Your guide to the department's cast of ministerial characters, and what’s in their in-trays
With all its constituent parts, the Ministry of Justice has the biggest headcount of any government department according to the most recent civil service statistics. Prison overcrowding and growing backlogs in the judicial system – core parts of the department’s work – will have provided an immediate headache for incoming justice secretary Shabana Mahmood.
Mahmood did not play down the magnitude of the issues faced by the department in her first town hall with civil servants, saying to staff watching virtually from across the country: “I know we have huge challenges in this department, but I look forward to getting stuck in. And I want to work with everybody in a spirit of collaboration and cooperation. I know that if we work together, we can get the job done.”
One week into the job, Mahmood announced plans to temporarily reduce the proportion of some categories of sentence served in prison from 50% to 40% and the cancellation of the previous government’s End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme. She said prisons were “on the point of collapse”. Her overcrowding solution was in line with measures proposed by the Prison Governors’ Association in the days before the general election.
Less than three weeks later, the country witnessed the outbreak of far-right fuelled riots following the fatal stabbing attack in Southport that left three young girls dead. The courts’ ability to bring perpetrators to justice again placed the MoJ in the national spotlight.
“I want to work with everybody in a spirit of collaboration and cooperation” Shabana Mahmood
ahmood is a qualified barrister – she has said her childhood ambition was to become Kavanagh QC, the 90s TV barrister played by John Thaw. She became an MP in 2010, representing Birmingham’s Ladywood constituency, and held several shadow ministerial posts in the following five years but returned to the backbenches due to disagreements with Jeremy Corbyn. Keir Starmer made Mahmood shadow justice secretary in September 2023.
In 2014, she faced criticism for taking part in an anti-Israel protest in opposition to the Labour Party’s stance against Israel-related boycotts. Last year, Mahmood criticised Starmer’s response to the Gaza crisis, declaring that Labour’s response had “lost the trust” of Muslim voters.
Mahmood’s ministerial team at the MoJ includes Lord James Timpson, who was given a peerage to take up the role of minister for prisons. Timpson was chief executive of the Timpson Group from 2002 to July 2024. The firm, which includes the Timpson shoe-repair and key cutting business as well as other high-street names, is well-known for its efforts to provide jobs for ex-prisoners, who make up more than 10% of its workforce.
Heidi Alexander – whose political experience started with a six month placement in the office of Cherie Blair in 1998 – is minister for courts. She served as an MP from 2010 to 2018, before resigning her seat to become deputy mayor of London for transport. She also served as deputy chair of Transport for London and, during the Covid-19 pandemic, led several rounds of government bailout negotiations. She returned to parliament as MP for Swindon South in this summer’s election.
The department’s parliamentary under-secretaries of state are Alex Davies-Jones, whose responsibilities include strategy on violence against women and girls; the victims’ commissioner; and Hillsborough, and Sir Nic Dakin, who has responsibility for sentencing and youth justice.
Lord Frederick Ponsonby serves as a junior minister with responsibility for all MoJ business in the House of Lords with the exception of prisons.
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