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Mr. John Braithwaite

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will certainly keep him informed. After this debate, it may be that other hon. Members contact me about their constituents, and I should be more than happy to co-ordinate with them. I want to make it clear that as far as I can tell, the company has done nothing illegal, but I believe that it has acted with a total lack of consideration for the effect of its policies on its employees. Being incorporated in Jersey, it is not subject to UK employment law. Will the Minister clarify whether Jersey is obliged to conform with EU employment law? Because Jersey law does not extend to extraterritorial employment, the company appears to be able to hire and fire as it pleases. In respect of my constituent, it appears even to have ignored its own company policy in a number of instances: it did not make the contract available before deployment; it changed the terms of engagement after the offer had been accepted; and the selection of individuals for redundancy was arbitrary and based on no objective criteria, as was admitted at the time by ArmorGroup personnel in Iraq. The case also raises the general issue of private security companies and the implications of their increasing involvement in conflict and post-conflict situations. I am grateful to a paper produced by Sarah Percy of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, of which I am a member, entitled ““Regulating the Private Security Industry?. I have used it to inform myself on the issue. Since the Foreign Affairs Committee report on the Sierra Leone arms investigation in 1998, most of the attention has focused on private security companies at the front end in conflict situations. The ambiguous legal position of mercenary forces and the absence of effective regulation was the subject of a Green Paper in 2002 and a further Foreign Affairs Committee report, but has not, as far as I am aware, led to UK legislation, as yet. The issues raised by the case of my constituent and that of the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Donaldson) are, of course, much less serious than the legal vacuum that appears to allow foreign mercenaries to commit human rights abuses and breach international law with an impunity that, quite rightly, does not apply to military personnel in the same situation. However, it is our Government who are commissioning and funding post-conflict reconstruction projects in Iraq. If that work is being done on the Government’s behalf by employees of a private security company, the Government should take some responsibility for ensuring that those employees are protected against the exploitative employment practices to which my constituent and others appear to have been subjected by ArmorGroup. The FCO has admitted in a parliamentary answer that the contracts include no stipulation requiring conformity with UK employment law, and I should like the Minister to explain why not. In response to my first letter to the Foreign Office on 24 October, the Minister for the Middle East said that ArmorGroup had undertaken an internal inquiry reporting on 10 November and had assured the Foreign Office that all proper procedures were followed in Mr Braithwaite’s recruitment, employment and redundancy. I am tempted to say, ““They would say that, wouldn’t they?? I certainly do not think that the Foreign Office should have been satisfied with that response. Essentially, the firm was allowed to be its own judge and jury. The IISS article states that Christopher Beese, ArmorGroup’s chief administrative officer, has suggested that with the demise of Sandline and now that no UK firm is involved in providing front-line fighting personnel:"““the need for regulation is less pressing.?" Given his company’s cavalier employment practices, I can see exactly why he is not keen on regulation, but the British Government owe it to people such as my constituent, who actually do the work in Iraq that the Government are paying for, either to introduce better regulation of private security companies or to include in their contracts better protection for employees. As I have pointed out, my constituent has been relatively fortunate in being able to return to employment with Thames valley police after only three months out of work, but I do not believe that it is acceptable for firms such as ArmorGroup to continue to operate in a way that exploits their employees, particularly when their major customer is the British Government and therefore the British taxpayer. There is very little evidence about the cost-effectiveness of using private security companies in post-conflict situations. Costs are simply not available publicly, and so few firms are involved that there is little effective competition. The Foreign Office has commissioned independent reviews of the policing programme to assess its effectiveness, such as the security sector development advisory team’s review in May 2005, Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s assessment in January 2006 and chief constable Paul Kernaghan’s progress assessment visit on 4 to 7 October 2006. However, it is not clear whether any of those reports considered cost-effectiveness or employment practices, and there has not been an opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny. I ask the Foreign Office seriously to re-examine its use of private security companies, independently to assess their cost-effectiveness to the taxpayer and institute proper controls in contracts to protect employees. Will it ensure that those reviews are available to Parliament and drawn to the attention of the relevant Select Committee? No one else employed by ArmorGroup on a British Government-funded contract should be subject to the same experience as my constituent, Mr. Braithwaite.