Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what her Department's implementation plan is for banning the box on job applications.

The application form template used by the Government Recruitment Services (GRS), who manage all recruitment activities on DWPs behalf, does not ask about criminal convictions.

This particular question is only raised as part of the pre-employment checking for candidates who have been deemed successful at the last stage of the recruitment process.

DWP are fully compliant with the ban the box initiative. Therefore, no advertised jobs were excluded in 2016 or 2017.