Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 31
31
Accepted
Accuracy of criminal and civil court data, including remand population, remains questionable
Conclusion
Despite these assurances, we concur with a request from the Law Society of England and Wales in its written submission to us for confirmation from MoJ that other data and statistics across the criminal and civil courts are not similarly affected.87 Exemplifying this point, in correspondence to us after the evidence session, HMCTS set out how MoJ’s data relating to the remand population are not accurate enough for MoJ to draw insights from.88
Government Response Summary
The government confirms confidence in Crown Court caseload statistics and details improvements made to magistrates’ caseload data, noting previous overstatements due to legacy system issues and committing to further revisions for additional legacy cases in the future. It also states that other caseload elements like police recorded crime are for other government departments.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
7.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented: March 2025 7.2 The external assurance review of the process and methods used to produce Crown Court caseload statistics concluded that MoJ can have a significant level of confidence in the Crown Court caseload statistics. 7.3 MoJ also made an improvement to the measurement of the magistrates’ caseload data in the December statistics publication. That followed work that HMCTS undertook to modernise its data and management information (MI). This was driven by the work to merge data from the legacy case management system, Libra, with the new data from Common Platform. During that work, HMCTS found evidence that the magistrates’ courts open caseload data had previously been overstated due to a variety of issues identified in the data derived from the legacy case management system, Libra. This revision represented an improvement in methodology, and an improvement in accuracy of the magistrates’ caseload data. 7.4 There are a small number of additional cohorts of legacy cases that are continuing to be investigated for remedial action and so the magistrates’ open caseload will be further revised in future. The first phase of the additional changes was released in the criminal courts statistics quarterly on 27 March 2025. They resulted in a downwards revision of around 17,000 open cases (less than 0.1% of those cases which have passed through the magistrates’ court on the legacy Libra system since 2010). 7.5 Other elements of caseloads in the CJS (e.g. Police recorded crime or issues of charging decisions) are for other government departments.