Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what his Department's implementation plan is for banning the box on job applications.

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.

The MoJ implemented this policy 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).