Attorney General written question – answered at on 14 July 2022.
Lord Morris of Aberavon
Labour
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Lord Bellamy on 28 June (HL Deb, col 580), what plans the Attorney General has to meet the Chairman of the Bar Association to discuss delays in dealing with rape cases.
Lord Stewart of Dirleton
The Advocate-General for Scotland
A key part the Attorney General’s role as head of the profession is meeting regularly with the leaders of the Professional bodies to discuss matters of relevance within the criminal justice system including the Chair of the Bar Council, the Chair of the Criminal Bar Association, the President of the Law Society and the Bar Circuit Leaders. These valuable and productive meetings enable the Law Officers to understand the issues affecting front-line practitioners, so that they are able to articulate their concerns to ministerial colleagues to ensure that in the development of government policy, the views of the profession are reflected and understood.
Agendas for these meetings are prepared so as to allow flexibility, in order to allow for discussion of topical issues. Such issues include the views of practitioners on the Crown Court backlog, government initiatives such as the roll out of s.28 and how we are working together to improve the system performance in relation to rape cases.
The regular monthly meetings of the Bar Council are attended either by the Attorney or the Solicitor General, so as to allow the Law Officers a full understanding of the issues that are affecting front-line practitioners.
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The Attorney General, assisted by the Solicitor General, is the chief legal adviser to the Government. The Attorney General also has certain public interest functions, for example, in taking action to protect charities.
The Attorney General has overall responsibility for The Treasury Solicitor's Department, superintends the Director of Public Prosecutions as head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the Director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland. The Law Officers answer for these Departments in Parliament.
The Attorney General and the Solicitor General also deal with questions of law arising on Government Bills and with issues of legal policy. They are concerned with all major international and domestic litigation involving the Government and questions of European Community and International Law as they may affect Her Majesty's Government.
see also, http://www.lslo.gov.uk/
