Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an estimate of the average number of words in a judge's sentencing remarks from court proceedings at HM Courts and Tribunals over the last 12 months.

Management information held about transcript requests is limited, and the information requested is not held centrally. Contracted suppliers are required to provide HM Courts and Tribunals Service with certain data, including the folio count, but that data could not be disaggregated to report specifically on requests for sentencing remarks per se, and in any event would not enable any report on word (rather than page) count.