Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate his Department has made of the proportion of Crown Court cases where victims have dropped out due to delays caused by the case backlog.

This Government is acutely aware of the risk of victims withdrawing their support from prosecutions because of delays in the Crown Court. It is not possible to provide an estimate of the number of cases where victims have dropped out due to delays caused by the case backlog. However, the Ministry of Justice can provide some data on the number of prosecutions which ended because of the withdrawal of the support of a victim or witness. This can include victims and witnesses dropping out for a variety of reasons, including the impact of delays.

Between January to September 2020, 124 Crown Court case were ended by the prosecution because a witness was absent or withdrew from a trial. This represented 6% of all cracked trials in that 9-month period. By comparison, in 2019 456 Crown Court cases ended due to witness absence or withdrawal – 5.5% of all cracked trials in that year. In 2010, 943 Crown Court cases ended to witness absence or withdrawal – 5.1% of all cracked trials in that year.

Victims deserve to have their cases investigated seriously and pursued rigorously through the courts and we are investing millions to deliver swifter justice and support victims. In 2021-22, we will provide just under £140m for victim and witness support services. Criminal courts continue to recover from the pandemic – magistrates’ backlogs have fallen by 50,000 since last summer, cases dealt with in crown courts reached pre-Covid levels in December, and more rooms are now open for jury trials than before the pandemic.