Memorandum from Rt Hon Malcolm Wicks MP,
then Minister of State at the Department for Business, Enterprise
& Regulatory Reform
In your letter to me of 12 June you asked
for an assurance that BERR would provide at least two months for
the Committees to consider the third tranche of changes for the
Review of Export Controls. I am sorry not to have replied sooner,
but as you know we have been finalising the second tranche changes
and preparing for publication of our further response.
I am very grateful for the Committee's input
into the Review process so far, and am keen to give it as much
time as possible to provide input into the next stages. However,
as you will appreciate, preparing and introducing new legislation
is no easy task, and can be time consuming, partly because of
the process that needs to be followed. We are also producing the
third tranche order as a consolidation order, which we think will
be helpful for users, but is not without complication because
it involves more detailed consideration of the whole of the existing
legislation rather than the particular areas of policy where amendment
is required. We also need to make sure that we allow enough time
after consulting the Committees to consider any comments it has
on the drafts before finalising them.
With that in mind, we calculate that we will
be able to get the final draft orders and guidance to the Committees
in order to give it one month to comment on them. Any more than
this might jeopardise our very tight timetable for laying them
before Parliament in time for them to come into effect in April
2009 as planned. In order to enable the Committees to plan
its meetings and discussions in advance, we estimate that this
will fall in the period mid September to mid October. We would
however provide the drafts earlier if at all possible. We would
also aim to give the Committees preliminary drafts earlier; this
might involve providing various elements of the orders and guidance
on a piecemeal basis as and when they can be produced if the Committees
would find this helpful. We would give this material to other
external stakeholders at the same time as the Committees.
I hope that the Committees can accept this arrangement,
so that we can bring the next set of changes into effect at the
earliest possible date. We would of course keep the Committees
closely in touch with any developments on the timetable during
the drafting process.
22 July 2008
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