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<p>As my Hon Friend, the Minister for Prisons, Probation and Rehabilitation announced
on 14 March, we take these allegations of the type raised by the Mail on Sunday on
13 March extremely seriously and we launched an immediate investigation into them,
which was conducted by a senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office's Proprietary
and Ethics team. This investigation found no evidence of the Department’s intellectual
property or confidential information being compromised as a result of staff leaving
the Department to join TDPi. Neither did the investigation find any evidence of improper
culture or general lack of professionalism in relation to how NOMS staff interact
with suppliers or contractors.</p><p>The MoJ has clear rules and governance in place
around the standards of conduct for current and former civil servants. All permanent
civil servants are covered by the Cabinet Office's Business Appointment Rules. For
employees below the Senior Civil Service grade, the rules expect an ex-employee to
submit an application form within a year of them leaving office if their circumstances
match one or more of the points set out at Section 13 of the Business Appointment
Rules. Following the investigation, we have briefed all Human Resources managers and
all staff at Senior Civil Service in NOMS about the procedures. The process has been
strengthened <ins class="ministerial">so </ins>that we now circulate the procedures
to senior managers annually. As my Rt. Hon Friend the Minister for Policing, Fire
and Criminal Justice and Victims said in his answer of 6 June (HC38271), over the
last six months, we have improved our commercial capability, more than doubling the
senior commercial experts monitoring work with the private sector.</p><p>We have no
plans to publish the letter to TDPi.</p><p> </p>
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