To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many defendants on bail between pleading guilty or being found guilty and sentence subsequently failed to attend court for sentencing in Northern Ireland in each of the last five years.

Bench warrants are issued when defendants on bail fail to appear at a Crown court.

The information sought was not centrally recorded prior to the introduction of a new IT system in October 2006. Consequently, it is not possible to provide the requested information prior to this without incurring disproportionate cost.

The following table details, for Crown court cases dealt with in Northern Ireland between October 2006 and September 2007, the number of defendants on bail between pleading guilty or being found guilty and being sentenced who had a least one bench warrant issued against them. All have since been sentenced.