These documents record the equality analysis undertaken for the decision to move England into step 4 through the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps etc.) (England) (Revocation and Amendment) Regulations 2021.

Ministers are required under the https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011/2260/contents/made">Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) as set out in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 to have regard to the need to:

• eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation
• advance equality of opportunity between different groups
• foster good relations between different groups

Ministers are required to consider the impact of policy decisions on people’s protected characteristics, with particular emphasis on meeting the duties set out above. These protected characteristics are:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• pregnancy and maternity
• marriage and civil partnership
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

The regulations covered by these PSED documents relate to the decision to move England into step 4 on 19 July 2021. This resulted in most legal restrictions, including those relating to social distancing and social contact, ending. All remaining businesses were allowed to reopen.

The quarterly legal aid statistics bulletin presents statistics on the legal aid scheme administered by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) for England and Wales. This edition comprises the first release of statistics for the three month period from April to June 2021 and also provides the latest statement of figures for all earlier periods. These statistics are derived from data held by LAA, produced and published by Legal Aid Statistics team of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).

Statistician’s Comment

This publication shows that completed workload and the associated expenditure has increased year on year and has also increased more over the recent quarters, due to recovery from COVID-19, across both the criminal legal aid and civil legal aid schemes. Some areas have seen large increases and this is mainly due to comparisons against unusually low volumes of workload in the early stages of the pandemic and in some instances within the report comparisons are also given against pre-covid volumes, in order to provide a comparison against pre-covid levels of activity.

Criminal legal aid expenditure increased compared to the same quarter last year in schemes that support the court system, including the magistrates’ and Crown Court. The incoming workload for representation at the courts has almost returned to levels seen in the period pre-covid. Complex trial cases ongoing at the Crown Court are not completing at the same rate as pre-covid due to social distancing measures, and reduced capacity in the courts is impacting upon closed claim expenditure.

Civil legal aid volumes and expenditure show a mixed picture compared to the same quarter last year. Overall, family law and mediation expenditure has returned to pre-pandemic levels. In April to June 2021, non-family law expenditure remains 15% lower than the same period of 2019. This is driven by the slow recovery of housing work following the impact of COVID. Overall civil legal aid workload still remains below pre-pandemic levels (by around 10%).

It was expected that criminal and civil legal aid volumes would return to, and even temporarily exceed, historic trend levels and more recent falls could be due to this return to normal levels or impact from further lockdowns.

Pre-release

Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons:

Ministry of Justice

Secretary of State for Justice, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Permanent Secretary, Director General Chief Financial Officer Group, Directors of Data and Analysis (2), Head of Access to Justice Policy, Deputy Director Legal Aid Policy, Chief Statistician, Special Advisor Inbox, Legal Aid Policy Officials (6), Press Officers (3), Digital Officers (2), Private secretaries (5), Head of Legal Aid Analysis (2)

Legal Aid Agency

Chief Executive, Chief Executive’s Office, Head of Financial Forecasting, Senior External Communications Manager, Director of Finance Business Partnering, Service Development Managers (2), Exceptional and Complex Cases Workflow Co-ordinator, Change Manager

The report presents key statistics on activity in the criminal justice system for England and Wales. It provides information up to the year ending December 2019 with accompanying commentary, analysis and presentation of longer term trends.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused MoJ to have to change its data gathering, access and release practices, focusing efforts on priority analysis and statistics. Our statement explains this further and in particular, we are pausing access to the Police National Computer, to minimise non-essential travel by our analysts. In line with guidance from the Office for Statistics Regulation, the decision has been made to delay the publishing of cautions data and the offending histories chapter of this publication. We will keep users updated of any further changes via our published release calendar.

The COVID-19 pandemic guidance on travel and social distancing has restricted access to some IT systems, so we are delaying the release of the detailed data tools for 2019 to finalise validation and quality assurance processes. We hope to be able to publish these tools on 28th May. Note that the impact of these quality assurance processes is likely to be very minor at an aggregate level and so should not affect the contents of the published bulletin or headline overview tables.

Statistician’s comment

The number of defendants prosecuted has fallen over the last decade – and figures published today show a further slight decrease in 2019, though there were increases in some of the most serious offence groups, in particular violence. The increase in prosecutions and convictions for violence was driven by the legislation that introduced the new offence of ‘assaults on emergency workers’ from November 2018. The publication also shows that custody rates, which have risen over the last decade, fell slightly in the last year, in part because of the change in the offence mix – with a rise in the proportion of all sentences that were for offences which are less likely to result in a custodial sentence.

Although we often consider crimes to correlate with prosecutions, we would not expect prosecutions to move directly in line with the ONS published police recorded crime series, or Crime Survey for England and Wales as only those crimes that result in a charge are likely to flow into courts – in addition criminal court prosecutions cover a much broader range of offences than police recorded crime or the survey.

The period of data covered by this report covers calendar year 2019, so court activity will not have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We will consider how we can best cover this in future publications. In the meantime, HMCTS publish regular management information on court activity here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmcts-management-information.

Pre-release access

The bulletin is produced and handled by the ministry’s analytical professionals and production staff. Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons:

Ministry of Justice

Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; Minister of State for Prisons and Probation; 2 Parliamentary Under Secretary of States; Lords spokesperson; Principal Private Secretary; Deputy Principal Private Secretary; 3 Private Secretaries; 4 Assistant Private Secretaries; Permanent Secretary; Head of Permanent Secretary’s Office; Special Advisor; Head of News; 2 Deputy Heads of News; 2 Press Officers; Director, Family and Criminal Justice Policy; Director of Data and Analytical Services; Chief Statistician; Director General, Policy, Communications and Analysis Group; Deputy Director, Bail, Sentencing and Release Policy; Section Head, Criminal Court Policy; Director, Offender and Youth Justice Policy; Director, Offender and Youth Justice Policy; Statistician, Youth Justice Board; Data Analyst, Youth Justice Board; Head of Courts and Sentencing, Youth Justice Policy; Deputy Director, Crime; Crime Service Manager (Case Progression) - Courts and Tribunals Development; Deputy Director, Legal Operations - Courts & Tribunals Development Directorate; Head of Criminal Law policy; 6 Policy Advisors.

Home Office

Home Secretary; Private Secretary to the Home Secretary; Deputy Principal Private Secretary to the Home Secretary; Permanent Secretary, Home Office; Assistant Private Secretary to the Home Office Permanent Secretary; Min