Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what diplomatic steps he is taking to prevent the erosion of arms control treaties.

The United Kingdom remains among the strongest defenders of international arms control and security treaties and of the international law and norms on which our collective security depends. The UK chairs the two main security committees of the OSCE, the Forum for Security Co-operation and the Security Committee. We have just concluded our year-long chairing of the P5 group on nuclear arms control. We will be the President of the next Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty. And we played a key role at the five-yearly Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in April/May, which reaffirmed the centrality of the Treaty for stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons.