Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an estimate of the proportion of people in (a) senior leadership and (b) governor positions in the prison system from ethnic minority backgrounds.

As of 30 June 2022, based on self-declared information, the proportion of ethnic minority staff in senior leadership positions and substantive Governing Governors working in public sector prisons was 6.5% and 5.6% respectively.

We recognise that race disparities persist in the Criminal Justice System, and we are committed to actively tackling the impact of this across MoJ. In December 2020 HMPPS launched the Race Action Programme, which will increase the diversity of our workforce, address the risk of bias in our policies and tackle disparity in outcomes for prisoners, people on probation and children in our system.