Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how many lawyers are employed in the Government Legal Service; and how many such lawyers are (a) women and (b) from ethnic minority communities.

The Government Legal Service (GLS) is not a department but a grouping of the legal profession within Government. Government lawyers take different forms; some are employed by the Government Legal Department (GLD), others employed by regulators and organisations at arm’s length from Government. The GLS is supported by a very small secretariat of fewer than five staff and does not systematically collect information as data is held by the lawyer’s own organisations. We are therefore unable to provide this information for the GLS. There is data for the GLD, which is the single largest ‘member’ of the GLS and the largest provider of legal services to government. As of 31 December 2016 the figures for the Government Legal Department are as follows:

*This figure is obtained from the information that is voluntarily self-recorded by employees