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that there should be no effort to establish a collective or "government" view on issues before the Inquiry. I said to Sir R Butler that I thought Lord Howe's point nonetheless had merit. It would be absurd to leave the Inquiry with the
• impression that, in answer to a PQ, Ministers were under some obligation to divulge every last detail of government policy in all areas relevant to the PQ itself. Sir R Butler agreed. He said that there were a number of incidents which sprang to mind where full disclosure of government policy would not have been in the public interest, measured by any yardstick. Misleading answers were another matter and were very rare. One example, he said, was Lord Callaghan when Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1967 avoiding a clear answer to questions about sterling immediately before the devaluation. To have been more forthcoming would have caused disruption in the markets and fed the interests only of speculators. Sir R Butler also drew attention to questions about intelligence where the standard answer was that it had been the policy of successive British governments not to answer questions on intelligence matters. In short, it was no more than a statement of the obvious to say that it was not always in the national interest that questions in the House should be answered fully, though it was of course axiomatic that all answers should be truthful.
4.
I spoke again to Lord Howe and told him of my discussion with Sir R Butler. He said he thought our reaction had been helpful. But he wondered whether it might be possible to provide him with other examples from the past where quite clearly it would have been wrong of Ministers, measured against a rational assessment of overall British interests, to have given a fuller answer to a PQ than in fact they did. Perhaps Parliamentary Relations Unit would be good enough to have a look at this to see whether some useful examples might be found. Sir R Butler said that he thought help of this kind to Lord Howe and other witnessess would fall within the rules established by Lord Justice Scott.
5. The second point raised by Lord Howe was related to the first. He said that throughout the 1980s British defence exports to the Middle East, and particularly to Iran and Iraq, had been a significant element in sustaining a British defence industrial base on which, in turn, our own national defence forces ultimately depended. In addition defence industries sustained employment for British citizens often in areas where employment was critical to economic well-being. Neither of these factors could be ignored by Ministers in the performance of their functions. They were, indeed, genuine British interests which Ministers had to take into account, amongst other factors, in reaching decisions about arms exports. To pretend otherwise would be naive and misleading. He thought that in his evidence (and perhaps that of others
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