I GREATLY enjoy the regular letters that I receive from readers of Thistle Diary, especially when they raise matters that might not normally come to a constituency MP.
Such a letter arrived in March 1990, and its contents prompted me to ask Nicholas Ridley, then the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, two questions. First, what steps had he taken to determine that the die-forging plant to be built by Matrix-Churchill would not be used to produce parts for ballistic missiles or for the supergun project, code-named Babylon, before he issued an export licence? And, secondly, regarding the lathes that the Colchester-based company 600 Services had produced for the al-Hillal rocket-fuel facility to the south of Baghdad, what consideration had he given to their purpose and place of use before an export licence was issued?
On 8 May 1990, the two questions received the same answer from the secretary of state: 鈥淚t has been the practice of successive governments not to comment on individual licensing matters. Exports for Iran and Iraq are subject to the ministerial guidelines on defence sales announced鈥� in the House on 29 October 1985.鈥�
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All this, and much more, Lord Justice Scott relates in his magnum Arms-to-Iraq report published last month. He comments that it is difficult to see what aspect of commercial confidentiality or damage to national interests would have been infringed by a substantive answer to my two questions. But he adds that the minister can hardly be criticised for having given an answer permitted under 鈥渃urrent鈥� parliamentary rules. Those arcane rules had been codified way back in the 19th century by Sir Thomas Erskine May when he was Clerk of the Parliaments.
Scott considers, however, that the second sentence of the answer was misleading in that it suggested the export licence agreement for the machine tools 鈥渉ad been, or, as the case might be, would be, considered against鈥� the terms of one of the 1985 guidelines. 鈥淭his, although Mr Ridley was not in a position to have known,鈥� says Scott, 鈥渨as not the case.鈥�
This failure of the minister to answer the questions, Scott goes on to say, was 鈥渄eliberate and an inevitable result of the agreement between three junior ministers鈥� 鈥� William Waldegrave at the Foreign Office, Alan Clark at the Department of Trade and Industry, and Lord Trefgarne at the Ministry of Defence. They had decided, says Scott, 鈥渢hat no publicity would be given to the decision to adopt a more liberal, or relaxed, policy, or interpretation of the guidelines, originally towards both Iran and Iraq and, later, towards Iraq alone鈥�
鈥淗aving heard various explanations as to why it was necessary or desirable to withhold knowledge from Parliament and the public of the true nature of the government鈥檚 approach to the licensing of nonlethal defence sales to Iran and Iraq, respectively,鈥� continues Scott, 鈥淚 have come to the conclusion that the overriding and determinative reason was a fear of strong public opposition to the loosening of the restrictions on the supply of defence equipment to Iraq and a consequential fear that the pressure of the opposition might be detrimental to British trading interests.鈥�
As the particular New 杏吧原创 reader was anonymous, I could not contact him or her to pursue the matter further. If that reader still reads Thistle Diary, perhaps he or she might think of getting in touch with me.
Now, I don鈥檛 want it thought that I normally ask parliamentary questions at the drop of an anonymous letter. But some of the information is so specific that it could only have come from an insider in the know (in the manner of Clive Ponting, that is). Maybe I should have pursued the lathes issue further. Sorry, anonymous reader.
WHATEVER do most Brits make of the Post Office鈥檚 latest offering? I refer to the Robert Burns bicentenary issue of stamps. And just what do earnest Germans and serious Swiss make of a letter addressed to them with a Queen鈥檚 head on a 19p stamp, bearing the words 鈥淲ee, sleeket, cowran, tim鈥檙ous beastie鈥� and a picture of a surprised mouse in the corner?
So, if we are to have Scottish heroes (and, contrary to general belief, Robert Burns was no untutored ploughman but one of the considerable literary scholars of his age) I have another candidate, Chinese Wilson. I am delighted to see that he is being rehabilitated by the national press, as he was one of the great plant collectors of all time.
In the latter half of the 19th century, he brought a massive number of rare Himalayan rhododendrons back to Edinburgh. Now people in India, Nepal and Bhutan are looking to Edinburgh to return some stock so they can reinstate species, which have been all but wiped out in their own land. Come to think of it, rhododendrons would look rather splendid on our stamps.