Criminal Proceedings: Legal Representation

(asked on 14th July 2015) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many adjournments occurred because of lack of legal representation for defendants in criminal proceedings in each week since 1 July 2015; and what the duration of each such adjournment was.


Answered by
Andrew Selous Portrait
Andrew Selous
Second Church Estates Commissioner
This question was answered on 22nd July 2015

In the vast majority of cases requiring a solicitor at the police station, a solicitor has been deployed within an hour. The Ministry of Justice does not retain details of detainees at police station who, having requested legal advice, do not then obtain it. There have always been a number of reasons why an individual might not receive advice, such as the detainee changing their mind or the police releasing the detainee before advice is provided.

The courts are sitting as usual. The representation status and the number of adjournments in magistrates’ court proceedings, and the reasons for them, are not centrally recorded. For Crown Court cases, data on reasons for adjournments are centrally recorded, but a lack of legal representation is not included within the list of possible reasons for an adjournment. Further, representation status is centrally recorded, but the reasons why an individual might be unrepresented are not.

Experimental data on the number of defendants dealt with in the Crown Court who are known to have had legal representation at their first hearing was published for the first time in the Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly publication on 25 June 2015, covering the period 2010 and 2014. These statistics are available via the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2015

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