It has been a bad week for Swire. His choice for PM (Dominic Raab, whose campaign he helped to conduct) was defeated early on and now questions are being asked (and decisions made) about the thorny subject of arms deals to Saudi Arabia during his time as a Foreign Office minister and since then during his (continuing) chairmanship of the Conservative Middle East Council.
Swire was made Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on 4 September 2012 and was in the job until 15 July 2016.
During his time as Foreign Minister, Swire made trips to Saudi Arabia in the company of BAE Systems and an attempt was made to examine arms sales to the country (and to Colombia) in 2016, as reported by East Devon Watch here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/crispin-blunt-to-intensify-row-about-saudi-arms-sales?
and here:
https://eastdevonwatch.org/2016/07/22/swire-economical-with-the-truth-at-the-foreign-office/
Since then Swire has again visited the country in his capacity as Chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council (CMEC) and a Labour MP tried to instigate an inquiry into the CMEC dealings in Saudi Arabia last year, mentioning Swire:
and Wikipedia states:
“Swire became Chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council (CMEC) in September 2016, having previously been a member of the group. In June 2016, he accepted a donation of £10,000 from the wife of a billionaire with links to the leadership of Saudi Arabia. The journalist Peter Oborne has criticised the direction of CMEC away from its earlier focus on Palestine, to greater interest on the Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia.[16]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Swire
Now, the Appeal Court has ruled that arms sales to Saudi Arabia are (and have been since 2015) unlawful because they contributed to civilian casualties in indiscriminate bombing:
The Guardian explains:
“… The UK has licensed the sale of at least £4.7bn worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since the start of the civil war in Yemen in March 2015, with most of the recorded sales taking place before 2018.
Sales are signed off by the foreign, defence and international trade secretaries, and ministers and former ministers including the Tory leadership candidates Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have defended the UK’s arms relationship with Riyadh.
Latest figures estimate that the death toll in the complex civil war in Yemen since 2016 is fast approaching 100,000 – although there is currently a ceasefire – with nearly 11,700 civilians killed in attacks that have directly targeted them.
Estimates say that two-thirds of the civilian deaths were caused by the Saudi-led coalition; the rest were victims of actions by the Houthi rebels they are fighting.
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said: “We welcome this verdict but it should never have taken a court case brought by campaigners to force the government to follow its own rules.
“The Saudi Arabian regime is one of the most brutal and repressive in the world, yet, for decades, it has been the largest buyer of UK-made arms. No matter what atrocities it has inflicted, the Saudi regime has been able to count on the uncritical political and military support of the UK.
“The bombing has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. UK arms companies have profited every step of the way. The arms sales must stop immediately.”
East Devon Watch 