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Arms Export Controls

It is always a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Committee on Arms Export Controls, the hon. Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry). He made an extremely pertinent contribution, and will be glad to know that he raised all the points that I was going to make. As always on such occasions, one is delighted to feed off the crumbs from the rich man's table. I will start with one important matter that the hon. Gentleman did not touch on—the fact that in this Committee, which is responsible for scrutinising Government policy, we are dependent on obtaining timely sight of proposed secondary legislation, before that legislation comes into effect. As the House knows, a great deal of the legislative and policy framework for arms export controls lies in secondary legislation. Our concerns were made clear to the Government in paragraph 11 of our report:""We therefore repeat our recommendation that, in future, the Government should ensure that interested parties have at least two months to comment on drafts of secondary legislation implementing the Government's conclusions on the outcome of its Review of Export Controls."" I am disappointed in the Government's response to that critically important point. They have given us no assurance that they will meet our requirements for being able to view the draft secondary legislation at least two months ahead of its implementation. In a very weak way, they merely responded:""We will endeavour in future to give stakeholders as much time as is possible to provide views in the event of further changes to the controls."" I do not think that is good enough, and it does not enable the Committee to discharge its responsibilities. The hon. Member for Kingswood referred to Ukraine. I shall not elaborate further on that issue, other than to say that it was a serious matter for the members of the four Select Committees, particularly the Foreign Affairs Committee. It is unfortunate if circumstances arise where a foreign country has a list of UK arms brokers who have been given licences, yet the UK post in that country is unaware of the contents of the list. We have taken careful note of that matter in the Foreign Affairs Committee and the other Committees. There is one further point that I want to pursue. We asked an important question of the Government when we obtained the list. We wanted to be satisfied that there had been no breach of UK legislation in terms of those exports from the Ukraine by UK brokers. Again, I am disappointed in the Government's reply. It is now six months after our visit, yet we still have no clear statement as to whether there has been a breach of UK export controls by those brokers. The Government say that they are investigating the matter but that the process is not yet complete. I would have expected the Government to come up with a clear answer to the Committee's important question on that matter. I turn briefly to the issue of extraterritoriality, which the Chairman of the Committee dealt with extremely well. For years, the four Committees have been out in front in that policy area, with the Government coming rather ponderously behind. It seems to be a half-baked policy involving a situation where some items on the military list are subject to extraterritoriality, and some are not. Do we accept the principle that an individual arms broker or arms exporter should be able to get outside UK jurisdiction, make sales that would be criminal offences if made within the UK, and get away with those sales without committing a criminal offence in the UK? If that situation is not acceptable, it follows logically that it must be the same for all items on the military list. That is what the four Committees have been saying. We are glad that the Government now have what we understand is an agreed proposal from the non-governmental organisations and the arms export companies. We noted that the Government were due to respond to those proposals by the end of October. We are now beyond that, and we look to the Government to produce their response to those proposals quickly. There is an anomalous position on anti-vehicle land mines. I applaud the current Government for getting in front of most of the rest of the world as far as anti-personnel land mines are concerned—that is absolutely to their credit. However, having got in front on that issue, why do we lag behind on anti-vehicle land mines? I do not understand why the Government have difficulty in extending category B trade controls to this classification of weapons. The extension to category B is not only sought by the Committee, it is sought by NGOs and by the industry. Arms exporters have no difficulty with the extension of category B to anti-vehicle land mines. I am puzzled as to why the Government reply, rather lamely:""The Government will look again at whether anti-vehicle land mines should be placed into Category B of the trade controls."" I also want to look at the important issue of controls over weapons in transit. The Foreign Affairs Committee is familiar with that issue, and it was a significant feature of our inquiry into arms exports to Sierra Leone. We asked the Government a very specific question: how often had they seized goods in transit under the powers that existed then? I have read their reply carefully, but as far as I can see, they have totally ducked our very specific question; perhaps the Minister can tell us why they have been silent. On the register of arms brokers, I fully endorse what the hon. Member for Kingswood said. Again, it is rather strange that the Government are unable to meet the Committees' recommendations. Ministers have effectively conceded the case for an international register of UK arms brokers. In paragraph 48 of our report, we quote the then Minister of State at the former Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the right hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks), who told us that his Department was""not opposed to the idea of a register of arms brokers in principle"." In their response to our report, the Government make the same point, so we all agree in principle, but Ministers do not seem to want to jump the fence. The Government response includes comments such as""The Government will be happy to look at this issue again once we have assessed the effectiveness of other initiatives…It is right that the Government takes the time to properly assess the effect of these new initiatives"" and so on. Given that the Government have accepted that a register would be desirable, why is it taking so long to agree that one as a matter of policy? I simply do not understand the problem that is being erected on the grounds that a register would apparently impose a burden on legitimate businesses. If there was a register of approved UK brokers, it would actually lessen that burden because brokers making successive applications would not have to have them dealt with from scratch every time that they submitted them, because those brokers would be on the approved register. That would actually reduce the burden on legitimate businesses, rather than increase it, as the Government have suggested. I am in no doubt that re-export clauses are very desirable, and if I were in the Minister's shoes, I would seize such a policy with both hands. Under the present system, a Minister takes a risk in relying on the fact that officials have got the risk assessment right and that a particular item will not be re-exported. If that judgment is wrong—and anybody can make a wrong judgment—it is the Minister who has to face the music. If there is a re-export clause in the contract, however, they can reasonably tell the House, "I've done everything I possibly can to prevent re-export. I put a re-export clause in the contract. Now I can litigate against the company in question." When he is in his bath, the Minister might like to reflect on which policy would suit him best. On end-use undertakings, I found the Government's response incredibly laid-back in one respect. In the course of our inquiry, the Committees exposed a fundamental factual error in internal Ministry of Defence guidance. In response to paragraph 73 of our report, the Government said that the original internal Ministry of Defence guidance""inadvertently included advice to Project Teams which suggested that end-user undertakings were not required between EU Member States."" If internally incorrect guidance is going around a Department that deals with licensing exports from this country, I should have thought that the first thing that people would want to do would be to correct that guidance at a rate of knots. In their reply, however, the Government simply say that they will make an amendment""pending the updating of the entire section on international business"," which will no doubt take several months, if not longer. Perhaps the Minister can explain why the Government are so relaxed and laid-back about correcting this serious error, which is running around in internal Ministry of Defence guidance. I have one last point on controls, although the Minister will be relieved to hear that I am now coming to a "sunlit uplands" section of my speech, in which I can say that we are on all fours with the Government. On dual use, the Committees recommended that the Government carry out independent research into how effective the controls are. As we all know, this is a serious issue, which brings us to potential chemical and biological nasties, so it is important that we have some independent assessment of how effective our controls are. The Government accepted our recommendation and commissioned a study, which they told us was carried out earlier this year, but the Committees are anxious to see the results. I do not know why the Government have simply responded by saying:""The results of this study will be reported to the Committees and made public in due course."" Why does it have to be "in due course"? This important study was carried out earlier this year, and one would have hoped that the results could have been made available to the Committees immediately.