For 25 years parliamentary scrutiny of UK arms exports was conducted by a unique and often dysfunctional combination of departmental select committees: the CAEC. Suddenly, it’s only a matter for Business and Trade. Anna Stavrianakis analyses what’s gone wrong with parliamentary oversight and how, when it is most needed, it can be put right.
Observers of the UK arms trade got a shock on 23 January when they received a media advisory informing them that parliamentary scrutiny of arms exports was changing shape. The Business and Trade Committee has decided to dissolve the quadripartite Committees on Arms Exports Controls (CAEC) – made up of the Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development and Business and Trade Committees – and take the lead on parliamentary scrutiny itself.
The case against CAEC
There is much to agree with in the report’s diagnosis of the problems faced by the CAEC. It is largely the “tenacity and vigorous efforts of successive Chairs” that drove increases in transparency and accountability. In particular, Sir John Stanley and Chris White – both Conservative MPs – were exemplary in their independence from government agendas. The CAEC super-committee model, in which each of the four constituent committees delegate members to attend, “is not a versatile model for scrutiny”, with disproportionately high quoracy requirements and ongoing problems of attendance, with meetings being postponed, cancelled or curtailed.
The Government has treated the CAEC poorly – or as the report puts it more diplomatically, “its record in submitting itself for the level of scrutiny which the House might expect has fallen some way short.” The Government has refused to send ministers to give evidence, engaged in foot-dragging on dates, made “meagre” written submissions and provided “slow, inconsistent” and poor-quality engagement.
CAEC’s record has indeed become dismal. The committees last met in November 2022, holding a one-off, non-inquiry session on export controls in relation to Russia. Their inquiry on developments in export controls took evidence during 2021 and belatedly published an anodyne report in October 2022. Their inquiry into UK arms exports in 2019 opened in February 2021, published a report in October 2022, to which the Government responded in January 2023. Hardly the model of responsive, timely scrutiny and engagement.
The last meaningful thematic inquiry conducted by the CAEC was the Yemen inquiry that opened in 2016 and ended in disarray, with disagreement over whether to recommend a suspension of arms export licensing to the Saudi-led coalition led to a split in the committees and a leak of a draft report to Newsnight. The 2016 Arms Trade Treaty inquiry took evidence but published no report. The 2016 defence export promotion inquiry didn’t even get as far as taking evidence.
In sum, there has for eight years been no meaningful or effective scrutiny of UK arms export policy. In that time, the war in Yemen has been kept off the CAEC agenda despite ongoing allegations of violations of the laws of war; the war in Ukraine provoked a step-change in UK arms exports; and the Israeli assault on Gaza has been found by the International Court of Justice to plausibly be genocidal. Not much to see here, then.
Contraction amidst controversy
The timing of the announcement, right in the middle of what should be a massive arms exports controversy and at the start of a judicial review into UK arms exports to Israel, risks becoming a distraction from the meaningful work of scrutiny. Indeed, the civil society coalition of NGOs working on the arms trade had already written to the CAEC committee chairs urging them to meet, elect a new chair and conduct an inquiry into Israel – and received no response.
To their credit, the CAEC themselves tried to remedy their dysfunction arrangements in January 2023. The Chairs of the four constituent committees and the CAEC Chair Mark Garnier wrote to the Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt, requesting that the Government support turning the CAEC into a standalone parliamentary Committee, which would mean a dedicated membership and its own Chair. Penny Mordaunt responded that she was “not currently convinced that the change you have requested is needed”.
Rather than working to retain the best elements of the CAEC, such as they are – inter-committee collaboration and shared expertise to mirror the inter-departmental nature of arms export licensing – the Business and Trade Committee has decided to take charge, as the Committee scrutinising the practice of the government department ultimately responsible for arms export licensing. Some of their reasoning makes intuitive sense: the quoracy demands would be lower and it is feasible that the Government might be more respectful to the Committee responsible for a named department. But the suggestion that joint reports are still possible, and that other committees can take the lead on issues of relevance to their departments, seems like pie in the sky. If the committees cannot agree now, they are unlikely to agree in future without the CAEC structure to bind them together. In diagnosing a problem, the Business and Trade Committee has opted for the wrong remedy.
The politics of scrutiny
The Business and Trade Committee has stated its commitment “to continue to engage with CAEC’s stakeholders” and its intention for the new arrangements to provide “an opportunity to engage with a larger number of individuals and organisations with an interest in these matters.” This wording makes me nervous, not least because there was no consultation with civil society stakeholders about this change to the structure of scrutiny. It would be interesting to know whether any industry or other stakeholders were consulted or even informed. The current problems with scrutiny are a symptom of the decline of Parliament and the increased Government willingness to treat it with contempt that we have seen under the Conservatives. But they are also a symptom of the pro-export orientation of the state, which cuts across both the Labour and Conservative Parties. The problem of scrutiny is primarily political.
There is a challenge of where to locate meaningful restraint and accompany scrutiny. The remit of the Department of Business and Trade is to promote business, and thus the scrutiny function of its parliamentary Committee is conducted in that light. Indeed, the Committee’s report is framed around the value of arms export orders, arms exports’ contribution to the economy, and jobs. There is no mention of the extensive government subsidy on arms production, the increasing asset manager ownership of British industry and other inconvenient facts about the role of the arms industry in the economy.
It is unclear, however, where would be a better location for export licensing. The Foreign. Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is a weak alternative – witness the Foreign Secretary deciding to recommend ongoing exports to Israel even after his lawyers pointed out the risks to international humanitarian law. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is also not a good option: the Defence Committee noted its concern that “a thriving UK defence industrial base needs all the more to be a prime consideration in export control decisions.” None of this bodes well for meaningful restraint of arms exports driven by consideration of their role in war, violence and global insecurities.
Post-election scrutiny
2024 is a general election year. It remains to be seen how practicable the Business and Trade Committee’s decision is. Will the change actually be implemented and, if so, with what resources? What declarations of registered interests do current and future Business and Trade Committee members have, and how will this affect their record on regulatory issues?
The Labour Party’s commitment to review the arms export licensing system – itself a backtrack on Keir Starmer’s 2020 statement that arms sales to Saudi Arabia should be suspended – opens a potential avenue for revisiting the model of parliamentary scrutiny as well as government decision-making. In a context where the ICJ ruling on Gaza means the political and legal challenges are only going to increase, and any potential incoming Labour government is doing all it can to close the distance between itself and the Conservatives, Parliament needs to find both its voice and its backbone.
The views and opinions expressed in posts on the Rethinking Security blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the network and its broader membership.
Image Credit: Dave Valler via iStock. The Houses of Parliament, Westminster.
