Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of the total work undertaken in magistrates' courts was presided over by (a) lay magistrates and (b) district judges on 1 April (i) 1989, (ii) 1994, (iii) 2000, (iv) 2005, (v) 2010 and (vi) 2014.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service does not centrally hold the data requested for 1^st April 1989, 1994, 2000, and 2005. The records became centralised with a phased roll out of a case management system (Libra) in 2005. Therefore, records prior to that date are retained locally and would require a manual trawl to retrieve and could only be collected at a disproportionate cost. However, for 1^st April 2010 and 2014 the data is set out in the following table:

The column headed 'Cases', provides a count of cases that have a hearing listed on the specified hearing date, it is possible for a single defendant to have more than one case listed at the same time. The data includes Criminal, Civil and Enforcement cases, but will exclude any family cases heard in the Magistrates' Courts. It is possible to have Magistrates sitting with District Judges in the same session; where this occurs the case will be counted under both.