Ministerial role

Attorney General

Organisations: Attorney General's Office
Current role holder: The Rt Hon Victoria Prentis KC MP

Responsibilities

The Attorney General is chief legal adviser to the Crown and has a number of independent public interest functions, as well as overseeing the Law Officers’ departments.

Responsibilities include:

  • Overall responsibility for the work of the Attorney General’s Office and superintended Departments (the Government Legal Department, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate)
  • Specific statutory duty to superintend the discharge of duties by the Director of Public Prosecutions (who heads the Crown Prosecution Service) and the Director of the Serious Fraud Office
  • Non-statutory general oversight of the Services Prosecuting Authority and government prosecuting departments
  • Government’s principal legal adviser dealing with (amongst others) questions of international law, human rights, devolution and COVID-19 issues
  • Public interest functions, for example, reference of unduly lenient sentences to the Court of Appeal, bringing proceedings for contempt of court and intervention in certain proceedings to protect charities
  • Questions of law arising on Bills and with issues of legal policy
  • Legal aspects of all major international and domestic litigation involving the Government, (including matters related to future relations with the EU)

The Attorney General also holds the separate office of Advocate General for Northern Ireland. The Advocate General for Scotland has specific responsibility for Scottish law matters.

Current role holder

The Rt Hon Victoria Prentis KC MP

Victoria Prentis was appointed Attorney General on 25 October 2022.

She was previously Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions from 7 September 2022 to 25 October 2022.

Victoria was previously Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on 16 September 2021 to 7 September 2022.

Before that, she was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 14 February 2020 to 15 September 2021.

She was elected as the Conservative MP for Banbury in May 2015.

Political career

Victoria served on the Justice Select Committee from 2015 to 2019, the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments from 2015 to 2017, and as a lay member on the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art from 2019.

Victoria also served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Attorney General from 2019 to 2020, to the Leader of the House of Commons from 2017 to 2019, and to Junior Ministers at the Department for Transport from 2016 to 2017.

Career outside politics

For seventeen years Victoria was a lawyer for the Treasury Solicitors’ Department and headed up the government’s Justice and Security team. Her responsibilities included providing advice on military, prisons and national security matters and representing the government in court.

More about this person

Previous holders of this role

  1. The Rt Hon Michael Ellis KC MP

    2022 to 2022

  2. The Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP

    2021 to 2022

  3. The Rt Hon Michael Ellis KC MP

    2021 to 2021

  4. The Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP

    2020 to 2021

  5. The Rt Hon Geoffrey Cox KC MP

    2018 to 2020

  6. The Rt Hon Sir Jeremy Wright KC MP

    2014 to 2018

  7. The Rt Hon Dominic Grieve KC

    2010 to 2014