ARMS companies are perverting British government policy through unprecedented influence on ministers and officials, a new report has revealed.

The result is arms export decisions which sustain war crimes, human rights abuses and blatant corruption, with rules are regularly bent in favour of the industry, it claims.

Over 10 years, ministers and top civil servants met with arms executives an average of 1.64 times every day, shows the report by Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) and the World Peace Foundation.

The report also said that over 40 per cent of high-ranking military officers and Ministry of Defence officials took jobs in the arms and security industries upon leaving the public service.

And the leading arms monopoly, BAE Systems, had more meetings with the Prime Minister and other ministers than any other company.

BAE has been at the centre of bribery and corruption scandals relating to arms sales on several occasions, and the report claims that it has effectively become a “privately owned branch of the state.”

Two other arms companies, Airbus and Rolls-Royce, also enjoyed very high levels of access.

The report argues that the movement of people between government and the industry is no longer a “revolving door” but an “open-plan office” within the national security establishment.

The report’s author, CAAT research co-ordinator Sam Perlo-Freeman, said: “This is a broken system. No industry should have this level of influence over government, especially one that deals in death and destruction.

“This level of influence is profoundly undemocratic and means that shareholder profits are protected at all costs — even if this means complicity in appalling war crimes.

“Radical measures are urgently needed to break the arms industry’s stranglehold on government policy.”

The report argues that the intimacy between the government and the arms industry has been a deliberate government policy over many years.

And it is sustained despite regular cost over-runs and other malpractice in delivering military equipment contracts.

Consequences identified in the report include a weak arms export control regime which has allowed the industry to continue supplying weapons for atrocities in Yemen, Palestine and elsewhere; virtual immunity from corruption charges; and sustained high profits for the companies concerned.

The report argues that persistent procurement problems will not be fixed unless the overly cosy relationship between the government and the main suppliers is addressed.