Arms Exports and Controls

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[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.

[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 ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am pleased that we are having the debate and look forward to the Minister’s response. This is the fourth day running that I have had meetings with him but, if this helps him, there are no plans for tomorrow.

I thank the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) for his work as Chair of the Committees, for the analysis and the depth of their report, and for his preparedness to present it so well and in such detail today. I hope that we will see elected in the next Parliament someone as diligent and determined to ensure proper scrutiny of arms exports as he has been throughout this Parliament. We all owe him a debt of thanks, and it is sad to think that he will not be here after the next election, unless he changes his mind.

I want to make a number of points, but I will be brief. We should commend the late Robin Cook for our having this debate and these reports, and for the increasing tradition of openness in the Foreign Office on arms exports, human rights matters and recruitment policy in the diplomatic service of the future. The commendable changes that he introduced during his time as Foreign Secretary have stood the test of time. He will be remembered as a great Foreign Secretary for them, as well as for many other reasons.

While I want to raise detailed points about arms exports, we should think about the generality for a second. If we, as a country, export arms of any capacity or capability to another jurisdiction or regime, and those arms are used to abuse the human rights of people within those communities or within that society, that removes our ability to complain about those abuses because, in a sense, we are complicit due to our supplying weapons that have been used to oppress people. In that regard, the criteria adopted by the Committees and the Government’s response make interesting reading. I commend the Foreign Office for how its responses have been set out, because their helpful presentation means that one can quickly read the objection raised by the Committees and the Government’s response to it.

My first point is about Israel and Palestine. To reiterate what is said in the report’s introduction, we all witnessed what happened in Gaza recently. It was not the first operation—I hope it is the last operation, but it certainly was not the first—because there has also been Operation Cast Lead, among others. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin) pointed out, we have witnessed the destruction of Gaza several times over. There have been several worldwide appeals to rebuild Gaza only for it to be bombed and then rebuilt again some years later. We are exporting surveillance and other equipment to Israel, and indeed we are importing arms from Israel, but while the war crimes investigation organised by the United Nations Human Rights Council is ongoing, we need to think very carefully about our arms export policy for Israel.

I hope that the Minister is able to explain in detail the massive communications equipment order placed by Israel. I think the expenditure that has been cited is £7.7 billion, which is absolutely massive. I do not know what the equipment is for, but I cannot believe that a country of only 5 million people would want to spend so much on something that, while it could be used for commercial mobile phone services or something else, did not have a military component. I would be grateful to know what inquiries were made, what end-user surveillance there has been for Israel, and whether there will be restrictions on such exports in the future.

Paragraph 159 of the report describes the ongoing issues in Bahrain. For reasons that I do not fully understand, the Government decided at some point that it was safe to sell anti-personnel, riot control-type equipment and armoured personnel carriers to Bahrain. I was at the United Nations Human Rights Council a couple of months ago as a guest speaker in a seminar on human rights in Bahrain and the sale of equipment there. I talked to people who had been brutally assaulted on the streets of the capital city for taking part in a democratic protest. I hesitate to say this, but it seems that some of the equipment with which they were beaten may have been supplied by Britain. I also talked to the families of the medics who were threatened with permanent imprisonment, if not worse, for treating anyone who was injured during the disturbances. The human rights situation in Bahrain is very serious indeed, and I question why we are selling any equipment at all to Bahrain in the current circumstances.

Likewise, paragraph 141 makes the point about the repression of individuals and the unaccountable power of the police on Saudi Arabia. What it does not say—I am not making a criticism, but the report does not say it—is that it is very difficult to find out a lot about what is going on in Saudi Arabia because of the nature of its public media and the difficulties facing foreign journalists who try to report what happens there.

I realise that Saudi Arabia is a massive arms market—not only for Britain, but for other countries—and that seems to have an enormous impact on foreign policy relations with Saudi Arabia. However, the arms that have now appeared among ISIL forces in Iraq and Syria have all come from somewhere. They were not bought at the Defence Security and Equipment International exhibition, or anywhere else; they were bought from people who imported them from the USA, Britain and Russia—all kinds of places all over the world—because they had the financial resources to do so. Those arms were exported under licence at some point, and they have arrived with ISIL and are being used to kill large numbers of people in the most abominable ways. We therefore need to be a lot more assiduous and much tougher about what happens to the arms that we export.

I have deep concerns about Sri Lanka, which is also covered in the report. I would be grateful if the Minister could give us an indication of the Government’s current thinking about the supply of arms to Sri Lanka. I know that the Prime Minister took the correct and quite brave decision to go to Jaffna during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting and he obviously expressed concern about the treatment of Tamil people at that stage. Are the Government now planning to resume the sale of equipment to Sri Lanka, or not?

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North made a point about the Defence Security and Equipment International exhibition, which has become more than a bit of an embarrassment. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has pointed out that there were people at the exhibition advertising the sale of things such as electric shock equipment. Although that equipment is totally illegal in this country, it is on sale in London at an exhibition sponsored by the British Government. That is a cause of the deepest embarrassment, and I question whether we should be having the exhibition at all.

Paragraphs 120 to 122 of the report helpfully refer to nuclear weapons and their effects. This area is covered by several treaties, including the non-proliferation treaty. I asked the Minister a question about this on Monday, and I will continue to do so. The Austrian Government are hosting a conference on the humanitarian effects of nuclear weapons in Vienna at the beginning of December. That is a continuation of a conference hosted by the Mexican Government and, before that, by the Norwegian Government. Already, 135 nations have agreed to attend the conference, and 155 nations have supported New Zealand’s statement on the invitation to the next conference. This is a serious discussion about the effects of nuclear weapons on humankind as a whole, including not only those people who have already been affected by the explosions nearly 70 years ago in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but those affected by nuclear testing elsewhere. I hope that the Minister will tell me that the Government are at least seriously considering their invitation to the conference and that they will encourage the other permanent members of the Security Council to attend, too. If we want to live in a nuclear-free world, as everyone claims to wish to, surely attending that conference has to be a good step forward.

The report also cites the middle east weapons of mass destruction-free zone conference, which is now apparently supported by everybody. I have sat through a number of non-proliferation treaty review conferences during which a number of countries—principally countries within the region, and usually countries in the Arab League—have raised a proposal from the 2000 review conference that to stop the proliferation and spread of nuclear weapons across the middle east, as only Israel has nuclear weapons in the region at the moment, that middle east conference should try to create a region free of nuclear weapons and WMD. That has never happened, however. The Finnish Government were unable to organise it, but it has been reiterated that the conference will be held. At the last review conference, every permanent member of the Security Council—Britain, France, Russia, China and the United States—got up and said they supported that. Iran supports it. and Israel has not said no to it, so I wonder what is the impediment to that conference taking place, if all the players want to attend?

At the previous review conference, Egypt walked out. It did not leave the NPT, but its representatives said that they were angry at the lack of progress. If there is not progress on non-proliferation in the middle east, proliferation will happen, because somebody else will be able to develop nuclear weapons—the financial resources are certainly available—and we will then be in a very dangerous situation.

I welcome the section in the Committees’ report about chemical weapons. If anything good has come out of the crisis in Syria during the past two years—this is probably the only thing—it is that Syria at least acceded to the chemical weapons convention. The removal and destruction of chemical weapons from Syria is to be applauded. That step forward shows what can be achieved when the EU, the USA, Russia and Iran co-operate to try to achieve something.

The Committees report that Angola, Burma, Israel, North Korea and South Sudan have not signed the chemical weapons convention, however, and it is time that they did. It is time that the whole world signed up to it, because if we can have a worldwide convention on small arms and landmines, we should be able to insist that there is a genuine worldwide agreement on the abolition of chemical weapons, and then move on to other weapons.

We have to think carefully. It is too easy to say, “Sell arms to somebody—out of sight, out of mind.” That comes back to bite us, with civil wars and conflict, and with human rights abuses, some of which are carried out with weapons that have been made in this country. We should think carefully about that, before we so glibly say, “We support the arms industry.”