Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I doubt if the world is sincere about avoiding conflicts like this in the future, but if it is it must put an end to the arms trade. Every one of the conflicts in the course of my adult life has been spectacularly exacerbated by the determination of a small number of powerful rich countries, of different claims in terms of ideology, to sell weapons to countries they neither needed nor could afford. If we are to engage in anything other than colourful rhetoric about ending conflict in the world, at which we all excel, something must be done to end the international arms trade. If it is not, we might as well stay silent because it is the fundamental cause of the scale of suffering in the world.

I have repeatedly said in this House that more innocent people die every year as a consequence of the international arms trade than die because of the international drugs trade. Drugs are made by the poor and sold to the rich, while arms are made by the rich and sold to the poor. We must confront this most fundamental moral issue, which has devalued many governments throughout the world, including many social democratic governments in Europe.