‘The UK Government needs to be held to account over arms sales’
Former MP Ann Clwyd believes the confirmation of new military arms sales to Saudi Arabia shows parliamentary scrutiny has broken down, as chief reporter Martin Shipton reports
ANN Clwyd has never been known for reticence, and despite retiring from Parliament at last December’s General Election she remains determined to raise concerns about injustice, especially where there are breaches of human rights.
At present she’s attempting to rouse public interest in a scandal which she rightly says has had too little attention in the UK.
It’s about the issue of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which has intervened in a civil war in Yemen in which more than 100,000 have died since 2015.
It’s difficult to describe the Saudi regime as anything but a brutal dictatorship under whose rule human rights barely exist.
The murder and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 provided a painfully graphic illustration of the regime’s capabilities.
Yet, the UK has for many years dodged the fact that its relationship with Saudi Arabia contravenes any pretence that it has an ethical foreign policy.
As a member for more than 15 years of the Parliamentary select committee that scrutinises arms sales – known rather clumsily as CAEC (Committees on Arms Exports Controls), Ms Clwyd, pictured right, knows more than most about Britain’s arms deals with the Saudis.
This week, after reading that further licences had been granted by International Trade Secretary Liz Truss for the export of arms that could be used in Yemen, the former Cynon Valley MP tweeted: “So the government is to resume arms sales to #Saudi Arabia – on what basis? What has happened to CAEC the select committee monitoring arms exports which I served on for 15 years – gagged?”
In fact it turned out that it was only on Monday this week that CAEC had its first meeting since the General Election to elect a new chairman: Mark Garnier, the Conservative MP for Wyre Forest, who is a former International Trade Minister himself. Rather oddly, a link that was meant to provide a list of the committee’s members connected to a message said there were “no current committee members”.
Ms Clwyd said: “The committee should have been sitting before now. It’s well over six months since the General Election, and the government needs to be held to account.
“The bombing being carried out by Saudi Arabia has killed many thousands of people, including many children, and there is clear evidence that arms bought from Britain have been used. It’s an absolute disgrace that the sale of arms to Saudi has been resumed.”
The former Labour MP for Cynon Valley was especially angered by the new weapon sales in light of the UK Government’s admission that weapons from the UK had been used in Yemen, albeit, claimed Ms Truss on behalf of the government, on isolated occasions.
Earlier this week, when it became clear that new export licences had been granted for arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the UK Government quietly announced that it was no longer pursuing to the Supreme Court an appeal against a judgement that it had awarded earlier arms export licences for Saudi Arabia unlawfully. The case had been brought by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.
Since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015, the UK has licensed £5.3bn worth of arms to the Saudi regime, including £2.7bn worth of “ML10” licences for aircraft, helicopters and drones and £2.5bn “ML4” licences for grenades, bombs, missiles and “countermeasures”.
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said of the UK Government’s decision to resume the supply of arms to Saudi Arabia despite abandoning the appeal to the Supreme Court: “This is a disgraceful and morally bankrupt decision. The Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and the government itself admits that UK-made arms have played a central role in the bombing. We will be considering this new decision with our lawyers, and will be exploring all options available to challenge it.
“The evidence shows a clear pattern of heinous and appalling breaches of international humanitarian law by a coalition which has repeatedly targeted civilian gatherings such as weddings, funerals, and market places. The government claims that these are isolated incidents, but how many hundreds of isolated incidents would it take for the Government to stop supplying the weaponry?
“This exposes the rank hypocrisy at the heart of UK foreign policy. Only yesterday the government was talking about the need to sanction human rights abusers, but now it has shown that it will do everything it can to continue arming and supporting one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world.”
Ms Truss said the UK Government had completed a review of how arms export licences were granted in order to comply with an earlier court ruling suspending sales.
She said that while some “credible incidents of concern” related to Saudi forces’ conduct had been classified as “possible” breaches of international humanitarian law (IHL), the UK Government viewed these as “isolated incidents”.
Ms Truss added: “The incidents which have been assessed to be possible violations of IHL occurred at different times, in different circumstances and for different reasons.
“The undertaking that my predecessor gave to the court – that we would not grant any new licences for the export of arms or military equipment to Saudi Arabia for possible use in Yemen
– falls away.”