Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been unable to attend court as a prosecution witness due to (a) childcare, (b) lost earnings from employment and (c) difficulty getting time off work in the last five years for which figures are available.

Detailed information on the reasons for prosecution witnesses being unable to attend court is not held centrally by the Ministry of Justice. This information may be held on court record but to be able to identify these cases we would have to access individual court records which would incur disproportionate costs.

However, it is possible to identify the number trial cases which were recorded as cracked or ineffective in the criminal courts where a witness was not able to attend/withdrawn. These figures are available from the ‘Criminal Courts Listing transparency’ file, at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2018