Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many trials for (a) rape and (b) sexual assault have been delayed in each year since 2010.

We have interpreted your request as being for ineffective trials, which is where the trial does not commence on the due date and requires rescheduling. This could be due to a variety of reasons, such as the absence of a defendant or a witness or adjournment requests from either the prosecution or defence.

Data on trial effectiveness is available in the trial effectiveness at the criminal courts tool and is published as part of the Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly release and can be filtered by offence group for adult rape and sexual offences. This can be accessed here: Criminal court statistics quarterly: October to December 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). However, information on ineffective trials broken down by offence are not available prior to 2014.

The number of ineffective trial volumes significantly increased in 2022; this was primarily due to the Criminal Bar Association action between April and September 2022.

It remains our priority to help deliver swifter access to justice for victims and reduce the Crown Court backlog. We are taking a range of measures to increase capacity in the criminal justice system, including removing the limit of sitting days in the Crown Court for the second financial year in a row.