Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many cases in (a) magistrates' courts and (b) the Crown court were awaiting trial on 1 October in each of the last five years.

Data are published in Court Statistics Quarterly showing the number of outstanding trial cases in the Crown Court annually at the end of 2001, and quarterly at the end of each quarter commencing March 2009, including at the end of 30 September. The outstanding number of cases in magistrates’ courts is published broken down by indictable only trial cases, either way trial cases, summary motoring cases and summary non-motoring cases from the quarter ending June 2012. This data set was created in April 2012 so data is not available prior to that date. Prior to this, completed proceedings were published for magistrates’ courts. The data does not distinguish between trial cases still awaiting their trial and those who have either pleaded guilty or been convicted and are awaiting sentence. Court Statistics Quarterly is published at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/court-statistics-quarterly Data to September 2014 is due to be published on 18 December 2014.