Diane Abbott – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Diane Abbott on 2016-01-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 19 January 2016 to Question 22275, what assessment his Department made of the risk that items might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law as defined in the Export Control Act 2002 and the EU Common position when making the decision to grant licences for the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

The UK Government takes its arms export responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world. All export licence applications are assessed on a case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria, taking account of all relevant factors at the time of the application including International Humanitarian Law. The Government is satisfied that extant licences for Saudi Arabia are compliant with the UK’s export licensing criteria.