Export Licences: High Court Judgment

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Liam Fox

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

We are ultimately accountable in the courts, as we have been, and the divisional court was clear in its praise for how Government rigour was applied to this process. We are not in breach of the consolidated criteria, nor has the Court of Appeal said that. What the Court of Appeal said is that the process by which decisions are reached needs to change, and needs to take into account the possibility of international humanitarian law having been breached. To compare that, for example, to the incidents in the Scott report is simply not credible.

Of course, we will review all licences in light of today’s judgment, as we are required to do. That will include open licences.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

The UK’s significant levels of arms production and exports is often justified by the need to protect jobs, and today we have been told that there is a risk of terrorism if we do not export arms to this appalling regime. Rather than being complicit in killing almost 100,000 Yemenis, if the Government really want to protect jobs, reduce the risk of terrorism and enhance the UK’s reputation around the world, why not stop Brexit?

[Dr Fox]

I have heard some really quite idiotic questions in my time in the House, but that one takes the biscuit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Liam Fox

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

3. Whether he plans to replicate the terms of EU free trade agreements in trade deals with Switzerland, Norway and Turkey after the UK has left the EU; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade (Dr Liam Fox)]

As we leave the EU, the Government intend as far as possible to maintain the effects of existing EU free trade agreements and other EU preferential arrangements. That includes agreements with Switzerland, Norway and Turkey.

[Ruth Cadbury]

I am going to pursue the questions asked by my hon. Friends the Members for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) and for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), which the Minister for Trade Policy did not answer. In 2016, the Secretary of State told the International Trade Committee that he would prioritise securing an agreement with Switzerland. The current relationship between the EU and Switzerland is overseen by some 20 joint committees. Very specifically, how many of those committees will be replaced by UK-Swiss committees, and how far along in the process of setting up those institutions is his Department?

[Dr Fox]

I met Swiss Ministers in Geneva recently, and we discussed what the future arrangement would be. Clearly, how we oversee the arrangement depends on what the arrangement itself is, and that is currently under negotiation.