Attorney General’s Office: Conflicts of Interest

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hermer (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. The law officers’ convention is not a convenient rock for law officers to hide behind; it is an essential principle that allows law officers to properly discharge their functions by providing legal advice to the Prime Minister and to government, and for that advice and the contents of that advice not to be revealed, because to do so would fundamentally undermine the efficacy of our work. I understand the basis of the noble Lord’s question, but I do not think I can properly answer that question directly, save to reiterate that we have in place a rigorous process for the identification and management of conflicts.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General, not least for bringing such a distinguished career and experience to this vital role. Can he reassure me that the processes that are currently in place for dealing with conflicts are the same as were in place under the last Government and their law officers? Does he agree that if we examined commercial conflicts of interest with the same zeal and enthusiasm that we assign to legal professional interests, that would be great for trust in democracy and would definitely assist the Government in pursuit of what went wrong during Covid, with corrupt contracts and other favours given to certain individuals and organisations?

[Lord Hermer (Lab)]

It is my understanding that the same rigorous process has been applied to me and my fellow law officers as was applied previously under Governments of all different colours. As to pre-existing experience, Parliament and various Governments have been lucky to enjoy the assistance of lawyers with a range of experience of public, commercial and criminal law. I anticipate that the same rigour has been applied to identify conflicts for all of them.