Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the definition of late arrival at court is under contracts held by his Department with providers of prisoner transportation; and what the threshold is for the application of a penalty to such a provider for the late arrival of a prisoner at court.

For the purposes of the Prisoner and Escort Custody Services contract, a delay occurs when a court is prevented from commencing its planned business at the intended start time, and it has no other business that can reasonably be rescheduled to take its place, resulting in one or more parties being inconvenienced.

If a prisoner is unavailable at the start time, and this unavailability results in a delay of more than 15 minutes in proceedings, service points are incurred. After the initial 15 minutes, points are incurred for each period of 15 minutes of court time lost. For delays in the Crown Court, the contractor, if at fault, will forfeit £2000 for each hour of delay; in magistrates’ courts the penalty is £1200 per hour.

If the problem persists, additional measures, such as the requirement for an improvement plan, will be taken.