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John Battle MP backs Arms Trade Bill

John co-sponsored an Arms Trade Bill put before the House of Commons this month to limit the trade in small arms.

“Small arms – rifles, pistols, and so on – are all too often readily available and inexpensive in many of the world’s poorest countries. They fuel war and instability where people’s lives are already hardest, and I have seen the effects of them for myself. Oxfam and Amnesty International have proposed a draft Treaty on International Arms Transfers, aimed at clamping down on exports of cheap weapons like these, and this Bill proposes putting the draft treaty into law in the UK.

“The Bill does not have enough Parliamentary time to become law, but it keeps this vital issue of everyday death and destruction spread by the international proliferation of low-tech, cheap small arms on the agenda, and I will continue campaigning for an international treaty on it, along the lines of the international treaty banning landmines,” he added.

John is a member of Parliament’s International Development Select Committee, and of the special committee of backbench MPs which studies arms exports, which recently interviewed experts from Amnesty and Oxfam and other groups.

©John Battle MP 25th May 2004

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