To ask Her Majesty's Government whether all their websites located in the United Kingdom must have the letters “UK” in their domain names. [HL967]

Ministers agreed in July 2008 that all new central government owned websites should use .gov.uk domain names. This new policy applies to all new websites. We are discussing transitional arrangements with existing websites. Non-government domains (eg com, org etc) should be used only for defensive registration when a similar domain name is registered to protect an organisation's brand from common misspellings (typosquatting) or intentional misuse; for example, seeking to sell back to the organisation or use in bad faith (cybersquatting). Any such defensive registration must redirect to the primary government domain. (See http://coi.gov.uk/guidance.php?page=194#section3a for related guidance.) A copy has been placed in the Library.