Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of sentences given in (a) magistrates’ courts and (b) crown courts were less than 60% of the statutory maximum length in the latest period for which data is available.

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the number of offenders sentenced at criminal courts in England and Wales in the following links. This includes the information on sentence outcomes, including grouped custodial sentence lengths and average sentence lengths, for a wide range of offences, which can be viewed individually to show the range of sentencing outcomes:

• Magistrates’ courts: Magistrates' court data tool

• Crown Court: Crown Court data tool

Using data held centrally to align individual convictions to statutory maxima would only be possible at disproportionate costs.