Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the contract agreed by his Department with ZK Analytics Limited on 18 March 2024, procurement reference 23425, if he will publish the deliverables specified in Annex F of that contract.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
A redacted copy of Annex F – Deliverables will be uploaded to Contracts Finder within the next 10 days.
Asked by: Siobhain McDonagh (Labour - Mitcham and Morden)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of rape trials that have been postponed within 24 hours' notice in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The data held centrally by the Ministry of Justice on ineffective trials does not specifically identify those that have been postponed within 24 hours' notice. This information may be held on court records but to examine individual court records would be of disproportionate costs.
The Government is committed to improving the Criminal Justice System’s response to adult rape. This includes the significant progress we have made in delivering our Rape Review Action Plan. Within this plan, we set ourselves stretching ambitions to return the volumes of police referrals to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), CPS charges and Crown Court receipts for adult rape to 2016 levels. In practice, this means more than doubling the number of cases reaching court since the Rape Review was commissioned in 2019. We are pleased to say we have already exceeded these ambitions.
We also recognise that lengthy waiting times can be particularly difficult for victims of rape and other serious sexual offences who wish to see justice done and move on with their lives. The Senior Presiding Judge for England and Wales has recently announced that all rape cases outstanding for more than two years will be listed by the end of July 2024, providing certainty to those victims that their cases will be prioritised and heard as soon as possible.
Alongside the SPJ’s efforts, we continue to make sure we do more than ever to improve timeliness at court. This includes delivering over 107,000 additional sitting days in Crown Courts; opening two permanent ‘super courtrooms’ in Manchester and Loughborough; increasing criminal legal aid spending by £141 million per year; investing over £220 million for essential modernisation and repair work of court buildings (up to March 2025); and investing further in judicial recruitment and retention.
We know that support services play a critical role in supporting victims including those engaging with the Criminal Justice System. This is why we are quadrupling funding for victims and witness support services by 2024/25, up from £41 million in 2009/10. The funding will allow us to increase the number of Independent Sexual and Domestic Violence Advisors to around 1,000 by 2025.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he (a) is taking and (b) plans to take steps to assess the efficacy of restraining orders in preventing repeat incidents of domestic violence (i) in minority ethnic communities and (ii) generally.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Restraining orders play an important role in ensuring that victims are appropriately protected, and feel safer, particularly within the context of repeated and/or escalating behaviour that disproportionately impacts women and girls, such as domestic abuse.
They are one of several existing protective orders that can be used in cases of domestic abuse to protect a victim, such as Non-Molestation Orders, Stalking Protection Orders, and Domestic Violence Protection Orders.
Abusers who breach restraining orders face tough penalties including jail time. Where a restraining order is breached, CPS guidance encourages prosecutors to consider whether a new course of conduct is present and, if so, to ensure that it is prosecuted in addition to the breach in question.
Safeguarding victims of all crimes, and particularly from those such as domestic abuse is a priority for this Government. That is why we are going further to protect victims of domestic abuse by piloting a new Domestic Abuse Protection Order from Spring 2024 which will give courts the power to impose exclusion zones, curfews, and electronic monitoring tags on abusers. The order will be independently evaluated to understand its effectiveness in protecting all victims.
Asked by: Siobhain McDonagh (Labour - Mitcham and Morden)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the unused court capacity was in each year since 2015.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
HMCTS had the following number of sessions recorded as either available or unavailable since 2015:
Period | Available verified sessions | Unavailable verified sessions |
FY 15-16 | 1,552,490 | 42,692 |
FY 16-17 | 1,512,424 | 36,811 |
FY 17-18 | 1,387,270 | 37,598 |
FY 18-19 | 1,347,648 | 36,507 |
FY 19-20 | 1,302,006 | 38,408 |
FY 20-21 | 1,062,856 | 130,071 |
FY 21-22 | 1,277,033 | 86,511 |
FY 22-23 | 1,277,981 | 42,665 |
FY 23-24 | 1,281,838 | 48,201 |
A ‘session’ represents the time that court/hearing room space is available, with up to two sessions available each day. Available and unavailable sessions are recorded for all jurisdictions.
HMCTS record a session being unavailable for a number of reasons, including important alternative uses. For example:
HMCTS’ Courtroom Planner performance database was introduced in April 2015 to collect information on the availability of courtrooms. The data was suspended in April 2020 due to COVID disruption and resumed in September 2020. The data between April and August 2020 is therefore incomplete.
The amount of time we use our available estate for hearings is also connected to the funded number of sitting days in any one year, and the availability of key participants such as judiciary and legal professionals.
To maintain session levels, we are investing £220m in the two years to March 2025 for essential maintenance and repair work across the estate to ensure we are keeping as many courtrooms open as possible to hear more cases. This two-year capital maintenance allocation enables us to plan major estate projects in advance and with certainty. Maintenance funding is prioritised to sites that need it most, and this investment is a step forward in improving the quality of the court estate. We have a planned pipeline of future works to improve the resilience and quality of the court estate, and this is kept under regular review.
We have also introduced additional measures to speed up justice for victims and improve the justice system, including:
o Extending 20 Nightingale courtrooms beyond March 2024 to provide additional capacity in the court estate.
o Investing in judicial recruitment since 2017 which has resulted in the annual recruitment of approximately 1000 judges and tribunal members across all jurisdictions. In particular, this has led to an overall increase in the number of judges in the Crown Court.
Please note all data provided is internal and subject to data quality issues inherent in any large-scale manual system.
Asked by: Siobhain McDonagh (Labour - Mitcham and Morden)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average waiting time was for a (a) rape, (b) murder, (c) GBH and (d) robbery trial in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
We have interpreted waiting time to refer to the time between the date of sending a case to the Crown Court and the start of the substantive Crown Court hearing.
The average waiting times of defendants dealt with in rape, murder, GBH and robbery trial cases where a not guilty plea was entered in the Crown Court can be found in the below table based on published annual data from 2014 to 2023. Data prior to 2014 is not available.
While the Crown Court is still recovering from the impact of the pandemic and disruptive action from the Bar, which reduced our ability to hear cases swiftly, the latest published statistics show that the median age of cases that are outstanding was around 6 months.
We are committed to ensuring the delivery of swift justice for all victims and have introduced a raft of measures to achieve that aim. This includes funding around 107,000 sitting days during the most recent financial year (FY23,24), recruiting up to 1,000 judges annually across all jurisdictions and investing in the continued use of 20 Nightingale courtrooms into this financial year (FY24/25) to allow the courts to work at full capacity.
Judges do prioritise cases involving vulnerable complainants and witnesses, and seek to ensure that domestic abuse, serious sexual offences and those with vulnerable witnesses are listed at the first available opportunity. The Senior Presiding Judge has also recently announced that all rape cases outstanding for more than two years at court will be listed by the end of July 2024.
Average waiting times (weeks) of defendants dealt with in rape, murder, GBH and robbery for-trial cases where a not guilty plea was entered in the Crown Court, annually, 2014 - 2023 | ||||||||
| Rape | Murder | GBH | Robbery | ||||
Year | Median | Mean | Median | Mean | Median | Mean | Median | Mean |
2014 | 27.6 | 29.5 | 25.0 | 26.3 | 26.6 | 30.1 | 23.9 | 24.5 |
2015 | 28.9 | 31.8 | 25.7 | 28.8 | 28.0 | 33.0 | 24.4 | 28.4 |
2016 | 28.0 | 30.9 | 24.3 | 23.1 | 25.9 | 33.4 | 24.0 | 27.3 |
2017 | 28.8 | 31.5 | 24.0 | 24.6 | 24.9 | 30.5 | 22.6 | 24.6 |
2018 | 29.6 | 32.9 | 23.7 | 23.7 | 24.7 | 28.9 | 22.6 | 23.4 |
2019 | 26.7 | 30.1 | 24.6 | 24.5 | 24.1 | 26.7 | 22.9 | 23.2 |
2020 | 30.6 | 32.5 | 25.5 | 28.9 | 27.0 | 31.4 | 25.4 | 27.8 |
2021 | 41.0 | 44.8 | 32.6 | 36.9 | 36.7 | 44.0 | 33.9 | 39.4 |
2022 | 39.7 | 44.4 | 33.0 | 36.6 | 35.9 | 46.7 | 32.4 | 43.1 |
2023 | 41.7 | 48.2 | 33.6 | 38.5 | 36.9 | 50.3 | 29.7 | 47.6 |
Asked by: Siobhain McDonagh (Labour - Mitcham and Morden)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of court trials for (a) rape, (b) sexual assault, (c) violence against a person, (d) murder, (e) theft, (f) possession of weapons and (g) fraud have been delayed each year since 2010.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
We have interpreted your request as relating to ineffective trials, which is where the trial does not take place on the day as planned and requires rescheduling. Ineffective trials happen for a variety of reasons, such as the absence of a defendant or a witness or adjournment requests from either the prosecution or defence.
The tables attached set out the data held by the Ministry of Justice on ineffective trials broken down by offence type, in volume and as a proportion of the total listed trials for that offence type. Crown Court data is available from 2014 onwards.
The pandemic created a significant challenge for the Crown Court and affected its ability to effectively list trials. As a result, the ineffective trial rate notably increased in 2020, primarily due to increases in defendant illness or absence, and overlisting (55% of all ineffective trials were for these reasons combined).
Since 2022, the proportion of ineffective trials in the Crown Court for all offences increased significantly as a result of the Criminal Bar Assocation (CBA) action. While the ineffective trial rate reduced swiftly following the conclusion of the CBA action, in the most recent available data published by the MoJ (October-December 2023), the defence or prosecution not being ready was the largest reason for ineffective trials, accounting for 22% (450) of all ineffective trials.
Despite the overall increase in ineffective trials since the pandemic and subsequent CBA action, the latest data shows cases progressed through the Crown Court more quickly throughout 2023, with the median time from receipt to completion reducing from 167 days in the first quarter of 2023, to 125 days in the last quarter.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the contract agreed by his Department with Press Data Ltd. on 1 April 2024 under procurement reference 410700/1338489, if he will publish the (a) work specification set out in Schedule 20 of that contract and (b) list of words used by the contractor to generate daily media briefings for his Department.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
A redacted version of Call-Off Schedule 20, which includes the specification, will be published within the next 30 days.
The supplier provides the requested search terms as part of the contract service, the search terms themselves are not specified in the contract or any contract documentation and will not be published.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Answer of 23 November 2023 to Question 2542 on Legal Aid Scheme: Manchester and Middlesbrough, what progress has been made on preparing the evaluation report into the early legal advice pilot scheme; and when he plans to publish that report.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
We plan to publish all Early Legal Advice Pilot (ELAP) outputs in accordance with Government Social Research protocols very soon.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of his Department’s (a) advertising and (b) marketing expenditure was on (i) local newspapers in print and online, (ii) national newspapers in print and online, (iii) social media, (iv) search engines, (v) broadcast and on-demand television and (vi) other channels in the most recent year for which data is available.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Over financial year 2022/23, the Ministry of Justice’s communications team delivered highly cost-effective marketing campaigns to support operational and policy priorities, such as our Prison and Probation Service recruitment campaigns.
As requested, we have outlined the proportion of the marketing and advertising budget that was spent on advertising broken down in percentages. The categories vary slightly due to the way the data is collected. It is worth noting that due to 2023/24 accounts still being in reconciliation, we are unable to provide data for year 2023/24.
| Proportion |
Local Print (advertising) | 0.04% |
National Print (advertising) | 0.52% |
Online job sites (advertising) | 54.24% |
Online Media Search advertising | 15.69% |
Broadcast and on-demand television (advertising) | 0% |
Other | 13.58% |
Social media (advertising) | 15.94% |
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 26 March 2024 to Question 19426 on Immigration: Appeals, how many appeals were made before the (a) First and (b) Upper Tribunal between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2023; how many and what proportion of these appeals were successful; and what the total cost to the public purse was for these appeals.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Information about appeal receipts in the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) and Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) is routinely published within Tribunals Statistics Quarterly in the main tables. The total number of receipts to the First-tier Tribunal is available in table FIA_1 and for the Upper Tribunal in UIA_1.
The proportion of appeals for the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal which were successful is also available as published data and can be found in tables FIA_3 and UIA_3 respectively.
The latest quarterly data includes figures to December 2023 and is available here: Tribunals statistics quarterly: October to December 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Data for the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) receipts, disposals and outcome figures is available up to Q1, April to June 2021. Data from Q2 2021/22 onwards have not been included in this publication as data was migrated to a new IT system and the data is not yet available.
Financial information is published for the IAC on an annual basis in the HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) Annual Report, within the fees and charges section. Published information relates to the expenditure and fee income of HMCTS and will not cover financial impacts on other public bodies. Fees and costs cannot be reliably attributed to a particular cohort of appeals. The most recent available data is for Financial Year 2022/23 and is published here HMCTS annual reports and plans - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).