Catherine McKinnell – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine McKinnell on 2015-11-10.

To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to the Answer of 22 October 2015 to Question 12365, what savings have resulted from the police-led prosecution initiative in each year since 2012-13.

Robert Buckland

The police-led prosecution initiative has led to a significant reduction in motoring offences prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in magistrate courts, as the following figures indicate:

Motoring offence cases finalised in the Magistrates Court

2012-13: 229,875

2013-14: 171,517

2014-15: 112,955

While the reduction has led to a fall in expenditure on these low-level cases, the overall effect on CPS budgets has been cost-neutral. A high proportion of these cases are dealt with as summary first-time guilty pleas, in which the Court requires the defendant to pay the prosecution costs as part of any financial penalty. Therefore, whilst the CPS has benefitted from a reduction in expenditure, it has foregone the receipt of cost awards that are routinely made in motoring offence cases, as these awards are now payable to the police.