Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, how many directors with responsibility for human resources are employed across their department and its executive agencies; and how many of those directors hold professional HR qualifications from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or equivalent professional bodies.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

As the number of individuals is five or fewer, across the AGO and the Law Officer Departments, I am unable to disclose the figure. This is to protect against the risk that individuals could be identified, in line with our obligations under the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, if the Attorney General whether he provided advice to (a) the Prime Minister and (b) the Secretary of State for Local Government on the original decision to cancel local elections in May 2026.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

By long standing convention, whether the Law Officers have been asked to provide advice, and the contents of any such advice, is not disclosed outside Government.

This convention protects the Law Officers’ ability as chief legal advisers to the Government to give full and frank legal advice and provides the fullest guarantee that government business will be conducted at all times in light of thorough and candid legal advice.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, whether the offence of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 is within the scope of the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

The offence of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 is not within the scope of the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme as it is not an indictable only offence and is not specified in statute as qualifying for review under the scheme.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, whether she has held recent discussions with her counterpart in the United Arab Emirates on the enforcement of UK High Court rulings in the case of Muhammad Tahir Lakhani and Muhammad Ali Lakhani.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

The Solicitor General has not had any such meetings.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, pursuant to the Answer of 12 February 2026 to Question 111611, how many employees are employed by her Department and its agencies.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

Departments are required to publish quarterly, the latest of which was released on 16 December 2025. You are referred to Public sector employment - Office for National Statistics for the information you have requested which states that 11,720 people are employed across all the Law Officers Departments.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, how many rape cases have been awaiting a decision for more than 3 years broken down by Crown Prosecution Service region.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

The CPS is committed to increasing the number of rape cases brought to court each year, and is working closely with other criminal justice partners to ensure that access to justice is not delayed.

The CPS continues to deliver the RASSO National Operating Model (NOM) developed in consultation with stakeholders to ensure a consistently high standard of decision making in rape cases. A key component of model is the offer of early advice (EA) to police to strengthen collaboration and help build the strongest cases from the outset by enabling police to seek advice from a prosecutor during the early stages of a case.

This change means that more cases are coming to the CPS earlier than before, impacting their data on timeliness. The enhanced EA offer was trialled first in the CPS pathfinder Areas London, West Midlands, South West and North East. The South East ran an EA pilot alongside these pathfinders.

The below table provides the number of rape-flagged cases awaiting a decision from the CPS that were first submitted to the CPS three or more years ago, by CPS Area as of the 25th of February 2026. These will include cases which are under further investigation by the police, and cases which have been subject to one or more legal reviews in the past but have not yet been subject to a final charging decision:

Whilst there are 46 cases which have not had a final legal decision after three or more years, there are no RASSO cases that have been awaiting a legal review for three or more years following initial submission or subsequent investigation by the police.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, what steps she is taking to ensure that the Crown Prosecution Service’s guidance on religiously aggravated and religion-based hate crime offences is applied; and what assessment she has made of the potential impact of CPS decision-making on community confidence across different faith groups.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) issues legal guidance on prosecuting racist and religious hate crime, available on their website. To support effective application of this guidance, all new CPS prosecutors receive mandatory training on hate crime, including religiously aggravated offending.

A Chief Crown Prosecutor National Lead for hate crime oversees a network of Hate Crime Coordinators and Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor leads, who provide specialist advice, support casework quality and promote consistent decision-making in every regional CPS Area. They oversee a robust assurance scheme which includes bi-monthly checks of the religiously aggravated hate crime cases in every Area. These checks examine whether such cases have been appropriately identified, and review the case strategy and handling, including whether applications are made to uplift the sentence on conviction. Feeback on casework is provided directly to prosecutors and shared at a regional and national level to identify shared challenges and best practice.

Engaging with communities affected by hate crime is important to build trust and support victims. The CPS has a strong record of engaging openly with a wide range of stakeholders, including academics, the voluntary sector, advocacy groups and community representatives. This helps to ensure that CPS policy and legal guidance reflect best practice and is responsive to communities’ needs. Across every Area and nationally, the CPS holds regular Hate Crime Scrutiny Panels for external scrutiny of its performance on hate crime, including examination of cases of religious hatred.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, what proportion of staff in the Department have (a) office-based, (b) hybrid, and (c) remote-working contracts.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

Contracts issued to staff do not record the information requested. Hybrid working is an informal, non-contractual agreement.

The AGO is committed to flexible working and the business benefits that it offers, including supporting the Civil Service priority of ensuring continued, effective and productive delivery of the work carried out by civil servants across the full range of services.

The AGO operates a ‘hybrid’ approach, led by business needs, and as a result many employees work both from home and in the workplace on an informal basis.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask His Majesty's Government what statistics are available comparing prosecution rates for crimes recorded in (1) rural, and (2) urban, locations.

Answered by Lord Hermer - Attorney General

This Government is committed to protecting our rural communities, as well as tackling crimes that predominantly affect these communities, such as machinery theft. Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) prosecutors work closely with local police officers and officers from the National Wildlife Crime Unit to tackle all types of rural crime.

The CPS provides legal guidance on Rural crime, which is available to all its prosecutors, to assist them in dealing with these cases. They also provide specialist training to ensure that its prosecutors have the expert knowledge needed to prosecute these crimes.

The CPS does not hold any central record of prosecutions for crimes recorded in either rural or urban areas. In the most recent twelve months (ending March 2025) the CPS completed prosecutions in respect of 449,573 defendants and to identify which of these prosecutions relate to criminal activity in rural or urban locations would require a manual review of each case and this would be at a disproportionate cost.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council Wildlife and Rural Crime Strategy 2025 - 2028 provides a framework through which policing, and its partners, can work together to provide a dedicated and tailored support for rural communities and those who live and work within them. This strategy is a key step in our mission to deliver safer streets applies to all communities, urban and rural, across the country

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many (1) prosecutions, (2) CPS referrals, (3) acquittals, and (4) convictions there have been under (a) sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, and (b) the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, for each of the last 10 years for which data are available.

Answered by Lord Hermer - Attorney General

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not hold any data which shows the number of defendants prosecuted, referred, acquitted, or convicted of offences created by s58-59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and s1 of the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929. To establish number and outcomes of prosecutions where these offences were charged would require a manual review of case files and this would be at disproportionate cost.

Management information is available which shows the number of offences of charged by way of Sections 58 and 59 (administering drugs or using instruments to procure abortion / procuring drugs, instruments to cause abortion) and Section 1 (child destruction) in which a prosecution commenced. The table below shows the number of these offences from 1^st April 2015 to 31^st March 2025.

The figures relate to the number of offences and not the number of individual defendants. It can be the case that an individual defendant is charged with more than one offence against the same complainant. No data are held showing the final outcome or if the charged offence was the substantive charge at finalisation.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, pursuant to the Answer of 2 March 2026 to Question 115462 on Sovereignty: Chagos Islands, how many times has the Attorney General met with Dapo Akande.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

The Attorney and Dapo have met on 5 occasions, including the Attorney General endorsing Dapo Akande’s candidacy to be a judge to the International Court of Justice.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the arrangements for managing unclaimed estates and properties under Bona Vacantia.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

The collection and disposal of bona vacantia monies arising from the estates of deceased people & dissolved companies is managed by the Treasury Solicitor as the Crown’s Nominee, with the proceeds passing each year to HM Treasury. Such arrangements are set out in the Crown’s Nominee Account which is laid annually before Parliament.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of reforming Bona Vacantia arrangements to permit local authorities to take ownership of unclaimed residential properties for public use.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

The revenue from the collection of bona vacantia, including that from the open market sales of any residential property, is transferred annually to the Consolidated Fund for the general funding of HM Government expenditure for the general benefit of all citizens.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, whether her Department was invited by the Office for National Statistics to provide evidence or input into its review of the ethnicity harmonised standard.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

A review of the harmonised standard for ethnicity data collection is underway by the Government Statistical Service Harmonisation team.

A public consultation between October 2025 and February 2026 sought views from a wide range of users, including Government Departments and public bodies, to understand user needs for ethnic group data. This was supplemented by a programme of engagement activity, including with representatives of all government departments.

ONS have committed to providing an initial response to the public consultation in April, and a full report on the consultation in late summer 2026 will include more detailed information on the departments that responded to the consultation.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, how many prosecutions there have been for offences relating to the termination of pregnancy through the the pills-by-post scheme.

Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)

The At-Home Early Medical Abortion or EMA (known as the “pills by post” scheme), was implemented to allow eligible individuals to receive medication to terminate a pregnancy of less than 10 weeks via post after a telephone or video consultation. Introduced in England and Wales during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 to improve access to care, the scheme was made permanent in August 2022.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not hold any data which shows the number of prosecutions for offences relating to the illegal use of medication expressly procured to cause an abortion. To establish number and outcomes of prosecutions where relevant offences relating to the misuse of medication were prosecuted would require a manual review of case files and this would be at disproportionate cost.

Management information is available which shows the number of offences charged by way of Sections 58 and 59 (administering drugs or using instruments to procure abortion / procuring drugs, instruments to cause abortion) and Section 1 (child destruction) in which a prosecution commenced. The table below shows the number of these offences from 1^st April 2020 to 31^st March 2025.

The figures relate to the number of offences and not the number of individual defendants. It can be the case that an individual defendant is charged with more than one offence against the same complainant. No data are held showing the final outcome or if the charged offence was the substantive charge at finalisation.

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is the total cost to the Crown Prosecution Service to date of (1) bringing the initial prosecution against Hamit Coskun, (2) defending that prosecution at Southwark Crown Court, and (3) the appeal of his acquittal in the High Court.

Answered by Lord Hermer - Attorney General

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is rightly operationally independent from Government. All decisions for prosecutions and appeals are therefore taken independently, without political interference.

In the magistrates’ court, the cost of proceedings came to £4,111.44

In the Crown Court, the cost of the Appeal came to £912.00

These are the costs of external counsel.

For High Court proceedings, as of 26 February 2026, a total of £13,983.60 has been spent on external counsel advocacy.

CPS have been ordered to pay the Respondent’s costs (Mr Coskun) for the CPS appeal hearing – total of £27,982.86.

Found: We are cognisant that Attorney General Lord Hermer’s amended guidance for government lawyers encourages

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Found: assault should be tried solely in the civilian jurisdiction unless consent is given by the Attorney General

Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether he has had recent discussions with (a) the Prime Minister, (b) Cabinet colleagues, (c) senior civil servants and (d) the Attorney General on the legality of authorising the United States to launch offensive military operations from RAF Fairford.

Answered by Al Carns - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for Veterans)

UK bases were not involved in the initial strikes on Iran. Permissions to utilise UK military bases are considered on a case-by-case basis and the decision to grant permission is dependent on the nature and purpose of their activity.

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Sir Robert Buckland gives detailed written historical evidence here: https://www.robertbuckland.co.uk/news/history-and-role-law-officers

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Found: The Attorney General v Ms Sandra Messi: [2026] EAT 34

Found: The Attorney General v Ms Sandra Messi: [2026] EAT 34

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