24 March 2002
UK Nuke Policy from Geoff Hoon

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: You said in a very interesting exchange in the Defence Select Committee that in the right conditions you would be willing to use nuclear weapons against among others Iraq.  Would that be if they used biological or chemical weapons against British troops, is that the kind of condition?

GEOFF HOON: Let me make it clear the long standing British government policy that if our forces if our people were threatened by weapons of mass destruction we would reserve the right to use appropriate proportionate responses which might..might in extreme circumstances include the use of nuclear weapons.

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: In the most recent Strategic Review you said that Britain would only respond with nuclear weapons against a non nuclear state if that state was allied to a nuclear state which had used nuclear weapons.  Now this is a very significant departure and this you clarified when you say we would respond if they if Iraq used weapons of mass destruction with nuclear weapons.

GEOFF HOON: I said if the conditions were satisfied, and they're precisely the conditions that we set out in the Strategic Defence Review which is wholly consistent with the government's long standing policy.

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: So you would only use weapons against nuclear weapons against Iraq if Iraq was allied to a nuclear state which had already used nuclear weapons or if Iraq had used nuclear weapons.

GEOFF HOON: No, weapons of mass destruction.

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Sorry but then there's a really big distinction here because what the Strategic Review is very careful to say and of course that is the long standing policy of all governments since British acquired nuclear weapons is that there would only be a nuclear response to a nuclear attack.  You're saying there could be a nuclear response to an attack with weapons of mass destruction namely for instance biological and chemical weapons.

GEOFF HOON: I think you'll find if you look elsewhere in the Strategic Defence Review and range a little more widely, you'll find that actually we make precisely this point that if there is a threat to our deployed forces, if they come under attack by weapons of mass destruction, and by that specifically chemical biological weapons, then we would reserve the option in an appropriate case, subject to the conditions that I have referred to when I was talking to the select committee, to use nuclear weapons.

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: You also told the select committee that you doubted whether Saddam Hussein would be deterred by that threat.  If you did then use British nuclear weapons against Iraq because he was not deterred, you would in effect be punishing the people of Iraq for what Saddam Hussein had done with annihilation.

GEOFF HOON: What we would be doing is defending ourselves and the British people against a threat from Saddam Hussein, I said in extreme conditions of self-defence we would need to do that.  You're suggesting somehow that we're talking about retaliation, we are talking about reserving the right to protect our own people from attack by Saddam Hussein.

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: But how do you protect your own people if Saddam Hussein is not deterred and therefore launches a biological or chemical attack?

GEOFF HOON: The fact is that states of concern like Iraq we have real concerns because we do not believe that he cares sufficiently about his own people.  He has, after al,l used chemical weapons against his own people and would not therefore be deterred from using such weapons against the people of the united kingdom or our allies.  But if I can just finish this point.  But if he were to do that then clearly if that threat was a continuing one we would reserve the right proportionately in those extreme conditions to defend ourselves against those attacks by the use the weapons that we have available.

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: But you would only use Britain's weapon of mass destruction after an attack by Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction?

GEOFF HOON: Clearly if there were strong evidence of an imminent attack if we knew that an attack was about to occur and we could use our weapons to protect against it.  I can conceive of a situation where you're question isn't quite precise, but generally speaking, what we would be seeking to do is to leave Saddam Hussein unsure as to our intentions.  Therefore he would not be certain in his own mind what response the British government would make to an attack using weapons of mass destruction against the British people.

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: If Britain was to use its own weapon of mass destruction one nuclear weapon you would in effect be obliterating the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, you would have destroyed Iraq, the countries around, Turkey, in the Gulf, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, could very easily be horrifically effected by nuclear fall out.  I put it to you that in reality no British government would ever, against the threat that you described, deploy that weapon of mass annihilation.

GEOFF HOON: That is why these are in only the most extreme circumstances where there is a direct threat to our forces and to our people from weapons of mass destruction but it is important that we do not rule that out, it is important that we do not allow an appalling dictator like Saddam Hussein to know precisely what our response might be.

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Secretary of State thank you, let's now bring in some of our audience, we have got lots today, right down here in the first row first of all , the woman with the grey sweater.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr Hoon can you not grasp the fact that just by making it so clear that you are prepared to repeat President Bush's determined statement to use Nuclear Weapons, that you and President Bush have issued the greatest Terrorist threat to human kind and Mr Dimbleby has spelled it out to you that  if you failed to understand before the level of annihilation that you will be inflicting on millions of innocent civilian lives. . . .

GEOFF HOON: . .  . which is why

AUDIENCE MEMBER: . . . there is no justification for this at all, plus the fact that you have to remember that when you joined with America in the first attack on Iraq both United States and the United Kingdom used deadly radio active depleted uranium weapons which are still causing vast areas of the country of Iraq to be radio active with all the genetic and horrendously genocidal impact that it is having on the people of Iraq.

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Two questions there Secretary of State

GEOFF HOON: Let me make it clear that the first responsibility of a Secretary of State for Defence and of a British Government is to defend the interests of the British People and to defend the interests of Britains armed forces and that does mean that we do have to keep people like Saddam Hussein unsure as to our response but I accept as I have just accepted in answer to Mr Dimbleby's question that these are extreme measures that we would only use in the circumstances where our people were threatened by weapons of mass destruction and in those circumstances . . .

AUDIENCE MEMBER INTERRUPTING HE CARRIES ON.

We must reserve the right to use them otherwise it is clear that Saddam Hussein will not know what our intentions are.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: In this area you have Menworth Hill, in North Yorkshire you have Filing Dales, two bases that are putting the lives of British People at risk in this country because they are being prepared by stealth with you giving evasive answers about whether or not we have been asked to allow them to be developed for Star Wars, these bases will have incredible repercussions for people of the of the planet.  They will give America domination of the planet . . .

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: . . okay

AUDIENCE MEMBER: . . . and they will have incredible impacts on peoples lives of this country endangering people to a level that has never been happened before. Your policies are just wrong.

JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Geoff Hoon.

GEOFF HOON: On the contrary those bases are there doing an invaluable job protecting the interests of the British People as they have done over a very, very long period of time and let me make it quite clear to you (applause), let me make it quite clear to you, I am not giving you in any way an invasive response.  We have had no request whatsover from the United States to use those bases for any further purpose but if we did receive such a request let me repeat it again we would use those bases to defend the best interest of the British people.

(JONATHAN DIMBLEBY, Sunday 24th March 2002, Geoff Hoon [Typographical errors may appear in this transcript due to the urgent transcription of the same],

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