Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of Crown Court defendants entered an early guilty plea, broken down by individual Crown Court centre, for each financial year from 2019–20 to 2024–25.

Where appropriate, early guilty pleas (EGPs) can have benefits for both the administration of justice (by saving court time) and victims (by saving them from having to give potentially traumatic evidence).

Data on early guilty pleas (EGPs) is published as part of the Criminal Justice System Delivery Data Dashboard. This defines an EGP as a guilty plea entered by a defendant at any time prior to trial. The data can be broken down by Local Criminal Justice Board, in the section ‘Early guilty plea rate (%)’.

Charge to case completion at court - CJS Dashboard

In Part 2 of the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts, Sir Brian Leveson made a series of recommendations aimed at strengthening the incentives for defendants who intend to plead guilty to do so at the first reasonable opportunity. We are carefully considering these and the additional remaining recommendations from Sir Brian’s Review and will set out a full response in due course.