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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Sarah Sackman)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne) for securing this important debate. Our ability to provide justice to the public and restore confidence in our criminal justice system, so bruised after the last 14 years, is of the utmost importance. I am grateful to be able to debate these issues today.
I will start by touching on the profound challenges that the Government face in the Crown court. When we came into power, we inherited a record and rising backlog. As others have pointed out, today it stands at 74,000 cases, which is around double what it was five years ago. I heard the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) outline his somewhat fairytale account of how we got here. His Government neglected their responsibilities both in the context of prisons, which were at breaking point when we entered government, and the dire inheritance in our Crown courts. He seeks to blame it purely on external factors, such as the covid pandemic. Who does he think was responsible for the industrial strike and the failure to broker with the professions? Under whose watch was that Crown court backlog allowed to rise? The failure to invest and reform are failures that this Government are intent on reversing.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford pointed out, the backlog involves real people. Real people lie behind these statistics. As we heard, countless lives of both victims and accused people have been put on hold as they wait for cases to come to trial. It simply represents an affront to the concept of swift justice, and I am afraid it represents the failure of the previous Government to take decisive and significant action—action that we will not shirk taking. The issue is more complex than simply rising numbers. Receipts are increasingly high and rising. The nature of the case load is different than before the pandemic; it is now made up of a greater proportion of more serious and complex offences, which take up more court time and tend to have a lower guilty plea rate. We acknowledge that has real-life consequences for victims and witnesses and that we are letting people down, both those who serve in the system and those served by it.
Addressing the Crown court backlog is a priority for this Department and this Government. We are not dithering and delaying—far from it. We have actually gripped the crisis. Last year, the Lord Chancellor funded an additional 2,500 court sitting days on top of the allocation agreed by the previous Government, contrary again to what the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle said. His Government agreed one settlement; we looked to fund over and above that, with 2,500 additional court sitting days and additional sentencing powers given to magistrates to free up vital capacity within the Crown court.
We did not stop there. To deliver swifter justice for victims, we announced funding that will enable 110,000 crime court sitting days in this financial year. That is an additional 4,000 more days than the previous Government funded and the highest allocation in recorded history. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle says, “Well, that’s not as many as the Lady Chief Justice could offer up.” The fact is there is a difference between sitting days and the capacity of the system. It is not simply a matter of judicial sitting days; it is about the capacity of our prosecutors, defence lawyers, legal aid and the entirety of the system to operate. We have allocated a record number of sitting days within that context.
I know my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford is specifically concerned with the situation in Kent, and I am thankful for his efforts and those of fellow Members of Parliament within the Kent area for raising this issue. I am sincerely sorry to hear about the experiences he describes and how they are impacting his constituents. With this record Crown court sitting day allocation, Kent can sit all its courts for the full year at capacity. That will include an additional courtroom at Canterbury, which we have equipped for Crown court use. To his question about flexibility, of course listing is a matter for the independent judiciary, but that additional capacity at Canterbury will enable some of the cases at Maidstone to be transferred there. There is also flexibility in the system to deal with additional capacity and pressures. In addition to the sixth courtroom at Canterbury, we are working closely with circuit-presiding judges to enable additional Kent cases to be heard in London. Some of that has already begun, with cases emanating from north-west Kent being dealt with at Woolwich Crown court. I hope that will alleviate some of the pressures faced by his constituents.
Just yesterday, I spoke to Lisa Killham, the delivery director for court services in the south-east region, to ask what additional steps she and her team can offer to provide additional capacity and flexibility within the system. I know they are working hard to alleviate some of the particular pressures felt at Maidstone. Some of that is a system design problem. The role of case co-ordinators, which the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle raised, is really important, as is the use of case progression meetings to strive to improve the effective trial rate. All those measures will be vital in bearing down on the Crown court backlog in the Kent area.
We know the backlog is serious and rising. Doing nothing is not an option. That is why we asked Sir Brian Leveson, one of our most distinguished judges, to conduct a wholesale review of our criminal courts and propose radical, once-in-a-generation reform to deliver swifter justice for victims. That is not outsourcing policy thinking; it is bringing the very best expertise and experience within our system to assist the Government in what needs to be a once-in-a-generation level of reform—and nothing is off the table. As Members will know, Sir Brian is looking at things such as re-classification of offences and what sorts of cases are appropriate for a jury trial.
Jury trial will always be a cornerstone of British justice, appropriate for the most serious cases, but the right to jury trial is not absolutely sacrosanct; what we need to ensure is the right to a fair trial. At the moment, victims of rape or serious sexual violence are having to wait one, two or even three years for their date in court, and that is not fairness at all. That is not a fair trial for any of the participants. That is why Sir Brian is looking at every single option. We inherited a justice system on its knees, and we steadfastly refuse to let it fall over entirely. Restoring swift justice in this country will require the courage to take decisions—big decisions that could and should have been taken by the last Government.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) for raising the situation for victims who are badly let down by the current system. Court backlogs have an undeniable impact on victims. The disruption to victims’ lives affects their ability to function, work and maintain relationships and the Government take it very seriously indeed.
The Victims’ Commissioner recently published a report highlighting the profound effect of the delays on victims, including the particularly adverse effect on victims of rape and serious sexual offences. To ensure ongoing communication with victims in the pre-trial period, the Government will ensure that every Crown Prosecution Service area now has at least one dedicated victim liaison officer in its rape and serious sexual offences unit, and that pre-trial meetings with a prosecutor are offered to all adult victims of those crimes. That singular point of contact can make a real difference.
As part of our landmark ambition to halve violence against women and girls, the Government have committed to introducing free, independent legal advice for victims and survivors of adult rape across England and Wales, to help them to understand and uphold their legal rights. We aim to begin a phased roll-out of the service later this year.
In the upcoming financial year, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne rightly pointed out, we have protected dedicated victim spending in the Department by maintaining this year’s funding level for ringfenced sexual violence and domestic abuse support. The hon. Member challenged us to go further and is right to do so. We have ensured that the funding for victim support is spent in the most effective way. That is why we have victim liaison officers and why we are introducing independent legal advice for victims and survivors of rape. It is right that we target resource on the most vulnerable victims in our system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford was right to raise the issue of backlogs not just in the Crown court jurisdiction, which is our focus today, but right across all jurisdictions. The Crown court is of course a significant priority for the Government, but as courts Minister I am focusing on managing demand across all our jurisdictions, including our magistrates and our civil jurisdictions.
The truth—the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle seems to have forgotten this as part of his party’s collective amnesia—is that the Conservatives left us with a mess in every single part of our justice system. On the civil justice side, whether someone was an employee, a tenant, a landlord, or an individual with a claim and a desire for redress, they were left with a mess. In our criminal justice system it was the same, whether in the magistrates or the Crown court.
More than 90% of all criminal cases are dealt with at the level of the magistrates court, where cases continue to be completed swiftly. That is a good news story. Although the open caseload rose by just under 14% in the year up until December 2024, timeliness in getting through cases has remained stable. We expect demand to continue to rise and, to keep pace, we will continue to invest in the recruitment of more magistrates. We are aiming to recruit 2,000 new and diverse magistrates this year. The diversity of our magistracy is highly important.
Whether it is the civil jurisdiction or our tribunal system, we are at capacity, sitting at the maximum, or close to the maximum, number of sitting days across all jurisdictions. That reflects the Government’s commitment to bear down on backlogs in every single part of our justice system.
The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle asked when Sir Brian is due to report; that will be later in the spring. When will the Government legislate? We want to get on with it, so we will legislate as soon as possible, either later this year or early in the new year. We are not hanging around; we have to get on top of this issue. Do we see a continued role for case co-ordinators? We absolutely do: effective case management is vital. Reducing delays in the criminal courts, maintaining our progress across all jurisdictions—including in the family court and in the civil justice space—and of course improving the experience of victims continue to be priorities for the Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford raised the issue of digitisation. I hot-footed it here from the Justice Committee, where we were talking about digitisation in the civil justice space. The Government are ambitious about what we can do, the efficiencies and the greater access to justice we can realise by end-to-end digitisation. A small example of that is the Government’s commitment, as part of our renters’ rights reform, to have fully digitised processes in the possession claims space—end-to-end digitisation vindicating the rights of renters. That is just one example. We can import the same learnings into our criminal justice space, as well as make greater use of remote hearings and alleviate the particular pressures that exist in my hon. Friend’s part of the world, and in the rest of Kent, which this debate is all about. We know of the particular pressures not just in the criminal jurisdiction but in the civil jurisdiction in London and the south-east. The Government are working hard to alleviate pressures in both places.
The hon. Member for Eastbourne was right to talk about prevention, not just cure. It is right that when we look at demand coming into the system, we look at the whole of the societal pressures that lead to the increasing demand. That is why the Government have a policy, in relation to youth hubs, that is introducing exactly the sorts of services to which the hon. Member once contributed so much.
Reducing delays in all areas is vital. We will deliver once-in-a-generation reform of our courts, to deliver swifter justice for all and adequately tackle the Crown court backlog not just in Kent but right across the United Kingdom. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford again for raising this important issue for debate.