Hilary Benn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Hilary Benn on 2016-04-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, on how many occasions his Department has (a) not granted and (b) suspended an arms export licence having concluded that there was a risk of breaches of international humanitarian law by the purchasing company in each of the last 10 years.

Anna Soubry

Criterion 2c of the Government’s export licensing Criteria states that the Government will not grant a licence if there is a “clear risk” that the items might be used in the commission of a “serious violation” of international humanitarian law (IHL). Criterion 2c has been in force since the adoption by the EU of Council Common Position 2008/944/CFSP on 8 December 2008.

Since that time 256 Standard Individual Export Licence applications have been refused under Criterion 2 which covers human rights as well as international humanitarian law.

Unfortunately it is not possible to determine which, if any, licences were refused specifically under C2c without examining the case file for each individual application and this could only be done at disproportionate cost.

No extant export licences have been suspended under Criterion C2c.