Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Lord Keen of Elie on 22 January (HL Deb, col 832) on non-disclosure agreements and gagging orders, what they are doing to satisfy themselves that, in the public sector, taxpayers and licence-fee payers are not paying, through the use of settlement agreements, for wrong doing or management failures to be covered up when it is in the public interest for such matters to be exposed.

I am sorry that I cannot add to the Answer I gave the Noble Lady on 22 January. The Government has committed to look at the structures around non-disclosure agreements and the evidence that is coming forward about how they are being used.