Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of the absence of routinely collected, disaggregated data on ethnicity, religion, and immigration or settlement status in private family law cases involving alleged harm on his Department’s ability to discharge its Public Sector Equality Duty when developing or applying policy, practice directions, or operational guidance.

The Government recognises that the Family Courts must support all court users and that accurate demographic data is essential to that. That is why protected characteristics data, including data on ethnic group and religion, is routinely captured by the new HMCTS private law portal. This is currently in place in respect of certain private law proceedings in the family court in Swansea, Kingston-upon-Hull, Essex, Suffolk and Wolverhampton with national roll-out due to commence in Autumn 2026. This data will include cases which involve allegations of domestic abuse and domestic abuse case flags are available on the portal.

The Department draws from a wide evidence base to inform policy in private family law. This includes, but is not limited to, evidence from commissioned internal research, independent reviews, external academic research and extensive engagement with stakeholders.

The Department uses a range of mechanisms to ensure that policy is evidence based and compliant with the Public Sector Equalities Duty. For any new Government policy or legislation an Equalities Impact Assessment must be completed to test for compliance with the Public Sector Equality Duty.