You would not expect them to submit applications which they knew would be refused," he said.. MEDIEVAL GUARDS waving swords patrol the entrance to the restaurant in the bowels of Europe's greatest dream factory. "It is all the more necessary since the evidence seems to suggest that this Government is refusing a similar proportion of applications to its predecessor," he said.A Foreign Office spokesman said looking at the proportion of licences refused was not a sensible way of measuring the implementation of the policy."The Government has kept in close contact with industry .. and British firms understand the new rules. "The present system is weighted heavily in favour of the military industry," she added.Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said there was a need for up-to-date legislation. In the 10 months up to the general election in May 1997, 9,846 such licences were granted and 85 refused - 0.85 per cent. On average, there were 984 licence applications per month in the period before the election and 977 after.Rachel Harford, of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, said the figures confirmed the suspicion that there had been little change. The new figures on the proportion of arms export licences that are refused were given to the committee in evidence from the Department of Trade and Industry.

Although they do not give a full picture, they do give an indication of what has happened since the general election.In the year from August 1997, 11,723 individual arms licence applications were granted and 89 refused - 0.75 per cent. It also called for new rules on the "licensed production" of arms abroad by British companies, a growing trend that was revealed in The Independent in October.The Government's first annual report on arms sales, delayed since the summer, is expected in the next few weeks. Emergency legislation passed 60 years ago was still in use, yet plans to update it would not be implemented this year.The committee expressed "disappointment" that controls on the end-use of weapons exported from Britain still had not been tightened. The number of applications was running at almost the same rate as under the Conservatives.The figures emerged as ministers faced criticism for their failure to implement the recommendations of the Scott report into the Arms to Iraq affair, which was completed nearly three years ago.A report yesterday from the Trade and Industry Select Committee said there were "gaping holes" in Parliament's ability to hold ministers to account. ARMS MANUFACTURERS are more likely to have their export licence applications approved by the Labour Government than under its predecessor, new figures have revealed.

The disclosure casts doubt on how much has changed under Labour's "more ethical" foreign policy, which was supposed to prevent arms exports to repressive regimes. Fewer than 1 per cent of applications were turned down between August 1997 and August 1998, the Government disclosed in evidence to a House of Commons committee. Despite his polished manner, enemies within the NF allege that Mr Megret is even more of an extremist than Mr Le Pen, more ideologically racist, more tempted to build philosophical links between the NF and neo-Nazism.The organisational revolution in the past 10 years, which has transformed the NF from a protest group and a vehicle for Mr Le Pen's personality into a hugely effective grassroots party, is mostly Mr Megret's doing Hence his strength in the local party machines.. A SMALL, BALDING, vole-like man with an ingratiating smile, Bruno Megret, 49, makes an unlikely demagogue He is also an unlikely racist and extreme nationalist. His wife, Catherine, the Mayoress of Vitrolles, near Marseilles, is of Russian-Jewish origin; he is himself half-Greek. Mr Megret is a classic French technocratic insider - ex-Ecole Polytechnique, ex-Gaullist - who has brought his undoubted political skills to the NF, the party of the malcontented outsider. Later that night he suspended Mr Megret from his job as delegate-general.

Calling for such a meeting was "a crime against the NF and above all a crime against France".. On Wednesday Mr Megret made what amounted to a first, frontal attack on Le Pen's authority, backing his supporters' calls for an extraordinary congress of the party next month to resolve the quarrel.Mr Le Pen had already made clear that anyone who backed such a congress would be regarded as an enemy of the party. When he ordered them to be ejected from the hall, Mr Le Pen was booed and heckled.This week harassment became a purge, with Mr Le Pen striding the corridors of NF headquarters, suspending or ejecting officials he suspected of pro-Mr Megret sympathies. He managed to smuggle his fired and suspended supporters into a meeting of the NF national council. To Mr Le Pen's astonishment, their presence was applauded by a majority of those present. But he has none of Mr Le Pen's vulgar humour or rumbustious charm. His only chances of success would seem to be to deliver a knock-out blow against Mr Le Pen, possibly with some startling revelation about the NF's finances or wider neo-fascist European connections.In the past month Mr Le Pen has been waging a campaign of harassment against Mr Megret and his supporters, stripping them of responsibilities, even firing several people who worked with Mr Megret on spurious cost- cutting grounds Last weekend Mr Megret struck back.

He is a highly intelligent, subtle and presentable politician. On television on Wednesday he accused Marie-Caroline, the eldest of his three daughters, of "betraying her family" by being linked to "one of the leaders of sedition". She lives with one of Mr Megret's lieutenants, Philippe Olivier, and has tended towards the Megret side in recent days.There is bitter irony here. The internal crisis in the NF began when Mr Le Pen was suspended from seeking public office because of his assault on a socialist female candidate during last year's parliamentary elections. "Papa" was campaigning for, and alongside, Marie-Caroline at the time.Is this the end of the National Front? Should all democrats and anti- racists rejoice? No and yes. The far right is a rooted presence in the political psyche of France; its strength has tended, however, to wax and wane with internal splits and quarrels.