Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether there is a planned timetable for the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s decisions on notifications being submitted in the correct form under the mandatory notification procedure proposed in the National Security and Investment Bill; and if so, what that timetable is.

My Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State must decide to accept or reject a mandatory notification as soon as is reasonably practicable. If a notification is accepted, the Secretary of State will be required to issue any call-in notice within 30 working days. If the statutory test is met and the Secretary of State decides to call in an acquisition, they have a further 30 working days to decide whether to impose any final remedies. This is extendable by a further 45 working days, and subsequent to this a mutually agreed voluntary period or periods, if the relevant legal test is met.

A draft notification form was published alongside the introduction of the Bill on 11 November 2020, to help interested parties understand what information is likely to be required for a valid notification.