§ Rev. Martin SmythTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what progress has been made in reducing delays in coming to trial in Northern Ireland; and if he will make a statement.
§ Sir Patrick MayhewWe remain determined to address with sustained and vigourous measures the problem of delays on remand. I believe that our efforts to do so in the past year have brought encouraging progress.
I announced to the House on 10 June last year a scheme designed to reduce the time defendants spent in custody before trial on indictment for schedule offences—the type of case where delays had been longest. This scheme was a joint initiative, involving agencies answering to the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney-General as well as the police and my own officials. It introduced targets for the progress of cases: 38 weeks from remand to committal and 14 weeks from committal to arraignment, a culmultative target of 12 months.
It began on 1 July last year. The agencies involved set up new machinery for close co-operation between them, in order to track the progress of cases, and to signal the need for attention to those whose targets risked being exceeded.
I am now able to announce the results of the first year's operation of the scheme. Fifty-seven cases with their first remand on or after 1 July 1992 had reached arraignment by 30 June 1993. All met the 12-month cumulative targets; all also met the 14-week committal to arraignment taget. Six cases, however, failed to reach committal within the target of 38 weeks from first remand. The average time taken to process cases also fell. In 1991, the last full year before the introduction of the scheme, the average time from remand to committal for such cases was 33 weeks; in 1992 case covered by the scheme reached committal in an average of 24 weeks, an improvement by 27 per cent. The statistics for a single year must obviously be read with caution, but I believe that the improvements indicated are most impressive and reflect great credit on all the agencies concerned.
We wish to see these improvements sustained. We have accordingly decided to continue the scheme until at least 30 June 1994; to extend its oversight to non-scheduled cases tried on indictment; and to tighten targets under the scheme by reducing cumulative target to 11 months. The latter will be achieved by making the committal to arraignment target 10 weeks instead of 14.
20WWe will continue to take a close interest in the operation of the scheme, and in the whole period up to the start of the trial, in order to identify any further ways in which avoidable delay can be reduced.