ONE in seven defendants is failing to turn up to court, according to new figures that show the Government is failing in a pledge to speed up justice.

As MPs caution that public confidence in the criminal justice system is in decline, the figures, seen by The Times, show that more rather than less time is now spent in getting people to trial than it was last year.

The Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney- General made quicker justice the central plank of plans to reform the criminal court system.

However, figures from the Department for Constititional Affairs show that the average delay for a criminal trial in magistrates’ courts is now more than two weeks longer than a year ago.

In a second blow to government efforts to get a grip on the justice system, the Committee of Public Accounts says that a seventh of defendants are not bothering to turn up for court appearances.

Their “no shows” cause waste, distress and delays to thousands of trials a year, the MPs say. Court officials and police often find carbon-copy bail forms used in many courts “discarded in the court buildings”, the committee says. However, the biggest cause of abortive hearings was the failure of prosecution witnesses to attend.

Action over failure of defendants to attend is slow and un- reliable. Of 118,500 bail warrants issued in 2002, only 45 per cent were executed by police within three months.

The MPs are also highly critical of the apparent lack of responsibility for the system’s failings.

“No single agency is responsible for ensuring that a defendant attends court,” they say.

Edward Leigh, the committee chairman, said: “Public confidence in the criminal justice system is weakened if defendants skip their court hearings, leading to failed trials. Many defendants believe they can get away with snubbing the legal process and, disgracefully, there is some justiciation for that belief,” he said.

“Many of these defendants are not promptly brought back to court and some are never brought back.”

Mr Leigh added that the bail process needed to be better managed. At present there was a “pass-the-parcel” attitude which was a recipe for confusion.

Courts were taking decisions on bail without reliable information; warrants to arrest “no-show” defendants took too long to reach local police stations; and police could be too slow to make arrests, he said.

The MPs are calling for greater use of professional magistrates to bring offenders to justice and to cut the number of court cases that collapse.

But they note the view of Home Office ministers that the public is attracted to the idea of lay justices in local magistrates’ courts.

“No shows” by defendants delayed one in twenty trials in magistrates’ courts and one in thirty-two trials in the Crown Court last year.

The figures on magistrates’ trials delays, contained in the Department for Constitutional Affairs Statistical Bulletin, compare the time taken to bring offenders to trial this March compared with March 2004.

Delays have fallen only with motoring offences. One in three trials in England and Wales also failed to be completed within the target of 143 days from the time of the offence.

In more serious cases, the average time was up 17 days to 131 days, while for summary offences the delay rose by 18 days to 156 days. With young offenders, the delay also grew, from 96 to 105 days in serious offences and from 83 to 93 days for summary offences.

A spokesman for the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, QC, who was appointed the lead minister for criminal justice, attributed the delays in part to the new emphasis on ensuring that cases went forward only with strong evidence.

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