Speeches by Bryant.

“There is an imbalance in one sense, except that if you are taking a tariff down from 3% or 4% to zero, that is rather different from taking one down from 33% or 25% to zero. It is a different order of magnitude. Secondly, of course the Indian market is very large. I should say that one of the things we are very conscio…”

“I warmly commend the Committee on producing its report. I take no offence at the demand that there be a separate economic security Minister, even though I think the Culture, Media and Sport Committee demanded, when I was the Minister responsible for tourism, that there be a separate tourism Minister as well—there seems…”

“We would obviously always want to keep that under review. As part of the CRaG process everything gets notified to the several Committees that might have an interest. When I was on the Foreign Affairs Committee, it struck me that it was always at that moment that all the members would put their heads on the table—it was…”

“Why—”

“The shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, argued for the benefits of Brexit—well, I have searched very high and I have searched very, very low for those. The previous Government even had a Minister for the benefits of Brexit, although he lost his seat, of course,…”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Trade Act 2021 (Power to Implement International Trade Agreements) (Extension to Expiry) Regulations 2025. I have never been so kindly called by the Chair in Committee, Mr Stringer, so thank you very much. It is a genuine delight to sit under your chairmanship.…”

“Sorry, can I add just one thing? Following whatever decision is made by everybody, if there are direct implications for us, I am very happy to write to the Committee and engage with you directly.”

“I was going to say all that, but it should probably be me who is writing to you.”

“Chair, Mr Maynard suggested something that I did not hear properly. I think he suggested that one of the things that we might look at is whether we could only allow Israel to have F-35s for defensive operations; I think that was what he was saying. If so, my anxiety is that that is not the judgment we are making. The j…”

“But our judgment is that—”

“No; people have tried quite hard. The way that the F-35s are constructed, and the way the contract is constructed, does not make that easy. The diplomatic arrangements are obviously for the Foreign Office, but I don’t know whether Mr Pollard wants to answer any specifics about the tracking issue.”

“But it is not about gumption, I have to say.”

“Indeed, but you have to achieve that consensus, and that is not as easy as anybody would like to suppose—which was one of the things talked about in the court judgment.”

“It is an intriguing idea, and the kind of idea that, of course, has occurred to lots of people in the Department before me—and, for that matter, to me as well. There are some significant problems with it. First, I am informed that tracking that is not quite as simple as everybody would suggest. Secondly, you referred t…”

“What Minister Falconer is absolutely right about, with the proviso that we have to be very careful about hypothetical sets of circumstances, is that we will always have to keep under review every single element of our engagement in this space, just as, previously, we decided to suspend our negotiations towards a free t…”

“To go back to the judgment of the Court, on ground 11 it found that the Government had “reasonably concluded that there was no realistic possibility of persuading all other partner nations that F-35 exports to Israel should be suspended” and that the UK faced a “blunt choice” to suspend all exports and accept “the defe…”

“More importantly, it does not have a carte blanche, full stop.”

“It quoted Lord Hoffmann—”

“The only other point I would make is that the Court was not deciding whether the decision was right or wrong; it was deciding whether the decision made by Government was made lawfully. It decided that our processes were thorough and lawful.”

“Just to be absolutely clear, Mr Western, we have rejected and ceased licences where people have sought to export other equipment, for other aeroplanes, which we were fairly clear would and could—in all likelihood, would—be used in Gaza. The only difference about the F-35 is the way the whole system is constructed.”