Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what plans the Government has to remove external tariffs on technical parts and components required for solar technology once the UK has left the EU.

The Department for International Trade published a call for evidence on the 28 November 2017 with the aim of identifying which UK businesses produce goods currently subject to anti-dumping, or anti-subsidy measures, or to on-going investigations related to these.

It asked those businesses to state whether they support, are neutral to, or oppose the maintaining of those measures, when the UK begins to operate its independent trade remedy framework. It asked for data about those businesses’ production and sales, and total UK production and sales.

Measures which meet the criteria set out in the call for evidence will be maintained once the UK begins to operate its independent trade remedy framework. Measures which do not meet the criteria will be terminated – cutting unnecessary costs for UK businesses and consumers.

The Call for Evidence closed on 30 March 2018. However, we continue to invite other interested parties to provide relevant information for measures of interest to them. This will enable us to make an accurate assessment of applications to maintain measures.