Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many Academic Technology Approval Scheme applications were made in each month since May 2021; how many of those applications were processed in less than (a) twenty and (b) thirty days; and what the longest time taken to process an application made was in each month.

The UK takes its responsibility towards countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and advanced conventional military technology seriously. The Academic Technology Approval Scheme is a thorough, necessary and proportionate tool to protect UK research from misappropriation and divergence to military programmes of concern. Between May and October, the scheme received over 30,000 applications. The majority of applications are processed within published timescales. We continue to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the scheme and a planned IT upgrade should provide greater data analysis capability by summer 2023.