2 Oral Evidence Taken Before the Economic Affairs Committee On

Oral Evidence Taken before the Economic Affairs Committee on Monday 27 June 2006 Members present Kingsdown, L Macdonald of Tradeston, L Paul, L Powell of Bayswater, L Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, L Sheldon, L Skidelsky, L Vallance of Tummel, L Wakeham, L (Chairman) ________________ Witnesses: Mr Stephen Pattison, Director, International Security, Mr Christopher Yvon, Head of Sanctions Team, International Organisations Department, and Mr Paul Bentall, Head of International Security and Global Issues Research Group, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Mr Patrick Guthrie, Head of the Financial Sanctions Unit, HM Treasury, and Mr Tom Dawlings, Manager of Financial Sanctions Unit, Bank of England, gave evidence. Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence. I am bidden to say to you at the beginning of the session, if you speak up and speak relatively slowly, we stand a better chance of understanding what you are saying and getting an accurate record; and that applies as much to us as it does to you. I do not know whether you want to introduce yourselves and your role, but I think that we ought to have on the record who has come and why. You can sort out amongst yourselves who is going to answer the questions. We will be very happy to hear from whoever wants to tell us anything. Perhaps, Mr Pattison, you might introduce yourselves in whatever way you would like to deal with it. Mr Pattison: Thank you very much, My Lord Chairman, for giving us this opportunity. I am Stephen Pattison, the Director in charge of international security at the Foreign Office where, 2 among other things, I oversee the sanctions unit in the Foreign Office, which is headed by Christopher Yvon, to my right. I will leave it to each member of the panel to say briefly what their role in sanctions is. Mr Guthrie: I am head of the Financial Sanctions Unit in the Treasury. We are responsible for implementing financial sanctions. Mr Dawlings: Tom Dawlings, Financial Sanctions Unit in the Bank of England. We have a very small role as agent for the Treasury in the administration of financial sanctions. Mr Pattison: Chris, as I mentioned, is head of our unit at the Foreign Office that deals with sanctions. Mr Bentall: Paul Bentall from the Foreign Office research group. I provide expert advice to Chris and his team. Q2 Chairman: Do you want to say something to start with? Mr Pattison: I am happy to do so if you wish, but what I would want to say is probably covered by the questions, which you have given us in advance. Q3 Chairman: How has the pattern of UK economic sanctions changed over time? Could you explain the rationale behind the apparent move from general to more targeted sanctions? Mr Pattison: I think you have to remember that prior to 1990 the UN in particular had experience of only two sanctions regimes. The expansion of the use of sanctions regimes that we have seen in the international community has been primarily since 1990. That expansion has been a process of learning and adapting. There is no doubt that the trend over the 1990s, as you say, has been to focus on targeted sanctions. What drove that trend was a perception that comprehensive economic sanctions, however defined, ended up having an impact on the humanitarian welfare of civilians which was not intended and which militated against the impact of the sanctions themselves. The trend has been to devise sanctions, which we call 3 “smart” in that they are focused on particular entities. It can be members of a regime or members of another group; it can be governments or entities outside government; it can be commodities or arms; it could be focused on a ban on travel or assets freeze, and so on. The trend towards smarter sanctions, I think it is true to say, has continued to develop. For example, there have been additional refinements in the area of arms embargoes. Instead now of talking of an embargo on hardware, the trend is increasingly to talk about embargoes in addition on the provision of military services. When you look at assets, we are looking at ways in which we can act against assets of targeted figures as quickly and effectively as possible. Commodity sanctions have become part of this trend, in particular the sanctions on diamonds, particularly the illegal import of diamonds or the export of diamonds in circumstances where we believe they will fuel conflict. This has been a major step forward. We have had timber sanctions and so on. There has been this refinement of sanctions since 1990, over the last 15 or 16 years. That does not mean, I think, that comprehensive sanctions can be completely ruled out. In the British Government review of sanctions policy conducted in 1998 and reported to Parliament in 1999, we were very careful not to rule it out, but the fact remains, as I say, that over the period in question the trend has been in a different direction. Q4 Lord Sheldon: How far have economic sanctions been used in a way that has been combined with other methods of influencing change – diplomacy and the use of force? If the sanctions are used as an alternative to force, it has got to be used as a means of persuading the public that that is the last, ultimate possibility that they have in mind – but it is always something that is a threat at the very end if other methods are used before that. Mr Pattison: I do not see sanctions as a substitute or alternative to the use of force. I see them as a quite distinct tool. They are recognised as a distinct tool under the UN Charter, which has separate articles on sanctions from the article on enforcement measures. I do not 4 think we should assume that sanctions are a substitute for force, nor do I think we should always assume that sanctions are a stepping-stone towards the use of force. In fact, the history of sanctions regimes that the international community has imposed do not suggest that at all; they suggest quite the opposite. As to the effectiveness of what you describe as economic sanctions, in a sense it applies to all sanctions. It is true to say that sanctions are most effective where they are not imposed in isolation, and what we are usually looking for is a policy which underlines that sanctions are not an end in themselves; sanctions are a way of achieving an objective. Usually, to achieve that objective a number of things will be required. In some cases we will need to make sure that we have a diplomatic process that is open to have the target entity in the sort of negotiations or resolution of the problem that we want to achieve. In other cases, economic sanctions, whatever they are, may be combined with other sorts of sanctions, so that one would look at an arms embargo and a travel ban and an assets freeze, and maybe a commodity ban on a particular entity, in order to achieve the desired effect. The two points that I would emphasise are that sanctions are not an alternative to the use of force; they are a separate tool in their own right. Second, sanctions have to be seen as part, usually, of a wider picture of levers that the international community can use to attain its objectives. Q5 Lord Sheldon: Are there not occasions when force is there in the background as a possible threat if sanctions are not going to work? Mr Pattison: There have of course been occasions where the threat of enforcement is there in the background. In almost every case those have been preceded by sanctions or the threat of sanctions in order to achieve the objective, but if you look at the range of sanctions regimes, those cases are in a pretty small minority. Q6 Lord Skidelsky: Do I understand you to then reject the theory of graduated sanctions? 5 Mr Pattison: No, not at all. Q7 Lord Skidelsky: When you said it was a distinct tool, you almost implied that it was a discrete thing and then used in combination, whereas the traditional view would be that you had an escalating set of sanctions, the ultimate step of which was war if you did not achieve the objectives that you had set out to do. That was one quite popular view of it in the past. Mr Pattison: I have no problem with the idea of graduated sanctions; on the contrary. Quite often, in designing sanctions regimes one is looking first at imposing a certain range of measures with a view to moving on to other measures, if necessary and if attainable, within the international community. My only point was that the logical end of that process does not always have to be force, nor would we start that process thinking that the use of force is going to be the logical end of it. Q8 Chairman: When you are considering sanctions, do you consider the effect of them not working when you bring them in and what you will do subsequently, for example the use of the sunset clause? Mr Pattison: There are several questions wrapped up in that, if I may say so. We always consider the effectiveness, and that boils down to whether they can be effectively enforced and policed. We also consider the impact that those sanctions are likely to have on the target regime. We certainly consider that if we cannot get the particular sanction we are going for and it is not effective, are there any other options that we could go for.

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