Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department has made a comparative assessment of the impact of the use of (a) section 28 pre-recorded evidence and (b) live evidence on jurors' perception of witnesses in rape and serious sexual offences cases.

Since September 2022, when we completed the rollout of pre-recorded cross-examination (Section 28) for victims of sexual and modern slavery offences in all Crown Courts in England and Wales, we have completed a process evaluation of the provision. The process evaluation, published on gov.uk on 3 April 2023, explored if the section 28 provision was working as intended and if any improvements were required. The evaluation did not examine the impact of section 28, therefore it did not compare the impact of pre-recorded versus live evidence.