Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, whether staff in her Department employed to undertake compliance visits in relation to (a) Open Individual Export Licences and (b) Open General Export Licences have been redeployed to work on (i) the covid-19 outbreak and (ii) Free Trade Agreements.

The Department continues to undertake compliance checks. Due to coronavirus, physical site inspections have ceased temporarily and remote inspections are being completed instead.

We currently have eight staff who are employed to undertake such checks and there has been no redeployment of these staff to other functions.