Asked by: Lord Bishop of Southwark (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that weapons manufactured in the UK and sold under export licences are not being used to commit or facilitate violations of international human law in Gaza and in contravention of the Arms Trade Treaty ratified by the UK on 2 April 2014.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
All export licence applications are assessed on a case-by-case basis against the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria.
The Criteria provide a thorough risk assessment framework and the Export Control Joint Unit will not issue an export licence to any destination where to do so would be inconsistent with the Criteria.
The Government continues to monitor closely the situation in Israel and Gaza. We can and do respond quickly and flexibly to changing international circumstances. All licences are kept under careful and continual review as standard. We are able to amend, suspend or revoke extant licences and refuse new licence applications as circumstances require.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Southwark (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will undertake a review of existing and pending licences of arm sales to Israel.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government continues to monitor closely the situation in Israel and Gaza. The Government can and does respond quickly and flexibly to changing international circumstances.
All export licences are kept under careful and continual review as standard. We are able to amend, suspend or revoke extant licences and refuse new licence applications as circumstances require.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Southwark (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to identify the beneficial ownership of 100,000 properties held by foreign shell companies on behalf of others as disclosed by the report published on 4 September by the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Warwick and the Centre for Public Data.
Answered by Earl of Minto - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
We are aware of the report provided by LSE, University of Warwick and the Centre for Public Data. We consider its methodology to be highly misleading. It has arbitrarily used a different definition of ‘beneficial owner’ from that in the Economic Crime Act 2022. This means that it counts as ‘non-compliant’ many overseas entities who have provided the required information.
As of 7 September 2023, over 29,000 overseas entities have registered with Companies House. So far, over 1,200 warning notices have been issues to unregistered overseas entities. Warning notices are a pre-cursor to the imposition of a financial penalty. Financial penalties to the value of around £660,000 have so far been issued. The Government currently has no plans to publish a list of unregistered entities.