Saudi Arabia: Arms Export Licences

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 26th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I was aware of the report from the committee on this issue. As I said earlier, we are confident that the UK export controls provide a robust means of assessing human rights concerns. Human rights are a core consideration in assessing export licence applications, and we will not now grant that licence as that would be inconsistent with the licensing criteria. These criteria require us to think very hard about the implications of human rights on granting licences.

Perhaps I should just repeat briefly that the interim procedures put in place mean that, on future licences, senior officials in DIT, FCO and the MoD are guaranteeing the latest information available to Government is used in this advice. All recommendations to grant licences for the export of items to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners will now have to be signed off by Ministers, as opposed to at official level.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I have lost count now of the number of times in the last 24 hours we have been told by government Ministers that this Government act lawfully. But four days into this Government, they were not only in breach of a court order that was made in June by granting licences to Saudi Arabia but in breach of undertakings that were given to Parliament. We know now of four instances and we can guarantee there will be more in a relatively short period of time into this Minister’s role.

We are reassured that no further trade is taking place with Saudi Arabia in this respect until this is all sorted out, but in the middle of this the Government invite the Saudi regime to come to the world’s biggest arms fair in London and allow them to look at what we can sell them there, while we are apparently not selling them anything because of their humanitarian failures. The real question here is: why did it take a court order in June that the previous Conservative Government was acting unlawfully to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the face of all their behaviour? Is it the case that this regime can behave just as it likes and it will get the support of this Government in terms of arms sales unless the court says that to give them to them would be unlawful?

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, I cannot agree with the noble Lord. The judgment of the Court of Appeal back in June endorsed the view of the Divisional Court of July 2017 that the processes we have applied were rigorous, robust and multi-layered. The noble Lord is quite right that, regrettably, there were errors in that process, which are very rare. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has commissioned this independent investigation to ensure that these do not happen again. As the noble Lord has said—he drew attention to humanitarian law—we have undertaken not to grant new licences for exports to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners for items which might be used in the conflict in Yemen.