Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average time has been between arrest and appearing in front of magistrates for people charged with knife possession in (a) Birmingham and (b) the West Midlands in each of the last 12 years.

The Ministry of Justice routinely publishes timeliness estimates of the key stages of the criminal justice system as part of the Criminal Court Statistics quarterly National Statistics release.

The published estimates cover the periods from offence to charge, charge to first listing and through from first listing to completion (at either magistrates’ and Crown Court).

The latest published information is available to March 2022 and can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-court-statistics.