From Revolving Door to Open-Plan Office: The ever-closer union between the UK government and the arms industry, by Sam Perlo-Freeman (Campaign Against the Arms Trade), is a comprehensive and evidence-based analysis of the UK arms industry’s influence on government policy. It examines how and why the arms industry in the United Kingdom (UK) enjoys unprecedented access to the highest levels of government and exerts an excessive influence over government. The report provides an overview of the size of the UK arms industry and its key players, presents detailed data and analysis to examine the key channels of arms industry influence, addresses why it has been able to attain such influence, and details the resulting impacts.
- This report is part of WPF’s Revitalizing Debate on the Arms Trade program, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The full report is 99 pages and is available as a pdf download (above).
- You can also access the 8 page Executive Summary.
Suggested citation: Perlo-Freeman, Samuel. 2024. “From Revolving Door to Open-Plan Office: The ever-closer union between the UK government and the arms industry,” World Peace Foundation and Campaign Against the Arms Trade (September), available at: https://worldpeacefoundation.org/publication/from-revolving-door-to-open-plan-office/.
The report includes:
Chapter 1: Introduction: How do they get away with it?
Chapter 2: The UK arms industry
Chapter 3: Context: What is influence?
Chapter 4: Money
Chapter 5: Ideas
Chapter 6: People
Chapter 7: Institutions
Chapter 8: Development of UK Policy Towards the Defence Industry
Chapter 9: UK Arms Procurement: a broken system or designed to serve industry?
Chapter 10. Arms exports – getting away with murder (and grand corruption)
Chapter 11. Conclusions and Recommendations
