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Arms Export Controls

It is a great pleasure to introduce this debate. Thank you, Sir Nicholas, for your very kind comments. It is a pleasure for all of us to participate with your good self in the Chair. Considering the report on arms export controls and the Government's reply is an annual event. I should like to thank all my colleagues who serve on the departmental Select Committees for again producing a unanimous report. As I have said before, we are four Select Committees sitting simultaneously, and we are just about quorate most of the time. It is no mean achievement that we arrive at unanimous reports on a controversial set of issues, and that is a tribute to all who serve on the Committees. I should also like to thank the staff of the four Select Committees, our Clerks and the officials of the Government Departments who have had the pleasure of responding to our questions. I thank all those who have given written evidence to the Committee and appeared before us as witnesses. The report of the inquiry that is before us today had the benefit of input from a number of witnesses. The former Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and—[Hon. Members: "Somewhere nearby."] I guessed that it might be somewhere nearby Kilmarnock, but I had forgotten precisely where—no offence to those who live near Kilmarnock. Thanks go to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Des Browne) and the officials from the Ministry of Defence who came along with him. My right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks), when he was Minister for Energy, also had responsibility for export controls, and I thank him and the officials of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform for being witnesses. I should also like to thank defence manufacturers, such as the Export Group for Aerospace and Defence, and the UK working group, which is the non-governmental organisation that represents Oxfam, Amnesty International and Saferworld. For this report, we heard oral evidence from representatives of Transparency International because we were considering issues of bribery and corruption. Moreover, I am pleased to record that my hon. Friend the Minister gave evidence to our Committee in January. Although we heard that evidence after the report had been published, it was important none the less. I am grateful for that and delighted that he is here to reply to the debate. Although I am clearly partisan in a party political sense, I am not being partisan when I say, on behalf of the Committees, that we all recognise that the Government have made substantial progress in relation to arms export controls over the years. We greatly value the regular reports that we now receive, the greater transparency and accountability that they provide, and the Government's leadership on the whole process to secure an effective arms trade treaty and a convention on banning cluster munitions. In the past, I have had one or two disagreements with Ministers on their reluctance to ban cluster munitions. I am delighted, however, by the recent decision to ban unilaterally the use of cluster munitions. Since that time, the UK has played a leading role in securing an effective convention, which we hope will be properly implemented. Therefore, there is a whole range of issues on which the Committees would wish to congratulate the Government. However, the benefit of these debates is not derived from people such as me singing the Government's praises. I have spent five minutes doing that, so I would like to spend the rest of the two hours and 55 minutes of debate identifying issues on which further progress can be made. I hasten to say, Sir Nicholas, that I will not personally take up all the remaining time. We have a fair bit of time to allow all hon. Members to contribute, as I hope that they will. There are a number of ongoing areas on which the Committees' view is different from the Government's.