§ 22. Mr. MackinlayTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the steps he is taking to control the hiring of mercenaries and marketing of small arms(a) within and (b) via the United Kingdom. [112890]
§ Mr. HainThe Government deplore the use, financing and recruitment of mercenaries. We are committed to publishing a Green Paper on mercenary activity by November 2000.
On small arms, the UK has some of the most stringent controls on firearms in the world. In order to sell, transfer or expose for sale any firearm by way of business or trade, a person must be registered with the police as a firearms dealer. All applications for licences to export small arms from the UK are rigorously assessed against our national export licensing criteria and those in the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports. We will not issue export licences where there is a clearly identifiable risk that the small arms might be used for internal repression or international aggression.