Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many magistrates are serving in England and Wales; and how many of those magistrates were so serving in March in each of the last five years.

The number of magistrates serving as at 1 April 2017 in England and Wales can be found in the Judicial Diversity Statistics at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/judicial-diversity-statistics-2017--2.

The information requesting how many of those magistrates currently serving in these areas were serving in March in each of the last five years could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

The number of magistrates serving in England and Wales as at 1 April in the last five years can be found in the Judicial Diversity Statistics Archive at https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/publications/?filter_type=publication&search=&tax-single-subject=171&tax-single-publication-type=169&tax-single-publication-jurisdiction=-1&date-range-after=&date-range-before

The number of serving magistrates in England and Wales by (a) ethnic minority and (b) by age category is also available in the public domain and can be accessed via the links provided above.

The published data covers the period up to 1^st April 2017. We plan to publish data which covers the period up to 1^st April 2018 in July.