Clause 15 - Short title, etc
Export Control Bill
10:00 am
Dr Vincent Cable (Twickenham, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment No. 26, in page 8, line 22, after `overseas territory', insert
`no more than 40 days after this Act is granted Royal Assent'.
Several of the amendments proposed concern issues of substance, and I would not necessarily expect the Government to agree with them. However, this point is technical and is in the spirit of the legislation. It arises from an anomaly that is created by the status of the Isle of Man. We have a customs union agreement with the Isle of Man, so trade flows freely and we cannot exercise export controls over products exported from the mainland to the Isle of Man. However, for historical reasons, the Isle of Man has its own export licensing regime. One can immediately see the potential for anomalies to arise.
The Government would normally deal with such anomalies by bringing in an Order in Council to make the provisions of a Bill of this kind binding upon territories like the Isle of Man and we would expect them to do that. However, the process might be slow or the Government might be forgetful, so the potential exists for a substantial time lag between legislation being enacted here and its becoming operational in the Isle of Man. That is not a theoretical problem. It is a very practical one, which was revealed in an extremely embarrassing episode that took place during a previous Parliament. Hon. Members may remember the appalling events that took place in Rwanda. The popular view of the Rwandan genocide was that it was a very low-tech operation, on an appalling scale, in which enormous numbers of people were butchered with machetes. It was not fully understood at the time that the authority of the Rwandan Government was upheld by more sophisticated weaponry. That was how they controlled the country.
Some of that sophisticated weaponry originated with arms brokers, some of whom were based in this country. In one case a company called Miltec, registered in the Isle of Man, was involved in the transshipment of weapons via what was then called the Democratic Republic of Congo. That was not subject to UN arms embargoes, so it was a conduit for armaments. There is little doubt that, entirely unintentionally, this country became indirectly complicit in the Rwandan Government's activities.
To be fair to the Government of the time, that fact was recognised as extremely embarrassing, and they instituted an inquiry into the matter. An exchange that summarises the outcome of those discussions took place on 21 January 1997, when the present Deputy Speaker, the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir A. Haselhurst), put a written question to the then Mr. Malcolm Rifkind about how the problem had arisen and what lessons could be learned from it. I shall not quote the whole answer, which is quite extended, but the key points made by Mr. Rifkind, which relate to my amendment, were that the UN arms embargo with respect to Rwanda was not implemented in the Crown dependency and that there was also a delay in its implementation in the dependent territories. The time lag was crucial in providing an opportunity for the brokers to operate.
Mr. Rifkind and the Government of the time established an interdepartmental Committee to analyse the problem, and it concluded that there had been a lack of consistency in implementing embargoes in the UK, its dependent territories and the Crown dependencies. That Committee, which reported at the end of 1996, recommended specifically:
``All future binding UN arms embargoes should be applied promptly in the UK and in Crown dependencies and the dependent territories, in accordance with HMG's international obligations.'' —[Official Report, 21 January 1997; Vol. 288, c. 537.]
My amendment is intended simply to give force and urgency to that recommendation, which was not controversial. Everyone accepted that it was an entirely sensible reaction to the Miltec scandal. We have suggested that a 40-day limit should be put on bringing forward the Order in Council that would make the legislation effective in the Isle of Man. The period could be 30 or 50 days; it is the spirit of the amendment that I want the Government to understand.