Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Third Report

Scrutiny of Foreign & Commonwealth Office publications

Twelfth Report of Session 2001-02, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual Report 2002 (HC 826)

13. A great deal of our work involves the examination of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's written output, in the form of reports and other documents. In drawing up our Report on the War against Terrorism, for example, we scrutinised in detail the Government's dossier on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction.[25] As our predecessor Committee did in the last Parliament, we examined closely the Office's annual report and published our findings in November as our Ninth Report of the last session: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual Report 2002.[26] We made a number of recommendations relating to the content and layout of the Report, as well as on substantial issues such as the FCO's ability to react quickly to crises (following the Bali bombing incident on 12 October).

Fifth Report of Session 2001-02, Human Rights Annual Report 2001 (HC 589)

14. We also continued the practice of our predecessor Committee in scrutinising the FCO's Human Rights Annual Report. This document sets out the Foreign Office's work in promoting human rights overseas during the previous year, and has been published annually since 1997.[27] Its publication in its present form was a direct response to the recommendation of our predecessor Committee.[28] As in previous years, we examined the Minister responsible, in this case Rt Hon Peter Hain MP, and reported his evidence and our analysis to the House. We argued strongly that the Government had to show terrorists that, "human rights are central to its vision of a civilised world," and made a number of recommendations on specific issues, such as forced marriages.[29] The Government subsequently agreed with many of our findings and the 2002 report reflected a number of the changes we had previously suggested.[30] We aim to continue this systematic scrutiny of the FCO's major output in the future.

Pre-legislative foreign policy scrutiny

Ninth Report of Session 2001-02, Private Military Companies (HC 922)

15. The FCO did not publish any legislation in draft in 2002 but the Committee produced Reports on two government green papers during the year. Our Ninth Report of Session 2001-02, published in July, examined the proposals contained in the Private Military Companies: Options for Regulation paper, produced by the FCO in February.[31] This green paper was largely the result of recommendations made by our predecessor Committee in 1999, which had urged the Government to set out its proposals for legislating on the control of private military companies (PMCs) following the 'Sandline Affair'.[32] In our Report, we concluded that the proposed legislation was necessary to curtail the activities of disreputable companies, whose activities were detrimental to the United Kingdom's interests. We urged the Government to establish a centrally-held registry of information on contracts between PMCs and Government departments, and recommended a number of detailed changes to the options set out in the Paper.

First Report of Session 2002-03, The Biological Weapons Green Paper (HC 150)

16. Our second piece of work in this area, was our First Report of Session 2002-03 on The Biological Weapons Green Paper (published in November 2002).[33] The green paper, which had been published in April, set out the Government's continuing strategy to defend the UK against the threat of biological weapons and to strengthen the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).[34] In its Report, the Committee welcomed the Government's commitment to dealing with this serious threat at an international level, and its decision to launch a public debate on the issue through the green paper's publication. We made a number of detailed observations and recommendations relating to the provisions of the paper, and to the attempts to enhance international co-operation in this field. The Report also highlighted the need for the Government to ensure control of the biotechnological research being carried out in United Kingdom universities and research institutions.

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25   FCO, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: the assessment of the British Government, TSO, September 2002. See: www.official-documents.co.uk. Back

26   Foreign Affairs Committee, Twelfth Report of Session 2001-02, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual Report 2002, HC 826. Back

27   FCO, Human Rights Annual Report 2001, Cm 5211, September 2001. Back

28   Foreign Affairs Committee, First Report of Session 1998-99, Foreign Policy and Human Rights, HC 100, para 170 Back

29   Ibid., para 3. Back

30   FCO, Foreign Affairs Committee Session 2001-2002 Annual Report on Human Rights: Response of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Cm 5509, May 2002. Back

31   Foreign Affairs Committee, Ninth Report of Session 2001-02, Private Military Companies, HC 922; Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Private Military Companies: Options for Regulation, HC (2001-02) 577. Back

32   Sandline International, a UK­based PMC, had been involved in the export of arms to Sierra Leone in contravention of an UN embargo. For further details, see: Foreign Affairs Committee, Second Report of Session 1998-99, Sierra Leone, HC 116-i. Back

33   Foreign Affairs Committee, First Report of Session 2002-03, The Biological Weapons Green Paper, HC 150.  Back

34   Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Strengthening the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Countering the Threat from Biological Weapons, Cm 5484, April 2002. Back

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Prepared 12 February 2003