Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the effectiveness of unconscious bias training made available to the judiciary.

The Lord Chief Justice (LCJ), the Senior President of the Tribunals, and the Chief Coroner have statutory responsibility for judicial training, under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, and Coroners and Justice Act 2009 respectively. Training responsibilities are exercised through the Judicial College. As training is a matter for the independent judiciary, no assessment is undertaken by the Ministry of Justice.

The Judicial College is committed to ensuring that matters of diversity and inclusion, fairness and tackling bias are embedded in all its training and competence frameworks for judges and magistrates. It is a golden thread that runs through every aspect of training design, development and delivery. The Judicial College’s goal is to include the topic of bias in all induction training and to have a suite of e-learning and resources on the topic of bias which judicial trainers can integrate into their continuation training as appropriate.