Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure proper scrutiny and oversight of the activities of the Research Information and Communications Unit.

RICU is part of the Home Office and is funded from within the Department’s overall budgets.

Decisions on funding are taken as part of the Home Office’s normal business planning process.

The Home Office publishes information on departmental spending through its transparency publications. We do not routinely provide detailed budgets for individual teams

The Home Office has previously contracted with a range of suppliers to support communications and research activity, in line with government commercial processes.

Information on individual contracts is published in line with transparency requirements, including on Contracts Finder and through departmental transparency releases.

The Home Office no longer holds a contract with Breakthrough Media.

We do not provide a consolidated, unit-level breakdown of payments to individual suppliers.

RICU operates within the framework of Home Office governance, including ministerial accountability and established departmental oversight processes.

Its work supports the wider counter-terrorism system by providing analysis on terrorist and extremist use of propaganda and exploitation of the internet to inform the UK’s counter terrorism system. All activity complies with relevant legislation.

Ministers have authorised RICU’s work since its establishment and receive its outputs as part of the Department’s wider counter-terrorism activity.

The team’s work is subject to appropriate internal assurance and external scrutiny, including by Parliament.

The Home Office does not routinely publish detailed staffing information for individual counter-terrorism teams where doing so could risk revealing sensitive information about the structure and resourcing of counter-terrorism capabilities.