Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, for each government department, from July to December 2013, (1) on how many occasions the scrutiny reserve resolution in the House of Lords was overridden, (2) on how many occasions the scrutiny reserve resolution in the House of Commons was overridden, and (3) in respect of how many documents an override occurred in (a) both Houses or (b) either House.

The Government seeks to avoid breaching the Scrutiny Reserve Resolutions, continuing to account for overrides in writing to the Committees. The last EU Committee report recognises that engagement between the Committee’s Secretariat and Departments helped the number of overrides fall, the largest category of override being on sensitive, fast-moving Common Foreign and Security Policy matters (16 of the 20 overrides across the two Houses) which cannot be publicised beforehand, making overrides difficult to avoid. During this period, 568 Explanatory Memoranda were submitted, the 20 overrides representing the lowest number since 2010.

The figures requested are in the attached Table 1.

Overrides July-December 2013