Speeches by Bryant.

“I understand that, but we have to consider all of those because they might move between one and another.”

“The other important thing is that it has to be proportionate to the kind of licence it is. There are licences where the area might be more ambiguous, and those should receive more rigorous and regular reassessment. Then there are others that are still controlled goods, but they are going to journalists and others, for …”

“There has again been a moment in this last week where we have been able to do that, because the new set of Ministers are asking questions about whether we are absolutely certain about these particular licences.”

“I am happy to answer. Most licences last for roughly two years, so there is an end date to every licence and there has to be a process of reapplication. That is why some of the licences that I was referring to earlier, which have been suspended, are still extant, if you see what I mean, but they will come to an end.”

“I should make a correction to what I said to Mr Western earlier. The numbers that he referred to are the maximum value that will be allowed under the licence. It is not necessarily the amount that actually ends up going out under the licence, which may be considerably smaller.”

“It might be best if we go to Rosemary, who is most directly engaged in that.”

“In the broadest possible sense, yes it is. I want to be as open as I possibly can be in the information that we give to the Committee. There do have to be some parameters around that in terms of the commercial sensitivity and security of the individual companies, but within those parameters I am happy to be as open as …”

“I think there is confusion here. As you know, in the UK’s export control arrangements there are two categories of things that have to be subject to an export control licence: the first is military and the second is dual use. Military covers a very wide range of things could be used but may not be used at all in a letha…”

“Yes.”

“That is a perfectly legitimate question that I have asked myself. But the assessment is that the training of an aircraft pilot on such equipment would take so long that they would not be among the people who would now be engaged in fighter combat in Gaza.”

“For instance, in relation to the trainer aircraft that I was talking about, we have made a very clear assessment—we rigorously looked at it, and we have looked at it again this year—of whether any of the equipment in those trainer aircraft could possibly be used in fighter combat, and they cannot be. We can see no way …”

“Again, that is not for me, I’m afraid.”

“That is not the job of the DBT; that is a matter for the FCDO.”

“Well, it means that they are not able to use them. And we have suspended more licences. It is just that three of the licences that are extant and that would have been continued, because the licences are normally for two years, have been suspended. There are others that were suspended on 2 September last year.”

“I am not quite sure what the tenor of your argument is in that question.”

“Yes.”

“Just one thing, which is that three of the 167 military ones were suspended military licences.”

“The F-35 is a matter for the MOD, I am afraid.”

“The system is global. It exercises regardless of the country. We deal with—I think—some 10,000 licences every year across the whole world, and they are not for every single item that could possibly be exported to another country. If we were to introduce such a measure, that would severely limit British trade with other…”

“Because, first of all, the original assessment, which I was trying to explain, is that we control certain items. Those controlled items have to go through a rigorous export licensing process. People in the Department assess every single one, and we assess the situation in Gaza as to what might or might not be used. For…”