Counter-Daesh Update

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Thursday 13th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

Yes, indeed. The Abadi Government are representative of all parts of Iraq. Abadi himself is a Shi’a; the President of Iraq, whom I met, is a Kurd; and my opposite number, the Defence Minister, is a Sunni. They are a genuinely representative Government, but they have work to do to provide reassurance, particularly to the Sunni populations and tribes of Nineveh and Anbar provinces in the west, that they too have a stake in modern Iraq and must feel part of it, and that they will be protected from any kind of Shi’a aggression such as they have suffered from in the past. The Government are representative and have lasted longer than some critics originally suggested they would, but they now have a huge amount of work to do to stabilise the areas that have been liberated and promote genuine political reconciliation.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State referred twice to Staffan de Mistura’s negotiations in Geneva, but he did not mention the Russian-Turkish-Iranian initiative and the meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan. What is the British Government’s assessment of the role of that process and the fact that it seems to be undermining efforts in Geneva?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

We support any genuine efforts to reduce violence in Syria and bring the civil war to an end, but we cannot endorse the Astana process for a number of reasons, principally because of the status it gives Iran as a guarantor of Syria’s future. That is not acceptable. We want the pluralist type of governance in Syria that we now have in Iraq, and that does not require further interference from Iran.

Trident: Test Firing

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

As I have said, the Government would not have brought the motion before the House last July had there been any doubt about the safety, capability or effectiveness of the Trident missile system. However, my hon. Friend is right to remind the House that the vote, and the huge majority it secured, was of course on the principle of our deterrent and the Government’s plan to renew our four submarines.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The essence of deterrence is uncertainty—about when, whether or if missiles will be fired. Can I take it that the purpose of the Secretary of State’s statement today is that he wishes to add to the uncertainty and therefore increase deterrence?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

To take the hon. Gentleman’s question seriously, he of course is right that one of the principles of deterrence is to leave one’s adversaries uncertain about the circumstances in which one would employ it. I have simply made it clear to the House today that the outcome of the tests was a successful return by HMS Vengeance to the operational cycle, but I am not prepared to go into further operational detail about the tests themselves.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Monday 7th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

A number of NATO members have much more to do. Some of them still spend less than 1.5%, and a few of them even spend less than 1%. But in the deployments that are being agreed on the eastern border of NATO we are seeing more co-operation, with countries such as France and Denmark coming alongside the battalion that we will lead in Estonia next year.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State, in the context of the operational effectiveness of our forces, emphasise that such things are normally done in partnership with other countries? Does he therefore agree that it is vital that members of the US Administration and other NATO partners recognise that they are strengthened by the contribution that NATO countries collectively make to the defence of the United States?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

It is probably the wrong day to comment on the position of the United States. Yes, NATO is a collective defence organisation, and we all, in that respect, rely on each other. I note, for example, that when Britain leaves the European Union, three of the four battalions on the eastern border of NATO will be led by non-EU countries.

Liberation of Mosul

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

It is perhaps worth saying that, when my hon. Friend refers to progress, we are at the very start of this campaign to encircle and then liberate Mosul. I must remind the House again that this may not be easy; there may well be setbacks along the way. We have trained a large number of peshmerga forces, as well as Iraqi troops, over the past two years. We can be proud of the role that the British Army has played, particularly in training them to deal with improvised explosive devices, which have been seeded on a much larger scale than in any previous campaign we have come across—far greater than in Afghanistan or in the original Iraq conflicts—and in helping them to deal with evacuation to face snipers. It has been a consistent training effort over the past two years, and I hope that, as a result, the peshmerga are better able to deal with what will be a very difficult assault.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

This conflict is taking place in a globalised world with social media. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to send out the very clear message that, although we have not seen the crimes and atrocities carried out inside Mosul by Daesh, terrible things will be portrayed from this conflict, which could take weeks or months, and many people will die, but that is a necessary part of saving the world and particularly of protecting Muslims around the world, who are dying as a result of the horrors carried out by this caliphate cult?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has experience of chairing the Foreign Affairs Committee in previous Parliaments. He is right: horrors are being perpetrated every day in Mosul, and that was the case long before the liberation and the assault started. We should not forget that some of these horrors have been perpetrated on our own citizens—on the hostages taken back in 2014—and others have been subject to atrocities ever since. It is important that the world does not forget just how evil Daesh has been in the extremes to which they have gone in punishing or killing those who happen not to accept the perversion they believe in.

Counter-Daesh Quarterly Update

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

Talks are under way on the future of Syria and they need to make more progress. My hon. Friend is right. In Iraq we have not seen the political progress needed to match the military progress, which is getting ahead of the reforms, securitisation and stabilisation that we need to see following on, particularly in Anbar province. We urge the Abadi Government to crack on with the reforms needed to create a national guard in which people can have confidence, to give the governors the powers they need to get essential services up and running, and to ensure that the areas that are liberated are then properly policed.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State’s statement did not refer to the Syrian Kurds—the Democratic Union party—or the Iraqi Kurds, the Kurdish Regional Government. In answer to an earlier question, he said that the long-delayed supply of ammunition to the peshmerga would take place at some point in the future. Why is it taking so long?

[Michael Fallon]

The peshmerga are able to access ammunition from a number of sources. They now have the funding to purchase it—some more funding has gone in from the United States recently—but we are not able to supply the Kurdish peshmerga directly. The Kurdish area is part of the unitary state of Iraq, so supplies have to be routed through Iraq and we also have to consider the needs of the Iraqi forces—the Iraqi army itself— vis-à-vis the peshmerga. I have, however, agreed a new shipment of ammunition, and I hope it will be going out there shortly.

Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I am clear that were we to intervene on the ground with combat troops, we could well help further to radicalise opinion in western Europe and encourage more support. That is exactly why the Prime Minister of Iraq for one has made it very clear that he does not want foreign troops on the ground and that this fight has to be a fight of the Iraqi army, which has to win back the support of the local population. There is therefore no question of our supplying combat troops on the ground in Iraq.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

For more than three years, the position of our Government has been to support the Syrian Coalition and the Free Syrian Army. The Secretary of State says that we are training people outside Syria to be reinserted at some point. Has he seen the press statement issued by the Syrian Coalition today, in which it denounces a breakaway group, “a so-called military council” that is being formed by

“members of the dissolved FSA Supreme Military Council”,

as

“just an attempt to mislead public opinion”?

Is it not clear that our strategy of working with the so-called moderate Syrian opposition has failed, is failing and will fail? Is it not time that we gave direct support to the only people in Syria who are fighting Daesh—the Syrian Kurds?

[Michael Fallon]

Support is going to the Syrian Kurds, but it is also important, as I hope the hon. Gentleman would recognise, to continue to try to identify moderate elements further south in Syria who are prepared to take the fight to ISIL. He is right that those who come forward for training have to be properly vetted. We are part of the overall American organisation of the programme. We must have confidence that, once trained, these people will be prepared to re-enter the fight when they return to Syria. That is why the numbers have been relatively small. However, we are at the beginning of the programme, and we expect and hope that the numbers will build up.

Britain and International Security

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I am laying out some of the case today. However, the Prime Minister has made it clear that we will not return to the House for parliamentary authority to conduct air strikes in Syria unless there is a sufficient consensus behind it. It may be that opinion in this Parliament is rather different from opinion in the previous Parliament. A number of things have changed, not least the attacks that have multiplied and the spread of ISIS itself.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State knows that in the absence of an effective Iraqi Government response, the people who have been fighting bravely on the ground are the Kurds—the peshmerga from the Kurdistan Regional Government. At the same time, Kurds in Syria have been fighting bravely against the same forces. Is it not the case that those Kurdish forces have been calling out for heavier weaponry and for military support from this country, as well as from other countries? Why are our Government not giving the Kurds the weaponry and the support that they need?

[Michael Fallon]

As I think the hon. Gentleman knows, we have supplied heavy machine guns to the Kurds. I have seen the training on those weapons for myself. As I have told the House, we are stepping up the counter-IED—improvised explosive device—training that we are offering to the Iraqi and the Kurdish forces. We are now doing that training in all four of the so-called building partner capacity centres.

Let me turn to the domestic front—

Falkland Islands Defence Review

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

We would certainly like more air links to the Falklands. I shall obviously continue to discuss with my hon. Friends at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office what other opportunities or potential there is for different services to other territories to be jointly linked up.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State referred in a previous answer to the international context. Will he tell us what discussions the Government have recently had with Latin American countries and the United States about these issues, given the unwillingness of the US to support Britain with diplomacy in the past?

[Michael Fallon]

I am sure that Governments across the region have noted the results of the recent referendum in the Falkland Islands, and that they would respect the right of the Falkland islanders to determine their future. We do have discussions with other Governments in southern and Latin America. I very recently met the Foreign Minister of Brazil, and I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that this subject did not come up.

Al-Sweady Inquiry Report

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

That is already part of the training that our servicemen and women now undergo, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The House should wonder whether the Taliban or ISIL would rush to provide bottled water before they were asked to do so if they had British detainees in their custody, or indeed if those detainees had survived to be in their custody.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State said that the cost of the public inquiry was £31 million, but that of course is not the total cost. Can he give us a figure for the total cost, including the costs before the public inquiry? Does this come out of the MOD’s budget or the Ministry of Justice’s budget? How many ships, planes and service personnel have we lost as a result of those firms taking this money?

[Michael Fallon]

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the figures for the earlier costs. The figure of £31 million is specifically for the public inquiry. As he said, that is a huge and unacceptable amount. It comes directly from the defence budget and he is right—it could otherwise have been spent on providing more equipment for our troops and on many other things that people might have regarded as having a higher priority.

UK Armed Forces (Iraq)

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Monday 15th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I agree with both my hon. Friend and the President of Iraq, in no particular order. The President of Iraq himself has said that he does not want British or any other foreign combat troops involved, which is why we need to make it absolutely clear that we are not proposing to return combat troops to Iraq. The effort that we are making is relatively small-scale and should be seen alongside the contributions being promised by others, including the Germans, the Spanish, the Danes, the Italians, the Australians and the New Zealanders, all of whom are considering what effort they can make to help with training and equipment.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that if we are to defeat this ISIL criminal caliphate cult, or Daesh, it will have to be done not just in Iraq but in its headquarters and heartlands in Syria? What is the international coalition of 40 countries to which he referred going to do about that?

[Michael Fallon]

The hon. Gentleman, who has some experience of these matters through his chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is right that in the end ISIL can be defeated only if it is defeated in both countries, Syria and Iraq. That is why we welcome the strikes that other members of the international coalition, including the United States but also our allies in the Gulf, have undertaken against ISIL, particularly in the north of Syria. That helps to disrupt ISIL’s supply lines into Iraq. Our part—it is all that the House will allow us to do at the moment—is in Iraq, but we have plenty to do there through airstrikes, surveillance, the supply of equipment and the consideration that we are now undertaking of further training.

Afghanistan

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and he is right that there is occasional criticism of the Ministry, but I will be delighted to pass on his congratulations. This was a huge logistical exercise, and there were many who told us at the time that it simply could not be done and the matériel would not be brought out safely—that the convoys would be attacked and the lines interdicted and so on—but that did not happen. That is in very large part due to the skill, commitment and professionalism of the planners and logisticians, as well as to civil servants in my Ministry, who sometimes do not get the praise we rightly accord, of course, in the first place, to our combat troops.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I add my voice to that of the Secretary of State concerning the appalling terrorist attack today? Does he agree that this shows that it is not just our military but many civilians and locally engaged people and people in the various private security organisations who put their lives at risk in trying to help the people of Afghanistan, and that we should recognise that this is a threat not just in Afghanistan, but throughout the world?

[Michael Fallon]

I certainly endorse that. A huge number of people have been helping in the effort to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan—as the hon. Gentleman says, civil contractors, locally employed staff and others—and it is right that we acknowledge not simply their commitment, but the fact that they, too, have been willing to put themselves in harm’s way to work for a better future.

Arms Exports

Debate between Mike Gapes and Michael Fallon

Thursday 13th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Michael Fallon]

I understand and take the hon. Lady’s point. I repeat, however, that there is no evidence so far that equipment supplied by the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia has been used in breach of the criteria. Obviously, if any evidence comes to light, we would certainly need to re-examine the position.

On the improvements to the Export Control Organisation, I was touching on the CLC service, which is a non-statutory advisory service, so no performance targets were published, although it had some initial teething problems while the ratings backlog was being addressed. The service is now performing better, however, with around 45% of inquiries being processed within 20 working days. As a non-statutory advisory service and with a number of self-rating tools available to the exporter, the CLC service is not able to compete for valuable technical resource, which must first serve the priority casework for HMRC snags where goods are detained on the point of export, as well as SIEL applications of course.

The hon. Member for Hartlepool made a point about training. For companies that would like to find out more about the rating process, the ECO runs a training course for exporters on control list classification and use of the checker tools—a full-day workshop held approximately every six weeks. The course is designed to give attendees confidence in identifying control list entries that specify their products.

The ECO is keen to identify further areas for improvement and, accordingly, has a service improvement project in place. It is a continuous improvement programme and includes changes to the export licensing system known as SPIRE, encouraging the use of open and general licences and the provision of better and more comprehensive advice for exporters. As part of that process, the ECO has identified the need for a change to the end-user undertaking that accompanies an application for an SIEL, splitting it into two: a normal undertaking and a stockist undertaking.

The ECO will shortly produce the new forms and their associated guidance in translation to help exporters explain the requirement to their overseas customers. Changing the end-user undertaking will help to speed up the export licence application process by reducing the number of times that a licence is held up by the need to clarify information on the end-user undertaking document. To assist in the completion of the forms, the ECO is planning to provide guidance in the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Spanish.

The ECO is also working to develop a manual and online training for exporters who use the SPIRE electronic export licensing system. It is developing desk instructions for staff that it hopes will improve consistency in the processing of export licences. It has also been mapping the customer journey on export licensing, so that it can better understand the pinch points in its processes. The intention is that that will lead to the development and delivery of tailored customer service training for ECO staff.

The ECO is implementing a new telephone system, which will provide better call and queue management, with pre-recorded messages and guidance information, and management information to ensure a better service to companies. The aim is to deliver management information on issues such as waiting times and dropped calls to enable the further fine tuning and development of the system.

Open general export licences have been very successful. They are one of the main reasons why the UK export licensing system is recognised as one of the best in the world. The light-touch approach of OGELs, coupled with rigorous enforcement through pre-registration and periodic risk-based audit, is virtually unique in the international community, although the UK model is now being adopted elsewhere, including by the European Commission, Germany and the United States, among others.

Industry wanted a much less complicated OGEL system that was easier to navigate and understand and that was written in plain English and with reduced legal terminology. The ECO initiated an OGEL review at the end of 2010. That work has now progressed to include a format that has been approved by the Plain English Campaign and the Export Group for Aerospace and Defence. The first licence issued under the new format was the OGEL relating to military components, which received the Plain English Campaign’s accreditation for clarity in July. The ECO has recently received further such accreditation for work on the OGEL relating to military goods, software and technology. All those things will take time to deliver, but we are already seeing the first fruits of these initiatives.

[Mike Gapes]

May I seek some clarification? The Minister touched on the Arab spring and then moved on to the issues he has just dealt with. I am interested to know whether he will respond to my point about Syria at some stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Fallon]

I will try to respond shortly to some of the more specific points that have been raised, and I hope Members will bear with me. Before I do, however, I want to touch briefly on three issues: enforcement, transparency and the arms trade treaty.

On enforcement, it is of course important that our controls are enforced robustly. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is the lead department for enforcing strategic export and trade controls, as well as sanctions and embargoes. It works in collaboration with the UK Border Force and the Crown Prosecution Service. In the last financial year for which figures are available, 141 illicit shipments of goods were seized, which was the highest number of seizures for 13 years; a further 188 shipments of goods of proliferation concern were stopped at ports; eight compound penalties were issued for breaches of the controls, totalling more than £500,000; and a successful prosecution for breach of the trade controls resulted in a custodial sentence of three and half years. Only last week, it was widely reported that arms dealer Gary Hyde was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for involvement in the illegal shipment of 80,000 weapons and 32 million rounds of ammunition from China to Nigeria and for laundering the proceeds.

Several Members have touched on transparency. As a result of the Government’s policy on transparency and recognising its importance to strategic export controls, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills laid a written ministerial statement on strategic export controls before the House on 7 February in which he outlined three proposals to increase the transparency of the export licensing process. The first is to insert into all open export licences a provision requiring the exporter to report periodically on transactions undertaken under such licences. The Government will publish that information, and that quarterly reporting will take place in arrears from April 2013. The others are to explore ways to make additional information contained in standard applications public, while protecting any sensitive material, and to appoint an independent person to scrutinise the operation of the ECO’s licensing process. The role of that independent person would be to help to confirm that the process was indeed being followed correctly and to report on the ECO’s work.

On 13 July, following a consultation, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave an update on the transparency initiative via a second written ministerial statement. The first two proposals will result in a significant increase in the amount and quality of information that the Government make public about controlled exports. On the third proposal, regarding the appointment of an independent reviewer, there was less understanding in the consultation of how that reviewer would operate and what benefits the role would bring. We will therefore return to the issue at a later date.

Finally on the major topics, let me turn to the arms trade treaty, which several Members have asked about. I reassure them that the UK is firmly committed to securing a robust and effective legally binding arms trade treaty to regulate the international trade in conventional arms. Our aim is a treaty that covers all conventional weapons, including small arms, light weapons and ammunition. Some progress has been made, and the international community has moved some way towards agreeing a strong treaty. After the recent vote at the UN, there will be a diplomatic conference in March 2013, at which we will aim to conclude the treaty.

A robust arms trade treaty will support our commitment to British values, including human rights and international humanitarian law. We also want a treaty with a wide membership and sufficient global coverage to be truly effective. We will continue to lead international efforts towards that goal, and we will continue to work hard, including with industry and civil society, to secure both aims. Negotiating legally binding requirements for the regulation of the conventional arms trade is obviously a complex business—if it were easy, previous Governments would have done it.

In the time remaining, I want to touch on some of the specific questions that have been raised. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling for sketching out the areas of agreement between the Committees and the Government; as he said, it is important to put those on record before turning to some of the areas of disagreement. He highlighted what has been done on bribery and cluster munitions, as well as our bar in terms of arms control for the purposes of internal repression.

My right hon. Friend asked me specifically about extraterritoriality. There are some difficulties. Extraterritorial controls would apply to acts done outside our jurisdiction, so they would be, by their very nature, extremely difficult to enforce. That is why successive Governments have maintained a policy of applying extraterritoriality only to the most serious offences. We are therefore not convinced of the need to expand the extraterritorial aspects of the trade controls to include all the items on the military list. Such an expansion would impose significant burdens on legitimate businesses that need to move goods between overseas countries as part of a global supply chain, and it would not increase our ability to take action against those brokers whose activities are of the most concern. The items that are subject to extraterritorial control are those whose supply is subject to international agreements. We would, of course, be happy to consider additional controls where there was hard evidence of undesirable activity.

My right hon. Friend asked me three further very specific questions—two of which it would probably be more appropriate for a Foreign Office Minister to answer—but if he will allow me, I will reply to him in writing on all three.

The hon. Member for Ilford South did indeed raise a number of quite wide-ranging foreign policy issues, and they were certainly well in order in a debate about arms control. They reflect his knowledge and experience of past conflicts. I am not sure that I can answer some of his more wide-ranging questions, but I do want to answer his points about Syria. What hung over the points that he made and the questions that he asked was the extent to which we should get involved with assisting the opposition forces there.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Foreign Secretary announced on 20 November that the Government have decided to recognise the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people. We have provided equipment, such as water purification kits, portable power generators and communications equipment, to unarmed civilian opposition groups in Syria. Those groups have been carefully selected as influential civil society and opposition organisations engaged in vital work in some of the areas worst affected by violence in Syria. There are currently no plans for arming the Syrian opposition being made by the European Union, and any change to that policy will of course be announced to Parliament.

[Mike Gapes]

I am grateful for the traditional response that there are currently no plans, but, as the Minister knows, discussions are going on internationally at this very moment, and it is reported widely that some of our key NATO partners are already in the process of giving some equipment to those who are combatants—not just NGOs and civil society organisations. It is also reported that they receive a large amount of weaponry from some leading Arab countries, with which we are also in alliance. May I seek clarification? The Minister referred to communications equipment. For example, could that be used in conjunction with offensive and lethal equipment by participants in the conflict in Syria?

[Michael Fallon]

No; the communications equipment is being supplied only to selected unarmed civil opposition groups, which are engaged specifically in helping and working in some of the areas worst affected by the violence. I fully appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s interest in some of the discussions that are going on, and I am happy to confirm—although this does not help him—that, as he has identified from the reports, those discussions are going on with our international partners at the moment. I cannot comment on the details. The plain fact is that until any policy is changed or plan made there cannot be an announcement; that cannot be other than by a formal statement to Parliament, and, if the policy is changed, that is what will happen.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) asked me about the Arab spring and the arms trade treaty, but also about Israel. Israel, of course, faces security threats, and we do not think that an arms embargo would increase our influence or lead to progress in the peace process. Where appropriate, we can and do refuse export licences to Israel. We have refused them in the past and will continue to do so if the criteria are not met. I do not want to go into detail about individual licences.

The hon. Lady mentioned the situation in Gaza, if I recall correctly. At the time of the previous incursion into Gaza, the Foreign Secretary in the Labour Government clearly set out the details of UK components and equipment that might have been used in Operation Cast Lead. UK equipment was not exported for specific use in that operation, and the then Foreign Secretary made it clear that the consolidated criteria were properly applied at the time of issuance and there was therefore no breach of them.

At that time, Israel, I am informed, procured more than 95% of its military requirements from the United States. The European Union accounted for a proportion of the remainder. The three largest European Union exporters of military goods to Israel are Germany, France and Romania, with UK exports accounting for less than 1% of total Israeli military imports. Of course, that was the previous operation in Gaza, but if the hon. Lady has further information or evidence that she would like us to consider, I shall be happy to look at it.

The hon. Member for Hartlepool asked a series of questions, and I think that I welcome what he said about the general application of the export control process. He said that he wanted strong—I think that he then said stronger—controls over licences, but when he said that he also wanted them speeded up, he put his finger on the balance that is needed. I do not think that it was wholly unfair to suggest that the system is slowing. As he conceded, the volume of exports is increasing—both across the board and in the area in question. I want to ensure that the system is robust and improved enough to match the increase in exports that he and I would both want.

The hon. Gentleman asked me specifically about two things, one of which was brass-plate companies. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling will know that that the Government have explored avenues of enforcement against such companies, which involve non-UK persons who trade in arms and proliferation activities outside the United Kingdom through companies that are registered inside the United Kingdom. We have looked at a range of options, but it is difficult through UK law to ensure that any measure tackles that overseas trade. Pre-licensing registration is unlikely to deter that sort of illegal arms trader, as revocation of registration is unlikely to affect that trade. I do not think that it is possible for the Government to come up with a simple answer. In a previous report, the Committees recommended that we explore possible ways to take enforcement action, including consulting enforcement agencies in other countries, but as we see it there are legal difficulties.

The hon. Member for Hartlepool suggested that we should move to a system of prior scrutiny. I would like to read his speech to see how that system might improve what exists at present. It is interesting that that approach is applied in the United States, which is a major arms exporter.

I thank all the right hon. and hon. Members present for their attendance and questions. I repeat my thanks to the Committees for the report and the work that they do. Their scrutiny is an important aid to the licensing process, and I look forward to their contribution and the continuing dialogue between the Committees and the Government in the coming year.