Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Tackling Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: October 2018 Update, how many full-time equivalent employees worked within the dedicated team in the Department co-ordinating work on ethnic and racial disparity in the criminal justice system when it was first set up.

Currently, there are five employees equating to 4.0 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) working within the Ministry of Justice team dedicated to coordinating work on ethnic and racial disparity in the criminal justice system (MoJ’s CJS Race Disparity Team).

When first established in September 2017 the team had 1.5 FTE staff. This increased to 3.5 FTE by January 2018, coinciding with the establishment of the Race and Ethnicity Board (which oversees the implementation of the Lammy Review recommendations and work on tackling race disparity).

The team does not have any dedicated budget (beyond for staffing costs), since work is resourced separately by the various business areas of Ministry of Justice and partner organisations responsible for actions to address racial disparities. Staff costs have been met within existing MOJ budgets.

Beyond this team, it is the responsibility of all policy and operational areas to consider equalities in their work. There are other teams beyond the team asked about which have a focus on tackling racial disparity, including a dedicated youth justice disproportionality team and HM Prison and Probation Service’s equalities team.