Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of HMPPS staff in the last latest staff survey indicated that they had not reported an experience of bullying or harassment in 2020.

All forms of unacceptable behaviour, including bullying, harassment, discrimination and victimisation, are not tolerated by HMPPS or the Ministry of Justice. Such behaviour is contrary to the organisations’ core values and all allegations of unacceptable behaviour are taken seriously, investigated and, where appropriate, disciplinary action is taken.

Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) Tackling Unacceptable Behaviour Unit (TUBU) began work in August 2020 and its investigation arm is due to launch later this year. There is no published data available regarding the proportion of staff who have reported experiencing bully, harassment, victimisation or discrimination since TUBU launched.

The MoJ’s People Survey is completed in October and asks questions of staff based on their experiences during the preceding 12 months. As such their responses may not be specific to their experiences within 2020 as specified in the question but may also be relevant to experiences within the final part of 2019.

In the 2020 People Survey, 2,334 HMPPS respondents indicated that they had been bullied or harassed at work in the previous 12 months. This equates to 13% of HMPPS respondents to this question. There were 1,415 HMPPS respondents who answered that they preferred not to say whether they had been bullied or harassed at work in the previous 12 months. This equates to 8% of HMPPS respondents to this question.

Of the HMPPS respondents who said that they had experienced bullying and/or harassment, 1,053 indicated they had not reported an experience of bullying and harassment in those 12 months. This equates to 45% of HMPPS respondents who said they had experienced bullying and/or harassment.

The overall response rate for HMPPS was 35%.