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Strategic Export Controls (Breach of Embargo)
3.30 pm
Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead): I beg to move,
- That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit the involvement of British subjects and companies and other persons under United Kingdom jurisdiction in the supply of armaments and associated items to countries to which arms embargoes apply.
I originally thought of tabling a ten-minute Bill on corporate responsibility in cases in which companies' actions had caused death, but because other Members--including my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), who is sitting next to me--have raised that in Bills recently, and because the Government are taking notice, I decided to raise the subject of arms trading, which could be described as corporate killing at its most extreme.
The existing British law on arms exports contains three major loopholes, relating to brokering, licensing and direct sales from British people based overseas. Brokering is a difficult concept, but is basically the transfer of arms from one country to another that is organised from a third. For example, the company Sandline organised from Britain the transfer of weapons from Bulgaria to Sierra Leone, and before that Mil Tec organised from the Isle of Man the transfer of arms from Albania and Israel to Rwanda. As the arms never enter the United Kingdom, they are not under the control of our law. The law relating to brokering needs to be clarified and tightened, and, when such brokering is used to get around embargoes, it needs to be criminalised.
Licensing is the arrangement for production in another country, outside UK jurisdiction. Arms can then be used in that country, or exported, without any reference to British law. When it breaches embargoes, that too needs to be stopped. My Bill would prohibit brokering and licensing by both individuals and companies based in the United Kingdom and dependent territories. Direct sales take place when British citizens are involved in the supply of arms while operating outside the United Kingdom.
The proposal for such a widening of UK jurisdiction is not new. In the main, British law covers breaches of embargoes mandated by United Nations Security Council resolutions. My Bill would expand that cover to other embargoes, such as those called for by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the European Union, as well as those declared on a unilateral basis by Her Majesty's Government--for example, the current embargo on arms and arms-related sales to Zimbabwe.
The Government's White Paper on strategic export controls, published in July 1998, said that
- it would be right in principle to control the involvement of persons in the UK or UK persons abroad in trafficking and brokering . . . to countries subject to other types of embargo.
In February 1999, in its report on the Sandline affair and Sierra Leone, the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs recommended that legislation to control brokering be introduced no later than the next parliamentary Session--that is, the current Session. Obviously, that has not happened. There has been plenty of discussion, but more than four years after the publication of the Scott report, we still have no legislation.
The strategic export controls sub-committee has said:
- We support a more stringent policy on brokering and trafficking, which could act as a spur to international action. We look to the 1999 Annual Report to make some specific reference to the Government's view of the way forward on this issue.
There is another reason for looking at that particular part of the arms trade. It resonates with one of the key themes of the Government: rights and responsibilities. One of the reasons why so many people are wandering the globe seeking asylum is that the arms trade makes some parts of the world extremely dangerous. In countries where dispute turns to violence, that violence is made significantly worse by the influx of arms from outside: Sierra Leone is an example. On CNN last night, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the United States envoy, put the troubles down to diamond smuggling, the drug trade and gun running. The same was the case in Rwanda with Mil Tec, which, as I have said, was based in the Isle of Man.
British subjects overseas rightly expect the protection that a British passport can offer. We can be rightly proud that British Governments of all political persuasions have come to the assistance of British passport holders overseas. However, carrying a British passport must carry obligations as well as benefits. It is wrong for a British passport holder to be involved in activities that displace and weaken the vulnerable--so that they are forced to become refugees and seek asylum in another country--without being subject to British law.
Some may say that the British Government should not have control of British citizens overseas, but precedents have already been set. Examples include legislation on sex tourism and the controls on land mines. Yesterday, The Guardian reported that, following our ratification of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development anti-bribery convention, the Government are considering extra-territorial laws to make it an offence for British citizens to offer bribes for business contracts anywhere in the world, so there is that precedent for extra-territorial law. It needs to apply to arms trafficking.
My Bill is just one small step in pushing forward the debate on how strategic export controls are to be implemented in this country following the Scott report and the activities of the Joint Select Committee on Strategic Export Controls, of which I am a member, but my Bill has a wider purpose. One of the major political issues of today is refugees, yet almost all the public debate is focused on what to do with refugees when they have fled from their home countries. Very little attention has been paid to why people become refugees and what could be done to reduce the numbers at source.
Armed conflicts are fuelled by arms. It remains a scandal that there are such lax controls. For example, several hundred arms brokers in London are not required to register activity and are subject to no regulation whatever. We need to make them subject to United Kingdom laws--especially in the case of agreed embargoes--whether they are operating in this country or abroad. That is what the Bill seeks to do. If enacted, it would contribute to making the world a safer place.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Harry Cohen, Mr. Harry Barnes, Ann Clwyd, Mr. Jeremy Corbyn, Mr. Jim Cousins, Mr. Jimmy Hood, Ms Jenny Jones, Laura Moffatt, Mr. Brian Sedgemore, Mr. Alan Simpson and Dr. Phyllis Starkey.
Strategic Export Controls (Breach of Embargo)
Mr. Harry Cohen accordingly presented a Bill to prohibit the involvement of British subjects and companies and other persons under United Kingdom jurisdiction in the supply of armaments and associated items to countries to which arms embargoes apply: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 9 June, and to be printed [Bill 135].
Opposition Day
[11th Allotted Day]
Crime
Madam Speaker: I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
3.39 pm
Miss Ann Widdecombe (Maidstone and The Weald): I beg to move,
- That this House regrets that police strength in England and Wales has fallen by more than 2,300 since the Government came to power, that crime is now rising, and that the Government has released early from prison thousands of drug dealers, sex offenders, burglars and violent criminals; notes the criticism of the Government's crime reduction targets, and further that police officers are unable to devote much of their time to fighting crime because of unnecessary bureaucracy; notes with surprise that none of the Government's local child curfews have been issued and that anti-social behaviour orders have been issued at the rate of less than one per week since they became available; further notes that, in contrast to the Government's failure to tackle crime, the Opposition propose to reverse the decline in police numbers that has occurred since the Government came to power, to provide effective and appropriate punishment and rehabilitation for offenders and to put the interests of victims at the heart of the criminal justice system; calls on the Home Secretary to reconsider his proposed changes to Immigration Rule 320(18) that would remove the prohibition on foreign sex offenders and drug traffickers entering the United Kingdom; and calls on the Government to work to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system and the police, to restore police morale, and to implement effective policies to tackle rising crime.
- "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
The first sustained fall in crime since the second world war has been turned round, and we are now faced with a rising crime rate. The latest figures are even more alarming than those for last year. In London, the crime rate increased by 12.6 per cent. in the year ending 31 March. The Metropolitan police have said that that gives "cause for concern". Nevertheless, last week the Prime Minister told the House that he did not believe that policing was in crisis. Yet on that very day the Home Secretary stood up at the Police Federation conference, and there, quite unmistakeably set out in 2 ft high letters behind him, was the conference's theme, "Policing in Crisis".
The chairman of the Police Federation told the Home Secretary that there was
- a crisis of no confidence, a crisis of no cash and a crisis of no colleagues
- The new century finds the service at its lowest ebb in recent memory.
-
If that is the opinion of the police, let not the Home Secretary try to take refuge in blaming the previous Government.
Hon. Members and the public can draw their own conclusions as to who is telling the truth about what is happening in the police service, or perhaps I should say, what is happening to the police service. Police numbers have fallen by more than 2,300 since Labour came to power. That includes a significant fall in the number of front-line constables. The thin blue line is getting ever thinner.
The Home Secretary always likes to bleat that numbers fell under the Tories between 1993 and 1997. However, he knows as well as I do that the number of constables increased year on year over that period, and that the reductions in total numbers were due to cuts in middle management. Under the Labour Government, both the overall number of police officers and the number of constables have fallen. That is despite the Home Secretary's words to the Police Federation within days of coming to office, when he said:
- The police constable is central to the success of our police service. In difficult, demanding and often dangerous circumstances, the constable is the physical presence of the law on our streets."
- the physical presence of the law on our streets--
We all know about the way the Home Secretary and his spin doctors fiddled Labour's conference pledge on police numbers. By contrast, we are pledged to restore the number of police officers to the levels inherited by the Government. We say that with no smoke and no mirrors. Is the right hon. Gentleman able to confirm that the figures on police numbers given in written answers hide the real picture? Is it not the case that the figures that he and his Ministers regularly provide relate not to actual strength but to budgeted strength, and that the amount of manpower available on our streets is substantially less than the Government have said? Will he tell the House how many police officers there actually are in England and Wales? Is it the estimated 124,800 provided in parliamentary answers, or is the figure substantially lower?
Fewer police officers are having to cope with more and more bureaucracy, such as the new crime reduction targets. According to the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir John Evans, on the day those targets were announced they were already in some difficulties. The Police Federation has said that the targets will mean shifting resources away from serious crimes, including crimes of violence, and from street patrolling.
We have seen that happen before, in the Government's approach to the health service. By setting politically inspired targets, they have distorted priorities. According to the police, there seems to be a real danger that the Home Secretary is now doing the same in the war against crime.
As if that were not enough, in the White Paper on licensing the Home Secretary wants to make police officers--not local councils, local magistrates or local bureaucrats, but police officers--responsible for approving requests to sell alcohol on a temporary basis. With just five days' notice, the local police officer would have to carry out the necessary checks, receive objections, issue a formal letter granting or refusing permission and, if there were objections, defend his decision before the licensing committee of the local authority.
I do not know about the Home Secretary, but surely that proposal would be regarded by most sensible people as an unnecessary bureaucratic burden. It does not contribute to fighting or preventing crime, and it would be perfectly possible, under the Government's plans, for the local authority to shoulder much of that burden. The police would have to be consulted, but why do they have to do all the bureaucratic donkey work? Joined up Government? We do not even have joined up thinking in the Home Office.
We need a comprehensive review of all police functions to ensure that they are allowed to get on with the job of fighting crime. The right hon. Gentleman told the 1997 Police Federation conference that
- the police have my wholehearted support and the wholehearted support of this new Government. We will do all that we can to ensure our police service is strong and effective. We will also support you by providing the protection and the resources you require.
It is another kick in the teeth for the police when the criminals that they have caught and seen locked up for a range of other serious crimes are let out of jail early. [Interruption.] I hope that Labour Members are listening, because this is where the Home Secretary's policy has got them. Between January last year and the end of last month, the Home Secretary's early release scheme let out more than 20,000 convicted criminals before the minimum point of their sentences.
What sort of convicted criminals? Trivial ones? Nope. There were 53 convicted of manslaughter; six convicted of attempted murder; 34 of making threats to kill; 2,562 of wounding, actual bodily harm or grievous bodily harm; 128 of assaulting police, obstructing a constable or resisting arrest; 23 of cruelty to children; two of causing an explosion; 20 sex offenders with convictions for buggery, indecent assault or unlawful sex with an under-aged girl; 1,887 convicted burglars; 811 robbers; 125 arsonists; 60 blackmailers; 30 kidnappers and 772 convicted of affray and violent disorder. I am not surprised that the Government are getting embarrassed.
Despite the Government's promise of a war on drugs, 2,767 people convicted of drug dealing and trafficking have been released. This week, the Minister of State admitted that he had not even given us the true picture in
his previous answers. His excuse was that there had been under-reporting of the further offences committed by the criminals when they should have been in prison. Now we know that almost 400, rather than fewer than 200, which was the Home Secretary's previous claim, have committed more than 700 further crimes when they would, but for the Home Secretary's kindly early release scheme, have still been in prison. Those crimes include two rapes, nine assaults on police officers, 18 other serious assaults, 21 burglaries, 14 offences of affray and violent disorder and 13 offences of drug dealing. Labour Members should take note of that because they are the Home Secretary's own statistics given in his own written answers, and they are beyond dispute.
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