Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of trials for alleged rape under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 did not go ahead on the day they were scheduled for each Crown court in England and Wales in each year since 2009-10.

Data on the proportion of trials for alleged rape offences that did not go ahead on the scheduled day in the Crown Court can be found in the attached table:

Table 1 - Effectiveness of Crown Court trials for rape offences in England and Wales, by Crown Court, 2009 - 2016.

This shows the proportion of alleged rape trials that were effective (where the trial commences on the day it is scheduled), those that are cracked (where the trial does not commence on the scheduled date and the trial is not rescheduled) and those that are ineffective (where the trial does not commence on the due date and requires rescheduling).

For England and Wales, the number of Crown Court trials for rape offences has increased by 65%, from 2,049 in 2009 to 3,388 in 2016. In the same time period, the proportion of ineffective trials for rape offences decreased from 10% to 8% of total trials, and the proportion of cracked trials for rape offences decreased from 14% to 7% of total trials. There was a corresponding increase in the proportion of effective trials for rape offences from 76% in 2009 to 85% in 2016.