Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what the (a) target and (b) average time taken to process export licence applications is as of 12 March 2024.

The Export Control Joint Unit is extremely mindful of the commercial pressures that businesses face - and of the need to process licence applications with minimum delay - which is why it strives to meet its licensing targets (to conclude 70 per cent of standard individual export licence applications within 20 working days and 99 per cent within 60 working days).

We publish comprehensive Official Statistics every quarter about the decisions we make on licence applications, which includes our median processing times. This covers data from every year since January 2008 and including our most recent publication covering the quarter up to June 2023. This data is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/strategic-export-controls-licensing-data.