Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of exempting key public sector workers from jury service.

Jurors are summoned randomly by the Jury Central Summoning Bureau (JCSB) using the Electoral Voting Registers, and at the point of being called for jury service a person’s occupation is not known. Each application for deferral or excusal is considered on its own merit, in a way that is both fair to the individual and consistent with the needs of the court in providing a representative jury. Applications for excusal or deferral from NHS staff are being treated particularly sympathetically whilst they are dealing with recovery from the impacts of the pandemic.