Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, in how many cases where a suspect had been charged in (a) 2013 and (b) 2014 their trial began after more than (i) six and (ii) 12 months.

Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) has two separate case management systems, LIBRA in the magistrates’ courts, and CREST in the Crown Court. The date of charge and date of trial are recorded in LIBRA, but the date of charge is not always recorded on CREST. Also, as a number of cases charged during this period are yet to enter a plea, it is not possible to identify how many will have a trial, or at what point. A number of offences charged during 2014 will not yet have reached six or twelve months since receipt by HMCTS.

The Ministry of Justice does, however, publish official statistics on the timeliness of criminal cases in Criminal Courts Statistics Quarterly at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-court-statistics.