Speeches by Bryant.

“Chair, Mr Maynard suggested something that I did not hear properly. I think he suggested that one of the things that we might look at is whether we could only allow Israel to have F-35s for defensive operations; I think that was what he was saying. If so, my anxiety is that that is not the judgment we are making. The j…”

“But our judgment is that—”

“No; people have tried quite hard. The way that the F-35s are constructed, and the way the contract is constructed, does not make that easy. The diplomatic arrangements are obviously for the Foreign Office, but I don’t know whether Mr Pollard wants to answer any specifics about the tracking issue.”

“But it is not about gumption, I have to say.”

“Indeed, but you have to achieve that consensus, and that is not as easy as anybody would like to suppose—which was one of the things talked about in the court judgment.”

“It is an intriguing idea, and the kind of idea that, of course, has occurred to lots of people in the Department before me—and, for that matter, to me as well. There are some significant problems with it. First, I am informed that tracking that is not quite as simple as everybody would suggest. Secondly, you referred t…”

“What Minister Falconer is absolutely right about, with the proviso that we have to be very careful about hypothetical sets of circumstances, is that we will always have to keep under review every single element of our engagement in this space, just as, previously, we decided to suspend our negotiations towards a free t…”

“To go back to the judgment of the Court, on ground 11 it found that the Government had “reasonably concluded that there was no realistic possibility of persuading all other partner nations that F-35 exports to Israel should be suspended” and that the UK faced a “blunt choice” to suspend all exports and accept “the defe…”

“More importantly, it does not have a carte blanche, full stop.”

“It quoted Lord Hoffmann—”

“The only other point I would make is that the Court was not deciding whether the decision was right or wrong; it was deciding whether the decision made by Government was made lawfully. It decided that our processes were thorough and lawful.”

“Just to be absolutely clear, Mr Western, we have rejected and ceased licences where people have sought to export other equipment, for other aeroplanes, which we were fairly clear would and could—in all likelihood, would—be used in Gaza. The only difference about the F-35 is the way the whole system is constructed.”

“To answer the question about how we assess, of course, we are making an assessment on the basis of what the Secretary of State for Defence has advised us, which is precisely the letter that you now have.”

“That then is a matter, I’m afraid, for the Foreign Office.”

“From the very beginning, when the new criteria were laid out by the then Government under Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who was Secretary of State for International Trade in 2021, she clearly stated that the application of the strategic export licensing control is “without prejudice to the application to specific cases of spec…”

“Well, the argument is in the case, but the primary point is that if we were able to dismantle the F-35 programme so as to take our element out of it, it would effectively be dismantling a process that is important to our national security and to international peace and security around the world, because it is part of a…”

“As you know from the skeleton argument that we made to the court in the Al-Haq case, which you have a copy of, we believe that while it is our duty to do everything we possibly can to ensure that any exports that we license are not doing material damage to the people of Gaza given the situation that exists there—becaus…”

“Sorry, because of that exchange, I am not quite sure what you are asking.”

“No, because the work has to be done before we get to that point. I think you are misunderstanding the process.”

“Because our relationship is with the exporter. If there were to be any evidence at any point that that is not where it was ending up, that would be a breach of the licence, and we would be able to revoke.”