§ Mr. MeacherTo ask the President of the Board of Trade how many export licence applications were referred to Ministers for(a) Iran and (b) Iraq for each year from 1980; and of those for each country in each year how many were (a) granted and (b) refused.
§ Mr. NeedhamNo reliable information is available from 1980–84. Export licence applications for Iran from 1985 to 1992, and for Iraq from 1985 to August 1990, were considered by the interdepartmental committee—IDC—which consisted of representatives from the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. All applications for the IDC are referred to FCO and MOD Ministers to give final approval to the military, atomic and nuclear list goods. Final approval for industrial list goods rests with the DTI unless the FCO has overriding political considerations.
DTI Ministers become involved only if there is a policy issue which needs to be resolved. In 1992 DTI procedures were changed, and all IDC cases are now referred to DTI Ministers.
Since August 1990, as only humanitarian exports have received exports for Iraq, no licence applications have been referred to DTI Ministers.
§ Mr. MeacherTo ask the President of the Board of Trade how many export licence applications for(a) Iran and (b) Iraq were received for each year from 1980; and how many in each year for each country were (i) granted, (ii) refused, (iii) withdrawn or (iv) cancelled.
§ Mr. NeedhamExport licence applications before 1985 have not been preserved, following a regular programme of destruction of routine documents.
From 1985 to 1992 export licence applications for Iran were processed by the interdepartmental committee—IDC—which was composed of representatives from the Department of Trade and Industry, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence. The most accurate figures available are as follows:
From 1985 to August 1990, export licence applications for Iraq were processed by the IDC. The figures are as follows:
purposes. Applications for licences are considered carefully on a case-by-case basis, not only in the United 265W Kingdom, but by the UN sanctions committee in New York which has, since October 1992, have issued letters of authorisation for each export. The figures are:
11990 1991 1992 Received 117 423 1,043 Approved 7 342 696 Refused 18 21 154 Pending at year end 92 60 193 1 August-December.