§ The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean)Enhanced statistical information on strategic export licensing will, from July 2004, be released on a quarterly basis, instead of once a year through the annual report on strategic export controls, as at present. The first quarterly report on strategic export controls will be published on the Department of Trade and Industry and Foreign and Commonwealth Office websites (www.dti.gov.uk and www.fco.gov.uk) on 28 July. This report will contain information on export licensing decisions taken from January to March 2004.
From now on, statistical data will be published on the FCO and DTI websites three months after the last decision in any given quarter. Until now, decisions taken in one calendar year have been reported in the annual report on strategic export controls in the middle of the following year. Information on the earliest licensing decisions reported in the annual report was not therefore made available until some 18 months later.
From 2004, the annual report, which the Government have a statutory obligation to produce, will summarise information already provided in quarterly reports, as well as describing export control policy developments. It will be produced in hard and electronic copy. The hard copy will include a CD-ROM containing all of the licensing data published in the quarterly reports for that year. The Government intend to publish the next quarterly report, relating to decisions taken between April and June 2004, in October.
The introduction of quarterly reports reflects the Government's commitment to further improve the openness of their strategic export licensing system, which is already acknowledged to be among the most transparent in the world.
The Government's most recent strategic export controls annual report was published on 7 June.