. He was sure that at every point in the negotiations from the Saturday onwards, the British knew what the Peruvians were engaged in.

Oscar Maurtoa, who spent two years at Pembroke college, Oxford and so had no problems of language, was the head of Belaunde Terry's office. He made it clear that the whole Government of Peru had come to a halt while they did this thing. It would have been impossible for the British not to know at every stage. Arias Stella was interviewed on "Panorama" and I shall go over his discussions with Mr. Emery. He said:

"The first panic button … was pressed not in Argentina, but in Lima, Peru. President Belaunde Terry, fearing a bloodbath for his old ally Argentina, got on to Haig to begin that Saturday what became the Peruvian peace plan."

Dr. Stella said:

"I was in my office, more or less, at midday on Saturday about 12.30 to 1 pm—that was the moment Mr. President was also getting in touch with the State Department. And since that moment, Mr. Haig there has had a lot of experience in the negotation procedures weeks before, start to work directly with President Belaunde on a formula, some sort of proposal "

Emery said:

"Did you, as Foreign Minister, on Saturday have any contact with the British Government?"

Stella:

"I kept informed of every step of our attempts both to the Ambassador from Argentina and to the Ambassador from Great Britain."

That is what the Peruvian Foreign Minister said. To make it clear, Emery said:

"You told Mr. Wallace, the British Ambassador in Peru?"

Stella:

"I kept him informed what we were doing and we have very close contact, we were very good friends—we are very good friends—and I keep him informed by telephone."

Emery:

"But Wallace told 'Panorama' it was Saturday evening before he heard anything. Immediately excited, he telexed London. Haig, though, was talking on Saturday."

So the Peruvian Foreign. Minister Stella said on Panorama that from 1 pm on Saturday he kept Ambassador Charles Wallace informed by telephone of every step of our efforts. That is exactly what I myself was told by Belaunde Terry when, with Willie Makin, I sat in his office in the presidential palace in Lima on 21 October and what I had been told earlier by Prime Minister Ulloa.

Are we to believe that an ambassador who is given the important post in Montevideo did not do his duty and report to his Government? Inconceivable. Besides, the Peruvians know that he did report back to London. After repeated refusals to be interviewed by "Panorama" Wallace telephoned "Panorama" from Montevideo out of the blue the day after the Prime Minister's letter to my right hon. Friend for Llanelli. He said on the record that the first he had heard of the Peruvian peace proposals was Sunday evening at 6.30 pm. Who pressurised Mr. Wallace to make such a telephone call? British ambassadors do not suddenly ring up "Panorama" from half way round the world. The official cover up seems to extend to Montevideo.

If one is not prepared to believe South Americans, what about the Prime Minister's own admirer — Alexander Haig? he said on "Panorama":

"Yes, I did think so. I had the feeling that while we had no control over it, that these actions came sometimes at crucial points in the negotiations which were unfortunately a detriment to those negotiations."

Is it just sheer coincidence that every time there was a prospect of a negotiated peace an incident would be created? Haig had his suspicions. He said:

"Well, I took it very seriously from the outset. After all, our desire was a negotiated settlement and a termination of the conflict. And when the head of state of a neighbouring country that clearly was very close to Buenos Aires made such a propsal it could not be taken trivially and we didn't. In fact, I worked rather intensely to arrive at some language which I felt was within the area of acceptability to Great Britain in those simplified points."

If an American Secretary of State is working rather intensely—that is, sweating his proverbial guts out on a plan to get acceptability to Great Britain—are we to believe that London had no indication of what he was doing until 36 hours later? Besides, as Mr. Woody Goldberg, Haig's assistant would put it, that would not be General Haig's pattern of working. Of course, the British embassy in Washington knew exactly what Haig was up to on that Saturday and was frequently in touch with London. Are we to suggest that Sir Antony Acland or his senior Foreign Office colleagues never bothered to let the Prime Minister know what Al Haig was doing? Of course they told her.

Again, in "Panorama" it was stated that in Washington that Saturday night the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East and Haig were apparently not yet in contact. Haig was in his den developing a plan with Belaunde and the Peruvian Prime Minister, Dr. Ulloa. Haig's book places this on Sunday, but when talking on "Panorama" he confirmed that it was Saturday.

There were phone calls. The phone rings:

"Hello-General Haig.

Fred Emery: For Haig, it was a fruitful night's work.

How much progress did you make on Saturday in dealing with President Belaunde on his proposal for some new effort to negotiate?

Alexander Haig: It would be difficult to say in hindsight. At the time, of course, there was enthusiasm on the part of President Belaunde, on my part and I think on the part of Great Britain, that here there may have been an opportunity for a break through.

Alexander Haig (continued): It involved really a simplification of the basic proposals we had worked on, so it was not a whole new 'ball of wax', so to speak, for the Argentinians to have to mull over, but rather a simplified version of earlier negotiations.

Fred Emery: What made you think though—staying up all night as you did, what made you think that there was a chance of something here when you had been through all that … and the talks had just broken down and the war had started, if you like …?

Alexander Haig: and sometimes that fighting has a sobering impact on those who are dealing with the problem. Also there was clearly a great deal of enthusiasm on the part of the President of Peru. He has a new state of mind, at least as far as President Galtieri was concerned."

How would Haig get it into his head that there was

"enthusiasm on the part of Belaunde, on my part and I think on the part of Great Britain that there may have been an opportunity for a break through"

if he had not discussed the Peruvian proposals with someone representing the British commander? At what level was such an impression of enthusiasm gained? Can we really suppose that the former NATO commander, an American Secretary of State, not unaware of his own importance, was content to deal with someone at junior level? That is unlikely to the point of impossibility. Who gave Haig such an impression? That matter should be settled by a tribunal of inquiry under the 1921 Act.

It is public knowledge that the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East will go before the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs in the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing). I wish to discuss the right hon. Gentleman's role. During that "Panorama" programme we heard a long interview which I cannot read into the record but I should like to. Part of it went as follows:

"Fred Emery: That same Saturday in Washington, Concorde arrives, bringing Francis Pym. One of the complexities of this weekend is that the former Foreign Secretary maintains he was not in contact with Mr. Haig for over 12 more critical hours.

Rt. Hon. Francis Pym M.P.: I don't recall any conversation with Haig that evening, and I don't think that there was any … "

I am absolutely sure that the former Foreign Secretary's memory is lacking and there was a conversation shortly after the right hon. Gentleman arrived in Washington and that Haig is right. I assert that there were discussions on that Saturday evening when the right hon. Gentleman arrived in Washington.

The interview continued:

"Fred Emery: He thinks he must have got in touch with you … [No …] when you arrived to tell you about what was developing on the Peruvian peace proposal.

Francis Pym: Well, if he did get in touch and there was a telephone call, which I do not recall, I am sure it did not include anything about proposals which we discussed at ten o'clock the next morning. If he said that he conveyed to me, on Saturday evening, outlines of Peruvian proposals — that is not my recollection …

Fred Emery: It seems odd.

Francis Pym: I think there was no contact that evening at all and the first—and this is quite logical—because we had the date to meet next morning.

Fred Emery: It seems odd to the outsider that you would go by Concorde to the United States, arrive there in early evening on a peace mission on furthering the whole business of negotiations and not even sort of have a phone call with the Secretary of State until next morning.

Francis Pym: Well, it was … if … if … there was no particular proposition that I had to put to him. Our purpose was to meet together, to see how we could carry it forward, and I had various ideas and it transpired in the morning that he had these ideas worked out or in the process of working out, with Peru.

Fred Emery: He says he spent all night. He was up all night on the phone …

Francis Pym: Well, he may have been up all night on the phone …

Fred Emery: Do you remember him telling you that?

Francis Pym: Well, he may have been up all night on the phone … [interruption] … perhaps that confirms the fact that there was no contact between us on Saturday night. Perhaps he wanted to take the thing further that night and told me about it in the morning—which he did."

It is not true that there was no contact between the right hon. Gentleman and Haig on the Saturday night. The right hon. Gentleman had admitted that he did indeed talk to Haig on the night that he arrived—it would have been extraordinary had he not done so. Does the British taxpayer send Ministers by Concorde to twiddle their thumbs in Washington and do nothing at a critical moment when a war is in progress?

Reports were sent back to London. On Saturday night the Prime Minister received the Peruvian proposals—a full day before she told the House of Commons, in answer to parliamentary question No. 4 on 12 May—that no news of the Peruvian peace proposals had reached London until three hours after the Belgrano had been sunk.

Where does all that leave the Minister's predecessor, the former Minister of State at the Foreign Office, the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow), who answered the Adjournment debate on 12 May 1983 on the sinking of the Belgrano? He must be responsible for the whole cacophony of statements to the House that are turning out to be untrue. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman must have known while he spoke from the Dispatch Box that they were untrue.

Order. The hon. Gentleman will know that we have had long experience of these matters. He knows that he should not make such an accusation.

I do not wish to get into any difficulty over the use of parliamentary language, so if "untrue" is an unsatisfactory word——

Order. The hon. Gentleman said that the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) knew the statement was untrue. He must withdraw that remark.

All right. I have considerable respect for the Foreign Office civil servants, who have shown great patience with me. I cannot but think that those competent and efficient people did a proper briefing.

The interview continued:

"Fred Emery: That anticipation was not all guess work: intelligence that the 'Belgrano' would turn north into the zone and perhaps complete the pincer movement was, we understand, signalled to the submarine."

It would be of advantage to the House if we clarified whether the hon. Gentleman was withdrawing the allegation that he made against my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow).

Yes. This is far too serious a matter to argue about honour.

If fleet headquarters at Northwood knew about the orders for a pincer movement on 1 May in anticipation of a British landing in the Falklands, equally it knew about the countermanding orders to go to the Argentine coast. As Conqueror could telephone or be telephoned by Northwood at any time, there were no communications difficulties. Indeed, we know that the countermanding orders were decoded at GCHQ in Cheltenham. When the order to sink the Belgrano was given, it was known, first, what the countermanding orders were and, secondly, that the Belgrano had been steaming westwards for at least 100 miles, being tracked by the Conqueror. I put that on record without apology, because the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East will be coming to the Committee on Monday and will surely be able to speak for himself.

The right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East should also pay attention to other aspects of the Panorama programme.

"Fred Emery: Following having lunch together at the British Embassy, Haig telephoned Pym urgently and the story gets more complicated. Before the 'Belgrano' was sunk, Haig's book states, Belaude gained acceptance in principle from both parties.

Pym: Haig had rung to say that he wanted to impress upon me—and this is having left after lunch—the importance he attached to the Peruvian proposals and I, because I didn't want to miss the plane and had my date in New York, authorised Sir Nicholas Henderson to ring back and to tell Al Haig to he in no doubt whatsoever that I regarded that proposal and I would regard any other proposal as extremely important and that no stone would be left unturned, as far as I was concerned, in the search for an agreement. So, that was the nature of the conversation."

I ask, what in heaven's name was so important about his catching the plane, and his date in New York, that the right hon. Gentleman could not himself take an urgent call from Secretary of State Haig? All right, he might have missed that plane. Planes between Washington and New York are not exactly infrequent in high summer. He could have caught another plane. Anyhow, what could be more urgent in New York than talking to Haig, when the Secretary of State had initiated an urgent call, to impress something on the right hon. Gentleman, than at least talking to Haig? More likely, the right hon. Gentleman felt that the last thing in the world he wanted to do at that moment was to talk to Haig. Why? Because by that time he knew that the request had come through to change the rules of engagement and he would have felt that he had to reveal this to Haig, and Haig would have ticked on as to why the rules of engagement had been changed, and blown his top, ordering the British to do no such thing as sink the Belgrano. The right hon. Gentleman, now in the know about the Belgrano, made his excuses for not talking to Haig,

"because he had a flight to catch."

What a frivolous excuse in the circumstances!

"Fred Emery: Understood. But Ulloa says he asked Haig, can you get on to the Brits and see if they can hold off on warlike actions and offensive operations and so on. Did you everhear about that?"

The reply came from the right hon. Member for Hertsmere:

"We knew all the time that there were continuing processes. I said Francis was away because he was seeking a diplomatic solution, but what we had to decide that day was something very specific. I believe it was essential to the success of diplomatic initiative that we maintained our military credibility and I think the sinking of the 'Belgrano' was a necessary part of maintaining that credibility."

Again the right hon. Member for Hertsmere let the cat out of the bag. So the sinking of the Belgrano was not because Belgrano was

"an immediate threat to our Task. Force".

The right hon. Gentleman agreed with Lord Lewin.

"Fred Emery: When did she become an immediate threat?

Lord Lewin: She didn't become an immediate threat because we sank her."

How then can the Prime Minister have it that the Belgrano was "an immediate threat"? The right hon. Lady ought to apologise to Mrs. Diana Gould, a housewife of Cirencester, who has written an excellent little book called "On the Spot", because it was clear in her replies to Mrs. Gould during the election that the words "immediate threat" were used.

"Emery: Did Haig say: the Peruvians tell me that they've got Galtieri virtually agreeing now?

Pym: I don't think 'virtually agreeing', but it was certainly perfectly clear that the Peruvians were in touch with the Argentines, of course they were, and that naturally the Peruvians were hopeful that the plan which was theirs, it was a mixture of American and Peruvian plans with the plans that the Peruvians regarded as their own, you know, had a reasonable chance of success. Well, naturally, they would take that view and that was a hopeful sign.

Emery: But it had gone from a sort of outline, in your words, very vague sort of ideas, to suddenly something that was terribly serious.

Pym: I don't understand that question——

Emery: After lunch?

Pym: No, it happened after lunch. All he rang me back to say was would I please realise how important he— Al Haig—regarded these proposals. And Sir Nicholas Henderson assured him that I did indeed regard them as very important, so far as they went, and that they were the basis upon which I would work."

From his demeanour on television, the right hon. Gentleman understood Emery's question only too well. "Panorama" laid bare the truth in a way that only television pressure can; the written word can be evasive. If they were so important, why did the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East go to New York? It was to get out of the light while the Prime Minister and the War Cabinet went about their work to sink the Belgrano.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that others wish to speak in the debate? For how long does he intend to continue? When does he believe that the Prime Minister and her colleagues decided to sink the Belgrano?

At Chequers at lunch time on 2 May. They knew for over five hours, from early that morning, about the course of the Belgrano.

The hon. Gentleman said that it was before the then Foreign Secretary left for the United States.

No, not before he left for America because he left on the Saturday. The decision to sink the Belgrano was made on the Sunday morning. Timing is all-important.

I shall try to be brief, but I must add that on the "Panorama" programme, the right hon. Member for Hertsmere spilt the beans, because Emery said:

"Before your meeting, Haig had been up all night, talking to the Peruvians. Dr. Ulloa, who was the Peruvian Prime Minister, tells us that he was on the phone to Haig. He had Francis Pym in his office that Sunday morning while you were at Chequers on the phone. Now, was that mentioned at your meeting?"

The right hon. Gentleman replied:

"We knew that all sorts of people were … people who wanted to see a peaceful solution, which we wanted to see, which the prime example is … President Belaunde, trying to take up where General Haig had left off but we couldn't …"

Emery said:

"You knew on that Sunday, 2 May?"

So the right hon. Gentleman knew about the Peruvian peace proposals. A prime example he said, was President Belaunde. If the right hon. Gentleman knew, how come the Prime Minister did not know?

The difficulty that the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East will be in when he comes to the Select Committee is that in the Daily Mirror of 20 May 1983 he wrote:

"If the Peruvians had prepared a treaty ready for signature on the evening of May 2, they certainly gave us no indication of this either in Lima or in London. Nor did Mr. Haig say or suggest any such thing to me."

That was written when the right hon. Gentleman wished to remain Foreign Secretary, during the general election, but what he wrote was clearly not the fact. I refer again to the book "Sources Close to the Prime Minister," which states at page 154:

"'Within days of Mr. Pym's appointment, Cecil Parkinson, fellow member of the War Cabinet, was walking the Commons corridors telling everyone who would listen that Pym was no good. He even told Labour MPs. Pym was being undermined from the top'.

The dissension between Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Pym was to continue throughout the year after the Falklands victory and, as the following chapter shows, was to reach its climax during the 1983 general election. 'Mrs. Thatcher's poisonous acolytes', as Mr. Pym called them, were to make full use of the Lobby system, as did his own closest associates."

That is why there should be some discussion of this whole issue.

I do not make too much complaint about it, but there has been a refusal by the Secretary of State for Defence to answer any more of the detailed questions that I asked in my letter of 19 March. In a letter of 18 April the right hon. Gentleman wrote:

"Thank you for your letter of the 19th March asking some questions about the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the General Belgrano. Since you wrote this letter, you will have seen the Prime Minister's letter to Denzil Davies of 4th April and you have yourself had a further round of correspondence in your letter of 5th April and the Prime Minister's reply of 12th April. There is nothing that I can usefully add."

I replied to the right hon. Gentleman on 1 May and he replied:

"Thank you for your further letter of 1st May. Your purpose in asking the questions you put to me is to pursue your campaign that the Belgrano was attacked in order to destroy the prospects for peace negotiations rather than for the military reason that she posed a threat to the Task Force. I do not believe that there is any point in prolonging this argument by a further round of detailed correspondence."

Those questions could be answered easily by a simple reference to——

Order. The hon. Gentleman is getting on to defence matters. The debate is on foreign affairs and a Minister from the Foreign Office is here. In fairness to other hon. Members, I ask the hon. Member keep to the subject.

I returned to that point because the argument on defence aspects has been brilliantly set out by Richard Norton Taylor in Time Out under the article entitled, "What really happened to the Belgrano".

Did the hon. Gentleman write it?

I did not write it. It is by Richard Norton Taylor and he is no one's creature.

I come to another book that is to be published. I have the permission of the author, Mr. Greg Philo of the Glasgow university media group to say something about it. It is about yet another peace negotiation that was discovered on 4 June. It is to be published by Glasgow university media group "War and Peace News", by the Open University Press. A report of the book states:

"that Argentina did make such an offer, but Britain rejected it, and most strangely that people in this country were not told about it. The occasion was a major effort for a cease-fire made at the United Nations on June 4—ten days before the fighting finally ended. On the Security Council nine nations voted for the plan—a crucial number since this would have made it mandatory on Britain to accept along with Argentina. Even the US at first voted against and then indicated that it wished to abstain. Britain alone stood out against it. What had made the plan so compelling was that Argentina had finally accepted UN Resolution 502."

That is not true.

If it is not true, the Minister will have to reply to it. He dismissed my points. I hope that the Foreign Office will study Mr. Greg Philo's book because it has been carefully researched. The report on the book continues:

"This resolution had been the basis of British policy all along, since it called upon Argentina to withdraw its forces. In a crucial move, Argentina had sponsored an amendment to the cease-fire plan indicating its acceptance of 502.

Outside Britain, this was interpreted as a major concession by Argentina as they were now prepared to accept a cease-fire on British terms. The Washington Post reported on June 4 that:

'The Argentine diplomat behind the resolution also accepted the interpretation that the Spanish-Panamanian resolution would require Argentina to commence unilateral withdrawal of its troops simultaneous with the ceasefire … One Western diplomat who backs the British position interpreted the Argentine concession to mean that Buenos Aires is desperate to achieve a cease-fire, even on British terms …

But this view did not become public in Britain.'"

That view did not become public in Britain. Greg Philo and Lucinda Broadbent point out that

"with the exception of a few references in the quality Press, the details of the proposed cease-fire did not emerge. Astonishingly on television news there was no mention that Argentina had agreed to Resolution 502 and was apparently contemplating unilateral withdrawal. The public were informed sumply of the official Foreign Office view that the plan 'would have left the Argentines on the Falklands, worded as it was.' (BBC-1, June 5, 1982). On the same night ITN reported that:

'The UN resolution was in their view (the Government's) not at all close to being acceptable, as Mr. Haig had suggested, because it didn't link a ceasefire to withdrawal.'

These reports did not mention a 'missed chance for peace' or discuss why Britain was now isolated in the United Nations."

Instead, the reports concentrated on the anger of the United States.

Sooner or later someone will have to reveal the truth of what did happen. I do not apologise for going into such details, because generalisations will not do. This is not past history. The Sunday Times figures show that we are spending £3 million a day. That may be an underestimate——

Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to be fair, so I should like to remind him that the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend), who raised the subject of the Adjournment, is entitled to a reply from the Minister. The Minister will want time to reply, and another hon. Member wants to intervene.

I shall leave the costs. I leave the question of the runway, to which we are taking 6,600 tonnes of rock and sand, on which I have tabled a parliamentary question. I leave the matter of the danger of a replay. We are whistling in the wind if there is not a negotiation about sovereignty. Only by outlining and exhuming those uncomfortable facts will the Prime Minister be overcome by those in the Foreign Office and elsewhere who woud like to do the rational thing.

In the end, there is the vital matter of truth. We cannot simply sit here and say that bygons should be bygones. As long as the Present Prime Minister is in Downing street, what she does in the name of this country is a matter of considerable importance. The truthfulness of what she says is of equal importance, because the Prime Minister, who strides the world stage, represents our country in relation to honour and politics. I choose my words no less carefully than my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) did yesterday. I believe that there has been a calculated misrepresentation. I shall not search around for parliamentary words.

Order. Many accusations go from one side to the other about misrepresentations and so on, but it is not for any hon. Member to say whether something is calculated or deliberate. The hon. Gentleman should withdraw what he has just said.

This puts us into great difficulty. I do not want to take up time over a row about parliamentary manners, so I shall leave it at that.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) for letting me join in his Adjournment debate.

I agree with the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) that it is wrong, in parliamentary terms, that my hon. Friend is not on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. The way in which he spoke in introducing the debate shows that he is the sort of person to whom another should give way. So far as I am aware, with the exception of the Chairman—the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing)—members of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs have not spoken, which shows that on occasion the arrangements for selecting members of the Committee should be subject to pressure from the House as a whole.

The Chairman is the hon. Member for Stroud (Sir A. Kershaw). I am just a member of that Committee.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I shall apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Sir A. Kershaw) in due course.

I hope to speak for about five minutes on the future situation in the south Atlantic, because that is the subject of the debate. Much as I should like to cover both sides of the south Atlantic and include southern Africa, I shall confine my comments to our relations with Argentina.

First, however, in a spirit of friendliness and gentleness, I put it to the hon. Member for Linlithgow that his lengthy comments will do two things. At a time when there is direct and indirect pressure on the British and Argentine Governments, the hon. Gentleman has made what would have been a most helpful debate less effective, in that such coverage as it attracts may be taken up with a repetition of the many issues which the hon. Gentleman constantly raises. Of course, the hon. Gentleman has every right to make his own speech. As he says himself, he must stand by what he has said and answer for it. Nevertheless, I believe that the impact of his speech today has been to undermine the objective that has brought us together—to make possible now more things that will become right in the future, or to make possible in the future more things that would be right now—because what he has said cannot be allowed just to run by without some comment from my hon. Friend the Minister.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow said in his speech — I apologise for intervening twice in it — that he believed that my right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym) got out of the way while the Government decided to sink the Belgrano. The only possible interpretation of that is that my right hon. Friend left London at a time when the War Cabinet knew that it was going to take that decision. That may not have been what the hon. Gentleman meant or intended to say, but I judged from his demeanour when I intervened that he was on very shaky ground. I would simply sweep away the assertions that the hon. Gentleman made on television about my right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, save to say that in interpreting demeanour the hon. Gentleman either made a slip of the tongue or was attempting to make a more general case in which a slight looseness of language suited his purpose. I may be quite wrong, but it is as difficult for the hon. Gentleman to correct me on that kind of interpretation as it is for the many people on the receiving end of his accusations today and on other occasions.

I served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) when he was a Foreign Office Minister during part of the campaign conducted by the hon. Member for Linlithgow. No doubt there are Parliamentary Private Secretaries who see all kinds of secret information, but I was not one of them. On no occasion in discussions with civil servants at the Foreign Office or with my hon. Friend the Member for Woking did I ever get the suspicion, let alone any halfway substantial evidence, that anyone was trying to hide anything from the hon. Member for Linlithgow when he was taking every possible parliamentary opportunity to put forward his version of events and, indeed, going a stage further and putting forward as gospel versions of events from other people's articles and books.

I have great personal respect for the hon. Member for Linlithgow as a tennis player, as a Member of Parliament, and in many other respects, but towards the end of the last Parliament I heard him support accusations made by people with no standing in the Falklands affair about what the Ghurkas and others were doing to people — I apologise if I have the specific example wrong, but there was a whole series of accusations — and demanding detailed replies from Ministers even on events which turned out to be non-existent.

There are also the events that really took place. If I had more time I would ask the hon. Gentleman at what time the Argentine air force first tried to bomb a ship that was part of the British force. I suspect that the answer that I would receive would be that it happened before the sinking of the Belgrano. I would then ask the hon. Gentleman whether it was by design that the bombs aimed at one of our ships missed. I would ask whether that happened during the time when, according to some of the books and television programmes referred to by the hon. Gentleman, the Argentine authorities had not heard of the Peruvian peace proposals, or whether it happened at the time when they were considering those proposals. I suspect that the decision would have been taken not only at a time when the initiative of the Peruvian President was known, but days, if not weeks, after the American proposals were known—and, as the hon. Gentleman said, the Peruvian proposals were the American proposals simplified.

We seem to be agreed on one small essential—that the Argentine authorities authorised an attack which would have had exactly the same effect as the sinking of the Belgrano, if we accept the hon. Gentleman's arguments.

I have dealt with the hon. Gentleman's demeanour. I have dealt with some of the accusations that he has made. I have dealt with the Argentine position over the Peruvian peace proposals. I have dealt with those points in an hour and five minutes less than the hon. Gentleman took to put them forward. I hope that he will now forgive me if I talk for five minutes about the future.

A remark of mine about the Select Committee's meeting with the Argentines in New York was quoted in "The Times Diary" —not perhaps the most substantial part of The Times I had been asked what my view of the meeting was, and I said that I was all in favour of it. The journalist reported the conversation reasonably accurately. He suggested to me that the Government did not seem to be in favour. I said that it was perfectly reasonable for the Government not to be in favour, as they did not have even correct relationships with the Argentine Government at the moment. The Government were not likely to rush around expressing approval of other constitutional bodies having meetings at other levels. The Government's response was perfectly reasonable, formal and open. I said that no one seemed to mind the Government's attitude very much. It was not for the Government to tell Parliament what to do. In the end, it is for Parliament to tell the Government what to do. That seems to be a remark to which no one should take exception.

We do not need to set out—as the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) said in his good speech—exactly what should happen at every stage. What we need to do is to require—and not only require, but make possible by our speeches here, impassioned or otherwise, and our activities outside—that our relations with the Argentine should improve, and that the restoration of diplomatic relations should make that improvement manifest. It is not only important that we should do this soon because of the possibly precarious nature of democracy in the Argentine. We should also do it because we need to have diplomatic relations with Argentina, whether or not democracy thrives there. Although other occasions may arise when diplomatic relations have to be broken off again, we should now be moving fast towards the establishment of diplomatic links. I hope that today I am making a small contribution towards bringing that about.

We are not trying to push Government leaders further and faster than they wish to go. We are not saying that we know more about it than the Government and that they should catch up with us. Clearly, we do not know more about it. The restoration of diplomatic relations is required as an expression of the interests of the people of this country. I hope that my hon. Friend will not feel obliged to deal with the question of diplomatic relations in great detail today. That might hinder the process. I simply want the message to be understood. Secondly, we must get discussions going. Tbere is no need to wait for the re-establishment of diplomatic relations. I hope that it is possible for our officials and the Argentine officials to have talks about diplomatic relations and other matters, and perhaps for those talks to be expanded. I do not want to talk about negotiations. I shall only say that, as matters progress, it will be important that people should show the courage and the realism which were talked about in a speech on 3 April 1982.

I could have made a speech which would have been regarded as brave and controversial, which could have been an extract of a speech made by my hon. Friend the Minister. Leaving out some of the details about the events of 3 April, the arguments are as good now as they were then, as they realistically examine our long-term interests, those of the Falkland Islands and those of Argentina.

There were two big mistakes in the Falklands war. One was made by Argentina, thinking that it could invade and get away with it. Our mistake was in letting Argentina think that. I fully support the military spending that is intended to ensure that that will not happen again.

In regard to what my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) said about our right hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) and his reception at a meeting outside the Chamber and his reception when he reported to the Chamber, both sides of the House will require courage to make it politically possible for the Government to put into effect what is necessary and right. With the exception of one hour's speech, today has been a great parliamentary occasion. When history is written it will be seen that it is those who are willing to risk short-term disapproval on whom the future of the south Atlantic depends.

I should like to join others who have spoken in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) on introducing what has turned out, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) said, to be an important and memorable debate. We all recognise the deep interest that my hon. Friend has devoted and continues to devote to this topic. I recognise his commitment to our common ambition to find a happy resolution of the problems of the south Atlantic.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham, in a spirit of gentleness, that this would have been an even better debate if not quite so much time had been used exhuming the past. I recognise the deep sincerity of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). I do not want to sound patronising — I recognise his commitment to these matters. However, it would be wrong if this debate went down in history as exhumation rather than a forward-looking debate. With the exception of the past, which was raked over minutely, we have a good deal to be satisfied about. We sincerely welcome the opportunity to hear from hon. Members with different points of view who have taken a long-term and dedicated interest in this important issue.

However, hon. Members have not been kind enough to the Government in their sense of timing. I do not expect kindness from the Opposition, but I should like to draw attention to some of the achievements that we have recorded.

All hon. Members must consider the matters with which we had to deal. The hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) said that it was two years since those sad events of the spring of 1982, but developments could have started only from the installation of the democratic regime in Argentina in December last year. Before that the country had a military regime whose actions were condemned by almost the entire world and by almost all hon. Members. It would have been impossible to make progress in any direction while that military regime survived. Therefore, we are talking about perhaps six or seven months, and I invite the House and especially my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes-James) — who, as always, made a distinguished contribution to the debate, and who is a distinguished historian—to recognise that six months is a very short time, given the background against which we are operating and given the impact of those events on the lives of the Falkland islanders, on Britain and certainly on Argentina.

The Government can take considerable credit for what has been achieved so far, and I reject accusations of intransigence in our basic propositions, which have the support of the great majority of the British people. They are that we shall stand by our commitments to the Falkland islanders, but that we are determined to seek a normalisation of relations with Argentina — a country with which, as many hon. Members said, we have had such good relations for more than a century and, indeed, since the republic of Argentina was created.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister welcomed the installation of democracy and sent a message that surprised the world at the inauguration of President Alfonsin——

She did not follow it up.

The hon. Gentleman has had a very long time, so perhaps he will allow me to continue. We sent that message and then we entered into further exchanges, which are continuing. The House would not expect me to discuss the details of those exchanges, because at this stage in our relationship no exchanges could make progress if they were not confidential. We look forward to the time when we can begin direct talks with the Argentines, although we are grateful for the efforts and contributions made by the protecting powers on both sides.

However, we would be wrong and would forsake our responsibilities to the Falkland islanders, the British people and, indeed, the Argentine people if we entered another level of talks on a false prospectus. That perception is what caused the trouble last time, but I shall certainly not follow the hon. Member for Linlithgow down the path of exhuming the past. We must learn from that part of the past. If we led the Argentine Government into any idea other than that we shall stand by our commitment to the Falkland islanders, trouble would arrive very quickly.

I recognise the force of pressure in Argentina and the importance of its democratic regime surviving. I spent more than three years in Argentina, and I know that, as during the past half a century, it has been governed by an elected regime, for only a short time, democracy must take root. It is a long process, and six or seven months is a short time. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will recognise that pressure, as well as the pressure to which they have referred, arid the responsibility that we have for the continuing development of democracy in Argentina. We applaud and support that process. We hope that the economic problems that the Argentine Government have to tackle will be solved. Through the IMF, we have played our part in meeting the external debt problems of Latin American countries, including Argentina. That, too, is part of our contribution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) referred to the visit to the graves. It has been made clear that that must be arranged by the International Committee of the Red Cross. We cannot have propaganda exercises by people such as Mr. Destfanis or his ilk, but we stand ready to work with the families. We cannot emphasise that too clearly.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow tempts me greatly to follow him down the path of exhumation—I keep using his word—of the past. He knows that that is pointless and that his path is a dead end. The suggestions that he has made this morning have been refuted in detail. He has had detailed letters from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, my right hon. and learned Friend the Commonwealth Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. He has been given answers from the Dispatch Box on many occasions. I am glad that he was able to withdraw the accusations that he made against my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow). The record is clear. We had a job to do at the time of the Belgrano. Everyone understands what we had to do.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the "Panorama" programme. On that programme the Argentine Admiral Lombardo recognised that the Belgrano was not withdrawing but was working a pincer movement. He said that if he had been in charge of the British forces he would have taken the same action and attacked the Belgrano.

As to the British claim to the sovereignty of the Falklands, there is no doubt about that. These are complex issues stretching over many centuries, and I am aware that if the hon. Gentleman wishes he can find the odd official who has put a different interpretation on a particular aspect. However, no British government of any political complexion have ever been in any doubt about our claim to sovereignty, and that remains the same. We stand by our commitment to the Falkland islanders. We recognise that there are costs but we are prepared to bear them because the Falkland islanders are as important now as they were in April 1982.

However, while we continue to stand by the Falkland islanders, we look forward to re-establishing normal relationships with a democratic Argentina and to returning to the friendship which for so many generations we have enjoyed with that country.