"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. …..." John Stanley - View Speech
"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.
"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, …..." John Stanley - View Speech
"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...." John Stanley - View Speech
"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 …..." John Stanley - View Speech
"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 …..." John Stanley - View Speech
"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, …..." John Stanley - View Speech
"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...." John Stanley - View Speech
"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 …..." John Stanley - View Speech
"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 …..." John Stanley - View Speech