Committee Says UK's Sanctions Policies Lack Clear Strategy

The United Kingdom’s House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee published a June 12 report rebuking the UK’s current sanctions policy, calling it “fragmented and incoherent.” The report called on the U.K.’s National Security Council “to begin an urgent review” of the country’s sanctions strategy and to report findings to Parliament by the end of 2019.

The U.K. government lacks a clear sanctions strategy, according to the report. When the committee questioned Sir Alan Duncan, minister of State for Europe and America, about the government’s sanctions policies, it said he gave descriptions of the U.K.’s “basic objectives of economic and financial sanctions” that “does not constitute a strategy or a clear statement of how the UK believes sanctions should be deployed in concert with other foreign policy instruments.” The report said it received “muddled answers” to questions about “core elements of Government activity on sanctions.”

Government officials told the committee that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has either completed or is “nearing completion” on rolling over existing European Union sanctions if the U.K. leaves the EU without a deal, adding that “there would have been no gap in UK sanctions policy” if Brexit would have occurred in March or April. But the report expressed concern that “vital elements” of the sanctions regulations “were completed mere days before that deadline” and questioned “whether sufficient resources have been allocated to a policy area that is essential to the UK’s role in upholding the rules-based international system.”

The committee also said it received “conflicting assertions” about cooperating on sanctions with the EU, saying Duncan and the Ministry of State both advocated for close cooperation with the EU and separate, autonomous policies. While the committee said it may be “appropriate for the UK to enact tougher sanctions on its own,” it was “deeply concerned” that “so little high-level thought appears to have gone into considering the UK’s strategy and policy approach to these issues.”