Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, which unit in his Department was responsible for conducting the June 2020 reassessment of exports of riot control equipment to the US; how long that reassessment took to conduct; and what process was put in place to gather and analyse the evidence relevant to that reassessment.

On 4 June, in line with standard practice, officials in the Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU) agreed that a reassessment should be undertaken in order to assess whether relevant licences remained consistent with the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria. ECJU-FCDO completed its reassessment on 12 July.

Information on the situation in the USA was collated by ECJU from independent press coverage, social media reports, reports from Non-Governmental Organisations and from diplomatic missions across the USA. This information was analysed to determine whether events gave rise to a clear risk under the Consolidated Criteria that crowd control equipment exported to the USA might be used for internal repression.