Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what safeguards are in place to ensure that (a) CPS and (b) defence solicitors receive timely access to all relevant evidence in cases to be heard in magistrates courts.

The package of evidence which must be served on the defence before the first hearing in a magistrates’ court is referred to as the Initial Details of the Prosecution Case (IDPC). The contents of the IDPC, and the time by which it must be served on the court and defence, are set out in Part 8 of the Criminal Procedure Rules:

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/criminal/docs/2015/crim-proc-rules-2015-part-08.pdf

Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) guidance states the responsibility of the police to provide key evidence within agreed time periods, and gives prosecutors information about the required contents and timeliness of the IDPC.

The police and CPS are required to adhere to the National File Standard (NFS), which specifies the material required for the first hearing and subsequent stages of the case. In 2016, CPS and the police developed the National Case File Quality Assessment model, providing a nationally consistent approach to checking and managing case file quality which assesses, among other things, whether the case file adheres to the NFS.