Secondment

Chris Ruane: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many private sector employees have been seconded by the private sector to his Department; what the name was of the company from which they were seconded; and whether any of those employees have worked on drafting legislation. [175656]

Mr Vara: Information held on the Ministry of Justice's central systems indicates that there were no secondees from the private sector in the Ministry, including its agencies, as at 30 September 2013.

Witnesses: Children

Ann Coffey: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) what progress HM Courts and Tribunals Service has made in developing a method to assess and score the facilities of each court in England and Wales; and what assessment he has made of the extent to which this development would make provision of better services to vulnerable child witnesses; [175642]

(2) what plans he has to make more use of video links and other technology in the courts to improve the experience of young and vulnerable witnesses in the criminal justice system. [175643]

Mr Vara: There are a number of actions HMCTS is taking in order to improve the experience of young and vulnerable witnesses in the criminal justice system.

For the first time we are going to spare vulnerable victims and witnesses from the aggressive and intimidating court atmosphere by pre-recording evidence and cross-examination before the trial starts, to then be played in court. This will help witnesses give their best possible evidence to bring offenders to justice.

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This new approach will be piloted at three crown court centres—Leeds, Liverpool and Kingston-upon-Thames—and make use of advanced video link technology, with the intention of rolling it out more widely if it proves to be successful.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service has not developed a method to score the facilities of each courtroom in England and Wales, however, our most recent audit of

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facilities in magistrates’ and crown court centres shows that there are 1517 waiting facilities dedicated to witnesses.

Over the past two years we have increased our capacity to receive evidence virtually in the courtrooms through expanding and refreshing our video equipment. We now have the ability to receive evidence over a video link in all crown court centres and in 90% of magistrates courts.