1-3 of 3 results for member:"Lord Hannay of Chiswick"
Librarians' tools
- Search time
- 0.177 seconds
- Solr query time
- 0.003 seconds
- Search query
- member:"Lord Hannay of Chiswick"
- We searched for
- member_ses:301044
Type
House
Session
Year
Department
Member
Primary member
Answering member
Legislative stage
Legislation
Subject
More
Publisher
My Lords, does the Minister recognise—and I am not asking what our negotiating position is—that between now and Friday
it is highly likely that we will have to make a choice between a robust treaty, which is not signed by everyone, and a weak treaty, which will not be worth...
My Lords, does the Minister recognise—and I am not asking what our negotiating position is—that between now and Friday
it is highly likely that we will have to make a choice between a robust treaty, which is not signed by everyone, and a weak treaty, which will not be worth...
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what their principal objectives will be in the negotiations for an arms trade treaty at the United Nations in July.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what their principal objectives will be in the negotiations for an arms trade treaty at the United Nations in July.
My Lords, the United Kingdom is firmly committed to securing a robust and legally binding arms trade treaty to regulate effectively the international trade in conventional arms. The final treaty should have a demonstrable humanitarian, security and development impact, and be capable of implementation in practice to ensure the broadest participation of states, including major arms exporters. This should be achieved without creating an undue additional burden for the legitimate defence industry.
I thank the Minister for that helpful reply. I am sure he agrees with his right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development, who, when speaking to the International Institute for Strategic Studies last week, said that the Government’s principal objective between now and the negotiations in July is to “raise the profile” of the arms trade treaty. Does the Minister not agree that the two steps that the Government could best take to do that would be, first, to announce immediately that the Foreign Secretary will attend the opening of negotiations at the UN in July; and, secondly, for the Prime Minister to give his
full support in a speech between now and the opening of the conference? Will the Minister lend his support to those two measures?
I thank the Minister for that helpful reply. I am sure he agrees with his right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development, who, when speaking to the International Institute for Strategic Studies last week, said that the Government’s principal objective between now and the negotiations in July is to “raise the profile” of the arms trade treaty. Does the Minister not agree that the two steps that the Government could best take to do that would be, first, to announce immediately that the Foreign Secretary will attend the opening of negotiations at the UN in July; and, secondly, for the Prime Minister to give his
full support in a speech between now and the opening of the conference? Will the Minister lend his support to those two measures?
To be fair, I say to the noble Lord, who obviously has been very much at the centre of these things, that the full support is most certainly there. All along, from the time that this initiative began in 2008, the British Government, under the previous Labour Administration and under this Administration, have given very full support to this and we want it brought to the point where we can get a draft treaty. However, as he knows, it is no use being too starry-eyed about overcoming all the difficulties. As to ministerial attendance or ministerial speeches, we will have to look at that. I know that this is a high priority. Of course, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has many high priorities and this most certainly is one of them, so we will have to take a decision on attendance in due course.