UK arms sales scrutiny is weak. Independent Scotland could do better

As I said in last week’s column, a major part of a state’s security is its approach to defence. I would argue that due to our geography in the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap in the North Atlantic, we are simply too strategic to go dark. Membership of the European Union and Nato are the two building blocks upon which an independent Scotland’s security will be based upon. An effective armed forces needs to be well resourced and therefore an effective domestic defence industry is a necessity.

Indeed, as I have argued in the past, the defence industry in Scotland has a key role to play in not only our national security but also our economic security.

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Companies such as BAE, Thales and Babcock not only produce essential components for our armed forces but are also a major source of employment in Scotland. As a recent Building A New Scotland paper by the Scottish Government noted, the defence sector added £3.2 billion to the Scottish economy and had more than 33,000 direct employees (including 1500 apprentices) in 2022 alone.

Equally, the sector provides a vital role in the research and development of dual-use technology which can have benefits for our day-to-day lives. To give one such example we all rely on every day: the foundations of the internet were laid by research and development by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.

As the old line goes though, with great power comes great responsibility. We are talking about an industry which produces weapons with the capacity to kill both combatants and, sadly too often, civilians. As such, while we should be supportive of our defence sector, it is also important that governments provide sufficient oversight, transparency and scrutiny to ensure that the least possible harm is caused.

In this regard the UK is woefully inadequate. I raised the point in this paper back in 2016 when I sat on the European Union’s foreign affairs committee that arms sales to Saudi Arabia should be halted given their use against civilians in Yemen.

In the years since, that conflict has left two-thirds of the Yemeni population (21.6 million people) in dire need of humanitarian assistance and protection, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The UK bears some responsibility for this due to its failure to limit arms exports.

A fundamental failure of the UK’s arms export regime is not only who it exports to but also that there is limited parliamentary scrutiny. The House of Commons Committee on Arms Exports Controls (CAEC) acknowledges its own limitations in its most recent report, saying “CAEC is not a versatile model for scrutiny” and: “The Government has stated that it recognises the importance of CAEC’s scrutiny role; but its record in submitting itself for the level of scrutiny which the House might expect has fallen some way short.”

Given that it is an ad hoc committee composed of members from four separate committees and has barely met over recent years, this is unsurprising.

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The SNP have done some work to try to tackle this. Back in 2020, I brought forward a bill which would have brought the UK more in line with the Belgian model of arms export control, with parliamentary oversight in both the UK’s parliament and across the devolved parliaments and assemblies.

The same bill would also have updated the UK’s policy on drones, as well as lethal autonomous weapons systems, both of which have been increasingly used in conflicts around the world.

Equally, along with my friends Stewart McDonald MP and Chris Law MP – who were the SNP’s respective spokespersons on defence and international development at the time – a key part of our Protection Of Civilians paper published in December 2022 was that “Scottish defence exports should not exacerbate instability or be used to commit or facilitate violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws”.

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To enable the Scottish Parliament to ensure this, we argued that not only should there be full transparency and effective parliamentary scrutiny of all aspects of arms exports but that there should also be an independent assessment which examined the likely consequences of arms sales to human rights priority countries.

This assessment would in turn also provide advice to the Government before arms trade licences are granted. What we have been proposing isn’t rocket science; indeed it is standard practice in other countries, as the Belgian example above highlights.

Yet the UK remains stubborn and rigid in its approach to arms exports and their impact on human rights. With independence, we will be able to chart our own course and ensure that there is sufficient transparency and accountability when it comes to Scotland’s defence exports. It is needed now more than ever.