Examination of Witnesses (Questions 51-59)
THURSDAY 3 APRIL 2003
MR ANDY
MCLEAN
AND MS
JULIA SAUNDERS
Chairman
51. Welcome to the UK Working Group. Would you
like to introduce yourselves to us for the record? (Ms
Saunders) I am Julia Saunders. I am the policy adviser on
Conflict and Arms for Oxfam.
(Mr McLean) I am Andy McLean, the head
of communications at Saferworld. Perhaps just at this point I
could apologise for the absence of our colleague, Robert Parker
from Amnesty International, who is unwell.
52. We had news of that. I hope he is all right. (Mr
McLean) Thank you very much.
53. Okay. Could we start then with perhaps one
of the areas of the consultation that has caused most interest
from yourselves, namely the extra-territorial application of trade
controls. Could you just summarise why you believe that all trade
in military equipment by UK citizens, wherever they are located,
should be subject to UK licensing controls? (Ms Saunders)
I think we are starting off with a sort of consensus that brokering
needs to be under regulation and that is presumably the intention
of the controls that are being introduced. It is our firm belief
that those controls need to map the way the industry really works
and to be effective rather than just exporting the problem. You
need extra-territorial controls because brokers, by the very nature
of the business, do move between jurisdictions very fluidly and
that is the way you need to track them rather than regard it as
a territorial issue.
54. Would this, for example, impose an unfair
burden on a UK citizen, say, working for an aerospace company
in India? Would that not place them in a rather difficult position
in relation to the requirements of the legislation if you incorporate
the full international coverage that you envisage? (Ms
Saunders) If we start legislating for exceptional cases we
are going to miss the vast bulk of what we want to control. Your
choice of a person working in India would raise difficulties,
I agree, because it is not a destination which you might consider
for an open licence to free-up an individual working in a foreign
company, but I would not want to throw out the baby with the bath
water on this one. I think that you should define your terms of
what you wish to capture under the Act more precisely in order
not to disadvantage legitimate people dealing abroad.
55. I know that the UK Working Group is part
of an international association of NGOs with concerns in relation
to these matters. Are you therefore able to tell us a little about
the practice of other countries? In your written submission, which
is a very detailed one, you make reference to the United States
and you make reference to some of the European Union countries.
Would you be able to comment on how they deal or are proposing
to deal with the trafficking and brokering? (Ms Saunders)
There are a couple of countries who already have had existing
legislation for a number of years, which perhaps can give us some
interesting examples to hone our own legislation. I believe the
defence representatives mentioned the US controls in their evidence.
This system looks at brokering and defines brokering around the
receipt of a fee really. So it is looking at it differently from
how this proposal is looking at it and, also, it is fully extra-territorial.
It has a register which is mandatory plus you can access those
who have been struck off, so it is quite a complete system. Looking
within Europe, the Swedish system works on the basis of those
who are habitually resident in Sweden, so it controls extra-territorially
those that have a real relationship, paying taxes, for example,
to Sweden. Germany has a system which is only territorial and
they have had the problem with export. It is fairly easy to cross
the border from Germany to countries without controls so they
have the problem of brokers hopping over the border literally
to do their deals. There is a new round of legislation being introduced
as countries have identified this is a problem area and these
countries have taken the view that fully extra-territorial controls
are required. We have seen controls introduced recently in Finland
and in Poland—fully extra-territorial—and also they
are under consideration in Belgium and France, although quite
whether or not they will emerge the other end of the legislative
process is obviously still a news question. (Mr McLean)
On that particular aspect, if I just reiterate that there is a
move internationally towards extra-territorial controls. So the
mention that by doing this the UK would be out of step with other
countries is not actually correct.
56. Do you have any view about which of those
various systems that have been introduced, which are the most
effective, cause or impose the least burdens on legitimate defence
industries? The American system is different from the European
system, is it not? (Ms Saunders) Yes.
57. In terms of your objectives, do you have
any preference and, if so, why? (Ms Saunders) Would
it be possible to answer that by saying there are aspects of the
different systems which I admire.
58. I suspected you would say that. (Ms
Saunders) We are in the position of wanting to learn from
these experiences. I would say that the register in America, for
example, is something which we should be looking hard at, particularly
the ability to proscribe brokers. You can access this list. So,
for example, if you were a DTI official in this country and you
had an application from an American citizen to broker here, you
could check this list to see if he had fallen foul of the American
law at any stage. Obviously, that aids transparency and the effectiveness
of making sure those who are the dodgy dealers of this world are
hounded out of being able to practice here. That would be one
place I would suggest as an example.
59. Just a final question before I turn to my
colleagues. What you said about trafficking and brokering, as
I understand it, seemed to focus mainly on the small arms trade.
Would that be true? If it is, would some of your concerns be met
if the Government were to introduce targeted controls in that
particular area? (Ms Saunders) Some of our concerns
would be met and I would certainly welcome any proposal along
those lines but, of course, you can also be killed from a tank
or something dropped from an aircraft so there are other areas
which are not controlled which would also be of concern. I would
be foolish, I think, to say that I would not support any advance
in this area, particularly if it was seen as a pilot to see if
this was an effective way of going about controlling conventional
weapons.
Chairman: Thank you.
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