Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference

John Stanley Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

This is a necessary and timely debate, and I should like to congratulate the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) on securing it. Like many others on both sides of the House, I had until recently been moderately optimistic that we were winning the battle against nuclear proliferation. We had seen South Africa, and Libya under Gaddafi, coming out of the nuclear weapons business. We had also seen a substantial swathe of the former Soviet Union countries—now supposedly, and hopefully, independent sovereign states—no longer having nuclear weapons stationed on their soil.

More recently, however, I have become concerned that the battle that we were winning appears to be in danger of going into reverse. On the Korean peninsula, the North Korean regime under Kim Jong-un seems determined to try to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. If that happens, I fear that it will call into question the nuclear weapons possession policy of, say, the Japanese Government. In south Asia, we have the wholly unresolved question of the nuclear weapons situation between India and Pakistan. In the middle east, whatever the outcome of the current negotiations on Iran, I believe that the Iranians will try to maintain a break-out capability. I understand from recent conversations with Ministers in Saudi Arabia that if Iran does break out and obtain a nuclear weapon, we cannot rule out the subsequent possession of a nuclear weapon by Saudi Arabia.

This debate is therefore necessary and important. We should not forget, when it comes to weapons of mass destruction, that we still have a chemical weapons convention that is not being adhered to or acceded to by key countries, including Egypt, Israel and North Korea. We also have a convention on biological and toxin weapons that remains without a verification regime, which leaves that convention resting on paper and on trust. I was grateful to the Minister for sending me, in my capacity as Chair of the Committees on Arms Export Controls, a copy of the Government’s national report to the 2015 nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference. I have to say that I found the report strong on the pluses, but rather limited on the more negative aspects of nuclear proliferation—some key issues and problems were skated over and others were not referred to at all.

I should like to pick out some key issues from the Government’s report. As the right hon. Lady has said, the comprehensive test ban treaty is of key importance; as we all know, it is not possible to have a truly effective nuclear weapon unless it has been subject to testing. I agree entirely with what the Government say in their report:

“The UK recognises the CTBT as a key element of the global disarmament and non-proliferation architecture”.

That is absolutely correct, and it is a matter of immense frustration to all of us that we still have eight remaining countries whose ratification of the CTBT is necessary in order to bring the treaty into force: China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the USA. I hope the Government will take the opportunity of the review conference to try to mobilise the maximum possible international pressure on those countries to secure their accession to the all-important CTBT.

The Government devote two paragraphs in their report to the planned—I stress that it is still no more than planned—fissile material cut-off treaty. I find those paragraphs most disappointing. The Government do not even skate over the real problem; they omit any mention of it, which is deeply regrettable. We all know why negotiations on the FMCT have not even commenced —why they have been stalled for years in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. It is simply because neither India nor Pakistan can reach agreement on what should be the treatment of their existing fissile material stocks. Those two countries and their disagreement have put into baulk the start of any negotiation on the FMCT. That is coupled with the fact that the Conference on Disarmament works on the basis of “consensus”, which everybody chooses to interpret as unanimity only. I simply do not understand why the Government fail to indentify that in their report as the key stumbling block.

The Minister will doubtless say in his reply, “There’s no need to worry, because the FMCT Group of Governmental Experts is going to resolve the deadlock.” I believe that is considerably optimistic and it may prove to be purely wishful thinking. In the Committees on Arms Export Controls, we have recommended to the Government that they should set a deadline for negotiations to start. In the absence of a deadline, there seems to be a compelling case for starting the negotiations in another forum, perhaps in a specially constituted commission, possibly within the United Nations. It is imperative that the negotiation of this treaty begins and is not subject to permanent delay as a result of the obstruction created by just two nations.

Given the key importance of missile technology control in preventing nuclear proliferation, I was disappointed that the Government make no mention of the Missile Technology Control Regime in their report. There are key holders of nuclear weapons that remain outside the MTCR, including China, India, Israel and Pakistan. Will the Minister tell the House whether or not the Government are actively seeking those countries’ membership of the MTCR? That information would be of great use to the House.

Another key nuclear non-proliferation organisation, which I am glad to say is referred to in the Government’s report, is the Nuclear Suppliers Group, of which, again, some key nuclear weapons holders are not yet members. I am referring to India, Israel and Pakistan. Will the Minister tell the House whether it is the Government’s policy to try to seek the membership of those countries to the Nuclear Suppliers Group?

On the hoped-for middle east weapons of mass destruction free zone, the Government’s report makes all the right noises. It says:

“We look forward to convening an inclusive conference on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction…as soon as the practical arrangements for that conference are agreed by the states of the region.”

The key issue here, and the catch in the Government’s wording, is that the conference will not take place until the practical arrangements for it are agreed by the states of the region. The point here of course is that Israel and Iran will not and have not managed to reach agreement over the terms of their participation in such a conference. On that I certainly agree with the Government that without the participation of Iran and of Israel, there would be little purpose in having such a conference.

Finally, I am pleased that the little known but increasingly important additional non-proliferation scheme, the UK’s academic technology approval scheme, at least gets one paragraph in the Government’s report. The scheme, rightly brought in by the previous Government and continued by the present Government, enables us to debar students from UK universities if they are considered to pose the greatest risk by access to subjects that could lead to the proliferation of knowledge about weapons of mass destruction.

When the scheme was introduced by the previous Government, it was limited solely to debarring students from abroad coming to study at UK universities. Even when it was brought in, that decision was possibly somewhat questionable. But today, I suggest that the limitation of the scheme solely to those from abroad is really wholly non-sustainable in security terms. We have a threat level in the UK that is almost unprecedented. We know that we have hundreds of young people, who, most regrettably, have chosen to go to fight for Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq, and it has been widely reported that substantial numbers of those have now returned to the UK.

The Committees on Arms Export Controls have, in successive reports, advocated that the Government extend the academic technology approval scheme to cover those who are in the UK, and not just merely students from abroad. Inexplicably, the Government have so far refused to accept the Committees’ recommendation, and I urge the Government in strong terms to do so given the current threat that we now face.

In conclusion, I wish the Government well in trying to achieve a substantive and effective outcome of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference. They most certainly need to do so, as we are living in an increasingly dangerous world.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Foreign Affairs Committee (Hong Kong Visit)

John Stanley Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am glad to follow the excellent opening speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, of which I have been a member since 1992.

When you, Mr Speaker, gave your most welcome consent to this debate yesterday, you were entirely correct in stating that the situation we face is entirely unprecedented. The Foreign Affairs Committee, during the long period in which I have been privileged to serve on it, has never before been refused entry to any country in the world. As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee has already pointed out, this is a dangerous precedent for other Committees in the House and for the House as a whole.

In a previous visit to China in the last Parliament, we were subject to threats and a degree of intimidation, as the authorities tried to deter us from going to Tibet. I was privileged to lead the group that eventually went to Tibet, and we faced down those threats and attempts to intimidate us. At the end of the visit, we faced further intimidation and threats from the Chinese authorities when they found out that we were going from mainland China to Taiwan. That difficult situation was admirably handled by the then Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). Again, we faced down the Chinese authorities and went to Taiwan as planned.

I am sure that all parts of the House would regard this unprecedented situation as wholly unacceptable. What the Chinese are seeking to achieve by barring the FAC from Hong Kong escapes me. As the Chairman of the Committee made clear, we will not be deflected from our inquiry. We shall continue to take evidence for our inquiry, including from people in Hong Kong—we are capable of doing that without actually going to Hong Kong—and we shall make our report to the House in due course.

In political terms, the Chinese authorities have scored a spectacular own goal. They could not have given more eloquent credence to the case being made by the pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong that the joint declaration is under threat; they could not have made it clearer by the way in which they have dealt with the House of Commons’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Notwithstanding that, the issue of how the British Government respond is of key importance.

I must say to the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), and to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary that I have, thus far, been very disappointed with what I have seen in the public domain from the Foreign Office in its response to the situation in which this House and the FAC have been placed. As far as I can see, all they have said is that the Chinese authorities’ response and ban on the Foreign Affairs Committee is “regrettable”. That is nothing like good enough. The House and democracy in this country have been treated with contempt. I hope that the Minister of State will give us a robust response when he ends this debate.

Arms Exports and Controls

John Stanley Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

As this will be our last opportunity during this Parliament to debate a report by the Committees on Arms Export Controls, I start by thanking most warmly my colleagues from the four Select Committees who have served on our Committees during this Parliament for the time that they have given, and most particularly for the tenacity that they have brought to our scrutiny of the Government. I also thank our staff who, because they are so few in number, are exceptionally cost-effective. Most particularly I thank the Clerk, Mr Keith Neary, who has given the Committees exemplary service for the greater part of the Parliament during which he has been Clerk.

I am conscious that the increasing width and depth of our Committees’ scrutiny of this key area has imposed a significant additional work load on the four Departments concerned, especially the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, both of which we have visited as Committees to see arms export control procedures in operation. I thank the officials for how they have responded to that increased work load, and I make it clear that in so far as there are shortcomings in those responses, that is entirely a matter for Ministers. That brings me to the two areas of major shortcomings that I must address in opening this debate, both of which relate to what the Committees and I regard as the single most important area of Government policy: the export of weapons and dual-purpose goods that can be used for internal repression.

The previous Government’s arms export control policy was set out in a ministerial written answer on 26 October 2000 by the then Minister of State at the Foreign Office, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain). It included a key statement of policy, which remained unchanged throughout the life of that Government:

“An export licence will not be issued if the arguments for doing so are outweighed…by concern that the goods might be used for internal repression”.—[Official Report, 26 October 2000; Vol. 355, c. 200W.]

We spent two years during this Parliament going hither and thither with Ministers on whether they adhered to that policy, had changed it, or were seeking to change it. That was brought to a conclusion this year when the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills announced the present Government’s arms export control policy in a written ministerial statement on 25 March. When that statement appeared, the previous Government’s policy wording, which I have just quoted, was dropped. Notwithstanding that fact, the Business Secretary said in his statement:

“None of these amendments should be taken to mean that there has been any substantive change in policy.”—[Official Report, 25 March 2014; Vol. 578, c. 10WS.]

Since March, when the Business Secretary gave his written ministerial answer, the Government have made various attempts to downgrade or outright dismiss the key policy wording on arms exports and internal repression in the original ministerial written answer of October 2000. First, in their latest annual report on United Kingdom strategic export controls, which was published in July, the Government chose to describe the wording in question as “the preamble”, even though the word “preamble” does not appear anywhere in the answer given by the right hon. Member for Neath.

Then, in a letter to me on 6 October, the Foreign Secretary tried to maintain that that key wording did not represent a statement of policy at all, saying:

“The text in question did not contain any substantive statement of policy.”

I leave it to hon. Members to judge whether that is the case:

“An export licence will not be issued if the arguments for doing so are outweighed…by concern that the goods might be used for internal repression”.

That was the statement in the written ministerial answer recorded in Hansard.

I stress to the House that it was the unanimous view of all four Select Committees comprising the Committees on Arms Export Controls that that wording did represent a substantive statement of policy. It was also the view of the right hon. Member for Neath, who came before the Committees to give oral evidence on that very point. When we asked him specifically whether he thought that policy on arms exports and internal repression had changed, he said:

“So I do think the policy has changed. It is a more relaxed approach to arms exports.”

In the light of those facts, as far as the Committees are concerned—we made this clear in our report—only one, regrettable conclusion can be drawn from those important exchanges on arms exports and internal repression: the Government have made a significant change in policy, but have not been prepared to acknowledge that such a change has taken place. I put it formally to the Government that they should consider most carefully whether they should now offer an apology to the Committees and the House for making a change in policy without being prepared to acknowledge that to the Committees.

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

My right hon. Friend is making an important point. Hon. Members may be aware that, in terms of development, the UK scores extremely well except on one significant issue: arms exports. That is the issue that drives our ratings down the development index. The Minister might not think that that matters, but will he acknowledge that there is a perception, which the Chair of the Committees is bearing out, that the UK is more inclined than other countries to sell arms to countries and regimes where their use may be questionable? That slightly undermines our reputation for being a pro-development leader.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Stanley]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point as a member of the Committees on Arms Export Controls and the Chair of the International Development Committee, and I am sure that the Minister will want to respond to it.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

In their excellent report, the right hon. Gentleman’s Committees draw attention to the sale of anti-personnel equipment to Bahrain and raise quite reasonable concerns about its use to control demonstrations and so on. For a while, it seemed that the Government were listening to such concerns, but in April last year, they changed their policy and did indeed sell armoured personnel carriers and other equipment to Bahrain. Does he have any continuing concerns about the supply of such equipment to Bahrain and its use there?

[Sir John Stanley]

The Committees most certainly do. As the hon. Gentleman will have seen, we included in our report specific questions to the Government about how particular items that have been approved for export to Bahrain can be regarded as compatible with the export criteria that they supposedly follow. We therefore have responded specifically to that.

I come now to our second area of disagreement with the Government on arms export policy and internal repression, which is with particular reference to exports to authoritarian regimes. In successive reports the Committees have made—again unanimously—the following recommendation:

“the Government should apply significantly more cautious judgements when considering arms export licence applications for goods to authoritarian regimes which might be used for internal repression.”

Regrettably, in successive responses, the Government have declined to accept our recommendation.

I shall set out one of the most striking differences between what has happened under the present Government and what took place under the previous one. Under the previous Government, going right back to their election in 1997—shortly after which came the foundation of the Committees, thanks to the initiative of the late Robin Cook, who was the first Foreign Secretary to produce an annual report on arms exports—the number of revocations or suspensions of existing licences stood at a mere handful. However, during the lifetime of the present Government, there has been a massive use of some 400 revocations and suspensions. I do not think that can be attributed only to the fact that there has been a considerable amount of international turbulence and conflict during this Parliament, as there were wars and turbulence during the previous Government’s lifetime.

I make it clear to the Government and the Minister that I am in no way critical of the huge number of revocations—indeed, I believe they are entirely justified. The key question, and the issue that has been exercising the Committees, is whether export approval should have been given to all the licences in the first place. To reflect what was said by the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), in broad-brush terms, the Government’s policy on the export of goods that could be used for internal repression to authoritarian regimes has been that if the situation in a particular country looks to be reasonably quiescent, there is a fairly considerable presumption that the export should be approved, with the Government no doubt saying to themselves, “Well, if things turn really nasty in that country we can always revoke the export licence.”

I suggest to hon. Members that nothing illustrates the weakness and limitations—and indeed the perils—of that policy more clearly than what has happened in Libya. Prior to the Arab spring, there was a significant arms export trade, approved by the Government, to Libya under the Gaddafi regime. Not surprisingly, when the Arab spring came and the Government announced their total list of revocations of arms export licences to Arab spring countries, the greatest single number—a total of 72 licences—was for licences for Libya.

We all know what happened when Gaddafi fell from power. Back in the UK, the Government had imposed their revocations, but they were of very limited effect, for the simple reason that they are of no use whatever for exports that have already been shipped. As I have said before, it was an exercise in shutting the stable door after the arms had bolted. What happened in Libya itself? The security arrangements around Gaddafi’s arms dumps vanished and people ransacked them, principally for financial gain, as they saw an opportunity to make quick and substantial money. As UN experts have reported, those stockpiles were then sold on and dispersed all over the middle east and north and west Africa.

I suggest that nothing better illustrates the cogency of the Committees’ recommendation for a significantly more cautious policy when dealing with arms export licence applications for arms that can be used for internal repression than what has happened in Libya. It is regrettable that, in their response to successive reports, the Government have failed to accept our recommendation for caution. I certainly hope that a future Government will take a different view.

I turn now to the Government’s export policy towards a few individual countries, starting with Russia. The publication of the Committees’ latest report happened to coincide almost exactly with the appalling shooting down of the Malaysian airliner MH17 over eastern Ukraine. That created something of a dilemma for the Government, because although, on the one hand, Ministers, led by the Prime Minister, were rightly condemning the Russian Government for being complicit in the shooting down of the airliner and the terrible loss of life, on the other, as was shown by our Committees’ report, there were no fewer than 285 extant British Government-approved arms export licences to Russia, with a value of some £131 million for the standard individual licences alone.

That led at one point to an unknown spokesman in No. 10 announcing to the media that many of the British Government’s arms exports to Russia were for the Brazilian navy, which I have to say came as news to me, as I suspect it did to a considerable number of other people. However, I thought that I should follow that one up, so I wrote to the Business Secretary to ask him for the stated end user of each of the 285 extant arms export licences to Russia. Disappointingly, he refused to give the Committees that information unless we agreed not to make it public. I see no justification for imposing that condition on the Committees. It is hardly in accordance with the Government’s supposed commitment to transparency on arms exports, and it raises a significant issue of policy for the Committees and, therefore, the House. The Government already make public the countries to which approved UK arms exports are going, but in many cases we need to know not just the names of the countries, but the end users in those countries. For example, will the end user be a Government body, a Government security authority or a civilian user? That is key information, but at the moment, the Government simply pick and choose when they will disclose the end users. They gave the Committees the end users when we wanted to know who they were in relation to the export of dual-use chemicals to Syria. They told us the end users when we wanted to know who they were for sniper rifles exported to Ukraine. However, they have refused to give us that information for Russia on the basis that it may be made public, and the Committee will want to address that policy issue further.

What is the Government’s present policy on arms exports to Russia? The Prime Minister said in the House:

“On the issue of defence equipment, we already unilaterally said—as did the US—that we would not sell further arms to Russia”.—[Official Report, 21 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 1157.]

I would be grateful if the Minister clarified two points. First, when the Prime Minister said that we would not sell further arms to Russia, was he saying that all or only some will not be sold to Russia? If he was saying just some, which will continue to be sold? Secondly, on new licence applications, will the Minister clarify whether the Prime Minister’s statement means that all new licence applications to Russia are being refused, or only some, and if only some, which? The Minister’s clarification will be helpful.

I am sure that there was great concern among hon. Members on both sides of the House about some of the measures taken by the Hong Kong security authorities against those who were exercising their right to demonstrate peacefully, and especially the fact that tear gas was used against demonstrators. I am in no doubt that if the Metropolitan police had used tear gas against those who recently demonstrated peacefully in Parliament square, there would have been considerable concern and perhaps outrage on both sides of the House.

I thought that the Committees should do their own analysis of precisely what items of lethal and non-lethal equipment that could be used for internal repression the Government had recently approved for Hong Kong. We took the information from the website of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for the last two years from January 2012. Our analysis showed that the Government had approved tear gas exports to Hong Kong in four of the past eight quarters since January 2012. If those licence approvals were given on the grounds that the security authorities in Hong Kong would never use tear gas against those demonstrating peacefully, that was a questionable assumption, given mainland China’s track record of dealing with peaceful demonstrators. Our analysis of lethal equipment approved for export to Hong Kong since January 2012 showed that it included pistols, sniper rifles and gun silencers, which were all stated to be for use by a law-enforcement agency.

I have written to the Business Secretary to ask a series of questions about the Government’s policy on arms exports to Hong Kong, including:

“Have any extant Government approved export licences to Hong Kong been revoked or suspended?”

I also asked:

“What is the Government’s present policy on approving new licences for the export of arms and equipment to Hong Kong that could be used for internal repression?”

We have just received the Business Secretary’s reply, a key paragraph of which is:

“No licences for Hong Kong have been revoked, suspended or had Hong Kong removed from a multiple destination open licence. The Foreign Secretary has advised me that the use of tear gas by the Hong Kong police was an uncharacteristic response at an early stage of the protests, the scale of which caught the police by surprise, and was not indicative of a wider pattern of behaviour that would cross the threshold of criterion 2. In his view that, since that incident, the Hong Kong police have generally approached the protests carefully and proportionately. I have accepted this advice.”

I am sure that the Committees will want to reflect on the Business Secretary’s response and then report to the House. My own view, having received that letter only a short time ago, is that the reply seems to reflect the more relaxed approach to arms exports that could be used for internal repression to which I have referred. It certainly makes me wonder whether, if the original wording in the October 2000 statement by the right hon. Member for Neath had been retained instead of dropped, those arms exports of both lethal and non-lethal equipment would have been approved in the first place.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, given the political situation in Hong Kong and the concerns that have been expressed internationally, there must be a real risk of a recurrence of exactly the sort of event during which tear gas was used against civilian protestors? There has not yet been a resolution of that protest; it continues in Hong Kong today.

[Sir John Stanley]

There is certainly a risk of a recurrence of exactly what the hon. Lady describes. I hope that a lesson has been learned by the Hong Kong police that it is not acceptable to use tear gas against those who are demonstrating peacefully. It remains a matter of concern to me, and I am sure that the members of the Committees will want to look closely at the analysis that accompanied my letter to the Business Secretary. The Committees will want to scrutinise closely whether it was wise in the first instance to approve exports of the sort of equipment—lethal and non-lethal—to which I have referred.

In turning to Israel, I want to make it crystal clear at the outset that I condemn unreservedly Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel. However, Israel has serious questions to answer about its use of lethal weapons that has resulted in the recent death of well over 2,000 Palestinians—men, women and children—in Gaza, the great majority of whom were certainly not Hamas fighters.

The Foreign Office, in its annual human rights report, includes Israel—entirely rightly in my view—in its list of the 28 countries of top human rights concern to the British Government. In our latest report, we have listed for each of those countries the extant UK Government-approved arms export licences. Our report shows that Israel has the third largest number of extant arms export licences of those 28 countries, with a total of 470—a figure exceeded only by China and Saudi Arabia. In addition, our report shows that of those 28 countries’ extant arms export licences, the largest by value is Israel’s, totalling £8 billion in value. However, I want to stress this very important point: that £8 billion is largely made up of a gigantic cryptographic equipment export order, valued at £7.7 billion, which the Defence Secretary, when he was Minister of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, assured the Committees was

“for purely commercial end use.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 426WH.]

Early in August, following what happened in Gaza, I wrote to the Foreign Secretary, asking him to list the controlled goods that the British Government had approved for export to Israel and that the Government had reason to believe may have been used by Israel in the recent military operations in Gaza. The Foreign Secretary gave me his reply on 19 August, saying

“officials have judged it unlikely that many of the components that were the subject of extant licences were for incorporation into systems that would be likely to be used offensively in Gaza”.

However, he went on to say, significantly in my view, that

“12 licences have been identified…where, in the event of a resumption of significant hostilities, and on the basis of information currently available to us, there could be a risk that the items might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”

I think that is a very significant statement by the Foreign Secretary, and it once again reinforces the Committees’ recommendation for a significantly more cautious policy when dealing with the export of arms that can be used for internal repression.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have two points to make: first, was the right hon. Gentleman concerned about the supply of drone aircraft parts to Israel during the recent operation and, I believe, since then? Secondly, was it ever identified exactly what the commercial purpose of the massive £7.7 billion order was, and what the boundaries were between commercial use, civilian control and military use?

[Sir John Stanley]

The hon. Gentleman, again, is on to a very important area, and that again highlights the need to get much more transparency about end users. He makes an extremely valid point, which applies even more strikingly in relation to non-democratic countries—one-party state countries such as Russia and China, in effect, where there is no clear boundary between the Government sector and the private sector at all. That is why we need to get the Government to accept that these Committees, and therefore the House, are entitled to end-use information.

On components for unmanned aerial vehicles, I can only refer the hon. Gentleman to what I just read out from the Foreign Secretary’s letter; he specifically refers to components that were for “incorporation into systems”. His view was that it was unlikely that they were used in Gaza, and I cannot take it any further than that, I am afraid.

If I may, I will just complete my points on individual countries. There are obviously a very large number of individual countries and others want to speak, and I want them to have their full time, but I make this point: in our report, we identified 12 countries in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s list of 28 countries of top human rights concern where it seemed to us that specific exports appeared to be in breach of one or more of the Governments’ arms export criteria. In our recommendations, we asked the Government to state why those exports were approved. Those 12 countries were: Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Uzbekistan and Yemen. We also asked the same question in relation to five other countries that are of concern to the Committees but are not on the FCO’s list of 28. Those five countries were Argentina, Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia and Ukraine.

For most of those countries, as the House will see in the Government’s response to our report—the Command Paper—the Government came back with a fairly formulaic response, certainly as far as the opening of their reply was concerned. They used this formula:

“The Government is satisfied that the currently extant licences for”—

and then they put in the name of the country—

“are compliant with the Consolidated Criteria”.

I want to assure the House that we shall not let the matter rest there. In our view, there is a substantial mismatch between what has been disclosed about extant licences and the Government’s arms export criteria. We want to examine that further, and we shall take oral evidence shortly from the industry and non-governmental organisations, and from the Business Secretary and the Foreign Secretary.

I turn to the other area of our report, which is international arms control agreements. Virtually all international arms control agreements are designed to control or halt proliferation of both conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction. The Committees have therefore extended their scrutiny of the Government’s policy to the entirety of international arms control agreements. The Government give an explanation of their policy in relation to some of those agreements in their “United Kingdom Strategic Export Controls Annual Report”, but a number of key agreements are omitted. For example, there is no reference to the fissile material cut-off treaty, or the chemical weapons convention, or the biological and toxin weapons convention, or significantly, to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

In the Committees’ last report, they recommended that the Government, in their annual report, make their coverage of international arms control agreements comprehensive, instead of only partial. It is disappointing that the Government, in their response to our questions on their annual report, have not accepted that recommendation, but I assure the House that the Committees will continue to scrutinise the Government’s policy across the totality of international arms control agreements.

I come to a few of the specific agreements, starting with the arms trade treaty. We warmly welcome the British Government’s ratification of the arms trade treaty on the first day it opened for ratification—2 April 2014. It is also very encouraging that the 50th country ratification, triggering the treaty’s legal entry into force, has now been achieved. According to the Government response to our report, entry into force will take place on Christmas eve 2014—an excellent Christmas present to all those concerned with international arms control.

However, it is particularly disappointing that of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council only the UK and France have ratified the treaty thus far. The US has signed but not ratified, and China and Russia have neither signed nor ratified. The House will agree that it would be a dismally poor example to the rest of the world if the remaining three members of the P5 failed to ratify the arms trade treaty. I hope that the British Government will continue to do their utmost to get those key countries to do so.

One of the most important arms control events in 2015, if not the most important, will be the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference. In our report, we recommended that

“the Government states as fully as possible in its Response what are now its objectives for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 2015”.

We did not get a particularly full response from the Government, but they did come back with three objectives:

“We want to agree further progress towards a world free from nuclear weapons and to highlight our actions in support of this; encourage action that will help to contain any threat of proliferation or non-compliance with the NPT; and support the responsible global expansion of civil nuclear industries.”

I hope that the Government will be rather more forthcoming, both to the Committees and to Parliament, about their detailed and specific objectives, and how they propose to try to achieve them in the run-up to the NPT review conference.

One of the great and largely unsung achievements of the Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher era was the intermediate-range nuclear forces agreement of 1987. The INF treaty is far and away the most important nuclear disarmament agreement that has been achieved since nuclear weapons were created. It was also the first and only time that the US and Russia reached a nuclear disarmament agreement based on zero-zero on each side. Against that background, it is of great concern that reports have appeared that Russia may be in breach of its INF treaty obligations. I took that up with the Foreign Secretary, who in his reply said:

“The US State Department’s recent annual ‘compliance’ report (Adherence to and compliance with arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament agreements and commitments) states that ‘the United States has determined that the Russian Federation is in violation of its obligations under the INF treaty not to possess, produce or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km, or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles.”

That is a very serious statement from the Foreign Secretary and the US State Department. In my view, if the INF treaty breaks down, it will be the most serious reverse for multilateral nuclear disarmament that has so far occurred in the nuclear weapons era. I therefore urge the Government to do their utmost to mobilise the maximum possible international pressure on Russia to restore its adherence to its INF treaty obligations.

To conclude, Ministers are never happier than when they can deal with difficult issues with comforting generalisations. The devil is always in the detail, and in no area is that more true than arms export controls. I therefore make no apology for the length of the Committees’ latest report, which, taken with the all-important volumes of evidence, runs to some 1,000 pages. I hope that it will prove a valuable resource to those in the House and outside who want to inform themselves about the actuality of the UK Government’s arms control and arms export control policies, rather than just resting on ministerial generalisations.

The Committees are not remotely self-satisfied about our scrutiny and are sure that we can improve it further, but I believe that now in the UK Parliament we have the most detailed and most open parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s arms export policies of any of the major arms exporting countries, including the United States, where, under the relevant legislation, there are financial cut-off thresholds below which exports do not have to be reported to Congress. We of course have no such financial thresholds in our Parliament and in the relevant legislation.

In the course of this Parliament, the Committees on Arms Export Controls have substantially widened and deepened our scrutiny of the Government’s policies. First, we have for the first time put alongside the list of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s countries of top human rights concern—the 28 countries to which I referred—the extant arms export licences approved by the British Government for each of those countries. That has been an extremely worthwhile and very illuminating exercise. It has certainly left me, on certain points, with considerable concerns, but others will draw their own conclusions.

Secondly, we have very substantially extended our scrutiny of the Government’s policies on international arms control agreements. That, too, is a crucial area, even though the subject tends to receive not much public attention, in Parliament or outside. Thirdly, we have in this Parliament extended our scrutiny to a whole series of additional export items, including drones, Tasers, cryptographic equipment, the UK Government’s gifted exports and Government-supported arms export exhibitions.

I hope that we have discharged our scrutiny responsibilities to the House of Commons effectively in this Parliament, and that we have created a strong and powerful springboard for our successor Committees to carry forward scrutiny of the Government’s policies in the key area of arms control and arms export controls in the next Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

I hope that is as aggressive as the debate gets. Let me reiterate that the Government take their arms export responsibilities very seriously and aim to operate one of the most rigorous and transparent arms export control systems in the world. Our core objective in export licensing is to promote global security, while facilitating responsible exports. That means preventing controlled goods from falling into the wrong hands. It also means that we must not impede legitimate trade in defence and security goods.

All export licence applications are carefully assessed on a case-by-case basis against the consolidated EU and national arms export licensing criteria, taking into account all relevant factors at the time of the application, including the prevailing circumstances in the recipient country, the nature of the goods, the identity of the end user and the stated end use. A licence will not be issued if doing so would be inconsistent with any provision of the criteria, including if there is a clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression or external aggression.

The Government support the responsible trade in defence equipment. All nations have the right to protect themselves, as enshrined in article 51 of the UN charter, and they have the right to acquire the means to do so. Moreover, defence and security exports help to strengthen the UK economy and to support growth. As the shadow Minister said, the industry employs tens of thousands of people across the UK. In 2013, the value of UK defence and security exports rose to £13 billion—a 13% increase on the £11.5 billion recorded in 2012. Those exports also helped the UK to forge close relationships with allies and partners in support of international security objectives.

We must therefore seek to operate an efficient export licensing system that not only ensures rigorous export controls, but facilitates responsible exports. The case-by-case assessment of export licence applications remains the most effective way to balance those concerns. We follow a clear and well-understood procedure for each application, which involves circulating expert evidence to other Departments as a matter of routine, to make the best assessment possible, based on the evidence available at the time.

I want directly to address the perception that, in the relatively rare instances where licences are subsequently revoked or suspended, the export licensing system is in some way broken. That is certainly not the case. In 2012, the then Foreign Secretary conducted a review of arms exports, which found that there were no fundamental flaws with the export licensing system. However, the review did identify some areas where the system could be strengthened. As a result of that review, a suspension mechanism was introduced to ensure greater responsiveness to changing circumstances overseas.

The suspension mechanism allows for the suspension of pending licence applications to countries experiencing a sharp deterioration in security or stability such that it is not possible to make a clear assessment of whether the consolidated criteria have been met. Following EU Council decisions, it has now been applied to extant licences as well as pending applications. The suspension of licences should, therefore, be viewed not as an admission that there has been a mistake, but as an indication that, on the contrary, the system is appropriately in tune with the reality that circumstances change and that the export licensing system must be able to react appropriately.

Moreover, we have the power to revoke any licence if we judge that changed circumstances mean that it is no longer consistent with the consolidated criteria. Again, revocations should be viewed as indicative of the fact that the system can respond to change, not as a sign that our case-by-case assessment of export licence applications is flawed. We make the best decision possible at the time of each application, and if circumstances change, we can react appropriately. Action to revoke or suspend licences is, then, not a sign that the system is broken; in fact, the flexibility to respond effectively to change is a sign of health and demonstrates how seriously the Government take the guiding principle of responsible exports.

Having set out that overview, I would like to touch on a number of specific issues my right hon. Friend and others have raised. First, however, it would be useful briefly to reiterate the Government’s policy on assessing the risk of goods being used for internal repression.

Criterion 2 of the consolidated criteria, which has been mentioned a number of times, states that an export licence application should be refused if there is a “clear risk” that the goods in question might be used for internal repression or in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law.

Some confusion arose following the former Foreign Secretary’s evidence to the Committees in 2012, which was interpreted as suggesting that the “clear risk” test in criterion 2 had been dropped. Let me emphasise: the threshold of clear risk in criterion 2 has been the policy of successive Governments since the criteria were established in 2000, and it remains our policy. As confirmed in recent correspondence with the Committees, we have no plans to change that policy.

[Sir John Stanley]

May I correct the Minister on the point he has just made? There was no misunderstanding and no suggestion in the Committees on Arms Export Control that the criterion 2 “clear risk” test had been dropped by the Government at any point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Stanley]

I thank all hon. Members for their generous comments on my endeavours as Chair of the Committees on Arms Export Controls. It is a unique conjunction of Committees to chair. I have no equestrian background at all, but I have likened it to trying to get a 16-horse stagecoach moving reasonably well in the same direction, which is particularly difficult when there is no ability to vote. We have achieved a lot even in just getting out the reports that we have. I thank hon. Members for their kind personal comments. I hope that the dedicated contributions of the hon. Members for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin) and for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) will be big plusses in their getting elected to one of the four Select Committees in the next Parliament. Perhaps one of them may end up as my successor. I wish them well.

I will briefly make one comment about the excellent speech made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North. She rightly and acutely picked up that the Government appear to have erected an additional hurdle before revocations or suspensions can take place to extant arms exports licences to Israel. I want to highlight to her an extraordinary contradiction that I am sure we will want to pursue. The Government have on the one hand dropped the broad test in the October 2000 statement of the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) from the consolidated criteria, but they have brought it back when dealing with suspensions. We made that point in paragraph 126 of our report:

“The Committees conclude that the Government’s decision to apply the broad test of ‘equipment which might be used for internal repression’ rather than the narrow test of ‘clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression’ for deciding whether arms export licences should be suspended is welcome.”

I cannot begin to explain the Government’s contradictory position on that key point, but I am sure that we will be considering it further in Committee.

Again, I am grateful to the hon. Member for Islington North, who has been a dedicated attender of our debates. As for the four countries to which he referred specifically, he will be glad to know that they will all continue to be the subject of detailed scrutiny by the Committees. Three of the countries, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka, are of course among the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s 28 countries of top human rights concern. He must have been glad to see that the Committees on their own initiative have added Bahrain to the five other countries of concern that we highlighted and gave details of in our report.

As I heard it, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) made what I consider to be an extremely welcome policy commitment on behalf of the Opposition Front Bench. I understood him to be saying that it is now the policy of the Opposition to restore the dropped wording that came from the October 2000 statement by the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain).

If the hon. Gentleman is looking for any reinforcement of the Opposition Front-Bench position from the Back Benches, I draw his attention to paragraph 123 of our report:

“As the broad test that: ‘An export licence will not be issued if the arguments for doing so are outweighed by […] concern that the goods might be used for internal repression’, which has been Government policy since October 2000, provides an important safeguard against military and dual-use goods, components, software and technology being exported from the UK from being used for internal repression, the Committees recommend that this now omitted wording is re-introduced into the Government’s arms exports controls policy.”

The hon. Gentleman will be glad to know that that was a unanimous recommendation of all parties on all four of the Select Committees concerned, which should give him some back-up to the welcome policy position that he enunciated.

I am grateful to the Minister for responding to the debate and for saying that he will send us answers in writing to those questions that he has not been able to deal with. I would be grateful if he could send me a copy as well, if that is in order, because I will obviously want to know what he says in response to the points made by other colleagues.

I must make it clear to the Minister that he did not address the fundamental policy issue as far as arms exports and internal repression are concerned. He made a number of references to criterion 2, what we call the narrow test or the “clear risk” test, which is a very limited test for a very simple reason. When can a risk be said to be clear? We can pretty well sell almost anything to anyone by saying, “There is a risk, but it isn’t clear, so we can approve the export licence.” That is the acute limitation of that test. If someone looks at our report and looks at the list of what has been approved by the Government, and for sale to which particular regimes, it can be seen just what a very limited test that is. That is why the Committees attached such importance to the restoration of the broad test—we have quoted this successively in the debate and I quote it for a final time—if we are to deal seriously and genuinely with not allowing to go out of the UK with Government approval British weapons that

“might be used for internal repression”.

Question put and agreed to.

Human Rights

John Stanley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) who, as we know, has made such a signal contribution to the advancement of human rights.

As we know, Mao Tse-tung, who was one of history’s worst human rights abusers, enjoined his followers to carry around his little red book. My personal alternative to the little red book, although I do not always manage to carry it around with me, is the Vienna declaration on human rights, which was made on 25 June 1993 and subsequently endorsed by the UN General Assembly in UN resolution 48/121.

For me, the most critical article in the declaration is article 5, which states the key principle of the universality of human rights overriding religious, cultural and ethnic traditions. The article reads:

“All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

In the decades since the end of world war two, we have made significant advances around the world in establishing the principle of the universality of human rights, but it seems to me that we are now in danger of standing still or perhaps even going backwards. When one looks around the world and sees the degree of conflict still taking place between religions and within religions, and on an ethnic and tribal basis, when one sees parts of the world—for example, parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan—where women’s and girl’s rights are now going backwards, and when there are so many countries in the world in which women’s and girl’s rights barely exist, if they exist at all, one wonders whether the principle of universality is being reversed. The first question I would like to ask the Minister is whether the British Government, and in particular the Foreign Secretary, who has lead responsibility, will create a new initiative with as many countries as possible to stand up for the key principle that the universality of human rights should override all other considerations.

I turn to what I consider to be one of the most important aspects of human rights policy: the British Government’s policy on giving export licence approval to military goods, and dual-use civil and military goods, that can be used for internal repression and the suppression of human rights. Until the week before last, the Government’s policy appeared to be soundly based. The Foreign Secretary told the Committees on Arms Export Controls on 7 February 2012:

“We will not issue licences where we judge there is a clear risk that the proposed export might provoke or prolong regional or internal conflicts, or which might be used to facilitate internal repression.”

There were therefore two controls. The first—a very limited control—was to establish a clear risk, which is endlessly debatable. The second—a much wider, more substantive and more embracing control—was to determine whether a given export might be used to facilitate repression. That approach faithfully followed the key policy of the previous Government, which was set out in a written answer on 26 October 2000 by the then Minister of State at the Foreign Office, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain).

Much to the surprise of the Committees on Arms Export Controls, however, the Foreign Secretary’s oral evidence of 8 January substantially reinterpreted the policy statement that he gave in February 2012. He told the Committees that the limited clear-risk policy applied to all aspects of the policy. In effect, therefore, he was saying that the much more substantial and all-embracing control of whether an export might be used to facilitate internal repression would be governed by clear risk—and would, I believe, be rendered more or less null and void. The question for the House, from a human rights standpoint, is how satisfactory or otherwise it is for the Government to rely solely on a clear-risk control for exports that could be used for internal repression.

I want to put that to the test in an area that has been the subject of much concern, namely the export of dual-use chemicals to Syria. Such exports have taken place since 2004 under the previous Government and the present Government, but I want to focus on the most contentious of all: the export of sodium fluoride and potassium fluoride to Syria in January 2012, which was well after the outbreak of the civil war. When we raised our concerns about that with the Business Secretary in December, he replied, much to our surprise:

“in this case I think we are talking about bog-standard chemicals, which the officials had absolutely no reason whatever to believe had any connection with chemical weapons or were likely to be used in that capacity.”

That comment was made against the following background: first, those chemicals are well known from open sources to be precursor chemicals for the manufacture of sarin; secondly, Syria was and is known to be a major holder of chemical weapons; thirdly, Syria was a known non-signatory of the chemical weapons convention; and, fourthly, at the time at which those export licences were approved, a major and most brutal civil war was taking place in Syria. I would add a fifth point: the Prime Minister subsequently revealed in his statement last August, following the appalling sarin attack on 21 August, that there had been 14 previous uses of sarin in Syria, dating back to 2012. The Business Secretary says even now that those were simply bog-standard chemicals that it was perfectly reasonable to export to Syria. I have to say that if that is how the clear-risk policy operates, it is hardly worth the paper it is written on. I am sure that the Committees on Arms Export Controls will return to that issue, which has profound human rights dimensions.

I want to refer to Bahrain, which the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley mentioned. The Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), and I had a meeting with the Bahraini Opposition earlier this week. I believe that Bahrain is at a tipping point. It could go downhill into the serious internal civil strife that we have seen in too many other parts of the middle east, focusing on Sunni and Shi’a. Equally—I still believe that this is a real possibility—it could become a standard bearer in the middle east for the peaceful resolution of such issues and the establishment of an inclusive, fully engaged political process in which all major sectarian groups can participate.

The climate for bringing about the second outcome, which we all wish to see achieved, will take place in a headwind, because over the past year or more in the middle east, we have seen an ever-increasing degeneration into strife between Sunni and Shi’a. Sunnis have become more and more fearful and paranoid about sharing power with Shi’as, and Shi’as have become ever more fearful and paranoid about sharing power with Sunnis. I suggest that the only counter to that will be for the friends of Bahrain, which certainly include Britain, to give fresh impetus and new support to all parties in Bahrain on reaching a peaceful outcome and finding a settlement that is fair and reasonable to all parties. I urge the British Government to play a full role in achieving that.

I turn briefly to children’s rights. I have no pecuniary interest to declare, but I am an unpaid adviser to the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. The Foreign Affairs Committee’s report recommended

“that the Foreign Secretary appoint a child rights expert to his Advisory Group on Human Rights”.

In their response, the Government effectively rejected that recommendation on the grounds that

“many—if not all—of the group’s members are familiar”,

supposedly,

“with child rights issues.”

I consider that to be a disappointingly superficial and facile reply to the Committee’s recommendation. The disturbing but inescapable reality is that, in this electronic age, criminals facilitating child abuse are adopting ever more sophisticated means of making money through corrupting and abusing children, and they are doing so ahead of the steps that the prosecution services and law enforcement agencies can take against them.

The Prime Minister has rightly seen fit to appoint a special adviser on child protection issues—my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry). She has done outstanding work on the issue and continues to do so. I hope that the Minister will convey to the Foreign Secretary that he would be well advised to follow in the Prime Minister’s footsteps.

I am delighted that the present Government are continuing the practice started by the previous Government —most commendably by the late Robin Cook, when he was Foreign Secretary—of producing an annual report on human rights. It is essential work. I appreciate the fact that it involves a lot of work for officials, for which I thank them, but such a report is key to maintaining the credibility of the British Government on human rights issues, both in this country and worldwide. Human rights are the universal entitlement of every man, woman and child on this planet.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

North Korea

John Stanley Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Given that the United Kingdom remains a member of the armistice commission which was established at the end of the Korean war, can my right hon. Friend give an unequivocal assurance that, in the event of further military provocations from the north and a military response from the south, the United Kingdom Government will use their position as a member of the commission to do their utmost to ensure that military action by both sides does not escalate out of control?

[Mr Swire]

My right hon. Friend talks about a military response. We are doing everything in our power to avoid any regional instability or military response by any side in the region. There are several worrying areas in that part of the world, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is contributing to the general instability. We work closely with our partners in the six-party talks and liaise closely with both the Republic of Korea and our American allies, and we shall continue to do that.

NATO

John Stanley Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) on securing this debate. He has fulfilled his responsibilities as president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in an exemplary manner, to the credit of Members in all parts of this House.

All three of the major military contributors to NATO have in the last few weeks made a significant policy change on the supply of equipment to Syria. All three have said that they are now ready to supply lethal military equipment to Syria. I want to bring before the House what I believe is a critically important case study before those countries, and possibly other NATO countries, decide in specific detail whether they will supply military equipment to Syria and, if so, what types.

Over the last few days, I have been analysing what was supplied to Gaddafi’s Libya in the five years prior to the outbreak of the Arab spring. The UK was one of the NATO suppliers, and was far from the only one. Non-NATO countries were supplying arms as well, and contributing to the substantial Libya-Gaddafi arms stockpiles. That five-year period ran from the beginning of 2006 until the end of 2010, which was of course the eve of the Arab spring.

I shall give the House a brief snapshot of the arms export licences that were approved by the previous Government here. They covered items including components for assault rifles, armoured personnel carriers, command and control vehicles, military utility vehicles, military communications equipment, cryptographic equipment, electronic warfare equipment, artillery computers, and components for surface-to-air missile launching equipment. The decision to issue an export licence for that last item— components for surface-to-air missile launching equipment—was made here in London, in blissful but understandable ignorance of the fact that within a few months NATO aircraft, including those from this country, would be overflying Libya to establish the no-fly zone.

Then came the change of Government in May 2010. In the subsequent seven months leading up to the outbreak of the Arab spring in 2011, the present coalition Government continued the policy of the previous Government. Indeed, I believe that they somewhat enlarged it. The export licences that were granted to Libya’s Gaddafi regime covered items including small arms ammunition, semi-automatic pistols, sniper rifles, assault rifles, machine guns, military communications equipment, cryptographic equipment, military cargo vehicles and, once again, components for surface-to-air missile launching equipment.

I raise this case study because the key issue for NATO in relation to supplying arms to Syria is to determine what has happened to the Libya-Gaddafi arms stockpile. To help us to answer that question, we are indebted to one key public source: the report presented to the United Nations Security Council by the panel of experts charged with reporting to the Security Council on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1973. I believe that that report should be made compulsory reading for all Ministers considering whether NATO countries should supply weapons to Syria and, if so, what weapons they should be.

I wish to place before the House a few key sentences from that recently published report. The panel of experts states that

“the proliferation of weapons from Libya has continued at a worrying rate and has spread into new territory: West Africa, the Levant and, potentially, even the Horn of Africa. Since the uprising and the resulting collapse of the security apparatus, including the loss of national control over weapons stockpiles and the absence of any border controls, Libya has over the past two years become a significant and attractive source of weaponry in the region. Illicit flows from the country are fuelling existing conflicts in Africa and the Levant and enriching the arsenals of a range of non-State actors, including terrorist groups.”

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I compliment the right hon. Gentleman on his excellent speech. Does he agree that, once those weapons have leeched out of Libya, there is no way of retrieving or controlling them, and no way of knowing where they will end up? This happened in Afghanistan in the past, and it could well happen in Syria.

[Sir John Stanley]

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to learn that he has anticipated a point I am about to raise.

I raised the future of the Libya-Gaddafi arms stockpile with the director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, Professor Michael Clarke, when he gave oral evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee last week. His answers were extremely illuminating. In reply to my first question to him, he said:

“The arsenals that existed in Libya, as we all know, were extensive, and there has been almost no control over those weapons stocks. The new Government has proved virtually incapable of preventing those weapons stocks draining away.”

He went on to make this key point:

“Weapons never go out of commission; they just go somewhere else. Almost all weapons find a new home once a war is over.”

On Syria, he said:

“There is a lot of evidence that Libyan weapons are now circulating pretty freely in the Levant, and that seems to be where they will have the most destabilising effect.”

The huge geographical dispersal of the Libyan stockpile is happening not only because of the breakdown of security in Libya following the end of the Gaddafi regime but because, in the middle east and in north Africa, all through Saharan Africa and down to west Africa, arms are seen in a different way from in NATO countries. In NATO countries, the value of weapons relates to their military capabilities. We ask how capable a weapon is, how much firepower it has, how accurate it is, and so on. In that part of the world, however, there is a different approach to weapons. It is not merely a matter of their military utility. They are tradeable items.

I put that point to Professor Clarke:

“Would you conclude from that, as some people have, that the very act of supplying weapons in those circumstances means that you are basically supplying weapons into a commercial market? The moment the weapons leave your possession—whether it is weapons or ammunition—they become commodities to be sold at the highest price.”

He replied:

“I would agree with that. There is no such thing as an end-user guarantee on anything other than the most sophisticated of weaponry. Everything below the level of major aerial, maritime and ground-based combat systems—the really high-tech stuff that we produce—that is classed as small arms, light weaponry or even medium-range weaponry, is on the market once it is sold to anybody.”

A key question for NATO is whether our decision takers will take account of the very different way in which arms are seen in that part of the world. Arms are seen not merely as weapons but as money-making opportunities. Arms are bazaar items; they are there to be bought and sold at a profit if at all possible.

In conclusion, I say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and, most particularly, to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister: before deciding whether to supply particular lethal weapons and equipment to Syria, take note of what happened to the Libyan stockpile. They should ask themselves the questions, “Where are the British weapons that went into that stockpile; which countries are they now in; and in whose hands are they now in?” Most of all, they should ask themselves, “If Britain is going to supply military equipment to Syria, what is the risk of putting petrol on the fire?”

FCO: Human Rights Work

John Stanley Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the present Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), and his predecessor, the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). I very much endorse the comments of my hon. Friend, when he said that the Government would do well to acknowledge that there is an inherent conflict between the Government pursuing their legitimate commercial interests, on one hand, and also standing up fearlessly for human rights on the other. The same point and representations have been made by the Committees on Arms Export Controls, which I chair, and the Government would do well to acknowledge that inherent conflict, rather than expressing a position of trying to pretend that no such conflict exists.

I say to the Minister that I shall raise a number of points, and I entirely understand that he may not have the time or information to reply to them immediately at the end of the debate. I will be very glad to receive replies subsequently in writing, if he so wishes.

I want to start with China, which remains a one-party, totalitarian, police state. Rightly and necessarily, it continues to feature in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s list of countries of concern with regards to human rights. As the FCO’s human rights report reminds us, when there were calls in China for a “Jasmine Revolution” to follow the Arab spring:

“Public order and security bodies detained and harassed lawyers, bloggers, human rights campaigners and other activists, without allowing them recourse to their legal rights.”

Very considerable numbers of human rights activists are in jail, including, of course, the immensely courageous Nobel peace prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, who is still in prison serving an intolerable sentence for the so-called, catch-all offence of “subversion”.

I want to raise a particular aspect of human rights in the context of China, and it concerns the Government’s policy on arms exports. China is rightly subject to an arms embargo. However, in the latest figures published by the Government on the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills website, for the third quarter of 2012, the Government have stated that they approved arms export licences for components for military electronic equipment; equipment for the use of military communications equipment; military communications equipment; military electronic equipment; and technology for military communications equipment. Will the Minister explain how it is that when the British Government have signed up to the EU arms embargo on China, they are still none the less approving military arms export licences to China for the type of equipment that, on the face of it, could be used for internal repression and the violation of human rights?

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South and the hon. Member for Ilford South, I want to discuss Russia, which is rightly listed as a country of concern by the FCO. From my perspective and that of most, if not all, in the House, under President Putin, human rights in Russia are going backwards, not forwards—particularly in the area of the freedom to express, the freedom to criticise and the right of peaceful protest. The laws that are now being put through the Duma, which is controlled effectively by those who support President Putin, are particularly concerning. The laws include, for example, fines for unsanctioned demonstrations and measures to oblige NGOs to register as “foreign agents”.

I noted with interest and concern what the mould-breaking former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said about the new Putin laws in a recent BBC interview:

“The common thread running through all of them is an attack on the rights of citizens.”

In the face of those new laws being passed and an increasingly hostile environment to basic human rights in Russia, will the Minister, in his reply, give us any assurance that the British Government will do all they can to protect British nationals in Russia, and, in particular, locally employed staff of organisations such as the British embassy, the British Council and those who are working for international human rights NGOs in Russia?

The country that probably has the worst human rights record in the world—indeed, this is stated in the Foreign Office’s human rights report—is North Korea. The previous Labour Government took what I considered to be an entirely justified step—we were one of the first European countries to do so—to re-establish a diplomatic presence in Pyongyang in order to give us the possibility to exercise some degree of leverage on human rights issues, among other things, in the capital, and also to provide a point of contact for human rights and humanitarian NGOs working in North Korea. With the arrival of Kim Jong-un as the “supreme leader” of North Korea—that is how he styles himself—we have in recent weeks and days seen an alarming escalation of hostile actions and statements. We have seen a ballistic missile test. We have seen a nuclear explosion. We have seen the Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea claiming nullification of the armistice that ended the Korean war in 1953. We have seen the cutting of the hotline to Seoul. Very recently, a public statement was made that North Korea was ready for “all-out war”.

In light of the dismal and concerning developments that I have set out, are the British diplomatic staff reporting a reduction in their ability to further the human rights agenda and objectives of the British Government in North Korea? Can the Minister assure us that the Government will do all that they can to support our embassy and NGOs in North Korea in the extraordinarily important and difficult human rights and humanitarian work that they do?

I now come, with considerable regret but absolutely no apology, to an area that I think that I have raised in every one of these debates since they were first initiated—Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As with my previous contributions, I emphatically do not do so in any one-sided or partial manner. The Hamas rocket attacks into Israel—I have been to the communities in Israel where those rockets have landed—are wholly unacceptable and totally intolerable. Indeed, I regard Hamas as a disgrace to the Palestinian cause and a very serious impediment to the Palestinian wish to achieve proper democratic progress towards an independent and viable Palestinian state.

That said, the Israeli Government cannot escape the criticism that they encounter, both within Israel to some extent and more widely internationally, for the relentless and continuing violation of basic Palestinian rights. I consider the FCO to be entirely correct in including Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a country of concern in its human rights report.

[Mike Gapes]

Does my friend agree with me that the formation of a Government in Israel today is a chance for a renewed emphasis on and impetus for the restarting of negotiations that will lead to the two-state solution that is the only viable way to deal with this conflict?

[Sir John Stanley]

I agree with my friend that that is an opportunity, but to be wholly frank and honest, I have grave doubts about whether it will be seized, because I fear that since the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, there simply has not been a majority in the Knesset that is really willing to embrace the concept of creating a separate, independent, viable Palestinian state.

In recent years, we have seen the Israeli Government ending the movement of Palestinians between Gaza and Israel, turning Gaza into one of the biggest prisons, de facto, in the world. We have seen the relentless and continuing removal of Palestinian families from East Jerusalem, with the clear political objective of preventing East Jerusalem from ever becoming the capital of a Palestinian state. We see the continuation of the intolerable violation of Palestinian human rights on the west bank. To expose that, we need go no further than the Israeli NGO—I stress that it is an Israeli NGO—B’Tselem in its last annual report. It said:

“In the West Bank, two and a half million Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation while settlers live in enclaves of Israeli law within the same territory. Individual acts of violence by extremist settlers periodically capture the headlines, and discriminatory and inadequate law enforcement is indeed a concern. However, the major human rights violations result from the settlements themselves: their extensive exploitation of land and water, the massive military presence to protect them, the road network paved to serve them and the invasive route of the Separation Barrier, which was largely dictated by the settlements.”

Having made many visits to the British consulate-general in Jerusalem, I am well aware of the sterling and excellent work that is done by the Foreign Office from the consulate- general in trying to support and uphold Palestinian human rights in the occupied territories. However, in my view, a step change will be needed in the Israeli Government’s policy towards the Palestinians and towards the occupied territories if we are to see a genuine improvement in human rights. Does the Minister see any such prospect? From where I sit, and having seen the human rights deterioration taking place over so many years, I fear that we are moving to a position in which Gaza continues for the foreseeable future as one gigantic prison, East Jerusalem becomes an area where house after house belonging to a Palestinian family is taken over by the Israelis and, sadly, the west bank loses the possibility of becoming the core of an independent Palestinian state and becomes what I can only describe as a middle-eastern version of a Bantustan. Perhaps I am being too gloomy. I hope that I am, but I fear that I am not, given the progress of events.

I now come to a different part of the world and a different human right. I want to raise the case of Colonel Kumar Lama, a Nepalese citizen who came temporarily to the UK and who has now been arrested in the UK on the grounds of allegations of torture, committed not in Britain but in Nepal and committed not against British nationals but against Nepalese nationals. I wish to inform the House that although I have no registered interest to declare, I am the chairman of the all-party Britain-Nepal group.

I am raising this issue not because I want to take any position or make any comment on Colonel Lama’s specific case, but because it calls into question some very important human rights policy issues for the Government. In his letter to me this week, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has said that the arrest of Colonel Lama has been carried out to fulfil the UK’s obligations under the UN convention against torture. I cannot believe that Colonel Lama’s case is an isolated one. I cannot believe that Colonel Lama is the only foreign national in the UK against whom allegations have been made of torture committed against non-British nationals in foreign countries. Surely there must be scores and possibly even hundreds of others in the same category, so the key policy issue that I have to put to the Minister is this. Will he now confirm that, in the light of the Colonel Lama case, the British prosecuting authorities and the police will now arrest, in fulfilment of the UK Government’s obligations under the UN convention against torture, all other foreign nationals in Britain against whom there are allegations of torture committed against non-British nationals in foreign countries? That is the central policy question the Colonel Lama case raises. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

The key human right of freedom of expression embraces, in my view, freedom of speech, a free media and freedom to demonstrate peacefully. Freedom of expression is becoming ever more important in this electronic age, which gives Governments who are so minded greater and greater ability to suppress human rights and human rights activists. It enables Governments to combine unprecedented access to information acquired electronically with an unprecedented ability to carry out surveillance electronically.

I shall turn from freedom of expression generally to developments in that key human right in the Commonwealth. I am glad to say that we seem to have achieved a breakthrough on freedom of expression as far as Commonwealth countries are concerned. The first declaration of Commonwealth principles, made in Singapore in 1971 and followed by a repeated declaration of the principles 20 years later in the 1991 Harare declaration, was a major step forward in human rights for the Commonwealth, but in neither the Singapore declaration nor the Harare declaration were Commonwealth countries able to agree on including freedom of expression as a key Commonwealth principle and human right.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Like the right hon. Gentleman, I welcome the Commonwealth declaration, which is a good step forward, but there must be concerns about the treatment of lesbian and gay people, in Uganda and Malawi for example. Although the Governments appear to be able to sign the declaration, it remains to be seen whether that signature will translate into any change in attitude, policy or law in either country.

[Sir John Stanley]

The hon. Gentleman is correct. In some countries to which he refers, national law conspicuously contradicts the Commonwealth charter that has just been announced.

I am glad to say that we now seem to have had a significant breakthrough as far as Commonwealth countries are concerned. In the text of the Commonwealth charter, which the Foreign Secretary has just laid before the House as a Command Paper, we were all glad to see, for the first time, a statement that freedom of expression is an essential Commonwealth principle. I must say that the wording of the paragraph is not entirely as I would have wished. It contains no reference to the right of peaceful demonstration or protest and instead of referring to “a free media” refers to “a free and responsible media,” which will of course provide grounds for countries that regard any form of criticism of the Government of the day as irresponsible to snuff out freedom of expression. We have made a significant step forward however. Freedom of expression is now within the Commonwealth charter—something we have never achieved before.

In conclusion, I wish to add my congratulations to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on producing this substantial report—all 388 pages, all well worth the publication cost. I have said before, but I want to put on record again, that we owe the initiative entirely to the late Robin Cook, who began these particular FCO annual reports. I consider it imperative that the FCO continues to produce these annual human rights reports—and produces them in hard copy, please. It is equally imperative that they should be scrutinised annually by the Foreign Affairs Committee and that the Committee’s scrutiny comes annually before the House.

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

Before I call the other speakers, may I advise hon. Members of the time? I would like to give the two Front Benchers and Mr Ottaway a few minutes to respond and I have two speakers on my list, so it would be helpful if, between the two of you, you kept to eight to 10 minutes, with interventions.

Piracy (Somalia)

John Stanley Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow in the wake of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway). We have been the beneficiaries of his naval and nautical expertise over the course of this inquiry.

I start, Mr Sheridan, by wholeheartedly endorsing your comments at the opening of the debate about the gross discourtesy that the Government have shown to the Committee by failing to make available a crucial document that had been promised by the end of April. We are grateful to the Minister for trying to ensure that the document appears before the end of the debate, but you will be first to appreciate, Mr Sheridan, that in such a complex and technical area, the Committee should have seen the document days earlier in order to study it and, if necessary, take advice from the Committee staff before the debate commenced.

Piracy is emphatically not a marginal, peripheral world issue. In my view, it is wholly central, above all on humanitarian and human rights grounds. Piracy is one of the worst forms of human rights abuse that we see anywhere in the world. Thousands of innocent seamen and seafarers have been taken hostage and held in captivity under intolerable conditions. Many have died, and nearly 200 people are in captivity today, some of whom have been exposed to torture, and threats of torture, in order to increase the degree of pressure for ransom money. This is a vile humanitarian abuse.

Equally important are the international maritime ramifications of Somali piracy. A few years ago, most of us would have said that piracy was relatively confined in sea terms; it was a risk in the maritime choke points such as, for example, the Gulf of Aden. As Somali piracy has developed, however, pirates have become more and more audacious, and more and more skilled. They have acquired mother-ships and dramatically increased the range of piracy. Piracy now extends vastly further in geographical or sea terms than at the outset of this malevolent trend.

If we were starting the report today, I would suggest to my Committee colleagues that we call it not “Piracy off the coast of Somalia” but “Piracy in the Indian ocean.” Piracy is a form of criminality that, if allowed to take root, has the potential to expand beyond the Indian ocean. We already have what appear to be copycat attempts off the west African coast, and pirates are a risk in the Caribbean. We are talking about an international maritime threat, which is why the issue is so important and why I believe that the Foreign Affairs Committee has done a considerable service to Parliament and the wider international community by producing this weighty and well-researched report.

All the manifold briefings that I have had on Somali piracy, both in the course of the inquiry and as a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s defence committee, have erred consistently on the side of considerable over-optimism and rose-tintedness. We have been told that we are getting on top of the problem, and figures are produced to indicate that that may be the case. We have been told that the numbers of merchantmen held hostage are going down, as are the numbers of ships that have been taken. However, those are not the key figures. If we honestly ask ourselves, “Is piracy paying?” only two statistics really matter. First, what is happening to the size of the ransom money being paid out? Secondly, what is the degree of risk to which pirates are exposing themselves?

The Committee, in our report, comes up unequivocally with the answers on those two key figures. With regard to the money, at the end of paragraph 111, we state:

“The latest information from Northwood HQ is that ransom payments in 2011 have already totalled $135m—a further substantial increase and a new record.”

On the ransom money test, we are losing comprehensively. The ransom money is going up; indeed, a new record has been set. On the risk test, there is a key sentence in our report at the opening of paragraph 74:

“Around nine out of 10 piracy suspects detained by forces engaged in multinational operations are released without trial.”

Nine out of 10 captured pirates are just released. Therefore, the honest answer to the question “Does piracy pay?” is yes, it does; it is a growing source of huge sums of money and it is largely risk free for those who engage in it. That is the point we are at, and it is singularly serious.

What do we do in this situation? Yes, in a perfect world, there would be an up-and-running criminal justice system in Somalia. There would be a splendid criminal justice system, with splendid courts, and those people would be put where they belong—in jail, for many years. However, that is an illusion. We will not be at that point for years.

On the naval side, as the Chairman of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South, rightly pointed out, the geographical scale of the sea operations is such that there is no conceivable prospect of being able to produce the massive armada of naval forces that would be in a position to respond quickly to a threat of piracy in such a huge area of ocean. Therefore, we are left with just one solution. We must put armed guards on the merchant vessels, and those armed guards must be in a position to ensure that not a single merchantman on the ship is taken hostage and the ship is not captured in any circumstances.

The Government, after a long delay—I have to say that they were continuing the policy of the previous Government—have performed what the Chairman of the Committee rightly pointed out is a complete U-turn, a very welcome U-turn, and have accepted the policy of placing armed guards on UK-flagged ships. However, that can be only half the policy. It is not enough to say that we will put armed guards on the ships and create a new form of arms export licence that enables weapons to be supplied to them. I have, not least in my capacity as Chairman of the Committees on Arms Export Controls, a number of detailed questions about that form of licence, but I shall be delivering them in writing to the Minister. I will not take up hon. Members’ time with them now.

It is not enough to say that we will allow armed guards and will have a licensing system to get the appropriate weapons and ammunition to them. We must have in place the right, requisite rules of engagement, and that is where I believe that the Government are seriously falling down in policy terms. The Government’s position appears to be that we state the policy—we say that we are in favour of armed guards—but we will not give any help or support with regard to the circumstances in which lethal weapons can be used. I refer hon. Members to what the Government say on page 5 of their response:

“It must remain for shipping companies and private security companies to agree between themselves upon the guidance on use of force within which armed guards are to operate.”

That, to me, seems to be a very serious cop-out. I do not believe that the Government can responsibly say that we have a policy of putting armed guards on British-flagged merchant ships and then refuse to accept any responsibility whatever for describing the circumstances in which those armed guards can use their weapons.

When I look at how the Government try to justify the policy, I have to say that it does not stand up as far as I am concerned. The Government’s justification, also on page 5 of their response, is that

“the introduction of government-prescribed rules on the use of force would blur the distinction between private maritime security personnel as civilians only acting in the context of self-defence, and military personnel who may be authorised to use force for other reasons.”

My first point is that armed military personnel are used and have been used with considerable regularity to board and to be on board civilian ships in a variety of circumstances, so the Government have ample experience of that; and in all those circumstances, those armed military personnel have rules of engagement, so the Government have in their possession rules of engagement that deal with the type of situation we are discussing.

I would question the Government when they say that the armed guards on British-flagged merchant ships are acting only in the context of self-defence. I do not know whether that is meant to imply the armed guards’ own self-defence. They have a much wider role. Their key role is, of course, to protect and ensure the safety of all the civilian crew members on board the ship and, in the process, ensure the safety and retention of that ship under the control of the crew’s master and the ship’s crew. That is their wider role.

In those circumstances, when the Government have abundant expertise in the area and, as a matter of course, have rules of engagement that they apply to service personnel who have to go on board civilian ships, and given that the Government now have a clear policy in favour of armed guards going on to British-flagged merchant ships, it seems to me to be wholly incumbent on the Government to accept the necessity of making clear what the rules of engagement are.

I come back to the conclusion that the Committee draws in paragraph 37. To me, it is the single most important recommendation in our report. It should be read in full, but I shall quote just the key sentences:

“The Government should not offload responsibility onto ship owners to deal with the most difficult aspects of handling private armed guards…The Government must provide clearer direction on what is permissible and what is not. Guidance over the use of potentially lethal force should not be left to private companies to agree upon. We recommend that the change of policy be accompanied by clear, detailed and unambiguous guidance on the legal use of force for private armed guards defending a vessel under attack.”

I urge the Minister to accept that recommendation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bellingham]

Yes, indeed. It is about a graduated response, and about the members of the armed detachment using their intelligence. If they believe that they or the vessel they are protecting is threatened, they can of course use force. They would probably start by firing a warning shot. If the skiff then disappeared, all well and good, but if it came closer and it was obvious that there were weapons on board, it is perfectly clear from the revised guidelines that the armed guards would not have to wait until a shot was fired at them or in their direction. We go a long way to giving the clarification that is need.

[Sir John Stanley]

As the Minister is aware, his Department employs private armed security guards in a number of locations around overseas embassies and high commissions. Will he make available a copy of those rules of engagement to the members of the Committee?

[Mr Bellingham]

My right hon. Friend was a senior Minister and had a distinguished military career, and he has stayed in many embassies and high commissions. He will know the work done by the armed guards, who we often employ from companies such as G4S. I will certainly consider whether the document can be made available.

I want to make a few additional points. I think that the Committee was looking for clear but comprehensive rules of engagement, and we have not gone as far as it would have liked. That is, first, because companies must seek independent legal advice. Furthermore, merchant shipping can be subject to multiple jurisdictions. On board a UK flagged vessel, persons are subject to UK domestic laws; they may also be subject to different domestic jurisdictions and equivalent laws depending on the offence committed, the nationality of the person taking the action, the person against whom the action is taken, and whether such an action takes place in international or territorial waters. It is not straightforward, and it can be incredibly complicated. I do not like to see advice saying that it is up to the court to decide, because it brings to mind the debate in the previous Parliament on what force a household can use to defend its property: time and again Ministers would say that it was up to the court to decide, but actually we did not want householders dragged into court. However, in the unfortunate event of such a case going to court, it is up to the law of the land in that particular state or jurisdiction to determine whether the force used in the unique circumstances of the case was lawful.

That is why we have not gone into the level of detail that the Chairman of the Committee would perhaps like to have seen. We have not laid out rules of engagement and rules on the use of force that cover every single eventuality. There has to be a graduated approach, and we must take the realpolitik view that every single circumstance and occasion will be unique. To be too prescriptive would be a mistake.

In addition to producing our national guidance, we—I say “we”, but it is more or less my hon. Friend the Shipping Minister—have played a leading role in the development of international guidance on the use of private armed security personnel for our leading role in the contact group. After detailed work within that body, the contact group has handed its conclusions to the IMO to develop further, and such international guidance will be made available. As I said, this is work in progress and further work is going on, first, on the national guidance that I mentioned and, secondly, on the accreditation process. That is very important. I congratulate my hon. Friend on that work and I hope that he carries on working tirelessly on this agenda.

I think it has been widely accepted that a combination of more robust naval activity, industry self-protection measures and the use of private arms security personnel have all contributed to the reduction in the number of successful hijackings in the Indian ocean, but such activities at sea are only part of the answer. We should not lose sight of the fact that the way to combat piracy is obviously on the land. That point was made by the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Cheltenham and the right hon. Member for Warley. We must look at the political strand, and I will come on to that in a moment in response to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), but in terms of sustainable solutions on the land, one of the things I was very keen to discuss with the shipping industry—it also featured in the London conference on Somalia—was what we can do to reward those communities, villages and small towns that have driven the pirates out. For example, in Puntland and Galmudug, the local militia have taken control of coastal communities that have previously been subjected to pirate activities. Those communities need to be rewarded, and rewarded quickly. That is why we have worked very hard indeed with the shipping industry, which I am pleased to say has been very proactive on that score, and been able to make some progress.

I am very pleased to say that when the Secretary of State for International Development was in Garowe, he was able to open a new fish market for which money was provided by his Department. We have also, for example, established new youth club facilities in parts of Puntland and looked at projects to increase existing capacity for vocational training and help similar training facilities in parts of Puntland and Galmudug. I am delighted that the UK Government have come up with £2 million for those projects, which has been matched by a $2 million pledge by the four shipping companies that are also very concerned and interested in that agenda. We are very keen to ensure that money goes into those communities that have successfully driven away the pirates.

I should also point out that as well as those fast impact schemes on the land, it is incredibly important that those pirates who are caught are taken for detention, prosecution and then imprisonment. Part of the problem with catch and release was, first, the difficulty of getting a robust prosecution package and, secondly, the question of where to take the pirates. In answer to the point made by the right hon. Member for Warley about whether we would take pirates to the UK, yes, of course we would. If UK citizens or service personnel were injured by pirates, of course, we would look at the evidence and we would consider bringing them to the UK for detention and prosecution.

The most important thing is to ensure that we build up regional capacity for detention, prosecution and imprisonment. I am absolutely delighted that more pirates are now being brought to justice. We recently agreed a new memorandum of understanding with the Government of Tanzania, under which UK naval assets will be able to transfer suspected pirates caught at sea for prosecution in the Tanzanian courts. That has been followed as recently as last Friday with the signature of our Prime Minister and the Prime Minister of Mauritius on a new MOU between us and the Government of Mauritius, which will put UK money into Mauritian prisons and ensure that the Mauritian Government will be able to take more suspected pirates for detention and prosecution. Most important of all, the point being put to us by all these countries is that they will detain pirates and prosecute them, but they do not want to go to the expense of imprisoning them; they believe that those convicted should be imprisoned in Somalia or Somaliland.

Human Rights

John Stanley Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who makes such a conspicuous contribution to human rights in this House. Like others, I am very glad that we have finally got this debate. The House may not appreciate that notwithstanding the admirable decision by the late Robin Cook to produce, for the first time, a Foreign Office statement in full written form on human rights, this is the first debate that we have had on the Foreign Office annual report since 18 December 2008, over three years ago. That delay was, in part, due to the intervention and the timing of the last general election. I earnestly hope that we will re-establish an annual debate on the Foreign Office’s human rights report and that that debate will be a full three hours in length, as it has previously been. The Chamber will be glad to hear that I will be severely truncating my planned two-hour speech to ensure that all hon. Members can make a suitable contribution.

At the outset, let me say to the Minister that I welcome the fact that the Foreign Office has, deservedly, devoted substantial resources to producing this 355-page written document. That is an admirable use of resources. It is invaluable to have it and I strongly support the point that has been made by the Chairman and other right hon. and hon. Members that this must continue in a sensible portable form—in written and published form.

I want to start by referring to a recent document that has come out following the Foreign Office’s annual report and our own report on that. It is “Human Rights Guidance,” which the Government have recently published in relation to overseas security and justice assistance. I wish to highlight two points in relation to that. First, in his foreword to “Human Rights Guidance”—I very much welcome this—the Foreign Secretary says:

“It is of fundamental importance that HMG work on security and justice overseas is based on British values, including human rights and democracy, and this guidance is designed to support that.”

Given the fact that the Foreign Secretary says that, I find it surprising and disappointing that when we get to paragraph 13, where the Government list the human rights that must be upheld when security and justice assistance is provided, the list fails to include any specific mention of women’s rights. It includes, entirely rightly, violations of the rights of the child, but there is absolutely no reference whatsoever to violence against women or women’s rights. I hope that the Government, like me, will regard that as a very serious omission. It is an even more striking omission when the letter that the Foreign Secretary sent to the Committee’s Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), yesterday, rightly includes women’s rights among the five global human rights priorities that the Government have set. Why is there no reference to women’s rights in this very important human rights document? I hope that the Minister will reflect on that.

There is a further, equally surprising omission, which I wish to highlight in my capacity as Chairman of the Committees on Arms Export Controls. This security assistance refers to assisting in particular what are described as “security institutions overseas”. Those institutions are defined in the guidance. It states:

“The institutions typically (but not exclusively) of relevance in this context are: armed forces, police, gendarmeries, paramilitary forces, presidential guards, intelligence and security services (military and civilian)”.

In other words, they are organisations that feature armed personnel in overseas countries. My question for the Minister is why, in that document, which includes checklists for officials here and overseas in our embassies to follow, there is no reference anywhere to the requirement under the EU and UK “Consolidated Criteria” in relation to arms exports to follow those criteria, which, critically, include no sales of weapons, ammunition and so on that could be used for internal repression. Why is the document 100% silent on that crucial requirement? That is a further question that I put to the Minister.

There is another important sentence in the Foreign Secretary’s foreword. He says:

“It is in police stations, detention centres and court houses that the state exerts its greatest powers over individuals and so where fairness, human dignity, liberty and justice are most critical.”

I regard that sentence as 100% right and I am very glad that the Foreign Secretary has highlighted the critical point that autocratic dictatorships down the ages have always said to themselves, “If we can get those who oppose us locked up behind bars, we can do with them what we like.” That is where human rights are most vulnerable. I am glad that the Foreign Secretary highlighted that. I shall return to that sentence in relation to a particular country later.

I shall now deal with a number of individual countries, starting with Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I am glad that those are again rightly listed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office among the countries of concern. As the House knows, one of the most important human rights organisations, if not the most important—it is important to stress this; it is a Jewish human rights organisation—is called in English the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. In Israel, it is called B’Tselem. As I am sure right hon. and hon. Members know, B’Tselem is loathed in many sections of the Israeli community and particularly in parts of the Israeli Government. That reflects most eloquently the extremely important and invaluable job that B’Tselem does in highlighting human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Last year, I tabled a written question that the Minister himself answered. I asked what had been the Foreign Office’s financial support for B’Tselem during the past five years. I was delighted to receive the Minister’s written answer on 12 October. It told me that after a gap of several years, the Government had made a grant of £135,000 to B’Tselem in support of its efforts to improve the human rights situation for Palestinians in the west bank, the Gaza strip and East Jerusalem.

I urge the Government to continue to give support to B’Tselem for the extraordinarily important work that it does in trying to highlight and expose the human rights abuses that are taking place in the face of the continuing relentless and, indeed, I have to say ruthless policy that the Israeli Government have followed for many years of bringing about illegally the de facto annexation of East Jerusalem and the water-bearing parts of the west bank.

I now turn to Bahrain, as other speakers have done. Like others, I have noted that at the time the 2010 human rights report was prepared Bahrain was not listed among the countries of concern, and—again, like others—I found that a somewhat surprising omission, given that for years now the Sunni, autocratic Government of Bahrain have engaged in consistent and serious discrimination against the Shi’a majority in the country. I certainly hope that Bahrain will be included among the countries of concern when the Government produce their next human rights report.

Of course, I appreciate that Bahrain is strategically of great importance. I know, as we all do, that it is the home of the US fifth fleet and that we face a sensitive and delicate situation in the strait of Hormuz. I also know that Bahrain provides a port for other NATO naval vessels, including our own. However, that is not sufficient grounds for going soft towards the leadership in Bahrain over the gross abuses of human rights that occurred in the country in the wake of the Arab spring against unarmed civilian demonstrators and, as we know, even against doctors and nurses who were performing their professional medical duties, as they were bound to do.

I note the Foreign Secretary’s statement in his letter to the Select Committee Chairman on 12 January, in which he sets out the Government’s human rights agenda as far as Bahrain is concerned, and I urge the Foreign Secretary to adhere tenaciously to the points that he set out in that letter.

If there is one country in the Arab spring firmament in which the leadership most deserves to be brought before the International Criminal Court in the Hague, it is Syria. I know that that will not happen to President Assad and those around him, for the simple reason that it would be blocked by the Russians who, of course, have a very important naval facility in Syria. Notwithstanding that, there is a real opportunity for the British Government to take the initiative. It looks as if the Arab League effort to try to stop the violence in Syria may now be in some considerable disarray and I hope that the Foreign Office is asking itself intensively what steps Britain and other countries can take to try to exert further pressure and to develop further policies that will stop the violence in Syria, and to help the move from autocracy to democracy in Syria that is urgently needed.

Like other right hon. and hon. Members who listened to the “Today” programme this morning, I was considerably moved by the broadcast from Syria, particularly hearing the crowd in a suburb of Damascus shouting, “Freedom, freedom, freedom”, in the background. I earnestly hope that the British Government will not be deaf to the cries for freedom emanating from the thousands of very brave people who are seeking freedom in Syria.

Lastly, I come to China, which brings me back to what I said about the Foreign Secretary’s statement in his foreword to “Human Rights Guidance” about human rights being in most danger when the state exerts power against individuals

“in police stations, detention centres and court houses”,

and other parts of the criminal justice system. No country in the world uses its state power more ruthlessly and more consistently than China against those who wish, entirely peacefully, to take a different view from that one-party, authoritarian state about how their country should be governed, a power that is used ruthlessly to imprison anyone who takes a different view, using the terrible, catch-all criminal offence of subversion against the state. As the House knows, in China in just the last few weeks, there has been a spate of arrests with sentences of some 10 years meted out to people such as Li Tie, Chen Wei and Chen Xi, to name but a few.

The Foreign Affairs Committee recently asked the Foreign Secretary how the Government’s human rights work fits with the promotion of trade, an issue which the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley has also raised. Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary replied to the Committee’s Chairman in his letter of 25 January and stated:

“We do see our trade promotion and human rights work as mutually reinforcing”.

That line is convenient for the Government, and nationally self-serving, but in my view it is an illusion. The determined prosecution of human rights, and the determined prosecution of trade are not, in my view, mutually reinforcing; they are inescapably mutually conflicting.

The uncomfortable reality for Ministers—I accept that it is uncomfortable for them—is that they have a hard choice to make in relation to China and other countries around the world. Do they stand up straight and firm on human rights, or do they basically say that they will go through the motions on human rights and give first priority to our country’s commercial interests? In my view, on the evidence to date, this Government have made the same choice as the previous Government, and have said that they will give top priority to trade. We will pursue that issue in the arms export area with Ministers and in the report that is currently under consideration.

In conclusion, I find the Government’s position on human rights somewhat mixed. Much of the wording, but not all of it, is right, but in translating the words into hard action, in some countries at least, the action falls significantly short of the words. I am sure that the Foreign Affairs Committee will continue to have its scrutiny of the Government’s human rights policy very high indeed on the Committee’s agenda.

Cluster Munitions

John Stanley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Martin Caton (Gower) (Lab)]

I have sought this debate because I am very concerned at current moves within the UN convention on certain conventional weapons to adopt a new protocol that would ban some older and less sophisticated cluster munitions, but allow continued use of some weapons that are the most dangerous to civilians. This would be a major step backwards, as it would effectively undermine the convention on cluster munitions that prohibits ownership, manufacture and transfer of all cluster weapons, because they all kill and maim civilian children, women and men when they are used. Some 111 states have now joined this treaty, which requires a complete ban.

However, before I rehearse my argument on that issue, it might help if I take a step back and look at what cluster munitions are, what they do and whom they do it to, and describe how the convention on cluster munitions was achieved and what has happened since to take its provisions forward. Cluster munitions are air-dropped or ground-launched shells that eject multiple smaller sub-munitions or bomblets. Some have been developed for use against runways, armour and even electrical transmission systems to locate a specific type of target. However, their primary purpose in most circumstances in which they are used is to kill people—ostensibly enemy combatants, but in practice many others as well.

Cluster bombs can contain variable numbers of sub-munitions, but most often that means very large numbers. Each sub-munition contains explosives, a copper cone, a pre-stressed fragmentation sheath and an incendiary sponge. The main bomb breaks open in mid-air and the bomblets are released, effectively carpet-bombing an area the size of two or three football fields. Anybody within that area—military or civilian—is likely to be torn apart. Tragically, in conflict after conflict, because of where they have been used, many of the victims of that weaponry—even at the time of attack—have been innocent children, women and men who were non-combatants.

However, that is only the first part of the story. There is a longer-term impact, because many of the bomblets do not work properly. They fail to explode on immediate impact and are left on the ground after the end of hostilities, to be trodden on by farmers returning to their fields, pulled up when families are cleaning rubble from their damaged homes, or even picked up as playthings by children attracted by their shape and shine. They remain lethal.

Cluster weapons date back to the second world war, but were used most extensively by the United States in the Vietnam war, where villages were carpet-bombed with cluster munitions. In fact, in Vietnam the US sometimes employed cluster bombs that were designed not to explode on impact. They were called area denial ordnance, and when they were dropped they were effectively land-mining an area from the sky. That was deliberate, of course; but all too often ever since, the result of using cluster munitions has not been too different.

Revulsion at what cluster munitions were doing to the ordinary people of Vietnam led in the early 1970s to calls for an international treaty. In 1974, Algeria, Austria, Egypt, Lebanon, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Norway, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Venezuela and Yugoslavia jointly put forward a document that included a section headed “Anti-personnel fragmentation weapons”. It said:

“Anti-personnel cluster warheads or other devices with many bomblets, which act through the ejection of a greater number of small-calibred fragments or pellets to be prohibited for use”.

Sadly, that initiative got nowhere at that time and the people of Vietnam are still living with the aftermath of that mass cluster bombing, 40 years later. Even now, every year, hundreds of Vietnamese civilians are killed or injured by American sub-munitions from cluster bombs dropped all that time ago. Some 22 countries have been affected by cluster munition contamination, with particular problems of unexploded ordnance in Indo-China, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Having visited southern Lebanon myself shortly after the ceasefire took place and after the Israelis had carried out a massive sowing of cluster munitions, I can say to the hon. Gentleman that he is absolutely right to point out the terrible dangers to men, women and children from these awful weapons, which are primarily used with the aim of, and have the effect of, killing and maiming civilians.

[Martin Caton]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that contribution. He is absolutely right, and I shall say a little about what happened in Lebanon.

In 2006, the charity Handicap International produced a report documenting more than 10,000 known civilian casualties from cluster munitions, but it believed that the true figure could be as much as 10 times as high as that. What there can be no doubt about is that cluster munitions have caused excessive and disproportionate harm to civilians in every conflict in which they have been used over the past 40 years. People across the world realised this, especially when they saw on their television screens the use of millions of these weapons by the state of Israel against Lebanon and the consequences for its people. Sixty per cent. of Israeli cluster strikes were in built-up areas, with the inevitable impact on innocent human life. At the end of the conflict it was estimated that there could have been as many as a million unexploded cluster sub-munitions littering roads, schools, wells, houses, gardens and fields, taking their toll on the Lebanese population. A clean-up operation continues, in which the UK Department for International Development is playing a valuable and important role, but that, we should not forget, is a diversion of development aid money from other humanitarian projects.

At the end of that conflict, cluster munitions, as an issue, had gone up the political agenda across the face of the planet. Civil society was brilliantly organised by the Cluster Munition Coalition of more than 350 organisations in more than 100 countries. They found politicians who were willing to listen, ready to be convinced and prepared to act. From 2000 until 2007 attempts had been made to negotiate on cluster munitions at the UN convention on certain conventional weapons, and this had been blocked every time by the United States and others. When in 2006 a mandate to negotiate an instrument on cluster munitions, proposed by 27 states, was again prevented, Norway and the other countries involved decided to go outside the UN to move the issue forward.

That was the start of what became known as the Oslo process, starting with a conference in that city in February 2007. In doing that, Norway was following the example of Canada, which had used the same approach in securing the landmine treaty 10 years earlier. The Oslo process was quite remarkable. By getting people and their Governments to address the impact of cluster munitions, we saw quite radical changes of position over about a year, not least in this country.

On 23 November 2006, I secured an Adjournment debate in the Chamber on cluster munitions in which I urged the then Labour Government to play a leading role in the Oslo process and to take the initiative by announcing the UK’s intention to renounce all cluster munitions. The then Minister of State, Ministry of Defence who responded described cluster munitions as

“lawful weapons that provide a unique capability against certain types of legitimate target”,

and went on to say:

“Our military commanders judge the degree of force to employ to achieve the mission, subject always to strict compliance with international humanitarian law. We believe that that is a sufficiently adequate body of law. It puts considerable constraints on the use of cluster munitions.”

He added that

“a total ban on the use of all types of sub-munition would have an adverse impact on the UK’s operational effectiveness.”—[Official Report, 23 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 802.]