HC Deb 27 March 1998 vol 309 cc309-11W
Mr. Faber

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his answer of 11 March 1998,Official Report, column 257, on export licences, how many applications in each of the stated four week periods his Department recommended for refusal. [36738]

imported into the United Kingdom; and from which countries. [36688]

Mr. Rooker

Beef bones are not separately identified in the Combined Nomenclature. Imports of greaves, flours and meals, of meat or meat offal (including tankage), unfit for human consumption, are shown in the table. The tonnages from each country for the last ten years of these exports are taken from the Official Overseas Trade Statistics.

The data will be subject to a degree of statistical error. The overall level of errors will be low, but these errors will have a much greater proportional effect on countries with small values or volumes of trade. Therefore great care is needed when interpreting the data in the table as the data will inevitably include a number of errors.

Mr. Fatchett

Licences to export strategic goods are issued by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and the Export Control Organisation of the DTI is the licensing authority. All relevant individual licence applications are circulated by DTI to other Government departments with a policy interest. These include the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development. The advice that is given by these departments to DTI falls into the category of internal discussion and advice, the disclosure of which would harm the frankness and candour of internal discussion and which is being withheld under exemption number 2 of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information.