Law Commission consultation on homicide offences

Closes 30 Sep 2026

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Privacy Policy

For information about how we handle your personal data, please see our Privacy Notice.

Privacy Notice

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (May 2018), the Law Commissions must state the lawful bases for processing personal data. The Commissions have a statutory function, stated in the 1965 Act, to receive and consider any proposals for the reform of the law which may be made or referred to us. This need to consult widely requires us to process personal data in order for us to meet our statutory functions as well as to perform a task, namely reform of the law, which is in the public interest. We therefore rely on the following lawful bases:

(c) Legal obligation: processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject

(e) Public task:  processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.

Law Commission projects are usually lengthy and often the same area of law will be considered on more than one occasion. The Commissions will, therefore retain personal data in line with our retention and deletion policies, via hard copy filing and electronic filing, and, in the case of the Law Commission of England and Wales, a bespoke stakeholder management database, unless we are asked to do otherwise. We will only use personal data for the purposes outlined above.

Freedom of information

We may publish or disclose information you provide us in response to our papers, including personal information. For example, we may publish an extract of your response in our publications, or publish the response in its entirety. We may also share any responses received with Government. Additionally, we may be required to disclose the information, such as in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. If you want information that you provide to be treated as confidential please contact us first, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic disclaimer generated by your IT system will not be regarded as binding on the Law Commissions. The Law Commissions will process your personal data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force in May 2018.

Any concerns about the contents of this Privacy Notice can be directed to: enquiries@lawcommission.gov.uk.

What is your name?
Are you responding to this consultation in a personal capacity or on behalf of your organisation?
(Required)
What is the name of your organisation?
What is your email address?
Which of the following categories would you consider apply to you? (please tick as many as applicable)
(Required)
Anonymity and confidentiality

More information

General

The paragraphs relating to our Privacy Notice below are those which are of particular relevance to the handling and possible publication and/or disclosure of the names and responses of consultees.

Different parts of our Privacy Notice deal with other aspects of privacy, such as the retention of personal data. To see our full Privacy Notice, please follow the link under the heading below entitled "Further information".

Privacy Notice

We aim to be transparent in our decision-making, and to explain the basis on which we have reached conclusions. We may publish or disclose information you provide in response to Law Commission papers, including personal information. For example, we may publish an extract of your response in Law Commission publications, or publish the response itself. We may also share responses with the Government. Additionally, we may be required to disclose the information, such as in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We will process your personal data in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation.

Consultation responses are most effective where we are able to report which consultees responded to us, and what they said. If you consider that it is necessary for all or some of the information that you provide to be treated as confidential and so neither published nor disclosed, please contact us before sending it. Please limit the confidential material to the minimum, clearly identify it and explain why you want it to be confidential. We cannot guarantee that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances and an automatic disclaimer generated by your IT system will not be regarded as binding on the Law Commission.

Alternatively, you may want your response to be anonymous. That means that we may refer to what you say in your response, but will not reveal that the information came from you. You might want your response to be anonymous because it contains sensitive information about you or your family, or because you are worried about other people knowing what you have said to us.

We list who responded to our consultations in our reports. If you provide a confidential response your name will appear in that list. If your response is anonymous we will not include your name in the list unless you have given us permission to do so.

Further information

Further information about how we handle data is available here.

Contact us

Any queries about the contents of this Privacy Notice can be directed to: enquiries@lawcommission.gov.uk.

Before answering the following questions, and as explained elsewhere, please note that consultation responses are most effective where we are able to report which consultees responded to us, and what they said.

Would you like your responses to this consultation to be treated anonymously (this means that we may publish or disclose what you say in your responses, but will not reveal that the information came from you)?

Please note that if you are responding on behalf of an organisation, we will not publish your personal name.

(Required)

Confidentiality: If you consider that it is necessary for all or some of the information that you provide in this response to be treated as confidential and so neither published nor disclosed, please let us know here and explain why you want it to be treated as confidential. If you ask for your response to be treated confidentially, it means that you are requesting that we will not publish or disclose anything that you say in your response, but we can reveal the fact that you have provided a response. If you have requested that your response be anonymous, we will not reveal the fact that any information came from you.

As explained in our privacy notice, we will take full account of your request and explanation but cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances.

Would you like your responses to be treated as confidential?

(Required)