Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his Department will conduct research on the potential effect on the cost of legal aid of encouraging early guilty pleas by defendants in serious criminal trial cases.

We currently have no plans to do so. It has long been the practice to encourage early guilty pleas by offering reductions in sentence, and this is governed by the guideline Reduction in Sentence for a Guilty Plea, first issued by the Sentencing Guidelines Council in 2005. The Sentencing Council (as it now is) last month published for consultation a revised guideline, the purpose of which is stated to be ‘to encourage those defendants who are aware of their guilt to enter a plea as early in the court process as possible’. Increasing the incidence of early guilty pleas would be expected to result in savings in legal aid, as well as in other benefits.