Intermediate Nuclear Forces

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:32 pm on 31 October 1983.

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Photo of Mr Michael Heseltine Mr Michael Heseltine The Secretary of State for Defence 3:32, 31 October 1983

We shall come to what decision it was.

Moreover, it was clearly a decision about the response to the threat of the SS20s and about NATO's own theatre nuclear forces in a similar area of capability that would be needed.

I would go further. The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen), the then Foreign Secretary and close colleague of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government, working with him and seeing eye to eye on those critical matters, was quoted, I hope accurately, in The Observer on this matter recently. I hope that he will be fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, but, if I might anticipate the right hon. Gentleman's views on some of the speeches of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was quoted in The Observer as saying: There is Denis Healey trying to pretend we never made any decision at all, which is nonsense. But it is equally nonsense"— as I have said— to say that the last Labour Government made all the decisions that led to cruise coming to Britain. The House will perhaps detect at least a difference of emphasis between those two former collegues; not what might yet be called a full split, just a lapse of memory. But in trying to assess the merits of aguments hidden in papers denied our inspection but widely leaked on both sides of the Atlantic, the House will want to bear in mind two factors.

First, all the other Governments that were represented at that April 1979 NATO meeting, all those Governments who put their names to the same communique as Fred Mulley, had within six months turned their support for that communique into support for the decision to deploy cruise and Pershing missiles by the end of this year.

We are asked to believe that, alone of the NATO allies at that meeting, Labour in office would have taken a different course. Just to show how incredible that assertion is, there can be found Bill Rodgers' statement in Hansard[Interruption.]I do not understand why the Labour party should doubt Mr. Rodgers' position, speaking then on behalf of the Labour party. Mr. Rodgers' position on the Labour party's defence policy is no further away from its present position than is the position of the former Prime Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the previous Labour Government. The only thing about Mr. Rodgers is that he continued to say much the same things out of office.

Let us remember Mr. Rodgers' words when he responded to the statement by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym), the then Secretary of State, who made the original twin-track decision announcement to the House. With the full authority of the Labour shadow Cabinet Mr. Rodgers said: As the House knows, when the right hon. Gentleman"— my right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East— made his statement on 13 December, we accepted the need to move ahead on the proposed timetable. It was the view of the previous Government that theatre nuclear modernisation was essential, and that is our view today."—[Official Report, 24 January 1980; Vol. 977, c. 691.] The conclusions are clear. The Labour Government were involved in the discussions leading to the twin-track decision and the deployment of cruise missiles in this country. The evidence is that they would have taken the same decision as all their NATO Allies and this Government actually took. Once the Government had taken the decision, they accepted it as essential. The trouble with the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Heale) is that he has all the intellect, all the experience, and none of the integrity necessary for his job—[Interruption.] He has become the worst sort of juke box politician—he will play any tune that the occasion seems to demand.