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Arms Export Controls

It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon and to appear before you, Mr. Pope. It has been a privilege to listen to the debate, which has been of extremely high quality. I shall try to the best of my ability to address the issues that have been raised. If I do not deal with some questions during the course of the debate, I will ensure that responses are forwarded to right hon. and hon. Members, because it is evident that there is a breadth of knowledge that is well worth tapping. Many of the arguments made today have been extremely persuasive. The Government have engaged with the Committee and listened to its arguments. They do so because these are difficult issues, and the benefit of experience and argument is something that the Government need to continue to use in determining their approach. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry) for his chairing of the Committee. If I may, I would like to use his speech as the cornerstone of my response. I have selected some of the issues that he raised. The Government are firmly of the view—some Members share it—that the UK has one of the most rigorous export control regimes in the world, and that it is right and proper that we do, because this is an extremely difficult area where difficult judgments have to be made at specific times on specific applications, and in the context of changing events. It is right and proper that throughout the process we take into account the changes that have occurred in countries when licence applications are made. We must balance the decisions that we make on export control applications with the important role that the defence industry plays in the UK economy. Many people are employed in the industry and it is important to take that into consideration. There is no conflict between effective export controls and supporting the defence sector, but it is important that we have an open, rigorous and transparent regime with which to assess applications and make the difficult decisions. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood that we have made significant progress, but I want to talk specifically about the areas that he mentioned and explore why we may not, as yet, have reached agreement on particular points, and I hope give him some comfort. First, on extraterritoriality, the Prime Minister announced in 2007 the Government's commitment to extend extraterritorial controls to small arms and other weapons and we implemented it in relation to small arms and man-portable air-defence systems in October 2008. We further extended those extraterritorial controls to other weapons—light weapons—on 6 April 2009. We committed to and prioritised the introduction of the controls on the basis of evidence of the risk associated with them. We asked the NGOs and industry stakeholders to consider the case for those extensions of controls to be applied to even more military goods. The joint industry and NGO working group met several times, from 2008 onwards, and presented its proposal to us in late spring this year. Following that, we held two further meetings with the group to clarify aspects of the proposal. We have been assessing the proposal and the outcome of those meetings, and although I cannot give my hon. Friend and the Committee a response today, I can say that there will be a response within a few weeks to the process that has been undertaken. It is a difficult area. We have listened to the views of the Committee, the NGOs and the industry and we will be introducing proposals—I was going to say "very shortly" but will stick to saying "within just a few weeks".