Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps the Government has taken to ensure that UK bilateral investment treaties meet the commitment in the Government's document, Good Business: Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, published in September 2013, to ensure that agreements facilitating investment overseas by UK or EU companies incorporate the business responsibility to respect human rights.

The UK is signatory to over 90 bilateral investment treaties (BITs). The objective of the BITs is to provide protection to investors against actions from the host state (whether the UK or the other party) that comprise unfair or discriminatory treatment of investors rather than to facilitate investment. Fair, non-discriminatory and proportionate action taken by a host state, including to protect human rights, would not breach an investment protection and as such, it is unlikely that a BIT could be invoked by an investor in a way that is detrimental to human rights. The Government is not aware of any investor-state dispute settlement claims made by UK investors under existing BITs that have led directly to or contributed towards a negative impact on human rights.