Arms

Patrick Corrigan, (Amnesty Blogs: Belfast and Beyond): At the risk of coming across as Forrest Gump with bad timing (see my recent Belfast and Beyond post: ('One night (not) in Bangkok'), last Tuesday I sort of stumbled across the Belfast end of an international arms bust.

As I passed the Europa Hotel, I noticed a squad of heavily armed police moving in on the hotel entrance, shouting instructions and organising vehicles. Inside they were arresting a Dublin man as part of an international police operation which also led to arrests and weapons seizures in Amsterdam, Zaandam and Dublin.

John Jackson (London, Mishcon de Reya): At the end of her judgement in the BAE case one of the law lords, Lady  Hale, said “- - I would wish that the world was a better place where honest and conscientious public servants were not put in impossible situations such as this - - -“. I would wish that too. I would also wish that people and nations did not seek to advance their interests by violence or the threat of violence. If that were so there would be no need of armaments industries and questions of national security could be dealt with in a more open and satisfactory way.

The impossible situation to which Lady Hale referred was the dilemma confronting the Director of the SFO in deciding, with incomplete information, whether, to quote Lord Bingham, “the public interest in pursuing an important investigation into alleged bribery was outweighed by the public interest in protecting the lives of British citizens”. The incompleteness of information available to the Director is the link to my second wish and my remark about how questions of national security are dealt with.

Andrew Blick (London, Houses of Parliament): I have just got myself a copy of the annual report by the Commons Committee on Strategic Export Controls (the report has not been released yet but the committee homepage is here). Known as the 'Quadripartite Committee' it includes members from the Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development and Trade and Industry select committees. It's a very worthwhile body, the basic function of which is to assess whether goods exported under licence from the UK might have been used for acts of repression or international destabilisation. What does this report tell us? There are some real problems with selling arms to an 'approved' country (such as India) which might then export them on to a less pleasant regime (such as Burma). Overseas companies owned largely by UK parents are not yet subject to full export controls. The Committee wants to see an end to the blanket exemption from export controls as applied to the UK government and its agencies (as opposed to commercial firms). Finally it has reiterated a request that it be enabled to scrutinise sensitive export decision in advance of their being granted. At present the committee can only examine exports which have already taken place. In any new constitutional settlement Parliament should have a role in the taking of decisions, rather than just examining them when it is too late. A good way to instigate this necessary cultural change would be for the government at last to accede to this longstanding request by the Quadripartite Committee.