Exports: Bahrain
Business, Innovation and Skills

Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran, Labour)

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills who the end-user is of the goods licensed for export in the fourth quarter of 2011 to Bahrain and described as equipment employing cryptography and cryptographic software.

Mark Prisk (Minister of State (Business and Enterprise), Business, Innovation and Skills; Hertford and Stortford, Conservative)

All export licence applications for strategic goods are assessed on a case-by-case basis by the Export Control Organisation within this Department against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria. A licence will not be issued where to do so would contravene the criteria.

The publicly available information on licensing decisions published in the annual and quarterly reports on strategic export controls, available to view at

https://www.exportcontroldb.bis.gov.uk/eng/fox

does not include information on specific end-users. This is because in principle the disclosure of such information would threaten to contravene expectations of confidentiality and the protection of commercial interests in the licensing process. With that in mind, I am however prepared to inform you in this case that the stated end-users were a commercial airline and a provider of public mobile telephony services.