Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many days (a) courts and (b) judges sat in England in (i) 2010, (ii) 2018 and (iii) are estimated to sit in 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Data on court sitting days is not routinely collected. Judge sitting days is the closest proxy we have to court sitting days for most jurisdictions. The official statistics for judge sitting days (tables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 of the Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly, January to March 2019) were withdrawn on 5 September 2019, due to data discrepancies that were discovered after publication on 6 June 2019 and deemed potentially misleading to users. The data under investigation covers the period 2003 to 2018 and advise not using the earlier editions of these figures.
These discrepancies remain under investigation and, in line with the Code of Practice on Statistics, the Chief Statistician and Head of Profession decided to withdraw these tables until the investigations were complete as is normal practice. The revised figures will be published in due course, and will provide the total sitting days in Family, Civil and Crown courts.
Given that we are most of the way through 2019, to provide a forecast for 2019 would pre-empt the publication of Official Statistics. The actual judge sitting days for 2019 will be published in summer 2020 as is usual practice.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average number of adjournments was per case in (a) cases relating to murder and (b) cases relating to rape in each year since 2010.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Dissolution.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many cases that collapsed on the day of the trial there were (a) in each month in 2019 and (b) in 2018 and (c) in 2010.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested about how many cracked cases there have been (a) in each month in 2019 and (b) in 2018 and (c) in 2010:
Please find attached tables providing:
- Number of cracked trials at the magistrates’ court and Crown Court in England and Wales in each month for the years 2010, 2018 and 2019
Table 1: Number of cracked trials in criminal courts, by court type and months – 2010, 2018 and 2019
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1) The total number of cracked trials listed during the reporting period indicated. |
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2) Cracked trial is a trial that does not go ahead on the day as an outcome is reached and so does not need to be re-scheduled. This occurs when an acceptable plea is offered by the defendant or the prosecution offers no evidence against the defendant. |
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3) Due to changes in data processing and timing of data extraction, figures for 2010 data may differ slightly from published information - the difference is small and relates to only one or two cases. |
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4) Latest published data available to June 2019. |
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Source: Criminal Court Statistics (PQ 7113) |
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For more detailed data on trials in the courts for England and Wales, the Ministry of Justice does publish annual data on trials in the magistrates’ courts for England and Wales, including numbers of effective trials and the key reasons for cracked trials and ineffective trials. This is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-annual-january-to-march-2018
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) failure to appear warrants have been issued and (b) times the police have had to collect defendants to ensure that they attended trial in each of the last 24 months.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Data on the number of warrants for the arrest of defendants who have failed to attend in criminal proceedings is not currently available in published statistics. The Ministry of Justice and HMCTS has developed a consistent statistical measure for warrants for arrest for failing to attend court, and will publish a quarterly time series in the next edition of in the Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly on 12 December 2019, as announced in the most recent edition on 26th September.
Information on action taken by the police, including the execution of arrest warrants, to secure attendance of defendants at their trial, is not held centrally.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many staff HM Courts and Tribunals Service employed (a) centrally and (b) through agencies in (i) 2010, (ii) 2014 and (iii) 2018; and how many they estimate will be employed in each of those categories in 2022.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Please find below HMCTS permanent and agency staff numbers for 2014 and 2018. Staff numbers were not available in 2010 as HMCTS was created on the 1st April 2011 by the merger of Her Majesty’s Courts Service and the Tribunals Service.
HMCTS Staff | Agency Staff | Total | |
31-Mar-14 | 19114 | 1056 | 20170 |
31-Mar-18 | 16023 | 2737 | 18760 |
From a forecasting perspective, agency staff (as of 31 Aug 2019) currently represent 13.82% of our overall Full Time Equivalent (FTE) workforce. By the end of the financial year (FY) 2021/22 we are forecasting that our overall FTE will be c13,000 FTE based on a Programme Business Case (05) figures; therefore, if our agency % remains the same then this would equate to c1,800 agency staff. However, we do anticipate reducing our agency rates over the coming years so this % is likely to be lower by the end of FY 2021/22.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) magistrates, (b) crown and (c) family courts which are scheduled to be sold are (i) still hearing cases and (ii) shut but yet to be sold.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The number of criminal or family courts that are currently operational and are scheduled to be disposed are as follows;
Magistrates’ courts | Crown courts | Family courts |
1 | 1 | 1 |
The number of criminal or family courts that are closed but are not yet disposed are as follows;
Magistrates’ courts | Crown courts | Family courts | Crown and county courts (combined courts) | Magistrates’ and family courts (combined Courts) |
7 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
The decision to close any court is not taken lightly – it only happens following full public consultation and only when effective access to justice can be maintained. Courts that have closed were either underused, dilapidated or too close to one another.
Since 2015/16 HMCTS has raised approximately £129m from the sale of surplus buildings to reinvest in the wider reform programme.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much his Department spent on third-party contractors in (a) 2010, (b) 2014, (c) 2018 and (d) 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested is provided in the below table. The spend provided is for the requested calendar years, not financial years. The spend for 2019 covers January to September.
The question has been interpreted to refer to the Ministry of Justice’s spend with suppliers we have contracted goods or services for the requester period.
Private providers play an important role in the Ministry of Justice. We continue to closely monitor the performance of all providers and we will not hesitate to take action where standards fall short.
Calendar Year | 2010 | 2014 | 2018 | 2019 |
Spend for Year | £2,679,422,903.60 | £3,113,267,154.29 | £3,994,928,310.79 | £2,972,954,526.18 |
Spend figures do not include MoJ Spend with the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) for council and solicitor spend as these are not considered contracted services.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate his Department has made of the number of courts in England and Wales that were inaccessible to people with disabilities in each day of 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
We can provide an indication of the number of inaccessible courts during 2019 based on sites which have long-term access limitations due to a range of factors such as the building’s age, internal configuration or listed status. Our estimate is that of around 335 operational court and tribunal buildings, 26 were inaccessible to members of the general public with disabilities. We consider buildings to be inaccessible if they do not provide disabled users with both physical access to the court and the ability to access appropriate services in the building, for example disabled toilet facilities.
HMCTS has a reasonable adjustments policy in place to accommodate those with particular access requirements. The modernisation and investment taking place across the justice system should mean that fewer people will need to attend court, as we make use of technology such as video-conferencing and online services. These provisions will reduce the need for people to attend a physical court building.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many adjournments have taken place in each month in 2019 in the (a) criminal, (b) civil and (c) family courts.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information sought in respect (a) criminal and (b) civil courts is provided in the table below. The equivalent information for (c), the family courts, could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
Cases Adjourned January to June 19 | |||
| Magistrates | Crown | Civil |
Jan-19 | 53,671 | 13,529 | 2,843 |
Feb-19 | 46,389 | 12,472 | 2,521 |
Mar-19 | 48,881 | 13,383 | 2,586 |
Apr-19 | 48,844 | 13,204 | 2,706 |
May-19 | 51,143 | 13,967 | 2,868 |
Jun-19 | 47,813 | 12,545 | 2,628 |
Notes
Data are: (i) taken from a live management information system and can change over time; (ii) management information and are not subject to the same level of checks as official statistics; and (iii) the most recent available and, therefore, might differ slightly from any previously published information.
Data are provided to June 2019, the most recent period for which official statistics have been published.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average number of adjournments is per case in all cases heard in the criminal courts in each year since 2010.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested about the average number of adjournments per case in all cases heard in the criminal courts each year since 2010 could only be provided at disproportionate cost