Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether there have been significant delays in care proceedings involving children in family courts in England and Wales since the implementation of the legal aid reforms in 2013; and if he will publish statistics of the length of such proceedings.

The average time for the disposal of a care or supervision application fell from 42.3 weeks (January to March 2013) to 32.0 weeks (January to March 2014). In the last quarter for which figures are available.Care proceedings timeliness is published and monitored in the Court Statistics Quarterly: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/court-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2014.

Legal aid remains available in public family law matters such as care proceedings.