Drafting a Request for Clearance
Those preparing letters should aim for clarity, brevity and precision.
All letters should adhere to the following rules:
Timing
- All letters should allow no less than 10 clear working days for comment. The relevant Committee secretary must be contacted if a shorter deadline is required and good reasons must be given in the letter if less time is allowed.
- Those seeking policy clearance should be aware that once all responses have been received, the Committee secretary will need additional time to secure clearance. All departmental objections must be resolved and a clearance letter must be issued by the Chair; receipt of all responses does not equate to clearance. For more information on the secretariats' role in this process, see the section entitled Securing Agreement, Advising the Chair and Issuing Clearance Letters.
- Most Committee correspondence should be classified as restricted. Letters should not be marked Committee Members Only (CMO) unless there are valid reasons. These must be discussed with the relevant Committee secretary given that the difficulties of distributing CMO correspondence mean that clearance deadlines can be put at risk.
Format
- The letter should be given a short self explanatory heading in bold.
- All letters should start with a short initial paragraph in bold which sets out upfront what clearance is being requested for. This paragraph should summarise any key issues and recommendations in the letter and clearly state a specific date by which responses are sought.
Addressees and copy lists
- The letter should be addressed to the Minister who chairs the relevant Committee and copied to the Prime Minister, members of the Committee and the Secretary of the Cabinet, currently Sir Gus O'Donnell. All letters must therefore end 'I am copying this to the Prime Minister, members of XYZ Committee and Sir Gus O’Donnell'. Private Offices should refer to the list of Cabinet Committees for a list of Committee members who need to receive the letter.
- The letter should be sent to the Chair of the Committee as should all responses to it. Where proposals come from the Chair's own Department, the letter should be signed by a junior Minister in that Department and addressed to the Chair.
- Requests for clearance can and should be copied to more than one Committee if the request is relevant to both; there is no need to write to both Committees separately. Ministers who are not members of the relevant Committees but who will have an interest can also be added to the copy list; their interest should be flagged up explicitly. When a request is copied to more than one Committee, one clearance letter covering all policy issues will be cleared by the most senior Chair, unless the Prime Minister is the Chair, in which case the next most senior Chair will respond.
- Cabinet Committee correspondence of relevance to the English regions should be copied as a matter of course to the regional Ministers [External website].
- Usually correspondence is sent only to Ministers although for some policy areas there may be others who should be engaged, such as the Chief Scientific Adviser. The relevant Committee secretary will be able to advise.
Devolved Administrations
- The Devolved Administrations are not part of the Westminster decision-making process and letters should not be copied directly to them.
- Where a letter covers an issue that has some bearing on the responsibilities of the Devolved Administrations, a separate letter should be sent. This process should be followed for all NSID(EU) correspondence and other Committee correspondence as appropriate. Where this is necessary, the original letter should read 'I am writing in similar terms to the Devolved Administrations'.
- Letters to the Devolved Administrations must always be copied to the relevant territorial offices in Whitehall (the Scotland Office, the Wales Office and the Northern Ireland Office) and to the Cabinet Secretary.
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