Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
WEDNESDAY 12 JANUARY 2005
12 JANUARY 2005 RT
HON JACK
STRAW MP, MR
EDWARD OAKDEN
CMG AND DR
DAVID LANDSMAN
Q100 Mr O'Neill: Sometimes we have
to qualify what your undertakings actually mean.
Mr Straw: There is no more assiduous
select committee than this one, in my view, and you have got the
cream of four other select committees!
Q101 Mr O'Neill: In your response
to our last report, you said that providing more information on
end use would be an unjustifiable diversion of limited resources.
Is it only possible to extract this information from databases
manually? One would have thought with the amount of money that
the Government spends on software that there might have been something
within the system which could be incorporated to avoid the use
of manual extraction, not least at a time when you are trying
to achieve staff cuts.
Dr Landsman: It is the case that
with the present software it is simply impossible to extract this
information automatically and it would have to be done manually
with, we believe, a disproportionate amount of effort. Clearly
when the next generation of software is introduced, this is something
that we will be aiming to take account of. I think it would be
difficult to justify replacing the software early purely for that
particular purpose, but it is obviously something we will take
fully into account.
Q102 Mr O'Neill: When do you anticipate
changing the software?
Dr Landsman: Those decisions have
not yet been taken. Work is progressing on the next generation
of software. Dates for implementation of the project will depend
in part on decisions which are taken about the future restructuring
of the Export Control Organisation in DTI.
Q103 Mr O'Neill: And could you give
us an assurance that the kind of software that would be required
to end the manual extraction will be given consideration as far
as the incorporation is concerned, even if as yet you have not
really scoped the exercise?
Dr Landsman: Officials will certainly
take into account all of these aspects and obviously Ministers
will need to decide what is done.
Q104 Mr O'Neill: And you will let
us know in due course?[2]
Dr Landsman: Sure.
Q105 Chairman: End use is important.
Indeed arguably end use is all that matters when it comes to arms
export controls. We have really got to know where the stuff is
going, so there is a degree of urgency about having as much information
in the public domain as possible about end use. My question, Foreign
Secretary, is about the Freedom of Information Act. Do you expect
that to influence what you publish in future?
Mr Straw: No, because I doubt
it and I cannot anticipate decisions under that Act and you are
aware of how it works. If you are not, as the author of the Act,
I am very happy to provide you with an extensive seminar.
Q106 Chairman: Thank you. I look
forward to it!
Mr Straw: The Act makes clear
that information which is due to be published in any event cannot
have early or advance publication, so I am quite clear that were
it not for this very open system that we have at the moment, we
would be expected under the Act to publish the kind of information
we publish in the quarterly reports, but since it is published
in the quarterly reports, I am quite clear that we would be justified
in refusing any prior application which obviously would just be
chaotic and could serve no particular purpose. In terms of more
detailed information, well, it may be that there will be individuals
who will seek further information about individual licence applications
and their consideration. The final decision on those would be
subject to the tribunal and then to other provisions in the Act,
but when the Act was drafted, a number of clear exemptions were
introduced and agreed by Parliament. Some of them were absolute
exemptions about the security service for the Royal Family and
others, which you are about to talk about, were qualified ones
where there is a public interest harm test, but those are issues
of commercial confidentiality, general confidentiality and international
relations. My own view is that I am certain we have one of the
most, if not the most, transparent systems in the world, number
one, and, number two, to go further than this would be to compromise,
to damage the necessary commercial interests or commercial confidentiality
of the industry and this is an important industry which sustains
a large number of jobs and we all around this table have a responsibility
to ensure that it continues and that is why there is an export
control system, not an export prohibition system.
Q107 Mr Bercow: Foreign Secretary,
during the British Presidency of the European Union, can you tell
the Committee, because we have had quite a lot of evidence on
this subject and other aspects of the strategic export control
system, what you judge to be the priorities? If you look at strengthening
the legal control of arms exports, tackling arms brokering and
trafficking and building capacity to address the availability
and the misuse of weapons within Africa and you have got six months,
you have got to prioritise.
Mr Straw: There is completing
what the Luxembourg Presidency have on the agenda and a lot of
the agenda for any Presidency is completing work already in hand
and it may be that the Luxembourg Presidency, which has already
started, is able to complete the review of the Code of Conduct
which has arisen in the context of the decision made in December
2003 to review the China arms embargo. A number of Member States,
of which the UK has been in the lead, have used that decision
to look again at the China arms embargo to seek to upgrade the
way in which the Code of Conduct operates, and that is obviously
very important. There is a user's guide on Criterion 8 of the
Code of Conduct and this has prompted some Member States and the
UK industry and NGOs to call for guides to other criteria, and
we are happy to consider that. There is the issue of the candidate
countries and also the new Member countries, the ten, where although,
by definition, the ten have to sign up to these criteria, the
standard of enforcement and transparency may in practice be less
than in the former 15 existing Member States, so there is that.
Then there is the whole issue of building up a consensus for the
International Arms Trade Treaty which I personally am very committed
to and that will be an international arms trade treaty and, as
I spelled out in my Party's conference, is there to build on the
work of the EU Code of Conduct in which we played a leading role
when Robin Cook was in my seat seven years ago, so it is part
of a wide agenda.
Q108 Mr Bercow: There is the issue
of quality and enforcement, but equally importantly there is the
issue, is there not, Foreign Secretary, of the extent of the provisions?
What I would like to try to tease out of you, if I may, is the
question of whether and, if so, to what extent you regard it as
incumbent upon the British Government to look at how other Member
States of the EU are behaving possibly within the terms of the
Code of Conduct, but in a way which is, nevertheless, damaging?
For example, if memory serves me, and I am sure you will correct
me if I am wrong, there is an arms embargo within the EU on the
export of weapons to Burma, but there is suspicion, and I put
it no more strongly than that, that that embargo is currently
being circumvented by Germany via the Ukraine. It is marvellous
to have a Code of Conduct and it may have real merit and a great
deal of attention may be paid to enforcing it, monitoring it and
seeing if it needs to be updated in line with the concerns of
the NGOs as well as of the industry, but what about things which
perhaps do not fall within its purview at all, but the effects
of which are very damaging?
Mr Straw: Comparative testing
is very important in all areas of government, but particularly
here where, Mr Bercow, you are right to imply that having the
Common Criteria in plain text is one thing, but having common
enforcement of those criteria is a separate thing, and the first
is a necessary, but by no means an efficient, part of the second.
The advice I have received is that on the whole other countries
are assiduous in their application of the Criteria, but there
is a difference which is about transparency, and this has arisen
acutely in respect of the China arms embargo and has wider application.
That is that we share information where one or other of us is
refusing a licence, so if I get an application, and you will be
familiar with the arms system, and I decide that that application
should be refused, that information is then pooled on a confidential
basis inside the EU and I think I am right in saying that if one
has notice of denial by another country, which sometimes happens,
and I then decide nonetheless to agree an export, we pool that
information as well, I think. That circumstance is the only one
in which at the moment there is effective pooling of information
about positive decisions to license rather than negative decisions
to refuse licences. Now, the number of licences granted greatly
exceeds the number refused because obviously in each country the
industry has a pretty clear idea of what the market will bear.
We do publish details of all the applications approved, though
we do not formally give it to the EU, but it is on the public
record, whereas some other countries do not, so it is for that
reason that I have been very committed to having a fully transparent
system both of refusals and of positive decisions on licences.
On the end user point, I have seen no information whatever suggesting
that Germany has licensed arms to the Ukraine which have then
been shipped to Burma. I have to say that the German Foreign Minister,
Joschka Fischer, has been very supportive and was very supportive
of extending the sanctions, the common measures against the Burmese
regime given their failure to meet the undertakings which they
had made in April or around April of last year to release Aung
San Suu Kyi and to allow the NLD to participate in the national
convention, but we are always happy to follow these up.
Mr Oakden: Perhaps I can just
add two points. Firstly, we are looking for greater information-sharing
and the fact is that because we have got a more extensive network
around the world, we sometimes get more information and there
is potential for us to share that more with other Member States.
The other is a slightly different area which is what happens when
a country comes out of sanctions and one wants to avoid a situation
where you go from very tight control under an embargo to any sort
of lurch, so we are negotiating in the EU a so-called `toolbox'
which would essentially set in hand this series of procedures
which would involve both consultation and three-monthly mutual
notification about export procedures and what each country has
done over the previous three months.
Q109 Tony Baldry: Apart from the
EU, the G8 and the Prime Minister's Commission for Africa, a lot
of NGOs and a lot of us know that the scourge of Africa is the
AK-47 and I just wondered what the FCO was doing in the context
of the Commission for Africa on tackling and brokering and the
presumption of denial. What is your input to the Commission for
Africa and conflict prevention?
Mr Straw: The key thing I think
for controlling small arms is an arms trade treaty because you
have got to deal with a few countries in Africa who manufacture
weapons. South Africa does and maybe other countries do and will
certainly maintain them, but the main manufacturers are outside
sub-Saharan Africa, so simply getting the African countries on
board will not resolve the problem and we have to have an international
arms trade treaty. We will be using the Commission for Africa,
however, as a forum in order to build up support for this Arms
Trade Treaty which will certainly include small arms, but will
have to include other arms as well. You are right, Mr Baldry,
to say that the scourge of Africa is the AK-47, but it is the
landmine, it is rocket-propelled grenades and all of the other
terrible relatively small arms which wreak such havoc and destruction
on the continent.
Q110 Donald Anderson: Foreign Secretary,
a number of the countries which joined the European Union on day
one are traditional arms exporters, such as the Czech Republic.
Mr Straw: Sure.
Q111 Donald Anderson: Are you satisfied
that the administrative procedures are sufficient in those countries,
and of course there are coming in two or three years' time Bulgaria
and Romania? At what time will the export control on arms kick
in in respect of those countries?
Mr Straw: On the satisfaction
about the new ten, I am able to give you a detailed answer. Am
I personally satisfied? I am not sure is the answer. What is the
case is that each of those countries had to meet criteria, very,
very detailed criteria in 32 separate sections or chapters of
the EU acquis and it was that that the European Commission
were measuring when they were determining whether or not each
candidate country had met a sufficient standard in order to be
recommended for membership of the EU. The process is a very, very
rigorous one. The Czech Republic has, to give you my impression,
quite a good level of public administration, I think, of the EU
ten and I have seen no reports of their system failing, but I
also would accept that it is probably the case that for all the
new ten, it will take some time for their systems to be quite
up to the level of the previous existing 15. As for the new candidates,
the two new ones coming forward, Bulgaria and Romania, we have
now agreed a date and in the period between now and accession,
they have to show that they are implementing all the standards
that they have agreed in those 32 chapters. I think formally the
system only kicks in on the day of accession, but there is a glide
path and this issue arose quite acutely in respect of Romania,
not Bulgaria, when there was some discussion in the margins of
the meetings before the last European Council as to whether or
not, because there were concerns about the level of public administration
in Romania, the corruption and so on, we should not give a differential
date or impose differential conditions in respect of Romania compared
to Bulgaria. We decided not to and the reassurance there is that
it is open to the European Commission at any stage before the
date of accession to say, "This applicant nation is not meeting
its trajectory on the glide path and, therefore, we should delay
further the date of accession".
Q112 Mr Colman: During the G8 Presidency,
you mentioned that in a sense you are following previous initiatives.
Can I ask you about the Kananaskis Ten Plus Ten Plus Ten and will
you intend to push this forward, particularly in terms of a further
parliamentary assembly, and there was one held in December 2003
at which I represented this Select Committee and the idea was
in fact that after the European Parliament had reconvened, as
it were, after the elections, in our Presidency we would move
forward significantly on that arms control initiative. Can I ask,
Foreign Secretary, what is proposed?
Dr Landsman: Mr Chairman, Mr Colman
is referring to the so-called `G8 Global Partnership' for addressing
the threats from the weapons of mass destruction from existing
stocks primarily, but not exclusively, in the former Soviet Union.
We certainly intend to take forward that initiative during our
G8 Presidency and we have plans for two specific initiatives,
one to address implementation of existing projects to ensure that
any obstacles there are addressed and removed and the projects
move forward, and we also intend to promote a threat-based assessment
of priorities, as it were, for the next generation of projects
under the G8 Global Partnership. As far as to the parliamentary
conference, I am afraid we will have to revert to you with some
more thoughts on that in due course.[3]
Q113 Mr Bercow: Very briefly on the
subject of the EU's WMD Action Plan, how do you intend to take
that forward, not least with regard to the results of the peer
review of dual-use export control systems?
Dr Landsman: Specifically on that
issue of the Action Plan, that exercise feeds into ongoing work
in the EU on implementation of the Code of Conduct of the export
controls and we will want to do some more work on ensuring that
the Code of Conduct is being implemented as part of the work which
we will oversee during our EU Presidency.
Q114 Mr Evans: Foreign Secretary,
on the arms embargo on China, France and Germany are very keen
to get it lifted and your opposite number in the Netherlands,
Bernard Bot, said he hoped that it would be lifted this year.
What is your view?
Mr Straw: When this issue first
arose in the EU European Council Summit on the 18th December 2003,
I, because I happened to be there in our seat at the time, supported
the proposal from President Chirac and Chancellor Shroeder that
we should review the EU China arms embargo because, on the face
of it, it had run its course. First of all, it was imposed in
the light of the specific circumstances following Tiananmen Square
and, secondly, at the time of its imposition, there was no EU
Code of Conduct, so you either had an embargo across the EU or
you had nothing consistent across the EU. Now, the human rights
situation in China has eased, though I am not pretending it is
fully acceptable and it is not as we spell out in our Human Rights
Report, but it is certainly significantly better than it was 15
or 16 years ago. Secondly, there is now the EU Code of Conduct
and what has been interesting in terms of the work that has been
done both in the UK and across the EU is that it transpires that
most of the applications for arms exports to China which have
been refused in recent years have been refused under the EU Code
of Conduct and not under the embargo which is narrow in its scope
and, moreover, most of the refusals under the embargo would have
fallen to be refused under the Code of Conduct in any event. As
far as the latter is concerned, I think I am right in saying that
for the UK there were only two refusals under the embargo, and
those were not particularly significant, which would not have
been refused under the Code of Conduct, so that is the background
to this. What the Council decided this December, just three and
a half weeks ago, and we supported this language both by definition,
but also because we did, was this: "In this context, the
UK Council reaffirmed the political will to continue to work towards
lifting the arms embargo. It invited the ex-Presidency to finalise
the work . . . in order to allow for such a decision. It underlined
that the result of any decision should not be an increase of arms
exports from the EU Member States to China neither in quantitative
nor qualitative terms and in this regard the European Council
recalled the importance of the criteria of the Code of Conduct
on arms exports, particularly in relation to human rights, stability
and security in the region and the national security of family
and allied countries". That is where we are and, as I have
always intimated, we are currently working on the revised Code
of Conduct and the new instrument on measures related to what
is called `the toolbox'.
Q115 Mr Evans: So now that we have
got the Presidency of the European Union, are you actively promoting
the lifting of the arms embargo?
Mr Straw: Our decision in principle
is that subject to satisfaction on the issues laid out by the
European Council in December, we called, also, for a lifting of
the arms embargo and that has always been the case and that was
why, for the reasons I have intimated, we supported the original
reconsideration of it. Indeed if it is lifted, we will end up
with as effective arms control in respect of China in practice
as we have now, but they will be ones which will apply to every
other country, apart from one or two, like Burma, and also we
will have a strengthened system across the EU. I have to say that
I have long understood China's argument which is that to lump
them in with, say, Burma and Zimbabwe is not appropriate and I
do not think it is.
Q116 Mr Evans: Is there a likely
timescale on this?
Mr Straw: I am a betting man on
big races, but I do not bet on these things, not least because
it would be viewed as insider information, but I think you would
get relatively short odds on the decision happening over the Luxembourg
Presidency. In other words, it is more likely than not that this
will be decided under this Presidency.
Q117 Mr Evans: The final point then
on this is that clearly you have got a very close working relationship
with the United States of America. They are not keen on the lifting
of the arms embargo along with one or two other countries, so
what are you going to do to pacify them that the options that
you are announcing today that you argue in order to see this lifted
this year will satisfy them?
Mr Straw: The United States have
an entirely legitimate and understandable interest both in the
effectiveness of the European Union's system of arms control and
in issues of regional stability in that area and it needs to be
borne in mind that we often think of the United States as an Atlantic
power, but it is also very much a Pacific power and China and
Taiwan and other countries are across a pond, albeit quite a large
pond. So there have been intensive discussions with the United
States because it is a point I have often made in the room in
talking on this issue in the European Foreign Ministers' meetings
and in the European Councils that we have to do our very best
to provide reassurance to the United States. They are our closest
ally and it would be ludicrous to turn this into an issue of aggravation
between these two allies, so a lot of effort is going into that.
Part of the difficulty has been, frankly, a lack of information
and an understanding in Washington and elsewhere about how our
system works, so, for example, there was a report by a congressional
committee, I think, last May about the UK system which was critical
and based on a number of clear misunderstandings about the nature
of our system. Our embassy weighed in and provided a point-by-point
rebuttal of the system. I have on many, many occasions pointed
out, number one, that the EU arms embargo itself has no legal
force, that it is an agreement. People may say, "What about
the Code of Conduct?" The Code of Conduct is backed by our
law and the laws of other countries, so it has a different level
of legal application. Also, and this is a critical point, what
is not realised in the US, and why should it be until we explain
it, is this central issue which is that since the embargo was
imposed, you now have the EU Code of Conduct, the interpretation
in most countries of the embargo, including the UK, has been a
narrow one, that most of the decisions to refuse arms licensing
to China have in any event been made under the Code and, as I
said, most of the decisions which have been made to refuse under
the embargo would have been made under the Code anyway and we
also then take through our United States interlocutors a criterion
in the Code relating to human rights, relating to regional security
and so on.
Q118 Mr Evans: So you hope to satisfy
the United States, but if at the end they still are not satisfied
and they are still pressurising you to keep the arms embargo there,
you will carry on with your policy?
Mr Straw: It does not work that
way. In the United States there are many issues where the United
States Government makes a decision which we would not necessarily
have taken ourselves because our political and economic circumstances
are different. The same applies in respect of decisions made by
European countries, including the UK. The crucial issue is not
to say to the US, "Are you going to vote for this?"
anymore than they ask us to vote for some of the decisions they
have made; it is to say to them, our very close allies, "We
hope that we have provided you with both an explanation and a
reassurance of why we are supporting this decision and why, in
our judgment, there is good evidence that it will not do the thing
which you fear it might".
Q119 Mr Davies: Foreign Secretary,
are you saying that the American attitude towards the EU giving
up its arms embargo on China is based either on a misconception,
a misunderstanding because the Americans wrongly believe it will
have some actual concrete and specific impact on the flow of arms
exports, whereas you are saying it will not, or that it is based
on a worry about the psychological effect of this embargo being
abolished at this particular time and that will be seen as a very
favourable gesture to the regime in Beijing?
Mr Straw: Well, it is based on
both and obviously different people within the Administration
and Congress have different opinions about it.
2 Ev 85 Back
3
Ev 88 Back
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