Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many defendants were granted court bail prior to the commencement of their trial where the principal offence was (a) murder, (b) manslaughter, (c) robbery, (d) rape, (e) fraud and (f) violence against the person in each month of 2018 to date; and how many people on court bail in each category of offence absconded.

The numbers of defendants who were granted bail at the Crown Court from January to March 2018 for these offences and the numbers of those who failed to appear in court are set out in tables 1 and 2.

For those granted bail at magistrates’ courts in the first three months of 2018, there was one recorded FTA.

The data record failing to appear (FTA) as a general category. We do not collect data specifically on absconds. The circumstances and reason for each FTA is unknown. Not all FTAs are due to defendants absconding. There are many reasons for a FTA and absconding is just one of them.