And it is this bureaucratic instinct not to want to know which recurs through the report, with all its associations with past war crimes.It reaches a climax in the extraordinary tale of the planned export of the "supergun". When Mr Q, the intelligence officer, circulated through Whitehall the sensational news that Iraq was developing a deadly long- range supergun, produced by the British company Walter Somers, he found he had a credibility problem. When he asked for help from intelligence colleagues in Spain, they reported: "Once the laughter subsided ... we undertook inquiries ..." When a new boss of Walter Somers, David James, realised that his firm was making the "monstrous gun", he told another intelligence officer, who thought it so improbable that he refused to accept what James alleged and asked Mr Q: "Has the guy finally taken leave of his senses?"But the most extraordinary part of the story is how the Government was so willing, not only to provide weapons, but to subsidise them through the Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD), which pays for them (at the taxpayers' expense) if the customer does not. Scott describes how, from 1985, the Ministry of Defence insistently pressed for more loans to finance military as well as civilian products to Iraq, and how the Foreign Office gave way - even though (as Scott says) it "was plainly inconsistent with a policy of evenhandedness" towards Iran.The Ministry of Defence persuaded the Department of Trade and Industry and the Treasury that equipment for communications and artillery was really for civilian use and therefore entitled to credit beyond the "defence quota" for loans to Iraq. By 1987, after the atrocities against the Kurds were well known, we were not only supplying crucial equipment for the Iraqi police to communicate with the army, we were also providing loans for it - while Iraq was increasingly overdue with other repayments.Scott rightly comments that Parliament had the right to be informed of how public money was being spent on arming Iraq. But Parliament was not told, of course, because the loans were absurd and highly dangerous.

They suited the arms makers, the bankers and Saddam, but they could not suit a public interested in peace and in saving taxpayers' money.The full cost of this spendthrift policy has been worked out in the important booklet Gunrunners' Gold, published by the World Development Movement last May, which describes how weapons to many developing countries were financed by British taxpayers But Iraq spelt out the full folly of it. By 1989, Saddam was effectively broke; as Boyden Gray, one of President George Bush's advisers, put it: "God, this guy had money problems. No wonder he went marching into Kuwait." After the Gulf war, the ECGD was faced with up to pounds 952m of unpaid debts to Britain - many for military equipment.The fact that we were, in effect, giving away defence equipment to our potential enemy of course makes nonsense of the arguments much-touted at the time by Alan Clark or the late Nicholas Ridley, that arms sales were essential to Britain's economic future - or to the assumption that they were crucial to making jobs at home. If the sales turn out to be gifts, there are much cheaper and more productive ways of making jobs than giving weaponry to future enemies.How did we get locked into such a dangerous and costly mistake? Scott's report effectively shows how readily bureaucrats become entangled in irresponsible policies. But it also makes clearer why the ex-Foreign Secretary Lord Howe went to such lengths to rubbish Scott; for it reveals how the duplicity at the top infected all the diplomats and encouraged them to conceal the truth from themselves and from each other.No wonder they were determined not to tell Parliament or the public.

But if this is not a cover-up, then we have to ask the Government, what is?The writer is author of 'The Arms Bazaar: From Krupp to Saddam'.. Every politician these days wants to do something to help the family. In the United States, Pat Buchanan's "peasants' revolt" is in part a crusade against the permissive culture of divorce. Here, recent months have brought unprecedented bitter battles over our divorce laws.

Last week, the family fundamentalists again seemed to be getting the better of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, over his Family Law Bill (Lady Olga Maitland helpfully promised that he would not survive the summer) and today new Labour is joining the fray, with Peter Mandelson's call for a pounds 5,000 government dowry for couples when they marry All of them are at least asking a good question. If nearly half of all marriages end in divorce and if, as all the evidence suggests, the divorced are poorer and less happy, and if their children are more likely to be depressed, to truant or to become criminals, then it is surely right to ask if anything can be done. Mr Mandelson and Roger Liddle's "government dowry" idea is certainly the most eye-catching proposal yet. Newly married couples would get the offer of an interest-free loan of pounds 5,000, financed through higher inheritance taxes. Couples would be able to use the money to help them to set up a home.Doubtless hordes of experts and spin doctors in Tory Central Office will soon start picking it apart. It is unclear exactly how it would be means- tested, how it would be policed and whether in practice it would not just turn into yet another tax subsidy for the banks and building societies.But it will be hard for the right to be too critical because this proposal is only the latest in a long stream of attempts to use financial incentives to reverse the tide of divorce. Only last year, a group of Tory ladies proposed that a lump sum should be given to married couples who had stayed together for 10 years (this at least had the virtue of recognising that the real problem is not a shortage of marriages but rather a shortage of successful ones). There is also a strong likelihood that Downing Street will conjure up its own marriage bonus in time for the general election.Many of these make good symbolic politics and doubtless the dowry idea would be popular, especially among working-class couples who would like to be able to afford a white wedding - such a wedding in the South- east is now estimated to cost more than pounds 8,000 - and a down payment on a mortgage.But the conventional wisdom that relationships can be seriously influenced by economic measures rests on a fundamental misreading of the situation In the past, marriage was above all an economic institution.

You had to get married to survive, just as you had to have children to ensure that you were looked after in old age, and you judged your prospective partner in terms of their ability to earn, to bear children, or to cook.Today our whole attitude has changed. In the Fifties, surveys found that the most important things in marriage were the efficient fulfilment of the roles of breadwinner and homemaker, but by the Eighties they found that the most important considerations were faithfulness, mutual respect, understanding and tolerance We now look to relationships and marriage for love. We expect our partner to be our best friend and most intimate companion, as well as a co-signatory on the joint mortgage.This is not to say that money is wholly unimportant when it comes to settling down or choosing your partner, but marriage today is not primarily about economics, just as the failure of marriages is not primarily about having the wrong incentives. After all, the sixfold rise in the divorce rate since the early Sixties came before the decline in real terms of the value of the married couple's tax allowance, which began in 1990. And the prospect of poverty after divorce has not prevented women (who initiate most divorces) from leaving unhappy marriages.The real problem is that we have far greater expectations of relationships, and much greater freedom to walk away from them, without having the skills we need to manage relationships well.