HC Deb 21 March 2002 vol 382 c452W
14. Ms Drown

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will implement the recommendations of the Scott report on export licensing. [42863]

Nigel Griffiths

The Bill responds to the Scott report's key recommendations that the existing export control should be replaced with legislation that:

Sets restrictions on the Government's power to control exports;

Gives Parliament the power to scrutinise orders introduced under export control legislation.

In addition the Bill gives the Government important new powers to control trafficking and brokering in arms, and the transfer of sensitive technology by intangible means.

Lord Scott has welcomed the Bill, commenting that "for the first time in some 50 years there are proposals for export controls which will have constitutional and democratic respectability." (Lord Scott made this comment during the Bill's Second Readings in the House of Lords—Hansard, 8 January column 482).