Hilary Benn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Hilary Benn on 2016-01-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether the UK was represented at the recent UN working group meeting on nuclear disarmament in Geneva.

Mr Philip Hammond

The UK did not attend the recent organisational meeting for the working group established by UN General Assembly Resolution 70/33 entitled “Taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations”. As detailed in PQ 23329, the UK, along with the four other Non-Proliferation Treaty Nuclear Weapons States, voted against this resolution. The Government believes that productive results can only be ensured through a consensus-based approach that takes into account the wider global security environment.