§ Mr. RedwoodTo ask the President of the Board of Trade what changes to guidelines on arms sales have been made by her Department to reflect the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's ethical foreign policy. [41158]
§ Mrs. Beckett[holding answer 8 May 1998]Licences to export arms and other goods controlled for strategic reasons are issued by the President of the Board of Trade and the Export Control Organisation of the Department of Trade and Industry is the licensing authority. All relevant individual licence applications are circulated by the DTI to other Government Departments with an interest, as determined by them in line with their policy responsibilities. These include the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development.
The criteria announced by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on 28 July 1997, Official Report, columns 26–29, are used when considering all individual applications for licences to export goods entered in Part III of Schedule 1 to the Export of Goods (Control) Order 1994. The criteria are also applied to licence applications for the export of dual-use goods when there are grounds for believing that the end user of such goods will be the armed forces or the internal security forces of the recipient country.
The criteria are not applied mechanistically and judgment is always required. Individual applications are considered case by case.