| Summary
The Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development and Trade and Industry Committees have worked together since 1999 to examine the Government's policy on strategic export controls. This arrangement, which has become known as the Quadripartite Committee, has been successful but we discuss a number of refinements that should be made to enable us to carry out our job—scrutiny of Government policy—more effectively. We are disappointed that on three occasions the Government has missed deadlines when supplying us with information, which has been obstructive to our work as a Committee in ensuring effective scrutiny.
We examine in detail the changes made to reporting of export licences since our last Annual Report, and welcome several Government initiatives, in particular the publication of quarterly data. We reiterate the need to produce more public information on the end use of equipment in order to avoid misunderstandings.
We note that, on the whole, the new system introduced by the Export Control Act 2002 seems to be working well, although there is ongoing debate with industry on the effect of certain provisions. We express concern that cuts in the budget and to the staffing of the Export Control Organisation may jeopardise this success. We also repeat our calls for an extension of the Act's extra-territorial controls.
In the international arena, this is a time of change, risk and opportunity: change, as the review of the EU Code of Conduct, elaboration of Criterion 8 and agreement of a Regulation to control equipment used in torture and capital punishment come to a conclusion; risk—in our view—as the EU considers lifting its arms embargo on China, and the US Congress continues to block the ITAR waiver for the UK; and opportunity, as support for an International Arms Trade Treaty gathers pace. We recommend that the Government should oppose the lifting of the arms embargo on China unless all EU member states give an absolute assurance that it will not lead to a qualitative or quantitative increase in their exports.
We conclude that the UK Government, as President of the G8 and EU during 2005, is in a position to make a real difference to arms control worldwide before the end of the year.
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