Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many court days were lost in 2025 due to non-delivery of remanded prisoners to court by courier firms by a) prison held in, b) contracted courier company, c) Crown Court and d) Magistrates court.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Data on the number of trials declared ineffective due to the non-production of defendants can be found here: Trial effectiveness at the Criminal Courts tool.
In the most recent reported quarter (July to September 2025), non-production of defendants accounted for 2% of ineffective trials in the Crown Court and 4% of ineffective trials in the magistrates’ court.
Securing data on the impact that non-production of defendants has had on sitting time would come at a disproportionate cost, due to the time required to process this information.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many court days were lost in 2025 due to the unavailability of courtrooms as a result of building failures by a) crown court, b) magistrates court and c) family court.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The number of court days lost due to building failures in the last full financial year (2024/25) is as follows:
Crown Court – 258 days
Magistrates’ Court – 36 days
Family Court – 2 days
To put this into context, over the same period we sat over 107,000 days in the Crown Court.
A lost court day is defined as a planned sitting day consisting of two sessions (one morning, one afternoon session) that is cancelled, adjourned or unable to proceed due to unforeseen circumstances, structural issues or scheduling conflicts. The figures above reflect court days lost due to building failures only. Workforce shortages are also a major cause of lost time: in 2024, over 1,000 trials were cancelled owing to a lack of counsel, which is why we are investing further in legal aid and match funding pupillages for criminal barristers.
Thanks to the efforts of court staff and the judiciary, where a building failure occurs, losing court days can often be averted through our ability to move cases to another courtroom or nearby court building, or by using remote hearing arrangements.
It is vital that court infrastructure does not prevent hearings from taking place, that is why we announced a boost in court capital maintenance and project funding from £120 million in 2024/25, to £148.5 million for 2025/26.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many magistrates served in a) magistrate courts and b) family courts in each year between 2009 and 2025.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Magistrates are the cornerstone of our long and established judicial System. The extraordinary voluntary commitment given by individuals across England and Wales, giving up their valuable free time to make a difference to our Justice system is incredible.
The earliest data we have is 2018, when we had a total of 14,008 magistrates. Currently, we have 14,466 magistrates sitting in crime and family.
Year | Total number of Magistrates - Adult | Total number of Magistrates - Family | Total number of Magistrates |
2018 | 13171 | 2880 | 14008 |
2019 | 12877 | 2752 | 13712 |
2020 | 12451 | 2881 | 13510 |
2021 | 11945 | 2839 | 13090 |
2022 | 11882 | 2926 | 13195 |
2023 | 11909 | 2967 | 13319 |
2024 | 12490 | 3489 | 14458 |
2025 | 12366 | 3554 | 14466 |
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average length of time was between charge and trial in a) rape, b) murder and c) GBH cases in each year between 2009 and 2025 for each court in England.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Data showing the time from charge to main hearing for defendants dealt with for the selected offences following the entry of a not guilty plea at the Crown Court from 2016 to 2024 can be found in the attached tables. Data is not available for years prior to 2016.
Data has been provided at the lowest geographical level of our published Accredited Official Statistics, Local Criminal Justice Board Level (LCJB).
Please note that many of the averages are based on very small volumes of defendants and as such the figures should be treated with caution.
Our published timeliness metrics are produced at a sufficiently 'high' level to reduce the volatility and fluctuations associated with low volumes of cases i.e. offence groups. Where court level offence breakdowns are based on fewer than five cases in these tables, timeliness values are suppressed as they are particularly volatile and can be misleading.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will ensure that independent celebrants are included in the Government response to the Law Commission’s report entitled Celebrating Marriage: A New Weddings Law, published on 18 July 2022.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Law Commission’s 2022 report on weddings made 57 recommendations for reform of weddings law, including how independent celebrants could conduct legally binding weddings. The Government appreciates the importance of this issue and will provide an update in due course.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average cost to prisoners is of the provision of television access in prison cells.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Vice Chamberlain (HM Household) (Whip, House of Commons)
The cost per prisoner in establishments in the adult estate is 50 pence per week if the prisoner is sharing a cell, and £1 per week for prisoners in a single cell.
Children and young people in the youth secure estate are not charged for use of televisions.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of staff employed by his Department are apprentices.
Answered by Alex Chalk
As of 31 March 2020, the Civil Service has achieved a total of 2.1% of its total workforce as apprentices against the legislative target for the public sector of 2.3% by March 2021. The Ministry of Justice has achieved 1.68% of the total staff employed within the department.
The Ministry of Justice’s Apprenticeship Strategy, designed to meet the allocated targets, consists of three strands:
This target is a percentage of the total workforce so the percentage attained will change in line with workforce fluctuations over time, making it challenging to predict when a department will meet it. The data for 2018/19 can be found here. The data for 2019/20 can be found here.
Departments are committed to increasing the number of apprentices across the Civil Service and continue to work towards the 2.3% target.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
What changes are required for the effective operation of courts and tribunals during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
Access to justice is an essential part of our lives - and I want to pay tribute to all those involved in keeping the wheels of justice turning - the judges, HMCTS staff, and partners throughout the justice system as well as legal professionals, volunteers and others.
Our priorities are to maintain access to justice – in particular for the most urgent cases such as bail applications and urgent family hearings – and to protect the safety of all who work in the courts and tribunals. To do this, we have already made changes in 5 broad areas:
Despite the exceptional circumstances, our justice system remained ‘open’ to deal with the most vulnerable in society. In France, for example, courts are closed for all but ‘essential litigation’ and Italy is in full lockdown until 4th May.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many successful prosecutions have been brought for the offence of blackmail against people that demanded money to leave sites which they are occupying illegally in each year since 2010.
Answered by Robert Buckland
Information regarding prosecutions and convictions for blackmail offences from 2010 to 2018 can be found at the following link –
Filter the ‘Offence’ field to ’35 Blackmail’ to obtain these figures. The total number of defendants proceeded against as well as those convicted of blackmail for the 2008-2018 decade will appear in the pivot table.
However, specific information regarding blackmail offences, such as the offence of blackmail against people that demanded money to leave sites which they were occupying illegally, may be held on court record. But to be able to identify these cases, as they are not held centrally, we would have to access individual court records which would be of disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many former members of the armed forces have served custodial sentences in each year since 2000.
Answered by Edward Argar
Since January 2015, all offenders coming into custody (convicted or remanded) are asked at reception if they have previously served in the Armed Forces. The department publishes this data quarterly and the number declaring has remained stable at approximately 3.5% - 4%.
In October 2018, Ministry of Justice published Experimental Statistics on ex-service personnel in the prison population (next release due October 2019), which indicated that there were at least 2,032 former members of the Armed Services in prison as at 30 June 2018. Details of the report and breakdown can be found at:
We do not hold information on the number of former service personnel that have served a custodial sentence for the years requested, which could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
The Ministry of Justice recognises the unique nature of those who served in the Armed Forces and those prisoners who declare a military background are able to access a range of specialist support, including from military charities who deliver services in prisons.