Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, for what reason the statutory review of closed material procedure in the Justice and Security Act 2013, which was due in 2018, was delayed until 2021.

Mindful of the statutory nature of this review, Ministry of Justice officials have been, since 2018, in discussion with counterparts in those departments that lead on national security matters to establish arrangements for the review. These discussions only came to a conclusion in late Autumn 2020. The establishment of the review was then announced by the previous Lord Chancellor on 25 February 2021. The reviewer has concluded the examination of the submissions received during the call for evidence (which ran from 7 April to 30 June 2021), and he is now approaching the conclusion of the review. It is estimated that the reviewer’s report, subject to any redactions required on national security grounds (in accordance with section 13(6) of the Justice and Security Act 2013), should be laid before Parliament early this year. As indicated at the time of the call for evidence, a summary of the responses to the call for evidence will be included as an annex to the reviewer’s report.