Asked by: Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many house repossession claims were outstanding in each month since March this year.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The requested information is not held by HMCTS. Some possession claims do not progress because they have concluded by other means without the court being notified (for example because the Defendant has left the property or paid any arrears) and for this reason outstanding volumes cannot be calculated.
Asked by: Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what targets they have set, if any, for reducing the backlog of outstanding cases across courts and tribunals in England and Wales.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
HMCTS has published an update on their response to Covid-19 in the criminal courts, Civil and Family Courts and Tribunals in England and Wales, please see attached.
This provides a comprehensive update on recovery plans and the work being undertaken to restore capacity. This includes installing plexiglass screens to make the estate COVID-secure, recruiting additional staff and establishing Nightingale courts.
Asked by: Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether there is a timetable for implementing the recommendations they accepted in their response to the report by Dr Natalie Byrom Making the most of HMCTS data: HMCTS’ full response and update to Dr Byrom’s recommendations, published on 9 October.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
HMCTS published a full response and progress update in October 2020 to Dr Byrom’s report Digital Justice: HMCTS data strategy and delivering access to justice. The response is attached and is also available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hmcts-response-and-progress-update-on-dr-natalie-byrom-report and details HMCTS response and progress made to date on each of the 29 recommendations.
The response confirms timelines for the collection of protected characteristics data; for starting to share data with academic researchers and others as part of the Data First project, and for the development of our approach to open and shared data.
Asked by: Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what funding they will make available to Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service to implement those recommendations they accepted in their response to the report by Dr Natalie Byrom Making the most of HMCTS data: HMCTS’ full response and update to Dr Byrom’s recommendations, published on 9 October.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
HMCTS published a full response and progress update in October 2020 to Dr Byrom’s report Digital Justice: HMCTS data strategy and delivering access to justice. The response is attached and details HMCTS response and progress made to date on each of the 29 recommendations.
Delivery of HMCTS response is funded in part through existing budgets including the Reform programme, and in part through funding from Administrative Data Research UK.
Asked by: Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the data collected by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service on the outcomes of cases across courts and tribunals since March this year can be disaggregated by (1) case type, (2) whether the hearing was conducted remotely or in person, and (3) the protected characteristic of the parties to the case; and, if not, what plans they have to collect such data.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
HMCTS continue to work to improve the data it collects, including following the recommendations in Dr Natalie Byrom’s report Digital Justice: HMCTS data strategy and delivering access to justice. The full response to the report is attached.
HMCTS’ legacy technology systems are limited in the data they collect – as new systems and services are introduced, HMCTS is able to improve the position, in order to support its core purpose to provide an efficient and effective courts and tribunals system, which supports an independent judiciary in the administration of justice - enabling the rule of law to be upheld, and providing access to justice for all.
To summarise the current position
(1) Case type
In the Crown Court HMCTS can disaggregate whether a case is triable either way, indictable only, for sentencing or an appeal. In the Magistrates Court HMCTS can report case type by Criminal, Enforcement and Civil, which can be further split by Offence type (ie Indictable, Either-way, Summary Non-Motoring, Summary Motoring, Breaches). In Family courts HMCTS can disaggregate public law and private law cases. Tribunal jurisdictions collect data which allows disaggregation into case type.
(2) Hearing conducted remotely or in person
HMCTS rapidly increased capacity for video and audio hearings as part of the response to Covid-19. At present for most jurisdictions the only information is a manual data collection via a ‘situation report’ (to provide overall picture of use of audio/video) and is not attached to cases. In the Magistrates’ Court there is a case marker to show if defendant appears via audio/video.
(3) Protected characteristics
Legacy systems collect some limited data on protected characteristics. As recommended by Dr Natalie Byrom, work has begun to collect data on users’ protected characteristics. This is data that we have been able to collect for Probate (digital) since 2 June, for Online Civil Money Claims (specified claims) since 21 July, for Divorce (digital) since 29 September and for Probate (paper) since 11 November. HMCTS will introduce this for new digital services entering public beta in 2021. HMCTS recognise that data about individuals’ protected characteristics is sensitive personal information – it is collected on a voluntary basis, held securely and with strict controls. It will only be possible to disaggregate outcomes by protected characteristics if the response rate to the voluntary survey is high enough to ensure individuals cannot be identified.
Asked by: Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many claims before employment tribunals were outstanding in each month of 2020.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The published number of outstanding single employment tribunal claims each month in 2020 are set out below:
Month | Outstanding claims |
Jan 2020 | 36,315 |
Feb 2020 | 35,653 |
Mar 2020 | 36,758 |
Apr 2020 | 39,241 |
May 2020 | 36,365 |
Jun 2020 | 42,786 |
Jul 2020 | 44,303 |
Aug 2020 | 45,130 |
Sep 2020 | 46,512 |
Asked by: Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many cases have been heard to date in each of the 'Nightingale Courts'.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Recovering from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is our top priority. By opening 18 Nightingale courts, we have added vital capacity and provided 33 extra court rooms, alleviating the pressure on courts and tribunals resulting from the pandemic. Additionally, we have secured £30m of funding to open a further 40 Nightingale court rooms in early 2021.
We do not break down data on cases heard in Nightingale Courts.
Asked by: Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many hours each of the 'Nightingale Courts' have been (1) open, and (2) sitting for court business, in each month since July.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
As part of our recovery plans across all jurisdictions, Nightingale Courts have enabled us to open a great deal of additional court capacity.
All 18 of the existing Nightingale Courts operate regular court opening hours of 9-5pm, and this will apply also to the additional five Nightingale sites announced this week. Data on sitting days in each court is recorded under their parent court. It is therefore not possible to disaggregate the data with sufficient granularity to set out sitting hours in each Nightingale.
Asked by: Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many trials have been completed in the Crown Court of England and Wales in each month of 2020.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Crown Court trials which proceed on the planned date are recorded as effective. We do not record trials in the Crown Court under a category of completed.
Data showing effective trials in each month of 2020 in England and Wales, can been found in the table below.
Published data is up to September 2020 (the end of Q3) and we are unable to provide data past that point.
Year | Month | Number of effective trials1 |
|
2020 | January | 906 |
|
| February | 824 |
|
| March | 520 |
|
| April | - |
|
| May | 8 |
|
| June | 61 |
|
| July | 200 |
|
| August | 275 |
|
| September | 471 |
|
Notes:
1). The total number of trials listed during the reporting period indicated, is considered 'effective' once a jury is sworn in regardless of whether they go on to reach a verdict. Not all cases will go to trial, for the purposes of trial effectiveness we consider a ‘trial’ at the point of initial listing. A trial which goes ahead on the planned date and occurs is then considered as ‘effective’, a trial that is listed but does not go ahead is considered either cracked, ineffective or vacated.
Asked by: Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what the average wait time between charge and sentence for crimes tried by jury was (1) in each year from 2008 to 2019, and (2) in each month of 2020.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The average number of days taken from charge to completion for crimes tried by jury in the Crown Court in England and Wales between the period of 2008 to 2019 has been provided in the table below.
The average waiting time between charge and completion for crimes tried by jury in the Crown Court in England and Wales in each month of 2020 is not available at this time. This is due to MoJ changing its data gathering, access and release practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
| Number of defendants whose cases have completed 5 | Charge to completion |
| |
| ||||
|
| |||
| Number | Mean | Median |
|
2010 Q2-Q4 | 72,916 | 204 | 174 |
|
2011 | 92,813 | 210 | 178 |
|
2012 | 82,214 | 212 | 179 |
|
2013 7 | 76,134 | 196 | 165 |
|
2014 | 76,531 | 206 | 174 |
|
2015 | 76,818 | 232 | 189 |
|
2016 | 69,563 | 234 | 186 |
|
2017 | 64,592 | 224 | 178 |
|
2018 | 64,852 | 239 | 188 |
|
2019 | 57,463 | 226 | 178 |
|
Notes:
1) Includes cases with an offence to completion time greater than 10 years but excludes a small number of cases with identified data quality issues and breaches. 2) Includes all for trial criminal cases (triable-either-way and indictable only cases) which have received a verdict and concluded in the specified time period in the Crown Court. This data also includes cases where the prosecutor has chosen not to continue with the prosecution. Not all cases included in this data will have gone to a full jury trial, for example where the defendant has pleaded guilty before their trial date.
3) Only one offence is counted for each defendant in the case. If there is more than one offence per defendant that completes on the same day, a set of validation rules applies to select one offence only and these relate to the longest duration, seriousness and the lowest sequence number of the offence.
4) Data from Q1 2018 to Q4 2019 are not comparable with previous periods and there is a requirement to break the series. The data from Q1 2018 onwards has been revised following the identification of defendant attrition through the timeliness process, as a result these defendants have been put back into the analysis. It is our intention to investigate the more efficient and effective way to provide robust and reliable back series in future.
5) The number of defendants shows the number whose cases have completed and where it has been possible to match from initial appearance at magistrates’ court to completion in the Crown Court. The match rate is typically between 90-95%, as for some cases, it is not possible to match defendants through the system and these cases are excluded.
6) Timeliness figures are only available from April 2010, so data for 2010 is presented above for Q2 to Q4 only.
7) Committal proceedings were abolished nationally on 28th May 2013. Triable-either-way cases are now sent rather than committed for trial.