BAE Systems | ukwatch.net

UK Arms exports- the World's Number One?

tim — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:20:31 +0000

‘UK becomes biggest weapons exporter’, declared the Financial Times in June, triggering a flurry of media interest and a fresh flood of calls to the CAAT office. The Guardian ran the story in depth several days later. But any news involving both arms and statistics must be doubly suspect, so what’s the reality behind the headlines? In the complex world of arms orders, deliveries and licences, there are many and varied ways to calculate arms exports. However you do the sums, they nearly all show the USA to be the world’s top arms exporter, with the UK in the top five. One of the more simplistic calculations methods is simply to add up the value of orders within a given year – regardless of how long those orders take to deliver. In most years, the USA still comes out on top. But in 2007 the UK was pushed into the lead by one huge order – 72 Eurofighter aircraft to be supplied by BAE Systems to Saudi Arabia.

This is the infamous Al Salam deal (it means ‘peace’ in Arabic – feel free to laugh). It was this deal that the Saudi regime threatened to cancel until the British authorities dropped a corruption investigation into BAE in 2006. When lobbying for an end to the investigation, apologists for the arms trade argued that the deal would create thousands of British jobs. Once the deal was signed in September 2007, BAE admitted that most of the jobs would not even be based in the UK. So Britain‘s role as ‘world’s top arms exporter’ is a temporary phenomenon, dependent on a questionable means of calculation. Nonetheless, the UK sadly retains a leading role in the arms trade, despite the growth in public opposition and the backlash triggered by the BAE scandal.

Outstanding?

When the figures were released, parts of the media asked whether British people should be proud of what trade minister Digby Jones called ‘this outstanding export performance’. I debated this question on BBC Radio Five Live with Ian Godden of the Society of British Aerospace Companies. With Saudi Arabia accounting for nearly half of the 2007 orders, many callers to the programme clearly felt uneasy about a trade that relies on the whims of a violent dictatorship. There can be no doubt that most UK arms exports still go to oppressive regimes or to countries involved in armed conflict or regions of tension.

I was challenged several times on the grounds that the arms trade supposedly brings benefit to Britain’s economy. The obvious answer is that arms companies in the UK are sustained by hundreds of millions of pounds in taxpayer-funded subsidies every year. Money is poured into research and development for the arms industry at a time when we desperately need to develop skills and technology to tackle climate change. And companies such as BAE have been cutting their UK workforces for years, shifting their focus to the USA but being quick to call themselves British when they want public support here.

Real security that really is sustainable

As Steven Schofield argues in CAAT’s recent report Making Arms, Wasting Skills, demilitarisation and an end to arms trade subsidies would provide the resources for major investment in renewable energy and the jobs and skills that would go along with it. This would place the UK at the forefront of real security and sustainable economics. Now that’s something of which we could all be proud.

Political epitaph

tim — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:45:25 +0000

Which genius dreamed up the idea of sending Gordon Brown off to Afghanistan to meet puppet president Hamid Karzai and to mimic Tony Blair’s previous media stunt of posing in brilliant white shirt surrounded by British soldiers?

President Karzai could only have been the answer to the question of what international leader’s grip on his job is more tenuous than our Prime Minister’s.

Commentators used to joke that his writ only ran as far as the outskirts of Kabul. This overstates his real influence.

The Afghan president continues to be guarded by US contractors because he distrusts his own armed forces and he is utterly dependent on NATO military power, which remains incapable of suppressing resistance to the occupation of Afghanistan.

Mr Brown’s lavish praise of British troops, likening them to Olympic heroes on a daily rather than a four-yearly basis, is unlikely to have endeared him to them, knowing, as they do, that he is responsible for placing them in the dangerous and unwinnable situation that faces them.

British troops were originally dispatched to Afghanistan in what was said to be a cross between a peacekeeping and a nation-rebuilding mission.

It has turned out to be an all-out war, especially since they were redeployed, at Pentagon insistence, to Helmand province, where resistance is fierce and where casualty levels have inexorably risen.

Despite this reality, the Prime Minister claims that “substantial progress” is being made against the Taliban and the proof for this is that the Afghan resistance is having to adopt tactics “more of a guerilla nature than head-on confrontation with our forces.”

How very unsporting. Wouldn’t it be so much better if the Afghans formed up into massed ranks to charge tanks and heavy machineguns or to present a clear target to the occupiers’ aerial power rather than using roadside bombs and suicide attacks.

The government’s advisers should have known that such guerilla tactics would be favoured in a long-lasting war of attrition, but new Labour put subservience to the White House before any concern for British troops, to say nothing of the Afghan civilian population, who are the real sufferers in this US imperial aggression.

Still, it’s an ill wind that blows no-one any good and the arms traffickers of BAE Systems aren’t doing too badly at all, thank you very much.

Our government’s slavish determination to support every Made in Washington war has meant a bonanza for the company’s private shareholders, with the latest contract to supply ammunition to our armed forces over the next 15 years weighing in at £3 billion.

That should guarantee plenty of bonuses and dividends for senior civil servants and new Labour ministers who jump on board after being deservedly turfed out at the next general election.

Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth is delighted that this programme will ensure “a modernised, sustainable munitions industry which will support British jobs.”

What a pity that such concern for industry and jobs has never extended to the rest of Britain’s manufacturing sector, which new Labour has allowed to disintegrate without lifting a finger.

And it is this obsession with war and private profits that will be new Labour’s political epitaph.

BAE case in the Lords

tim — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:33:54 +0000

Buried

The five senior Judges are technically a committee of the Lords so the hearing took place in a Lords’ Committee room, dominated by a huge painting of the burial of King Harold. Only the tops of the heads of the Judges (without wigs) were visible from most of the public seats as the banks of case documents formed a wall across the room. Between the Judges and the rest of us sat eleven bewigged barristers – CAAT and The Corner House had four (David Pannick QC, Philippe Sands QC, Dinah Rose QC and Ben Jaffey) and the Government five, whilst ‘interested party’ BAE, and ‘intervener’ Justice, a human rights and law reform organisation, had one apiece. All these barristers were backed by teams of solicitors. Even though the Lords’ authorities had added an extra bench, this retinue left little space in the room.

We all crammed in – CAAT and Corner House people; the Guardian‘s Rob Evans, who had done so much to expose the BAE corruption allegations, was there along with journalists from other papers, the BBC and specialist legal magazines; representatives from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, concerned that its 1997 Anti-Bribery Convention will be rendered meaningless if the Government is allowed to stop corruption inquiries as in this case, took copious notes; Peter Gardiner, the former BAE travel agent who gave evidence to the SFO looked on; and many others were present.

The arguments

The Government’s lead barrister, Jonathan Sumption QC, went first. He argued that the Director of the SFO, as an independent prosecutor, had a wide discretion as to which cases he investigated or prosecuted, he just had to act ‘reasonably’ in making his decisions. He also produced a witness statement from the Foreign Office in an attempt to show that, in contrast to what Lord Justice Moses had said in the High Court, the attention of Saudi Arabian officials had been drawn to the separation of powers between the Government and the legal authorities in the UK.

David Pannick challenged this. He said the rule of law had to prevail and that this demanded that the SFO did not give into threats by Saudi Arabia to withdraw cooperation on anti-terrorism until all other options had been exhausted and, even then, only if it was strictly necessary. The Government, he said, did not meet this test, as all bar one of the approaches to Saudi Arabia listed in the Foreign Office statement had been made before the threats were issued and all were fairly casual mentions in the course of other meetings. Additionally, the UK did not seem to have reminded Saudi Arabia of its anti-terrorism commitments.

With regards to the OECD Convention, Dinah Rose argued that this was a relevant consideration because the SFO Director said his decision was made in accordance with it – the question was whether ‘national security’ was an implied exemption or not and she said not – whilst the Government said it was up to the OECD to decide on this issue.

No decision as yet

There was very little intervention by the Judges as the barristers made their submissions. This, we were told, is unusual. Each of five Judges now considers the submissions, looks up the precedents and writes his or her own speech – the verdict is the majority view. The result will be announced, most likely in October, when the Judges’ committee reports to the full House of Lords. Justice?

Campaign update

The House of Lords has overturned the High Court's ruling that the Government broke the law by stopping the corruption investigation into BAE Systems' Saudi arms deals. The case had been brought by CAAT and The Corner House with widespread support.

The Serious Fraud Office's appeal was heard by the House of Lords on the 7th and 8th of July and judgment was given on 30th July.

One of the judges, Baroness Hale, said that she would have liked to have been able to say that it was wrong to stop the investigation as it was "extremely distasteful that an independent public official should feel himself obliged to give way to threats of any sort." However, she had to agree with her colleagues that the decision taken by the SFO Director was lawful.

The judgment means that those with powerful friends prepared to make threats can effectively evade justice, particularly if the threats are couched in terms of national security. The ruling also confirms that the UK government has driven a coach and horses through a key international anti-bribery convention to protect its friends in BAE.

CAAT and The Corner House are not dejected by the result as it has brought the whole issue into the public realm and clarified the law.

Merchants of death

tim — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:44:53 +0000

BAE Systems shareholders will be delighted by the company's 14 per cent rise in net profits - a cool £586 million - in the first six months of this year.

As the company itself puts it so poetically, its Land and Armaments unit "continues to benefit from operational requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Well, bully for the company and its shareholders who can sit back and wait for the profits from war to land in their laps, while British troops and the civilian populations of both Iraq and Afghanistan count the cost in death, destruction and injury.

All in all, it's not been a bad week for the merchants of death, with the Law Lords having ruled on Wednesday that normal rules on investigating bribery and corruption do not apply to the arms industry or to its partners in the venal autocracy of Saudi Arabia.

Britain's arms-trafficking industry already enjoys a privileged position over the rest of our country's manufacturing sector.

The government guarantees, through its export credit and guarantee department, payment for contracts tied up with some of the most dictatorial and unstable regimes in the world.

And when criticism erupts from either peace campaigners or civil libertarians, Cabinet ministers launch into a long diatribe about the contribution that arms sales make to the economy and to employment in the vital export-oriented engineering sector.

What they do not explain is why this industry needs feather-bedding rather than, say, cars, shipbuilding, rail rolling stock, motor bikes, steel or a raft of other sectors that have been allowed to decline, become extinct or be bought up at knockdown prices by competitors in other countries.

In each case, government - it doesn't really matter of what stripe since their responses have been uniform - has simply cited the inexorable power of market forces.

But market forces do not seem to apply to an industry that is geared to annihilation rather than peaceful development.

Trade unions will, of course, welcome the ongoing employment of their members, even though the numbers in the arms industry are in steady decline.

Unions are also correct to insist on the preservation of collectives of highly skilled engineering workers and the maintenance of existing research and development teams.

But it is a perversion of their skills and training that they should be restricted to production in the cause of death rather than life.

We do not have to go back to the example of the Lucas shop stewards committee three decades ago to understand that the skills of arms industry engineers can be put to better civil use.

The Scottish TUC and Scottish CND have done excellent work together in identifying alternative projects relating to tidal power and other renewable energy possibilities to take the place of the ridiculously expensive and dangerous Trident submarine white elephant.

There is no reason why the government could not give its blessing to similar initiatives across Britain.

The main reason that it does not do so is its servile attitude to the US, which demands backing for its various criminal overseas wars and insists on a war-based economic model.

Reversing that militaristic approach would help the cause of international peace and Britain's economic position.

SFO wins appeal in BAE-Saudi case

tim — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:54:04 +0000

The Law Lords have this morning upheld an appeal by the Director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) against the High Court's ruling that he acted unlawfully in terminating a corruption investigation into BAE Systems' arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

The appeal followed a High Court judgment in April that the SFO, acting on government advice, had dropped the investigation following lobbying by BAE and a threat from Saudi Arabia to withdraw diplomatic and intelligence co-operation if the investigation were not dropped. This judgment was in response to a judicial review brought by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House.

Nicholas Hildyard of The Corner House said:

"Now we know where we are. Under UK law, a supposedly independent prosecutor can do nothing to resist a threat made by someone abroad if the UK government claims that the threat endangers national security. The unscrupulous who have friends in high places overseas willing to make such threats now have a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card – and there is nothing the public can do to hold the government to account if it abuses its national security powers. Parliament needs urgently to plug this gaping hole in the law and in the constitutional checks and balances dealing with national security. With the law as it is, a government can simply invoke 'national security' to drive a coach and horses through international anti-bribery legislation, as the UK government has done, to stop corruption investigations.”

Symon Hill of CAAT said:

"BAE and the government will be quickly disappointed if they think that this ruling will bring an end to public criticism. Throughout this case we have been overwhelmed with support from people in all walks of life. There has been a sharp rise in opposition to BAE's influence in the corridors of power. Fewer people are now taken in by exaggerated claims about British jobs dependent on the arms trade. The government has been judged in the court of public opinion. The public know that Britain will be a better place when BAE is no longer calling the shots.”

CAAT and The Corner House will issue a more detailed statement following an analysis of the Lords' judgments.

Victory in the Courts: BAE Saudi inquiry ruled unlawful

tim — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:06:16 +0000

The decision followed a legal challenge brought jointly by CAAT and The Corner House, a respected organisation that has worked on anti-corruption issues for many years. In a strongly worded judgment on 10th April, the Court described how BAE and the Saudi regime had lobbied Tony Blair and his ministers to have the investigation dropped. The judges went so far as to describe the Saudi threat as a ‘successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom’.

The history

The legal challenge began sixteen months previously, at the end of 2006. At that point, SFO investigators had spent two and a half years delving into allegations that BAE paid multi-million pound bribes to Saudi princes to secure the arms deals known as Al Yamamah. In autumn 2006, the media reported that the Saudi regime was threatening not to sign a deal with BAE for Eurofighter Typhoons if the investigation was not stopped. Apologists for the arms trade appeared in the media to make wildly exaggerated claims about the number of British jobs dependent on the sale.

The investigation was terminated on 14th December 2006. Within days CAAT and The Corner House had instructed solicitors at Leigh Day & Co and barristers from Blackstone Chambers to begin a claim for judicial review. This is the process by which a court considers whether a public body has behaved unlawfully.

A long process followed, with moments of both joy and exasperation. BAE spied on CAAT and got hold of an email containing advice from our lawyers. A comedy gig organised by Mark Thomas, with comedians including Russell Brand and Ed Byrne, raised thousands of pounds for the legal challenge. We applied successfully for a Protective Costs Order, placing a limit on how much CAAT would have to pay if we lost the case. Our claim for judicial review was initially rejected, but in November the High Court gave permission for it to proceed. Finally, in February, the hearing took place.

Documents released during the hearing exposed the lengths to which BAE was prepared to go to stop the investigation. They revealed that the company had lobbied the SFO to have it dropped as early as 2005. At that point, the SFO told BAE quite clearly that commercial and political considerations were not valid reasons for stopping a criminal investigation. During the following year the SFO obtained access to Swiss bank accounts and Tony Blair was personally lobbied by the Saudi prince Bandar – an individual who was himself at the centre of the corruption allegations. As his threats included the withdrawal of cooperation over fighting terrorism, BAE and the UK government were able to use ‘national security’ as a fig-leaf to cover up their motivations.

Decision unlawful

Contrary to Blair’s claim to be protecting the UK, the High Court found that the UK’s adherence to the rule of law had been undermined by the decision to drop the investigation in the face of the Saudi threat. The judges, Alan Moses and Jeremy Sullivan, ruled that the SFO’s director ‘failed to appreciate that protection of the rule of law demanded that he should not yield to the threat’. They added that surrender to a threat ‘merely encourages those with power, in a position of strategic and political importance, to repeat such threats’. It was not the investigation, but the decision to cut it short, that had endangered national security.

The judges went on: ‘There is no evidence whatever that any consideration was given as to how to persuade the Saudis to withdraw the threat, let alone any attempt made to resist the threat’. They then moved on to a vital point about motivations: ‘Too ready a submission may give rise to the suspicion that the threat was not the real ground for the decision at all; rather it was a useful pretext. It is obvious, in the present case, that the decision to halt the investigation suited the objectives of the executive. Stopping the investigation avoided uncomfortable consequences, both commercial and diplomatic.’

The judgment was welcomed by a wide range of newspapers (see page 12), politicians from all the main parties and others. Messages of congratulation flooded in to the offices of CAAT and The Corner House, by post, email and phone. The Government and BAE were alarmed. Clutching at straws, several right-wing columnists – who sixteen months before were confidently predicting that our challenge had no chance of success – suddenly revived their commitment to British jobs. Their claims were even less believable this time. BAE has already admitted that most of the jobs created by its latest Saudi deal will not even be based in the UK. Lord Woolf’s report into BAE’s ethics was greeted with similar derision for its failure to consider some of the most basic ethical issues about the arms trade (see page 3).

Government to appeal

The Government almost immediately announced its intention to appeal against the decision. The appeal will be heard by the House of Lords on 7th and 8th July. Considering the questions raised by the case to be of general public importance, the High Court has ordered the Government to pay all the costs both for the case so far and for the appeal regardless of the outcome.

The High Court’s decision means that the investigation is technically reopened. However, the new director of the SFO, Richard Alderman, has said that he will make no decision in practice until after the House of Lords has ruled on the appeal.

Regardless of the outcome, the political repercussions of the High Court victory should not be underestimated. The arms industry in the UK is struggling to get used to the fact that it can no longer expect to have everything its own way. Ministers know that their subservience to arms dealers is coming under greater public scrutiny. BAE has discovered that it cannot always bully its way to the desired result and the Saudi regime has realised that the British people do not share their Government’s willingness to submit to human rights abusers.

Just as importantly, public and media awareness has shot up on the issue of arms companies’ influence in the corridors of power. People from all walks of life are determined to campaign against this situation, recognizing that it is as harmful for the UK’s democracy and economy as it is for international peace and security. And more people than ever are now aware that CAAT is a key organisation working to change this situation.

One more thing is very clear. While staff at CAAT and The Corner House, along with our barristers and solicitors, have worked extremely hard on this case, we could not have done it with out the encouragement and help of thousands of supporters. Countless individuals have made donations to CAAT, lobbied their MPs, written to their local papers and gone out on to the streets to promote the campaign. Many have offered encouragement that has kept the staff going at the most difficult times. Our success would not be possible without them. This, then, is a victory for every CAAT supporter and for everyone committed to justice, accountability and peace.

BAE’s frantic flag-waving

tim — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:16:40 +0000

BAE has launched a new advertising campaign, its first for more than five years. The company claims that ‘It is not a knee-jerk reaction to the negative press and the SFO inquiry’. The campaign includes adverts in a selection of national and regional newspapers, ‘giant mobile poster sites’ in regions where it has a ‘significant industrial presence’ and advertising wraps on taxis in Farnborough and London.

The basic campaign image is the Union Jack, which seems a little rich considering two company trends. Firstly, BAE Systems is moving into the US as fast as it can. The number of BAE employees in the UK is steadily decreasing while the number of BAE employees in the US is rapidly increasing, overtaking the number of UK employees in 2006. BAE may happily become a US company if the opportunity arose. Secondly, BAE is increasingly subcontracting work to lower-cost countries. For example, BAE’s signature Hawk aircraft are being built in India for the Indian air force, with talks reported to be taking place about Hawk production there for the global market.

There is no indication that the company has any interest in its UK manufacturing base except as a bargaining (blackmailing) chip, primarily to gain new contracts from the Ministry of Defence.

Advert 1: ‘Our firsts in engineering help the UK stay a world leader in innovation… In the last two years we’re proud to have launched the Type 45 destroyer and Astute submarine’

BAE projects are routinely late and over budget with the taxpayer left to pick up the bill. Only two weeks before the launch of the BAE ad campaign, a report from the House of Commons Defence Committee revealed that the budget for BAE’s Astute Submarines had increased by 47 per cent and the budget for BAE’s Type 45 Destroyers by 18 per cent, costing the taxpayer £2.2 billion more than expected. The in-service date for the Type 45 is presently three years later than planned.

But a wider question leaps out: what sort of innovation do we want? Nuclear submarines or alternative energy and transport systems? Even civil aviation has been rejected by BAE which sold its stake in Airbus, leaving the 13,000 UK employees subject to the politics surrounding French/German aerospace giant EADS.

Advert 2: ‘We train more skilled engineers in the UK than any other company… We’ve always hired and trained the very best of UK talent’

There is a skills shortage in many areas of UK science and technology. But extensive government support for arms production, not least by means of Research & Development funding, means that arms companies have not been the ones to suffer. In 2005, around £2,600m of government R&D money went to the military sector while a paltry £37m went to renewable energy.

If the government were to reduce its arms expenditure and put the money into technologies required for our wider, environmental security, there would be equivalent levels of skilled employment. A recent government report estimated that the number of jobs in the renewable energy sector could, given supportive enough policies, expand from 8,000 in 2004 to as many as 35,000 by 2020. In contrast to arms companies, this work would be a contribution to global welfare and security.

Advert 3: ‘Last year we spent over £3.2 billion with our UK suppliers… it’s all of us that benefit’

Every company has a network of suppliers. The economic activity that would result from workers moving into other sectors would result in alternative supplier networks.

And the beneficiaries of BAE’s activities? There is no doubt that the company’s decisions are taken not with the UK public or even its own employees in mind, but in order to generate maximum wealth for its international shareholders.

Unfair Trade

tim — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:02:29 +0000

As the AGM of BAE Systems takes place in London today, the company's supporters will again pop up in the media to trot out the usual phrases about "living in the real world". In reality, it is these very supporters of the arms trade who display staggering levels of naivety.

This became very clear last month, at the time of a landmark High Court ruling in favour of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House. The judges ruled that the government had behaved unlawfully in cutting short a corruption investigation into BAE's Saudi arms deals. Among the congratulatory messages which flooded into the CAAT office were a few abusive ones and the odd death threat. But one message left on my phone began: "I'm a member of the British public and I live in the real world." The anonymous caller claimed that were "thousands of British jobs" dependent on Saudi arms deals.

His comment was typical of people who believe that it is naive to oppose the arms trade but who simply accept assertions about employment figures without scrutiny. Such scrutiny is vital to those of us who believe that everybody's livelihood is extremely important. As a child in the early 1980s, while my unemployed father quite literally got on his bike to find work, I experienced the realities of unemployment far more closely than most of those who are willing to make questionable claims about jobs to claw back public support for BAE - such as Norman Tebbit in the Daily Mail recently.

This sight was common in 2006, when BAE was lobbying for the Saudi corruption investigation to be dropped. BAE's supporters rushed onto radio and television, pausing only to pluck random figures from the air. A report by arms companies had previously suggested that BAE's latest Saudi arms deal might create 11,000 jobs across the whole of Europe. By November, BAE was citing the figure of 16,000 British jobs, while the figure of 50,000 regularly appeared in the media.

After the investigation was dropped, and the deal signed, BAE admitted that most of the jobs would not even be based in the UK. Saudi Arabia was to receive 72 Eurofighter aircraft, the first 24 of which had been intended for the RAF, who now have to take second place; so much for British jobs and national security.

BAE is keen to present itself as good for Britain, having reacted to the recent bad publicity with an advertising campaign covered in union flags. This is rather rich, given that BAE is developing away from the UK. George Bush's aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan has created countless business opportunities for those who profit from war and BAE now has more staff and shareholders in the USA than in the UK.

Far from enhancing our country, BAE has weakened it. In the High Court last month, judges found that the BAE investigation had been dropped following a Saudi threat. They described this as a "successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom". Giving the impression that Britain will give into threats sends an appalling message to terrorists.

Most of all, BAE's supporters are naive about the arms trade itself. I have lost count of the times that I have been accused of opposing arms deals "even when countries need arms for self-defence". This displays an utterly unrealistic perception of what the arms trade is about.

The main players in the arms trade are often those using weapons for aggression and repression. Indonesia has been a good customer of BAE, not the people of West Papua who have they so easily bombed. Morocco and China both appeared at the DSEi arms fair in London last year, but no representatives from the Western Sahara or Tibet. People suffering aggression are victims of arms companies, not their customers.

Sometimes the attitude of arms trade supporters goes beyond naivety. Some suggest that corruption is a western concern and "they play by different rules to the ones we stand by here". This ignores the reality that when bribery leads to ministers wasting public money on arms they will not use it to provide health care or tackling poverty. The victims of bribery are the poorest people in the poorest countries.

Yet people here in Britain are also victims of the arms trade. The unhealthy influence of arms companies over government distorts democracy and leads to about £850m of taxpayers' money being spent every year on subsidies for the arms trade, although only 0.2% of UK jobs depend on it. In these circumstances, it is no surprise that BAE can boast about how many engineers it employs. I am often told by engineering students that their career prospects will be severely damaged if they are not willing to work in the arms trade.

Is this where British taxes and British skills should be going? Future generations may not understand why we chose not to subsidise the engineering needed to tackle the unprecedented horrors of climate change but to assist the sale of weapons to dictators. They will think that anyone who thought this would help Britain must have been shockingly naive.

The world in which supporters of the arms trade live is not based on reality, but on fantasy. It is a world straight out of 1950s boys' adventure stories. It is a place in which honest British arms companies work hard to provide jobs and to sell arms to grateful democracies in need of self-defence. It is a world in which any British company engaging in bribery would do so reluctantly and only because you can't expect foreigners to live up to our standards. It is based in a fictitious Britain in which millions of people work in the arms trade and climate change isn't real.

This is a world as real as Narnia and most British people know it. They would rather see their taxes used for health and education, just as many engineering graduates would rather use their skills to fight climate change. They know that corruption kills, that the arms trade fuels aggression and that arms trade bosses are moved to emotion not by the union flag but by profit graphs.

A dwindling minority of people - among them a disproportionately high number of politicians and columnists - still remain oblivious to this. After a year which has seen an unprecedented rise in public opposition to the arms trade, it's time for such people (as they would put it) to move into the real world.