Recommendation 16

Aware that time is often of the essence when negotiating international agreements, we recommend that the Ministry of Justice and the Crown Dependencies work together to identify how the entrustment process could be streamlined, speeded up and improved, and adapt their ways of working where necessary to achieve this, with the objective of achieving a signed off letter within an ambitious timeframe. A useful first step in helping to speed things up would be to improve understanding of the process across Whitehall and, to this end, we recommend the Ministry of Justice publishes a ‘How To Note’ on entrustment, accompanied by awareness-raising training for UK Government departments on the topic. (Paragraph 60) The constitutional relationship with the Crown Dependencies 33