Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what proposals the UK has put to the Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council (P5) on collective participation in the Conference on the Humanitarian Effects of Nuclear Weapons being hosted in Vienna in December 2014 by the Austrian government; and what discussions were held within the P5 on participation in the predecessor conferences held in Norway and Mexico.

The UK has not put any proposals to the Permanent Five (P5) members on attendance at the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Effects of Nuclear Weapons. The UK, US, France, Russia and China exchanged views on attendance ahead of both of the previous humanitarian consequences conferences.

The P5 dialogue (initiated by the UK in 2009), provides a valuable opportunity for the P5 to exchange views on a range of nuclear disarmament issues, and is an essential step to building trust and confidence among the nuclear weapons states, as part of a step by step approach to disarmament.