Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many outstanding cases in (a) Crown courts and (b) magistrates' courts (i) there are as of 12 January 2021 and (ii) there were on 12 January 2020.

We are unable to provide the full year-on-year comparison from January 2020 to January 2021 as we did not start to collate this information prior to March 2020. The number of outstanding cases in the Crown Court in September 2020 was 49,822, compared to 53,478 in September 2019. Our latest published statistics can be viewed on our weekly management information page.

The magistrates’ backlog continues to fall, and the number of cases being dealt with in the Crown Courts reached pre-pandemic levels in December. To drive this recovery further we are investing £110m in a range of measures to boost capacity, including recruiting 1,600 new staff and shortly opening several more Nightingale Courts. These efforts will be bolstered by an extra £337m the government is spending next year to deliver swifter justice and support to victims, while £76 million will further increase capacity in family courts and tribunals.