Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of job roles advertised within his Department in (a) 2016 and (b) 2017 excluded the box under the Ban the Box initiative.

On 8 February 2016, as part of a wider set of measures to support the rehabilitation of offenders, the Prime Minister announced that the Civil Service would not ask for details of criminal convictions at the initial recruitment stage, subject to any exceptions for jobs with specific security requirements.

Therefore, to ensure we have the best possible mix of talent and act to remove barriers for all individuals, including ex-offenders, the MoJ fully implemented the Ban the Box initiative that aims to provide fairer opportunities for offenders to compete for jobs by removing the tick box asking about criminal convictions from application forms.

The MoJ implemented this initiative in October 2016 and removed the criminal conviction declaration ‘tick box’ to declare a criminal record from application forms at the front end of the recruitment process. If an applicant is successful, security clearances will be carried out prior to appointment (Applying Criminal Records Policy) and each case will be judged on its merits where such offences are identified.

Data prior to this date is unavailable due to a change in recruitment system in December 2016.