HC Deb 26 January 1996 vol 270 cc425-6W
Mr. David Nicholson

To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he has anything to add to his answers of 19 June 1995,Official Report, column 59 and 14 July 1995, Official Report, column 797, about BMARC. [12681]

Mr. Oppenheim

The work of licence recovery, examination and cataloguing undertaken since the start of the BMARC affair has led to the identification of a number of export licence applications whose existence was not known at the time of the answers given on 19 June 1995,Official Report, column 59, and 14 July 1995, Official Report, column 796.

The problem of retrieving export licence documentation is complicated by the large volumes of papers involved, and the fact that the archived papers are not stored by company name. In order to retrieve papers it is necessary first to use various databases to identify the individual applications made by any given company; then to establish the individual reference numbers relating to the applications concerned; and finally to use these to identify the relevant archive locations. It is only following these steps that the papers can be called back and inspected.

While verifying and cataloguing the new findings, an unrelated search of licence application papers carried out towards the end of last year showed some weaknesses in the systems used for indexing applications. A wider search was then put in hand, with the aim of seeing whether the identification and recovery of any of BMARC's licence applications might have been hindered by similar problems. This further work led to the discovery of an additional batch of applications.

In the light of all these findings, it is necessary to update the figures provided in the answers given on 19 June 1995 and 14 July 1995. The figure for the number of export licence applications made by BMARC—including the period when the company was known as Astra Defence Systems—for which papers have been recovered from my Department's archives and which were dealt with under the military list between 1985 and 1990, should be increased in total by 43 over the figure which was given on 14 July 1995. The breakdown by year is as follows:

Year Number
1985 148
1986 133
1987 186
1988 134
1989 105
1990 174
Total 880

In addition, over the same period, a further five cases have been identified of index records apparently relating to BMARC export licence applications, but where the absence of any surviving documentation makes it impossible to confirm this.

I am bringing these new findings to the attention of the Trade and Industry Committee in view of its current inquiry into the granting licences to BMARC for the export of naval guns to Singapore.