The government has brought in new rules for the arms trade that experts fear will make it easier to ignore human rights concerns when deciding whether to allow international sales of UK-made weapons. The revised Strategic Export Licensing Criteria could also make it harder for critics to challenge any deal in court, warned Martin Butcher, policy adviser on conflict and arms for Oxfam, who said the changes “would reduce accountability and transparency and will lead to more UK arms being used to commit war crimes and other abuses.” The secretary of state for international trade, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, introduced the revised criteria for licensing arms sales in a written statement to parliament on Wednesday. Ministers now appear to have more discretion to allow sales. One new provision allows exports if a minister decides there is only a “theoretical” risk that a buyer would break rules about the use of weapons. Under the new rules “[the government] will not refuse a licence on the grounds of a purely theoretical risk of a breach of one or more of those criteria”, Trevelyan’s statement said. This means that export licences could be issued to governments implicated in serious abuse, Butcher said. “This gives a lot of wriggle room and lessens transparency over arms licensing,” he said. “In the context of arms sales to Saudi being used in Yemen, this means that if the minister believes there is only a theoretical risk of arms being used to target civilian infrastructure or residential areas, they will issue the licence.” Even under previous tighter export-control rules, two-thirds of countries classified as “not free” because of their dire record on human rights and civil liberties received weapons licensed by the UK government over the past decade. Between 2011 and 2020, the UK licensed £16.8bn of arms to countries criticised by the US-funded human rights group Freedom House. Of the 53 countries castigated for a poor record on political and human rights on the group’s list, the UK sold arms and military equipment to 39. The UK government has already admitted that a Saudi-led coalition has attacked Yemen using weapons made by British companies. The UK supplied more than half of combat aircraft used by the kingdom for its bombing raids, in a campaign that has faced accusations of serious human rights abuses. The changes also appear to allow the government to decide whether it should take sanctions, embargoes and other restrictions into account when making decisions about handing out licences. “The new criteria allow government ministers to weigh up different factors and if, ‘overall’, they think a transfer should go ahead, they can ignore factors which should be used to deny a transfer,” Butcher said. The new rules seem to be modelled in part on the US arms-licensing stance, and will allow the country to put political or strategic decisions ahead of concerns about violating international humanitarian law, he added. “This is a radically different approach to the past criteria … it seems that if the UK government’s allies are in a conflict, this will be taken into account when considering licences.” The Department for International Trade said that the “UK takes its export control responsibilities very seriously” and the changes “in no way represent a weakening in the UK’s export control regime”. MP Alyn Smith, who represents Stirling for the SNP, said: “The UK arms export regime wasn’t much cop to begin with, given the dubious regimes around the world it already somehow justifies exports to, but these changes will weaken it even further. Worse still is the sneaky way they have tried to bounce it under everyone’s radar while so much of the political class are distracted by the shambles of a government.”