Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of a review of access policies in relation to the Home Office Atlas immigration database in the context of the recent guilty verdict in the Peter Wai case.

The Home Office has a robust Identity and access management policy that sets out how all staff should access Home Office systems, assets and data, specifically outlining how only appropriately authorised and ‘identified’ individuals should have the ability to gain entry via mechanisms such as password management, access control and account management.

We keep our security arrangements under constant review, which is why we have undertaken a programme of work to strengthen them further, with a number of additional measures being adopted to tighten controls.

It would be inappropriate to comment on the specific details of our security arrangements as to do so could undermine their effectiveness.