§ The Earl of LAUDERDALEasked Her Majesty's Government:
The average time required to process and agree exploration programmes under each of the six rounds of licence offers respectively.
§ Lord STRABOLGIUnder the procedure adopted in Licensing Rounds 1–4, the negotiation of work programmes was not carried out as a separate part of the licensing process and so the time it took is not available. In the Fifth Round the negotiation of work programmes was undertaken separately after the conditional award of licences: the process of negotiating all the work programmes under the Round took about five months. Work programmes under the Sixth Round will be discussed when conditional awards under the Round have been announced.