It is routine for ministers and civil servants to head straight onto the payroll of the arms suppliers they have just been "regulating". A few months ago, representatives of Amnesty International picked up a stray bullet in blood-soaked Uganda and took it back for analysis. It turned out to have been manufactured in Cheshire.This summer, Blair provided us with an unusually blatant example of how governments routinely trade off human rights against corporate profit. The Government spent months secretly negotiating the largest arms deal in history: a £40bn clincher to sell Typhoon jet fighters to the House of Saud. They knew these corrupt dictators routinely torture any of their subjects who have the cheek to call for democracy or women's rights. But the Defence Secretary, John Reid, met Prince Naif - the man in charge of Saudi Arabia's secret police - to hear the Saudi royal family's conditions nonetheless.

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They wanted two refugees from the Saudi tyranny who made it to Britain to be deported Blair and Reid have reportedly agreed. What's a few asylum-seekers when you've got contracts to negotiate?The problem is not simply that we allow arms suppliers to the poor and tyrannical to operate in this country; it is much worse. The Government actively lavishes cash and political energy on them. Arms suppliers receive subsidies topping £990m per year from your taxes - enough to build 10 hospitals.The Government justifies this by saying the defence industry is a major employer in this country. The happy shoppers included representatives from Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Indonesia, Libya and several African countries sucked into the war in Congo that has killed three million people in four years.Of the 14 countries in Africa where there is a conflict, Britain has sold arms to 10 of them. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?"Tony Blair promised us "the toughest arms regulations in the world" back in the dreamy days of 1997.

But only last month, in the heart of London, there was an arms fair - paid for with your tax money and mine - offering cluster bombs, stun guns and leg irons for sale. Many times." Yuri Orlov - played by Nicholas Cage - captures the amorality of the world's barely-regulated arms industry when he says: "There are 550 million small arms in circulation That's one firearm for every 12 people on the planet. "Why did the world make it possible for children to kill children with your guns and your bullets?" Emmanuel asks. "Why are you still doing it?"When you need to look to the Hollywood Hills for moral guidance, you know you're in trouble - but the movie The Lord of War, released this week, is a must-see polemic against the uncontrolled, anarchic trade in weapons in which Britain stands as the number two supplier.In a stunning opening sequence, the camera follows a bullet on its journey from being manufactured in a factory in a leafy Western suburb to entering the skull of an African child-soldier. Emmanuel found this hard to watch: "I saw where those bullets ended up.