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Arms Export Controls

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Pope, and it is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn). As a member of the Defence Committee who has not been on the Quadripartite Committee, and having heard all the praise being heaped on the Chairman, the hon. Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry), and on the Committee's work, I am disappointed to have missed something that I should have been involved in. I can only hope that, subject to the electorate, I will have an opportunity to serve on the Committee, if Parliament wishes to continue it. The report is a well-produced document, and I congratulate all four Committees on the part they played in its production. I also congratulate the Chairman on the excellent way in which he presented the case today. It would be a churlish person who said that the Government's response is unhelpful, as it recognises many of the issues. So, the Government are also to be congratulated on the way that they have tried to address some of these issues, which are not easy to address. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) talked about Israel. I think that the issue of exports to Israel goes right back to 1998—more than 10 years ago. For those of us who were against the exports of the 1980s and 1970s, it goes back even further. He talked about considering matters on a case-by-case basis. A good example of that issue is provided by Israel buying from the UK armoured vehicles that are not for suppression or aggression. Following that logic, the Palestinians could make a coherent case for buying tanks on the same grounds. They could say, "We will never use the tanks on our own people or in an aggressive way; we will use them to defend ourselves." Logically, on a case-by-case basis, one could easily argue that one could not resist selling that sort of weapon to the Palestinians. The hon. Member for Islington, North raised the issue of corruption. As I said in an earlier intervention, certain phrases are repeated in the Government's response. Three that crop up time and again are "in principle", "in due course" and "we will look again". On corruption, the Government make a very interesting comment. Not a few weeks or months ago but in their response, the Government said that they had appointed an anti-corruption champion, the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, and that he""wrote to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last October committing to develop a comprehensive strategy to combat foreign bribery and strengthen our work with international partners. This strategy is being developed by a cross-Whitehall group of officials and is supported by his anti-corruption secretariat in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills."" If that happened a year ago, where is the strategy and why are we still waiting? When will we see it? As the hon. Gentleman has rightly pointed out, those issues need to be exposed, and that should be done in such a way that people can see it being done. That brings us to the issue of why we do not have a register of brokers. In the very first page of the Government's response, they say that they""briefed the Ukrainian licensing authority on the introduction of the UK's new rules on licensing brokering transactions at an EU organised meeting in April in Kyiv"." But they go on to say that, unfortunately, they had not publicised them very well and that they were considering how to improve that situation. However, they were saying that back in April, and in July they thought that they would reconsider the matter, but there they were, in October, still without a mechanism by which the new controls that they have brought out can be properly publicised. There is a deficiency somewhere is there not? On brokering, I share the view of the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley); I think it would be of benefit to companies to be on a register. It would be helpful to them. If one is recognised as being an honest broker—if there is such a thing when it comes to arms dealers—one will benefit from not having to go through the systematic and long regime of work that needs to be carried out to get permission to go ahead. The resistance to having a register is beyond me. I cannot believe that is about cost, or a lack of willingness. There has to be some other reason why people do not want to do it. Arms brokers are the one group that do not lose out in a depressed world: they always seem to be able to make a buck or two, and usually more than that, as hon. Members have said. Being properly registered and accredited so that they are recognised as having some antecedents with our Government would be of enormous benefit to arms brokers. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), who chairs the International Development Committee and is listed in the report, and other hon. Friends who have appeared at meetings of the Committees on Arms Export Controls recognise their debt to the hon. Member for Kingswood for his chairmanship. I would like to make a few points on behalf of my party. We welcome the Government's commitment to review whether anti-vehicle mines should be placed in category B of the trade controls and would welcome further clarification on who will implement that review, the terms of reference that will guide it and when it is expected to be completed. Once again, I do not think that that is too much to ask. Given the Government's support for the 2006 declaration on anti-vehicle mines in the UN convention on certain conventional weapons and the UK arms industry's recognition that there is little commercial interest at stake in moving those mines to category B, the case for doing so on humanitarian and policy coherence grounds seems fairly straightforward. So why the delay? The Government could and should provide a clear indication pretty soon on how and when they plan to implement any proposed changes in the law and on their plans to review whether those mines should be placed in category B. I am also puzzled by the Government's response to paragraph 9 of the report's conclusions, as it seems they cannot recognise the importance of the non-re-export clause, and every Member who has contributed to the debate this afternoon has mentioned that fact. Some people might believe that it is hard to prove whether India sold the two maritime surveillance aircraft to Burma. Some suggest that it did and some that it did not, so how does one prove either case? The evidence available at the time makes it pretty clear that that was going to happen, yet the Indians totally ignored it. The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, the hon. Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell) stated in evidence to the Committee that there was a more worrying case of a helicopter that was to be transferred. The Indians once again made it clear that there was nothing in the contract that obliged them not to sell it on. Surely we must do something on that issue. It is unclear from the Government's response to paragraph 11 what exactly they are doing on the EU end-use control. End-use is vital and needs to be moved further forward. The Government's response to paragraph 21 states that on 30 October the UN voted overwhelmingly on the resolution to negotiate a strong, robust arms treaty. As Members have said, we know that only one country voted against that. The Americans, to their credit, voted for it, but I think that the proof will be in the eating in that regard: it is one thing to vote in the UN, but quite another to carry out that policy when the pork-belly politics of the US are at work. The pressures on a Government and on Congress to adhere to it is another thing, so we will have to wait to see how that transpires. Unless there is some sort of breakthrough in the way those laws are adopted, we could find that good ideas, such as a unified ban on lots of weapons or a treaty that is sufficient robust not be easily ignored, could be overwhelmed by the idea that they can be dealt with only on a basis of consensus. What is the point of that, because there will always be someone prepared to be the odd one out or a group that would simply stifle debate on those ideas? I know that it is easy to criticise, as I have done a little today, but I am also optimistic enough to think that the Government in this country have seen the light when it comes to export controls on weapons and that we all as a nation feel upset at the evil we see in the world, whether in Guinea, Sri Lanka or elsewhere, such as the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. How many of our soldiers have been killed by equipment provided by other countries whose representatives sit down and eat with our politicians and share discussions? How many of the weapons used in Iraq were manufactured in Transnistria and exported through Ukraine? Those end up in the hands of the enemies of our soldiers in Iraq and have been used to kill them. We must be mindful of the fact that those things are never easy to overcome, and the Government are showing a determination to do something about it. It would be foolish of anyone to criticise the Government by saying that they are doing nothing, because they are doing an awful lot. However, we cannot go on using the excuse that it is in the post. We must find a way of delivering a comprehensive response to reports such as the one we are considering. The report is one of the best I have read in more than 20 years in Parliament. It is not a difficult read, and members of the public and journalists will find a lot of information in it, and the Government's response has tried to do it justice. The best thing in the world, as the hon. Member for Islington, North concluded, is to work towards making it an even firmer proposition that would deliver the peace we want to see and for those weapons to be less easily available than they are at present.