Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many litigants in person have appeared before courts in England and Wales in each year since 2010.

Details of self-representation in criminal and civil courts can only be obtained by manually checking every case file at disproportionate costs.

The numbers for family cases showing self-representing applicants and respondents are published quarterly. Self-representation is determined by the field ‘legal representation' in the Ministry of Justice administrative database being left blank. Therefore, this is only a proxy measure and parties without a recorded representative are not necessarily self-representing litigants in person.

Information for parties' representation is available for family courts at a national level from 2011. The data are in table 2.4 of Court Statistics Quarterly, available at this link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/court-statistics-quarterly

Litigants in person are not a new phenomenon in our courts. Judges are used to helping persons with no legal representation, including explaining procedures and what is expected of them. We have taken steps to help people who either want or have to represent themselves in court, including publishing a revised guide for separating parents and increased training for judges. The link to the guide is:

http://hmctsformfinder.justice.gov.uk/HMCTS/GetLeaflet.do?court_leaflets_id=2756