To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what procedures the Exports Credits Guarantee Department has put in place to ensure that fraudulent or unethical export contracts are identified and excluded prior to abandonment of export credit claims under the UK's debt cancellation policy. (180436)

In order for any debt arising in relation to an ECGD-supported export contract to be considered for forgiveness, that debt must appear on the list of debts which form the subject of a debt rescheduling agreement between the UK and the debtor country, which would, almost invariably, be entered into pursuant to arrangements agreed in the Paris Club. The debts to be included in that debt list would have to be accepted by the government of the debtor country and, during this acceptance process, it would be open to the debtor country to raise objections to the inclusion of any particular debt on the grounds that the export contract to which it relates had been procured by corruption or is otherwise ineligible for inclusion in the debt list.

In addition, in 2000, ECGD first published new Business Principles and anti-corruption procedures and these (as updated from time to time) are applied to all new applications for ECGD support.