To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of international investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms.

The effectiveness of individual Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions depends upon the specific terms of the relevant investment protection treaty, of which there are over 3000 in force worldwide. Over the life of all these agreements investors have filed over 560 claims. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), by the end of 2012, of concluded arbitration cases, 32% had found in favour of the claimant, 41% in favour of the state and 26% were settled. In the absence of any protections provided by an investment treaty and ISDS provisions, foreign investors would, in many of these cases, have had no equivalent legal mechanism through which to have their claim considered objectively by an independent judicial body.