Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, who from his Department will represent the UK at the November meetings of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in Geneva and Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons; and what the priorities of those attending those meetings will be.

The UK delegation will include military and Ministry of Defence (MOD) civilian personnel from the Counter-Proliferation and Arms Control Centre, Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. A priority for the MOD is to support the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in fulfilling our commitments as a proactive State Party to the CCW. MOD participation will allow us to share our thinking on autonomy, notably as set out in the recently published Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) doctrine note. This forms part of our efforts to build improved understanding at the international level in the debate on Armed Forces' use of remote and automated systems.