To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what steps he is taking to ensure equality of opportunity in respect of staff on the Prison Service surplus list and Probation Service secondees in applying for vacant positions in either service. (312570)

Probation services are not part of the civil service, and their employees are not civil servants. Therefore recruitment to the National Offender Management service (NOMS)—which is a civil service agency—or any other civil service department or agency must reflect that distinction, and NOMS must follow civil service wide procedures for managing surplus staff that have been agreed with civil service trade unions.

Probation boards and trusts are employers in their own right and therefore have individual recruitment and secondment policies as well as individual policies for dealing with surplus staff which have been agreed with the probation trade unions.