[ARCHIVED CONTENT] Drafting a Response to a Request for Clearance

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When responding, departments should:

Draft the proposed response with sufficient time for it to be considered and cleared by the appropriate Minister within their department and issued by that Minister within the deadline stated in the original letter.

Address the response to the Minister who chairs the Committee, not to the Minister who wrote requesting clearance. It should end 'I am copying this to the Prime Minister, members of XYZ Committee and to Sir Gus O’Donnell'.
The Devolved Administrations are not members of Committees and should not be copied into the response even if they received a separate copy of the original clearance request.

A nil return is a sign that a Minister is content with a policy. It is the responsibility of Private Offices to ensure that letters issued in their Minister's name have substantive comments to make; otherwise, they should give a nil return and do not need to write.
Where possible, keep replies short. Where this is not possible, start the letter with a summary of the department's concerns.
There are three categories of Ministerial comments and the response must clearly distinguish whether a particular comment is one the Minister:

requires to be addressed as a condition of agreeing to clearance
believes should be addressed, but does not insist on as a condition of clearance; and
is making without suggesting it needs to be addressed before clearance.

If any member of the Committee objects to a proposal and their objections cannot be resolved, the proposal will not receive policy clearance without a meeting of the Committee. It is therefore important that, where there are disagreements between departments, the issues are discussed as soon as they emerge and a compromise is sought prior to the Minister responding to the original letter. Objections cannot just be dismissed. The Committee secretary will need to confirm that all parties are content before policy clearance is granted. For more information on the Committee secretary's role in brokering agreements, see the sections entitled Securing Agreement, Advising the Chair and Issuing Clearance Letters in this guide.
Whilst a Minister is entitled to reserve his or her own position until an issue is resolved, it is not generally consistent with the principles of Ministerial responsibility for a Minister to require that officials are satisfied on an issue of policy. On matters of detail, however – for example on the drafting of documents – a Minister may want to ask that they are resolved between officials, indeed it is preferable that Ministerial correspondence does not become embroiled in matters of detail (if it is felt that drafting points should be covered in a letter, it is better that they are dealt with in an annex).