My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group and address particularly Amendments 40, 41 and 51 and the requirement for a fast-track process. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, I welcome the Minister’s commitment to meet the NGOs before the next stage of the Bill. It is important to understand that their anxiety is not due to the Minister’s lack of commitment, his intentions or the policy of the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, which has a stated policy of processing licence applications for humanitarian purposes as quickly as possible. However, the NGOs and all the amendments in this group seek to create more certainty because, as the noble Earl mentioned, delays occur and when sanctions are biting hard we are unable to get assistance
where it is needed. Humanitarian crises can emerge extremely suddenly and we are most concerned about how the new regime will deal with them. As the noble Earl said, there are plenty of examples of the costs of slow-moving sanctions policy—for example, in Somalia in 2011, where uncertainty about the sanctions regime slowed down the NGOs’ response to the famine in that country. I certainly support the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for a general licensing exemption. I hope the Minister will come back with some very concrete reassurances after meeting the NGOs, so that there will not simply be his kind words but a declaration in the Bill to ensure that uncertainty is removed.