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Arms Export Controls

I am glad to open what I hope and expect to be the first of our annual debates on the reports of the Committees on Arms Export Controls. First, I thank the members of the four Committees for their contributions to our report, which sets a high standard of detail, incisiveness and relevance to current events, with particular reference to north Africa and the middle east. I also thank the staff of our Committees for their invaluable contribution in bringing together our report, and I thank Ministers and their officials for the substantial volume of detailed information that they have provided to the Committees in the response to our report and in answer to our subsequent extensive questions. One of my objectives, which is shared by the members of the Committees, is to achieve a higher level of transparency in our work in the key area of arms export controls, and I believe that we have made a good start in that direction. I start with various aspects of the arms export controls system. Much of the debate will focus on the situation in north Africa and the middle east, which I will come on to, but it is important to cover this central area of the controls system, and I begin with the Export Control Organisation. I see the attraction for the Government and, most particularly, for the Treasury of changing the system of funding for the ECO. The Government are considering a proposal whereby that funding is taken out of public expenditure and therefore from the general body of taxpayers and is made the responsibility of the arms exporting industry. There are, however, possible risks and dangers in going down that route, because a crucial feature of the ECO is its clear independence. We have no doubt whatever about the integrity of all the civil servants who work in the ECO, but the Government must answer the question of whether a change to the basis of its funding might change public perception from seeing the ECO as an independent watchdog to seeing it instead as a poodle of the arms exporting companies. That would be detrimental to the perception of our UK arms export controls. I hope that the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), and his colleagues will consider that point carefully. We made recommendations about three particular issues: brass-plate companies, the pre-licence registration of arms brokers and extraterritorial arms export controls. I must express my acute disappointment that, six months after we published our report and its recommendations, we have still not received a substantive response from the Government on any of those three important policy areas. I put it to the Minister that we expect a substantive response on those three areas shortly, and certainly in good time before the Committees resume taking oral evidence in a few weeks. On what are called military end-use controls, a key issue in how to deal with dual-use goods, I very much welcome the Government acting on the Committees' recommendation to produce specific proposals for strengthening such controls. I gather that the Government have now proposed a specific strengthening of article 4(2) of the relevant European Union regulation. I urge them to continue to press for the amendment of that article so that we can achieve greater strengthening of control over military end-use.