Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to page 330 in Chapter 12 of the Equal Treatment Bench Book, what evidence exists to support the claim that It is important to be alive to the fact that the gender history of a person may be something an opponent litigant may seek to use in order to place pressure on them.

No assessment of the effect of the Equal Treatment Bench Book is made by the Ministry of Justice. To preserve the independence of the judiciary, the Lord Chief Justice (LCJ), the Senior President of the Tribunals, and the Chief Coroner have statutory responsibility for judicial training. These responsibilities are exercised through the Judicial College, which also produces the Equal Treatment Bench Book.

Fair treatment is a fundamental principle embedded in the judicial oath and the Equal Treatment Bench Book is compiled by the judiciary to provide general guidelines for judicial office holders to apply as appropriate in any particular case. It is reviewed by a judicial editorial panel, with content from judicial experts and information from subject experts. The identities of the principal contributors appear in the Acknowledgments. The external documentary sources relied upon by the editors of the Bench Book are set out in full in the footnotes.