Scrutiny of arms export controls (2013)

Scrutiny of arms export controls (2013)
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committees on Arm Export Controls
Publisher: Stationery Office
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2013-07-17
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780215060068

The 2013 Report of the Committees on Arms Export Controls (CAEC) scrutinizes the Government's arms exports and arms control policies and practices in unprecedented depth and detail.The scrutiny encompasses the Government's quarterly information on arms export licences, arms export control legislation and procedures, organisational and operational issues, Arms Export Agreements, Arms Control Agreements, arms export control policies, and arms exports to Countries of concern. There are over 3,000 Government approved export licences, worth more than £12 billion, for strategic controlled goods going to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's 27 countries of human rights concern. Five other countries not on the FCO's list are also covered, including Argentina, which is of concern because of its policy towards the Falkland Islands. The Committees adhere to their previous recommendation that the Government should apply significantly more cautious judgements when considering arms export licence applications for goods to authoritarian regimes "which might be used to facilitate internal repression" in contravention of the Government's stated policy.

Scrutiny of arms export controls (2012)

Scrutiny of arms export controls (2012)
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Business, Innovation and Skills Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2012-07-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780215046796

The joint committee is known as the Committees on Arms Export Controls, formerly the Quadripartite Committee. The UK strategic export controls annual report 2010 was published as HC 1402, session 2010-12 (ISBN 9780102973662)

HC 551 - The FCO's Human Rights Work in 2013

HC 551 - The FCO's Human Rights Work in 2013
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Foreign Affairs Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2014
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0215078861

The FCO designated 28 countries of concern in its 2013 report, where it judged the gravity of the human rights abuses to be so severe that a particular focus should be applied. The Committee concentrated attention on three of these countries: Sri Lanka, Burma, and Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Favourable trade concessions to the EU market should be removed from Sri Lanka if the Government of Sri Lanka continues to deny the OHCHR investigation team access into the country. The Government should advocate re-imposition of sanctions by the EU if there is no improvement in the human rights situation in Burma. The human rights of Israeli, Palestinian and Bedouin citizens living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories continue to be of serious concern to the UK.

HC 605 - The FCO's Performance and Finances in 2013-14

HC 605 - The FCO's Performance and Finances in 2013-14
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Foreign Affairs Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2015
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0215081722

The cuts imposed on the FCO since 2010 have been severe and have gone beyond just trimming fat: capacity now appears to be being damaged. If further cuts are imposed, the UK's diplomatic imprint and influence would probably reduce, and the Government would need to roll back some of its foreign policy objectives. The FCO's budget is a tiny element of Government expenditure, but the FCO makes disproportionate contribution to policy making at the highest level, including decisions on whether to commit to military action. The next Government needs to protect future FCO budgets under the next Spending Review.

Government Foreign Policy Towards the United States - HC 695

Government Foreign Policy Towards the United States - HC 695
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Foreign Affairs Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
Total Pages: 70
Release: 2014-04-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0215070585

This reports finds that the Coalition Government has developed in public a more mature and measured relationship with the US, although there has been no fundamental change in the nature of the tie. The Committee declares the relationship to be in good health. In particular, the Committee said that it was not aware of any evidence that the House of Commons vote in August 2013 against potential military action in Syria had damaged the UK's relationship with the US. Rather, the Committee concluded that the episode illustrated general features of the UK-US relationship, namely that developments in the UK could influence US policy; and that the underlying tie was resilient. Today's publication follows up a report produced by the previous Foreign Affairs Committee at the end of the last Parliament, which recommended that the UK Government should adopt a more hard-headed and less deferential approach to the US. The Coalition Government seemed to have taken up this recommendation. The Committee criticises the UK Government's poor provision of information about the UK-US Joint Strategy Board, which was created during President Obama's State Visit to the UK in May 2011. Among strategic issues that it considered, the Committee agreed with the Government that the proposed EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could have significant positive strategic impact for the UK and the transatlantic relationship.

OECD Development Co-operation Peer Reviews: United Kingdom 2014

OECD Development Co-operation Peer Reviews: United Kingdom 2014
Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 123
Release: 2014-12-17
Genre:
ISBN: 9264226575

This peer review of United Kingdom reviews its development policies and programmes. It assesses not just the performance of its development co-operation agency, but also policy and implementation.

Empire of Guns

Empire of Guns
Author: Priya Satia
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 569
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0735221871

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade "A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.

House of Commons - Defence Committee: Towards the Next Defence and Security Review: Part One - HC 197

House of Commons - Defence Committee: Towards the Next Defence and Security Review: Part One - HC 197
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Defence Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
Total Pages: 98
Release: 2014-01-07
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780215066039

In this report the Defence Committee argues that the capabilities of HM Forces should be determined not by budgetary constraints but by a fully-developed strategy which defines the position in the world that the UK wants to adopt. The report urges the government to produce a comprehensive national security strategy in the first place and let that document, along with the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), direct the next Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). The allocation of resources will be based on national spending priorities set to meet the nation's security needs. There is a danger of defence becoming a matter of discretionary spending. Decisions about the expeditionary capability that the UK retains must be based on proper strategic decision making about the UK's place in the world and not simply flow from the "horse-trading" that surrounds the CSR process. The report points to a lack of understanding amongst the public of why we have Armed Forces. General sympathy and support for the Armed Forces must not obscure a hard-headed understanding of what they are for. The process of producing the next Defence and Security Review is the opportunity to engage the public in understanding the future of the Armed Forces. The Committee has very real concerns about the focus that will be given to the number of asymmetric security threats to the UK, such as from terrorism or cyber attack. The Government must think more strategically about the resilience of the country's critical infrastructure and recovery following an attack.

House of Commons - Defence Committee: UK Armed Forces Personnel and the Legal Framework for Future Operations - HC 931

House of Commons - Defence Committee: UK Armed Forces Personnel and the Legal Framework for Future Operations - HC 931
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Defence Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2014-04-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780215070654

UK military personnel as individuals are properly subject to UK and international law wherever they serve and there are processes to ensure scrutiny of their individual behaviour and legal compliance but, in the last ten years, legal judgments in the UK and elsewhere against the MoD have raised a number of legal, ethical and practical questions for the Armed Forces and their conduct of operations. The growing number of such challenges is leading to a feeling of disquiet amongst military personnel and informed commentators about the extent and scale of judicial involvement in military matters.There are two aspects of the use of human rights law in military operations that most concern the Committee: The extraterritorial application of the European Convention on Human Rights has allowed claims in the UK courts from foreign nationals. However, the requirement for full and detailed investigations of every death resulting from an armed conflict is putting a significant burden on the MoD and the Armed Forces. Secondly, there has been a failure of the accepted principle of combat immunity, most recently evidenced in the Supreme Court majority judgment in June 2013 allowing families and military personnel to bring negligence cases against the MoD for injury or death. This seems to us to risk the judicialisation of war and to be incompatible with the accepted contract entered into by Service personnel and the nature of soldiering.