Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, in the past twelve months, how many disciplinary cases were concluded against civil servants in (a) his Department and (b) its agencies broken down by (i) outcome and (ii) whether the primary allegation related to (A) performance and (B) conduct.

The Ministry of Justice holds all staff to high standards of professional conduct. Where behaviour falls short of those standards, appropriate action is taken in line with established policies and procedures.

Number of Conduct and Discipline cases in the Ministry of Justice broken down by agency and outcome (1st April 2024 to 31st March 2025)

The central ePM case management system cannot identify the main allegation in a case or distinguish whether each allegation concerns performance or conduct. Its categorisation structure does not allow disciplinary data to be separated into conduct versus performance cases. Additionally, poor performance issues are handled through a separate policy and system, which is not included in the disciplinary case data.

Caveats

1. The above table is created from Conduct and Discipline records held in the ePM case management system. This only includes formal disciplinary actions and will exclude any local disciplinary actions taken.

2. Due to differences in the data matching processes, very slightly different methodologies have been used to calculate the figures for HMPPS compared to the non-HMPPS agencies.

3. This information only includes cases that concluded between 1st April 2024 and 31st March 2025 where the case had a known and recorded outcome and where the agency of the individual could be determined.

4. Cases can have multiple outcomes, and therefore the highest level penalty has been used to determine the outcome in the table. If the outcome was appealed, the outcome of the appeal has been taken as the final outcome of the case. The 'Dismissal' category includes summary dismissals and 'Any other penalty' includes both disciplinary action and financial penalties.

5. Within the centrally held ePM case management system, it is not possible to determine the primary allegation made against the individual or whether each allegation is specifically related to performance or conduct.

6. This data is based on the latest information available as at the end of June 2025. Further data regarding the 2024 - 2025 financial year may be received in future data provisions and therefore these figures may be subject to change.

7. For some cases, information is incomplete and we have conducted data cleaning to improve data quality where possible. We are in the process of improving the ePM data pipeline. Figures may change slightly in the future as data quality improves.

~ denotes values of 2 or fewer, suppressed for reasons of data protection, or values suppressed for reasons of secondary suppression to prevent disclosure in cases where totals would reveal suppressed values

8. The case categorisations on the system does not allow the breakdown of figures into conduct and performance groups. There is a separate poor performance policy and case management system which is separate to the disciplinary cases presented in the table