Arms subsidiesORG has long questioned the economic, military and political rationales for UK government support of the arms trade. The arms trade debate has often hinged on a trade-off between economic and employment benefits on the one hand, and moral and foreign policy costs on the other. As with many policy debates, the reality is a great deal more complex. In collaboration with Saferworld, ORG researched and published The Subsidy Trap: British Government Financial Support for Arms Exports and the Defence Industry in 2001. This highlighted the level of UK Government subsidies to arms exports, estimated to be about £420 million each year. In September 2004, Oxford Research Group, in collaboration with BASIC and Saferworld, published a follow-up to this report entitled Escaping the Subsidy Trap: Why Arms Exports are bad for Britain which estimated that government subsidies to arms exports cost the taxpayer at least £450 million and possibly up to £930 million a year. While still interested in this important issue, ORG has not been conducting work directly on arms subsidies since the publication of Escaping the Subsidy Trap. For more information, please contact Paul Ingram at BASIC.
Escaping the Subsidy
Trap: Why Arms Exports are bad for Britain The Subsidy Trap:
British Government Financial Support for Arms Exports and the Defence
Industry |
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