Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the (a) gross and (b) net amount likely to be collected through the criminal courts charge in each of the next five financial years; and how much has been collected since that charge was introduced.

It is right that we find better ways to pay the costs of running our Criminal Courts, and the introduction of this charge has made it possible to recover some of the costs from offenders, which reduces the burden on taxpayers. The Government is, of course, keeping the operation of the Criminal Courts Charge under review.

The information requested on estimates can be found at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/796/impacts.

Data relating to the Criminal Courts Charge for the period April to September 2015 will be published in an annex to the Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly on gov.uk. This will separately identify the amount collected in the first 6 months since the charge coming into force, from 13 April 2015.