Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
THURSDAY 27 FEBRUARY 2003
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP, MR EDWARD
OAKDEN AND
MR TIM
DOWSE
Chairman
1. Foreign Secretary, may I welcome you and
your officials this afternoon. It is our intention to take the
first hour and a half of evidence in public session and then have
half an hour or so in confidential session at the end. Could I
start by raising our role in scrutinising licences. As you are
aware, this year we have had a little bit of difficulty in the
sense that we asked a number of questions in November to which
the Government kindly responded promptly. We then raised a number
of other questions which it proved impossible for the Government
to reply to. We had thought these were straightforward, factual
questions about licences the information for which would be on
a database somewhere. Could you start off by telling us why it
has proved to be somewhat difficult this year to provide that
additional factual information about licences that the Committee
requested?
(Mr Straw) First of all, thank you to
the Committee for the invitation to be here. I am joined by Edward
Oakden, Director of International Security, and Tim Dowse, Head
of the Non-Proliferation Department. We have always worked and
I have always worked on the basis of trying to provide as much
information as possible to Select Committees, not least to your
Select Committee and that is what we have sought to do. There
is simply an issue of physical capacity. You and I have had two
meetings and one phone call about this. There are only so many
hours in the day and only so many officials and the degree of
detail which the Committee was requesting meant that we had already
spent 900 person hours in answering your questions which you can
work out in terms of weeks, and the ability of Mr Dowse's department
to deal with export licences was having to be put on hold. That
is not an issue here, it is just about, if I may say so, physical
capacity, that is all and no unwillingness to be helpful; far
from it. I think colleagues here will recognise that personally
I have always gone out of my way to provide more information rather
than less to the House when asked a PQ and in written PQs, and
Home Office and Foreign Office officials know that. That is the
issue. I am responsible for both the quality of the answers and
their number, and I also have to bear in mind my responsibility
for ensuring that the licensing system itself stays intact because
what we are charged with principally—and in a sense this
Committee shares in this responsibility—is ensuring that
the licensing system operates so that we can license defence exports
according to criteria. To end up in a position where the number
of questions that your Committee was asking meant that the whole
of the system was having to be put on hold for a month is not
acceptable to me, so that is why. We are answering the questions
and in any event we have already answered more questions in greater
volume than we did last year.
2. I would have to say I am shocked if the system
was put on hold for a month, that would be quite worrying.
(Mr Straw) It is not an issue of being shocked. Life
is a matter of consequences and I think the number of questions
asked was at least twice, if not higher, than that last year,
with a greater degree of complexity. Officials, contrary to the
parody, are very assiduous and want to provide information, that
is my injunction to them too, but that is the situation we are
in. When I realised there was a problem I dealt with it by inviting
you to come and have a conversation we me. From recollection,
aside from conversations in the lobby, we have had two official
conversations and one official phone call.
(Mr Dowse) Can I add a little. I think the problem
we faced was the degree of detail in the questions that were being
asked about individual licence applications and decisions on specific
licences. The initial set of questions that was asked, somewhat
over 90, required us to examine over 1,000 individual export licences.
You are right in the sense that the data is available but it is
not available readily in the format that the Committee was requesting.
It required us to interrogate a number of databases and in some
respects go to individual case files to look at why decisions
were taken. This is the problem that we had. It was not a matter
simply of pressing a button and drawing the information electronically.
I would say as well it is not solely the Foreign Office that was
facing the pressure from this, it ran across four departments,
the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department for International
Development and the MoD as well.
3. I do not want to prolong this. If there is
any way in which we can ask the information in a form that is
easier for you to give it to the Committee, we would be delighted.
We look at the Annual Reports and we look at which countries,
given the criteria—are there human rights issues, weapons
of mass destruction issues, regional instability issues—we
should look at carefully. We look at the detail in the Annual
Report which is far better—I say this, Foreign Secretary,
before you do—than ever before.
(Mr Straw) And any other countries.
4. Absolutely.
(Mr Straw) Thank you.
5. But we look at that information and that
naturally gives rise to questions. We then get the information
back. Having looked at this in some detail some of the information
does not always clarify the position and we have to ask for further
clarification. The fact that a widget is exported to Bloggs in
Bahrain, who is Bloggs? I am not trying to be facetious about
this but a lot of the information we get back from that initial
set of questions we as a Committee do not know how to interpret
and therefore we have to ask the subsequent questions, which is
where the problem arose this year. If you have any suggestions
about the way in which our retrospective scrutiny can be improved
in the sense of you providing information in a different format
perhaps, we would be happy to look at them, but you will appreciate
our problem, we have to access the information to enable us to
do our job properly.
(Mr Straw) And you will appreciate our problem, which
is it would be an absurd situation for both of us to get into
where because the number of questions that we are being asked
was completely disproportionate, we ended up in a situation where
the licensing system could not operate. This is in a context—thank
you for your compliment on the Report that is published and the
work that is done by officials—and it is also against a
comparison that this is the most open and comprehensive system
of scrutiny anywhere in the world. It is not as though we are
starting from a low base. We are starting from an exceptionally
high base. What we have to do is talk to you Chairman and your
Clerk, and I will ask my officials to do so, on an informal basis
to ensure we arrive at a balance. I should say that it is just
a question of securing a balance. We want the system to work.
On the whole it does work. We want the public to have confidence
in it and therefore we want you to have confidence in it. There
are limits. I am not going to get into the point I was making
to you in private conversation about some of the requests, but
I think it is also about what the focus of the Committee is.
Mr Lansley
6. Again, I do not want to elaborate this too
far but on average you seem to be working on the basis that it
is something like a full day's work to answer each of our questions.
Clearly that cannot, strictly speaking, be true, for many of them
are statements of fact or statements of policy which should take
much less than that time, unless it is taking a lot of time in
the clearance of questions. I speak for myself, I do not know
what the rest of the Committee feel, I think it would be a great
pity if the amount of time taken answering the questions substantially
consisted of time between departments and officials in securing
clearance and co-ordination of responses and that was held against
the Committee for the time it takes to answer them.
(Mr Straw) Some of the questions were multiple questions,
an example of which concerned all licences for India. That is
a rather large question, it may be one question but it is a huge
question, and there are four departments involved. I have said
to my colleagues I am very happy to streamline the whole system
to take it over in the Foreign Office but others may have a view
about this and pro tem we have to stick to you folk from
the non-Foreign Office Committees and we have to stick to this
arrangement. In terms of clearance, there is an issue of clearance.
I have never ever signed off an answer to Parliament or a parliamentary
committee without approving it. I simply will not do it. I live
in fear and trembling that one night late at night I have ticked
a question. Sir John will remember this because he and I were
on opposite sides and I am quite sure it was not quite like that
either, but you have this overwhelming responsibility for accurate
answers for which you are responsible. Thus I go through every
PQ answer and I go through every piece of paper that goes to a
select committee and I can tell you that every so often—I
remember not a memorandum for here but for a memorandum for the
FAC Committee recently, it looked all pretty straightforward,
the Government's response to an FAC report and I was sitting in
my sitting room at about 11 o'clock at night and I thought, "Why
have I got to do this? Oh, I had better read it through",
and I got to page 46 and there was something that was completely
wrong on something which is now very highly topical and I thought,
"It is just as well I have got it." If I had ticked
it, I tell you this would have been a story, so I have to clear
the stuff and that takes time. I turn the stuff round very quickly
and so do officials, and I will ask Mr Dowse to do a bit more
explaining.
Mr Dowse) Just to follow that up I think
the request was for information of details of all licences for
India, and maybe Pakistan as well, and it required us to access,
pull out and in fact put into a form that was at least approximating
the form that the Committee had asked for over 800 single licences,
so one question but 800 separate pieces of work. That is just
an example. I would say we very much would welcome the opportunity
to work with the Committee to see how we can co-operate better
in future years and meet the sort of requirements that you want.
I would also say the questions that we have not been able to answer,
the follow-up questions for clarification, I think there were
36 or so, we have not given up on those and we hope that we can
answer some of them today if you wish to put them to us, and those
that were left outstanding we are happy to continue to follow
up on. It was a question of what we could do in the time available
given that the officials who are tasked with doing this work are
also the same officials who are processing new licence applications
and indeed, in the Foreign Office's case, the same officials who
are attending EU meetings, so there is simply a question of capacity.
Chairman: We appreciate that and we will pursue
it but we will move on. I will say, Foreign Secretary, your fear
is not spotting something in a signed-off answer but our fear
is reading the Annual Report and finding there are questions we
should have asked on the Annual Report that we failed to ask and
then we are seen not to be doing our job of retrospective scrutiny
properly. Let's move on. Martin?
Mr O'Neill
7. On the government-to-government questions
we get the impression that because the government does not itself
require a licence to export controlled military goods that there
may be some items which are not included in the Annual Report
on strategic export controls. Maybe you could explain to us whether
or not all sales of equipment by the UK government agencies have
been included within the report on strategic export controls.
(Mr Dowse) They are included in the summary totals.
The government-to-government transfers are included in summary
form.
8. So if we were to subtract everything else
from the total we would get the number that would be there; is
that right?
(Mr Dowse) Yes, that is correct.
Chairman
9. There are no transactions not included in
that total?
(Mr Straw) We also consider them on a case-by-case
basis against consolidated criteria. A lot of the transfers are
government-to-government.
Mr O'Neill
10. This gets onto the other point about the
F680 process. Are they all done under the F680 process or are
they done against the criteria separately? Maybe you could explain
to us because I think this is a grey area.
(Mr Straw) Where the transfer takes place outside
the UK in connection with the sale of surplus equipment, the F680
procedure may be used in place of an export licence, but all of
them are considered on a case-by-case basis.
(Mr Dowse) It depends when the transfer of ownership
takes place. If there is a government-to-government transfer,
which may be a sale or a gift in some cases, and the transfer
of ownership from the British government to the recipient government
takes place while the equipment is in the UK, then an export licence
will still be required and it will feature in the Annual Report
in the normal way because the recipient government will have to
apply for a licence to export the equipment from the UK. If the
transfer of ownership takes place outside the United Kingdom,
then we may use the F680 procedure. I think we responded on this
point to the Committee's last report last October and we said
that even in the cases where an F680 procedure is used we still
consider these sort of government-to-government transfers against
the consolidated criteria, as we would do for a normal export
licence.
Mr George
11. Secretary of State, on the topical issue
of weapons of mass destruction and the proliferation thereof,
can you tell us what information is available about the action
taken other than being taken under the Export Control Act to transform
the effectiveness of British arms export controls and to encourage
others to do the same in the face of the increased threat from
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction?
(Mr Straw) I would be grateful for some more detail
about the question. It goes without saying that we do not permit
the export of any items ourselves which are banned by these criteria,
by definition, or if they are unlawful under various international
conventions then they cannot be exported full stop before you
get to the criteria. Are you talking about the development of
measures to deal with poisonous gases and so on?
12. What negotiations are you having with other
countries with whom we have a good relationship to encourage them
to develop the standards that we have evolved?
(Mr Straw) The general standard of export licences?
Okay, I have got you.
(Mr Dowse) I think the first thing one would say is
that we are participants in the various multi-lateral export control
regimes that deal specifically with various weapons of mass destruction,
the Nuclear Suppliers= Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime
and also the Australia Group, which deals with chemical and biological
material. All those groups continually review their control lists
to ensure that the items that are being controlled are the ones
that should be controlled. One thing that has happened is that
since 11 September all those groups have taken action to add the
need to prevent WMD falling into the hands of terrorists to their
overall guidelines and their raison d'etre. Their lists
are being reviewed. The Australia Group took the lead in this
respect to ensure that the items and quantities that are controlled
and recommended and all the members commit to control are appropriate
for terrorist groups as well as for state-to-state transfers.
Domestically, we have got stricter controls for exports or trafficking
in relevant materials for weapons of mass destruction than we
have for conventional weapons controls. For example, under the
new Export Control Act, aiding and abetting a WMD programme or
providing materials that would assist in a WMD programme is subject
to extra-territorial jurisdiction, which is not the case for conventional
weapons. I think our controls are pretty robust as they stand.
To give you a figure, of all the export licence refusals that
we issued last year, 50% were because of WMD concerns.
13. Is the Foreign Office satisfied that the
organisations you mentioned, the Australia Group et cetera, et
cetera, have reached the requirements that we believe are necessary,
because very often organisations reach shabby compromises and
this is too important to be left to shabby compromises. Are you
generally happy that the structures, the arrangements, the enhancements
post 9/11 are satisfactory?
(Mr Dowse) I think there is always room for improvement
and we have made a number of proposals ourselves in these groups
to improve their procedures. One of the things that we have done,
for example, is with all these groups we have encouraged and succeeded
in setting up meetings of enforcement experts, so that it is not
simply those that look at technical details and decide what the
control lists should be but we bring Customs experts together
to exchange information, to network, and sometimes information
on the experience that our Customs or some of our European partners'
Customs have is useful to pass to other countries that are involved
in some of these regimes. The Japanese may be interested in learning
from our experience and vice versa. There is one step. As I say,
I think there is always room for improvement and we are always
looking for new ideas.
14. As a slight extension of that, what are
the mechanisms that exist between our government and its international
counterparts to exchange information on proliferation and diversionary
activities and how does this information feed into your licensing
process and decisions?
(Mr Dowse) All the export control regimes have as
part of their annual process of meetings what they call "information
exchanges" where papers are presented on countries and programmes
of concern. The UK is one of the most active in presenting papers
of this sort.
Sir John Stanley
15. Foreign Secretary, we are all deeply, deeply
exercised on the risks of weapons of mass destruction falling
into the hands of terrorist organisations. Recently Rachel Squire
and I, as members of the Defence Committee of the NATO Parliamentary
Assembly, had a briefing in Washington on the scale of the continuing
Russian stockpile from the former Soviet Union of their chemical
weapons. I should like to ask you whether you have had recently—and
if you have not perhaps you would consider asking your officials
for it—a full statement of the current position of nuclear
warheads, fissile material and chemical weapons held inside Russia
and the degree of security arrangements, or not, in relation to
their safeguarding? Included in that briefing would you also seek
advice as to the rate—we were advised minimal—of destruction
of these weapons and fissile material? Would you agree, Foreign
Secretary, that this is an issue of the most acute priority for
the responsible international community? It is an issue of money,
as you know. The Russian government is not holding these willingly
and would be delighted to dispose of them but unless the international
community is prepared to produce the money, and it is very sizable
indeed, there is going to be this continuing huge risk of a massive
source of weapons of mass destruction that could get into the
hands of terrorist organisations.
(Mr Straw) It is a very important issue. I cannot
remember the date when I was briefed about this and had a submission
about it but it is a matter of continuing concern. I will ask
Mr Oakden to come in on this. It is partly an issue of money but
it is partly an issue of capacity of the Russian authorities to
spend the money in a way that would produce an effective result.
I speak from recollection but I think I am right in saying that
we have allocated about US $750 million over ten years for this.
I remember looking at this rather closely when the Spending Round
was coming up, which was last year, and there is money factored
in for the current spending round as there was in the previous
one but we had not actually spent all we had factored in before,
as I recall. The money is there from our point of view ready to
be paid but it obviously has to be paid to the Russian system
in a way that the Russian Federation government and its agencies
can spend effectively.
(Mr Oakden) Perhaps just to add that broadly the analysis
you describe is very much what drove the G8 initiative at Kananaskis
last summer which launched an initiative for global partnership
with the Russian Federation exactly to address both aspects—the
nuclear and the chemical weapon aspect—of the problem. It
is, as you have described, a very substantial problem and very
substantial funds and organisation will be needed to set it up
because just a simple issue of how you destroy safely is substantial.
Just on the G8 front, there are a number of processes going forward,
firstly on the nuclear side to agree the arrangements under which
the money from the G8, and we hope from other international partners
too, and there is an outreach programme that is now being taken
forward, will be taken to Russia and spent in an effective way.
On the chemical weapons side similarly, the Russians have recently
come forward last month with some proposals which we and other
partners are studying. As soon as we, the G7, can agree with the
Russians on the procedures under which the funds should be started,
we can get under way. We have got a series of projects designed
across the DTI, MoD and ourselves which are ready to start, but
there are a number of important liability issues, for example,
which need to be resolved. I might also say it is not just the
G8, the EU too through the Northern Dimension, for example, is
looking at how you dispose safely of decommissioned Russian nuclear
submarines.
(Mr Dowse) Can I add just one point to that. You specifically
highlighted the problem of chemical weapons and chemicals that
required destroying. The Russians themselves have said, and President
Putin said at Kananaskis that this was one of his top priorities.
They have got obligations to meet under the Chemical Weapons Convention
to destroy their chemical weapons, and it is a huge challenge
for them, both in terms of size of cost and organisation. In that
area the UK is already pursuing projects and we have in fact completed
a first project in support of a very large chemical weapons destruction
facility at Schuch'ye in Russia—the MoD is the controller
of the budget for this money—and we are starting on our
second project. So in that area we are already moving ahead. The
areas where we are still having to have further discussions with
the Russians are primarily in the nuclear area.
Tony Worthington
16. In an Iraq situation, either in war or before
war, if the weapons inspectors discover weapons of mass destruction
or materials to make them, will it be standard practice to call
the weapons inspectors back to identify the countries of origin
of those materials and publicise that?
(Mr Straw) Yes, of course they will do their best
to ensure that there is a full tracking back because in any of
these cases if there has been a breach of sanctions, for example,
which is already becoming apparent, the sanctions breach will
not only have been by the government of Iraq but also by the export
nation as well. It may have been in some cases not so much a direct,
conscious breach of sanctions but a failure of control by the
government, so, yes, it is very important.
Mr Chidgey
17. Returning quickly to Sir John's point regarding
Russia, Foreign Secretary, could you tell us when the programme
for the destruction of the Russian arsenal was first agreed, including
the radioactive material, after identifying the problem following
the collapse of the Russian Empire, what the scale and quantity
of these materials was and how much has been destroyed?
(Mr Straw) I think we will have to write to you.
(Mr Dowse) I can give you a partial answer but I think
we should write to give you a more full answer. Some countries
started co-operative programmes with Russia very soon after the
fall of the Soviet Union. The most notable is the US which concluded
what they call a Co-operative Threat Reduction Agreement with
Russia in 1992, I believe it was.
18. Ten years ago?
(Mr Dowse) And has spent very large sums since that
time. US assistance to Russia has run at $500 million a year in
recent years. That has been going on for a long time. Germany
has had a long-term programme, again under a bilateral agreement.
In our own case we undertook certain specific areas of assistance,
though focused less in the WMD area and more on the military conversion,
dealing with the problems for Soviet forces withdrawing from Eastern
Europe, more into the conventional area. The more recent activity
and the creation of the G8 Global Partnership dates from last
year and the Kananaskis Summit and that was really setting up
an umbrella to bring together, to co-ordinate a whole range of
bilateral programmes that individual G7 members were undertaking
with Russia, the aim being to identify gaps, to identify priorities
and see if there were areas of overlap with the aim of getting
the biggest bang for our buck.
19. So the programme started in 1992?
(Mr Dowse) The US programme started in 1992, other
countries came in later.
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