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Arms Export Controls

As always, I am extremely grateful to you, Sir Nicholas. Let me start with a few comments about the perennial issues of brokering, trafficking and extraterritoriality. Over the years, the Government have introduced extraterritorial controls in relation to brokering and trafficking. The Government say that the purpose of that is""to ensure that unscrupulous traders cannot pursue deals that concern the UK simply by carrying out the business from another country."" That is an excellent summary of why it is necessary to have extraterritorial controls over arms dealings by UK persons abroad. The Export Control Act 2002, which came into operation in 2004, regulates, for the first time, UK persons abroad when they trade in missiles with a range of more than 300 km—they are usually referred to as long-range missiles—and torture equipment, or when they trade to an embargoed destination. Following the recent review of the arms export control regime, the structure for regulating brokering has extended extraterritorial controls to small arms, cluster munitions and man-portable air defence systems, or MANPADS. The Committees warmly welcome that decision. I, like others, have said on many occasions that the omission of small arms from the 2002 legislation was unfortunate, to put it mildly. It bears repeating that small arms are the current weapons of mass destruction. They kill a man, woman or child every minute—half a million people on this planet every year. The Committees and I welcome the fact that the Government have finally accepted our recommendation and that small arms, cluster munitions and MANPADS are now covered by extraterritorial controls. The Government deserve congratulations on that.