Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, whether her Department operates a ban the box employment policy in respect of ex-offender job applicants with unspent convictions; and how many employees of her Department have unspent convictions.

DFID supports fair chance recruitment practices and uses the Civil Service wide recruitment system to advertise all jobs. This fully complies with the ‘Ban the Box’ policy.

The Cabinet Office mandated Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) requires all new recruits to declare unspent criminal convictions. Employees have a continued obligation to inform us of any criminal convictions received during employment with DFID.

To comply with our obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998, we do not routinely store this information and are unable to confirm how many employees have unspent convictions.