Appendix 2: Letter to the Secretary
of State for Trade and Industry from the Chairman
Thank you for your letter of 27 June, which
my office received on 2 July.
The main thrust of your letter is very welcome.
However, I should stress that I am replying in a personal capacity,
as it has not been possible to arrange a meeting of the Committee,
or even to consult with Committee Members, within the deadline
that you have set.
QUARTERLY PUBLICATION
I welcome in particular your proposal to publish
licensing data quarterly. This is in line with a recommendation
made by the Committee in its last Report (paragraph 52). It will
improve the relevance of the Government's reporting by enabling
us and the public to scrutinise the Government's licensing decisions
in a more timely way. You propose to publish this information
only on the Internet, and annually on CD-ROM. Given the volume
of information involved, I can well understand the reasons for
this proposal. But given that the Internet is still not accessible
to all, can I suggest that you might wish to make paper copies
of this information available on request (at cost price), and
that you might also wish to place paper copies in the libraries
of both Houses of Parliament?
CHANGES IN
FORMAT AND
PRESENTATION OF
INFORMATION
My understanding is that all of the information
currently made available in Annual Reports will continue to be
available in future.
You propose to reformat the presentation of
data on SIELs. The proposed use of tables looks as if it will
be clearer than the current use of lists. As I understand it,
your proposal will enable the reader to see how many times the
Government has issued a licence to a given country for a particular
type of equipment in the course of a quarter or year. This will
increase in a small way the amount of information available to
the public. But I am not sure that repeating essentially identical
information is the best way to show that more than one licence
has been granted. If five licences have been granted to Algeria
for "technology for inertial equipment", would it not
be better to state: "technology for inertial equipment (5
licences)", rather than repeating "technology for inertial
equipment" five times?
PROVISION OF
CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION
TO THE
COMMITTEE
Your proposal to provide a separate quarterly
confidential report to the Committee is also welcome. The Committee
has consistently requested enhanced information on refusals and
I am grateful to you for your decision to provide this information
unprompted. I trust that the information will be at least as full
as that provided to the Committee in previous years.
PROVISION OF
END-USE
INFORMATION
I would be grateful if you could reconsider
your decision not to provide the Committee in confidence with
end-user information as a matter of routine. You state that to
do so might compromise commercial confidentiality, but this surely
cannot be the case given that the information would itself be
provided to the Committee in confidence. I also cannot remember
a single occasion on which the Committee has in the past been
refused end-user information because of commercial confidentiality
concerns. I would much prefer it if, where there are serious confidentiality
concerns, you were to withhold information in those specific instances
with an explanation, while making end-use information on other
licensing decisions available to the Committee in confidence as
a matter of routine.
I should add that end-use information is often
necessary to understand whether concerns about a licensing decision
are justified. If you do not provide this information as a matter
of routine, the Committee will no doubt wish to continue to request
it in relation to certain licensing decisions, as it has in the
past.
The end-use and end-user information provided
to the Committee in confidence earlier this year in relation to
SIELs issued during the first eight months of 2003 (in response
to parliamentary questions from Sir Menzies Campbell MP) was particularly
useful and well presented, and I hope that it might be used as
a model, where the Government provides such information in the
future.
RESPECT FOR
CONFIDENTIALITY
I really must correct your claim that the Committee
published end-user information in our last Report which had been
provided to us in confidence. The Committee has always respected
confidentiality absolutely. In circumstances where the Committee
wishes to draw on information provided to it in confidence, the
Committee Clerk is under a standing instruction to ensure that
the Government has no objections to the Committee's proposed course
of action. In this case, the Clerk met FCO officials on 20 April
to talk through a number of possible issues, including the text
of the paragraph you refer to. He was assured that the proposed
text was acceptable and would not be a breach of confidence, as
it did not identify the end user of the licence or describe equipment
or end-use conditions in more than the most general terms. Indeed,
he was told that the Government would welcome the publication
of this information, as it would help to assuage public concern
about the nature of these exports. It is important for us that
we are able to rely on advice from Government officials, especially
in an area as sensitive as this.
LOOKING TO
THE FUTURE
I note your view on prior scrutiny of export
licence applications, but hope that you will remain open to future
suggestions for improving the timeliness and transparency of Government
reporting on strategic export controls. I look forward to the
publication of the Government's first quarterly report.
Roger Berry
July 2004
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