Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans he has to collate data on the number of court days lost as a result of prisoners not being produced in court by companies operating prisoner escort contracts.

HMCTS does record data on the number of trials that are ineffective in both Crown and Magistrate’s Courts as a result of a defendant not being produced by prisoner escort custody services. These statistics are published in Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly publication on gov.uk and the latest data is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2019

There is currently no requirement or plans for HMCTS to collate data on the number of court days lost as a result of prisoners not being produced in court by companies operating prisoner escort contracts.