Disclosure of exporter information
21.There is increasing demand from the public and private sectors for access to export information that HMRC holds. This would be used to help efforts to boost exports by enabling appropriate services and support to be made available to a wider range of businesses and would create greater visibility of UK exporters, especially small businesses, to new overseas customers. The Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 does not, however, permit HMRC to share this information and the absence of a reliable publicly available data source has been highlighted as a constraining factor to delivering better export services.
22.To address this, section 10 gives the Commissioners for HMRC the power to make regulations to permit sharing of certain information on exports. This is deliberately tightly drawn and specifies the categories of information that may be disclosed under the regulations, but limited to less sensitive but nonetheless useful information. The formal consultation on ‘Sharing and publishing export data for public benefit’ will be completed before HMRC makes any regulations, to ensure that all views are taken into account.