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Arms Export Controls

I, too, welcome this debate and endorse the report that we are discussing. I will focus on one issue, but before I mention that, I want to put on record my endorsement of what my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry) said and the themes of his speech. He made important points about extraterritoriality, re-export, brokers and the need for a register of UK brokers. One of his most telling points involved the question of end use. He rightly said that unless we get end use right, the rest is all a bit irrelevant, because where arms end up being used is where people die. That is what we must focus on. He was absolutely right to pay tribute to the Government and their work on the need for an arms trade treaty, but he was also right to say that there is more work to be done to bring good intentions into practice. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes)—the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee—said about Sri Lanka, and about the role of the Committees and Departments. I certainly agree with what he said in his tribute to the Chair of the Committees on Arms Export Controls. When the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) began his speech by saying that the Chair of the Committees had said everything that he wanted to say, my heart sank a bit, because it is always great to hear from the right hon. Gentleman. However, although the Chair's speech was well targeted and pertinent, he did not say everything that the right hon. Gentleman wanted to say. We are fortunate to have him on the Committees, with his forensic questioning of Ministers and others who come before us and his ability to get to the point of many issues. He showed those qualities again today, although I started to worry whether we would get too much information when he began to give my hon. Friend the Minister advice about what he should be doing in his bath. I hope that, in our next evidence session, the right hon. Gentleman does not get involved in forensic questioning on that subject, as it might lead us into rather dangerous territory. I shall focus on the question of exports to Israel, particularly in the light of the conflict in Gaza. It is an issue on which I might be in danger of being typecast. I should declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Palestine and as a member of the Select Committee on International Development, which has discussed arms exports to Israel not only with the Committees on Arms Export Controls, and in work with other Committees, but in our own reports and inquiries. The humanitarian position facing the peoples of the occupied territories has been an important part of our work over the past few years. It is not surprising—indeed, it is right—that we should spend some time today considering that issue. Apart from anything else, it is topical. We are debating it in the context of the report at the same time that the United Nations General Assembly is debating the report prepared by Judge Richard Goldstone on the allegations of war crimes committed during the conflict in Gaza earlier this year. The conclusion of his inquiry is that there is evidence that war crimes were committed in Gaza by Hamas as well as Israel. That means a lot to me, as I led a delegation to Gaza and southern Israel this February to see the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead. We were one of the first international parliamentary delegations to the area after the conflict, and certainly the first UK parliamentary delegation. Nobody could have participated in that visit and seen what we saw—the destruction of homes and the aftermath of that conflict—without feeling a powerful moral responsibility to bear witness, when they returned, to what they had seen and, perhaps most importantly, to try to do something about it, in terms of both accountability and ensuring that such a thing never happens again. About 1,400 Palestinians died, many of them civilians, in the course of Operation Cast Lead. During that period, 13 Israelis also died, three of them civilians. We owe it to all of them to ensure that we do what we can. It is not simply a historical matter of what happened in December 2008 and January 2009. Those events were preceded by an ongoing blockade of Gaza and continuing occupation of the west bank. Israel would also argue that they were preceded by rocket attacks on Sderot and other towns in southern Israel. Since the events of December 2008 and January 2009, the blockade has continued, as has the violence. To illustrate how important it is that we do the right thing in relation to arms export controls, I draw the Minister's attention to the latest report from the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied territories. The report says that in the past week,""Israeli forces have continued to prohibit Palestinian access to agricultural land along the border fence and to fishing areas within three nautical miles from the sea, through firing warning shots in the direction of farmers and fishermen. During the ""reporting period, Israeli forces opened fire against Palestinian fisherman and farmers on at least three occasions. In addition, in three separate incidents, Israeli forces entered with tanks and bulldozers a few hundred metres into the border areas and conducted levelling operations."" That is the latest weekly report from the UN. There is a tendency to say that conflict in Gaza ended in January 2009, but it is still going on.