HC Deb 19 January 2000 vol 342 c455W
Mr. Simon Hughes

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department in each of the last five years for which figures are available, in how many and what percentage of either-way cases in which(a) magistrates declined jurisdiction and (b) defendants elected to go to the higher court, defendants pleaded (i) guilty and (ii) not guilty; and if he will make a statement. [104731]

Mr. Charles Clarke

No regular statistics are collected on this. However, there is some information available from the baseline data collected by the Home Office in 1998 for the evaluation of the pilot schemes to reduce delay in the criminal justice system. In a sample of nearly 1,000 triable either way cases dealt with in the Crown

Number and proportion of defendants tried at the Crown Court for indictable-only offences final plea, 1995198
Type of plea
Guilty Not guilty Not known
Year Total tried [=100 per cent.] Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage
19951 6,899 3,550 51 3,319 48 30 0
1996 15,565 8,327 53 7,203 46 35 0
1997 15,710 8,300 53 7,368 47 42 0
1998 16,740 8,644 52 8,046 48 50 0
1 Plea data collected as from July 1995.