Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
THURSDAY 4 MAY 2000
MR PETER
HAIN MP, MR
PAUL HARE
AND MR
IAN BAILEY
100. Have such complaints been made at Council
meetings?
(Mr Hain) I am not aware of any. For a start, we do
not have any evidence that any of our fellow Member States are
breaking any embargoes that have been agreed.
101. They do not have any evidence of your conduct.
(Mr Hain) Well, there it is.
Sir John Stanley
102. Minister, we are quite some way apart,
are we not, on arms export policy from the United States in the
India/Pakistan situation and, sadly, we are substantially apart
from the United States on human rights policy towards China where
they take a commendably much tougher line than we are doing.
(Mr Hain) I do not accept that, Sir John.
103. I am just referring to the recorded votes
of the resolution that was passed at the recent UN meeting at
the annual meeting of the Human Rights Committee.
(Mr Hain) No, if I may say, and I do not know if we
want to go down this path, I do not think that is the full picture.
104. I think that is perhaps another issue then.
(Mr Hain) It is, yes. I would be happy to come back
to that but I do not accept that.
105. Fine. We will debate that elsewhere perhaps.
On arms exports, could you tell the Committee whether the United
States is now following a more restrictive or a more liberal,
if I can use that word, policy of arms exports to China compared
to the UK?
(Mr Hain) I do not think we are following a policy
which could be seen to be, or interpreted as being, whether against
the US or any other country, somehow more lax, if I can answer
your question that way.
106. You are saying then that the policy followed
by the US is the same as being followed by the UK in relation
to China at the moment?
(Mr Hain) No, I am saying I do not think our policy
is more lax. We have much tougher criteria at one level in terms
of our own Code. I am not aware of the US having a code of the
kind that we have for arms exports which applies universally across
the world and obviously assessed by each country on a country
by country basis, in terms of meeting very strictly the criteria
for, amongst other things, no external aggression or no internal
oppression. We are way out in front ahead of the US in that respect.
They have a particular policy on Pakistan which is separately
progressed.
107. I am talking about China.
(Mr Hain) Sorry, China which is separately progressed.
They do not have the same kind of code as we have.
Chairman
108. May we turn to the particular position
that Hong Kong SAR is in in the context of licensing. As I understand
it from the report—and I quote directly—"Licence
applications are considered on a case by case basis but goods
which would not be approved for export to the Chinese armed forces
in mainland China will not be permitted for export for military
end use in the Hong Kong SAR". In fact, when one looks and
scrutinises the licences on Hong Kong most of them are relating
to crowd control and para-military equipment. To what extent is
the Government prepared to license para-military equipment for
use by the police force in Hong Kong SAR which would not be licensed
for similar forces in mainland China?
(Mr Hain) The trade department of the Hong Kong SAR
Government has got a high quality system in place to monitor the
import of equipment and ensure that it goes to the stated end
user, in other words it cannot get across the national boundary.
So far, as far as I am aware—and I do not claim perfection
in this because this is a very imperfect world—Hong Kong
has actually had a good model both of human rights practice and
also commitments made under these sorts of arrangements and other
international covenants. We remain pretty confident that equipment
of that kind supplied legitimately is not going to go across the
border.
109. We are a very great traditional supplier
of such equipment according to Hong Kong police. It has always
been a significant market. You are saying that you are confident
that equipment is not being diverted or re-exported and there
is a very effective verifiable end use system in place for such
equipment to Hong Kong?
(Mr Hain) Yes. I am not saying that there will never
ever be any breaches of that but I am saying that—
110. To date you have found there has been no
evidence of such a breach?
(Mr Hain) No evidence of it. To the extent we can
be confident that the end user commitments are given, in Hong
Kong's case they are. Can I just say that our officials—that
is officials from the FCO, DTI, MoD, Customs & Excise—regularly
visit Hong Kong to see how effectively its control system is working
and the next such visit is planned for this summer. We do not
just stand back and accept their word, we actually go out and
check it.
111. Unless any other colleagues have any other
points I would like to move on from China and Hong Kong. We picked
up a couple of issues from the 1998 Report that we want to follow
up, Minister. Without breaching the confidence of the information
that has been provided to us I would like to put to you some general
questions and then perhaps pursue them later in the private session.
In a number of classified summaries we have received, what emerges
is a curious, if not sometimes contradictory, decision which implies
there could be different branches of armed services and of police
services with different human rights records and we would sell
to certain armed forces or police services on a discreet basis
within a country where perhaps human rights issues and human rights
abuses might be taking place. The implication of the information
and the classified summaries we have received is that it is claimed
that we are that sophisticated that we can ensure that equipment
is not diverted from one service to another within a country and,
therefore, not end up capable of abusing human rights. We are
puzzled and interested by this sophisticated, or apparently seen
as sophisticated, ability to track such sales and to make such
distinctions between different armed forces within a country where
the human rights record generally speaking might not be good?
(Mr Hain) First of all the answer is yes, that we
have done that but we consider very stringently the risk of diversion.
We do not close our eyes, as it were, and nod this stuff through.
If we were to find that any such equipment was being diverted
then obviously we would put a stop to it. I think that is the
general answer to your question. Perhaps if I could just add that
in all of these decisions it would be quite easy to simply say
"We are not supplying anything to anybody". I know that
is nobody's position, at least not that I am aware of in this
Committee. Inevitably we are not living in a perfect world. We
are not living in a world in which we can monitor literally everything
that is being done in every end use country every day of the week.
But, given that reality, I think we have a pretty good record
and I would be very happy to invite criticism from either this
Committee or human rights' groups or others if we were seen not
to be taking the right decisions. That is again—at the risk
of repetition—why I value this grilling, if I can put it
that way, and why I value the scrutiny which you place us under.
It is precisely because we think that this is the right way in
which these decisions should be taken that your scrutiny is very
important to us.
Dr Godman
112. There are some difficulties here, are there
not? For example, the question of surveillance equipment used
in anti-drug operations could be used by the state to conduct
actions against opposition parties or trade unions so there are
difficulties there, are there not?
(Mr Hain) This area is fraught with difficulties but
it is precisely that dilemma that we have to confront in many
of these cases. We think that high quality British equipment which
could track down narcotics deals or be used for counter-terrorism
purposes in which Britain has a direct national interest, as do
inevitably people in the region, we should be supplying that equipment.
It helps combat that kind of very serious crime. On the other
hand, if it were to be diverted we would put a stop to it and
you are right to remind us about the dilemma.
Chairman
113. Equally, if I may suggest, one of the presentational
aspects of the annual report that we might indicate to you is
that where such equipment has been sold for anti-narcotics trade
work of the kind we have just described, would it not be a good
idea to say that and identify it so that instead of suspicions
and scepticism arising about some of this equipment, it could
be more transparently seen to be fulfilling that purpose and thereby
remove any sort of innate suspicions that occur? Presumably in
this case a little more transparency would actually remove the
sort of unfair scepticism that is expressed sometimes.
(Mr Hain) I welcome that very generous offer, Chairman,
and perhaps we can consider this and any advice you have to offer
us would be gratefully received.
114. May I just turn briefly, if I can use by
illustration a point I was making when I introduced this line
of questioning. If we sold, for example, a cradle-mounted machine
gun to a navy in a state whose human rights record was not great,
would we send our defence attaché along to check whether
that cradle mounted machine gun had not been moved on to any of
the other armed services and, therefore, could be used in a context
which we did not intend? Are we capable of exercising such detailed
scrutiny?
(Mr Hain) We actually have done this in some cases
where we have been sceptical, to use your term, in another context.
We may do that if we have suspicions. Inevitably you are talking
about huge resources here and I do not want to pretend otherwise,
but if there is any evidence of end use obligations given to us
in good faith being breached then we take a tough line on it.
Ann Clwyd
115. You make it sound as though this surveillance
is very sophisticated but in the case of Indonesia it certainly
was not because British made equipment was used on the streets
of Jakarta, it was used in Acceh, it was used in Irian Jaya and
we continue to supply those arms. I would suggest that it is not
quite as finely tuned as you make it sound.
(Mr Hain) I do not know that I can claim that it is
finely tuned, I claim that we are doing our best to make sure
that the principal decisions we took were actually the right ones.
I know that all sorts of things happened in Indonesia of an undesirable
kind and if we have any evidence that British arms were used,
for example, in the circumstances you have described obviously
we would make sure that would not happen again.
Chairman
116. If we sell crowd control equipment to Morocco,
and there have been troubles in a number of towns in Western Sahara,
how does that influence our policy?
(Mr Hain) It influences it very considerably to the
extent that if we thought that any of the equipment would be used
in the Western Sahara or anywhere else for that matter, but I
guess it would be in the Western Sahara, then we would want to
stop arms in the future which could be so diverted.
117. Right.
(Mr Hain) Going back to Indonesia, Indonesia has got
a huge coastline, for example, and it has got the world's worst
piracy problem. We could have a detailed discussion on Indonesia
and I respect Mrs Clwyd's continuing concern about Indonesia and
her good record on it. In the case of the world's worst piracy
problem I think we have approved licences quite legitimately and
they are ones that I am sure you would understand.
118. Before we turn to outstanding policy issues
that we would like to deal with, the problem arises in part from
this distinction we make that we will sell arms to a country with
very considerable human rights abuses as long as those arms cannot
be used for internal repression. That is the condition that is
the attached to the sale. So you can have a country where human
rights abuses are very considerable, where there is much concern
being expressed nationally and internationally by everybody, but
sales can carry on as long as this rather narrower definition
is maintained, the material we are selling cannot be used for
internal repression. Do you not think that this is where the grey
areas and the borderline cases and the difficulties arise?
(Mr Hain) Yes.
119. Surely where human rights abuses are of
a general kind, should it not be the case that there should be
a more general criterion of scepticism or refusal to sell?
(Mr Hain) I do think this is a grey area and that
is why we try to take every possible care to make sure that any
equipment supplied will not be used aggressively specifically
internally, as you say, for human rights abuses. By and large,
and there may be exceptions which could be drawn to my attention,
I do not think in the period since we have had this much more
open and accountable policy, and if I might say so more principled
policy, that we have been guilty of this. There might be instances,
in which case we would need to examine them. I just think it is
worth reminding ourselves of the sort of information we give now
which is detailing all sorts of information. Compared with what
was given under the last government, which was completely meaningless
tables of material, and I am not striking a point, I am simply
defending the Government's record, I think that we are inviting
ourselves to precisely the sort of inspection that you have described.
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