Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to the Answer of 23 May 2022 to Question 5345 on Criminal Liability, for what reason the CPS does not maintain a central record of any defence employed by defendants in criminal proceedings.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) collects data to assist in the effective management of its prosecution functions. This data is derived from structured data fields completed on individual case records held in the Case Management Information System (CMS) and reported in the Management Information System (MIS).

Any information recorded in the CMS about the defence(s) employed by defendants would be added as ‘freetext’ which cannot be centrally collated in the MIS and would only be obtainable by manually reviewing CPS case records. Defences employed are by their nature specific to the circumstances of each individual case, so collecting related data would provide little benefit as CPS operational management information.