Category: UK

Corruption and Arms Trade: The UK’s Enduring Dilemma


Will anything change in the government’s approach to weapons sales?

August 2026

We questioned the extent of help offered to arms companies in a previous post. The Farnborough show featured a range of such companies including Elbit Systems deeply implicated in the appalling death toll in Gaza. We noted the vast sums – around £3 trillion – of tax payers money underpinning the industry when they are not paid. We drew attention to the infamous ‘revolving door’ where senior military, civil service and government ministers sidle off into lucrative directorships or consultancies with arms firms when they retire using their contacts to secure yet more funding. A system so steeped in corruption it is amazing it is still allowed.

So we now have a new leader of the Labour party who was quick to say on July 9, that Labour “didn’t get it right” on Gaza. His video message also included a pledge to bar arms sales to Israel wherever weapons could be deployed in Gaza or the West Bank. Sounds good. So what happened?

The second time we saw our PM’s face on a video message discussing arms was a mere 11 days later. Beamed onto the big screen at Farnborough Air Show, he gleefully emboldened the arms industry, placing them as a core pillar of his ambition to ‘re-industrialise’ the nation by ‘working together with brilliant businesses, like those at Farnborough’ – Farnborough being an international arms fair hosting over 1,000 exhibitors, including the likes of BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, Rafael, Israel Aerospace Industries and Boeing.

Shortly after, his Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, took to the stage and announced a £708 million government contract with BAE. He remarked at ‘what an opportunity we have with this Prime Minister’ and ‘the enormous contribution that Defence [defense] can make to the Prime Minister’s vision for this country.”

It’s getting worse

Campaign Against the Arms Trade have analysed the current situation and if anything the situation is worse than previous administrations. A key element is Wes Streeting’s desire for speed in commissioning and delivering new systems. He is aware of the prolonged time scales, endless delays and cost overruns involved in arms procurement. He is against unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy. Part of that bureaucracy is assessing risk and potential damage to human rights for those at the end of the arms sales. Putting speed above these assessments carries obvious risks.

He is also keen on joint ventures which makes it difficult for the UK to extract itself from sales where weapons are used by regimes bent on oppression or killing people. The F35 is a classic example which is being used by Israel to bomb Gaza, Iran and Lebanon. We cannot ban components made in the UK (around 15%) because they go off to the States.

Streeting ended his speech with a glowing rhetorical flourish: ‘It is not yet clear whether the 21st century will be defined by tyranny or freedom. But we need not let others define the answer to that question…. We know which side we are on.’ As CAAT argues ‘others’ does rather leave the door open to alternative interpretations. Streeting and Burnham were both members of governments who have engaged the UK in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine involving the deaths of a million people. Iraq led to instability and the creation of ISIS; Afghanistan has left the country in the hands of the Taliban with its draconian controls of women and a flourishing heroin trade, and Palestine has seen the wasting of Gaza and the death of 20,000 children.

Have they learned nothing?

You would think that they might have learned a thing or two about violence. Yet here they are, lauding the firms who make the weapons and hell bent on making things worse. Over and over we have argued that making and selling weapons with their ability to create jobs is put above moral or human rights considerations. Claims of a ‘robust policy’ on sales is no longer credible. Does ‘re-industrialising’ the nation have to involve selling weapons to awful regimes? Is that really what Andy Burnham and his new team really want?

We are grateful to CAAT for use of some of their text. No AI has been used.

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Protests under threat: The erosion of Civil Liberties


The steady decline in our rights in the UK continues

July 2026

For many years, Amnesty concerned itself with human rights overseas. There was an own country rule. There was a tinge of arrogance in that based as it was on the assumption that rights in the UK were perfectly all right – after all we had the Magna Carta, a democracy and parliament to look after us – it was people overseas that needed the help. Well they still do but here in the UK, there has been a steady stream of legislation with the intention of inhibiting protests. Governments do not like them and act after act has appeared both from Conservative and Labour governments and Home Secretaries, seeking to obstruct and make protests more and more difficult. Which is why we have initiated these posts.

In this 250th year of America Independence, and as we have many (very welcome) readers from over the pond, it is worth noting that the UK does not have a constitution nor the equivalent of the first amendment rights to free speech enjoyed by US citizens. Which is why the slow drift into authoritarianism by our government is so troubling. We have tended to rely on the courts to protect our rights. As you can see in the first item below, that reliance is extremely uncertain.

Right to peaceful Assembly and Protest

The Supreme Court has controversially overturned the High Court ruling that declared the ban on Palestine Action to be unlawful.  This means that the ban on Palestine Action is restored and charges stand against the 700 plus people being charged under the Terrorism Act. Tom Southerden, Amnesty’s legal programme director, said that it was fundamentally disproportionate to treat direct action protest as terrorism and claimed that the images of people from all walks of life, from nurses and pensioners to military veterans, being bundled into police vans for peacefully holding placards would be long remembered as a deeply shameful chapter in our history.

Subsequently, on 12 June the four Palestine Action activists known as ‘the Filton 4’ were told by Judge Mr Justice Johnson they would be sentenced as having a ‘terrorist connection’ following convictions for criminal damage arising out of their direct action at the Elbit Systems arms factory in Filton, Bristol. Criticisms of these verdicts have been widespread in the UK and the UN.

Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, concluded: 

“The defendants in this case were sentenced as terrorists because prosecutors want to make an example of them and set a precedent for how direct action protesters could be treated in the future. Criminal damage has never been treated as terrorism within the UK justice system before and it is dangerous to treat them as the same thing. We should all be worried about what this means for other individuals taking direct action in protest of a genocide or any other issue. The right to protest is one of the most effective tools we have to hold our leaders to account and today is another step in the ongoing crackdown in this country against it.  The use of terrorism laws against direct action protesters must end”                                                                                                      

Equality and Human Rights Commission Transgender guidance

A total of 135 MPs, 69 of them from Labour, have signed a Commons motion calling for the code of practice on transgender people, recently drafted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission,  to be blocked, primarily because of worries about its impact on transgender people and also the possibility of legal challenges. It’s unlikely that the guidance will be stopped, as the government has declined to allow a vote, but there is pressure on ministers to listen, and possibly to consider new legislation to resolve the problem. The 40-day period for the code to be laid before parliament ends early next month, after which it will become law.

Right to privacy/freedom of information

The High Court has rejected attempts by Nigel Farage’s Reform party to dismiss the challenge from the Good Law Project that they must be more transparent in how they hold data of members of the public. Before the general election, Good Law Project supporters demanded that political parties reveal how personal data is held and used, as the law requires them to do. Notably most requests to Farage’s Reform party received no response.

It is legitimate for political parties to combine the electoral roll with other data they’ve captured to target people with tailored ads and messages. This itself raises questions in a democracy, but is particularly concerning when micro-targeting is done by a far-right party like Reform which currently is experiencing issues over transparency especially over their funding. The Good Law Project will now sue Reform. 

 Oversight for Police AI 

Liberty is calling on the government to establish oversight for the increasing use of AI by police. They demand full transparency in response to public concern; binding rules on what data can be fed into police systems; independent testing and continuous monitoring; accountability to a designated human of decisions resulting from AI; training of officers in its use, limitations and their responsibilities; clear recording and auditing of how decisions are reached; and an independent regulator to enforce these standards.

Workplace rights

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has published new commissioned research on harassment in the workplace. The rapid evidence review shows how organisations can prevent problematic behaviours, fulfilling the legal obligations introduced by the Worker Protection Act.

The research highlights the importance of reporting mechanisms but warns that organisations should not rely on the number of harassment reports to determine if they have a problem. Low harassment reporting rates they say may indicate a workplace in which employees feel unable to report, rather than the absence of harassment.

The study also suggests that when employers are purely motivated by reputation management, policies often involve ineffective ‘box-ticking’ interventions which, in isolation, fail to prevent harassment or protect their employees. It concludes that to be effective, interventions need to be implemented consistently, reviewed regularly and involve multiple approaches to increase awareness of harassment through training and communication.


Transfer of jurisdiction under scrutiny

UK police forces have faced severe criticism for ceding jurisdiction to the US military for off-duty crimes committed by their personnel on British soil, preventing such cases from ever reaching the Crown Prosecution Service

Following the high profile challenge launched by the mother of Harry Dunn, in which only after a long legal battle the CPS succeeded in the prosecution of the American driver responsible for his death, a second instance of a failure of the British Government to protect its citizens has recently come to light. Sarah Steele, who was strangled by an American pilot, failed to have her case heard in a British court when the US military transferred the hearing and judgement to their own court. The defendant was subsequently expelled from the military but found guilty of only one of two charges. Justice Secretary David Lammy undertook to raise the case directly with the US government.

Terrorism bill

We shall be saying more about this bill and its worrying aspects in a future post.

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