Where are they now ? No 345 Baroness Symons

House of Lords Debates / Tuesday, 24 September 2002 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Minister of State (Trade), Department of Trade and Industry)

My Lords, the central issue before the House today is straightforward, solemn and serious. It is how the international community can make Iraq comply with its clear obligation to abandon its weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein has those weapons. He can use them, and we believe that in time he will do so.

The dossier goes on to show that Iraq is seeking components and uranium to take forward its already advanced nuclear programme. The dossier highlights the fact that the regime has developed mobile laboratories for military use, corroborating earlier reports about the mobile production of biological warfare agents. It shows that Iraq is developing longer-range ballistic missiles to deliver such weapons further afield.

The dossier brings out clearly the assessment of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which brings together the heads of the three intelligence and security agencies. That assessment is that the Iraqi regime could, in certain circumstances, produce a nuclear weapon in a period of between one and two years.

The same committee has evidence that Iraq has sought to buy the significant quantities of uranium that it needs from Africa, at a time when Iraq has no civil nuclear power programme and, therefore, no legitimate reason to acquire uranium.

Appallingly, the report shows that Intelligence indicates that the Iraqi military is already able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so.

Of those who say, "Prove that Saddam will use the weapons", we ask, "What more proof do we need than his record?".

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Ex Minister of Defence Procurement, and of State (Trade), Department of Trade and Industry) is a Director of British Airways, P&O and US law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary the 6th largest legal services organisation in the UK who delivered one of the first ever PFIs in the UK defence sector in 1998, and as the winner of the "Public Private Finance Awards for Best UK Deal to Reach Financial Close 2006" for a Ministry of Defence (MOD) project, claim, "we are a major player in the defence market." You can find an extensive (and very interesting and massive MOD PFI contracts ) list of the contracts in which they have been involved here including secondment of "our people" to the Defence Procurement Agency's Private Finance Unit at Abbeywood (part of the MOD) where they have worked on an extensive number of national and international programmes such as: Eurofighter Programme, Nimrod MRA4, Harrier GR7,Lynx Mk 7 and 9 simulator and the FIAST (?) programme.

In 2001 she married her partner Phil Bassett, ex Murdoch hack who was in the No 10 "Strategic communications unit", which he left in September 2003 to become special adviser to Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs.These NU Labour apparatchiks had their son privately educated.