Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many civil servants in his Department have a criminal conviction.

As of September 2023, there were 101,276[1] (FTE) staff in post across the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

To provide the quantitative base to answer this PQ, this could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost. This would require manually entering each individual record to extract the data and engaging with all workplaces across England and Wales to ascertain locally managed/ recorded information.

All Ministry of Justice staff are held to high levels of professional and personal conduct and are subject to pre-employment vetting checks to ensure suitability for employment into post. Across the MoJ, all directly employed roles require a minimum of Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) level to enter the organisation and this includes a request of criminal conviction history. For any roles requiring a higher security level, roles may require an enhanced DBS check or be subject to National Security Vetting (NSV) checks which are carried out externally by UK Security Vetting (UKSV).

Across the MoJ, we must act in accordance with the high expectations that the Government and members of the public expect from us to ensure we drive our vision to deliver a world-class justice system that works for everyone. People are at the heart of what we do, and security and safety considerations are paramount in ensuring we welcome the right people to come to work for us to deliver our objectives. This might mean that some people may not ever be considered suitable to hold employment with us because of their background. Criminal conviction history of the applicant, including offence type and length of time since conviction will be assessed during vetting decision making to assess suitability for the role applied.

[1] Workforce management information: MOJ - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)