Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of average export licence processing times on businesses that require quick approvals of those licences.

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.

One of the reasons we are transparent about our processing targets and performance is to enable exporters to be well informed about the process and to plan for the need to apply for an export licence in advance. However, some destinations remain more challenging and will take longer than our target times to complete as we continue to maintain our robust export controls regime.

The Government's policy on export control is certainly not to frustrate or hamper the ability of companies to trade, but to make the world a safer place for us all by operating a clear, proportionate, and robust system of export controls in the UK.