Key to Column Numbering

W Written Answers, House of Commons WS Written Ministerial Statements, House of Commons WA Written Answer, House of Lords Column number with no letters Oral Proceedings in the House of Commons

Ballistic Missile Defence

• Global Security: Russia, House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Second Report, HC 51 of 2007-08, 25 November 2007, Excerpts on Missile Defence
• Response of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, to the Foreign Affairs Committee Report on Global Security: Russia, Cm 7305, February 2008
• Armed Forces: US Missile Defence, House of Lords, Debate, 10 Jan 2008, Column 949, Excerpts
• Missile Defence, Written Answers, December 2007 - February, 2008

Armed Forces: US Missile Defence, House of Lords, Debate, 10 Jan 2008, Column 949, Excerpts

• Lord Wallace of Saltaire
• Lord Giddens
• Lord Marlesford
• Lord Hannay of Chiswick
• Lord Addington
• Lord Judd
• Lord Powell of Bayswater
• Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
• Lord Sheikh
• Baroness Falkner of Margravine
• Lord Young of Norwood Green
• Baroness Williams of Crosby
• Lord Luke
• Baroness Crawley
• Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Lord Wallace of Saltaire rose to call attention to the United Kingdom’s commitment to participate in the United States missile defence system, and to the implications of recent negotiations between the United States and other states for the deployment of that system; and to move for Papers.

10 Jan 2008 : Column 950

The noble Lord said: My Lords, the context for this debate is provided by the Government’s commitment to participate in the United States missile defence system, slipped out in a Written Statement one day before Parliament rose last July. Since then, the Government have offered no opportunity to debate this decision in either House; despite the promise that Tony Blair, as Prime Minister, made in the other place last February that:

“We will tell the House as soon as there is something to say. At the moment those discussions are at a very preliminary stage ... When we have a proposition to put, we will come back and put it”.

He was forced to say that only because the Economist had just published an article detailing negotiations under way between the UK and the US in Washington, based on Washington sources.

Mr Blair also promised that when a decision was made there would be a,

“discussion in the House and, indeed, outside the House”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/2/07; col. 919-920.]