There’s another spat going on about who can ship what sort of arms where. This part of it accords with my own experiences:

Roger Berry, chairman of the influential parliamentary Quadripartite
Committee that monitors arms exports, suggested an export licence might
not have been required if the entire deal took place overseas.

‘British
arms brokers are completely out of control when they are operating
outside the UK,’ said Berry. ‘If no part of the transaction takes place
in the UK they don’t need a licence. This is precisely the loophole
that my committee argues needs to be plugged.’

15 years or so back we were asked to make a supply that came under such arms dealing licences. It was a computer of such power (a Sun Workstation as it happens) that, given that it was going to an arms factory ( a helicopter one) that it was treated a if it was indeed arms. Thus we needed an export licence. The people who issued such at the time were a group in Paris (sorry, forgotten the name) and off we trotted to try and get one. Now, we came across this little anomaly as above. We were a UK Ltd company, so we got in contact with the DTI of the time and asked whether we should handle the licence application through the UK. No, came back the answer. As the delivery was from the US to Russia, it all depended upon their relevant rules: nothing to do with HMG.

We got our licence in the end, (in the 6 months that took prices of such boxes had fallen dramaticaly, but the contract value didn’t. Very sweet outcome for us.) and shipped the machine. As it happened, it went through Heathrow as cargo, at which point someone removed it from its casing and deliberately broke it. Clearly, despite the fact that we were fully licenced, some thought we shouldn’t have been.

Did you know that the only place you cannot buy insurance cover is for what happens in a customs hall?

Still worked out OK. Our saboteur wasn’t very good at his job. He’d bent the frame (which we repaired on the Moskvitch production line) but done no other damage.

But the basic point, that a UK company, when shipping from country A to B where neither is the UK does not need a UK licence seems to be established.