Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 8 December 2015 to Question 18370, on criminal proceedings, how many (a) men and (b) women make up the 9,578 figure; and what the sex of the lead defendant was in each case.

Of the 9,578 cases where there were one or more defendants, there were 24,619 defendants in total. Of these, 20,877 were male and 3,603 were female. The remaining defendants were recorded as companies or unknown. To identify the lead defendant would not be possible without incurring disproportionate costs.