§ Mr. DismoreTo ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department in relation to criminal cases that can be tried either way in the magistrates or Crown courts, if he will say, for each of the last three years(a) how many cases in which the defendant elected for trial in the Crown court resulted in a plea of guilty at the Crown court, (b) in relation to the cases, identified at (a), how many defendants were on legal aid, (c) what was (i) the total, (ii) the highest and (iii) the medium cost to the legal aid budget of the cases identified at (b), and (d) what he estimates the cost to the legal aid system would have been, for the statistics identified at (c), if the cases identified at (a) had been tried on a guilty plea in the magistrates court. [107846]
§ Mr. LockThe information required is not held centrally by the Department and could, therefore, be supplied only at disproportionate cost.