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not quantifiable. The best way to avoid any adverse consequences is for Saddam Hussein to comply with the United Nations resolutions in full."I then asked :
"Is not the spine-chilling truth that no mining engineer, no scientist, and no politician knows for certain what will occur if 300 deep-mined oil wells are detonated?"
My mistake was to suggest that the figure was only 300 ; it is now 500 or, if the Kuwait Petroleum Company's figure is right, 800. I continued :
"In those circumstances, might not the fires rage for months, if not years, in a fashion quite outside human experience? In view of that, should not the damage to the planet, let alone the human slaughter and the Arab ecological disaster, rule out any talk of a military option?"
The Prime Minister replied :
"As the hon. Gentleman says, no one can be absolutely and precisely certain about the outcome. In so far as it is possible to make an assessment, we see no reason to agree with any of the views put forward thus far as to what the outcome may be."--[ Official Report, 11 December 1990 ; Vol. 182, c. 814.]
On what basis did the Prime Minister say that? The Government had had notice of my question. A month earlier I asked the former Prime Minister to make a statement on her discussions in Geneva with King Hussein of Jordan in relation to the ecological consequences of war in the middle east. The former Prime Minister replied :
"My bilateral discussions with King Hussein did not cover this subject, as I made clear to the hon. Gentleman on 7 November. However, if a tyrant is never to be fought in order that freedom and justice may be restored, tyranny will triumph in all its brutality and the environment of human rights, which we seek to extend, will have received a fatal blow."
I replied :
"If King Hussein is right and 50,000 million barrels of oil equivalent go up in flames, what will be the result in terms of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, and what would that do to people and the planet?"--[ Official Report, 13 November ; Vol. 180, c. 446.]
The former Prime Minister did not answer that question. As I am not making a party political point, I shall add, in candour, that the Labour party leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock), saw me courteously and privately at the end of November to discuss the ecological consequences. I am not making a party point, but saying to politicians, my colleagues--for goodness sake, what kind of scientific assessment is made before actions are set in motion that could have the most disastrous consequences? The hell of the matter is that, had politicians been less dismissive of the scientists' warning, Saddam Hussein and Iraq might have taken more notice of the effect on southern Iraq, parts of which are likely to be as badly affected as Kuwait.
The final section of the motion calls on the Government to fight disease in Kuwait and, as far as possible, in Baghdad and other cities. I shall confine myself to one question on Kuwait. I am told by Bill Spiers, of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, who has deep knowledge of the Palestinian problem, that a respectable case can be made for saying that the Palestinians are responsible for much of the prosperity of Kuwait, and that many of them have made their home there for 30 years. Will they be allowed to languish there, uncared for, or simply sent on their way with nowhere to go?
Earlier in the week I telephoned the Foreign Office to ask for Her Majesty's Government's views. I hope that if my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway) has a chance to speak, he will repeat the moving speech that I heard him make in Committee on the
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problem of what he called the pogroms. His speech contained other powerful sections drawn from his deep knowledge of the Palestinian communities, which he has visited.During the war, it was reiterated time and again that the coalition had no quarrel with the Iraqi people. If we assume that that is true, do we not have an obligation to offer medical and health-related help? Whatever the recent past, the here-and-now is that more than 4 million people in Baghdad face a public health crisis of vast proportions because of what international health authorities call "grossly inadequate water and sanitation services."
The Red Cross says that, unless Iraq immediately receives massive international relief, the city could soon suffer outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and polio. The drinking water for millions of people comes from the Tigris river, which is being fouled by gushing streams of raw sewage. Water purification plants have been disabled and the electrical generating plants that powered them have been destroyed. Dr. Mohammed Ani, director of immunisation and primary health care for the Iraqi Ministry of Health, said :
"We are being killed indirectly."
I was moved by John Pilger's accounts when he said that the weakest, youngest and oldest would be the first to suffer. Mr. Rojo, the correspondent of El Mundo, said that 50 children a day were dying in Baghdad for want of electricity. He referred to water-borne diseases as "that silent assassin." The water-borne diseases may prove the greatest danger. Dr. Ezio Gianni Murzi, an Italian who represents the United Nations children's fund in Iraq, sees as a major problem the 65 million cubic yards flowing from Baghdad into the Tigris every month. Air raids targeted plants that manufactured purification chemicals such as chlorine. With the pumping stations knocked out, water cannot be pumped from the river to the treatment plants. How are the Government responding to the urgent appeal from UNICEF and the World Health Organisation for water treatment chemicals? What is the supply of chlorine in Baghdad? Have the coalition even asked?
Raymond Naimy, a UNICEF emergency official, said that Baghdad's water supply had been cut by 90 to 95 per cent. at a time when Iraq's brief chilly spring was ending, and the scorching summer was to begin. The risk of disease will increase dramatically as the weather turns hot over the next few weeks. I shall be personal for a moment, though relevant--my father, as a young man before the first world war, was private secretary to Sir William Willcocks, Britain's most famous imperial water engineer, who attempted to recreate the ancient irrigation systems, and thereby fashioned most of Iraq. Central to his scheme, Willcocks completed the Hindaya barrage in 1914. The management of rivers is central to what is a hydraulic civilisation. How can a third world country be expected to repair such damage by its own efforts?
Because of the shortage of time, I will simply say that the same argument applies to Kuwait. There is a desperate need for us to do something about the appalling health problems there. I raised the matter at Scottish Office Question Time on 6 March, and I have been told that a brief has been sent by the Scottish Office to the Minister who will reply to this debate. Meantime, on 13 March, the Minister of State, Scottish Office wrote to me saying :
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"Following my answer to your supplementary question on 6 March you asked about the assistance which might be given by the NHS in Scotland to alleviate the problems of communicable diseases in Kuwait and Iraq. I understand that the international arrangements for the provision of emergency medical aid to these countries is being co-ordinated and undertaken by the United Nations and its agencies such as UNICEF. This should helpfully ensure that assistance is fully synchronised and appropriately focused. I can assure you, however, that any specific request for help from the National Health Service in Scotland, which is compatible with these arrangements, would be quickly and sympathetically considered. Moreover, I have no doubt that if a Scottish doctor or other professional wished to participate in the current international response, health boards would look favourably on any such proposal."What about sanctions? We are left only with our own unproven assessments about whether, given longer, sanctions would have worked. But consider the strength of the United States and British insistence that sanctions must remain in place until Iraq has complied with all the relevant United Nations resolutions. The Foreign Secretary said that sanctions should not be lifted lightly or prematurely, and he claimed that their potency should not be underestimated. In that case, how come that a weapon that was deemed inadequate to dislodge the Iraqis from Kuwait is now deemed too important to surrender, now that they have gone?
In addition to all the other problems, there are the problems created by the thousands of returning troops, maimed and injured to Baghdad.
There should be an urgent response to the UNICEF and WHO requests and requirements. We should go further. Far from acquiescing in President Bush's statement that he would not give a dime to Iraq, we should offer some places in British hospitals that were cleared for our returning wounded to maimed Kuwaitis and Iraqis, be they Shi'ites, Kurds or other injured.
Ambassador von Richthofen understandably sent the Minister of State for the Armed Forces a copy of a letter that he wrote to me following a question that I put to the German ambassador at Lord Kimberley's defence group about provision in Federal Republic hospitals. I hope that the British Government are prepared to have discussions with the EEC countries about that. It might be helpful if I were to read into the record Baron Hermann von Richthofen's letter to me, in which he wrote :
"Thank you very much indeed for your kind letter dated 19 February 1991.
With reference to the matter of German medical support for British forces in the Gulf, I should like to inform you about the whole issue :
Firstly, the Federal German Government has offered facilities in German hospitals including beds for wounded soldiers both for British and American troops. The British authorities have not accepted this offer as yet.
Secondly, there have been flights carried out by the German Armed Forces from Cyprus in support of British forces ; casualty evacuation could be part of it.
Thirdly, since the end of last year German medical officers have been working in British Armed Forces hospitals located in Germany in lieu of their British colleagues currently deployed in the Gulf. In addition to this governmental support also private initiatives are taking place. For example one of the major German Ambulance Organisations (Johanniter Unfallhilfe) has offered its full service for British Gulf casualties in close co-operation with St. John's Ambulance.
I felt it appropriate to send a copy of this letter to Mr. Archie Hamilton, MP, Minister of State for the Armed Forces."
On 18 February 1991 I asked the Secretary of State for Defence what facilities were available in Bundeswehr
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hospitals for Gulf wounded, and the Minister of State for the Armed Forces replied that there were no plans to use Bundeswehr hospitals for the treatment of British personnel wounded in the Gulf. What is the Minister's response to an article in The Sunday Times by Sean Ryan under the headline :"Vast Gulf pollution cloud heads towards Europe"?
I am told that that is not true, but perhaps the Minister should comment on it.
Hon. Members will know that I am not emotional about many subjects. But I suggest that, emotionally, we shall be haunted for a long time to come by what has happened in the last few weeks. We shall be haunted in particular by what occurred on the Basra road. That was done in the name of the American Congress and the British House of Commons. It is up to us to establish the truth. I do not know where the truth will lead us, on that and other matters, but for our future relations with the Arab world, we have a solid obligation to get to the truth, wherever it may lead us. What was done will haunt not only those in my age group but those in the age group of my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor), on the Opposition Front Bench, and that of the Minister.
This debate represents a small attempt to discuss alleviating what some of us believe was a historic mistake.
10.25 am
Miss Emma Nicholson (Torridge and Devon, West) : That we should be having this debate at all is a measure of the tragic suffering in the Gulf. I wish at the outset to pay tribute to the great scientific expertise and diligence of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), to whose speech we listened with the greatest care and attention, as it deserved. Indeed, his ecological warnings have proved all too true.
However, had there been no use of force by us--had we abstained from war-- the human, animal and bird suffering would have been infinite. I fear that we see the left wing's failure of perception in large degree. Saddam Hussein's hatred of humans is mirrored only by his equivalent hatred of the world in which we live. As the Secretary of State for the Environment said on 28 January of this year, words are inadequate to describe the callousness and irresponsibility of his action in deliberately unleashing this environmental catastrophe. Had Saddam Hussein accepted one of the many peace initiatives put forward by the allies, in which Her Majesty's Government were in the forefront, he would have saved not only 140,000 Iraqi lives, his own people, but the physical devastation of the earth and sea. It was unthinkable, but it happened.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow referred to a number of ways in which the west could respond, and has responded ; the purpose of this debate must be to look forward. He spoke about the UNICEF paper. I dined last Friday with Dr. Jolly and heard about the awful things that have happened to Baghdad's water supply. The hon. Gentleman castigated the Government for, he claimed, doing nothing, but I am delighted to report that a joint Oxfam-Save the Children Fund team is out there looking at the situation. I have no doubt that when they return with proposals, the Overseas Development Administration will look at them with great sympathy.
At the height of the war, I put to the Foreign Office questions about the sort of actions that the British Government might take to help Iraqi children after the
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war. The response was good and warm and I have had subsequent correspondence and meetings on the subject. I have no doubt that the Government's response on behalf of the children of our former enemies will not be wanting.Mr. Dalyell rose--
Miss Nicholson : I must get to Devon urgently to open a new school, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not give way.
The response of the British Government was immediate and effective, for example, in offering key expertise and funding from Britain. Our Prime Minister responded immediately, and I have quoted the Secretary of State for the Environment. That came as no surprise to my hon. Friends and it should not have surprised Opposition Members. Our former Prime Minister committed the United Kingdom to an environmental outlook several years ago. Our former United Nations ambassador, Sir Crispin Tickell, is one of the world's leading environmental specialists. He has been committed to the environment since he was a boy and has been at the forefront of Britain's work in this area.
As a result of that great work, we were thus the first country to respond financially to the International Maritime Organisation's appeal for money. We immediately gave £1 million. The Department of the Environment's key experts in pollution control and the ecology went immediately to the Gulf to help. We have ordered three oil recovery skimmers, with a value of £300,000, to go to Bahrain. On 28, 29 and 30 January we sent no fewer than 90 tonnes of anti-pollution equipment to the Gulf by air. We undertook that first-class cluster of important measures at the very height of the war.
What more can we do now, despite the fact, which can be so readily overlooked now that our own forces are not so heavily involved, that the conflict in the Gulf is continuing? We can help more. The United Kingdom has vast knowledge of induced breathing difficulties--a lucky heritage, in terms of knowledge, from London's smog. It is important to work on that, because the incomplete combustion of oil-producing carcinogens may cause cancer. Our medical help might be offered to assess and limit that damage to humans and animals. Perhaps both historically and currently, due to our background, we have more knowledge about the health and welfare of many of the peoples of the Gulf and surrounding countries, including even India, than many other countries. I am sure that our work would be well considered, well respected and well accepted by those nations. I hope that we shall help in that way.
The United Kingdom also has much weather expertise. Indeed, we talk about it all the time. The Meteorological Office has been running special weather models throughout the war. Perhaps it could continue to do so and to offer two-day forecasts of the dispersion and wash-out of pollutants. That would offer valid warnings to people in the Gulf area and beyond. When I use the word "valid", I cannot help but remind the House of the public's disbelief in the validity of the Met Office's forecasts in recent years. Much time has passed since the Met Office could not understand why everybody laughed when its spokesman said plaintively, in a public statement, "We cannot understand why the general public do not believe our forecasts. After all, they are right for 50 per cent. of the time." I could do as well by flipping a coin, but I most
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certainly do not have its great expertise in matters relating to the Gulf. Perhaps scientific uncertainty over the behaviour of the smoke in certain conditions could be reduced by measurements of smoke plume characteristics by the Met Office's research aircraft. Those investigations are critical to confirm whether climate- effect predictions are valid.We also have extensive knowledge of acid rain from, for example, the Department of Trade and Industry's Warren Spring laboratory. Perhaps our involvement in such work in the Gulf would also help our long-term understanding of pollution processes that are relevant to acid rain in Europe, which would be of large and continuing importance to our own industrial behaviour patterns and to the measures that the Government have introduced to ensure the best control of such things.
Finally, our expertise in the environmental impact of such incidents is crucial. Environmental impact and environmental assessments lie at the heart of our own Government's policy on the environment. Perhaps the universities, especially Imperial college, could help. Indeed, the Secretary of State for the Environment has suggested that the Meteorological Office and other areas of United Kingdom expertise may well be useful in the next stage of this ghastly tragedy.
The Government, so far, have responded in an appropriately thoughtful, professional and effective manner. I and other colleagues await our next moves as a country and a Government with interest and high expectations.
10.34 am
Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Hillhead) : To her credit, the hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) may well have listened carefully to the powerful exposition of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), but sadly the Government Whip did not listen with quite the same respect. The man whose cynicism has deepened with the length of time that he has spent on the Treasury Bench could say only at the close of my hon. Friend's remarks, "The Belgrano revisited".
Before turning to my main points, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow. I speak on behalf not only of Opposition Members and some Conservative Members, but certainly on behalf of the vast numbers of our fellow citizens whom we represent in the House. His indefatigable energy, remorseless integrity, intelligence and care have sustained him throughout his quest for the truth--yes, I advise the Government Whip that it was the truth--about the Belgrano and about many other issues going back over decades. I pay tribute to him also for his approach now to these important and vital issues when we are attempting to calibrate the true cost of the enterprise in which we have just been involved.
The bitterly hard thing for some of us to accept on the Ides of March is that we have had to listen to the list of the casualties of that enterprise, as given by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow, and who could do so without a deepening sense of foreboding about the true cost of the enterprise? It is vastly greater than the popular media and some of the more gung-ho Conservative Members would have us believe.
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There are those of us, such as myself, who have been Saddam Hussein's bitter opponents for as long as he has been in power in Baghdad. There are people, such as myself, who have marched, petitioned, written, railed and ranted at the dictatorship in Baghdad, and it is bitterly difficult for us to see the attitude of those Conservative Members who did not want to hear what we were saying and who wanted to say little and do even less about the bestialities that were committed by the dictatorship in Baghdad. For them, the dictatorship was merely a bloody good customer. That is the truth of the matter.Those of us who had a track record of opposing the dictatorship argued that if we got into a war of the kind that was being contemplated, the consequences would be so devastating that they would outweigh any good that could be done. No one ever argued that force against a dictator such as Saddam Hussein was not justified. We argued whether such force was wise and whether the cost of the use of that massive force would outweigh the good that it would do. Conservative Members would do themselves some credit by acknowledging that. When we hear from them that it was all a great success and was achieved, to quote the Daily Mail last week,
"at a cost of a handful of lives",
we begin to see the vast gulf--I hope that the House will forgive that unintended pun--between the truth as outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and that popular perception. The liberation of Kuwait was not achieved at the cost of only a handful of lives.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West) : Surely the vast gulf, which can be perceived by Conservative Members and by anybody listening to the debate, is between what the hon. Gentleman said at the time of the conflict and his attempt now to rewrite history.
Mr. Galloway : I can be accused of many things, but seeking to distort the truth is not one of them. I am about to say, if the hon. Gentleman will let me, exactly what I said throughout the months after the invasion of Kuwait on 2 August and what I have been saying for 15 years, which is a hell of a lot longer than the hon. Gentleman has been talking about the regime in Baghdad. Perhaps we can consult the record on that.
The true cost has been and will be paid by people in that area, by the ecology and environment of the area, and by all of us on the globe. The true cost is far greater than the straw hats and trumpets brigade--the vulgar triumphalists, some of whom sit on the Conservative Benches--want the country to believe. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow described the vast environmental and ecological disaster which that enterprise has created. I hope that the Government have something constructive to say, not only about what they will do to try to arrest what is happening. Month after month, hon. Members, in particular my hon. Friend, predicted exactly what has happened on the environmental front. The Government should also say why the same effort that moved half a million men and all their fighting equipment was not expended on simple matters of civil and marine engineering, such as booms and other equipment. They could have been air- lifted with the military equipment and would have obviated some of the difficulties that we now face.
The same mentality that turns a Nelson's eye to environmental costs turns a Nelson's eye to the vast mountain of incinerated human beings who were killed
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because they had dark faces and because they had the misfortune to have been born in Iraq. The vast majority of human beings who made up that mountain of dead people never supported Saddam Hussein, never voted for Saddam Hussein, never voted for the war, and never in any sense offered any support to the Baathist regime in Baghdad, yet they were shot "like fish in a bowl". They were massacred "like rabbits in a sack". Other disgusting metaphors were plastered across our newspapers over the past few weeks. No one can talk about environmental damage or damage to the atmosphere without coming to terms with the fact that the massacre on the Basra road will haunt the world, as my hon. Friend said, for many decades to come. A Conservative Member smirks. Perhaps it does not haunt him. No amount of washing of his hands will remove the black spot-- [Interruption.] I note that the Government Whip has stopped yawning and is calling for the men in white coats. History will judge who were the lunatics who took control of the asylum over the past few months.Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : When will the hon. Gentleman refer to ecological problems in the Gulf and stop playing party politics?
Mr. Galloway : Anyone who knows my opinion of the Labour party's performance over the past few months would not accuse me of playing party politics in this matter. If the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) thinks that the environment includes only oil, ducks, drakes, trees and plants and not human beings, he has a strange idea of the environment.
Mr. Dalyell : Will my hon. Friend explain the powerful analogy about half-drowned men?
Mr. Galloway : I was about to refer to the plight of the Palestinians who are trapped in their ghetto in Kuwait city. A day or perhaps two days after the war, the Prime Minister gave me a courteous answer and has acted on the problem in the intervening days. I referred to the dangers of a new pogrom--a new Sabra and Shatilla-type massacre-- occurring in Kuwait city. A couple of days after I raised that matter with the Prime Minister, Robert Fisk and other senior and eminent journalists in this country-- [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) guffaws his contempt for Robert Fisk, too. Perhaps I should be gratefgul to be included in such company. The hon. Gentleman should save his contempt until he makes his speech. I should not be diverted by such puerility. Fisk and other journalists from the English-speaking world have written movingly of their sense of foreboding as the witch hunt mentality develops in Kuwait city. For nearly 20 years I have been concerned with Palestine. The people of Dirr Yasshin, the people who have been beseiged and massacred in country after country in the middle east, the people of Sabra and Shatilla this very morning are locked in their homes--when there is a virtual curfew in the area--wondering whether the knock on the door in Kuwait city will be as deadly as the knock on the door has been for Palestinians in countries throughout that area. That is because of a caricature of the position of the Palestinians who opposed the invasion of Kuwait and opposed aggression against Kuwait but could not stand by neutrally when, in their view America transformed it into a war of the big powers against an Arab country.
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I was in the occupied territories, in the town of Jericho underneath Mount Temptation, talking to a moderate professor of politics, Sa'eb Erakat. That man has met our Foreign Secretary and his predecessor, and James Baker and his predecessor. He is on the regular circuit of discussion with international leaders. He is currently incarcerated under town arrest in Jericho, many miles from his university in Nablus, which, in any case, has been closed by the military authorities for the past three years. He addressed the Palestinian approach to the Kuwait-Iraqi-American-British conflict, and said, "We Palestinians were a drowning people, adrift on the ocean, with international ships sailing in the opposite direction pretending that they could not hear our call of distress. Along came a ship flying our flag as well as its own, the flag of Iraq. It stopped by us drowning people adrift on the ocean, and offered to lift us on board. What were we to do--ask for the human rights record of the captain or for the bona fides of his ownership of the vessel before we climbed aboard? The ships that sailed in the opposite direction were responsible for our plight." That is part of the environment of the area and it will be part of the history of the events of the past five months.10.50 am
Sir Anthony Meyer (Clwyd, North-West) : I am sure that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway) is passionately sincere, but the somewhat hysterical character of some of his remarks has not made it easier for me to support, as I fully intend to do, the main tenor of the argument of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). The fact that the Opposition Back Benches are occupied almost entirely by hon. Members who have taken an uncritical attitude of opposition to almost any use of armed force by Her Majesty's Government does not make my task any easier. There is a conspicuous absence of those who may be called moderates on the Labour Back Benches.
I am glad to have the opportunity to make a small contribution to the debate. The hon. Member for Linlithgow has done the House and the nation a service by focusing attention on this issue and by setting out so vividly and in such detail the scale of the ecological and environmental consequences of the Gulf war. He knows the high personal regard which I have for him. I cannot always follow him in his battles--sometimes they seem to be battles against windmills. I usually part company from him sharply when he pursues, as he rather notably did not do today, the conspiracy theory of history. I am a devout believer in the cock-up theory.
As it happens, I believe that the Government have done well in their action to help clear up--perhaps that is not the right expression for putting a sticking-plaster on a gaping arterial wound--after the war. At any rate they have done well by rushing like Mrs. Partington with her mop vigorously pushing back the Atlantic ocean. The Atlantic ocean, as admirers of Sydney Smith will recall, beat Mrs. Partington. If the hon. Gentleman is in the business of blaming the Government for showing less enthusiasm for clearing up the mess than for getting into the war, I am not with him. The action announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment on 28 January was prompt and well judged as a contribution to clearing up the most immediate threat to the environment from the conflict- -the spreading oil
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slicks in the Gulf. The effort, prompt as it was, does not begin to match in scale the effort that we put into the war or the real needs of the truly alarming environmental catastrophe. That, alas, mirrors human attitudes. It is easier to get massive support for a war than for cleaning up its aftermath.Heaven knows, I did not want to get into the war. Even now I am not finally convinced that it was the lesser of two evils. It is just that I was driven to the conclusion that it was going to happen anyway because Saddam Hussein was determined to have a war so that he could pose as the Arab champion against Israel. If it was going to happen anyway, there was no realistic possibility of making it less awful by delaying it. It was the much criticised last-minute efforts at mediation by France and the Soviet Union which eventually convinced me that war was inevitable.
Just because I have no fault to find with the Government, either in their conduct of the war or in their response to the ecological catastrophe which has, entirely predictably, ensued, it does not mean that any of us can sit back and say, "We have done what needed to be done." Far from it. It is to public opinion in this country and the world outside that we need to address our warnings insistently and stridently.
The damage done by allied air action in Iraq and still more by the Iraqi scorched earth policy in Kuwait is irreparable. The most enormous efforts are called for from the world community even to mitigate the worst effects of that damage. To make matters worse, these efforts are called for at a time when famine once again threatens great swathes of Africa and the many millions of men, women and children who live there. The efforts that must be made to limit the damage in the middle east must be in addition to, not in place of, the efforts that the rich world makes to alleviate famine in Africa.
No hon. Member wants war. I wish I could say the same of the press, but I have found it hard to read The Sunday Times or The Sunday Telegraph, let alone the Sunday Express , The Sun or The Star without sensing a real relish for battle. I cannot avoid the feeling that even among the more responsible people, such as hon. Members who certainly did not want a war, there has been insufficient appreciation of how horrible war is. Because of that insufficient appreciation, I am not sure that in balancing the pros and cons of recourse to armed force, we necessarily came to the right conclusion. Yes, of course war brings out some heroic qualities of courage and self-sacrifice, but so do concentration camps. I hope that we will not start romanticising them.
It is a matter for rejoicing that the casualties on the allied side were so light, but the casualties on the Iraqi side were appalling. As the hon. Member for Linlithgow said, many of us will be haunted for the rest of our lives by the pictures of the carnage on the Basra road. I have no right to condemn the military action which produced that slaughter any more than I had a right to condemn the bombing of Dresden in 1945 or the dropping of the second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki. All three are copybook examples of the senseless butchery which war almost invariably brings in its train. When we weigh up whether in any given situation war is the lesser of two evils, we should recognise that such horrors are inseparable from it.
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Mr. Dalyell : Does the hon. Gentleman agree that before we jump to any conclusions about what happened on the Basra road we should have far more facts? May I repeat to him a request that I put to the Leader of the House during business questions and again last night on the motion for the Easter Adjournment, that the Government should give to the House the information that they have about the timing and their state of knowledge of what occurred? Then and only then can we make a judgment.
Sir Anthony Meyer : I have little doubt that those facts will emerge. I have great faith in the persistence of investigative journalists to delve into those matters. It will all emerge in the course of time. One of the troubles was that the war ended so abruptly that public interest switched rapidly from horror at what happened on the Basra road to surging relief that the hostilities had ended. That has been a major factor. I have no doubt that such facts will emerge and I am glad to think that when they do the verdict will remain the same--that the military action probably was justified. That will still not relieve my sense of horror.
We are supposed to be debating environmental consequences, rather than the slaughter of men, women and children. The hon. Member for Hillhead equated the two, but there is a distinction in logic which has to be drawn. There is a danger of overstating the case. The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) made a number of remarkable interventions during debates on this matter, and laid himself wide open to the charge of overstating his case. But all too often it is the prophets of doom who are nearer the truth in the end than the bland reassurers. We are not yet at the end of the Chernobyl fall-out, and I say that as a supporter of nuclear power.
Clearly, we will all be baffled by science in this matter. The worldwide consequence of the smoke clouds from the burning oil wells and the spreading oil slicks are presumably too dependent on winds and tides and ordinary climatic factors to be safely predictable, but the regional and local consequences are only too predictably dire. The consequences for public health in Iraq of the destruction of the sewers and the water supplies are all too predictable and, of course, disease knows no national frontiers. There is a strong case for a relaxation of sanctions to the extent that is necessary to permit the importation not merely of medical supplies, but of the equipment that is needed to repair the damage to the sewers and the electricity supply. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us about that.
I hope that the debate will focus public opinion on the consequences of war --not just on the number of people killed or maimed for the rest of their lives or those left without partners or parents or families whose life is permanently blighted, but on the destruction of cities and the ruination of the countryside. Modern methods of warfare spread such destruction and ruination many hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles from the battlefield. Anyone who travels around Europe is constantly reminded of the loss of fine buildings and great works of art in earlier wars. This country has also suffered, especially from the destruction in London, Coventry, Liverpool and other great cities. I am not convinced that public opinion or the Government give full weight to such considerations when taking the fateful decisions about
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whether the need to deter and punish aggression outweighs the predictable consequences of even the most "successful" war. I think that I am still of the opinion that the decision to go ahead with military action in the Gulf was the lesser of two evils, but I do not by any means rule out the possibility that I may later have to change my mind.I am certain that I am in no position to condemn Opposition Members, even those whom I have categorised in my speech as extremists, for their opposition to the war. I am still less able to criticise those who, like the hon. Member for Linlithgow, have continually reminded us of the awful consequences.
11.3 pm
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey) : With two minor exceptions, I agree with every word of the careful and worthwhile speech of the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Sir A. Meyer). My two points of dissent are that I hold a different view on nuclear power and I am clear that Governments, both here and in the allied countries, did not take sufficient account of the environmental implications of the Gulf war before they committed us to military activity.
My views differ from those of the majority of Labour Members who are in the Chamber in that, like the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West, when the French and Russian initiatives failed I came to the view that, irrespective of what had gone before, there was no international alternative to military action. I did not find that view comfortable, because it was not one that I thought I would have reached. It does not change my view or that of all my colleagues, that the war was the result of diplomatic and political failure by world Governments. To reach a point at which there was no alternative to military action meant that we had failed the world community. I listened with respect to the powerful speech by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway). Like him, I have been to the occupied territories. It is almost irrelevant, but my first intervention in the press was made in my local paper when I was a teenager, and it was in support of the Palestinian cause. One of the failures that Britain has exemplified is the failure to understand exactly what drives people such as the Palestinians to accept support from wherever it comes. They do that because they have been denied support for so long by others. It is the same reason that persuaded Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela to support those who were driven to military action in South Africa. There comes a time when people cannot accept that peaceful passive resignation will lead to a satisfactory and just conclusion.
I entirely endorse the plaudits extended to the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). He has persistently sought, as I have done, although I concede that I have probably been less successful, to make sure that the environmental implications of the Gulf war were on the agenda of the House and the country. I agree with the hon. Member for Hillhead that there was and is massive concern in the country that the Government and politicians were not properly addressing that matter.
I and my party agree with every word in the motion. Our party conference started this morning in Nottingham and that is why my colleagues are not present for the debate. I may not be able to stay until 2.30. The hon. Member for Linlithgow has brought to the debate his
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well-known scientific expertise and his dogged parliamentary perserverence. I hope that the Government will take seriously the widespread support, not just for a proper analysis, requested by the hon. Member for Clywd, North-West, of what has happened in terms of future decisions, but for vigorous action to deal with the consequences of the war and its environmental implications. I hope that we shall show as much determination in that as we showed in our prosecution of the war.I also reiterate what the hon. Member for Clywd, North-West said about the press and people being jingoistic, aggressive and enthusiastic about things military and suddenly becoming uninterested about their environmental results. The balance is completely wrong. One of the issues that must now be addressed is the potential implication of what has happened to the environment and the ecology in the middle east. The loss of marine life as a food source will have consequences for subsidence fishermen in the Gulf. That means that they and many others are at risk of becoming poorer and less able to survive than they ever have been in a marginal economy. Unless we have a much more co-ordinated, urgent and more widespread international response than we have seen so far, we shall leave the ravage of the war writ upon the seas and the land of the countries of the middle east and, potentially, condemn a politically very delicately balanced region to further risk of military conflagration.
It was said that the United Nations intervened to bring about a peaceful middle east, but economic and human poverty and degradation as a result of the war could make that peace far less likely, unless, in a different way, we now intervene. Therefore, the ecology and the environment are integrated with the peaceful future of the countries in the Gulf.
I shall deal specifically with two issues, that give us cause for continuing concern. The first is oil fires. I am advised that the figures that I am about to give are not specific, but the numbers are large enough to be able to be generally substantiated whatever their specificity. It is said that there are 650 or 700 oil fires--perhaps 800--burning in Kuwait. That means that between 3 million and 6 million barrels of oil are burning each day. The main economic source of that part of the world is literally going up in smoke. The consequences are widespread and they have been well set out. I hope that the Government will give full credence to the work that has been done at Imperial college by the global environment research centre, to which the hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) and others have referred.
There are consequences for human health that add to the chances of suffering from respiratory disease, infection and discomfort. There is the inevitability of acid deposition that makes those complaints worse.
There are consequences that will lead to the pollution of water, which is the principal source of life and survival. There is the risk of serious pollution of surface water as well as the pollution of underground water supplies as a result of soot and other fall-out from emissions.
Potentially there is a serious threat of a large-scale abuse of salt and polluted fresh water if these materials are used to dampen down temperatures and to put out fires. There are consequences for the soil in the region, the land and, therefore, agriculture. Acidification of the land would have a direct effect on the ability to produce crops and food for animals, upon which the economy depends.
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