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5 Nov 2009 : Column 323WH—continued
I want quickly to make some remarks about Libya. Its regime is the same today as it was at the time of Lockerbie; it is the regime that murdered, in cold blood, WPC Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot from the window of the Libyan embassy in St. James's square in London. It is the same regime that launched the Eksund, which was arrested by the French customs authorities in French territorial waters, with 200 tonnes of arms and explosives.
It was not the first such shipment, and there are today bereaved families in Northern Ireland and on the UK mainland who have lost loved ones as a result of Libyan explosives and weapons brought into this country. In those circumstances, the issue is one of profound sensitivity. I am yet to be persuaded that we should engage in arms exports with Libya. In response to my question, the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said:
"All arms exports to Libya are assessed on a case by case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria. We take into account fully the prevailing circumstances in Libya, particularly in respect of the human rights situation in that country, in making these assessments."-[Official Report, 2 November 2009; Vol. 498, c. 660W.]
The question that I want to put to the Minister today is: will he assure the House that in the case-by-case consideration of the arms exports to Libya the Government have not and will not use arms export permissions as a sweetener for wider commercial dealings between the UK and Libya? That is my question and I would like the Minister to answer.
The human rights situation in Sri Lanka is still very serious and, indeed, deteriorating; there is not only the issue of displaced Tamils but the extremely worrying reports of the Sri Lankan Government's increased use of semi-dictatorial powers, including the ruthless suppression of free media. The UK Government need to look carefully at whether there should be future arms sales to Sri Lanka.
This will be the last report by our four Committees that can be debated in this Parliament. It is for the House as a whole to judge whether we have served it well. If the House concludes that we have done our job properly and effectively, I suggest that that is in no small measure due to the quality of the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Kingswood. The hon. Gentleman has shown, throughout this Parliament, enormous diligence and thoroughness. He has been always inclusive, very patient with us and unfailingly courteous. His chairmanship of the Committee has been exemplary.
3.32 pm
Mike Gapes (Ilford, South) (Lab/Co-op): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley). May I begin by endorsing his remarks, with which I completely concur, about my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry) and his work as Chairman of the Committee in this Parliament?
I want to concentrate on only one area of the report and the Government response. I do so because over many years it has received insufficient attention in debates in this country. It is the situation in Sri Lanka. Recently, at the culmination of the 20-year military conflict between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, otherwise known as the Tamil Tigers, we saw huge demonstrations in the centre of London and diaspora communities all over the world. I declare an interest; large numbers of my constituents are of Sri Lankan Tamil origin and have families in that part of the world.
Given that some representatives of organisations that support the Sri Lankan Government label anybody who raises concerns about Sri Lanka as some kind of mouthpiece for the Tamil Tigers, I want to make it clear
that what I say today is based on my total opposition to terrorism, to the assassination of political leaders, to blowing up buses and to killing children. That is my position whether those acts are carried out by the Tamil Tigers, the Irish Republican Army, Hamas or Hezbollah. That is my view generally around the world. Therefore, I will not take kindly to any criticism after I have made this speech from people who label those who raise such concerns.
Having said that, it is important to say that the report must be put in the context of other reports. I refer to the Foreign Affairs Committee's human rights annual report, which was published recently and had a section on Sri Lanka, to which there was also a Government response. With your permission, Mr. Pope, I intend to refer to both reports.
The Committees on Arms Export Controls concluded that it was appropriate for the Government to continue to assess licences to Sri Lanka on a case-by-case basis. However, after reviewing the evidence and looking at the fact that there seem to have been significant arms sales to Sri Lanka for a large number of years, we recommended a review of all extant licences to Sri Lanka. We called on the Government to give our Committees an assessment of the UK-supplied weapons, ammunition, parts and components used in the conflict either by the Sri Lankan armed forces or by the Tamil Tigers.
We received a response in two forms. The Government response to paragraph 126 of our report said:
"We note the Committees' conclusion...and welcome this endorsement of our approach"-
the case-by-case policy. On the review of exports, the Government response is interesting; it simply refers us to a letter from the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that refers to the FCO review. If we look closely at that letter, we see that it does not answer the question. It simply says that the Government have revoked
"a number of extant export licences in the light of changed circumstances-including replacement components for military helicopters and telecoms equipment."
It does not say that military helicopters or their components supplied by the UK were or were not used in that conflict by the Sri Lankan armed forces. It does not say that telecoms equipment or its components supplied by the UK were or were not used. It is silent on those questions. Will the Minister say clearly whether UK-supplied helicopters, or their components, or telecoms equipment, or its components, were used by the Sri Lankan armed forces in the conflict with the Tamil Tigers?
The same letter refers to press coverage that appeared over the summer. It goes into some detail to explain why licences that had been approved in September 2006 for armoured vehicles and machine gun components, and in February 2006 for semi-automatic pistols, had not been revoked. According to the Government assessment, that equipment appears not to have played any role or any significant role-it is not absolutely clear-in the conflict. If the Government can make an explicit assessment for items that they are not revoking, why can they not explicitly tell us their reasons for revoking licences for other items? We need an answer to that question.
The conflict in Sri Lanka ended nearly six months ago, but for an estimated 280,000 people the conflict is not over. In the light of that, should we still be providing military assistance of any kind to the Government of Sri Lanka? Why are we doing so?
The Foreign Affairs Committee human rights report concluded that the Government were correct, in their response to our report, to include Sri Lanka in next year's report as a "country of concern". That is notwithstanding the regrettable United Nations human rights council vote in May, when it chose not to consider the situation in Sri Lanka-a disgraceful decision. The Government were on the side of the good guys, but unfortunately countries such as China, India, Egypt and others voted by a clear majority not to refer Sri Lanka for consideration on the basis of the human rights situation there, saying that it was an internal matter for Sri Lanka. That is a damaging indication that the UN system, and the new UN human rights council, is not fulfilling aspirations that were set when the council replaced the discredited UN human rights commission a few years ago.
Mr. Hancock: What the hon. Gentleman says has serious implications for the Government. He is in the privileged position of being Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a member of the quartet of Committees. Is he saying that he has had evidence that the Government have given military assistance or allowed military equipment to be passed on to the Sri Lankan authorities? Is training for Sri Lankan military advisers being given in this country, or are UK military advisers acting in that country? His demanding an answer from the Minister leads me to believe that the hon. Gentleman would not have asked the question if he did not know the answer, and from the way that he phrased the question, the answer must be that there had been a situation in which that had happened.
Mike Gapes: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the report. An annexe sets out information sent by the organisation Saferworld, which listed arms exports year by year from the UK to Sri Lanka. We were told by the then Foreign Office Minister, now the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell), that there had been a pause in those exports as a result of the conflict. However, that pause came later-in 2008, not 2006. The issue raised when questioning the Minister, which is reflected in the report, is that the ceasefire established in 2002 was always tentative, breaking down and being significantly eroded; yet in most years from 2002 onwards the Government continued to allow exports of a whole range of weaponry to the Sri Lankan armed forces, including small arms, naval components, helicopter components and so on.
We might make an assessment today that the situation in a particular country is relatively safe with regard to the export of armaments; but within one, two or three years, or perhaps 10 years, those same weapons could be used by the same Government or a successor Government for repression or in an internal conflict, which would be contrary to the intention of the Government's original decision. We must therefore be rigorous. When the Foreign Affairs Committee was discussing the matter with the Foreign Office Minister, I pointed out that we had much tougher rules with regard
to Israel on such matters than we do for Sri Lanka, yet many more people died in the conflict in Sri Lanka than were killed in Gaza.
According to the Government's October response to the Foreign Affairs Committee human rights report, more than 200,000 internally displaced persons are still being held in IDP camps in northern Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Government do not agree with that figure. In a communication dated yesterday-presumably sent in expectation of today's debate-the Sri Lankan Government claim that the number of people remaining in the IDP camps is much lower. They claim that there are 164,338, of whom 151,000 are in what they call zones 0 to 11 and welfare centres, 7,255 in transitional sites and 247 in what they call an elder home, giving a total of 158,990. The others, presumably, are somewhere else.
The Under-Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster), has recently been in Sri Lanka, and has been pressing for the early release of those people. There is no prospect of their being returned to their homes soon; the situation is bleak, given the water supply, the overcrowding and the climate. That is partly because some of those areas have been mined, but also because the Sri Lankan Government seem determined to keep young men and women in screening centres and in detention.
Jeremy Corbyn: Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the excessive detention of large numbers of Tamil people, particularly the non-release of young men, suggests an attempt at the repopulation of areas of Sri Lanka to prevent the continuing concentration of Tamil people in the north and east? That is a gross violation of the rights of those people, who in effect are being imprisoned by the regime in Sri Lanka.
Mr. Greg Pope (in the Chair): Order. Before the hon. Member for Ilford, South continues, may I gently point him back to arms exports to Sri Lanka rather than the general human rights situation there?
Mike Gapes: I do not have any direct evidence to confirm or deny what my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North says, but it is a matter that the Foreign Office and other Departments should take up.
If, as the Government say, there is a culture of impunity in Sri Lanka, and if, as they say, there are serious human rights concerns, is it not appropriate that we should take a much more rigorous approach on future arms sales to the Sri Lankan regime? Until we are given absolute assurances about the human rights position-I almost said cast iron assurances, but that is not the right phrase to use this week-we need to be sure about the early release of all those in the IDP camps who are able to return to their homes. There should also be a policy of national reconciliation, under which the Tamil people in Sri Lanka are treated in a way that minimises the possibility of future conflict in that country.
I will take your advice, Mr. Pope, and not stray further into that subject, but I believe that Sri Lanka highlights a wider issue of British Government policy on arms exports. A country that has a democratic Government but also internal conflict, and where civil
war has been ongoing for more than two decades, must necessarily be treated differently from other countries in the region or the rest of the world.
I will conclude, because I am conscious that other Members wish to contribute and will no doubt comment on other aspects of the report. It has been a pleasure to serve on the Committees on Arms Export Controls and their previous incarnation, the Quadripartite Committee, on which I served as a Member of the Select Committee on Defence. The co-operation between the four Select Committees shows the House of Commons at its best. By working together, we also learn a great deal about how government is not always joined up. It is clear that some Departments are more co-operative with their Select Committees than others and that there are sometimes delays in receiving documentation because it is caught up in the chain between one private office and another. We have also revealed over the years that tone and approach sometimes vary when questioning different Ministers from different Departments.
My message is that just as our Select Committees need to be more joined up when we work thematically, because hunting in packs might be more effective than doing so individually-hopefully, the Liaison Committee will consider that-I hope that the Government will also recognise that they should expedite their response to Committees of the House on cross-departmental issues to improve the effective scrutiny of Government policy.
3.52 pm
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab): I, too, welcome this debate and endorse the report that we are discussing. I will focus on one issue, but before I mention that, I want to put on record my endorsement of what my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry) said and the themes of his speech. He made important points about extraterritoriality, re-export, brokers and the need for a register of UK brokers. One of his most telling points involved the question of end use. He rightly said that unless we get end use right, the rest is all a bit irrelevant, because where arms end up being used is where people die. That is what we must focus on. He was absolutely right to pay tribute to the Government and their work on the need for an arms trade treaty, but he was also right to say that there is more work to be done to bring good intentions into practice.
I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes)-the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee-said about Sri Lanka, and about the role of the Committees and Departments. I certainly agree with what he said in his tribute to the Chair of the Committees on Arms Export Controls.
When the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) began his speech by saying that the Chair of the Committees had said everything that he wanted to say, my heart sank a bit, because it is always great to hear from the right hon. Gentleman. However, although the Chair's speech was well targeted and pertinent, he did not say everything that the right hon. Gentleman wanted to say. We are fortunate to have him on the Committees, with his forensic questioning of Ministers and others who come before us and his ability to get to the point of many issues. He showed those
qualities again today, although I started to worry whether we would get too much information when he began to give my hon. Friend the Minister advice about what he should be doing in his bath. I hope that, in our next evidence session, the right hon. Gentleman does not get involved in forensic questioning on that subject, as it might lead us into rather dangerous territory.
I shall focus on the question of exports to Israel, particularly in the light of the conflict in Gaza. It is an issue on which I might be in danger of being typecast. I should declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Palestine and as a member of the Select Committee on International Development, which has discussed arms exports to Israel not only with the Committees on Arms Export Controls, and in work with other Committees, but in our own reports and inquiries. The humanitarian position facing the peoples of the occupied territories has been an important part of our work over the past few years.
It is not surprising-indeed, it is right-that we should spend some time today considering that issue. Apart from anything else, it is topical. We are debating it in the context of the report at the same time that the United Nations General Assembly is debating the report prepared by Judge Richard Goldstone on the allegations of war crimes committed during the conflict in Gaza earlier this year. The conclusion of his inquiry is that there is evidence that war crimes were committed in Gaza by Hamas as well as Israel.
That means a lot to me, as I led a delegation to Gaza and southern Israel this February to see the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead. We were one of the first international parliamentary delegations to the area after the conflict, and certainly the first UK parliamentary delegation. Nobody could have participated in that visit and seen what we saw-the destruction of homes and the aftermath of that conflict-without feeling a powerful moral responsibility to bear witness, when they returned, to what they had seen and, perhaps most importantly, to try to do something about it, in terms of both accountability and ensuring that such a thing never happens again.
About 1,400 Palestinians died, many of them civilians, in the course of Operation Cast Lead. During that period, 13 Israelis also died, three of them civilians. We owe it to all of them to ensure that we do what we can. It is not simply a historical matter of what happened in December 2008 and January 2009. Those events were preceded by an ongoing blockade of Gaza and continuing occupation of the west bank. Israel would also argue that they were preceded by rocket attacks on Sderot and other towns in southern Israel.
Since the events of December 2008 and January 2009, the blockade has continued, as has the violence. To illustrate how important it is that we do the right thing in relation to arms export controls, I draw the Minister's attention to the latest report from the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied territories. The report says that in the past week,
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