Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many domestic violence trials in each magistrates' and Crown court in Lancashire in 2014 (a) collapsed and (b) were postponed due to the complainant not being present.

The information requested in relation to both the magistrates’ courts and Crown Court is not held centrally and could only be provided by accessing and examining individual files at a disproportionate cost.

Computerised data is available on the number of adult trials which did not proceed because a prosecution witness did not attend. However it is not possible to filter down that information to domestic violence trials or to the non attendance of the complainant in domestic violence cases as the computer recording systems for the magistrates’ and Crown court do not break down trial data into specific types of cases or types of witnesses (complainant or other).