Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what estimate he has made of the (a) number and (b) value of Raytheon Paveway laser-guided bombs that have been approved for export to Saudi Arabia; what proportion of those bombs have been exported under (i) Standard Individual Export Licence and (ii) Ordinary Individual Export Licence in each quarter since June 2015; and at which locations those bombs were manufactured.

Exports of Paveway bombs are made under a long-standing Government-to-Government defence cooperation programme between the UK and Saudi Arabia. As such, the UK Government has full oversight of the exports.

The UK has issued two licences for the export of Paveway bombs to Saudi Arabia: a Standard Individual Export Licence (SIEL) in April 2015 and an Open Individual Export Licence (OIEL) in March 2014, in accordance with the Consolidated Criteria. Details of these can be found in the published official statistics at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/strategic-export-controls-licensing-data.

I am withholding details of the number and value of bombs permitted by the SIEL as disclosure would prejudice commercial interests.

OIEL applications do not include values because OIELs are generally not restricted by quantity. We therefore do hold that data.

We do not hold figures for the number of weapons exported, nor do we hold information about the locations in which the bombs were manufactured.