Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what assessment he has made of the Investment Court System; what the Government's policy is on that system; and what plans the UK has to promote that system to other countries as part of future trade agreements.

The Investment Court System (ICS) proposed by the European Commission represents a shift from the existing framework of dispute resolution, and we shall want to consider how it operates once it is implemented, to see if it delivers fairer outcomes, more quickly and at less financial cost than the current framework.

As the UK develops an independent trade and investment policy, we shall be considering our approach to investment protection, including investor-state dispute resolution, for which the ICS is one model.