Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether the UK ambassador to the UN in New York, the UK Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, officials from the UK mission to the UN in New York or other officials of his Department attended the first organisational meeting on negotiating a ban on nuclear weapons in New York in February 2017; and whether he plans to monitor the (a) working papers produced by participating states and (b) negotiations.

The UK did not participate in the organisational meeting on negotiating a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons on 16 February and will not attend the substantive negotiations starting on 27 March. We do not believe these negotiations will lead to effective progress on global nuclear disarmament. The best way to achieve this goal is through gradual multilateral disarmament negotiated using a step-by-step approach and within existing international frameworks.