Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, with reference to his power to grant his consent to a prosecution, whether he is required to make that decision in accordance with the 1972 Franks Committee memorandum criteria of (a) whether the charge is being brought in appropriate circumstances, (b) the five reasons for the requirement of consent, as set out in that memorandum and (c) the mischief at which the criminal law in question was addressed.

For certain offences, Parliament has decided that the Attorney General’s consent is needed to bring a prosecution.

The Home Office memorandum to the Franks Committee in 1972 gave guidance on the reasons for including a consent requirement when creating a criminal offence. It provided that the basic reason for including a consent requirement is that otherwise there would be a risk of prosecutions being brought in inappropriate circumstances and identified five broader overlapping reasons for including a consent requirement.

It is a constitutional principle that, when deciding whether to consent to a prosecution, the Law Officers will consider all relevant facts including why it is proposed to bring the prosecution and the mischief which the proposed offence was intended to prevent and apply the well-established prosecution principles of evidential sufficiency and the public interest test.