Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many of her Department's ministers have been exempted from quarantine in a hotel after returning to the UK from a covid-19 red list country to which they have travelled for the purposes of conducting official business.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The Attorney General and Solicitor General have not claimed any exemptions from the requirement to quarantine after returning from a red list country as neither Law Officer has undertaken any official business overseas since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Details of Ministers’ overseas travel are published quarterly on GOV.UK, and all travel is arranged in line with official regulations.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what recent steps he has taken to promote awareness of the laws on contempt of court among social media users.
Answered by Robert Buckland
Where appropriate the Attorney General and I publish online the warnings about potentially prejudicial reporting that Attorneys General had previously only given to the mainstream media. My office also sends tweets warning social media users of the risks of being in contempt of court.
In addition, the Attorney General has recently issued advice to social media users and others that identifying a victim in a sexual offence case is a criminal offence.
We continue to look at whether there is anything more that can be done to raise awareness in this area.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the criteria used to determine whether or not a prosecution is in the public interest.
Answered by Jeremy Wright
Decisions on whether prosecutions are in the public interest are guided by the Code for Crown Prosecutors and CPS Legal Guidance. The Code is produced by the Director of Public Prosecutions after significant public consultation. The CPS Legal Guidance is available for the public to see on the CPS website at http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/ . There have been seven versions of the Code since 1986 and it was last updated in January 2013.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how much the Law Officers' Departments spent on the purchase of televisions in (a) 2013 and (b) 2014 to date.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Serious Fraud Office spent £450 on televisions in 2013-14, and £1,272 in 2014-15 as at the 31st August.
The Crown Prosecution Service does not collect this information centrally. To obtain it would require local area managers to review all paper procurement records which would incur a disproportionate cost.
The remaining Law Officers’ Departments have not incurred any such expenditure during the past two years.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many officials in the Law Officers' Departments, of each grade, have remained at that grade since 2010 but received a pay rise; and how much of a rise each such person at each such grade has received.
Answered by Jeremy Wright
Tables containing the information requested plus accompanying notes have been placed in the Library of the House.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many mobile telephones, BlackBerrys and laptops were lost by the Law Officers' Departments in (a) 2013 and (b) 2014 to date.
Answered by Oliver Heald
The information requested is contained in the following table.
Serious Fraud Office | Crown Prosecution Service | Treasury Solicitor's Department | ||||
2013 | 2014 | 2013 | 2014 | 2013 | 2014 | |
Laptops | 1 | 1 | 13 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
Mobile Phones | 1 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Blackberry's | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
The Attorney General's Office and the HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate have not recorded any losses of IT or communications technology during this period.