Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the average length of time for decisions to be made on export licencing on the competitiveness of British exporters.

HM Government is committed to maintaining a robust and transparent export control regime. The Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU) is extremely mindful of the commercial pressures that businesses face – and of the need to process licence applications with minimum delay.

HM Government publishes data on export licensing decisions on a quarterly basis in the Official Statistics on GOV.UK. This covers licensing decisions back from 2008 onwards and includes data on the average length of time for decisions to be made. This data is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/strategic-export-controls-licensing-statistics-quarterly-reports.

We keep the licensing process under continuous review, including the targets we set for processing times for applications.