BAE system had more meetings with ministers and Prime Ministers than any private company in 2009-2019, say anti-war groups, exposing lucrative ‘revolving door’ in arms procurement

~ Kit Dimou ~

Government and arms companies run an ‘open plan office’, says a new report on the depth of the arms industry’s influence in UK government. While all industries seek to influence the government, the arms industry is unique in the closeness of its relationship at the highest levels, and the revolving door of state and corporate careers through arms procurement, said the report.

Based on data from a Transparency International open data portal, the report shows BAE Systems had more meetings with ministers, and more with Prime Ministers, than any other private company between 2009-2019, with Airbus and Rolls-Royce also high on the list. According to the report, published by the Campaign Against Arms Trade and World Peace Foundation, senior government officials and ministers met with their arms industry counterparts 1.64 times a day.

According to the anti-war organisations, this is not simply the result of industry efforts, but a deliberate policy by successive governments to draw the industry into a tighter embrace. The report describes “the ever-closer union between the UK government and the arms industry” which the authors say is moving “from revolving door to open-plan office”.

The report shows that over 40% of top-ranked military officers and civilian MOD personnel took roles in the arms and security industry upon leaving public service. This includes employees, board members, and independent consultants to the industry, a clear majority working in procurement. The organisations say this results in a “broken MOD procurement system, that nonetheless ensures steady profits for the UK’s top arms companies, and a lax arms export control regime that has allowed the industry to continue fuelling atrocities in Yemen and Palestine, while evading accountability for severe corruption”.

“No industry should have this level of influence over government, especially one that deals in death and destruction”, said report author Sam Perlo-Freeman, “Radical measures are urgently needed to break the arms industry’s stranglehold on government policy”.