Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many courts in England and Wales have recorded covid-19 outbreaks of (a) one to three people, (b) four to six people and (c) seven people or more.

Since 18 August we have recorded all confirmed positive incidents of COVID-19 affecting HMCTS buildings centrally.

We take swift and robust action for each suspected or positive case.

When there are two or more confirmed positive cases within 14 days in a particular building, we also refer the incident to the Public Health England/Wales local health protection team. There should be no assumption that a referral indicates that there has transmission within a court building.

Since 18 August, we have made 39 referrals. Of the referrals 24 involved 2-3 people, 11 involved 4-6 people and 4 involved 7 people or more. There are 341 court and tribunal buildings in the HMCTS estate.

Incidence rates amongst court staff have consistently been trending lower than the national average for England and on 2 November this was 137.8 cases per 100,000 compared to the English reported position of 228.1 positive cases per 100,000.

All data is internal and not subject to the same level of checks as official published statistics. Although care has been taken when processing and analysing this, the details may be subject to revisions inherent in any large-scale manual system.