Before I call the Foreign Secretary, may I tell the House that a large number of right hon. and hon. Members are anxious to take part in the debate and ask for brief contributions?

It is five months since we had our last full-scale debate on foreign affairs. Today, as the House knows, we are to cover defence issues as well as foreign affairs, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence hopes to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, at the close of the debate. The fact that both topics are being considered together reminds me of the suggestion made by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), that time should be more generously allocated to discussion of foreign affairs. That is an understandable point. I certainly will not be able to deal today with all the possible questions that might arise and my right hon. Friend's suggestion is still under consideration.

At our last debate I offered the House the opinion that the foreign policy climate had taken an undoubted turn for the better. Today one can go further than that. In the West, the European Community is pressing ahead with the revolution in the way its people live and do business. In the East, President Gorbachev is promoting a revolution of his own, the impact of which is being felt far beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. Together we are rediscovering the potential of some of the post-war institutions, perhaps most notably the United Nations.

In other words, we live in a time of great opportunity for constructive action by the United Kingdom in foreign affairs, of opportunity to shape the destiny of Europe as we approach 1992 and beyond, and of opportunity to shape the direction of what may be a new era in East-West relations.

If, then, we have reached a new beginning, it is one that Britain has helped to bring about. This Government have proved that they have the vision, capacity and will to build for the future. In foreign policy as in economic policy we have never hesitated to follow the course that we believe to be right. That has been true in our handling of arms control, the Community budget and Southern Africa, just as it was true when, as Chancellor, I confronted a large part of the economic establishment with the 1981 Budget and won my contest with the 364 long forgotten economists of that time.

So, too, with foreign policy. The lesson of the past decade is that Britain's influence in the world can grow and not forever retreat, as seemed inevitable with the Opposition. The Government's foreign policy rests upon a few simple and clear long-term objectives. We are determined to advance democracy, to defend freedom and to maintain and promote our prosperity. We shall defend our national interests and advance western values at the same time by being a reliable ally and trusted partner.

Our starting point is our place in Europe. The United Kingdom is an active and committed member of the European Community, which promotes democracy, enhances our competitive strength in world trade and plays a significant part in our prosperity.

Likewise, we are an active and committed member of NATO, the guarantor of our security. Through those organisations, we protect and promote our interests and determine our own destiny.

A moment ago, I said that we had helped to shape a new beginning in foreign affairs. In East-West relations—a topic on which the Foreign Affairs Committee is currently doing a great deal of work—we have consistently pursued a policy that combines strong defence with the search for dialogue, not dialogue for its own sake, but to get results.

After the years of confrontation following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it was, finally, the Soviet Union, under Mr. Gorbachev, which began to move towards our agenda. Notable successes have followed: the INF treaty; and the prospect of withdrawal from Afghanistan itself. Throughout that period, NATO has been fortified by the strength of our bilateral relationship with the United States. The Prime Minister and President Reagan have forged a bond which, as we saw last week in Washington, in its closeness and warmth, has been unprecedented since the war. The election of Vice-President Bush—we warmly congratulate him on his success—offers the prospect of welcome continuity in American policy.

Meanwhile, we look forward to President Gorbachev's third visit to the United Kingdom next month. Discussions with him are always lively, in marked contrast to those with his predecessors. On the occasions when I challenged Mr. Gromyko, for example, on any point of Soviet policy, the almost invariable consequence was the replaying of a well-worn record. I have a particular instance in mind—one of many. When I raised with him the all-too-familiar catalogue of human rights cases—many of them now solved—his only response was to tell me that I was "lowering the tone of the conversation". There was no serious debate whatever.

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm or deny whether, at the same meeting, representatives of the Soviet Government mentioned human rights abuses in this country and the number of people held in prison in Northern Ireland?

Absolutely not. The hon. Gentleman's question reveals just how little he has understood the purport of what I am saying. On other occasions when I have raised the question of human rights with Mr. Gromyko, he declined to comment at all. On that occasion, his contribution was remarkably generous, when he offered that one sentence and said that we were lowering the tone of our conversation. That was the character of the dialogue at the time—no serious debate at all.

With President Gorbachev and my opposite number Mr. Shevardnadze, we have established a real dialogue on the issues. It is refreshing to be able to explore, and often to diminish, our differences frankly and openly. Mr. Gorbachev has launched an historic process of political and economic reform in his country. His thinking has become more radical as he has come to realise the full extent of the overhaul that is needed. We welcome what Mr. Gorbachev is trying to do. If he succeeds, it will be an event of far-reaching importance for the Soviet Union and for the wider world. Surely we cannot be certain that he will succeed. His own country—from Tbilisi to Tallinn—is in ferment. The Soviet Union is not going to end up as a Western-style democracy. It is hard for Mr. Gorbachev to achieve democratic goals when the means at his disposal are essentially non-democratic. He wants to make the existing one-party system more efficient, not dismantle it.

We also have to face up to the fact that the Soviet Union will remain a military superpower. Soviet military might is a stark reality. The Soviet Union still spends at least 15 per cent. of its GNP on defence. Why does the Soviet Union need more than 5 million active members in its armed forces—as many as the entire population of Denmark? Why do the Russians still build twice as many tanks as NATO every year? What is it all for?

The Soviet Union claims that its force levels and deployments in Europe are purely defensive. Yet we see Warsaw pact forces superior in numbers and geared for offensive operations. The answer to that paradox lies in the facts—cold, simple facts. Without agreed facts, there can be no starting point for negotiations, no reliable verification, and no arms control agreements. We need the facts out in the open—facts that underpin our case and justify NATO's entire approach to arms control.

Surely the right hon. and learned Gentleman must know the history of the whole business. He must understand that, after the revolution in 1917, the Soviet Union was invaded by countries from the West, including our own. He must also be aware that, eventually, despite the agreement with Hitler for a short period, the Germans marched in against the Russians, and 20 million people were killed. In such circumstances, would not the right hon. and learned Gentleman be concerned about the future?

The hon. Gentleman made a point that I have made on many occasions, and it is important to concede it. But the two conflicts to which he referred—bloody and dreadful as were their consequences for the people of the Soviet Union—occurred decades ago. The points that he made show why we should be concerned about historial recollection in the Soviet Union. They do not show why, today, the Soviet Union, under its new dispensation, is still manufacturing twice as many tanks as the whole of NATO manufactures. They do not show why, today, the Soviet Union is still launching one new submarine every 37 days. They are the facts that we need to address in today's debate.

That is why I am glad to announce today that, as a result of a British initiative, the NATO allies are publishing—in this document—a new in-depth assessment of the balance of conventional forces in Europe. It is the most exhaustive analysis of the available data ever undertaken. The allies have concealed no detail of their own forces, and spared no efforts accurately to estimate the Warsaw pact forces.

The Warsaw pact may challenge our figures. My message to them—my message to President Gorbachev—is this: "Follow our example. Put your cards on the table. Face up."

Military glasnost is a prerequisite for successful arms control. The figures published today show that, despite the improved atmosphere of East-West relations, the balance has not improved in recent years. There is still an imbalance of three to one in the Warsaw pact's favour in tanks and artillery, and two to one in combat aircraft. The Soviet Union alone—I emphasise that—has more tanks and artillery in Europe than the whole of the rest of the Warsaw pact and NATO combined.

Faced with this huge conventional superiority, NATO cannot afford to abandon the policy of nuclear deterrence that has kept the peace for 40 years.

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell us, before its publication, whether the document will go beyond the kind of narrow bean counting that he has just been indulging in and whether it will involve the publication of net assessments of threat which, apparently, are available to the allies and to the Alliance, or will we get another version of Soviet military power in time for the Christmas fiction lists?

The hon. Gentleman's observations offer a tragically revealing insight into Opposition Members' approach to these matters. To describe the lethal comparison of Soviet military power with the rest of the military alliance as bean counting is to reveal the paucity of the hon. Gentleman's imagination and insight in the most catastrophic way.

The Labour party, as the hon. Gentleman's intervention and last month's Labour conference have confirmed, remains firmly shackled to unilateralism. Opposition Members fundamentally misunderstand or wilfully ignore the part that deterrence plays in our defence. Mr. Gorbachev, for all his talk of a nuclear-free world, is happy to leave unilateralism to somebody else. The Socialist Government of France would not dream of taking lessons from Labour. No nuclear power has ever given up its deterrent, nor would anybody follow us if we were to do so. That lesson has still not penetrated Opposition Members' minds.

It is vital that the West remains united in its approach to arms control. The Soviet Union can simply impose unanimity in defence matters on its Warsaw pact allies and on its own public opinion. In NATO, we have to build consensus. We have done so successfully in the past—for instance, over the difficult question of INF deployment. We must continue to do so when we face other difficult decisions—for instance, over nuclear modernisation.

Nine of the European members of NATO, now including Spain and Portugal, are members of the Western European Union. We believe that a stronger and more active WEU will strengthen NATO as well. We see a role for the WEU in the protection of out-of-area European security interests also. For example, we have led the WEU in co-ordinating common European naval patrols in the Gulf. The whole House will agree that our own Armilla patrol—still there—deserves our special thanks.

First, will the Secretary of State explain why the Prime Minister publicly opposed the entry of Spain into the WEU? Did he personally persuade her to change her mind? Secondly, if the Secretary of State regards the WEU as a possible pillar for Europe in NATO, does he accept that France, Germany and Belgium already disagree with Britain on the modernisation of tactical nuclear weapons in Germany?

The right hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to make his own speech on that topic.

Will the Secretary of State answer the question?

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to conclude my generous remarks about him. His insight on this question is uncharacteristically at fault. I cannot put it more gently than that, and I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will agree with me.

Will the Secretary of State answer the question?

I am delighted to see the right hon. Gentleman sitting like a bird perched on the Back Benches. I am sure that he agrees that vigilance and a strong defence remain crucial to the future of Western security.

We want further progress in arms control as well. Here, too, NATO has set the agenda of 50 per cent. cuts in United States and Soviet strategic nuclear arsenals, a global ban on chemical weapons and the elimination of conventional imbalances in Europe.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister referred to the prospects for the START negotiations in her speech on Tuesday. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence replies to the debate, he will emphasise the particular importance that we place on a chemical weapons ban with effective verification.

I shall now deal briefly with conventional arms control. I spent polling day in June 1987 at Reykjavik, and while I was there we were able to hammer out an agreed NATO position and an agreement that there should be talks on conventional stability. [Interruption.] I returned in time for the count and the result was never in doubt. It was agreed that talks on conventional stability—CST—and separate talks on confidence-building measures should both take place within the framework of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe.

We also agreed that the conventional stability talks should be confined to the 23 members of the Eastern and Western alliances, who would retain autonomy over the subject matter and procedure of those talks. We must stand by that agreement. NATO's overall objective for the talks is a stable and verifiable balance of conventional forces at lower levels.

At the Moscow peace forum in 1987, Mr. Gorbachev said that the right way to correct imbalances was for the side with the larger forces to make the reductions. Who can possibly disagree with that? The question now is whether the Soviet Union is ready to put those words into effect. We shall be putting that question squarely to the Warsaw pact at the Vienna CST meeting, and to Mr. Gorbachev when he visits London next month.

The Vienna meeting is not, however, just about military security. It is also about the kind of security that a citizen feels in a country where his human rights are respected. We want an agreement that strengthens respect for human rights.

When the Soviet Union first proposed some two years ago that a CSCE conference on human rights should be held in Moscow of all places, the reaction of Western delegations was one of sheer disbelief. But, in the time since that idea first surfaced, the Soviet human rights record has improved. It is now possible to begin to take the Soviet proposal seriously—so seriously, in fact, that we want to be sure that the proposed conference will genuinely advance the cause of human rights in the Soviet Union.

However, we are not prepared to take part in a propaganda showcase. If the Soviet Union wants the conference to take place it must provide clear evidence that it intends the improvement in its human rights record to be permanent, that it accepts that human rights must be respected as of right and that it will ensure open conditions for the holding of the conference itself. Not to set and insist on strict conditions of that kind would be to deny all the effort we have made over the years on behalf of those in the Soviet Union—and elsewhere—who are seeking their basic freedom.

May I confirm, having recently been in Moscow, that my right hon. Friend's words will be welcomed by many of those whom we met there, who are most concerned that the West may agree too easily to a conference on human rights and who have considerable support for the Government's line?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks, which underline the importance of the point I have made.

We see no inconsistency between firm Western positions on security and human rights issues and our overall desire for better relations with the Soviet Union. The facts show that Western firmness has helped rather than hindered dialogue by establishing a clear framework within which both sides can work.

Our active engagement with the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe in recent years has been graphically illustrated by the highly successful visit to Poland of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. It is the result, not of a cold war mentality, but of clear and consistent policies, plainly spelt out in my own earlier visits to every East European capital. The Governments of the Soviet Union and of Eastern Europe know that we are a Government with whom they can do business.

It is fascinating to study the current processes of change in the East. It is easy to see where their economies have gone wrong and to prescribe a greater role for market mechanisms and individual enterprise, but it is much harder for them to take the tough economic decisions that are necessary without the political framework of elections and free speech. It is there that the East is still groping for the solution.

We are under no illusions. We cannot directly influence these developments, but we believe that our efforts to encourage cultural, political commercial and personal links will, in the long term, exert an influence and, by example, help the East to evolve in our direction.

I sometimes find myself wondering whether it will ever be possible for the Labour party to learn what the Communist world is fast acknowledging—that the free market works. There is another crucial difference. Unlike the Labour party here, in the Soviet Union, it is those who oppose new thinking who are being shed from the Politburo—what a contrast to the Labour party.

There is another contrast between the economic stagnation of Eastern Europe and the dynamism of the West. Through our membership of the European Community, we are helping to transform Europe's future. Today's European agenda has, in large measure, been set by Britain. The concept of the single market owes a great deal to our way of thinking and will revolutionise the way in which Europe does business. We have worked energetically with our partners to put in place more than 100 of the 300 measures for the single market envisaged in the 1985 White Paper.

We can work towards the completion of the single market because we have cleared many of the old problems from our agenda. Agricultural spending is now finally being brought under control, stocks are being reduced—sometimes dramatically—finances have been put in order and the structural funds have been reformed.

The Europe that Britain wants to see will be a Europe not just of growing prosperity but of growing political significance in world affairs and a force for stability, democracy and economic freedom. It will be a Europe open for business and open to the world, and both are important.

Does the Secretary of State recall that when Mr. Delors made his famous forecast about 80 per cent. of our legislation stemming from Europe in 10 years' time, there was an immediate reaction from the Government and the media? Can he explain why, when I revealed in the House two weeks ago that the current rate was already 80 per cent., there was complete silence? The Government had to accept the unanimity of article 236 of the treaty of Rome in putting through the Single European Act. Will the Secretary of State undertake to accept full responsibility for any legal consequences which flow from that Act, particularly as it was put through the House on a guillotine and a three-line Whip?

I think that the House is more than glad to accept responsibility for that legislation, as it has done for the original legislation on accession to the European Community. The House had a full opportunity to debate the legislation, as the hon. Gentleman well knows.

No—it was guillotined.

The House had a lengthy and full opportunity to consider the legislation.

It was guillotined.

Nevertheless, the House had a full and lengthy opportunity to consider the legislation, and the House endorsed it with a substantial majority. We are now working within the framework endorsed by the House. That includes the proposition that I have just set out, of a Europe that is open for business and a Europe, as the hon. Gentleman often emphasises, that is open to the world, because we want other countries to make their markets as open as we are determined that the European market shall be after 1992. The Community has already scored successes with the United States over the recent trade legislation and with Japan over the importation of Scotch whisky.

We want to build on those successes at the forthcoming mid-term meeting of GATT in Montreal. With our partners, we shall be seeking agreements of substance and of principle, not just empty declarations. In particular, in the GATT forum, we must register gains in the key area of agriculture. The Community has cut agricultural support and protection. We must do more, but our GATT partners must make similar efforts so that, between us, we can bring agriculture back closer to market realities.

From our place in Europe, Britain derives additional authority for the influence we bring to bear in the wider world. The Commonwealth remains a significant focus of our political, aid and trade relationship with more than 40 developing countries. In the United Nations, we have led the search for solutions to regional conflicts through the Security Council and, in particular, through renewed co-operation between the five permanent members of the Council.

We have, for example, secured the resumption, after an interval of many years, of meetings between the five Foreign Ministers at the time of the General Assembly. Much of the ground for these important meetings was prepared by Britain's ambassador in New York, Sir Crispin Tickell, who has led the co-operation between the five permanent representatives.

As I sat down in New York with my four colleagues and the Secretary-General this September for the second such meeting we were all, I think, conscious of the historic importance of the institution that we were helping to recreate. The founding fathers of the United Nations had intended it to be built upon co-operation between the five permanent members, but, almost from the outset, that role was never fulfilled. Now, after more than 40 arid years, there is a clear sense that we really are moving towards genuine co-operation. A combination of changed superpower relations, and a determinations to use the Security Council to solve real problems, offer hope of effective action on regional issues which threaten peace. The House needs no reminding that, as a permanent member of the Security Council, under this Government, Britain is playing her full part in those important developments.

The first fruit of such efforts has been a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq war, a year after the acceptance of resolution 598, which resulted from a British initiative. We support the efforts of the Secretary-General to negotiate the implementation in full of resolution 598. The House knows that we have recently agreed to restore full diplomatic representation with Iran. We did not take that step lightly, but we see it as a common-sense move as Iran emerges from a senseless war, apparently ready to rejoin the international community. Now is the right time to improve our channels of communication with a major power in the region.

The Foreign Secretary earlier mentioned the Armilla patrol. In view of what he has now said, is the continued presence of the Armilla patrol being kept under review? Is there any end to that patrol, in view of the cost to the British taxpayer and of the number of foreign vessels that have been flagged to take advantage of the British presence?

The matter is kept under review, as it has been throughout. I shall leave my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence to deal with the specific points raised by the hon. Gentleman.

What is the Government's attitude to, and what they have done about, the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds? This is a vital question to which we ought to know the answer.

The House is right to emphasise this point, and we have laid great emphasis on it ourselves. We have pressed for action in the Security Council. I raised the matter in my speech to the General Assembly. We have noted the response by the Iraqi Government that they are seeking to comply with international obligations, but we believe that the matter needs to be kept continuously on the international agenda. Therefore, we are supporting the important conference being convened in Paris in January on the proposal of the Presidents of United States and France about the 1925 Geneva convention on chemical weapons. The hon. Gentleman can remain assured that chemical weapons, and the particular example that he cites, remain a source of continuous preoccupation to Her Majesty's Government. It is a ghastly feature of today's world scene that those dreadful weapons should have re-emerged into active use anywhere on the face of the globe. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will have more to say about it later on.

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

I cannot give way. I am now dealing with other aspects of this question.

The House will want to know, but will need no reassurance, that we have made no deals over our hostages in the Lebanon or the two British subjects imprisoned without trial in Iran. We have long been urging the Iranian authorities to release Mr. Nicola and Mr. Cooper and to do all in their power to help secure the release of our hostages. I raised these issues personally with Iranian Foreign Minister, Mr. Velayati, when I met him in New York in September. Prospects for the further development of our relations must certainly be affected by the Iranian approach to these questions.

The Gulf ceasefire has shown what a sustained international endeavour can achieve. A similar international effort is urgently needed to tackle the Palestine problem. Mr. Bush assured my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in Washington last week that he would make this one of his priorities. We look forward to discussing it also with Mr. Gorbachev next month.

Our position is clear and consistent. We believe that the only answer is a negotiated settlement based on the principles of security for all states and justice for all peoples in the region, including Palestinian self-determination. An international conference still offers the best framework for negotiations.

The recent meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers gives some grounds for hope. The apparent willingness of the PNC to accept an international conference on the basis of Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 is a positive move, but ambiguities remain. The PNC has not moved as far as it will have to on renunciation of violence and explicit acceptance of Israel's right to exist. The declaration of a Palestinian state does not help to carry the matter forward. While recognising the movement that the Palestinians have made, we look to them to reinforce their more promising words with deeds.

It is high time for Israel, whose past policies have provoked the continuing Palestinian uprising, to move as well. Blanket rejection of Palestinian overtures is no answer. Each side must be prepared to make the other an offer it cannot refuse. Britain has been working consistently for a negotiated settlement, in co-operation with our EC partners. Our policy was reflected in the statement by Community Foreign Ministers earlier this week. The formation of a new Israeli Government offers a new opportunity. We will be ready to work with it to help Israel and her neighbours to obtain peace and security. I emphasise that the PNC decisions offer a good basis on which to build.

In another long-standing area of conflict, patient diplomacy has finally brought results. We warmly welcome the approval by the Cuban, Angolan and South African Governments of the Geneva agreement on a timetable for Cuban troop withdrawal. Namibian independence on the basis of UN Security Council resolution 435 is nearer now than at any time in the past 10 years. Patient, persistent and imaginative American diplomacy, ably managed by Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker, has brought results, and he deserves our thanks. We have given full support to the negotiations. The Soviet Union also played a constructive role during the talks. We very much welcome this positive example of United States-Soviet co-operation which could serve as a precedent for the resolution of other major regional problems.

We have confirmed our willingness to contribute to the United Nations transitional assistance group. As a permanent member of the Security Council, we shall have a special role in working for early implementation of resolution 435. With our Community and Commonwealth partners, we shall be ready to offer economic and other assistance to an independent Namibia. The main credit for the progress achieved must go to those who over the years have supported the unjustly derided policy of staying engaged. I see here an eloquent justification of our own policy towards South Africa. The lesson is that engagement achieves much more than walking away from a problem.

I am confident, too, that there is increasing understanding in black African countries of our position. They know that we are worrying for an end to apartheid, which is a violation of basic human rights and human dignity. They know that we are working for the unconditional—I emphasise "unconditional"—release of Nelson Mandela, whose case my right hon. Friend the Minister of State raised again during her visit to South Africa last week. They know of our concern for other prisoners in South Africa, including the Sharpeville Six. We had repeatedly urged the South African authorities to reprieve them. Now they have done so, and we welcome it.

Those countries know, too, we are helping black Africans within South Africa and that we are working to strengthen the prosperity and stability of neighbouring countries—for example, through the civil assistance and military training that we supply to Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Our voice is a positive one aimed at alleviating, not exacerbating, a difficult situation. That is why we reject punitive sanctions, which would impoverish and abandon the very people whom we are seeking to help.

Today this country is in the vanguard of an international community that is on the move. Our foreign policy is coherent and effective. In East-West relations we have put the wasted years behind us. Historic opportunities are opening up. While safeguarding our own security, we are working for arms control and greater freedom in the East. In NATO we are a robust ally and in Europe we are a committed partner advocating bold steps to strengthen the Community. On the global stage and in the United Nations we are an informed and influential participant.

Wherever one looks, the story is the same. One sees Britain acting as a force for freedom, a dynamo of democracy, and a champion of common sense. That is the philosophy and the effect of our foreign policy today; and that is why I commend it to the House.

In the five months since the House last debated foreign affairs it cannot be said that the world situation has improved overall. It is true that there have been some encouraging developments. As the Foreign Secretary has said, Iran has at last accepted United Nations Security Council resolution 598, and there is a good possibility that the murderous Iran-Iraq war will come to an end after so many years of needless slaughter. I join the Foreign Secretary in paying tribute to the Armilla patrol and to the men in our minesweepers in the Gulf. I was most impressed by their dedication and morale when I visited them last year.

The election last week in Pakistan seems to have signalled a return to democracy in that country. We trust that a Government will shortly be formed which will reflect the will of the Pakistani people as expressed at the polls. Elsewhere, however, there are too few promising signs.

The Foreign Secretary spoke about human rights. All over the world we see invasions of and attacks on human rights. I was interested to note the change of tone by the Government on the possibility of participating in the human rights conference proposed by the Soviet Government in Moscow. Of course, we are well aware of the problems about human rights in the Soviet bloc and in other countries and we are anxious about them. Sometimes we get a response that is difficult to answer.

I was in Prague this week, and in talks at the Foreign Ministry and with the secretary of the Communist party there I raised the question of human rights in Czechoslovakia and specifically discussed the response with tear gas and water cannon to the demonstration in Wenceslas square only a few days ago. I made very clear the feelings of the Labour party on matters like that. In that discussion I found it difficult to justify the legislation in this country which criminalises demonstrations and marches and which takes away the rights of defendants. I also found it difficult to justify the censorship of television and radio and the pursuit of newspapers through the courts for which the Government have now become notorious.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Not at the outset of my speech.

It is sad that little further progress has been made in central America. We trust that president-elect Bush will end any further attempt to fund the Contra terrorists and will bend his efforts towards helping the peace initiative of President Arias of Costa Rica. Our Government continue to play a negative role. I understand that the Under-Secretary of State is shortly to visit central America but that he is not to include Nicaragua in his itinerary. Is that correct, and, if so, why? With the exception of Costa Rica any central American country that he visits will be less democratic and more authoritarian than Nicaragua. Is he to bestow his benison on the death squads of E1 Salvador but not on those working for better health and higher standards of literacy in Nicaragua?

The Government's initial response to the hurricane disaster in Nicaragua was disgraceful and even now ought to be improved upon. It is about time that the Government pursued a positive policy towards the central American peace process and to the one country which, despite adverse developments, has taken more positive steps than any other to implement that peace process. Of course, we welcome the results of the plebiscite in Chile, but here again the vote of the people does not seem to have resulted in genuine respect for that verdict by the bloodstained President Pinochet. Will the Government put much-needed pressure on Chile to return to democracy; and, if not, why not?

The situation in South Africa remains dim and depressing. We are happy that unprecedented international pressure has won the reprieve of the Sharpeville six, although those innocent people still face long prison sentences, and that Paul Setlaba has gained a stay of execution. These are simply welcome candles in appalling gloom. Five more people were hanged yesterday; and Nelson Mandela, at the age of 70, has been in captivity for 26 years. Peaceful organisations working for change continue to be banned. The whole vile apparatus of apartheid remains in place setting the stage for ultimate bloodshed on a horrifying scale unless peaceful change can be achieved.

In the middle east hopes for peace negotiations have, for the time being, been extinguished by the folly and shortsightedness of the Israeli electorate. Faced with the deepest crisis in the history of the Israeli state and with the Intifada approaching its annivarsary and showing no sign of fading away and still less sign of being suppressed, however brutal the methods used against it, Israel is in danger of throwing away the greatest chance that it has ever had for a negotiated peace. Her Arab neighbours have shown their readiness for a settlement that will provide for Israeli security. That readiness has been confirmed by latest discussions with senior members of the Syrian Government in Damascus and with President Mubarak in London, as well as by all the further contacts that I have continued to have with other Arab Governments. It has also been confirmed by the remarkable declaration made this month by the Palestine National Council meeting in Algiers.

If the PNC has not yet gone all the way to making the statements demanded by Israeli politicians before they are willing to talk to the PLO—and I hope that they will—it has certainly gone so far in denouncing terrorism and in accepting a two-state solution that it is now incumbent on Israel to respond in a positive manner. The problem for Israel is that, instead of being able to take initiatives, all it can do now is to respond or fail to respond to the initiatives of others.

The quarrelsome and divided Israeli electorate has turned away from the prospect of peace and, instead, created the prospect of a narrow, bigoted Israeli Government who would be expansionist abroad and, at home, would corrupt the dream of a Jewish homeland into a fundamentalist, Khomeinistic ghetto. The only hope for a sane and peaceful Israel now rests with the Labour party of Shimon Peres. I hope that the Israeli Labour party will ponder carefully before considering any coalition with Likud that would be based on a rejection of the peace process for which Shimon Peres fought so courageously up to and including the election campaign.

In the dialogue between the super-powers, which we greatly welcome, progress seems to have stalled since the Moscow summit. When I had discussions with Mr. Frank Carlucci, the United States Secretary of Defence, not long ago, he indicated to me that there were hopes of a START treaty by the end of the first half of 1989. I very much hope that those hopes will be fulfilled and that there will also be progress in the Vienna talks so that we can look forward to a breakthrough on conventional arms reductions. As the Soviet Union has publicly acknowledged asymmetry in conventional forces in favour of the Warsaw pact, such progress should be more likely.

Faced with such challenges, the British Government have scope for a major and constructive role. We may not be a super-power, nor any longer a major world power, but we are an important regional power which, alone among other significant regional powers, has unparalleleed influence through membership of the United Nations Security Council, the Commonwealth, the European Community, NATO and the economic summit. We are the only country in the world to be at the centre of all those intersecting circles, yet the influence available to us is mostly unused and, where used, mostly misused.

I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments of my right hon. Friend, but does he agree that he is underestimating the potential of Great Britain in this respect? Is it not true that we are also the cultural and constitutional centre of the English language and of many democratic institutions throughout the world, that we have an unparalleled advantage in our language and that we would have used our world service and educational institutions to further the aims of peace and concord in the world if the Government had not squandered the opportunities given by both?

I fully agree with my hon. Friend. Wherever I travel in the world and to whomever I speak, whether in eastern Europe, the Arab countries or all the other places that I visit, I find that the greatest source of objective, genuine information that is valued in those countries is the BBC's world service. The British Council is also greatly valued. I very much hope that the Government will give every support both to the BBC world service and to the British Council because of the great good that they do for the British reputation throughout the world.

I certainly do not blame the Foreign Office or the Foreign Secretary for this lamentable state of affairs. Neither the Foreign Secretary nor his Department has demonstrated any overall cohesive view nor a comprhensive and consistent approach to world affairs, yet the Foreign Office is a remarkable repository of expertise.

From my own experience, I regularly see how hard those in our overseas posts work, and so often with such excellent intentions. I should like to take this opportunity of thanking them and those in the Foreign Office here in London, together with the right hon. and learned Gentleman's private office, for all the trouble to which they go to assist with my overseas visits. I should also like to thank the Foreign Secretary and the Minister of State.

It is not the fault of our foreign service that Britain's influence in the world in practice is so much less than it could be, when it could be so substantial. It is the fault of the shadow Foreign Secretary. I do not here refer to myself, but to the shadow that looms over the Foreign Office from the building that faces it on the other side of Downing street—the shadow of the most interfering, meddlesome, negative and baneful Prime Minister with whom the Foreign Office has ever had to put up. If we read the memoirs of Lord Carrington, published only a few weeks ago, we see what hatred the Prime Minister has for the Foreign Office—it emerges from page after page of that lengthy book—and what damage she inflicts on the morale of the Foreign Office.

In almost 10 years the Government have only two achievements to their name in overseas affairs—the negotiations that led to the independence of Zimbabwe and the agreement with China on Hong Kong. They are both achievements entirely of the Foreign Office. Lord Carrington makes clear in his book that the Rhodesia settlement went completely against the instincts of the Prime Minister. She had to be talked into it. It is common knowledge that the remarkable achievement of the Foreign Office on Hong Kong was almost wrecked by the ignorance and arrogance of the Prime Minister.

The right hon. Lady goes marauding around the world, ever alert for the pop of a flashbulb. Her overseas travels are one long quest for the next photo opportunity. Tacit us said of the Romans, "Where they make a desert, they call it peace." The record in foreign affairs of the Prime Minister can be found not in the Stateman's Year Book, but in the Thatcher family photograph album. There is not a spot on earth that she has visited which is happier, better off or more peaceful as a result of her frenzied sojourn. Indeed, the record of havoc or broken hopes that she leaves behind is appalling.

When the Prime Minister visited Canada, she instructed the voluble Mr. Bernard Ingham to brief the press offensively and inaccurately against the Canadian Government. This month she went further and caused offence in Canada without even visiting the place. Her remarks in the United States led the leaders of both Opposition parties in Canada to complain that she was treating their country as though it were a colony.

The Prime Minister went to Turkey this year, proclaiming before she set out that she would bring back with her the contract for the new Bosphorus bridge. She declared,

"Building bridges is one purpose of my visit."

Click, click went the cameras, but Britain lost the contract for the second bridge to the Japanese, and there is no sign of a contract for the third bridge for Britain.

The Prime Minister went to Poland and lectured the Government there on what she called having

"a real dialogue with representatives of all sections of society, including Solidarity"

that from a Prime Minister who never has a dialogue with any section of society in this country, most especially not with her Cabinet.

The right hon. Gentleman may for a moment bask in what little he can bask in—namely, the amusement of his hon. Friends at these absurd observations—but he may like to acknowledge the fact that one of the principal tasks of the Foreign Secretary is to fend off the immense torrent of invitations for the Prime Minister to visit countries, from Poland to Canada. She is recognised throughout the world as a formidable statesman of world stature, whereas the Leader of the Opposition is not recognised even in the countries that he does visit.

That was lovely, but one of the real jobs of the Foreign Secretary, as I shall have cause to describe in a few moments, is fending off the damage that the Prime Minister does and doing his best to explain it away when it has been done.

Protected by General Jaruzelski's police, the Prime Minister went to Gdansk. She is safer in Gdansk than she is in Gorton. Poles who know little of her, will tolerate her, but my constituents would give her a different reception. However, she does not dare to visit and prate to them as she does to people who live too far away to know much about her. She visited workers who were trying to prevent a shipyard closure when she has been responsible for the closure of most shipyards in Britain. Indeed, she forced a censure vote in this House against the Labour Government's shipbuilding deal with Poland. I stood there and had to defend it.

As someone who worked a number of years as a consultant to the shipbuilding industry, I find it odd that anyone on either side of the House should say that the decline in shipbuilding throughout Europe is the responsibility of one person. Is the right hon. Gentleman unaware of the fact that shipbuilding throughout the world is shrinking and is in recession?

The chairman of British Shipbuilders, who was appointed by the Government, paid tribute to the Labour Government and to me for saving the shipbuilding industry by bringing it into public ownership. The Government have brought about a situation in which the merchant shipbuilding force has almost disappeared. The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) may be a consultant, but the workers in the shipyards—those who remain—know the truth, which is that the Government are the greatest enemy of shipbuilding. We could never have won the Falklands war without the dedicated work of British shipbuilding workers, especially on the Tyne.

The Prime Minister placed a wreath on a monument to strikers when she visited Gdansk. In Britain, the same strikers would have been penalised by her trade union legislation. She offered her sympathy to workers who are fighting for the recognition of trade union rights in Poland, when she is sacking and victimising Government employees in Britain for the specific "offence" of trade union membership.

On this subject, Mr. Jerzy Milewski, the director of the office abroad of Solidarity, said:

"Solidarity totally supports the call by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, to which it is affiliated, for the immediate reinstatement of the dismissed workers and the full restoration of trade union rights at GCHQ.

We appreciate the British Government's stand on trade union rights in Poland and their support for Solidarity. But the British Government's legitimate concern and welcome sympathy for our struggle could only gain greater authority if they applied the same standards to British workers."

He expressed full support for the British Trades Union Congress and its action, and said:

"They have been with us in the most difficult moments of our independent union's life and they can be sure of the support of Polish workers in their fight for freedom of association."

The Prime Minister told the House a few days ago that Solidarity is different from British trade unions and represents what she called

"the only expression of opposition to Communism and Socialism in Poland."—[Official Report, 8 November 1988; Vol. 140, c. 167.]

It is clear that the Prime Minister knows nothing about Solidarity. In his autobiography, "A Path of Hope," Lech Walesa makes it clear that he does not want Solidarity to be a political opposition in Poland and that he supports a Socialist Government for Poland. In response to the Prime Minister's statement that he expresses opposition to Socialism in Poland, Lech Walesa said:

"We're in the process of working out a Polish style of Socialism … For the great majority of people, socialism boils down to things we are accustomed to, which we pay no more attention to than the blood circulating in our veins: social benefits, hospitals, schools and so on—the basic essentials … all that is best in the economy and in the domain of social welfare is socialism".

That is what Lech Walesa says when he refers to the elements of social benefits which the Government are destroying in Britain and for which proper trade unionism stands.

Mr. Walesa, in his book, specifically states that the aim of Solidarity is to win the right to negotiate on pay and conditions and the right to partcipate in decision-making in the workplace. Those are the proper rights of a trade union anywhere, but rights which the Prime Minister detests and tramples on in Britain. The Prime Minister went to Gdansk to cash in on Mr. Welesa's popularity, without having the faintest understanding of or sympathy for the concepts for which he really stands.

The Prime Minister—[Interruption.] I invite hon. Members to read the book. The Prime Minister does not care about democracy or human rights. She cares instead about being photographed with popular people. The right hon. Lady does not even have to start out on her travels to cause trouble and offence. Last week, the talkative Mr. Bernard Ingham briefed Lobby correspondents about the Prime Minister's plans for a visit to Africa. In Africa, millions are starving and thousands are dying in bloodshed through avoidable wars. Mr. Ingham told journalists nothing about the Prime Minister's plans to try to remedy both kinds of tragedy. Instead, the main item in his briefing was that the Prime Minister would use the trip to pay off a score against the President of Zambia through an act of petty spite.

The Prime Minister does not have to contemplate foreign travel of her own to cause serious damage. The press is still full of reverberations about Mr. Ingham's briefing of journalists a week ago on the Prime Minister's wish to ban a visit by the Queen to the Soviet Union. It is natural for the Prime Minister, following her pseudo regal progress through Russia last year, to wish to conceal from the Soviet people and their Government that we in Britain have a genuine and extremely popular monarch and that the Prime Minister herself is only a jumped-up and impertinent pretender. The problem is that the Prime Minister's court is a good deal more presumptuous and arrogant than anyone connected with Buckingham palace could ever be. It is time that that gang of placemen were put thoroughly in their place.

There is no doubt that Mr. Ingham gave that briefing. Why did he give that briefing? With whose authority did he give that briefing? What is to be done about Mr. Ingham having given that briefing? I do not expect the Foreign Secretary to know the answers. As so often, the right hon. and learned Gentleman was left in the dark. When questioned about this murky affair in Brussels, this is the way in which he dolefully responded:

"I have not had an opportunity to study this question and I have not been in London in the last few days. I do not want to comment on this. If you want a comment, you had better ask them in London. You had better talk to London."

What a humiliation for the Foreign Secretary, who should be providing advice for the palace on such an issue. Instead, he is put in the shade by the people in 10 Downing street, who care so little for the office of Foreign Secretary.

Then there was the Prime Minister's visit to Bruges. The Foreign Secretary spoke a good deal about the Community, but for some reason which escapes me he did not refer to the Prime Minister's speech to the college of Europe on 20 September. I wish to put some detailed question to the right hon. and learned Gentleman about the speech, and I shall readily give way to allow him to answer each one. In her speech, the Prime Minister said that she is against

"decisions … taken by an appointed bureaucracy."

Does the Foreign Secretary agree with that? If so, how does he reconcile it with the provision in the Single European Act, which adds to EEC treaty article 145, on powers of the Commission, a provision to confer further implementing powers on the Commission? The Commission is, of course, the Community's appointed bureaucracy. The Single European Act is now embedded in United Kingdom law through the European Communities (Amdt) Act 1988, which the Foreign Secretary guillotined to allow it to pass through Parliament.

At Bruges, the Prime Minister said that she is opposed to a European superstate. Does the Foreign Secretary agree with that? If so, how does he reconcile it with the provision in the Single European Act, which is now United Kingdom law because of the European Communities (Amendment) Act, which commits participants, including the United Kingdom, to transform relations among the member states into a European union? Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree with the Prime Minister's insistence in Bruges on the need to preserve individual members' parliamentary powers? If so, how does he reconcile that with the provisions in the Single European Act to draw up by the end of 1992 an inventory of relevant national laws not yet harmonised and submit appropriate proposals?

Does the Foreign Secretary agree with the Prime Minister that

"it is a matter of plain common sense that we cannot totally abolish frontier controls"?

If so, how does he reconcile that with the provision in the Single European Act for the Community, by the end of 1992, to comprise an area without internal frontiers?

Does the Foreign Secretary agree with the Prime Minister's opposition to what she called, in her Bruges speech, "power centralised in Brussels"? If so, how does he reconcile that with the provisions in the Single European Act that introduce majority voting, partly or wholly, into six articles of the EEC treaty at present requiring unanimity for action, and which provide for majority voting in five of the new supplementary articles?

How does the Foreign Secretary reconcile that with the commitment to ensure balanced progress by qualified majority and with the commitment to replace unanimity in the EEC treaty article 59(2)? As Mark Antony said in "Julius Caesar",

"I pause for a reply."

The Foreign Secretary is not even listening.

Come on, get up and answer.

The Foreign Secretary's lack of response is interesting.

Itemised, one by one, every one of the major issues to which the Prime Minister says she is opposed is embedded in British law. They were opposed by the Opposition, but they were forced upon this country by the use of the guillotine. Yet the Foreign Secretary has nothing to say and can only accept the yawning gap between the words of the Prime Minister and the truth of the matter.

We have the right to state our reservations and objections to these matters. We fought the legislation through the House, and it was guillotined because we did so. How does the Prime Minister purport to oppose for Britain what she ordered her parliamentary majority to impose on Britain? It is no wonder that the West German newspaper Die Zeit pronounced the Prime Minister as hypocritical. Nowhere else has that hypocritical attitude been more plainly manifest than in the areas of defence and disarmament. On Tuesday, the Prime Minister boasted that

"the defence budget will grow by nearly £1 billion a year over the next three years."—[Official Report, 22 November 1988; Vo1. 142, c. 27.]

That is the measure of the Government's determination to ensure that our forces have the most modern and up-to-date equipment, both nuclear and conventional. Yet that cash increase masks a reduction in defence expenditure in real terms. It is certain that there will be a reduction in real terms in 1989–90. In 1990–91 and 1991–92, there will be further reductions unless inflation falls to 3·5 and then to 3 per cent. Yet inflation now stands at 6·4 per cent.

That brings me to another question for the Foreign Secretary. Perhaps he will answer this one because he has pointed out that, as well as holding his current post, he was once Chancellor of the Exchequer. During the Prime Minister's manic visit to Australia, she encountered a very rare Antipodean species. I refer not to a wallaby or a koala, but to a television interviewer who did not treat her with sycophantic self-abasement. It was Mr. Kerry O'Brien who had the cheek to pull up the Prime Minister when, letting her true sympathy for apartheid show through, she talked about the "small amount of poverty" in South Africa.

Discussing inflation with Mr. O'Brien, the Prime Minister said that inflation in Britain, then at 4·6 per cent., was

"not as low as I would wish".

She then went on to declare:

"I should be very surprised if it got up to about seven."

Can the former Chancellor confirm that statement by the Prime Minister and assure the House that inflation in Britain will definitely not rise to 7 per cent.? After all, in Australia the Prime Minister said that that would not happen.

Even if the Foreign Secretary can give us that assurance—although, once again, he is failing to respond to a very simple question—it is clear that, even on the Prime Minister's own boast, spending on defence in Britain will fall in real terms over the next three years and that, because of the pointless, wasteful and irrelevant expenditure on Trident, expenditure on conventional defence—which should be our real contribution to NATO—will fall substantially.

It therefore makes especial sense for Britain to play an active and constructive role in conventional disarmament talks. We are simply not playing such a part, and we have actually been obstructing those talks. Once again, the responsibility lies with the Prime Minister. When I met the United States Defence Secretary, Mr. Carlucci, for talks in Washington three months ago, we discussed these issues. I asked him why the West had not accepted the proposals by Mr. Yazov of the Soviet Union for an exchange of data, and Mr. Carlucci replied:

"You don't want to get me in trouble with Mrs. Thatcher, do you?"

I took down those words on his own Defence Department pad in his office. Mr. Carlucci said that he was ready to exchange published data. What the Foreign Secretary has announced today, with such a flourish, is not an exchange of data, but merely unilateral assessment.

The Prime Minister, obstructive on conventional disarmament, is positively destructive on nuclear disarmament. Wholly misunderstanding the role of battlefield nuclear weapons, she demands modernisation as a means of deterrence. By that stance, she shows that her real aim is to nullify the INF treaty, which is removing from Britain the cruise missiles to which she is so attached.

The Foreign Secretary said today that the West should remain united on arms control, but the West is not united on that issue. The Prime Minister is at serious odds with West Germany, as emerged clearly during my visit to Bonn a few weeks ago when I had discussions with Herr Genscher, the Foreign Minister, and Herr Scholz, the Defence Minister. There is also, of course, the opposition of the Belgians to modernisation. Chancellor Kohl of West Germany made it clear that he is opposed to any modernisation that would be a way around INF—[Interruption.] Oh, yes. Herr Genscher and Herr Scholz made it clear to me—I have published this and it has been accepted by the West German Government—that they do not regard modernisation as justified before it is necessary and that they regard battlefield nuclear weapons as a provocation to war rather than a protection against it. That is what those members of the Federal Government said to me, together with Herr Schäuble, who is the head of the Federal Chancellery. They do not regard any of those weapons as a deterrent.

Opposed to conventional disarmament, obstructive on NATO land-based nuclear arms, the Prime Minister stands clutching her so-called independent nuclear deterrent, the Trident missile, which she leases from the United States at massive cost and which can be serviced only by six day's journey across the Atlantic to King's Bay, Georgia, where every tiny spare part is kept. While she struts about the world stage like a Walter Mitty with megalomania, the poor old Foreign Secretary—now repudiated as her potential successor—is left to pick up the pieces.

The Prime Minister dismissed the notion of a common European currency. The Foreign Secretary, in his speech to the Kangaroo Group in Paris earlier this month, called for

"further practical concrete steps to greater currency stability"

in the context of an attack on the wastefulness of 12 different Community currencies. The Prime Minister attacks every major consequence of 1992. The Foreign Secretary pleads that we should regard 1992 as good news. The Prime Minister attacks the abolition of frontiers. The Foreign Secretary rejoices over what he calls "a barrier-free Europe", giving

"new dynamism to the Community."

Going around trying to smooth out the offence that the Prime Minister causes wherever she goes and to sort out the confusion that she creates, our Foreign Secretary—who is in charge of one of the best Foreign Offices and Diplomatic Services in the world—has been reduced by the Prime Minister to the role of the man who comes along with the shovel at the end of the Lord Mayor's procession.

There are major opportunities for Britain and we could play a worthwhile and constructive role. Given the chance, the Foreign Secretary would do his best to play that role. Let him, at long last, stand up to the Prime Minister and assert his authority as a senior Secretary of State. If he does that, he will have the support of the Opposition.

I suppose that we all agree that it is the duty of an Opposition to oppose, but the bitterness and waspishness of the attack of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) on the Prime Minister can be explained only by his sense of frustration at eight years in opposition.

The map of the world is undergoing great changes. We do not have many debates on foreign affairs, but this is an opportunity for constructive thinking. I hope that we shall have a more generous and constructive expression of views from the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), if he succeeds in catching your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I shall, however, take up the remarks about Europe made by the right hon. Member for Gorton and add to the debate that has arisen since the speech of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in Bruges. Nobody could doubt the commitment of the Government and of my right hon. Friend to Europe and European union. Our economy, security and role in the world depend on it. That is clear, and even the Labour party is coming round to recognising that our destiny lies in European union.

The debate has been over simplified in the press as one between inter-Government union and federation. There has never been any serious question of a European federation in the sense that the United States is federal. Our own experience points to that. At the beginning of the century, the British Government tried to create a federation of the self-governing parts of the British empire. They proposed an imperial Government, a customs union and an imperial navy. The people of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the two smaller South African colonies were most loyal and affectionate. But they turned down the proposal because, after 50 years of self-government they had acquired a sense of nationhood that forbade them accepting the federal proposal. Hon. Members cannot tell me that ancient and famous countries such as Britain, France, Spain and Germany will be corralled into an imitation of the constitution drawn up by Alexander Hamilton for the almost uninhabited United States where there were still almost as many Red Indian tribes and buffaloes as there were European settlers.

But there is a constitutional issue at stake—the relationship between Ministers and the European Commission. It is not a crisis but a European version of "Yes, Minister". There has always been a certain tension, as any of us who have held office will know, between a Minister and his officials. In private the officials often regard themselves as the real Government and regard the Ministers as the tribunes and public relations officers who are supposed to put across the Departments' views. There is a problem here. The real Government, in so far as we have an embryo Government of Europe, are the Council of Ministers.

As the right hon. Member for Gorton has said, the Commission is the bureaucracy. It is important for the Council of Ministers to keep the Commission in its place. I do not mean that Mr. Delors is a super "Sir Humphrey", but it is important that the Ministers should make their supremacy clear. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's speech may have been abrasive, but it delighted most of her ministerial colleagues on the Continent—at any rate, that is the impression that I have formed from talks with some of them.

Having expressed strong support for my right hon. Friends general view that the Council of Ministers' supremacy must prevail, I have one or two reservations about the speech she made in Bruges and to which the right hon. Member for Gorton has drawn attention. Is it really necessary to say that we must maintain border and customs control after 1992? Before 1914, there were virtually no border controls in Europe and one could travel almost anywhere in Europe, except in Turkey and Tsarist Russia, without a passport. Since we were a free trade country, we hardly bothered with Customs. We look a bit silly now talking about border controls against terrorism and drugs when the one open border in the United Kingdom is the border with the Irish Republic where many sympathisers of the IRA live. We should reconsider that matter.

The single currency is a long way away, but here again we should reflect on the past. For a long time we had a single currency in Europe in the form of gold. One could travel anywhere; and gold coins, the sovereign, the napoleon and the German gold mark were interchangeable.

In 1931 we had another limited experience of a single currency when we went off gold and created the sterling area. Although not all of the currencies in the sterling area had the same parities, there was virtually a single currency between them; and that currency, which became a reserve currency, was accepted, second only to the dollar, by the world until the 1960s.

I am not sure that we need a central bank to have a single currency. There was not a central bank for gold and, although the Bank of England acted as a reserve bank for the sterling area, it was not the only issuing house and it did not own the reserves which other sterling area countries pooled there.

Let me say something in parentheses. Hardly a month goes by without one of my right hon. Friends recommending the privatisation of something now in Government ownership. There is always some new privatisation plan, whether it is for water or electricity, or whatever, but I have never heard anyone suggest the privatisation of the Bank of England. Yet the German Bundesbank and the federal reserve bank of the United States are virtually privatized—or are at least independent of Government. Would it make things easier for the Government to contemplate a reserve bank for Europe if the Bank of England were privatised?

We must remember that the emerging European constitution will inevitably be outward-looking because all of us, in different ways, have close links with countries outside the European Community. The old imperial powers—France, Britain, Spain and Portugal—have close links with other parts of the world—North America, Latin America and Africa. The Germans still have hopes of reunification. None of us wants to see a tight, little western Europe—it should be outward looking. Already countries not yet in the Community are thinking about applying for membership, the Austrians are interested and also even Finland.

As the Soviet empire in Europe loosens up, the Community may well become a magnet to which countries such as Hungary and the Danube valley countries may be attracted. They know that the Soviet Union is incapable of giving them the necessary economic support to redeem their poverty. It is not surprising if they look towards the Community as a source of investment and funds.

We have travelled a long way since the idea of a united Europe was first launched in 1946. We are attempting something which has never been attempted before. Many people have tried to unite Europe by force, but this is the first time that an attempt has been made to do it with the free consent and will of those involved. It is not an easy task. We have certain uniting traditions, such as the classical traditions of Greece and Rome and the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but we also face some formidable difficulties which are not easy to overcome.

(by private notice): To ask the Secretary of State for Health what action he proposes to take to end disruption in the Health Service following the breakdown of talks through ACAS.

That is in the hands of the trade unions, particularly the two unions that are attempting to organise industrial action. I regret that they made it clear in the talks at ACAS that they were unwilling to end industrial action and seeking to reopen the basis on which the regrading exercise was carried out. That exercise has been completed and the largest real pay rise for nurses and midwives in the history of the National Health Service will be in this month's pay cheques. The majority of nurses and midwives will receive all their back pay in December.

The overwhelming majority of nurses and midwives are working normally. Although there can be no question of reopening the basis of the new career structure, I shall discuss remaining issues with the Royal College of Nursing at its request on 5 December. I am not prepared to talk to NUPE and COHSE unless they call off their attempts to organise industrial action.

Is the Secretary of State aware that last night I, with other hon. Members, met all members of the nurses' staff side, including the unions and the royal colleges? Does he accept that, contrary to the statement that he has just made to the House, all members of the staff side made it plain that they had been willing to call off all industrial action if the management side had been willing to enter into discussions on the points in dispute? Why does he not admit that the talks broke down yesterday because the management side refused to enter into talks even if industrial action was called off, and made it clear that in doing so it was acting on ministerial instruction.

Does the Secretary of State accept that the representative of the RCN made it plain yesterday that the college went to ACAS only because the other unions were willing to call off industrial action, and described the management response as a kick in the teeth? Does he accept that all members of the staff side, including the royal colleges, informed us last night that it will now be difficult for each of them to restrain their members from industrial action? Is he really prepared to do nothing when what should have been an historic improvement in the nursing structure degenerates into a major crisis of morale in the wards and disruption in the hospitals?

Will the Secretary of State concede that the guidelines on supervision and responsibility were not part of the April agreement and have never been negotiated? If he is so confident that he is right in this guideline, why has he refused the invitation of all unions, including the royal colleges, to submit that to binding arbitration? Why is he so afraid to take a second opinion on his unilateral interpretation?

Will the Secretary of State confirm the extraordinary letter that he sent me yesterday in which he admitted that two letters from the general secretary of COHSE had not been replied to by him due to "a clerical oversight"? How does he expect the nurses in our wards to take seriously his lectures on the need for commitment to the job from them when he is so incompetent in running his office that he twice loses a letter from a leader representing 150,000 nurses? Does he not understand that our Health Service is fated to experience mounting disruption so long as it is in the hands of a Secretary of State who, since his appointment, has never met the leaders of the nurses who work in the wards and who now makes it a point of pride to snub them?

In answer to the hon. Gentleman's first point about the decision of the various trade unions, I can do no better than to quote from a statement issued this morning by Mr. Trevor Clay on behalf of the RCN—

From Korea?

From Korea. That is right. A statement was also issued in London by Mrs. Gillian Sandford. Mr. Clay, the general secretary of the RCN, said:

"Perhaps it is time the other unions recognised that the RCN does not regard industrial action as negotiable. ACAS provided a way back into the discussions and they"—

the trade unions—

"have chosen not to take it.

That is right.

If the hon. Gentleman will not accept that, perhaps he will accept what Gillian Sandford said. She stated:

"The RCN meeting with Kenneth Clarke to discuss the problems in the clinical grading dispute is going ahead on 5 December. As we have warned, industrial action will not take us forward. Patients are already being affected. The RCN is not surprised by the outcome. We believed that the ACAS route was worth the effort. We now know that the courage to call off industrial action is not strong in the other unions despite everyone recognising that it is a dead end."

I shall meet the RCN on 5 December at its request when I hope that we can make reasonable progress.

As the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) made clear, COHSE and NUPE wish to discuss the basis on which the exercise has been conducted, particularly for untrained auxiliary nurses, and he wishes us to take that to arbitration. Some, but not many auxiliary nurses are taking part in industrial action of a kind which the unions are trying to foment. They wish to discuss a complete reinterpretation of the grading for the auxiliaries who have all received a pay increase of between 7·6 per cent. and 9·4 per cent.—a little under £500.

The meaning that the unions are now attempting to put on grade A would, in effect, abolish it because they argue that to work under supervision means that a trained nurse must be present and watching an auxiliary when making a bed, taking a patient to the lavatory or any other such duty. They want to move all those nurses on to a grade which will give them up to £1,500 a year more, which would be a 33 per cent. pay increase. The unions are prepared to foment industrial action by misleading their members into believing that that is properly their due.

It is not usual to have exchanges across the Floor during industrial disputes, but occasionally they take place. Exchanges are not always helpful, and the hon. Gentleman and the Labour party are not trying to be helpful. They are taking every opportunity to encourage industrial action, which is not widespread in our hospitals. That is plainly his approach today.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman descended from the sublime to the ridiculous by raising the embarrassing matter of the handling of correspondence. I have apologised to the hon. Gentleman and Hector MacKenzie. Indeed, I was grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out to me in a radio interview that these letters had been received. It was a clerical oversight because Mr. MacKenzie's letters had been diverted into the part of my Department which deals with routine correspondence from the public, and I must admit that the Department had not been dealing with it with excessive speed. The moment I discovered the letters I replied to them. [Interruption.] They merely told the general secretary what he already knew from our public exchanges, which was that I was not prepared to have discussions with trade unions while they were attempting to organise industrial action against patients in hospitals throughout the country. That remains our position.

Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that there is no justification for members of COHSE and NUPE taking industrial action now which is damaging to patients? Does he agree that it is a searing indictment of the Labour party that it seems to be more intent on encouraging such action in the interests of its own sordid politics than on being concerned with patient care? Does he agree that in the interests of patient care the Labour party should urge its friends in those unions to get back to work and to settle the outstanding differences in discussions with the Department?

I agree with my right hon. Friend. Opposition spokesmen have made no attempt to condemn industrial action against patients. They have taken the reverse view. A spokesman for the Opposition has deliberately visited hospitals where he has discovered, from the newspapers, that action is taking place, with the obvious intention of encouraging more people to join it. That is an irresponsible approach to the well-being of patients.

Does the Secretary of State accept that many nurses have no desire to take industrial action but have a real sense of grievance about the results of the grading procedure? Should not their sense of responsibility be rewarded by sympathetic consideration? If not, there is a serious risk of provoking a long-lasting crisis in the National Health Service.

I agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman, and I accept that many nurses and midwives have been disappointed. There was bound to be disappointment when some nurses and midwives discovered that they were on lower grades as compared with colleagues with more skill and responsibility who are receiving spectacular increases. Unfortunately, some unions have made no attempt to explain to their members the basis upon which the grading was carried out. They have encouraged nurses to appeal who plainly have been graded correctly, with the result that the appeals system must deal with thousands of cases.

I am prepared to discuss with the Royal College of Nursing, and any other organisation that calls off industrial action, ways in which the appeals procedure can be operated so that legitimate grievances are dealt with fairly and in a civilised fashion. I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for making it plain that his party supports that view.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that at a time when, because of their economic success, the Government have been able to devote billions of pounds to expanding the Health Service, with £2·2 billion promised for next year and nearly £1 billion devoted this year to an historic pay rise for the nurses, a minority of nurses, the leaders of COHSE and NUPE and the Opposition parties are making so much political trouble that you, Mr. Speaker, have been persuaded to allow a private notice question—[Interruption]—in the middle of a debate on foreign affairs and defence—

Order. We are in the middle of a debate on foreign affairs, and hon. Members should ask questions of the Secretary of State, not of me.

It was not a question to you, Mr. Speaker. I was pointing out that, despite all those resources being made available, the political noise that is being made calls into question the fundamental structure of the National Health Service which Aneurin Bevan forced through the Labour party in 1946. In his review of the NHS, will my right hon. and learned Friend take account of those matters and consider the remedy, proposed by Mr. Herbert Morrison, of locally controlled hospitals as an alternative to the present system.

My hon. Friend has raised a very wide issue. The exercise this summer showed some of the weaknesses of centralised pay bargaining, especially involving six different nursing unions and especially when we are trying to negotiate the extremely complicated division of a huge sum of money. We have had to take into account the skills and responsibilities involved in almost 500,000 nursing and midwifery posts, and we must rely on local management and representatives to carry that out. I believe that the exercise has been carried out well. It required considerable commitment for local management to carry it out so quickly and to get the money into the hands of the nurses, with the pay rises coming by November and the back pay by December.

Almost all the gradings have been done correctly, but inevitably some mistakes have been made. That is why we have an agreed appeals procedure, which should now be used. No system involving such a huge service and such huge sums of money could work entirely smoothly, but there are some mischievous people about trying to make political capital out of the fact. COHSE was organising industrial action during the summer while we were still in the early stages of the process, and it has lost no opportunity to do so ever since. In that, it has had the encouragement of the Labour party. Two unions are not helping matters by giving misleading information to their members and by trying—not very successfully—to organise disruptive action in hospitals.

Can the Secretary of State point to any predecessor who has succeeded in forcing many midwives to resign en bloc from the NHS or to make clear their indignation at being placed, after many years of training, on the same grade as people who have lower qualifications? Have any of his predecessors then exacerbated the problem by making rude comments? Is that a positive contribution to industrial relations?

I have made no rude comments about midwives, and I shall make none. I am told that 26 midwives have announced their intention of resigning from a hospital in north London. Those midwives have received a pay increase of 25 per cent., or about £2,000 a year, but they believe that they should receive more. I am sorry about that. I accept that a genuine sense of grievance is felt by the Royal College of Midwives and by many individual midwives. I regret that, because they are dedicated people and it is a non-striking trade union.

I believe that the sense of grievance is based on a misunderstanding and is separate from the COHSE and NUPE dispute which the Labour party supports. The Royal College of Midwives has a long-standing claim that midwives should have a separate grading structure. That is not agreed by the other trade unions or by management, and it has not been accepted by the review body or the Government.

Some of them have received only grade C.

There are no midwives graded C. This year the midwives put to the independent review body a claim for a separate higher grading structure, which was not accepted. But midwives and their union persist in saying that that structure should be applied. Unfortunately, it is not the one that the review body recommended or that was agreed earlier this year, so if they wish to persist with the claim they will have to return to it in the future.

Midwives as a whole have done much better than the generality of nursing staff, and nine out of 10 staff midwives are on the higher of the two grades available to them. They received a pay increase of one quarter, which is worth about £2,000 a year, and a much better career structure has been established for them.

rose—

Order. As the House knows, this is one of the rare occasions on which the House can debate foreign affairs, and there is great pressure on time. I shall allow questions on this private notice question to continue until 11.25, and I ask for brief questions.

Is it not time that we started to tell the truth on this matter? Is not the truth, as reported by Oxfordshire regional health authority, that the majority of clinical nurses in the Oxford region will receive substantial salary increases averaging 20 per cent., that they will receive their new salaries and back pay by Christmas, that the new grading system rewards clinical skills, has been carried out fairly and will assist the recruitment and retention of nurses and that the Government have honoured their commitment fully to fund the pay increase?

Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that Oxford district health authority had no hesitation in describing the pay awards as "angels' delight", that nurses praised the grading review process and that the Oxfordshire chief nursing officer described it as a major step forward? Is it not time that the press and the media in general started to talk about the truth rather than the synthetic broth that has been promulgated by the Opposition?

My hon. Friend has described views that are shared by the great majority of nurses and midwives and the position as it exists in most of the country. Most nurses and midwives regret the attempts of those two unions and the Labour party to organise action that can only damage the reputation of the profession at a time when its reputation deserves to stand high. The Government have recognised that reputation in the pay award.

Does the Secretary of State accept that the basis for the dispute lies in the devious statement that he made in April when he cash-limited the nurses' pay rise by introducing this spurious grading exercise? Since then he has tried to set one group of nurses against another. Does he understand that grade A nurses are experienced and do a vital and responsible job and that the rate of pay recommended for grade A is disgraceful? The Secretary of State should stand by the statement that he made in April, that all nurses were to get a substantial rise in their basic pay, rather than threatening COHSE and NUPE members with legal action and, on top of that, refusing even to discuss the case with them.

The pay increases are almost unique in my experience of pay settlements, in that they are not cash limited. Our original estimate that it would be a 15·3 per cent. increase had to be revised when we had finished to 17·9 per cent. I had to announce further funding in October to keep to our commitment that we would fund the increase in full. It cost more when the grading exercise was carried out and we did not cash limit it at all. The root of the dispute is Left-wing politics.

Given that a necessarily complicated regrading exercise affecting hundreds of thousands of nurses and midwives must lead inevitably to at least a few mistakes being made, does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it was for that reason that the unions agreed to the appeals procedure? Further, given the fact that the settlement is rightly the most generous pay settlement ever to be given in the history of the NHS, is not the attitude of the leadership of COHSE and NUPE in apparently trying to suggest to every nurse that he or she must be regraded upwards one of the most irresponsible and hypocritical acts of lack of leadership?

I agree with my hon. Friend. As he said, the logic of the union's case, as put by the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn), would ensure that nobody was on the lower of the alternative grades at the various stages. That is contrary to the spirit of the regrading structure that we first negotiated, taking two and a half years over it, with the self-same unions.

I spent last Friday evening listening to 200 nurses from the Wakefield district who are not militants or Left-wingers. They are members of the RCN as well as of COHSE and NUPE and they raised with me anomaly after anomaly in individual cases in respect of the settlement.

What should I say to five nurses at Stanley Royd hospital who were offered the highest grade by the management in Wakefield heath authority and were then told, "Sorry, we have made a mistake. You have got the lowest grade"? What should I tell the nurses who came to the meeting, who were informed that it would be at least five years before their appeals could be heard, many of whom told me that they would be retired by then? What answer should I give those people? Does the Secretary of State accept that he has made a complete shambles of the issue?

The hon. Gentleman is in no better position than me to settle the grade of any nursing or midwifery post. That must be settled by the management. If it is disputed by the individual, there is an appeal process that can properly resolve the problem. I should like to believe that the hon. Gentleman spent his time at the meeting explaining that and trying to ensure that those people discussed with their own health authority the handling of the appeals procedure, and that those who had appealed on the basis of false information from their trade union should withdraw the appeal and help us to get on with it. However, I suspect that that was not the tone of the hon. Gentleman's contribution to the meeting.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that the regrading structure has been the result of two years' negotiations with the unions and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman) said, it provides for an appeals procedure? It would be wholly wrong if my right hon. and learned Friend were to enter into negotiations with the trade unions. Does not that raise a much more serious problem of precedent elsewhere in the public service, in that, if he were to concede, it would give succour and support to other unions in the public service to take industrial action after agreements had been reached and negotiated and to carry on doing so until they induced Ministers to come back to the negotiating table to renegotiate? That would be a dangerous and improper judgment to make. It would be an error of judgment that the Government as a whole would regret if my right hon. and learned Friend were to give way.

I agree with my hon. Friend; it is extraordinary. It is important to remember that we have all entered into a no-strike agreement and everybody is a party to it. The Government set up an independent review body, which made recommendations contrary to the Government's own evidence, which the Government accepted and implemented for the nurses. In this case, I am glad to say that the independent review body confirmed the regrading and new career structure for nurses and put generous figures upon it for implementation. It would be wrong, above all in the NHS, where patients' well-being is at risk, if industrial action could be taken and, in the face of that, we started to alter the whole structure and abolished the lowest grade because the unions decided that all auxiliary nurses should get pay increases of up to one third.

Is the Secretary of State aware that last Saturday morning I met only RCN nurses who came to see me at my offices, delegated by the RCN at Walton hospital? If the right hon. and learned Gentleman thinks that those nurses are Left-wing loonies, he should have been there. After listening to them, I was delighted that I was a Labour and not a Tory Member of Parliament because I am not sure that I would have got out in one piece if I had been a Tory. The nurses were very angry. They told me of 800 appeals—

The Minister should meet the nurses.

Order.

I am sorry.

My hon. Friend is backing me up.

I heard that 800 of the nursing staff in Walton and Fazakerley in my constituency have appealed. They are very angry and will not be helped. They think that they have been conned by the Government. Some of the nurses said that they had stuck by their union all this time, but that sooner or later they would have to think differently unless the union took action.

I do not mind nurses putting in appeals. It is predictable that there will be disappointed nurses when they find that they are on a lower grade than some of their colleagues and that they are getting less than the 17·9 per cent., which is the average settlement, because other people are getting 33 per cent. and 40 per cent. awards. Careful handling by all parties was required, and that was carried out by the management and some trade union leaders, but not other trade union leaders. The obvious thing to do now is to follow through the appeals procedure, not to take industrial action. We cannot start altering the basis of the grading structure because COHSE and NUPE keep threatening industrial action to force us to do so.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I apologise to the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) for slightly protracting the interlude in his speech, but you will recall, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney) criticised you for accepting the private notice question tabled by the Opposition. It is a convention that, when the Opposition ask for a private notice question and it is refused, we do not refer to it publicly. Will you confirm, Mr. Speaker, that it is equally a convention for hon. Members on Government Benches not to object when you grant the asking of such a question?

rose—

Allow me to deal with it. I did not take it as a criticism.

I was almost at the conclusion of my remarks. As a peroration hangs ill in the air, I shall not detain the House any longer.

I thank the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) for the tone of his remarks. Although he has been in Opposition for 24 years—and it does not seem to have affected his amiability—I do not see why he should believe that a mere nine years in Opposition should have done anything to the character of my sunny friend, the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman).

I propose to spread a little ointment on the bruises that the Foreign Secretary may be suffering as a result of my right hon. Friend's brilliant speech. The Foreign Secretary deserves the support of all right-minded people in the difficult task that he has as a member of a Cabinet with the particular Prime Minister under whom he suffers. We shall do our best to help him and accept with tolerable equanimity any misquotation of history or partisan remarks that he may find it necessary to make from time to time to remain not exactly in his leader's affections, but as a tolerated member of her Cabinet.

Many have said that the five months since we debated foreign affairs confirm that we now stand at a watershed in the post-war world, and I hope, conceivably, at a watershed in the history of the human race. In 1945 Russia and the United States emerged as super-powers confronting one another over the middle of a divided Germany in a divided Europe; but in 1988 both super-powers feel increasingly unable to sustain the role that they assumed to themselves in 1945, and particularly if they are compelled to compete in an arms race that they know neither can win.

In the Soviet Union Mr. Gorbachev is, in my opinion—I do not think many would now deny it—trying to change the entire basis on which the Soviet regime has rested at least since 1924—some would say since 1917. Although his domestic perestroika—the reconstruction of the Soviet economy—has failed so far to produce results and is clearly running into heavy weather, the greater openness—the glasnost—that has accompanied perestroika has released a pent-up demand for national freedom not only in eastern Europe but in all the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union: in the Baltic states, in White Russia, in the Ukraine, in Georgia and, most conspicuously, in the republics of central Asia.

We now find ourselves at a point that appeared to be coming way back in 1956 when the Hungarians rose against Soviet domination, a point at which the possibility of reuniting Europe, which has been divided for nearly half a century, is sufficiently real for the two halves of Europe to exert an increasingly magnetic attraction on one another. One of the challenges to Western diplomacy in the coming years will be to try to create a framework in which this explosive demand for national freedom in eastern Europe can lead to increasing unity between the two halves of Europe. I believe—I do not propose to develop this point now—that to achieve the reunification of Europe may require some important and difficult concessions and revisions of policy on the Western side as well as on the Eastern.

In the United States there has been another presidential election. Mr. Bush has just been elected President of what is still the richest and most powerful country in the world, in an election in which one third of those who might have voted did not bother to register and another third did not bother to vote. He finds himself President with the votes of fewer than one in five of the population and facing a Congress dominated by the other party, which is still bruised by the way in which he fought the campaign.

There is no doubt that the new American Administration will face great difficulties in confronting the formidable problems that await them and which were almost completely ignored in the election campaign. Mr. Bush cannot claim to have a mandate for anything, because he put nothing before the American electorate and only one in five of them bothered to vote for him when the time came.

I have some sympathy with those who say—it is increasingly popular to say it, even in Britain, let alone the United States—that America's domestic deficit is not a major problem. As a percentage of America's national output it is a good deal lower than most deficits in the Western world. But the foreign trade deficit is very serious indeed. America is already the biggest single sovereign debtor in the world. Unless something is done about the foreign trade deficit, within two or three years America will owe more than $1,000 billion to the rest of the world—more than all the other sovereign debtors put together. As a result, money from the surplus countries which should be going to help the developing world is flowing into the richest country in the world to finance its trade deficit; so is money from some of the poorest countries, which incurred debts to the United States during the binge of lending to the Latin American countries earlier this decade.

No one is yet taking seriously enough the difficulty of continuing to finance an American external deficit on that scale, and there is the growing reluctance at least of Japan, if not of Germany, to go on buying American bonds, which we are told by the Americans' chief economic adviser are liable to lose 20 per cent. of their value in the next year or two. I am surprised that the Foreign Secretary had nothing to say about the shift in the balance of economic and military power that has taken place in the world in the past decade. Japan is already the strongest economy in the world, although not the largest. It is the third strongest military power, although it is spending only a fraction more than 1 per cent. of its GNP on defence. Nevertheless, it spends a great deal more than Britain, France or West Germany.

The Japanese Government have already made it clear that they want to dethrone the dollar as the world's only reserve currency. Both their central banker and his deputy, Mr. Gyohten, who spoke in London last week, have said that they want the yen to become a key currency.

All this will have an important impact on the removal of barriers inside the European Community, because it is clear that the Japanese Government and institutions will not continue to buy American Government bonds which are certain to lose their value. Increasingly, they will buy hard assets in the United States and elsewhere, and they calculate that if the yen reaches 110 to the dollar, as, according to Mr. Marty Feldstein, is likely, Japan could make a profit exporting from factories in the United States to Japan in any branch of manufacturing industry. It is already making a profit exporting motor cars from the Honda factory in the United States to Japan, and Nissan is hoping to make a profit by exporting cars from Britain to the Community.

I do not believe that the British or European Governments have yet come to terms with the possibility that we shall have a flood of highly reliable, high quality, low-priced Japanese goods produced in Japanese factories in countries inside the European Community and the United States.

All this has an important impact on the problems of defence and disarmament which have featured largely in our discussions today. If the United States fails to deal with its external trade deficit, there is likely to be a collapse of the dollar and a big increase in American interest rates. If those things are accompanied, as is more than possible, by a collapse in the price of oil, revolution and default in the debtor countries in Latin America could follow, with consequences that could distract America's attention from the outside world for at least a generation.

One thing is already certain. If the United States is to make progress mending its foreign deficit, it will have to reduce domestic spending, because it is already working at full capacity. Any cut in domestic spending and a consequent cut in domestic deficit is bound to include a cut of at least $300 billion in American defence programmes over the next few years. As Mr. Bush—unlike Mr. Dukakis—has committed himself to continue all American nuclear programmes, that is bound to mean substantial cuts in America's conventional forces, which are bound to affect the strength of NATO in Western Europe. This is at a time when, because of demographic trends, manpower available for the German army will be 40 per cent. short, and when Britain is cutting its defence spending, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton pointed out.

I am sure that the Secretary of State for Defence will agree that for demographic reasons, we, too, are facing real problems in manning our armed services. In other words, NATO is entering a period of unilateral disarmament, led by the United States, with the co-operation of Britain, West Germany and the Low Countries at least. I challenge the Secretary of State to deny—I will not say the exact truth but the probability—that we are moving into that situation.

It is absolute lunacy not to get on fast with multilateral negotiations, so that the unilateral cuts on which the Government and Western Governments are already embarking become multilateral. I must confess that I found the Foreign Secretary's remarks on that matter somewhat lacking in candour. It is 18 months since Mr. Gorbachev first made his proposal for conventional arms control between the Atlantic and the Urals, to start—contrary to what the Foreign Secretary said—with an inspected verification of the size of forces on both sides of the area, and to be followed by the removal of disparities that are found to exist. I hope that the Secretary of State for Defence will tell us why NATO has not got on with that process. Why are we putting up arguments that are known to be untrue as a reason for not getting conventional arms cuts going?

I suggest that the main obstacles are coming from the French and British Governments. The French Government do not want negotiations between NATO and the Warsaw pact. They want negotiations to take place only in the conventional stability talks framework, including neutral countries. At the moment, they are proposing a three-year delay before serious negotiations take place. I hope that the Defence Secretary will tell us what position the British Government are taking on that matter.

I hope that he will tell us also why the British Government are joining the French in holding up progress by refusing to go to the human rights conference in Moscow, yet, at the same time, are saying that progress on human rights matters must be a precondition to progress on conventional disarmament. Having known and loved the Forein Secretary for many years, and knowing that he is a skilled lawyer, I have tried hard to read between the lines churned out for him by the Foreign Office word processor. Incidentally, I congratulate the Box on getting some new softwear. The adjectives were a good deal fresher today than they were in earlier speeches.

It seemed that the Foreign Secretary was trying to get the Prime Minister off the human rights hook on which she has impaled herself. I hope that the Secretary of State for Defence has recovered from his jet lag and from the extraordinary meeting that he attended yesterday at which, apparently, his own Department was unable to put forward any recommendation to the relevant Cabinet Committee on whether the Prime Minister should be allowed to suck up to President Reagan by buying an American instead of a British tank. I hope that he will be able to tell us whether there are just some conditions in respect of human rights to be met, in which case they should be met fairly fast. We should be able to have the conference and get the process started.

I had hoped to be able to make a speech without referring to the Prime Minister. I apologise, especially to my old friend the right hon. Member for Pavilion, but I shall make a few gentle animadversions on the Prime Minister's role in these affairs. She is increasingly seen throughout the world as the major obstacle to all progress—from progress in the Common Market to progress in East-West relations—by standing out alone with impossible demands on human rights. I do not blame the Foreign Secretary for leaving the Chamber. He kindly let me know that he is to make a television broadcast, and we wish him well.

The Prime Minister is a major obstacle to progress in East-West relations. She is a major obstacle to progress in the Western European Union. She said that Spain should not be allowed to join, a week before she went off on an official visit to Spain, thereby showing that unerring sense of tact and timing for which she has become famous, if not loved, throughout the world. She finds herself practically alone now in the Western European Union in pressing for the modernisation of tactical nuclear forces in Germany—something that is absolutely opposed by the German and Belgian Governments, and which the French Government have said they want to delay for at least three years until they see how the conventional arms talks go.

For many years, I have been trying hard to understand the Prime Minister. I am sorry that the Secretary of State for Health has left the Chamber. I have discovered that there is a medical term for the condition from which she suffers. In the psychiatric profession it is known as cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a psychiatric condition in which the patient finds it absolutely impossible to accept a reality which conflicts with her prejudices or offends her vanity. One of the most famous politicians to suffer from it was Robespierre during the French revolution. That is an analogy that hon. Members with an historical bent might find it worth exploring.

We have seen cognitive dissonance in domestic policy—for example, the poll tax, and the creation of private monopolies to make water and electricity more expensive. We saw it this morning in the National Health Service. I often compare the Prime Minister with Florence Nightingale. She stalks through the wards of our hospitals as a lady with a lamp—unfortunately, it is a blow lamp. [Laughter.] I am glad that the Secretary of State for Defence can see the joke. It means that he has recovered from his torpor.

The Prime Minister has already made it clear that she wants to replace the Treasury with an immigrant acolyte from the United States who is regarded by many people as Dr. Who. He certainly resembles Mr. Jon Pertwee, who once acted in that capacity. It now appears that she wants to abolish the Foreign Office and, no doubt, replace the Foreign Secretary with Colonel Oliver North—if Colonel North is able to escape imprisonment in the next few months. She has already shown that she wants to abolish the BBC, the House of Lords, the Church of England and the monarchy. No institution will be left to protect our democracy, except for the Special Air Service and MI5. If I were a member of either of those bodies, I would be waiting to see when her beady eye would fall on me.

Against that background, it is astonishing that the Prime Minister's official mafia at No. 10, led by her Pudovkin, Mr. Bernard Ingham, should have persuaded the sycophants in the Right-wing British press that the right hon. Lady is now the key to world peace and the bridge between Washington and Moscow. However, President Reagan invited Chancellor Kohl to visit Washington before the Prime Minister managed to edge her way in for a cursory working breakfast in Washington—something which I am sure the Foreign Secretary would like to forget. As for being the bridge between Mr. Gorbachev and Washington, we were told that Mr. Gorbachev was coming here to find out from the Prime Minister what the new American Administration thought. Unfortunately, Mr. Gorbachev will already have met the new American Administration in the United States when he comes here.

Indeed, Mr. Gorbachev has already spent many days each with the Prime Minister of Italy, the Chancellor of West Germany and, this week, the President of France. He is fitting in the British Prime Minister right at the end of that long queue, and she has to take second place to President Castro. In many ways, that is appropriate because some of us have always regarded the right hon. Lady as the Castro of the Western world—an embarrassment to all her friends. All she lacks is the beard. If we could once see her as the bearded lady—

She shaves every morning.

I am sure that we would all realise the aptness of that comparison.

It is a bit thick for the Prime Minister to pose as a bridge builder when we are told by Mr. Bernard Ingham that her aim is to persuade Kohl to screw Genscher. I do not know whether that is a parliamentary expression, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I can assure you that I took it from reports in The Times and The Daily Telegraph. The Prime Minister has an uncanny knack of making friends and influencing people.

The obstacle that the Prime Minister presents to progress in any of those areas is serious. Although the Foreign Secretary will enjoy our support—if that is the right verb—in standing up to her and trying to weasel his way around the obstacles that she has created for him, we shall do our best to help.

I should like to finish with a few words to my own party, because in my sunset years—[Interruption.]—I should like to be bipartisan. The British Labour party has a heavy responsibility to offer a positive alternative. We shall not do that if we indulge in a Punch-and-Judy show between abstract unilataralism and abstract multilateral-ism. The plain fact is that we shall have to have both. The present Government have embarked on unilateral disarmament inside NATO. The United States is embarking on it, too. The really important thing is that we should develop policies calculated to help the movement towards a new basis for international security, which depends on co-operation between the two blocs and in which—I share the Foreign Secretary's hope—the United Nations may be able to perform the role that we all hoped it would perform when it was set up after the war.

If we work hard—I hope that we shall have support from some Conservative Members and perhaps even from some of those on the Government Front Bench—we may be able to shift our Castro in a more sensible direction, or possibly even to marginalise her. I am sure that we would have the support of many institutions, including one not a mile away across St. James's park, if we succeeded in that endeavour.

I was surprised when the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) used the word, "ointment", because I do not think we would ever see him as an emollient. If my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary was bruised by the words of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman)—although I think that he is virtually unbruisable—his bruises would not have been much affected by the remarks of the right hon. Member for Leeds, East. The right hon. Gentleman was interesting when he talked about foreign policy, but, like his right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton, most of his speech was not devoted to foreign policy. However, they were both interesting tours d'horizon as, of course, was the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary. I do not want to follow them down their interesting byways, and, although I should like to touch on the issue of human rights, I shall refer mainly to the middle east and the Palestine problem.

The most depressing thing about the Israelis' reaction to the Intifada is that they do not seem to understand that things will never be the same again. The brave Palestinians have permanently changed the middle east and the Palestinian situation. It is depressing that the Israelis do not seem to realise that, although some do.

It has been made perfectly clear that the myth that the occupation of the west bank and the Gaza Strip was in some way benign, has been exploded for ever. It never was benign because there was a great deal of violence and about half the land was appropriated by the Israelis, which is not exactly a benign thing to do. That was always a myth, but it is now seen to be a myth and there is no going back. The status quo cannot be maintained for long.

The second thing that the Intifada has done is to demonstrate the self-control of the Palestinians, because it has been a virtually non-violent operation. There have been one or two terrible instances, like the killing of the Jewish Israeli family at Jericho just before the election, and one or two other dreadful instances. Mostly, however, it has been a question of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. The violence has come from Mr. Rabin, the settlers and the Israeli army, which has decided that the right way to deal with stone-throwing children is to break their bones or to shoot at them. That is what Mr. Rabin has advocated. Clearly, the violence has come mainly from that side.

The Israelis, however, are not the only guilty party—the Americans are also guilty. After all, they are now shelling out about $4·5 billion a year to be used by the Israelis to shore up the Israeli occupation and their present behaviour. As far as I can see, apart from one or two weak statements by Mr. Shultz, they have done absolutely nothing to stop the brutal repression or to make the Israelis see the error of their ways. The Americans could not even get as far as helping Mr. Peres in the run-up to the election. They were neutral as between him and Mr. Shamir, which was not very helpful.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary and the right hon. Member for Gorton talked about human rights. The West is absolutely right to press the question of human rights in the Soviet Union. However, the Palestinians also have human rights. I very much hope that Mr. Gorbachev and Europe will point out that fact to the Americans, because it is absolutely wrong to continue to talk about human rights while supporting what is happening in Palestine. I thoroughly support, and always have supported, the human rights of Soviet Jews—for example, their right to emigrate—but it is grotesque to make an enormous fuss about that while condoning, if not supporting, what is going on on the west bank and the Gaza Strip.

My right hon. and learned Friend and the right hon. Member for Leeds, East talked about the Palestine National Council and its recent declaration, and I welcome what they said. I also welcome what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said about it in Washington. It was one of Mr. Bernard Ingham's happier pieces of reporting, and I do not think that anybody will hold that briefing against him. No doubt, the PNC could have gone further, but it has taken an enormous step forward. It is extraordinary—rather, it is not extraordinary, and one might have expected this—that the Israelis and the Americans were so unforthcoming in their reactions to it.

The Government's task is to push the Americans and the Israelis in the direction of peace, and I endorse what the right hon. Member for Gorton said. If the Israeli Labour party goes, en masse, into a coalition that will not be devoted to the prospect of peace, there will be a serious lookout for Israel and the whole area. I hope that Mr. Peres will maintain his efforts. It is necessary for this country to try to bring pressure to bear on America, because we all know that American policy is, as it always has been, hamstrung by the great strength of the Israeli lobby there. It raises a great amount of money to elect Senators and Congressmen. Unless there is counter-pressure to that lobby, there is no way that American policy will change. Therefore, it is the task of Europe, and particularly of our Government—my right hon. and learned Friend spoke about our relationship with the American Government—to bring that counter-pressure to bear.

We can and should do one thing more. My right hon. and learned Friend did not speak about this, but surely it is high time that we had proper talks with the Palestine Liberation Organisation. We have waited far too long, but now we have a good reason to talk—the PNC statement. The Government have been understandably reluctant, because any comparison that might be made with Ireland and the IRA, but the situations are different. The IRA does not represent anybody. There is a clear majority in Northern Ireland against what it is seeking to do and probably, if there were a plebiscite throughout the whole of Ireland, there still would not be a majority in favour of what it seeks to do. Palestine is different. No serious person could deny that the PLO represents the overwhelming majority of Palestinian people, and it is clear that they and the PLO want a Palestinian state. Therefore, I hope that the Government will start talking to the PLO.

Another objection has been that, allegedly, the PLO believes in violence; but if we went on that criterion, the Government would have to stop talking to Mr. Rabin, Mr. Shamir and various other people like that. That criterion does not apply, and I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will tell us that there will be a change of attitude. It is in the interests both of this country and of the Palestinians that we should talk to the PLO so that we can set out our policy and it can explain its policy to us.

The uprising has now been going on for more than a year. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands maimed or wounded. There is a supreme opportunity for peace, as the right hon. Member for Gorton said. I hope that the British Government will do everything in their power to bring home the need for peace to both the Israeli and American Governments.

rose—

I appeal for brevity, as Mr. Speaker did at the beginning of the debate. The debate has already been truncated by time spent on the private notice question and many right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House wish to contribute to the debate.

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour), whose elegant, informed and wise remarks have enhanced so many similar debates.

The Foreign Secretary is a calming man. However, one should not allow the cuddly emollience for which he is so famed to mask the fact that there is a different interpretation of the Government's approach and contribution to foreign affairs from that which he provided. One does not need to go over the top to make it. Within the European Community, the Prime Minister continues to establish her reputation as a "Mrs. Nyet" of European co-operation. Her portrayal in the Bruges speech of a highly centralised Europe betrayed what she really thinks about the Community. In her heart, she sees it as being a free trade area, a European Free Trade Association writ large. Her vision is of a Europe of business men. Ours is of a Europe for all its citizens. We need economic success, so we support the single market, but if we are to have a successful single market, we also need common social, regional and environmental policies. That also means developing much more effective democratic institutions.

The Prime Minister's opposition to such changes could cost us dear, for the risk still remains, though it is not as strong as it was not so long ago, that, held up time and again by one or two reluctant members, the majority within the Community will go its own way. An example of this is the central European bank. It is a natural development, which will almost certainly happen in time. Members of the Community have committed themselves to the free flow of capital everywhere by 1990 and this is expected to be of major benefit to this country. However, in the absence of a common bank and a common currency, this would inevitably produce huge swings in interest rates as Governments tried to avoid harmful fluctuations in the value of their currencies. Furthermore, the sheer cost and bother of changing money, along with the added risk involved in dealing with fluctuating currencies, is a real barrier to the policy of economic convergence to which all Governments are committed.

The Prime Minister's vocal opposition to these sensible steps is sad, and it is a mistake for which Britain could pay, for if a common central bank were established with Britain participating, London would be a natural location. If Britain were less enthusiastic, Frankfurt would become the major contender. As we are all beginning to don habits of green, and talk about the environment, it is sad to see that within the European Community, the pushing for improved environmental standards is not coming from this country.

I am entitled to criticise the Prime Minister and the Government about their European attitudes, behaviour and intentions. We have been consistently arguing for many years for a more coherent Community moving in a federal direction. The Labour party spokesman, the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), has no such track record. If he and his party had had their way, the Single European Act would not have been passed, and the forward development of the Community, which is essential to our prosperity and influence, would have been halted. The Labour party is in no position to proffer advice in the Community until it gets its own act together.

The Foreign Secretary was right to stress the major changes in East-West relations. The presence of a fresh mind at the head of the Soviet Union has opened up enormous possibilities which two or three years ago would have been unthinkable. We have had the first treaty to reduce the level of nuclear weapons. In some of the world's worst trouble spots, from Afghanistan to Namibia and Angola, we have seen negotiated settlements.

Within the Soviet bloc, there has been a great improvement in human rights. I am not exaggerating that. Mr. Gorbachev has been moving further and faster than anyone imagined that any Soviet leader could or would. It will and has produced enormous stresses from Estonia to Azerbaijan. As the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) said, while he was still talking about foreign affairs, this is undoubtedly an historic opportunity and brings with it considerable responsibilities. That is why the Government approach of pressing for the modernisation of the NATO short-range nuclear weapons is a mistake. It undermines the INF treaty and is also premature.

The right approach is to follow the advice of my Free Democratic party colleague, the German Liberal Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who is, after all, the most experienced Foreign Minister in the Western bloc, by attempting to negotiate a multilateral agreement to make modernisation unnecessary. That does not in any way give up the possibility of going ahead with it at a later stage if this proves necessary. It is a variant of the NATO two-stage proposal which did not work at that time but which I and the Secretary of State for Defence supported. The opportunity for the same kind of approach to work this time is much greater.

We must be more positive in our approach to the Eastern bloc and must appreciate the tremendous stress that changes are bringing about. It would be terrible if a generation younger than us looked back at the present Soviet leadership in the same way that we look back at Dubcek and the Prague spring saying that if only Western leaders had been prepared to deal with Gorbachev more effectively he might have survived. Mr. Gorbachev is not in all that strong a position. I accept that the West must not jeopardise its own security, but nor must we miss genuine opportunities to improve relations and the possibility for disarmament.

The hon. Gentleman has just put his finger on the problem. Mr. Gorbachev is under enormous pressures. He is taking on the party, the army and the KGB and is asking them to change against their own self-interest. What guarantees do the West have that he will succeed? We should welcome what he is trying to do and should help him, but that is not an argument for lowering our guard. On the contrary, we must safeguard our defences.

I am not arguing that we should lower our guard. I am saying that it appears that the modernisation of short-range nuclear weapons in Europe is not immediately necessary. We do not need to take that decision now. If we do take the decision and proceed, it will not create the proper climate for the reductions that I know the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Dr. Hampson) wishes to see as much as I do. As the Foreign Secretary said, I accept that there is no evidence that the Soviet Union is in any way reducing its production of weapons of destruction. I accept that we must be prudent, but as far as possible we must seek to give the opportunity to the other side to respond.

As many hon. Member have said in the debate, the issue about the visit of the Queen to the Soviet Union was very clumsily handled. It is difficult to find out what is True and what is not, but if what has been reported is true a remarkable mistake has been made.

The Gracious Speech talks about support for the United Nations. Can the Secretary of State for Defence tell us when the Government will reverse what I said from the beginning was a wrong decision and go back into UNESCO? It would have been of great encouragement if, when discussing regional problems in the world, the Foreign Secretary had spoken about improving the peace-keeping capacity of the United Nations. Against the background of East-West detente and less stress, there is an opportunity to strengthen the United Nations. Such an opportunity does not normally exist and we should take advantage of it.

It would also have been of great encouragement if when congratulating president-elect Bush—congratulations with which I associate myself—the Foreign Secretary had taken a more definite position on the middle east and on the new opportunity afforded by the PLO's simultaneous recognition of Israel and is assertion of statehood. The Americans are the only people who can get the Israelis to the conference table and we should press them very hard to do so. In that context, I agree entirely with the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham, who spoke with all the authority of a former Minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

It is strange that the Government, who have taken such an uncompromising attitude towards human rights abuses in the East, have not put more emphasis on standing up for human rights in other places. South Africa is an obvious example. Rightly or wrongly, many people have the impression that the Prime Minister is more opposed to sanctions than she is to apartheid. More recently, the Iraqi regime were shown by overwhelming evidence to have violated the Geneva protocol by using chemical weapons against the Kurds. Perhaps to say that what the Foreign Secretary said was rhetoric would be a slight exaggeration, but I am afraid that the Government have not gone beyond the level of making rather feeble protests.

At a meeting in the House earlier this month, a first-hand account was given of the effects of these gas attacks by doctors who visited the town of Halabja shortly after it was attacked by Iraqi Government forces. They told of a town strewn with 2,500 corpses, most of them civilians. They were the victims of the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons. The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave), who is not in the Chamber, recently dealt with this matter and described the Iraqi actions. He spoke of,

"The deeply disturbing and indefensible use of these weapons by a Government against its own population."

That appears to be the official Government position. Yet within two weeks of the hon. Gentleman using that expression the Government had signed an agreement with Iraq substantially to increase its export trade credits. That is indefensible. Today's papers carry pathetic pictures of Kurdish refugee camps, and I should like to know what the Government propose to do about them.

The Government never cease to tell us that under their stewardship the economy is stronger than ever before. Now is not the time to go into the details of whether that is so, but one of the things that is not stronger than ever before is our overseas aid contribution, which is worse than it has ever been before. The Government have publicly accepted the United Nations target of 0·7 per cent. but have not done very much about it. They have allowed our contribution to fall rather than to increase. It was 0·52 per cent. in 1979 and is now 0·29 per cent.

Over the past few months, the Government have boasted that they plan to increase aid by 5 per cent. in real terms. The Minister with responsibility for overseas development developed that argument. One can do anything with statistics if one really tries. That increase works out at less than 1·5 per cent. a year, or less than half the present rate of growth in the economy. That means that the Government are planning to fall even further behind the United Nations aid target than they have already. It is a question of priorities, and I am afraid that, for the Government, overseas development is less of a priority than it was eight years ago when they came to office.

In Britain, overseas aid is less of a priority than in any other European Community country. Denmark and the Netherlands easily reached the 0·7 per cent. target and Belgium, France, West Germany and Italy all contribute a greater percentage than we do. The Government talk of a target. I thought that a target was something that one worked towards rather than worked away from. I hope that the recently announced change in Government policy about aid to Kampuchea will be implemented and successful. That country is perhaps one of the most needy, and to hold back any contribution was a moral mistake.

At the start of the debate the Foreign Secretary gave us a picture of the Government's stewardship of our international relations which was misleading and in some respects rather complacent. Because of the lack of time, I cannot cover all the ground, but I have referred to one or two important points.

I conclude by hoping that when the Secretary of State for Defence replies he will seek to answer some of the questions that have been asked, not only by me but by other hon. Members. In recent times in foreign affairs debates—and they are not very frequent—Ministers have tended to give more priority to making their own speeches than to answering hon. Members' questions. I believe that the House deserves better than that.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) made an interesting and well-informed speech which ranged widely over many topics. I agree with what he said about the middle east and, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour), with whom I wholly agreed, I intend to concentrate my remarks on that area.

In the many years that I have been addressing the problems of the middle east, the situation there, which was bleak and gloomy, has become progressively more so. If I set out to analyse in great detail why that is so, my speech would not remain the brief one that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, would like me to make and which I intend it to be.

In a nutshell, it can fairly be said that the overwhelming responsibility for lack of progress falls on Israeli intransigence and on American acquiescence in such intransigence. There are many in Israel who want peace, but sadly they have not been able to assert themselves, as we saw again in the recent election. Because of internal Zionist pressure, the might of the United States has remained firmly aligned on the side of Israel, regardless of American and Western interests and irrespective of international law, justice and morality. Israel has vehemently and with deplorable consistency rejected the concept of exchanging territory for peace when dealing with Palestinian territory and, as a result, initiative after initiative has foundered.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham rightly said, this debate is taking place only a few days after a new window has been opened. There is no doubt that the developments in Algiers, which have seen the Palestine Liberation Organisation accept resolutions 242 and 338 and renounce violence, have provided a new and welcome ray of hope. Whether that hope will be translated into progress depends on the response which is given to the PLO initiative. Mr. Shamir's response has been predictably and offensively dismissive and that of the United States disappointingly lukewarm, but these are early days in the life of the new Administration and, therefore, there is still much to hope and work for there.

On the other hand, the response of the European Community has been commendably positive, as has been that of most countries throughout the world. I was delighted that the Prime Minister raised the issue with President-elect Bush during her visit to Washington because, whatever Opposition Members may say, the Prime Minister, of all European leaders, carries the greatest influence and authority in Washington. We hope that the demarches that she made on the subject received a sympathetic hearing and that she will persevere in her efforts in that direction. To achieve a peace settlement in the middle east would be a sensational diplomatic triumph for President Bush and for the Prime Minister and the steps necessary to bring about such success would command the wholeheaerted support of our European partners, most of whom have usually been ahead of us in their attitude to middle east policies.

Acceptance of resolution 242 and rejection of the use of force are precisely the policies that successive British and other Western Governments have been continually urging the PLO to adopt. It needed courage for the PLO to do so, particularly at the moment, so soon after a Shamir electoral victory and with the continuing horrors on the West Bank. It required much skill and determination by Mr. Arafat to obtain agreement in Algiers and a warm response from Her Majesty's Government was both timely and right.

The Palestinian declaration offers a perfect opportunity for upgrading our relations with the PLO, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham and the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) pointed out—an upgrading that many of us believe to be long overdue—and for commencing a dialogue at ministerial level. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence or my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary will soon be able to say something specific about that.

If the legitimate rights of the Palestinians, which we and virtually everyone else have endorsed, mean anything they mean self-determination, and that in turn means a state. The two-state solution is the one that ordinary men and women everywhere, not least in Britain, regard as being sensible and fair. It now has the official backing of the PLO. It deserves the support of all countries which wish to see peace and stability restored to one of the most volatile and dangerous areas in the world.

The uprising of the west bank and Gaza, after 21 years of illegal occupation, repression and suppression of human rights and liberties, has now continued for nearly a year. The response of the Israeli forces has been incredibly brutal. It has resulted in over 300 Palestinian men, women and children being shot dead The Israeli Minister of Defence has instructed his diers to aim to wound demonstrators rather than arrest them. Earlier, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham said, the intention was to break their bones. Rightly, a good deal of world attention has been focused on the daily shooting, maiming, gassing and detention without charge or trial of Palestinians of both sexes and all ages who are seeking a minimum of respect and justice. That was especially so before the television cameras were excluded. These activities have been rightly condemned on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, by my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary and by other Ministers responsible for foreign affairs.

Our historic responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians is greater than that of any other country except, perhaps, the United States. We should acknowledge this with a show of understanding and generosity instead of the qualifications and equivocations in which we too frequently indulge. In that context, the abstention on the recent United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning the Israeli violation of human rights in the occupied territories was hard to understand, let alone to explain. I hope that such equivocation and weakness is now behind us and that Her Majesty's Government will be in the vanguard of the countries that are ready to sieze the opportunity that is now on offer, and after 21 years to ensure that there is a start to real progress towards peace in the middle east.

I intended to make a fairly lengthy speech, but in view of the statements that have been made from the Chair I have decided to throw my notes away and speak off-the-cuff. We have had some great vintage speeches during the debate, certainly from my right hon. Friends the Members for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) and for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench. The same can be said of the Foreign Secretary's speech. There have been interesting contributions.

I approve entirely of the word of advice that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East gave to our people in the Labour party. He said that we must understand that we need both unilateral and multilateral disarmament. I could not agree more. On that basis, there is no need for us to get rid of our unilateral view on nuclear weapons. My right hon. Friend has reinforced the argument that some of us have been advancing for many years. We have always believed that we should start with ourselves and then work for multilateral nuclear disarmament throughout the world. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has underlined that argument. I hope that it will be repeated by my Front-Bench colleagues and that it will be underlined that that is the position of the Labour party.

I agree entirely with the remarks of the hon. Member for Westbury (Sir D. Walters) and with those of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour). I was always a great supporter of the state of Israel. I have argued for it on many occasions. Those of us who spent our years in the forces during the last war took the view, when we heard of what had happened to Jewish people under Hitler, that the Jews had a right to a country of their own. We felt strongly about that and supported the state of Israel. It is interesting to note that the first country to recognise and give support to the state of Israel was the Soviet Union.

We all felt that it was right that the Jewish people should have' their own state, but the actions on the Gaza strip and the west bank are unacceptable. I have believed for a long time that the Palestinian people have a right to their own state. I welcome the declaration in Algiers and the fact that 50 nations have already recognised the proposed new state. It is not just a matter of talking to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, although I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I wish that the Labour party would invite the PLO to send a delegate to the Labour party conference. It has not done so yet, but I have argued for it for some time. Arising out of such talks would be an acceptance of the concept of a state for the Palestinian people. There will be no peace in the middle east unless that is recognised, especially by Britain. We have a special responsibility because we were the last people to dominate the Palestine area. We upped and left it, and, although many years have passed, we still have a responsibility to work for peace.

I was the leader of the first Labour party delegation to visit Israel, Palestine and the west bank after the six days war. The Israelis said that the area would be in their hands for only a short time and they would use it as a bargaining factor for peace. Twenty-one years later matters are worse, with area after area having been taken over by the Israeli's, new settlements established and new reactionary concepts developed.

There are people in Israel who are sick of what is happening and who want peace. Some of the early pioneers and their children want peace. The current state is not what they thought would happen and they are concerned about it. We must encourage the state of Israel to reconsider its future and we must help it in every possible way.

I have already raised with the Secretary of State the treatment of the Kurds, who are one of the oldest of peoples. When I was a lad I read about the Medes and the Persians. The Medes go back to 2,000 BC and are the oldest established people. The Kurds do not have a state of their own, although for a brief period after the first world war there was some acceptance of a state of Kurdistan, but that was overthrown at the Lausanne conference. The Kurds have a right to their own state. There are 20 million Kurds spread throughout five different countries. What has happened since the end of the Iraq-Iran war—an end that we all wanted—has been absolutely horrific. Thousands of people, including the elderly and children, have been killed by chemical weapons. We also have responsibility there but we tend to ignore it. At first our Government almost tried to pretend that nothing had happened. The Americans learnt through their intelligence service that chemical weapons had been used, but then the Americans are not that bothered about obtaining oil from that area. Our commercial and oil interests determined that we did not say anything. We must speak out because history also shows that we have a responsibility to those people.

I know that I am straying far and wide, but I want to mention human rights. Some younger Members of the House, who came in at the previous election, always snigger and sneer when I speak on human rights as though I am a dedicated supporter of the internal regime of the Soviet Union. Obviously, they have never heard the speeches that I have made, the questions I have put or the delegations I have accompanied to the Polish, Czechoslovakian and Soviet embassies—you name it, I have been there. In fact, the two areas of the world where I have never been welcomed—certainly not by their embassies—are the Soviet Union and the United States. I have also argued about the role of the United States in countries such as Chile, Nicaragua and elsewhere.

We must not have double standards. If hon. Members are genuine democrats, they must fight for human rights in every part of the world. I did not take too kindly to the Prime Minister going to Poland—not that it seems to have made much difference. There is an interesting article in The Independent today by Anne Applebaum in Warsaw. She refers to Mr. Rakowski's themes since he was appointed Prime Minister. He is quoted as saying:

"'Mr. Walesa demands recognition of Solidarity before talks between government and opposition take place … This isn't possible.'"

The Prime Minister may not have helped events when she visited Poland.

To be honest, I found it a bit sickening that the right hon. Lady went over there and talked about the recognition of Solidarity, while, at the same time, introducing legislation here and acting against GCHQ. We have the worst anti-trade union legislation in western Europe.

It is called hypocrisy.

Yes, there is no question about that. We must not have double standards. For that reason I would love Conservative Members to get up—not many of them have done so—and fight for human rights in Chile and pledge their support for the people of Nicaragua who are trying to create a new society. Of course, people will make mistakes, but we should always be in favour of those who support the democratic process and real human rights.

I had a lot more to say, but I hope that I have at least made my position clear on the fundamental issues. The Secretary of State was slightly pessimistic, but I agree with him that, because of what Mr. Gorbachev is trying to do, we have an opportunity to develop relations with the Soviet Union. Here at last is a leader who recognises that if the Soviets continue to build up arms and maintain high levels of armaments, they cannot do the things that ordinary people want. We must help Mr. Gorbachev, despite the criticism and demands that we rightly make about human rights. We must help the Soviet Union because it is in everyone's interest to have a peaceful world.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heller) will not expect me to agree with everything that he said, but he confirmed the wisdom of throwing away one's notes by making a speech which was easy to listen to. I regret that he did not elaborate on his point about the compatability of unilateral and multilateral disarmament. If he had done so, perhaps I would not have understood it any better than what he did say.

I shall follow other hon. Members and talk about the most important question of foreign policy—East-West relations. We should understand clearly why glasnost and perestroika have been adopted. There is general agreement that one reason is the failure of Socialism economically. About 30 years ago Khruschev forecast that the Soviet Union would overhaul the United States by the 1980s economically, but the reality has been the opposite. The gap between the two super-powers has grown ever wider, which is why Mr. Gorbachev is introducing market mechanisms and why he needs Western help. Let us be clear about what Mr. Gorbachev's objective is. Liberalisation will be limited. He is not striving for Western-style democracy. He is a Leninist, and he says so. His objective is not to abandon Communism, but to make it more efficient.

The second reason rests in Soviet relations with the rest of the world. Mr. Gorbachev has seen that a policy of Soviet expansion is inconsistent with expanding the Soviet domestic economy. He sees that a continued policy of expansion would take too much of the Soviet Union's limited resources, and the same is true of the Soviet Union's other adventures abroad, such as those in Afghanistan, Angola and south-east Asia. He sees that the Soviet Union could not match the United States if it came to an all-out arms race and that a policy of expansion would continue to alienate the West. In particular—and this is the most important point—he sees that his policy of expansion at the expense of the West has been a failure. It has failed because of the firmness, unity and strength of the free world. Years of propaganda, subversion, disinformation, menaces and cajolery have failed to split the Western world.

What do we expect to be the course of glasnost and perestroika? The Foreign Secretary said that economically the Soviet Union is groping for solutions, and the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) said that perestroika is in heavy weather. The heavy weather that the Soviet Union is going through now is likely to be nothing compared with the heavy weather that it will face at home and abroad in coming years.

I cannot think of any example of a Communist state democratising successfully. One can think of examples of Right-wing dictatorships achieving democracy. Spain and Portugal are only two of the most striking. Argentina, with some assistance from Britain in the form of the Falklands war, achieved democracy, and it may be that Pakistan is about to achieve it. There is a simple explanation why it is so much more difficult for a Communist country to achieve democracy, and it is that in a Communist country the state owns the means of production, distribution and exchange. Everything—prices, wages, investment, output, credit and foreign exchange—is controlled by the state. To dismantle a Communist dictatorship, one would have to dismantle the economic side, whereas in Spain, Portugal and other Right-wing dictatorships, that was unnecessary.

There will be great opposition from the bureaucrats in the Soviet Union whose positions are threatened. There will be great confusion among business managers, who have no training in market techniques. There will be price rises, shortages and other problems.

On the political side, the differences between nationalities, such as those in Azerbaijan and Armenia, will become more numerous. The troubles in the Baltic states will spread to other parts of the Soviet Union. The rivalry between eastern European countries, such as Hungary and Rumania, will develop in other areas. The resentment of Soviet domination that is characteristic of the countries of eastern Europe will become more evident, and we may have repetitions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

If that is a reasonably accurate, although pessimistic, forecast, what should Western policy be? We are right to welcome glasnost and perestroika and to hope that Mr. Gorbachev remains in power, but can we do anything to help? On the economic front, we should pursue our own interests. We shall not help by giving a great deal of aid to the Soviet Union. The banks which lend a great deal of money to the Soviet Union may lose much of it. But there is one way in which we could help Mr. Gorbachev and sustain the policies of glasnost and perestroika; that is, by continuing to be firm, united and strong. We should continue the policies that have helped to bring Mr. Gorbachev to his present way of thinking. If the problems that I foresee for the Soviet Union lead to a reaction from Mr. Gorbachev's political opponents, who still exist, the generals or the KGB, and if there is a call for a return to the hard line at home and abroad, it would be a great error if at that time it appeared to the Soviet Union that the West was disunited and weak. That would provide a justification for such a reaction and might tempt the generals and the KGB to return to foreign adventure.

We should place in that context the present policy of the Labour party, which is that we should give away 100 per cent. of our nuclear deterrent in return for 3 per cent. of the Soviet Union's deterrent. That form of unilateral disarmament, which is the policy of the Labour party for the moment, would not be helpful. Who knows what its policy will be in a few months' time?

Glasnost and perestroika have not yet penetrated the Soviet armed forces. I shall give a few examples of what the Soviet Union could do to confirm that it is not simply talking about moving to a defensive military strategy in Europe, but is doing something about it.

For example, it would be helpful if the Soviet army were to withdraw its offensive bridging capability from the Elbe to the Volga and the mobile fuel pipelines, which are designed to help Soviet tanks in a surprise invasion of Western Europe. They should withdraw them a long way back from where they are now. It would be helpful if the Soviets ceased to train their spetsnaz forces in the assassination of leading figures in the west, both political and military, in the hours leading up to a surprise attack by the Soviet Union. It would be helpful if the Soviets ceased to train their military forces in the offensive use of chemical weapons. Those are some of the things that we have yet to see. I do not see any sign, in practice, of the Soviet Union moving in such a direction.

I am not making a pessimistic speech. I hope that I am being realistic and constructive. I am optimistic that we could be at the beginning of a lasting new era of good relations between East and West. We have already made great progress. Ten years ago, the topic of discussion was how long Western Europe could survive. I remember Henry Kissinger, who was the American Secretary of State at the time, giving us about 10 years. He said that in one of his unguarded moments, but I think that he meant it. Now the question is not that at all, but how long tyranny can survive in the Soviet Union. That is a massive step forward. We should continue the policies that have brought us success.

The Gracious Speech gave the emphasis that one would expect to the high priority that the Government put on national security and to the importance of the strength and effectiveness of our armed forces. However, there is one aspect to which Her Majesty's Government and the Secretary of State have given insufficient priority—the recruitment role and place of ethnic minorities in the armed forces.

That matter should not be seen purely as of esoteric interest to sympathetic and concerned royal colonels-in-chief or to Members of Parliament who have within their constituencies large numbers of constituents who are drawn from ethnic minorities. The matter goes to the heart of the vision that we have for our country and for our armed forces. It is vital for the maintenance of the security of the state and our country that the armed forces should be seen to be representative of a cross-section of our community in every way as well as pillars and examples of good practice in the promotion of equal opportunity. Therefore, it is not a matter of esoteric interest and certainly not of party political interest, but it goes straight to the heart of the effectiveness and honour of the armed forces.

The subject has been thrown into sharp relief over the past week through the response to the question asked by the right hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Sir B. Hayhoe) about the figures made available by the Ministry of Defence for recruitment into the armed forces from among the ethnic minorities. The figures show that there is real cause for concern about the level of recruitment. Ethnic minorities make up 1·6 per cent. of applicants to the armed forces, while in the age group most affected, between the ages of 19 and 24, they make up 5·7 per cent. of applicants. That must be a matter of concern.

So, too, must be the relative percentages of those who are accepted for service in the armed forces. The general acceptance rate is 28·4 per cent.; the rate for ethnic minorities is 19·1 per cent. The Ministry of Defence must hold an inquiry into what lies behind those figures, and the inquiry should lead to action. I hope that the Secretary of State will tell us what he proposes to do to improve those statistics and to make a concerted and focused recruitment drive which recognises the importance of placing advertisements in the ethnic minority press and of targeting the areas with the greatest numbers of ethnic minorities. Work must be done in schools, borough fairs and so on, and a positive effort should be made to hold up a career in the armed forces as something desirable, not only as service to the country but for acquiring the skills that will equip people in areas of high unemployment the better to go forward in later life.

The MOD should also examine the fact that fewer ethnic minority applicants are successful than general applicants. The Select Committee on Defence published a report earlier this year making clear, as the MOD's response agreed, the injunction and requirement for an impartial selection process—impartial in the letter and the spirit. I should like some reassurance about that impartiality.

We must go further. The publication of these figures gives the Secretary of State and the Ministry of Defence the chance to think again about their response to the Select Committee's first report, which stressed the importance of monitoring what was happening, in cap badge terms, in regiments around the country. I refer to the selection and the successful completion of entry into these regiments by the ethnic minority communities. If the armed forces are to be representative, as it is widely accepted that they should be, and if the public are to perceive them as not discriminating by reference to racial origins, the prestigious regiments, particularly the Guards regiments, should set an example by being seen to be fully integrated.

The Scots, Welsh and Irish Guards may advance the argument of the traditional territorial ethos governing the recruitment of their members. But the Coldstream and Grenadier Guards have a traditional image as national regiments that recruit from the cities and inner cities, and in them, particularly, there is no excuse for the present dearth of black faces.

One is not suggesting for one moment that there should be a reduction in standards, because there does not have to be a reduction in standards. One is not suggesting for one moment that there should be special favours for ethnic minority applicants, but one is saying that it is vital that the Ministry of Defence and the Secretary of State should be in a position to judge the success or otherwise of the recruitment of ethnic minority youngsters into the forces as the result of the concern that has been expressed by the Secretary of State and by hon. Members. Without the figures, one cannot do that.

There is no need for me to rehearse the arguments that were put to the Secretary of State in the dialogue that he had with the Committee on the occasion of his giving evidence to it, save to say that elsewhere in the service of the Crown—one recognises the differences that he himself highlighted—in the Civil Service the role of ethnic monitoring is recognised as taking a positive part in promoting equal opportunities. In the light of the figures and what they reveal and the benefit that has come from the response that has been given to the right hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth, the time has come to extend it to monitoring by cap badge, as the Defence Committee originally recommended. If the Secretary of State is not prepared to do that across the board, he should at least introduce a pilot scheme whereby it could be done.

The Secretary of State should recognise also the lessons that we can legitimately learn from the United States. We know the real differences that exist in force traditions between the United States and the United Kingdom. But the Secretary of State must surely recognise what an honour guard means and what it does for the spirit of a nation. In the honour guard that greeted the Prime Minister in that historic photo session only a few days ago there was seen to be a representative cross-section of the population of the United States. That guard said something not only about what President Reagan felt about our Prime Minister but about the ethos of the United States and where it is 25 years on from the assassination of President Kennedy. There is no denying that; it is a fact.

We should make sure that, for example, when President Bush comes to our country, we are in a position to have similar photographs flashed across the Atlantic to say something about our country and where we are at this time.

Monitoring does not seem to put an intolerable strain on the resources and the ingenuity of the Ministry of Defence. The argument that it is not practicable to monitor does not carry much weight. If we have a mind to do it, and if we have a will to do it—and we should be of such a mind and will—it can be done.

While I am on the subject of the Prime Minister, may I say that we know her favourite poet. The Secretary of State should reflect on that point when he considers how to respond to the debate. The Prime Minister's favourite poet is a much misunderstood man—a man who was a real friend of the ordinary foot soldier. He is even more misunderstood now that he has become known as the Prime Minister's favourite poet, and he posthumously basks in her admiration. Rudyard Kipling had something to say in relation to the merits of service men, whatever their origin. He recognised that whether from "east or west", wherever people come from, regardless of border or breed or birth,

"When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth,"

they stand together as men in the service of a cause. We should recognise that in terms of our own armed forces. In this country, black and white come not from the ends of the earth, but from Harlesden, Handsworth, Brixton and Bradford, and they stand not face to face, but side by side. It is the responsibility of the House to ensure that they are able to do that.

Given the pressure of time, I shall forgo my comments on foreign policy except to refer to the contribution made by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston), who stressed the British Government's need—which I endorse—to take a major lead in Europe on green issues. Concern for the environment and ecology is mounting throughout Europe and we have to be seen to be delivering solutions. Moreover, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) stressed at Chatham house last week, if we do not, we shall find ourselves, as other democratic Governments, increasingly vulnerable to the peace movement—as we were in the 1960s and 1970s—and to the Soviet use of the growing green movement. That has happened in Germany with the green movement, and such movements will be orchestrated elsewhere.

I am not saying that the Soviet Union does not believe in environmental improvement, but it is a practitioner of realpolitik and will take advantage of any situation. It will try to obtain technology transfer from the West if it can and to persuade us to reduce our defence spending and our efforts to modernise our short-range missiles. It has turned on the pressure by saying that if we spend less on weapons, we could do more to protect the environment. We must seize the historic opportunity offered by the improved climate in the Soviet Union since Mr. Gorbachev has been in charge. We must help him to achieve the necessary reforms and we must act positively, but prudently.

I shall now turn to a defence matter that is close to my constituency interests—the decision that the Government must make in the process of modernising their weaponry and maintaining a serious capability, particularly on the central front—the decision about which tank we should choose. I must put my comments in the context of the state of the threat, because procurement depends on the nature and immediacy of the threat. We have entered an improved international climate, so there is no pressing argument for the military to have a particular weapon on a particular date. I lived with generals and the military hierarchy for a while in the Ministry of Defence, so I know that one becomes frustrated when they argue for month after month about what they would like, and gold-plating it, and then, having come to a conclusion, expecting their choice to be delivered when they want it. It is not relevant to the argument to say that the Abrams tank could come into service two or three years before a British equivalent.

I want to refer to the helicopter fiasco and the length of time taken to make a decision. I must point out that we still do not have an effective helicopter strategy. It is difficult for the layman to judge the precise capability of different tanks and to decide whether the American tank might be heavier on fuel or have a higher infra-red profile. Obviously, the differences between the two are fine, otherwise the Ministry of Defence would have come to a definitive view. One argument that has been put forward by the Americans is that it would be too risky to wait for something that is on the drawing board when the American tank can be purchased off the shelf in working order and at a good price—and that view is shared by some people in the Ministry of Defence.

We may be looking at the issues in a false context. People cite the AWACS and the waste of procurement resources that that entailed, when we had eventually to buy the American version. The British did not deliver on time, nor at the agreed price, but that must be seen in the context of the feebleness of the project management and the fact that the Ministry kept changing its requirements. One should not compare the AWACS project with the tank project. Vickers had long identified the weaknesses of the Challenger, before it bought the company that is to make it. I urge the Government to give Vickers a little credit for buying the royal ordnance factories and, within a year, building the most modern tank factory in Europe at Leeds, to match the one in Newcastle, with over £10 million invested. Surely if that is the Government's philosophy—to move the state sector into private hands—we should give the company some encouragement.

The company knew that the tank had an ineffective fire control mechanism because it had a better one in the mark III tank and the designs for the Vickers mark VII can be, and are being, translated into the new Challenger. It is not a matter of this being a paper tank on the drawing board. It is already a good tank and we are losing sight of that fact among the welter of criticisms. It has a vulnerable aspect, but that can be, and is being, remedied.

We face more than a military choice. The issue that we face is how the British Government responds to industry, and particularly to the technological industries of the future. There is a military dimension. If we lose this order we will find ourselves incapable, as an industrial and military country, of producing a heavy tank. We have to look at American motives. It is not just that they want export orders. I believe that they wanted to take over Westland to use the Black Hawk to gain a monopoly position for the supply of helicopters in the free world. They wish to have a monopoly manufacturing capability for tanks in the free world.

Therefore, despite the accusations and many valid criticisms made by the Public Accounts Committee, we have to try to compare, more than we do, like with like. Our procurement system may be inept at times but so is that of the Americans and of every other country. What we forget when we criticise our manufacturing industry is the huge costs going into the production and development of American weaponry and the fact that the American Government are directly helping those American manufacturers to become the monopoly supplier in that sector, whether it be helicopters and the colossal orders for Black Hawk, which can be sold only to the American Department of Defence, or the Abrams tank. We have to bear in mind that their objective is to ensure that the British capability ceases to exist.

The Americans, particularly through the Darpa Organisation, and through the Department of Defence programmes, such as the strategic computer programme, consciously use defence spending to boost their main industrial base, particularly the new technological industries. We have a duty to do the same. Therefore, rather than lose the capability of making a tank, particularly, when it is a high technology part of the tank, the Government should support our tank, even though it may take a little longer to produce to precise specifications than the American one. Even that may be in doubt. I understand that modifications may be needed to the American tank, and I have no evidence that AWACS will be produced on time and to the conditions laid down. Why should the tank be any different?

We cannot go on assuming that the Americans will transfer their technology. We should not put ourselves into the position where we are not capable of developing these technologies ourselves. This decision is not or should not be a mere bottom of the line accounting decision. It is not clear that there is a lead-up on costs. There are major military, political and industrial considerations. Above all, they are political. We are still looking for better guarantees from a Conservative Government that they genuinely care about the north and regional development. We are concerned not just about the loss of jobs in Leeds if we lose the order, but about our perception of the intentions and seriousness of our Government.

I shall be as brief as possible, as many hon. Members wish to speak. We should look at the methods of constructing foreign affairs debates, because it is not satisfactory to have five hours general ramble on any issue that any hon. Member cares to raise. That is unsatisfactory from all points of view, and it does not concentrate our minds on a particular region.

I shall raise two issues. The first is the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war. We have all witnessed, albeit through television and media reports, the needless deaths of 500,000 people. Every industrial country has had complicity in that either by the direct supply of weapons or by supply through third parties, or by the extension of trade and aid credits to either country. Those things have contributed to the war machines in Iran and Iraq and we are now dealing with the horror of the aftermath of that war.

Hon. Members have spoken about the plight of the Kurdish people and I shall deal with that later. I know that the Government are in the process of reopening diplomatic relations with Iran. If those relations are reopened, some concern should be expressed about human rights in Iran. Ever since Khomeini came to power thousands of people have been put to death because they opposed the Islamic republic, or were trade unionists or people who opposed the war. That bloodthirsty regime has much blood on its hands.

Since the ceasefire and the opening of peace negotiations with Iraq new areas for killing have opened in Iran and figures ranging from a low estimate of 800 to a high estimate of 3,000 have been given as the numbers of people executed by the Khomeini regime since the end of the war. One hopes that if a British ambassador is restored to Teheran his first call of duty will be to express concern about the plight of prisoners in Iran, the people who are on death row there and the murders that are still going on. As with the regime in Iraq, the Iranian regime is not a clean one.

Some of my hon. Friends spoke about Iraq. The Government there are fascists and through the Ba'ath Socialist party they control all levels of activity and are brutal to political dissidents. One war that did not stop when the welcome ceasefire between Iran and Iraq took place was the war against the Kurdish people. That war is different in each country and in Iraq the treatment is vile and loathsome.

In the Easter Adjournment debate I raised the matter of the deaths at Halabja, and it has been raised again since then. Since Halabja many thousands of Kurdish people have been killed by chemical weapons in Iraq. On behalf of the Kurdish Front and other political parties Masoud Barzani has sent a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and to all world leaders. It is a moving letter and I shall quote briefly from it:

"It seems that nothing will deter the Iraqi government from using Chemical weapons against the Kurdish People in the future also, unless the world community especially the Security Council takes some serious measures in this respect."

Serious measures are indeed called for. Thousands of people have fled from Iraq into Turkey, but that is not because they welcome or recognise the contribution that the Turkish Government have made to Kurdish people in the past. They are fleeing out of a sense of absolute desperation because of what is happening to them in Iraq. I know that small amounts of aid have been offered to Turkey to look after those refugees, but we now learn that many refugees have fled from Turkey to Iran in order to avoid the winter cold and the persecution that many people have suffered.

The Kurdish people are in crisis and that crisis is probably worse than it has ever been. It is vital that western Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union wake up to that and demand that the United Nations be allowed to send in aid at least to maintain the life and limb of those Kurdish people. Above all, there must be some long-term solution to the Kurdish problem. I have had meetings with ambassadors and I have had meetings at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about the plight of the Kurdish people.

I accept that the officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave) are appalled by the use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish people. I believe them when they say they are appalled and understand how they feel about it, but words alone will not solve the problem. The Iraqi Government will not take seriously one word that is said by any industrial power unless something serious is done. Because of the heavily censored press of Iraq, mere condemnation will have no effect whatever. The only thing that they will understand is the refusal of credit of up to £200 million for further trade with Iraq. We should not encourage business men who made money out of the war to make money out of the peace. The Fascist regime in Iraq needs to be isolated until it stops murdering the Kurdish people in their thousands. If we do not speak up, no one else will do so. I hope that the Minister recognises the horror that the Kurdish people face and the responsibility of all Governments to do something to protect the precious lives of those people.

This year has been one of unprecedented so-called environmental disasters. There have been floods in Bangladesh and floods and drought in Africa, and a series of hurricanes have devasted the people of central America and the Caribbean. Some of those disasters are natural—for example, a weather cycle causes hurricanes and consequent death and destruction—but others are not so natural. There is a strong link between the likelihood of flooding in Bangladesh and the deforestation of the Himalayas, just as there is between the drought in north Africa and the deforestation of the mountains of Kenya. On the one hand, deforestation causes microclimatic changes which bring about drought and, on the other hand, lead to loss of ground cover to prevent the run-off of water which itself causes floods. That precious water could contribute to the agriculture of the future.

This subject perhaps warrants a special debate so that we can discuss the effects of environmental pollution in this country, western Europe and throughout the world. It has been known for a long time that, if we continue to burn up fossil fuels at the present rate, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will rise. That in turn will cause a global warming, the melting of the polar ice caps and the invasion of much land by rising sea levels. Such climatic changes will bring about drought, floods and other major changes in the earth, just as other forms of pollution, which have led to the rapid depletion of the ozone layer, will undoubtedly cause further environmental problems. It is not as if there will be a cataclysmic end to world civilisation as we know it at some point in the 21st century. We shall see a growth in what we are told are natural disasters and a growth in environmental illnesses, poverty and hunger.

It falls to all Governments, particularly this Government, to consider whether their policies are perhaps unwittingly contributing to this process of environmental disaster. There are strict rules in this country, western Europe and the United States governing the dumping of toxic waste. Unfortunately, however, a large amount of the toxic waste that is not dumped, because of the tight regulations, is exported to poorer countries for disposal, with ensuing environmental damage.

We must consider carefully the control of all toxic waste and insist that it is not exported but is kept in this country where it can be disposed of safely. It should not be dumped on the poor people of the Third world who often lack the facilities to deal with it. There is something evil about offering toxic waste, which would cost more than $250 a tonne to dispose of in the United States, at a price of $40 a tonne to the people of poor countries. In some cases, the price offered to those people to deal with the toxic waste is greater than their gross national product. That shows how precious the wealthy countries of the world consider the disposal of such waste. Further action is required unless we are to see another incident such as that involving Karin B.

I wish to say a few words about debt and poverty in various parts of the world. Many of the environmental disasters in Brazil and elsewhere are a direct consequence of the debt crisis. Countries that are told that the only way that they can get themselves out of debt is to produce more cash crops for export to wealthy industrial countries more rapidly deplete their national resources, such as timber or anything else. They do so to increase their export revenue so that they can meet the rapidly rising interest rates of the World Bank and other financial institutions. This action contributes to environmental disaster. It serves to take wealth and resources from the Third world to the first world and the losers are the poor people of the poorest countries. Something must be done to stop the removal of wealth from the poorest countries to the richest, and that something is a world economy that does more than charge exorbitant interest rates to remove national resources from poor countries for the benefit of wealthy countries.

Many international agencies have tried, and continue to try, to do something about the important matters to which I have referred. The British Government left UNESCO—the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation—a few years ago. The Government are talking about returning when UNESCO is run in the way that is desired by the United States and Britain. I thought that the purpose of membership of an international agency was to participate in it, rather than dictate to it how it should be run. There is the United Nations environment programme. The total budget of the programme in 1986, the last year for which full accounts are available, was only $28 million, of which $1,471,000 was contributed by the British Government. It is the most woefully underfunded agency within the United Nations. It could be argued that it is the most vital of all the agencies. I hope that the Government will consider increasing Britain's contribution to it, increasing its powers and increasing its work. If they do not, we shall continue to see environmental disasters and continuing problems for the world's population. There is no room for complacency. It cannot be said that deregulation or free enterprise can solve the world's problems because they cannot. Instead they will lead to the destruction of the ozone layer, further pollution of the seas and, for example, destruction of the Antarctic.

I hope that the Government will be prepared to listen to the arguments and take them most seriously when they arise in the United Nations. I hope that the House will return to them on a full day's dabate.

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for making it possible for a Conservative Member, who is neither a Privy Councillor nor a knight, to participate in the debate. I believe that I am only the second Conservative Member to come within this category.

I wish to refer to the middle east. I hesitate to pontificate on Israel's problems, for I have no qualifications or even ostensible reasons to do so. I am not a Jew and I have no Jewish votes in my constituency. I have no family or business connections with the middle east. If I presume to take an interest in it, it is because, ever since I was an undergraduate 25 years ago, I have considered the existence of the Jewish state of Israel to be an inspiring cause. It was and is a fitting outcome to centuries of pogrom, persecution and horror, culminating in the dreadful genocide of the Nazi beasts, that millions of Jews should live once again in their historic homeland. I make no opology for that deep emotional feeling. I know that many hon. Members feel differently and that their hearts go out to the plight of the Palestinian Arabs. I respect their honourable concern and I ask only that they should respect mine.

It is easy for us, sitting here, to forget the deep feelings of those who live with the problems all the time. Some of those problems are irreconcilable. There are religious or nationalistic fanatics on both sides who have bombs, guns and Molotov cocktails and are prepared to use them. There are others who answer terror with terror, and who have been inadequately punished and too speedily pardoned. Some of those Jewish fanatics view all Arabs as enemies to be mercilessly transferred—that is, deported—to live anywhere other than in the land of Israel. They are matched by Arabs whose blind hate festers in camps in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere, dreaming of revenge for 1948 and a return to olive groves and houses that have long since been destroyed. Those are the people on both sides who are driving out moderation, frequently through violence or murder. Several brave Palestinians within the PLO wanted to talk to Israel, but they have been cut down by bullets fired by men like Abu Nidal and others who are interested only in victory, not in settlement.

All of us who know and love Israel have been distressed by what has happened in recent years. There has been unacceptable brutality and shameful scenes of repression. There can be no justification for the aimless beating of captives who have surrendered or who have been arrested during a riot. Whatever the provocation, whatever the Jewish outrage after terrorist incidents such as the fire-bombing of the bus in Jericho the other day, none of us who love Israel can for one moment condone such brutal repression. We are not blind to Israel's faults, but we recognise her strengths and her remarkable achievements.

There must be negotiations if Israel is to survive as the sort of country in which so many of us have long believed. There can be no future in permanent occupation of the west bank and Gaza. The Arab majority do not want them there and the famous "double D" equation of democracy and demography cannot indefinitely be ignored. If Israel is to remain a Jewish democratic state, it cannot indefinitely rule over 1·5 million hostile Arabs with no vote. Either the west bank and Gaza must be annexed, and the Arabs offered full Israeli citizenship, or the issue of self-rule for the Arabs must be grasped. The status quo cannot be an option.

Annexation would be wrong in principle and, ultimately, fatal to the Jewish state. Instead of facing that desperate dilemma, some Israeli politicians have taken refuge in the dread word "transfer." Others believe that the problem will be solved by millions more Jews flooding in from the Soviet Union or elsewhere to create more facts on the ground and so alter the demographic balance. Every serious student knows that those are impossible dreams and, for transfer, they are repulsive nightmares. The brutal language of Rabbi Kahane or the new Moledet party is light years away from the inspiring visions of the pioneers who struggled to build a modern democracy out of the ashes of Auschwitz.

On the question of the Palestine National Committee declaration in Algiers, the declared independence of Palestine is a less important part than the more or less explicit acceptance of resolutions 242 and 338, although without any unequivocal acceptance of Israel's right to exist and certainly without any promise of an end to violence. Nevertheless, it is certainly some progress. I do not believe that the Government should go overboard about it. They will doubtless wish to adhere to their usual policy of quiet and informal contact with the PLO at official level until there are considerably more forthcoming moves from the PLO towards public recognition of Israel and an end to violence. We certainly need to keep in close touch with the Bush Administration because of the important role that they play in this matter.

The difficulty of dealing with the PLO is twofold. First, it must explicitly accept Israel and stop the violence. Secondly, there is the question whether it can actually deliver a deal and, if so, whether it would be the sort of deal that Syria would tolerate or which any Government in Israel could accept and still last for more than five minutes. Since the Israeli elections, with their depressing outcome, and since the withdrawal of King Hussein—at least for the moment—from the scene, the position has become even more difficult. We can now forget about a United Nations international conference including the five members of the Security Council, which King Hussein wanted and which Mr. Peres and Mr. Schultz were prepared to accept. There is no support from Mr. Shamir and there is inadequate political backing in the Israeli electorate.

Further negotiations—and there must be such—need to involve the two super-powers and appropriate representatives of sovereign Arab countries, which can also include nominees of the PLO. At present, Israel will not sit down with the PLO, but she need not inquire too carefully into the antecedents of the Palestinians across the table. Mr. Arafat has plenty of experienced people whom he could use for that purpose and whose names are well known. Whether the Arab League, the Islamic Conference or some ad hoc grouping of Arab states is used for that purpose is not very important. It is a halfway house between bilateral negotiation and a United Nations-sponsored conference. The essential requirement is that the two super-powers are actively involved and that any Government of Israel can show their electorate that they are negotiating directly with sovereign Arab states and not solely with the PLO.

Israel is often told to speak to its enemies. The Arab League represents its enemies, and the PLO is part of it. Even if such negotiations can be set in motion—and it will need all the clout of the Americans and the Soviets to get Syria, Israel and the Palestinian deputation into the room at the same time—it is as well to be realistic about the negotiating aims. Heady talk from Algiers about a Palestinian independent state on the west bank and Gaza —incidentally, that has been rejected, of course, by Iran and the Syrian-backed rivals to the PLO—will not be a suitable basis for success.

The only realistic possibility involves, at least for the foreseeable future, a condominium of Jordan and the Palestinians, led by the PLO, over a demilitarised west bank and Gaza. Those are the outlines of a settlement which every serious student can perceive. Many of us must know in our hearts that there will be no independent PLO state of Palestine on the west bank and Gaza in the foreseeable future because no Israeli Government could accept such a thing and survive for five minutes.

There can be no Yamit style evacuation of Ariel, Kiryat Arba or other West Bank settlements, let alone dismantling the Gilos or Ramots of greater Jerusalem. Yamit, for example, was a fine town of 15,000 people. Now it is sand again in Egyptian Sinai, but the demolition of that new town was a strategic necessity that Israel accepted. Although Sinai was never part of biblical Eretz Israel, the evacuation of Yamit—I remember it well—brought almost intolerable strains on the Israeli democracy and it was carried through by a Likud Government led by Begin. No Israeli Government led by Shamir, Peres or a combination of either could peacefully evacuate and demolish west bank settlements, but sovereignty over them could, conceivably, pass to Jordan or be jointly shared by a condominium of Jordan and the Palestinians.

The way must be found for the Arabs of Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron, Khan Yunis and all the rest of them on the west bank and Gaza to rule themselves, but without their also ruling Jewish Ariel, Kedumin and Emmanuel. God knows it is a daunting, dreadful problem, even if the negotiations can ever be begun, let alone successfully completed, but we must try, and the sooner the better.

I wish to address my concluding remarks to my Jewish friends in Israel and in this country. There are some who do not care a fig what anyone else thinks, let alone listen to Gentiles such as I who do not live in Israel. There are many others who will bear to their dying day the unspeakable traumas of the holocaust, whether through personal involvement or the murders of loved ones. They will trust no one else with their own security. Perhaps there is nothing that I can say to them, except to respect their fears and concerns. There are hundreds of thousands of other Israelis, however, who wait fearfully every day for telephone calls about their sons and daughters patrolling with the Israeli defence forces in Hebron, Gaza city or indeed Galilee.

There are also others who have grown weary of international condemnation and of the constant strain of violence, war and terrorism. There are yet others who know in their hearts that concessions can be made for peace, just as they were successfully made in Sinai. They should make their voices heard, even though the election is over, as people of good will. Their voices should be echoed by hundreds of thousands of Arabs who are fed up with the squalid conditions, miserable lives and absent leaders who have achieved nothing for them in 40 years.

It is a shame that the phrase in which many of us believe has become the slogan of one small section of Israeli political society. I believe that that phrase should belong to all decent Israelis, except those on the repulsive and lunatic outer fringe. It should also belong to all moderate and sensible Arabs yearning for a better existence. It should be the slogan of world leaders, of Bush and Gorbachev, as well as King Hussein, Shamir, Peres and even Arafat—all those whose assent or acquiesence is vital for a lasting settlement. The words are simple and heartfelt and they are well known in Israel, "Peace now, before it is too late."

I understand that the Front-Bench Members want to start their winding-up speeches at 1.50 pm. Time may prevent me from echoing what the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Latham) said in his excellent speech. It was a thoughtful speech, which was delivered with sincerity. I listened with great interest, and I shall re-read with greater interest the points that he made.

I was disappointed with the content of the Queen's Speech on foreign affairs. A substantial chunk of the wording was directed towards foreign affairs, but it consisted largely of collective wishful thinking on the part of the Government. The real meat was on the second page where we got down to the legislative proposals that will affect us domestically. As we have lost a world role, this place now contemplates its legislative navel. We are about to get involved in a whole range of Bills that will do nothing to address, but will merely exacerbate, the country's problems, which have been created by the Government's policies.

I do not look for a return to the day when the country dominated the world militarily or economically, but I regret that we have so few chances to talk about world events. The Government do not seize the opportunities that our political and cultural traditions should give us—opportunities to influence world events more constructively than we do. We have a great deal to contribute to human experience. We could be visionary. Whatever is said about us, we remain a powerful, rich, influential nation capable of contributing greatly to the relief of world poverty, ignorance and enmity between nations. Indeed, we could solve such problems domestically if only the Government would turn their attention to them. Years of experience and expertise have produced enormous cultural and political respect for us around the world.

We could use those legacies, but instead we squander and abuse them under the leadership of a petty-minded xenophobe who struts around the world interfering and lecturing in her usual arrogant and high-handed manner. It is a pity that she does not spend a little more time going round this country and visiting the various communities of our inner-city areas to see the enormous and dangerous damage that her Government's policies have inflicted on so many of our people. She might try listening rather more than lecturing this and other nations. But I make those comments more in hope than in expectation.

In the past 18 months I have visited Nicaragua three times. The Government's attitude to Nicaragua emphasises the client-state status that we have in respect of United States foreign policy. I have heard the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State regularly say from the Dispatch Box that a political settlement in Nicaragua is needed, but never once has he or any of his Front-Bench colleagues voiced any criticism of United States policies there. There has been no word of condemnation about the mining of Nicaraguan territorial waters, the United States economic blockade of Nicaragua, or Contra terrorist forces being financed by the United States. We have heard not a word of open criticism because the Government dare not criticise. They are poodles of the United States when it comes to its policies on central America.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State never loses an opportunity to condemn Nicaragua, and if he were to reply today he would once again seize the opportunity to attack it. He says that Nicaragua is not complying with the terms of the Esquipulas accord, but he does not say anything about the death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala. In Nicaragua there are no death squads and no terrorist bases, but there are terrorist bases in Honduras. Instead of criticising those countries for their failure to meet the Guatemala peace accord provisions, he merely seizes every opportunity to attack Nicaragua.

We have had a debate and a series of questions on the damage caused to Nicaragua by hurricane Joan. The extent of the damage in Nicaragua is even greater than we first feared. Some 231,000 people, representing 6·4 per cent. of the population, have lost everything. Some of the worst damage has occurred within the bread-basket regions of that country. The hurricane has added problems to the already critical economic position. Nicaragua has been suffering the cost of aggression that amounts to almost $12,000 million and there have been 54,000 victims of United States-inspired terrorism led by the Contras. The damage has been enormous, yet, despite our close political and cultural links with Nicaragua, our contribution will be a measly £413,000, which includes the money that has come from the EEC.

Perhaps the Secretary of State for Defence or the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will advise me whether more money will be made available to Nicaragua. Will the Under-Secretary of State reconsider his decision not to visit that country when he tours central America next year? He says a great deal about Nicaragua. Perhaps he should visit that country to see the reality; we might then have a little more respect for him when he talks about it. I hope that those questions will be answered today, if not later. I assure the Under-Secretary of State that many Labour Members will return constantly to the subject of Nicaragua and the problems of central America.

When opening the debate the Foreign Secretary almost complained about the fact that part of it would be taken up by defence matters, but as the Gracious Speech linked the two subjects it is legitimate to take some time to discuss arms control and defence. I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that foreign affairs debates are limited in length and frequency and that we should find more time for them. That would provide more opportunities for my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) to give the House more of his cool, thoughtful and moderate speeches. His speech today could be summed up, in the words of Ernest Bevan, as a tour d'horizon.

The debate has covered a wide range of topics. The stage was set by the opening speakers, so my remarks will relate to defence and arms control. There are few areas in which the gap between the rhetoric and the performance of the Government is wider. We have optimistic references in the Gracious Speech to support for the 50 per cent. cuts in strategic weapons in the United States and Soviet arsenals. We have yet to hear what will be the attitude of the Government, as we approach the end of the first round of the strategic arms talks, to the Soviet suggestion that the United Kingdom should be involved in the second round. Perhaps the Soviets will place a condition on final agreement on the first round of British and French participation in the second round, as was envisaged at Reykjavik, when a further 50 per cent. of the nuclear arsenals will be subject to negotiation.

The Foreign Secretary made no meaningful reference to short-range and tactical weapons systems. The absence of concensus on modernising short-range and theatre weapons is one of the biggest problems confronting the Alliance, yet it appeared nowhere in the Foreign Secretary's speech. The agreement that was reached at Montebello about five years ago seems to have been made a long time ago in terms of the attitudes and priorities of the Alliance. The Secretary of State for Defence still bears the scars of the Monterey meeting shortly after the INF treaty was agreed, when he sought compensation for the cuts that that treaty envisaged. He was alone in the Alliance in seeking compensation and he returned so that his mistress could do better. She duly went to the NATO summit in March, when she sought to use her special relationship with President Reagan to secure consensus on modernisation.

As in so many instances, Chancellor Kohl arrived at Washington and spoke to President Reagan some time before the Prime Minister had even reached the starting blocks. We had the two communiques, one issued for European consumption and one for British consumption. The two did not add up to a consensus but were evidence of the wide gap between the British position on modernisation and the ambitions of the rest of Europe.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) said, when we went to the Federal Republic and spoke to what can be called all three sections of the German coalition, we found that there was no enthusiasm for the process of modernisation as envisagd by this Government. It would not be true to say that there is yet within the Federal Republic widespread support for a third zero, but it is clear that within the Bundeswehr and the Ministry of Defence in the Federal Republic there is at least some support for a 2¼ zero. If one goes to the Chancellor's office, one finds that the figure is about 2½ zero. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) referred to Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the Liberal Minister for Foreign Affairs. His proposition is clearer—he is certainly in the 2¾ zero position, getting towards the third zero position. In the most important European member of the Alliance, there is no enthusiasm for precipitate modernisation of those weapons systems.

Nevertheless, does not the hon. Gentleman think that the statement by Chancellor Kohl in the past few days about the modernisation of short-range nuclear forces is much more in line with the British Government's approach, and has he not had time to read it?

I am always reluctant to answer questions that start with the word "Nevertheless, does he not". I read the statement by Chancellor Kohl. His position is clear, that no decision will be taken until well after the general elections of 1990. That may be for internal political reasons, but it is nothing like as speedy a decision as would be required by our Prime Minister. I believe that it will be a major issue in the general elections. I suspect that there will not be a majority Government and that a coalition will be formed. They will have to put up with Mr. Genscher, and one of his conditions for support is that there will be little progress in modernisation well into the 1990s.

By then, the matter may have become academic in any case. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) made the point about the failure of the West to pick up President Gorbachev's offer of substantial cuts in conventional weaponry. The definition of disparities seems to lie at the heart of the delay—that was the impression that my right hon. Friend got when he spoke to the present United States Secretary of Defence. It was not the United States that was to blame for the failure to obtain a clear expression of the differences and disparities between the two blocs in Europe.

The latest defence Estimates show that in several areas there are considerable contradictions, for example, in main battle tanks. If one compares the figures quoted by the Ministry of Defence with those of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, one finds that according to the MOD figures there are 4,600 fewer NATO main battle tanks, 500 fewer NATO artillery systems, 7,230 more Warsaw pact anti-tank guided weapons systems and 730 more Warsaw pact tactical aircraft.

I want not to dwell on these details but to go behind them, and when we examine the problem of whether the beans that we are counting are the same on each side we are struck by the aridity of the Foreign Secretary's approach, which is so depressing. That is why we are concerned. We may be optimistic that an Alliance-wide application of the bean counting process may prove more realistic and honest than publications emanating from the Ministry of Defence. Since Gorbachev took power—between 1985 and 1988—the Soviet Union has increased the numbers of its main battle tanks in the central region more slowly than NATO. The Soviets have also cut the numbers of tactical aircraft at a greater rate than NATO. I could expand on these figures; suffice it to say that the information was given me by the Library and is freely available to anyone who wants confirmation.

In addition to these problems of conventional stability, there is the problem of how we will get to the negotiating table. In all the Foreign Secretary's remarks about the quality of the Alliance and the good relations with other European nations we heard nothing about the French involvement in winding up the CSCE and the relationship between NATO, the Warsaw pact countries and the non-aligned countries of Europe. This critical problem must be addressed. I cannot imagine that it was merely good manners on the Foreign Secretary's part that prevented him from mentioning the subject, and that he did not want to offend the French. I realise that he has quite a job building bridges to Europe after the damage done by the Bruges speech, but it is incumbent on the Defence Secretary to answer this point and to state the Government's attitude to these serious problems, which we hope can be nipped in the bud so that CSCE can be wound up, human rights and associated matters can be sorted out, and confidence-building measures can be put aside to enable the Warsaw pact and the 23 countries of NATO to consider the complicated issues of conventional stability as quickly as possible so that consultations may be held which can then be reported back to the other seven interested nations.

In the context of conventional arms we do not want the sort of haphazard cuts that have been made in British defences and which will continue to be made. The Gracious Speech did not mention defence expenditure, but the Prime Minister referred to an increase of more than £1 billion over the next three years—

One billion pounds a year.

This increase in no way repairs the damage done over the past few years. Between 1984–85 and 1988–89 there has been a cut in real terms of 7·8 per cent.; between 1988–89 and 1991–92 there is likely to be a cut of 0·8 per cent. A likely increase of 1·7 per cent. will follow in 1991, and an increase of 1·3 per cent. in the year after that. Perhaps those figures are the basis of the Prime Minister's confident predictions, but they are based on an assumption of inflation running at 5 per cent. this year, 3·5 per cent. next year and 3 per cent. the year after. Today we heard an announcement of a 1 per cent. increase in interest rates and of the largest ever monthly trade deficit, which is likely to result in the largest ever annual trade deficit, so these figures can clearly be given no credence and the confident noises by the Prime Minister are no more than noises made to try to appease realistic anxieties felt by her Back Benchers.

At this time of problems with the trade deficit we should delay no longer the decision to buy British tanks from Vickers, a decision that should have been taken yesterday on the basis of merit and of a planned and constructive development of our procurement policy. Certainly, on occasions, trade deficits impact upon defence expenditure and defence considerations. However, there can be no justification whatever for trade deficits being used as an excuse for sending the Chancellor of the Duchy to Iraq to bolster some kind of trade delegation when we have appalling evidence of the nature of the war that is being waged against the Kurds.

The Government deserve a degree of credit for their persistence in pursuing a chemical weapons ban treaty. We wish them well and hope that the optimism of the Gracious Speech is borne out by events.

One of the relatively few encouraging points that came out of the American election was the speech by George Bush in Toledo. He went so far as to say that, if he could get nothing else out of his presidency—I hope to God that he can—he hopes to get some form of chemical weapons ban treaty over as wide an area of the world as possible.

There was one reference during the debate to something that would cost precious little. That is how my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) referred to it in his measured and compelling speech. He spoke about the national shame that we must feel about the unrepresentative nature of much of our armed forces. He said that, if we are to encourage the confidence of our people, the armed forces must be truly representative of all our people and of all the communities that make up our society.

There have been several references to the new thinking in the Soviet Union and to new opportunities. Then there were remarks such as, "But, on the other hand." We heard a speech to that effect from the right hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Sir P. Blaker). He made a characteristically thoughtful speech. I had some sympathy with much of it. He made constructive suggestions about the development of ways in which the Soviet Union could be brought to task. His views were echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heller). In one of his characteristic speeches, he laid on the line the need to have wholehearted commitment to the improvement of human rights, not only in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe but throughout the world.

The new thinking must be supported not only by statements in the House but by positive economic support. If perestroika is about anything, it is about economic construction, just as it is about social reconstruction. The Soviets are basically materialists. Their Communist philosophy is basically economistic in its first application. With wealthy countries, we must seek a means of providing support for the best efforts of the Soviet Union.

It is a shame today that the Foreign Secretary has avoided the opportunity of backing Chancellor Kohl's suggestion that we should look towards new forms of economic assistance that would help and encourage the Soviet Union and encourage the economy of Eastern Europe. We are some considerable time and distance from the conditions that resulted in the COCOM arrangements. We should seek to assist the Soviet Union. At this time there are opportunities for new thinking and for new approaches to the problems of peace and disarmament. I am afraid to say that there is precious little in the Gracious Speech that suggests that there is evidence of new thinking on the part of the Government.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neil) for his opening remarks. Having one day in the debate on the Gracious Speech to discuss defence and foreign affairs is almost traditional and is welcome to all of us. Although today's debate has not been entirely balanced between foreign affairs and defence, it has nevertheless been an opportunity for both of these important subjects to be aired in the House.

The Gracious Speech has emphasised again the importance that the Government attach to the maintenance of our country's defences and our membership of NATO. That has been a constant theme of much that has been said in the debate. The speeches made by hon. Members of all parties have been of great interest and I hope to say a few general words first, and then to do the best I can to meet the suggestion put forward by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) and to answer as many as possible of the points that have been raised.

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary, who said—I think truthfully—that today there is great optimism in international affairs. It is widely thought that that is so, and that is the general atmosphere and attitude in any country that one visits.

Forty years ago, western European nations, struggling to recover from the devastation of a world war and threatened by the military might of a Soviet Union which was blatantly engaged in installing puppet regimes in the countries of eastern Europe, took an historic step. The Governments of Britain, France and the Benelux countries signed the Brussels treaty committing themselves to building a common defence system.

As hon. Members know, that initiative led directly to the formation of NATO—the 40th anniversary of which we shall celebrate next year. We have much to celebrate, including the continued membership of all NATO's original members, despite many strains over the years and far-reaching changes in its strategy and the expansion of the Alliance to encompass most of the free nations of Europe. Most of all, we shall be celebrating next April peace—the peace which NATO has guaranteed throughout these intervening 40 years.

It was Ernest Bevin who said in 1948:

"If we are to preserve peace and our own safety at the same time we can only do so by the mobilisation of such a moral and material force as will create confidence in the west and inspire respect elsewhere".

NATO has fulfilled those criteria admirably.

The resolve shown by the Alliance in recent years was rewarded with the INF agreement and the start of a process which, for the first time, will lead to the elimination of an entire class of nuclear weapons. It gave me particular pleasure to visit RAF Molesworth in September to witness the removal of the first cruise missiles from western Europe under the terms of the treaty.

The lessons learned during the long years while the Soviet Union refused to negotiate seriously about arms control should not be forgotten now that a more realistic outlook and less aggressive stance appear to have been adopted by the Soviet leaders.

The security of this country and the other NATO nations is vital and demands a sober approach to arms control negotiations, not an uncritical embrace of superficially attractive proposals.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

The hon. Gentleman has already made a speech.

Are you the Speaker?

Order.

I should like to ask the Secretary of State a question about NATO. Is he really suggesting that it was good that the Greek colonels could use NATO weapons to suppress democracy in Greece and that the Turks could use NATO weapons to invade Cyprus?

The hon. Gentleman knows that those events happened some time ago. NATO made its position clear at the time. The good thing is that both those countries have survived those experiences and are still in NATO.

Only last Wednesday Dr. Worner, the Secretary General of NATO, emphasised the importance of maintaining strong modern forces in the Alastair Buchan memorial lecture which he delivered in London to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He remarked:

"It would be very odd if the Alliance were to jeopardise its policy of deterrence just at a time when there are prospects of making the Soviet leadership understand the importance of its contribution to maintaining … stability in Europe …"

We are cautiously optimistic about the possibility of securing further arms control agreements, particularly on conventional and strategic nuclear forces. It is disturbing that, despite Mr. Gorbachev's talk of "reasonable sufficiency" in defence, we have not yet seen any evidence of a slowing down in the rate at which the Soviet Union is modernising its own forces or, as my right hon. and learned Friend said in his opening remarks, a reduction in those forces, which are grossly in excess of what might legitimately be needed for defence. We have not seen a diversion of resources from the military to the civil sector, although it is rightly said to be one of Mr. Gorbachev's aims. We have not seen a change in the structure of Warsaw pact forces, which remain organised for large-scale offensive action. While this capability for aggression exists, it is vital that the West should keep up its guard.

There are some signs of change. Defence Secretary Carlucci has sat in the cockpit of a Blackjack bomber, and MiG 29 Fulcrum aircraft took part in this year's Farnborough air show.

The exchange of visits this summer between Porton Down and the Soviet chemical warfare establishment at Shikany provided an opportunity for the Soviet Union to be more forthcoming about its chemical weapon capabilities.

As my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary reminded the House in his opening speech, a global ban on chemical weapons is a goal to which we attach a high priorty. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Clackmannan for mentioning that he appreciated that point. The Soviet Union possesses the world's largest and most comprehensive chemical warfare capability. It is right that we should look to it to give a lead in the negotiations to eliminate these inhuman weapons. We require greater openness from it to ensure that the complex problems of verificaton of any agreement could be met.

In this context, the fact that the visit to Shikany took place at all is encouraging, but while we showed considerable openness during the Soviet visit to the chemical defence establishment at Porton Down, the return visit revealed that the Soviets still take a different approach to secrecy. The helicopter overflight did not afford a view of the whole site, many of our questions were either evaded or not answered at all and access was denied to a facility which commercially available satellite photographs clearly indicated was closely connected to the Shikany complex. So, although the exchange of visits was a step forward, the Soviet Union will have to be far more open about its chemical weapons and other capabilities before we can have the confidence necessary for further arms control agreements.

In the meantime, we must take every step necessary to preserve our security. We must maintain a strong defence, and continue to invest in up-to-date forces, both conventional and nuclear. The importance that this Government attach to defence is demonstrated by our record. Defence spending last year was more than one fifth higher in real terms than when we took office. We have ordered 64 new vessels for the fleet, seven regiments of Challenger tanks and 23 battalions of armoured vehicles for the Army, and 500 new aircraft for the RAF. I am pleased to announce further today that the main development the day before contracts for the European fighter aircraft were signed yesterday in Munich. These contracts are a major step towards producing this advanced, agile fighter, which will enter service with the RAF in the 1990s.

The strength of our commitment to defence was re-emphasised earlier this month when my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced substantial additions to prevous defence spending plans as a result of which the budget will now be growing by about £1 billion a year over the next three years. We intend to ensure that these extra resources are used effectively. Our drive to pursue value for money will continue—in the procurement of defence equipment and the management of defence.

Is the £1 billion per annum in real terms? If it is, will the Secretary of State confirm that that will be an increase of about 5 per cent. per annum?

I can confirm that the £1 billion extra each year is in cash terms. The figure in real terms is approximately an average of 1 per cent. growth per annum. that is much better than most of our NATO allies.

The Minister talks about real term growth. What are the inflation assumptions?

They are the same as for all the rest of public expenditure published in the expenditure White Paper. Therefore, it is certain that they are pari passu with the rest of the public expenditure provisions. We expect that to be a healthy and useful addition to the defence budget.

The money devoted to defence is not the whole story. We rely critically on the courage, efficiency and dedication of the members of our armed services. We see these qualities most obviously in the fight against terrorism. The contribution that the services make to preserving the peace in Northern Ireland against a vicious and ruthless enemy deserves our wholehearted admiration and gratitude. Our service people also contribute to internatinal peace keeping. A contingent serves in Egypt with the Sinai-based multinational force and observers group. Another contingent serves with the United Nations forces in Cyprus.

As my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary said earlier, our naval forces remain on patrol in the Gulf. In the two years up to the beginning of this month, when the Armilla patrol stopped accompanying entitled merchant ships, they had accompanied over 1,000 merchant vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, more than all the other Western navies put together. No merchant vessels have been attacked while in company with warships of the patrol. This is a magnificent record.

I am grateful to hon. Members who have contributed to make this a valuable and interesting debate. I am afraid that I cannot extend all of that fulsome praise to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). With respect to the right hon. Gentleman, I thought that his speech was thoroughly unworthy of the Front-Bench spokesman of a major political party. However, to be a little more generous to him, I have to say that he had an extremely unenviable task because speaking in a debate on defence and foreign affairs for a party that has a policy neither on defence nor on foreign affairs would tax the most skilled foreign affairs spokesman. The right hon. Gentleman did not reach the standard that he should have reached.

The right hon. Member for Gorton commented on the speech that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made in Bruges. In those comments, the right hon. Gentleman was at his most waspish and unconvincing. He fought tooth and nail the Single European Act, and it is a bit rich for him to offer us lessons on how we should interpret it. That point was well made by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber.

The Single European Act sets out how decisions are to be taken to build up the kind of Europe that all member states want to see. It does not say or try to say what those decisions should be. Perhaps the Opposition have not fully appreciated that. The Prime Minister's speech at Bruges was a strong statement of Britain's commitment to Europe. She said, "Our destiny is in Europe". It was also a strong statement of the kind of Europe that Britain wants to see, one that is more interested in building prosperity than in building castles in the air. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) said, that vision is widely shared by the other member states.

The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) asked about the BBC world service, but he was very wide of the mark. To hear the hon. Gentleman one would think that the world service had virtually been wound up. The BBC world service has had a 40 per cent. increase in funding in real terms since 1979–80, and output has increased from 711 hours per week in 1979 to more than 767 hours per week now. The Government have already spent about £90 million on improving audibility, and capital funding will continue on the implementation of a 10-year audibility programme. The British Council has been given an extra £6 million for the financial year 1989–90, and that is a 10 per cent. increase in real terms in the direct grant that it receives from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That means that the mixed money grant as a whole will be more than 7 per cent. higher in 1989–90 in real terms than it was this year.

rose—

I am sorry, but I wish to press on.

We are always pleased to see in these debates the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). His speech was delightful, except in the middle section where I fear that he ran out of material. It was much more entertaining in the middle but was devoid of content.

I wish to say a few words about the conventional stability talks to which the right hon. Member for Leeds, East rightly referred. We want those talks between the 23 members of NATO and the Warsaw pact to start as soon as possible. It is fair to say that we have played a leading role in discussions in Vienna on a mandate for those talks. The broad objectives of the Alliance for the forthcoming talks have already been agreed by NATO Heads of Government at their last summit, and we want to present to the Vienna meeting a substantive and balanced document. Progress on human rights is also important. It is thanks to Western efforts that we have come a long way on that subject.

The right hon. Gentleman also suggested that the NATO nations were entering a period of unilateral disarmament within NATO as a result of budgetary pressures. Of course, he is right that there were budgetary pressures. I have no doubt that the NATO Alliance collectively over the past nine years has made progress, thanks to the influence of the Government, and successively maintained a policy of deterring aggression through sustaining the strength of its nuclear and conventional forces. Many NATO nations have achieved real growth following the lead given by the United States and the United Kingdom, which has permitted a substantial investment in modern and effective weapon systems, overwhelmingly in the conventional field.

In the case of the United Kingdom, it is now clear that we are back on the path of sustained real growth in the defence budget and there are encouraging signs in other NATO nations, such as Norway and Germany. We attach great importance to the continued commitment of American forces in Europe which is vital to European security. I am sure that the United States Administration, under President-elect Bush, will understand fully the importance of that commitment and the need to maintain it. We should not be rushed, as the right hon. Gentleman wished, into hasty or unilateral reductions. The goal is to tackle the massive Soviet superiority, a policy that we can follow only from a position of adequate strength.

I also wish to respond to the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-West (Dr. Hampson). As the House is aware, we are considering the options for replacing the Chieftain tank. Ministers had a first meeting to discuss that yesterday, as widely mentioned, and it is a difficult procurement matter. No decisions were taken. Further work is required and has now been put in hand. It is still our intention to reach a decision on that by the end of the year.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I must press on.

I must also congratulate the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) on raising the issue of the results of the first year of ethnic monitoring of applicants and recruits to the armed services. I listened with great interest to his balanced and valuable speech. I can assure him that the armed services go to considerable lengths to ensure that their recruiting efforts reach all ethnic groups and that their selection procedures are without bias. In the light of the results of the initial survey, I wholly accept that further action is required, and we are already fully committed to such action.

The next step is to establish the reasons for the low rate of applications from ethnic minorities and the lower success rates when they occur. We are seeking the views of the Commission for Racial Equality and of the members of the Home Secretary's advisory council on race relations on how best to carry that work forward. I take the hon. Gentleman's point that we have an obligation not merely to be even-handed in this, but to appear to be over even-handed.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber raised the question of modernisation and force restructuring. To maintain deterrence at a minimum level of forces in the face of the Soviets' continuing modernisation of their own forces, including their short-range nuclear systems, we have to ensure continually that our forces are effective, responsive and survivable. The process of modernisation and restructuring the Alliance's forces will in no way undercut the real reduction in NATO's land-based nuclear weapons resulting from the implementation of the INF agreement.

NATO will continue to maintain only the minimum level of forces consistent with credible deterrence. The NATO nuclear stockpile in Europe is consistent with that. It is today at its lowest level for 20 years and has been reduced by 35 per cent. since 1979. That shows that our policy is working in the face of the need to keep a strong defence and to base upon that further armaments reductions. It is delivering a reduction in nuclear weapons when all previous attempts at such a policy did not succeed.

I hope that the House will give warm support to the Government for their continued pursuit of future reductions in nuclear weapons and the abolition of all chemical weapons throughout the world, and to do so from a position of strength. The Government have been able to provide that strength and to establish a firm basis from which to negotiate reductions in armaments. Without that strength, I am convinced that we would never have had the reductions. With it, we can say that it is a highly successful policy.

Yesterday evening I visited Mr. Walter Evans, a pensioner living in my constituency, who, at 68 years of age, is seriously ill from mesothelioma, which is an asbestos-related cancer. In 1976, he lost a lung. For the past seven weeks he has been struggling to breathe with the help of a nebulizer machine beside his bed in the front room of his home. Mr. Evans had the misfortune to live in Old row, Armley, in my constituency, from 1939 until the 1970s. He lived close to the asbestos factory of J W Roberts. He can tell the story of how his wife used to wipe the greyish white dust off the window sills of their home at 9.30 am, and that an hour later, if the machines at Roberts were blowing out dust, there would be another layer of dust half an inch thick.

A neighbour of his grew up in Arley place, which is nearby, and he is now 44 years of age. Both his father, who died at 50, and his mother at 53, were certified as dying of lung cancer. In the case of his mother, there was tearing of the stomach lining. He described how as young children they played in the dust. They scooped up the dust into piles with their hands to kick the little mounds down, he said. Others who went to the nearby Armley clock primary school described how the playground was always covered in dust. Children wrote their names in the dust. The girls marked out the hopscotch squares in the dust.

Another resident, Mrs. Shires, recalled:

"If you walked right behind the factory it was like cotton. It was in the cracks in the pavement behind the factory."

Mrs. Annie Muscroft of Nunnington terrace has said:

"It used to be blue-white. We used to sweep this blue dust up. It was blue fluffy stuff."

Jack Peat of Nunnington terrace has said:

"The dust was always there while I was at school, lying on walls or window ledges if it had been damp. It was like snow fall."

Mrs. Annie Hall of Arley place recalls:

"I used to get up in the morning and the other side of the street always had a layer of fine dust with footmarks on it from the early morning workers."

That dust is now proving to have been the cause of mesothelioma. It is a comparatively rare but deadly cancer of the lining of the lung and stomach. The only known cause of it is exposure, even for the briefest of periods, to asbestos dust. The disease can lie dormant for 50 years. There is no known cure. Once the tumour develops, a life is usually shortened to death within two years. In an area of west Leeds, Armley, within a half-mile radius of the Roberts asbestos factory, hundreds of residents in the surrounding terraced streets, which run right up against the factory walls, regularly encountered dust from the Roberts factory until it was closed in 1958, after operating for 70 years.

We are indebted to Mr. Richard Taylor, a reporter with the Yorkshire Evening Post, who, in the best traditions of investigative journalism, carefuly followed up routine coverage of the Leeds coroner's court reports about four years ago. He detected and traced a pattern in the past few years of an incredibly high incidence of mesothelioma deaths in Armley around the Roberts factory. A series of revealing articles were published in the Yorkshire Evening Post in the past year, which I have forwarded to the key Government Departments. Richard Taylor put a magnifying glass over the densely populated inner-city area near the Roberts factory. He examined death certificates and interviewed relatives and neighbours of the deceased. His evidence showed an incredibly high incidence of mesothelioma, and that was backed by the Leeds coroner's records.

Coroner Gill identified 22 deaths from mesothelioma between 1977 and 1988. There are now 29 identified cases. Being revealed is a pattern of death from mesothelioma for people who lived close to the Roberts factory. Coroner Gill commented:

"It was only as a trend over a number of years that a more precise picture appeared. I have very few other cases from other areas of Leeds. It is significant that virtually all the cases we have come from that area."

Mr. Alfred Herod moved to Arksey terrace with his parents in 1936 and lived there until 1948. His wife recalls that as a child he used to get a good hiding for coming home covered in dust. They moved from Armley in 1964. He fell ill and died in June 1965, aged 34.

Mr. Ronald Huby lived a few doors away from Mr. Herod from 1932, when he was two years old, until he married in 1953. Like the others, he lived with the dust, never imagining that it could cause harm. In 1976, he began to experience difficulty in breathing and died in 1978, aged 48, of mesothelioma. Before he died he urged his wife to press for compensation, but neither she nor Mr. Herod received any. Mrs. Herod was refused legal aid and, like many others, could not face the prospect of lengthy and expensive legal proceedings against a factory that had closed.

The Yorkshire Evening Post names many others who have died in their late 50s or early 60s—for most of whom the only connection with asbestos was through living close to the Roberts factory. It appears from the evidence of such an intense mesothelioma cluster that the factory had, and is still having, a lethal impact on the people in its neighbourhood. One of Britain's leading experts on asbestos said that the Roberts factory is proving to be one of the most environmentally dangerous in the country. Families have paid, and are still paying, a high price for living near it.

Although mesothelioma is increasingly appearing on the death certificates of people known to have lived near the Roberts factory—and the disease can be dormant for decades before it strikes—deaths from contact with asbestos dust are not recorded as such. There are many death certificates that state bronchial pneumonia, tuberculosis or emphysema. Most deaths do not have an inquest or a post mortem, so many people may have died of mesothelioma unacknowledged.

The facts about asbestos have been known for nearly a century. In 1894 a factory inspectorate report provided the first warnings that exposure to asbestos could mean health danger and premature deaths. By 1931, the danger of asbestos was so apparent that the Government passed asbestos regulations directing that there should be no asbestos dust in the workplace. By 1935, the link between lung cancer and asbestos was clearly recognised. In 1969, the Government introduced new regulations fixing what were then called "safe dust levels." As we know, in 1985 the Asbestos (Prohibitions) Regulations, the Asbestos Licensing Regulations and the Asbestos Products Safety Regulations all came into effect.

Recently, I received a helpful statement from the Under-Secretary of State at the former Department of Health and Social Security, the noble Lord Skelmersdale. In response to my letter, dated 15 March, he said:

"Research supports an association between residence and school attendance but no occupational exposure near asbestos factories and malignant mesothelioma. In the particular context of Armley, the greater awareness of this condition by physicians, surgeons and pathologists may well contribute to the number of cases observed."

I agree with that, but must challenge the next sentence, which stated:

"It was only subsequent to the early 1960s that mesothelioma hazard associated with asbestos exposure was recognised."

The JW Roberts factory in Armley was a world producer of asbestos-based goods for 70 years until operations ceased on site in 1958. It was one of the four founder members of Turner and Newall Ltd., now known as T and N plc. This was a well-established major local employer, but by March 1928 Dr. H. De Carle Woodcock—a well-known lung specialist—drew attention, at the inquest of Walter Leadbeater of Aviary mount in Armley, to the inhalation of asbestos dust as the cause of fibrosis of the lungs.

In August 1928 the Leeds coroner adjourned an inquest on Margaret Marden who died at the age of 34. She worked at Roberts and her symptoms pointed to asbestos poisoning. It is reported that the inquest was adjourned so that the coroner could pay a personal visit to the factory and obtain expert medical opinion. At the same inquest the assistant police surgeon, Dr. John Kelly, pointed out that it would take 10 to 12 years for asbestos disease to manifest itself.

In February 1929 Mrs. Lily Hensley, aged 41, died and the coroner suggested that the jury return a verdict of death from the inhalation of asbestos dust. Mrs. Hensley had worked at the Roberts factory for 20 years. At the time of her death her mother reported that steps had been taken at the asbestos works to prevent the dust floating about, but that was after her daughter had ceased to work there. Therefore, the danger to employees from asbestos dust was acknowledged many years before 1960.

JW Roberts still exists as a constituent part of T and N plc. In its 1987 annual report and accounts there is an interesting note to the accounts on page 32:

"The company and certain subsidiaries are among many companies named as defendants in a large number of court actions concerned with alleged asbestos-related diseases in the USA and are among a number of defendants to claims in the UK from employees and former employees. Because of the slow onset of these diseases the directors expect that similar claims will be made in future years."

Mesothelioma, as a result of exposure to asbestos dust, is not an "alleged asbestos-related disease"; it is a proven one.

The notes to the 1987 annual accounts also include the following budget line on page 23:

"Asbestos-related disease claims, including legal costs for 1987—£5·1 million".

How much of this has been paid to former employees and their families? I do not know, but claims have been made and there are rumours of out-of-court settlements. But local people who did not work at Roberts, whose relatives have died from mesothelioma as a result of living nearby or who may now have the disease, want to know if they can claim any recompense from the company.

In reply to my inquiry to the Lord Chancellor's Department, the issue of damages at civil law was raised. The reply reads:

"I am unaware of any case in which people who live or have lived near a factory, as opposed to workers at the factory, have received damages for diseases caused by asbestos. However, there is nothing in law which would prohibit such people from bringing a claim for negligence against the proprietor. The success or failure of such a claim would depend, as it does in all negligence actions, on the answers to such questions as whether the company knew or should have known of the dangers; whether they took all reasonably practicable steps to limit or remove the dangers; whether it was foreseeable that the plaintiff would develop the disease, and whether the disease was in fact caused by the defendant's breach of duties.

A further question to be considered would be whether the claim was barred under the Limitation Act. It would no doubt be easier for an employee to prove a case of negligence, particularly since there are statutory duties on an employer towards his employees which he does not owe to others."

It is precisely those "others" that I represent in the House. People such as Mr. Evans face difficulties in even considering taking out court action against T and N plc. It is also clear that the cases of some former employees have dragged on so long that the dying person has never lived to see the end of it. In the light of that, I appeal to the Minister to use his powers to initiate a full-scale inquiry into the mesothelioma deaths of people who lived in Armley near the Roberts factory. Will the Minister ask the Health and Safety Executive to prepare what I think is known as an "occasional report" as a starting point, and use it as a focus to initiate a Government inquiry that co-ordinates the resources within the range of Government Departments, particularly the Department of Employment, drawing on the expertise of that executive, the Department of Health, the Department of the Environment and the Lord Chancellor's Department?

I appreciate that the scale of this environmental pollution is much wider than the remit of the Health and Safety Executive. The full picture of local residents who live there and who have died or moved away and of the children who attended the Armley clock primary school still needs to be compiled from electoral rolls, school registers and health records. Could not the Department of Health, for example, be asked to send a circular to all coroners and health authorities to seek out recorded deaths from mesothelioma with a view to finding those who lived close to the Roberts factory at Armley? Only then can the extent of the tragic impact of its presence be properly assessed.

The scientific link between mesothelioma and asbestos dust from Roberts needs to be firmly established beyond doubt from contemporary history and medical evidence. Nor should the dormant period of the disease be a barrier to seeking recompense against a factory that closed in 1958, but which is part of a continuing and successful company with a turnover of £961 million and whose profits before taxation in 1987 increased by 73 per cent. to £77·3 million.

The relatives of those who have died and who are dying seek recompense for the painful shortening of life by mesothelioma. They know, as is acknowledged in the Turner and Newall annual report, that the company faces huge claims for compensation from the Chase Manhattan bank and the Prudential Insurance company in the United States, but they do not have the means to stake their claim as those companies do. They want to know how they, too, can be included in the note to the accounts in Turner and Newall's annual report headed, "Asbestos-related disease claims." I urge the Minister to initiate an inquiry and to ensure that all its documentation and findings are made available as evidence to be used in any civil action that may take place.

Scientific developments based on experiment will always include risks and tragic discoveries. There is a tragic irony in the picture of Lady Asbestos as a Greek goddess and symbol of protection which was first used in 1918 in publicity material produced by Turner Brothers Asbestos. The tragedy is that that shield of protection against the elements has proved to be such a lethal weapon, killing thousands painfully and prematurely.

A key question, highlighted in the Lord Chancellor's letter, remains and that is whether the company knew or should have known of the danger. On 6 December a Yorkshire Television documentary, "First Tuesday", which has conducted major research on the tragic legacy of the Armley asbestos factory, may address this question. For my part, I frequently walk and drive the streets around that old factory building, visiting my constituents. I cannot believe that those who owned and ran Roberts can have gone in and out without seeing the dust everywhere on the surrounding streets and pavements. If they knew that their workers within had to be protected from the asbestos dust, how could they have ignored the position of their neighbours who lived with that dust outside? It was not rendered neutral or innocuous as it left their premises.

If they knew, why did they knowingly continue to ask not only their employees but local residents for a generation to pay the price with their lives for the profits of continued asbestos production? Is not the price of a life, albeit by a delayed reaction, too high a price to pay? Should not the company be responsible for that deadly legacy? The Armley asbestos tragedy cannot remain private and hidden because it is not yet over.

I urge the Minister to ask for a Health and Safety Executive report, to initiate a full-scale inquiry and to use his powers to ensure that all documentation can be made available in any action relating to claims for recompense by those who have inherited that deadly legacy, be they my constituents or—because they may have moved from Armley—the constituents of other hon. Members.

I compliment the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) on the way in which he has brought this important subject before the House and I extend my personal thanks for his courtesy in giving me an idea of the way in which he intended to raise the matter.

The hon. Gentleman laid out a catalogue of misery and death with which he and his constituents have had to live. I am all too keenly aware that, whatever the cause of those deaths may have been, even a debate on the Floor of the House may seem an inadequate reaction.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned several important subjects that I shall do my best to cover. I fully appreciate that compensation for people whose health has been affected by such circumstances is a grave and major problem. Equally, nothing that I say could make up for the loss of good health or the suffering or death of a husband, wife, parent or child. It is possible that the families of those who have died as a result of living near an asbestos factory may be able to obtain compensation by claiming damages at civil law. If any of the hon. Gentleman's constituents have not already done so, I urge them to take legal advice.

The hon. Gentleman will accept that I cannot pass judgment on the individual circumstances of the Roberts factory in Leeds. The problems are compounded by the time lag of the disease and by the fact that sometimes such firms are no longer in business. The point that was made by the Lord Chancellor's Department is that, although it is easier to prove a case where statutory regulations exist, it does not mean that a case cannot be proved according to the general law. I make no apology for repeating that, if any of the hon. Gentleman's constituents have not yet taken legal advice—I cannot pass judgment on why a legal aid application may have been refused—they should do so now.

Employees who have contracted an asbestos-related disease during their work and whose employers have ceased to trade, can claim compensation under the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Protection) Act 1979.

The hon. Gentleman suggested conducting an inquiry to identify former residents of Armley who may be affected by the disease. I understand his reasons for suggesting that, but I wonder how useful it could be. First, it would be almost impossible to conduct such an exercise. The logistics of tracing and identifying such people are formidable. Not only was the factory in operation for more than 50 years, but it ceased operation more than 30 years ago. By now, people who lived in Armley during that period could be spread not just over the country but over the four corners of the globe. Furthermore, what could such an inquiry achieve? As the hon. Gentleman said, this tragic disease is incurable. Mounting a well-publicised search to identify potential sufferers may cause much needless concern among former residents, many of whom will be elderly.

I take this opportunity to address the long and complex story of asbestos, what we have learnt about its dangers and the controls that have been applied to its use. There is the related and broader question of protection for members of the public who live close to factories or other places where potentially dangerous activities are carried out.

Asbestos is a useful material, not least because it is chemically inert. It does not react easily with other substances and is not easily damaged or destroyed. For a long time it was also assumed to be biologically inert in its effects on the human body. Awareness of those effects grew slowly. That was partly because the cancers that we now know to be caused by asbestos do not usually appear until many years after the sufferer was exposed. Furthermore, they are often indistinguishable from cancers caused by other substances. That made asbestos hard to spot as the hazard that we know it is.

Those facts are important in the case of the Roberts works at Armley where production ceased in 1958. To understand fully the situation, we have to look at what was believed about asbestos at the time. Evidence that asbestos was harmful accumulated during the 1920s and 1930s. But attention was focused on its ability to produce asbestosis, a type of lung tissue damage, something like coal miners' dust disease. There was no suspicion that it could also cause cancers.

To protect process workers against the risk of asbestosis, the 1931 regulations were introduced. Their main requirement was that workers' exposure to asbestos dust should be controlled by the use of exhaust ventilation equipment or protective clothing and breathing apparatus. It was still believed that there was a threshold level of exposure below which the risk vanished, and some processes were excluded from the 1931 regulations on that ground. The regulations, then, were based on the evidence available at the time, and that was the legislation that existed to protect the employees at the Roberts works up to the time of its closure in 1958.

The regulations did not extend to members of the public, and people living in the neighbourhood were covered only by the Public Health Act 1936 and civil law generally. That Act empowers local authorities to deal with statutory nuisance, including dust prejudicial to the health of or a nuisance to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood.

It is possible that there were escapes of dust from the Roberts works but, even if heavy by today's standards, they would almost certainly not have been judged prejudicial to health at the time. That is because the health risk was thought to be asbestosis, and it is highly improbable that dust levels in the open environment would ever be high enough to cause that disease. It is even hard to say whether the dust levels would have been considered a nuisance, but in any case steps taken to deal with mere nuisance would not have eliminated what we now know to be the real health risk.

The hon. Gentleman says that many of his constituents suffered from mesothelioma. That would suggest that blue asbestos, the sort most closely associated with mesothelioma, was being used. That is quite possible, although we do not know exactly what was being done at the factory. Nor do we have any data about actual asbestos exposure for either employees or members of the public nearby. At the time no one would have thought it worth collecting. To make matters worse, we cannot even check what might have happened by looking at factory inspectorate records for the period, because records from so long ago are not kept.

Since then, as many people will know, enormous changes have taken place. During the 1960s the link between asbestos and lung cancer became clearer and the 1931 regulations were replaced by the Asbestos Regulations 1969. However, those regulations were still confined to the protection of factory workers, and they still embodied the idea of a threshold level of exposure below which nothing more need be done. The regulations themselves did not specify the threshold, but separate control limits were set and the regulations were used to enforce those limits. It was not long before it began to appear that even those standards were not good enough. Crucially, it was realised that asbestos-induced lung cancer, and mesothelioma can both be caused by relatively low exposure.

With hindsight, of course, we can now see that the dust that escaped from the Roberts factory, and that may or may not have been considered a nuisance at that time, was sufficient to cause those diseases. But that had not been established in the years when the factory was in operation.

In 1976 the Health and Safety Commission set up the Advisory Committee on Asbestos, which reported in 1979. It recommended, among other things, that the assumption that there was a safe threshold should be dropped, and that control should be aimed at reducing exposure, as far as reasonably practicable. The control limits for white and brown asbestos were reduced. In 1983 the HSC called for another review of the medical evidence and the control limit for white asbestos was reduced again.

Nowadays, in contrast to what I said earlier, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind that asbestos dust was prejudicial to health and a statutory nuisance. I mentioned the possibility that blue asbestos had been used at the Roberts works, and its links with mesothelioma. Since the beginning of 1986 the use of both blue and brown asbestos has been prohibited altogether by the Asbestos (Prohibitions) Regulations. In fact, the control of exposure to blue asbestos had become so strict that its use had ceased long before.

I should emphasise that the dust emissions which seem to have been occurring at the Armley factory in Leeds could not happen under today's regime. One final area in which asbestos can cause concern is the demolition of buildings that have contained asbestos or an asbestos process in the past. Asbestos removal can be just as worrying. As well as being subject to all the legislation that I have mentioned, anyone now doing such work has to be licensed under the Asbestos (Licensing) Regulations 1983.

I have tried in my few remarks to give the background in a way that I hope will assist the hon. Gentleman. Anyone who listened to the debate must have been impressed by the detailed care that he gave the subject. If there are points that we need to pursue in correspondence, I shall be delighted to do so when I have had a chance to read his speech in Hansard.