asked Her Majesty's Government:

How many requests for mutual legal assistance were received from the United States in the latest year for which the statistics are available; and what were the average and maximum times taken to deal with them. [HL831]

The Home Office has received 50 requests for mutual legal assistance from the US since 1 January 2007. Of these, 37 were new requests and 13 were supplementary to earlier requests.

“Deal with” has been taken to mean either referral by the Home Office to an executing authority or refusal to accede to a request. Of the 37 new requests received, 32 have been dealt with and five are pending.

Of the 32, the maximum length of time taken to deal with the request was 31 working days and the average length of time was 7.7 working days.