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Sir George Young: Further to the serious exchanges that we have just had, will the Leader of the House reconsider the business for the next two days? Will she have discussions through the usual channels and then consider making a further business statement tomorrow?

Mrs. Beckett: I have already undertaken to consider what is scheduled to happen on Thursday, but none of us would be in the position that we are in now, let alone at this time, had there been the possibility of discussions to resolve these matters through the usual channels. [Interruption.] It is not a matter of being clever; it is simply a statement of fact. Of course I am always prepared to take on board what the House is saying and

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to discuss and consider these matters through the usual channels. That remains the position and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we will do that.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We must move on.

Mr. Michael Fabricant (Lichfield): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Will you advise the House? We have just heard that apparently there will be just five hours to debate 10 groups of amendments that the Speaker has grouped together. Is there any indication of how much time will be allocated to each amendment?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That will be the subject of tomorrow's debate, when the hon. Gentleman might be able to catch the eye of the Chair.

Mr. Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We have heard that we are to debate the timetable motion. In advance of that, is it possible to hear from the Leader of the House whether the five hours that she proposes to allocate to the consideration of the 10 groups of amendments will include Divisions or not? If Divisions are not included, it allows fifteen minutes--

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is trying to extend questions on the statement.

Mr. Hogg: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Several motions have been summarily removed from the Order Paper. Have you received any notification from the Government as to when they intend to put them to the House again?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: As a former Minister, the right hon. and learned Gentleman should know that that is at the Government's discretion and has nothing to do with the Chair.

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Millennium Compliance (Defence)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Kevin Hughes.]

12.41 am

Mr. David Atkinson (Bournemouth, East): There are now 284 days to go until the new millennium. Unfortunately, even as the champagne corks are popping at midnight on the eve of the new century, events will begin to unfold over which we will have little control, to which we can only respond as best we can and which no one can guarantee will be avoided.

I am, of course, referring to the effect of the so-called millennium bug on those computer systems upon which all of us today rely to sustain our standard of life but which, some experts predict, will cause chaos, confusion and even catastrophe that will be world wide: commencing in New Zealand--the first to enter the new century--and, like a tidal wave, moving at the speed of time westwards across the planet, wrecking whole societies in its wake.

I should emphasise that that is a domesday scenario suggested by some. Others predict that we will instead experience a slower breakdown of essential services and critical infrastructure as the computer services which deliver them come up against a date that they do not recognise--the year 2000.

I was the first to raise the issue in the House, as long ago as 7 December 1995, in a question to the then Prime Minister. Today, because of the ever-wider coverage given to the issue--and thanks to the Government's quarterly reports to Parliament--there is no excuse for any politician not to be aware of the issue and not to be ensuring that everything possible is being done to respond to it, both nationally and locally.

One of the most important aspects upon which we should be certain that our computer systems are millennium-safe concerns our national defence and security. In 1996, alarming reports began to appear in our national press. Sunday Business, on 17 November, warned that the UK

"may be defenceless in the Year 2000."

Rachel Oldroyd reported:

"Technology experts are warning that the country's entire defence infrastructure will fail at the end of the century unless immediate action is taken to rectify a serious flaw inherent in many of the Ministry of Defence's computer systems, space satellite communication systems, logistic systems and weaponry.


The systems will fail, according to experts employed by the Government, because many computer programmes and computer chips embedded within machinery including nuclear weapons are unable to recognise the Year 2000."

Mr. Brian White (Milton Keynes, North-East): The hon. Gentleman will be well aware that the UK systems are now millennium compliant. Will he comment on European systems and, in particular, the ex-Soviet fleet in the Arctic, which is not millennium compliant and may pose a danger to this country?

Mr. Atkinson: I was not going to comment on the issue, but no doubt the Minister will have heard the hon. Gentleman and may wish to reply if he has time.

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The Daily Telegraph of 31 August 1996 reported that particular problems were predicted on 22 August 1999, when the global positioning satellite system used to direct cruise missiles to their targets, supertankers into harbours and aircraft to airports will reset its date to 6 January 1980 because of a year 2000-related fault.

In his letter to me of 1 December 1995, the then Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), had assured me that

"appropriate measures are already in hand".

That was subsequently confirmed in a detailed reply by the then Defence Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot). That early work by the previous Government in response to the problems posed to our national defence by the millennium bug was acknowledged in the letter that Lord Gilbert, a current Defence Minister, sent to the hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall) on 1 June 1997, which concluded:

"I hope this gives you confidence that we are taking vigorous steps to ensure that UK defence systems are not at risk."

I applaud the present Government's continuation of the previous Government's work to address the threat posed to our defence by the millennium bug. I note that I am not alone in looking forward to learning from the Minister the latest position regarding the millennium preparedness of the critical computer systems of all three armed services, especially in view of last week's quarterly report from the Leader of the House suggesting that key Ministry of Defence agencies are not likely to be millennium compliant until late December.

I am sure that the Minister realises that it will not be enough to assure the House that the computer, information, satellite communication and logistics systems and weaponry concerned with the defence of this United Kingdom will be millennium ready, because we are in alliance with 19 other countries in NATO, and 10 in the Western European Union. Our computer systems are linked to and interdependent with theirs.

Just as Action 2000 is currently emphasising in its newspaper advertising campaign that

"If a business you rely on isn't ready, you aren't ready",

the same logic applies to the computer links with our allies. It is essential for the maintenance of the entire defence of Europe that all the systems of all our allies continue to function without interruption. I seek an assurance on that from the Minister, but from the evidence that I will now share with the House, he will not be able to give it.

Two years ago, I proposed to the technological and aerospace committee of the Western European Union that we should investigate the alarming reports that this country, and therefore all member states, might be rendered defenceless by the bug. I had hoped that the WEU assembly might debate the outcome of that investigation in December 1997, but that debate did not take place until the most recent session, last December.

The committee agreed that its chairman, the hon. Member for Leicester, South should approach the Defence Ministers of the 10 WEU states to find out how they were responding to the millennium bug, so that we could take a considered view on whether the WEU as a whole was responding adequately to the threat. My report,

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document 1622, records the responses that he received, together with those from the WEU council, the satellite centre and the assembly.

From those responses we were able to conclude that Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are fully aware of the problem and are taking the action necessary, as, it would seem, are the WEU council, the satellite centre and the assembly, although, as I pointed out in presenting my report to the assembly last December, it should be aware that we now know that any assurance Microsoft gave that its most recent systems will not be affected must now be disregarded. Even Windows 98 will not be compliant without action being taken and tested.

We could not conclude that the computer systems involved in the defence and security of Europe, as provided for under the Brussels treaty, would be millennium compliant, because the hon. Member for Leicester, South has received no replies from four member states--Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal--even after a second approach.

Moreover, as and when members of the assembly press their Governments in their own Parliaments, such as ours, on whether they can guarantee that the computer systems of the public services and infrastructures on which their armed services rely--including electricity supplies, rail or air traffic control systems--will be safe from the bug, they will not be given such an assurance.

In view of that, the assembly unanimously endorsed my recommendation--No. 6362--on the millennium bug and its consequences for European defence. In seeking an assurance that European defence would not be at risk, it urged the WEU council to report to the assembly on its response to the problem and on any contingency plans that had been drawn up.

Earlier this month, the council replied to that recommendation, but the reply is totally inadequate. It ignored our principal conclusion that, because four member states had ignored our request for information, we could not be assured that European defence would not be at risk. The council has not told us whether WEU is or will be millennium ready as a defence alliance. Nor has it said whether contingency plans have been or are being drawn up. I look forward to hearing from the Minister whether the collective defence of WEU member states will be at risk at the end of the year.

Let me turn to the NATO alliance. When the technological and aerospace committee visited the United States of America in 1997, it was briefed on the Department of Defense's Year 2000 management plan, dated April 1997. In his introduction, the then Under-Secretary of State, Emmett Paige, emphasised that that Department relies heavily on computers in the deployment of weapons. When the computer fails, the weapons systems fail.

However, in the British-American security information council's report, "The Bug in the Bomb: the impact of the Year 2000 problem on nuclear weapons", which was published last November, it appears that the Pentagon's efforts to meet the fast approaching deadline are "a mess", with what the report calls

"severe and recurring problems across the spectrum".

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The report says that initial research findings by a number of agencies and teams of experts inside and outside the USA's Department of Defense have resulted in no confidence that the Department's programme will meet the challenge. The Deputy Secretary of Defence, John Homre, is quoted as admitting that

"everything is so interconnected, it's very hard to know with any precision that we've got it fixed".

This worrying situation appears to be confirmed in Connected, a supplement of The Daily Telegraph, which, on 31 December, contained an article headlined, "The bug bang". Simon Davies reported that at a meeting on 25 September a group of high level officials met at Mr. Homre's office to review the potential impact of the millennium bug. Admiral Richard Mies, the commander-in-chief of US Strategic Command--STRATCOM--bluntly told the meeting that the nuclear defence system was not millennium compliant. He warned that 11 crucial STRATCOM nuclear systems would not be fixed in time. He added that 12 new systems currently in development would also not be compliant.

In other words, says The Daily Telegraph, at least 23 control systems at the heart of the USA nuclear arsenal might fall victim to the millennium bug. If the computers fail to recognise the rollover, they might react in 100 different ways, from creating a false attack alert to blacking radar systems.

If what I have said is remotely accurate, it would appear that with only 284 days to go, we cannot conclude that the member states of the WEU and of NATO will not be rendered defenceless by the millennium bug. Nor can we guarantee that we will not be at risk from accidental nuclear attack, as the Federation of American Scientists has warned. As the report "The Bug in the Bomb" concludes:

"the only prudent course may be to de-alert or even de-activate those nuclear missile systems where date-related malfunctioning in associated command, control and communications systems poses even a remote possibility of accidental launch."

We know that a similar risk of accidental launch of missiles exists from other countries with a nuclear capability, such as Libya, Syria, Iran, China, Russia and North Korea, because so much of their computer software has been pirated that they lack the source code to correct it, unless the Americans are prepared to share information to guard against a launch based on faulty data.

Nor can we rule out a calculated launch, as suggested in the Sunday Telegraph on 6 December, which quoted an American defence official as saying:

"If Saddam Hussein wanted to launch an attack, 1 January 2000 would be the day to do it."

I look forward to hearing from the Minister on the current state of preparedness of UK defence, about the collective defence of western Europe in our alliance with the WEU and NATO, and about the risk of accidental launch of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons from unfriendly countries unable to cope with the millennium bug.

In particular, will the Minister respond to the key question posed in The Daily Telegraph in an article on 31 December, on which his Department declined to comment?

"If Britain and the US are partners in an integrated nuclear defence system, then how will the possible failure of 23 critical American systems affect our own systems?"

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Will he support the endorsement given by the WEU assembly to resolution 1167, passed last September by the Council of Europe, calling for an internationally agreed standard of millennium conformity; and will he say how far that has progressed? An internationally agreed test day should be held as soon as possible to put right the problems that will, inevitably, be exposed. Finally, will the Minister tell the House of the proposed involvement of the British Army in providing back-up to the police from new year's eve to deal with any civil emergency arising from any breakdown of public services due to the millennium bug, as suggested in the memo by the Secretary of State for Scotland last November?

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