Parliamentary Questions - Written Replies

'IRAQGATE': Richard Ryder, the Chief Whip, was last night named by the Prime Minister as being involved in the 'Iraqgate' affair. On 19 July 1990, Mr Ryder, then a Treasury minister, attended a key ministerial meeting for Mr Major, then the Chancellor, to discuss defence sales to Iran and Iraq. 'The public expenditure Cabinet was held on the same day and would have been my principal preoccupation,' Mr Major said in a written reply to George Robertson, a Labour spokesman on foreign affairs. He said that at the beginning of August 1990, he saw a minute referring to Matrix Churchill as one company with potential exports that would need to be prevented.