Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-106)
THURSDAY 3 APRIL 2003
MR ANDY
MCLEAN
AND MS
JULIA SAUNDERS
100. You would probably agree, however, that
the high standards are not always achieved in every area or even
pursued in every area, so why is it that they do it there? Is
it not so much a matter that they are doing it out of economic
self-interest rather than out of any desire, and in some respects
you might say uncharacteristic desire, to inhabit the moral high
ground? (Mr McLean) I am not sure that the motivation
is important, it is the control in that it actually prevents downstream
proliferation. We have seen with the example of Heckler &
Koch machine guns being manufactured, 200,000 of them under licence
in Turkey, that some of those ended up in Indonesia. It is unlikely
that at that time the British Government would have directly licensed
the export of those machine guns to Indonesia.
101. You quoted the example of the Americans
and I was saying that in the context of American foreign policy,
"my enemy's enemy is my friend", they will sell arms
to whoever happens to fall into that category at the appropriate
time and make the appropriate facilities if that is necessary,
but I do not think that Britain is in quite that position. Even
in the days of a bipolar world we were never in that position
and now that we have a unipolar world I think that the United
States as an example of best practice is perhaps not the most
relevant because you are not really comparing like with like.
It is up to us to agree or disagree. (Ms Saunders)
Can I make one suggestion just to answer your question, which
is that amongst the many motivations that drive the US Government
to control licensed production facilities, one of those motivations
might be one which would be to control the proliferation of technology
and, therefore, there is an interest in the onwards export. For
example, you can imagine, I believe there have been examples of
licensed production facilities in Egypt exporting technologies
which we are now facing in Iraq coming at us rather than in our
arsenal. Therefore, there is a real interest here in actually
seeing the bigger picture, estimating the risk and putting some
conditions on that production facility going ahead and also using
the diplomatic clout, lesser than the States I admit but there
is some clout, in being the UK Government if you see those conditions
being violated.
102. I think that is a judgment call, it is
not necessarily something that we can prove one way or the other.
There are a lot of people who sell licensed production facilities
with the best intentions and might even do watertight deals but
once the deal has been completed it is rather difficult to police.
I think that may well be one of the problems that the Government
has identified as one of the reasons why they do not wish to tie
the hands of defence manufacturers in ways that could prevent
them from entering into any kind of licensed production agreement
at all. I realise that is not your intention but there could be
a danger of that happening, would you agree? (Mr McLean)
I think it is obviously impossible for the Government, if in our
process you do set a limit on capacity, to be absolutely able
to enforce and prevent the company in the second country from
exceeding that production capacity, which I think is your point,
so how can you police it. If you introduce the political leverage
into the system you increase the chances of ensuring that the
capacity is not exceeded and you insert into the system that level
of political leverage, diplomatic pressure, which I think can
only be a good thing when the stakes are so high as in this case
when we are basically talking about establishing alternative centres
of producing and proliferating sensitive technology.
Chairman
103. Could I just ask one final question and
I am not sure how well placed you are to answer it. In your written
submission you make the point that it is possible that the Government
can frame a law that is sufficiently intelligent to strike that
simple balance between legitimate defence industry interests and
the requirement of control of less scrupulous individuals. I wonder
if you have any comments on the proposed legislation in the whole,
whether you feel there are areas, other than the ones you have
mentioned, where the legislation could be better framed to catch
these less scrupulous individuals without imposing intolerable
burdens on legitimate business? (Ms Saunders) Yes,
and here I think we have some common ground with defence representatives
in that I think there are some issues over the definitions that
we see within this draft. I would focus back down on the extraterritorial
provision. We believe if you get this right this is one way of
streamlining the whole system because, as we have just heard,
there is a discussion about what is the trigger mechanism here
to know whether or not you need a licence for a particular deal.
I think part of this confusion has entered because of the territorial
extent of the controls because the Government has had to define
the various stages of the deal and marketing and promotion being
excluded but acquisition—I forget the actual quote from
the legislation. To acquire and dispose is part of the brokering
activity. In a sense, if you put that to one side and just focus
back on brokering being around a commitment, which you could then
go on to define using the experience under contract law, for example,
you would not then have to go through the tortuous process of
looking at an entire deal, you would know when that moment comes
along that is your trigger moment for having to acquire a deal.
If you focus on that moment you need extraterritorial controls
because otherwise your brokers would just do all of their marketing
promotion, have their office in the UK and just slip abroad to
do the handshake. That is why you need to have the two things
together. It simplifies the system if you have full extraterritorial
controls and use your trigger as the moment of commitment, it
does not matter where that happens then. That would be our proposal
for streamlining the whole system.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Sir John Stanley
104. As you know, incapacitants have been, and
are being, much in the news and indeed may well be much in the
news in the next few days or weeks. There are two points on which
I would be grateful for your clarification. Do you agree with
me that though the phrase "incapacitating substance"
is used in Annex F under the section in relation to torture equipment,
I myself have not been able to find in the definitions that appear
earlier in the schedule any definition of what does constitute
an incapacitating substance. Am I right on that or am I wrong? (Ms
Saunders) This is where we need our Amnesty colleague because
this is their special area of competence.
Chairman
105. We will be inquorate in a second. Could
we ask Mr Parker perhaps to respond in writing if that is the
case? (Ms Saunders) Yes.
Sir John Stanley
106. My further question in this area is do
you agree with me that it is distinctly anomalous to extend extraterritoriality
to devices for, in the words of the Order—a magnificent
euphemism—"administering an incapacitating substance"
but not extraterritoriality to the incapacitating substance itself? (Ms
Saunders) Yes.
Sir John Stanley: Thank you.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for your
written evidence and for coming this morning. We hope Mr Parker
recovers quickly. If there is anything else you want to say please
communicate that in writing, we will be very pleased to hear from
you. Thank you very much indeed.
|
