To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average cost to the public purse is of preparing a (a) full pre-sentence report and (b) fast delivery report in magistrates' courts, including the time spent by probation staff in court whilst the report is being delivered and considered.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will estimate the cost to the public purse of the production of pre-sentence reports for courts in each of the last three years.

The most recently available information on the unit costs of probation relates to 2012/13 and is published on the Gov.uk website at the following web location: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-and-probation-trusts-performance-statistics-201213

The published unit costs of pre-sentence reports are calculated by dividing the fully-apportioned cost to NOMS by the volumes of the three separate types of report: Standard Delivery Report (SDR), Fast Delivery Report (FDR) and oral report. They exclude the time spent by probation staff in court whilst the report is being delivered and considered, as this cannot be separately identified.

The unit costs of SDRs and FDRs for 2012-13 are as follows:

SDR: £430

FDR: £150

The publication of probation trust unit costs was suspended whilst the probation service restructured, but work is underway to develop unit costs for the National Probation Service and we will seek to publish this information once it is sufficiently robust.