The legal profession in England and Wales, together with its regulators, operates independently of government. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is the frontline regulator responsible for regulating the professional conduct of solicitors and most law firms in England and Wales. The Legal Services Board (LSB) oversees the performance of all frontline regulators, including the SRA, to ensure they operate effectively and in the public interest, including through annual performance assessments, targeted reviews and ongoing engagement with regulators on their statutory duties.

Section 44B of the Solicitors Act 1974 provides the SRA with the power to require solicitors and law firms to produce information and documents where the SRA is satisfied that it is necessary to do so (amongst other grounds) for the purpose of investigating whether there has been professional misconduct by a solicitor or a breach of its rules by a recognised body. It has a similar power under section 93 of the Legal Services Act 2007 in relation to licensed bodies. The SRA has published guidance on its approach to evidence gathering, which states that the SRA may request material where privilege is asserted, subject to safeguards and use for regulatory purposes only. This guidance is available at: SRA | How we gather evidence in our regulatory and disciplinary investigations | Solicitors Regulation Authority.

I met recently with the new Chief Executive of the SRA to raise a series of performance issues with her. Whilst this Government has not undertaken its own specific assessment of the impact of the SRA’s ability to seek material over which privilege is claimed on its effectiveness as a regulator, I will discuss this with the SRA. I am aware of the ongoing proceedings concerning the scope of its statutory powers in relation to legally privileged material, and officials have discussed the matter with the SRA as part of their routine regulatory engagement.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) is an independent statutory tribunal that hears cases of alleged misconduct by solicitors, registered European Lawyers, registered foreign lawyers, and employees of solicitors’ firms.

The SDT is committed to upholding the principles of open justice. Its default position is that hearings should be held in public and that any departure from this principle must be justified as an exception. Rule 35 of the Solicitors (Disciplinary Proceedings) Rules 2019 governs the SDT's power to hold a private hearing and stipulates the specific exceptions where hearings may be private. The primary ground for holding a private hearing is exceptional hardship or prejudice to a party, witness, or affected person. In addition, a private hearing may be necessary where a public hearing would prejudice the interests of justice. Details of the SDT’s approach to conducting hearings, or parts of a hearing, in private are available here: https://solicitorstribunal.org.uk/resource/policy-public-private-hearings/.

Whilst the Ministry of Justice does not intervene in individual cases or decisions of the SDT, we keep the underlying legislative framework under review to ensure it continues to provide an effective and transparent disciplinary system.

The Statement of Compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics sets out how the Home Office and all Government departments should comply with the Code of Practice agreed by the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) and Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).

As referenced in the Ministerial Code, Ministers are mindful of the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice which defines good practice in relation to official statistics, though it is not for the Home Secretary to offer guidance to government on the public disclosure of unpublished data.

Our Head of Profession for Statistics meets regularly with the OSR to discuss statistics matters, including the department’s approach to handling requests for operational data that might not be routinely published. OSR have been supportive of the general approach this department has taken. In the note on embedding transparency in government written by the OSR Director General and published on 14^th October, the Home Office was cited as having demonstrated good practice in this regard.

The Statement of Compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics sets out how the Home Office and all Government departments should comply with the Code of Practice agreed by the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) and Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).

As referenced in the Ministerial Code, Ministers are mindful of the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice which defines good practice in relation to official statistics, though it is not for the Home Secretary to offer guidance to government on the public disclosure of unpublished data.

Our Head of Profession for Statistics meets regularly with the OSR to discuss statistics matters, including the department’s approach to handling requests for operational data that might not be routinely published. OSR have been supportive of the general approach this department has taken. In the note on embedding transparency in government written by the OSR Director General and published on 14^th October, the Home Office was cited as having demonstrated good practice in this regard.

Access to audio recordings of proceedings in the Crown Court is at the discretion of the Court, subject to procedures and principles set out in the Criminal Procedure Rules and Criminal Practice Directions.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising this. Court orders must be obeyed, and a person can apply to the court for them to be removed. That will need to take place in the normal course of events.

On the Lucy Letby case, I simply make the point that juries’ verdicts must be respected. If there are grounds for an appeal, that should take place in the normal way.

No one in this House has done more than my right hon. Friend to clamp down on this iniquitous behaviour, and I am pleased that we have been able to make some progress. He makes a really important point: every day that is spent in court pursuing ill-founded and abusive litigation is time that could be spent on other matters in the public interest. I will certainly look into the interesting suggestion he makes about publishing the cost of that behaviour.

The sharing of passport data with law enforcement agencies for the purpose of preventing and detecting crime is longstanding, and is provided for within His Majesty’s Passport Office’s Privacy Information Notice: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmpo-privacy-information-notice#full-publication-update-history

The sharing of passport data with law enforcement agencies for the purpose of preventing and detecting crime is longstanding, and is provided for within His Majesty’s Passport Office’s Privacy Information Notice: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmpo-privacy-information-notice#full-publication-update-history

The Improving Elective Care Coordination for Patients Programme is one of the two main Foundry pilots. It supports trusts to effectively deliver care through care coordination.

The Chelsea and Westminster pilot has so far achieved these benefits:

- 79% of patients on waiting lists have been assessed for accuracy, leading to 27,200 patients being removed for example if they no longer need their procedure;

- 3,507 patients have been reprioritised to date;

- 3,279 theatre actions have been created to manage patients through the 6-4-2 process, a model to improve operating theatre productivity, safety, and patient experience;

- 4,372 booking requests have been completed;

- waiting lists for 392 consultants have been managed through care coordination;

- there has been a 55% reduction of bookings cancelled on the day due to missing Pre-Operative Assessment from, 2.89% to 1.29%; and

- patients with suspected cancer had their first appointment on average two days sooner.

The Royal Free London, Barts Health and Milton Keynes University Hospital Trusts pilots have not yet gone live.

The disclosure to Trust Systems Software UK Limited (trading name Trustopia) resulted from access given to a predecessor organisation that was a legitimate provider. The Department received a change of name request form and the amendment form which required Trustopia to sign a new learning provider agreement which set out terms of use for the Learning Records Service.

There is a dedicated team who manage the Learning Records Service. A signed copy of the agreement will be placed in the House of Commons Library in January 2023. The Department has worked closely with the ICO following this incident. Procedures for monitoring unusual activity have been strengthened, as have wider practices around Data Protection in the Department.

The Department’s legal advice at the time was not to pursue breach of contract pending the ICO investigation. The company has since ceased trading.

Examination result information was not made available to gambling firms. A third party made the decision to use their lawful access to the Learning Records Service without discussion with, or the agreement of, the Department. This was outside their conditions of use. The third party used the system to verify the age that individuals had given to gambling firms. When their actions became known, the Department immediately removed their access to the system. The Department reported itself to the Information Commissioner’s Office and has continued to work with them since to improve Departmental processes.

The Home Office publishes data on small boat arrivals in the ‘Irregular migration to the UK’ release. Data on the top nationalities arriving by small boats is published in table Irr_02b of the ‘Irregular migration summary tables’. Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data cover up to March 2022.

Data for April to June 2022 will be published on 25 August 2022. Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.

Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the code of practice for statistics, taking into account a number of factors including user needs, as well as quality and availability of data.

Only a few weeks ago, my right hon. Friend was in the Chamber telling me that £4 billion was “a rounding error”. As a fellow former member of the Brexit Secretaries club, let me now welcome him to the value for money club, as that is the subject he seems to have raised in the context of the cost of FOIs and focus groups’ information.

The point of substance is that, with so many lives threatened by the pandemic, it was right that we commissioned insight into a range of factors in order to understand the impact of our messages and that of the Government’s response to the pandemic. I think the commissioning of insight to enable us to understand that was absolutely right and value for money. As for the disclosure, as I said a moment ago to the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), responses to all FOI requests are handled in line with legislation, and that includes applying relevant exemptions where applicable.

I refer the Rt Hon. Member to the answer given to PQs 82315 and 82316 on 9 September 2020, and PQ 156454 on 2 March 2021.

Covid-19 polling for the cross-government public information campaign has been conducted regularly since the start of the pandemic. This work allows the Cabinet Office to optimise campaign messaging and maximise effectiveness, ensuring vital public health information reaches as many people as possible. The insight gathered continue to inform the Government’s ongoing communications strategy and response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and so shall not be published at this time.

The Cabinet Office publishes details of all contracts over £10,000 on Contracts Finder and spend over £500, including on public information campaigns, on a rolling basis. This will include expenditure on this campaign and will be broken down by supplier.