Politics

Arms trade: Where are British weapons going?

The government licenses the sale of weapons to 13 countries of concern, including Russia, Syria and Israel

July 23, 2014
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Russia, Iran, Israel: the past few weeks have seen these and other powerful and militant states stirring up violence across the globe.

Perfect timing, then, for the House of Commons Committees on Arms Export Controls (CAEC) to release a hefty report demanding that the government explain why we still allow the supply of arms to these and other nations with questionable human rights records.

In general, the report says our arms export controls have undergone a “substantive weakening,” because where the government used to refuse licenses on the grounds of “concern that the goods might be used for internal repression,” now they will only refuse a licence if there is a “clear risk that the items might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international law” (emphasis mine).

The full report is available to download here, but here are four key things we learned from it:

To Russia with a lack of scrutiny

This section of the report has dominated headlines this morning. The government still reportedly has licences in place which allow the export of arms to Russia, worth a total of £132m . You might be picturing missile launchers and RPGs, which isn't quite right: think more body armour and components for a variety of weapons and military technology. Still, David Cameron said in the commons on Monday that the government had imposed an absolute arms embargo against the country, and on 19th March the government saw fit to suspend a total of 34 licenses for export of arms there. Given the scale of international outrage levelled against Russia following claims that it may have supplied weapons to the separatist rebels who probably shot down a passenger plane in Ukraine last week, the government is likely to want to clear this up as soon as possible.

Right to buy

These Russian revelations actually come within the context of a wider section of the report, which reveals that the government still issues licenses allowing the export of arms to a total of 13 out of the 28 states on the Foreign Office's own list of “countries of human rights concern.” These include Israel, Libya, Iran and Syria, who haven't exactly been keeping a low international profile lately. Goods supplied to these countries include shotguns and assault rifles, ammo, water cannon and a variety of communications and strategic technologies.

Looking back in anger

One interesting criticism is the charge that the government's arms export policy is essentially one of “reacting to events,” rather than anticipating them. The committee recognises that the government often takes action to suspend licences to countries of concern. But the CAEC says the government should take more care when granting licences to potentially dodgy countries in the first place. The report points out that the government has had to suspend or revoke a total of 318 licences in the last two and a half years. The committee recommends the government “apply significantly more cautious judgements” when considering arms export licences.

Terror on the high seas

Buried somewhere in the middle of the report is a paragraph which suggests a desire to combat piracy is basically a licence to buy as many guns as you want. The report is highly critical of the fact that Ministers and officials from the business department were unaware, until the CAEC told them, of the volume of weapons supplied to private security companies to counter piracy. Since you ask, that's 34,377 assault rifles, 5,100 shotguns, 1,401 sniper rifles and thousands of other small arms. They also pointed out that in 2012 and 2013 the Business Department gave licence to ship about 55 times as many anti-piracy weapons as were actually shipped in that period.