Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answers of 20 January to Questions 3722 and 3721, whether a timetable has been set by when the correct statistics will be made available for (a) judge and (b) recorder sitting hours; and whether he expects those sitting hours to be less in total than in 2018.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The official statistics for judge sitting days (tables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 of the Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly, January to March 2019) were withdrawn on 5 September 2019, due to data discrepancies that were discovered after publication on 6 June 2019 and deemed potentially misleading to users. These discrepancies remain under investigation and, in line with the Code of Practice on Statistics, the Chief Statistician and Head of Profession decided to withdraw these tables until the investigations were complete.
The corrected figures will be published in the March 2020 publication if our investigation shows that the corrected figures meet the expected quality standards before then; if the appropriate quality standards cannot be met by then, the correct figures will be published in June 2020. This is the date when 2019 sitting days figures are due to be published as part of the normal publication cycle.
Until these investigations and corrections have been concluded, it is not possible to make a comparison against 2018 data.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much was spent on communications and public relations by (a) his Department and (b) HM Courts & Tribunals Service in 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
In the financial year 2018/19 the departments communications budget was £7.94m. This delivered:
Regarding HMCTS expenditure, I refer you to the previous answer for PQ6328 answered on 31st October 2019, in which HM Courts and Tribunals Service expenditure for last three financial years was provided.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the Answer of 4 November 2019 to Question 7113 on Prosecutions, what proportion of trials were cracked on the first day of the trial in each month in (a) 2019, (b) 2018 and (c) 2010.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Ministry of Justice publishes annual and quarterly data on cracked trials in England and Wales, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2019.
In these statistics a cracked trial is defined as: “a trial which does not commence on the scheduled date and the trial is not rescheduled, as it is no longer required. Cracked trials are usually the result of an acceptable guilty plea being entered by the defendant on the day or the case ending as the prosecution decides not to proceed (offers no evidence) against the defendant.”
It is not possible to separately identify if the trial was cracked on the day of trial or at any prior point from the data centrally collated by the Ministry of Justice. As a result, identifying the proportion of trials that were ‘cracked on the first day of the trial’ would require a search of court records, which would be of disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many adjournments took place in (a) Crown courts and (b) Magistrates' courts in each month of 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The number of adjourned cases in the magistrates’ and Crown Court fluctuates from month to month and is dependent upon the volume and type of cases received and the plea entered.
The information requested about the number of cases which have been adjourned in (a) Crown courts and Magistrates’ courts in each month of 2019 can be found in the table below
Cases Adjourned January to September 2019 | |||
|
| Magistrates | Crown |
Jan-19 |
| 53,725 | 13,542 |
Feb-19 |
| 46,461 | 12,486 |
Mar-19 |
| 48,943 | 13,402 |
Apr-19 |
| 48,887 | 13,223 |
May-19 |
| 51,178 | 14,010 |
Jun-19 |
| 47,845 | 12,593 |
Jul-19 |
| 55,025 | 14,161 |
Aug-19 |
| 50,499 | 12,910 |
Sep-19 |
| 49,827 | 13,189 |
|
|
|
|
Cases can be adjourned for a number of reasons including when counsel request more time to prepare their case or when more information is required ahead of sentencing.
Notes:
Data are taken from a live management information system and can change over time
Data are management information and are not subject to the same level of checks as official statistics
The data provided is the most recent available and for that reason might differ slightly from any previously published information
Magistrates: The data provided is a count of Criminal Cases Heard, rather than Defendants, where the following Libra Result Code Sets were present: ADJ, ADJAREM, ADJR, ADJSD, ADJYREM, RCB, REMITA, REMITY, RIC, ROC, ROREC, RUB, SUMRTH, SUMRTO
Therefore, the data supplied includes cases which were Adjourned, Remanded in Custody/On Bail or Remitted for a further hearing as well as cases originally listed under the Single Justice Procedure which were subsequently adjourned for a Summons to be issued for a Court Hearing (SUMRTH & SUMRTO).
The data is in line with PQ 4971 & 7111, although the data has been refreshed
Crown: A hearing has been counted as adjourned where the data field IS_ADJOURNED has been marked 'Y'. If a case involves more than one defendant and only one has their case adjourned then it has been counted in the above figures. DATA in line with PQ 4971& 7111, although the data has been refreshed.
For both the Magistrates' and Crown Court, if a case is adjourned in different months then each adjournment is counted once for each month.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many cases cracked on the day of the trial in (a) Crown courts and (b) Magistrates' courts in each month of 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested about how many cracked cases there have been in each month in 2019:
Please find attached tables providing:
- Number of cracked trials at the magistrates’ court and Crown Court in England and Wales in each month in 2019.
Table 1: Number of cracked trials in criminal courts, by court type and month, 20191,2,3,4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Notes: (p) = provisionald. |
1) The total number of cracked trials listed during the reporting period indicate
2) Cracked trial is a trial that does not go ahead on the day as an outcome is reached and so does not need to be re-scheduled. This occurs when an acceptable plea is offered by the defendant or the prosecution offers no evidence against the defendant.
3) Latest published data available to September 2019.
Source: Criminal Court Statistics (PQ 3718)
The Ministry of Justice publishes annual and quarterly data on cracked trials in England and Wales, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2019.
In these statistics a cracked trial is defined as: “a trial which does not commence on the scheduled date and the trial is not rescheduled, as it is no longer required. Cracked trials are usually the result of an acceptable guilty plea being entered by the defendant on the day or the case ending as the prosecution decides not to proceed (offers no evidence) against the defendant.”
It is not possible to separately identify if the trial was cracked on the day of trial or at any prior point from the data centrally collated by the Ministry of Justice. As a result, identifying the proportion of trials that were ‘cracked on the first day of the trial’ would require a search of court records, which would be of disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many cases were cracked in (a) Crown courts and (b) Magistrates' courts in each month of 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested about how many cracked cases there have been in each month in 2019:
Please find attached tables providing:
- Number of cracked trials at the magistrates’ court and Crown Court in England and Wales in each month in 2019.
Table 1: Number of cracked trials in criminal courts, by court type and month, 20191,2,3,4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Notes: (p) = provisionald. |
1) The total number of cracked trials listed during the reporting period indicate
2) Cracked trial is a trial that does not go ahead on the day as an outcome is reached and so does not need to be re-scheduled. This occurs when an acceptable plea is offered by the defendant or the prosecution offers no evidence against the defendant.
3) Latest published data available to September 2019.
Source: Criminal Court Statistics (PQ 3718)
The Ministry of Justice publishes annual and quarterly data on cracked trials in England and Wales, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2019.
In these statistics a cracked trial is defined as: “a trial which does not commence on the scheduled date and the trial is not rescheduled, as it is no longer required. Cracked trials are usually the result of an acceptable guilty plea being entered by the defendant on the day or the case ending as the prosecution decides not to proceed (offers no evidence) against the defendant.”
It is not possible to separately identify if the trial was cracked on the day of trial or at any prior point from the data centrally collated by the Ministry of Justice. As a result, identifying the proportion of trials that were ‘cracked on the first day of the trial’ would require a search of court records, which would be of disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much was spent on consultancies by (a) HM Courts & Tribunals Service and (b) his Department in each month of 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Please find below the total spend on consultancy for HMCTS and for MoJ in total for the period January 19 to November 19. Please note the spend is taken from our spend analysis tool and is an accurate figure of what has been invoiced and paid during the period. Invoice and payment data for December 19 is not yet available.
Consultants are engaged to deliver short-term on projects where specialist skills required are not available within the organisation. By making use of consultants, the department can save on salary, national insurance and pension costs associated with permanently employing individuals whose skills may not be needed after a set period
| HMCTS Only | All MoJ (inc HMCTS) |
Jan_19 | £753,599.80 | £826,620.80 |
Feb_19 | £48,755.00 | £731,940.55 |
Mar_19 | £2,292,766.92 | £2,482,758.97 |
Apr_19 | £1,677,992.05 | £2,079,137.53 |
May_19 | £1,052,152.70 | £1,551,874.13 |
Jun_19 | £158,923.48 | £326,955.16 |
Jul_19 | £979,392.51 | £1,150,230.51 |
Aug_19 | £79,558.52 | £338,141.85 |
Sep_19 | £1,214,269.72 | £1,413,668.13 |
Oct_19 | £1,355,668.58 | £1,883,496.23 |
Nov_19 | £144,059.67 | £1,016,306.27 |
Total | £9,757,138.95 | £13,801,130.13 |
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many recorder hours were (a) sat in each month of 2019 and (b) are expected to be sat in 2020.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
We hold data in terms of ‘sitting days’ rather than hours.
(a) The official statistics for judge sitting days (tables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 of the Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly, January to March 2019) were withdrawn on 5 September 2019, due to data discrepancies that were discovered after publication on 6 June 2019 and deemed potentially misleading to users. These discrepancies remain under investigation and, in line with the Code of Practice on Statistics, the Chief Statistician and Head of Profession decided to withdraw these tables until the investigations were complete. The revised figures will be published in due course, and will provide the total sitting days in Family, Civil and Crown courts.
(b) We have not been provided with sitting day allocations for financial year 2020/21, but expect that all Recorders will be offered sufficient days to maintain and build up their skills and experience.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many days judges sat in total in England in each month of 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The official statistics for judge sitting days (tables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 of the Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly, January to March 2019) were withdrawn on 5 September 2019, due to data discrepancies that were discovered after publication on 6 June 2019 and deemed potentially misleading to users. These discrepancies remain under investigation and, in line with the Code of Practice on Statistics, the Chief Statistician and Head of Profession decided to withdraw these tables until the investigations were complete. The revised figures will be published in due course, and will provide the total sitting days in Family, Civil and Crown courts.