Asked by: Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Independent Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will publish a full list of the criminal offences introduced between 1997 and 2013 in a form easily understood by the general public.
Answered by Lord Faulks
The Government wants to avoid bringing in new criminal offences where they are not needed and will continue to scrap unnecessary and out of date laws, but where there is a genuine need to create a new criminal offence we will continue to do so.
To publish an accessible list of criminal offences introduced between1997 to 2008 would incur a disproportionate cost to the public purse.
During this parliament, however, the Government committed to publishing the number of offences it created each year. My department is responsible for doing so and publishes an annual statistical bulletin on the number of new criminal offences added to the statute book. The bulletins cover primary and secondary legislation containing criminal offences enforceable in England and Wales. The latest bulletin covering the period 2009 to 31 May 2013 is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/revised-new-criminal-offences-statistics-in-england-and-wales-june-2009-may-2013. The next bulletin should be available in December and will cover the period from 1 June 2013 to 31 May 2014.
Asked by: Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Independent Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what rules currently govern the disclosure of European Union information; and whether any past or present rule, or any proposed rule, bans disclosure of information disadvantageous to the European Union.
Answered by Lord Faulks
Access to documents held by the European Union (EU) is governed by Regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (the Regulation), which provides a public right of access to documents held by these three institutions. The Regulation has also been extended to further EU institutions through other instruments. Information relating to the EU may also be requested from UK public authorities under domestic information rights legislation, including the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Neither the Regulation nor domestic legislation contain provisions which prohibit the disclosure of information simply because its release would be disadvantageous to the EU, and there are no plans to introduce such a measure. However, both the Regulation and domestic legislation provide a range of exemptions, often subject to a public interest test, which permit bodies subject to them to withhold genuinely sensitive information from disclosure where release would undermine legitimate interests specified in that legislation. These include, for example, exemptions which may be relied upon to protect international relations, commercial interests or the decision-making processes for making EU legislation.