Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of the time taken for court hearings.

The Ministry of Justice published data concerning the average length of hearings in complete cases at the Crown Court as part of the Criminal Court Statistics series which is available at the following link: Criminal court statistics - GOV.UK

The average hearing time for cases completed at the Crown Court in England and Wales has fallen 14% compared to the previous year.

The Ministry of Justice does not collate hearing time information for the magistrates’ court or other jurisdictions.