Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Government's consultation on codes of practice in relation to the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 complied with Government guidelines on consultations for (a) accessibility and (b) otherwise.

The public consultation on the Investigatory Powers Act codes of practice closed on 6 April 2016. The Government is currently carefully considering the results of that consultation and will publish its formal response in due course.

The Government is confident that this consultation complied with all aspects of the Cabinet Office consultation principles. Indeed, in some aspects the Government exceeded requirements: the Government first published the codes of practice in draft over 12 months ago so that they would be available for public scrutiny during the Parliamentary passage of the Investigatory Powers Act. This early publication provided an unprecedented level of information to the public about the intended use of investigatory powers.