Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what training and information is given to magistrates' clerks to ensure that they operate in accordance with the Armed Forces Covenant.
The responsibility for the training of Magistrates and their legal advisers lies with the Lord Chief Justice as head of the judiciary and is exercised through the Judicial College.
The Government’s response to the November 2014 Stephen Phillips’ Review into ‘Former Members of the Armed Forces and the Criminal Justice System’, included a commitment by the Judicial College to consider whether the Bench Book should be updated to include former service personnel as a separate group.
The Judicial College concluded that their Equal Treatment Bench Book already sufficiently covers many of the important aspects of fair treatment and makes some suggestions as to the steps that judges can take in different situations, to ensure that there is fairness and equality of outcome for all those involved in the justice process.