Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average projected length of time is between charge and trial in cases of domestic abuse yet to be heard in court.

The Ministry of Justice does not carry out projections for length of time between charge and trial for specific offences.

The Ministry of Justice does publish end-to-end timeliness data each quarter, which enables users to calculate average length of time at various stages of the process. Data is only published for the average.

However, it is not possible to separately identify cases of ‘domestic abuse’ in the published data because the information held centrally is related to the offence in law for which a defendant is convicted. Domestic abuse related offences can be prosecuted under a wide range of legally defined offences.

In line with the Independent Sentencing Review recommendation, we will be introducing a domestic abuse identifier at sentencing in criminal cases. This will enable police, prisons, and probation to consistently identify domestic abuse offenders and improve support for victims, whether the perpetrator is in the community or in custody.

The Ministry of Justice commissioned Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts to tackle the outstanding caseload and to improve timeliness across the board – including for domestic abuse. We are considering Sir Brian’s recommendations and will issue a response in due course.