Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how many early guilty pleas there were in the Crown Court in each year from 2010-11; and what proportion of total pleas they represented in each such year.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) maintains a central electronic record of the numbers of defendants and the outcome of prosecution proceedings at the Crown Court on its Case Management System. An automated facility to collate data showing the number of early guilty pleas was developed and implemented across the Service during 2013. Complete records are therefore only available from April 2014.

The table below represents the number of finalised defendants entering early guilty pleas and shows these as a proportion of all guilty pleas at the Crown Court during 2014-15.

The total guilty plea volumes in the table above are inclusive of cases where a defendant has entered mixed guilty and not guilty pleas.

The second table shows the number of early guilty pleas as a proportion of all finalised prosecution outcomes at the Crown Court during the same period.