Asked by: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Solicitor General, with reference to the Civil Service 2024/2025 External Expenditure on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, published on 30 May 2025, which suppliers were used to provide the LGBTi internal conference.
Answered by Lucy Rigby - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)
The LGBTI conference was a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) event, and the supplier used to provide venue services was Calder Conferences.
Calder Conferences offers venue solutions for meetings, conferences, and other events, and works with various government departments.
The CPS has a contract with Calder Conferences through the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) Framework for Travel and Venue Solutions. This framework allows CPS to access venues for meetings and conferences as needed.
The contract was signed in 2024 under the previous government for two years, with an option to extend for one additional year until February 2027, as is standard across government departments when contracting with conference suppliers. As standard, government contracts are routinely reviewed.
Asked by: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what steps the Government is taking to increase the number of prosecutions for modern slavery.
Answered by Robert Buckland
We have the strongest legal framework in place including the Modern Slavery Act, which came into force in July 2015. The Law Officers are supporting the Prime Minister’s Taskforce on Modern Slavery, and the CPS continues to see a year on year increase in the numbers of prosecutions.