BBC News, Jonathan
Marcus, BBC diplomatic correspondent, 17 July 2013
Related
Stories
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| Arms licences to Sri Lanka included pistols, small arms ammunition and 600 assault rifles |
The House
of Commons Committees on Arms Export Controls says the value of the existing
export licences to the 27 countries in question exceeds £12bn.
This
includes significant sales to China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Sales to
Sri Lanka raise "very serious questions", the report adds.
The
committees consist of four select committees meeting and working together:
business, defence, foreign affairs, and international development.
The
chairman, Conservative MP Sir John Stanley, said he was astonished at the scale
and value of the licences.
'Clear
risk'
There were,
for example, more than 60 licences for Iran, including components for military
electronics and what is described as "equipment employing
cryptography".
This
appears to be a catch-all term which encompasses a variety of equipment, much
of it in the telecommunications sector.
Similar
equipment figured prominently in China's £1.4bn worth of licences, which also
included some small arms ammunition, even though there is a European Union arms
embargo on Beijing.
Sir John
told the BBC that in his view the EU embargo "was not drafted as widely as
many people would wish".
Arms
licences to Sri Lanka included pistols, small arms ammunition and approval for
the sale of 600 assault rifles, which he said "raised very serious
questions".
The report
urges the UK government to look again at all the 134 existing UK export
licences to Egypt to ensure that they do not breach the current policy, which
is not to issue licences where it feels "there is a clear risk that the
proposed export might provoke or prolong regional or internal conflicts, or
which might be used to facilitate internal repression".
The
committees also want more detail on a sales licence granted to Israel earlier
this year for the purchase of £7.7bn worth of what is described as
"equipment employing cryptography and software for equipment employing
cryptography".
This one
licence granted in February 2013 accounted for well over 50% of the value of
all existing licences to the countries in question.
The
committees also comment on military sales to Argentina.
The UK has
adopted a restrictive policy for such sales and the committees note that:
"It is reprehensible that the UK government is unwilling to lobby other
(friendly) governments to make the same changes in (their) arms export policies
towards Argentina."
The
committees have asked the government to report back and give assurances that
arms export licences to all the countries mentioned are in tune with policy.
The report
concludes: "Whilst the promotion of arms exports and the upholding of
human rights are both legitimate government policies, the government would do
well to acknowledge that there is an inherent conflict between strongly
promoting arms exports to authoritarian regimes whilst strongly criticising
their lack of human rights at the same time, rather than claiming, as the
government continues to do, that these two policies 'are mutually
reinforcing'."
'Information
security'
"Cryptography"
is a term that appears frequently in the arms licensing data.
It appears
to refer to technology which can be applied to a variety of tasks,
encapsulating the "dual-use" problem - technology which can be used
for peaceful purposes but which equally could have a security or military role.
A
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills spokeswoman said cryptography
was "a means of ensuring information security, ie preventing unauthorised
access to data".
There was,
she explained, "a huge range of commercial applications that use
cryptography, from public mobile telephony, online shopping and banking,
through to providing secure networks for businesses and governments. Commercial
applications account for the vast majority of licences under the cryptography
category."
These
commercial applications, she stressed did "not raise any concerns with
respect to internal repression or conflict".
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