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

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Callanan on 7 December (HL4251), whether the licences and contracts they have signed conform to international best practice regarding (1) confidentiality clauses, and (2) exceptions being allowed and written into contract under a range of pre-defined circumstances; and whether they can elaborate on what such allowed exceptions are in the case of the UK licenses.

The reference made to protecting commercial confidentiality in the previous reply was not specific to any contractual obligation but to the duty of care the Government is under to protect commercially sensitive information shared with it. This duty is recognised, for example, in section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.