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Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts: Part 1.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. Despite the title of this debate—which I will immediately concede is less than exciting—it focuses on a serious problem with significant consequences. The criminal courts of England and Wales are under very significant strain. That is translating to very long delays from early hearings in criminal cases to the hearing of trials. I was at my local Crown court a couple of weeks ago and the delay there was at least 18 months. It is as bad or worse elsewhere.
That delay is not just an administrative problem; it has real, human consequences. It means a longer wait before a victim of crime or a witness in criminal proceedings can see the case resolved and move on with their lives. Of course, the longer it takes to get to trial, the harder it is to remember detail and to give the best evidence possible. For a defendant—and it is worth recalling that not every defendant is found guilty—the case continues to hang over their head along with, in some cases, the threat of potentially losing their liberty. A defendant in custody awaiting trial adds to the pressure on the prison population for longer than they should if the eventual outcome of their trial is acquittal or a non-custodial sentence. We can see that in the statistics: remand prisoners made up 11% of the prison population in 2018 but that figure was up to 20% in 2024.
There are other consequences of long periods on remand. Remand prisoners are not convicted so no work is done on their rehabilitation in prison. Time spent on remand counts towards an eventual prison sentence but spending longer on remand means a greater proportion of the eventual sentence—in some cases, the majority of the sentence that is ultimately handed down—is served without any rehabilitative work being done to reduce the likelihood of reoffending. Substantial periods on remand also mean that there are more cases where a custodial sentence is imposed at the end of it but the whole sentence has already been served on remand, so the offender is released immediately after the trial. That can be hard to understand and accept for victims and the public, who have to watch that offender walk free from court despite their conviction.
Long delays in the criminal courts should worry us all. They certainly worry the Government, who have commissioned Sir Brian Leveson, a very senior and experienced judge, to review the operation of the criminal courts and recommend improvements. Part 1 of his review was published on 18 June and deals with the policy changes that he believes may improve the situation. I have no doubt that Ministers will have been considering those recommendations carefully and will take up some or all of them, but we in Parliament should consider them carefully too. That is why I sought this debate.
I have worked with Sir Brian in a variety of roles and have huge respect for his insight and judgment. The report that he published is 378 pages long; I cannot do justice to all of it in this debate—you will be grateful to hear, Mr Efford—but I do want to say something about his analysis of the problem and some of his solutions.
First, I will discuss the problem and the reasons for it. Those interested only in political attack lines will always be able to find them, but this issue deserves deeper analysis. Of course more resources will be important, and Sir Brian makes that clear, but previous reductions in funding can be at least partly explained by periods of reduced demand. The number of cases received by the Crown courts fell, for example, during the nine years I was in government from 150,000 in 2010 to 102,000 in 2019. The open caseload, which is the number of cases begun in the Crown court but not yet completed, fell from 55,000 in 2014 to 33,000 in 2018, but it has increased significantly since, standing at a historical high of 75,000 in 2024. As Sir Brian set out in his review, there are many reasons for that.
It is true that the system has not yet entirely recovered from the covid pandemic, but the other reasons are more structural. Central among them is that the type of cases being heard matters as much as the overall number of cases. The criminal courts are now hearing a greater proportion of cases involving sexual offences or fraud, which are more complex and take longer to resolve, so the length of the average Crown court trial has doubled between 2001 and 2024. The complexity of trials has also been increased by the greater volume of digital evidence, including from mobile phones.
All of that leads Sir Brian to conclude that we cannot go on as we are, and I think he is right. We all know how difficult it will be for the Government to find significant extra resource for the criminal court system. Even if they could, it would not be enough to address the very different workload and ways of working that the system now deals with so, as Sir Brian urges us, we should look at structural change. As I said at the outset, his review makes many recommendations that I do not have time to discuss, but I hope that the Government and the Minister, who I am delighted to see in her place, will look carefully at his proposals to end release under investigation instead of bail, which I think is sensible, and the increased standardisation of out-of-court disposals.
I want to focus on Sir Brian’s recommendations in three areas. The first is how we can encourage guilty pleas, where they are appropriate, to be entered earlier. If a guilty plea is how a criminal case should and will be resolved, the earlier it is given the more quickly victims and witnesses can be reassured that they will not need to relive their experiences by giving evidence, and the more quickly valuable and scarce court time can be allocated to other cases, so that is a change worth pursuing.
Those of us who have practised in the criminal courts know that there is only so much we can do to persuade a guilty defendant to plead guilty—some will always hold out until the day of the trial in the hope that the witnesses against them fail to turn up; I am afraid that delays in hearing the trial make that more likely—but Sir Brian makes three recommendations in particular that might help. Those recommendations are that the discount on sentence for an early guilty plea should be increased from one third to 40%; judges should give defendants more information on what their sentence may be if a guilty plea is forthcoming; and the plea hearing should be delayed to allow defendants to receive fuller advice before entering a plea. I suspect that the first two will receive the most attention, but I believe the third may have the most effect.
Making sure that defendants know how much shorter their sentence may be if they plead guilty rather than are found guilty, and increasing that difference with bigger discounts for early guilty pleas, may well change some minds, but must not and is not intended to constitute inappropriate pressure to plead guilty when not guilty. Defence advocates, of course, have a clear professional duty to advise their clients not to plead guilty if they do not accept their guilt, but discussions between defendants and their advocates about the evidence and the law are very often constrained because they happen only at court on the morning of the trial. It is often that that truly restricts the prospects of realistic pleas at an earlier stage, so allowing more time for that advice to be given is vital.
Such advice has to be accompanied, though, by changes that will make it more likely for that extra time to be productively used. If, as I hope they will be, the Government are attracted to the idea of delaying plea hearings for that purpose, it will also be important to ensure that advocates are properly incentivised, including through fee structures, to conduct conferences with their clients in advance of the plea hearing. Where the client is in custody, allowing access to the client—preferably in person, but via video link if not—must also be made easier than it is now, or appropriate advice will not be delivered early so that appropriate pleas can be delivered early.
It is also worth saying again—these points have been made many times by many people, as the Minister knows—that early advice on the prosecution case and the available defences cannot be given if the prosecution evidence has not been served on the defence in time to allow it to be properly considered. Late disclosure by the prosecution remains a fundamental problem, as does the timely production of defendants in custody at court.
The second area of Sir Brian’s review I want to focus on is the proposed rebalancing of work between the Crown court and the magistrates court. It is important to recognise that, as Sir Brian points out, the bulk of criminal cases are dealt with by magistrates already—around 90%, in fact, with only 1% of criminal cases being resolved by jury trial. Nevertheless, because a magistrates court trial is both quicker and cheaper than a jury trial in the Crown court, it makes sense in resource terms to shift the balance further in the direction of magistrates where there would be no injustice in doing so.
Sir Brian suggests that that can be done in a number of ways. Some are fairly straightforward: for example, we could increase the financial threshold for trials of criminal damage cases in the magistrates court from £5,000 to £10,000. Of perhaps more significance from a policy perspective is the suggestion of removing the automatic right to appeal a magistrates court conviction in the Crown court and replacing it with a permission to appeal process, and that of removing the right to choose a jury trial altogether for offences with a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment or less. In the circumstances, I have no substantive objection to any of those proposals, but in relation to the last of them, I invite Ministers to consider the discrepancy it would create between, on the one hand, trials of offences for which sentences of up to two years’ imprisonment could be imposed taking place in magistrates courts and, on the other, sentencing powers for magistrates remaining limited to 12 months’ imprisonment, which Sir Brian does not seek to change.
I am sure that Ministers will also want to factor in the capacity of magistrates courts to do the extra work, as there is a backlog there too, and consider whether a neater way of rebalancing the caseload towards magistrates courts would be the reclassification of some offences as summary only. They will also want to factor in, of course, the need to ensure that lay magistrates have access to good-quality legal advice when hearing cases.
On changing access to jury trial, the important point is an obvious one, but one that is worth making for context. As things stand, not every criminal charge entitles a defendant to a jury trial. We already restrict the right to jury trial, so this debate is about moving the threshold for eligibility for jury trial, not about abandoning a principle of jury trials for all.
I should say that I have great faith in the jury system. I have sought to persuade juries for the prosecution and for the defence in Crown court trials, and I have heard many jury verdicts, and I have retained throughout my confidence that, in general terms, this is a good system for determining guilt or innocence. However, that does not mean that we should refuse to contemplate any change or to recognise the pressure on jury trials for some of the offences that occupy large amounts of court time.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I just wondered whether I might pose the fact that the backlog has been created and exacerbated by problems in the criminal justice system, and that it is certainly nothing to do with the time a jury trial takes to be completed. Jury trial has been statistically proven to be fairer to ethnic minorities and people who are more vulnerable. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman not therefore agree that jury trial is definitely the way we should go in some cases? I accept his point that not every case has the right to go to jury trial.
Sir Jeremy Wright
I understand the point the hon. Lady is making, and to be fair to Sir Brian, he is not suggesting that we remove jury trial in all cases; he is very much talking about a subset of cases in which he thinks it is worth restricting that right. However, she is right that we must balance the clear advantages of jury trials, in terms of the interests of justice, with some of the structural and organisational challenge the system undoubtedly faces. To go back to the first point I made, Sir Brian is clear that the current situation cannot persist for much longer without significant change. All the changes we might consider will have downsides as well as upsides, but we must be prepared to contemplate change of some sort.
The hon. Lady is also right that people have come to see jury trials as considerably advantageous in the delivery of justice, particularly for some of our fellow citizens. However, it is also right to recognise that although we cannot blame jury trial for all the mess we are in, jury trials do take longer than other trials. I am afraid that we will exacerbate the pressure on the criminal court system if we do not at least look carefully at the prospects for restricting those sorts of trials, in addition to other changes.
Tessa Munt
The point I would make, of course, is that a jury is free, and paid judges are not. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman have any observation to make about that? The cost is a problem, is it not?
Sir Jeremy Wright
The hon. Lady is right, and juries are cheap—that is undoubtedly the case—but they do not sit without a judge, and I am afraid that we pay the judge for a jury trial, just as we would for a judge-only trial. I do not think that the financial saving, in that sense, can be left out of account, and there is not much difference, in terms of what the judge is paid, whether they are hearing the case on their own or with a jury. The only difference may be that we will make better use of that judge, because the trial will complete more quickly, and they will be able to get on to other business more quickly. However, I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that Sir Brian’s proposals to change access to jury trials represent a distinct restriction of freedom for citizens facing trial, yet he does not offer convincing evidence that that will save an enormous amount of time or speed up the trial process, and that that lack of evidence causes concern to many practitioners?
Sir Jeremy Wright
Yes. My hon. Friend makes a really important point. Again, to be fair to Sir Brian, it is not within his capacity to do all the analysis necessary to follow through his recommendations and to understand quite what the effect on the system will be. However, I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. As I was about to say, we have to balance the advantages that Sir Brian sets out with the disadvantages that would undoubtedly arise from his proposals. It is hard to do that in an informed way if we do not know exactly what the resource benefits will be of implementing these proposals.
Let me come on to the third area of recommendations that I want to discuss, regarding the removal of a right to jury trial, particularly in complex fraud cases, where trials can take months and where, apart from anything else, the impact on the lives and jobs of jurors can be immense. As I have suggested, this is not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination, but I am not yet certain that it would be right to conduct all such trials without a jury.
Many who practise in this area, and some judges, continue to believe that juries can consider these cases thoroughly and fairly and reach appropriate verdicts, even when the evidence is complex; indeed, I have seen that for myself. The argument is made that these cases are really about dishonesty, and that it is the job of counsel and of the judge to make the issues and the evidence clear to a jury. All of those are reasonable arguments, and those of us who believe in the jury system instinctively baulk at the idea of restricting it. However, I go back to the central premise of this report: the system is under intolerable pressure, and something must be done about it.
If it can be established—this goes to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox)—that complex fraud trials are indeed the cause of much of that pressure and, crucially, that judge-only trials would help substantially to relieve it, then given the relatively even balance of arguments for and against this change, which have been made for decades, it is perhaps a least worst option worth considering.
Sir Brian’s proposal to allow most defendants to opt for a judge-only trial if they wish is of course much less controversial and well worth pursuing, as it does not inhibit the right to a jury trial if a defendant still wishes to have one. The only caveat is that we must avoid the complexity of allowing different defendants in the same case to have different types of trial. If all defendants in one trial cannot agree on a judge-only trial, I am afraid that all must be tried by a jury. Any other approach would lead to multiple trials, which could and should have been avoided because of their impact on witnesses, who would have to give evidence repeatedly, and because they would reduce or eliminate the benefit of judge-only trials in using up less court time.
As I said, there is too much in this review of the criminal courts for me to be able to talk about everything, and there are some important recommendations that I have not been able to mention—perhaps others will. I want to finish where I started, with the reason this review was commissioned and the inescapable context of it: our criminal courts are under incredible pressure, and there must be a policy response to relieve it. Otherwise, we may see the expectation of fair and swift justice, which underpins our society, erode or even fail. That is not something that we—Government or Parliament—can allow to happen. If Sir Brian Leveson’s proposals are not to be adopted, others must be. On that crucial question, I look forward to hearing what colleagues and the Minister have to say.
Several hon. Members rose—
Clive Efford (in the Chair)
I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate. I call the Chair of the Justice Committee, Andy Slaughter.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship this afternoon, Mr Efford. I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for securing this debate. As he says, the changes being proposed to the way in which the criminal courts operate are very significant, and it is right that we have the opportunity to debate them here. My contribution was to move the time of the Justice Committee to allow its members to take part today, and we therefore see a well-attended debate.
The latest figures show that the current open caseload for criminal cases in the Crown courts now stands at 78,329—more than double the 38,070 cases recorded in December 2019. If no action is taken, that number is projected to increase to between 99,000 and 114,000 by the end of March 2029. In response, the previous Lord Chancellor, on 12 December 2024, announced that she had asked Sir Brian Leveson to review the criminal courts to consider how to accelerate the hearing of cases. The “Independent Review of the Criminal Courts: Part I”, the subject of this debate, was published on 9 July 2025. The second part of the review will focus on the efficiency of the criminal justice system, and is due to be published later this year. The first part of the review proposes 45 recommendations. Sir Brian stresses that the package needs to be looked at as a whole and
“should not be approached as providing a ‘pick-n-mix’ series of options.”
In the interests of time, I will mention only the most radical and controversial of those proposals.
First, the review recommends an expansion in the use of out-of-court resolutions, noting that their use has fallen by 35% since 2015, from 328,000 to 212,000. Secondly, the review recommends removing the right to elect a Crown court trial for offences with a maximum sentence length of two years. It states that those offences form an obvious grouping, as they have been categorised by Parliament as the least serious of the either-way offences. The review identifies a pool of additional offences for removal of the right to elect, based on the average custodial sentence length they typically involve. It also recommends reclassifying some offences as summary only—in effect, removing the defendant’s right to elect and ensuring that such offences could be tried only in the magistrates court. The review proposes to select offences for reclassification based on whether the average custodial sentence length falls well within the magistrates’ sentencing power limit of 12 months. That requires—this picks up a point the right hon. and learned Gentleman made—reducing the maximum sentence for these offences to 12 months to align with the new maximum sentencing power for the magistrates court.
Thirdly, the review proposes the introduction of a dedicated Crown court bench division, comprising a Crown court judge and two magistrates, ensuring the retention of community participation, in the absence of a jury. Magistrates would have equal decision-making authority on evidence and sentencing, with matters of law reserved to the judge. The Crown court bench division would encompass the same sentencing powers as the Crown court, negating the need to commit cases for sentence. For either-way offences, allocation to the CCBD would be determined at the plea and trial preparation hearing, with cases likely to attract sentences of three years or less anticipated to be heard in this division. Responding to the review, Mark Beattie, chair of the Magistrates’ Association, noted that an extra 6,000 magistrates would be required to ensure that the CCBD runs successfully alongside maintaining capacity in the magistrates court.
Fourthly, the review provides recommendations to incentivise early resolutions in the Crown court: increasing the maximum reduction for early guilty pleas from 33% to 40%; making it mandatory for judges to offer advance sentence indications, allowing defendants greater clarity and confidence in entering a plea early; and establishing a pilot scheme to test whether delaying the pre-trial hearing allows better-informed plea decisions. Appearing before the Justice Committee in December 2024, the Director of Public Prosecutions stated that 70% of cases going through the Crown court eventually end up with guilty pleas, but in only 36% of cases are guilty pleas entered at the first substantive hearing. Fifthly and finally of the points that I want to address, the review recommends that serious and complex fraud cases should be tried by a judge alone, with eligible cases defined by hidden dishonesty or complexity outside the understanding of the general public.
The combined effect of the reforms would be to curtail a defendant’s right to trial by jury, and that has generated adverse comments from the legal profession and some commentators. These are very significant changes to the way the criminal courts operate. As to whether the review’s proposals would achieve their aim of speeding the trial process, it models three recommendations: the introduction of the Crown court bench division, the reclassification of some offences and the removal of the right to elect. Other recommendations made by the review in part 1 were not modelled, and any impact of those would be in addition to those savings. In combination, and with savings measured in Crown court sitting days, the modelled proposals suggest savings of 9,000 Crown court sitting days per annum through the diversion of cases to the magistrates court or the Crown court bench division.
Given that the Leveson review is the Ministry of Justice’s main play to reduce the Crown court backlog, it seems inevitable that it will go forward, and go forward as a package, as Sir Brian requests. Whether it will achieve its targets, and whether it will have the adverse effects on the administration of criminal justice predicted by the Law Society, the Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association in their briefings for this debate, we will find out. What is certain is that, by expressing the need to apply to the criminal justice system many of the innovations that have been proposed and rejected over the past several decades, it draws into sharp focus the parlous state of our criminal courts in 2025. Many of the proposals in Sir Brian’s report are not new; they have been debated and, on the whole, rejected over several decades. The question really—for the Government, but also for all of us—is whether, given the lamentable failure of the Crown courts at present to deal with cases in a timely manner and to see justice delivered, those are sacrifices worth making now.
Clive Efford (in the Chair)
If we are going to get everyone in, we will have to stick to about four minutes each. I am not going to put a hard time limit on at this stage, but please bear that in mind.
Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)
It is an honour to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. This independent review comes at a time when our criminal justice system is at breaking point. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for securing this debate. As a member of the criminal Bar, I know the importance that many barristers out there place on this debate.
We now know that Crown court trials could have a potential backlog of more than 100,000 cases by 2029. The review’s recognition of the need for significant reform is welcome, but restoring the criminal justice system cannot come at the expense of fairness, due process or the right to be tried by jury.
I understand, as it is currently set out, that the proposal to create a new Crown court bench division would allow select cases that carry a sentence of up to three years in prison to be heard without a jury. Under the proposals, it would be the judges, not the defendant, who decide where a case is handled, and who therefore hold the power to potentially change the entire trajectory of a criminal case. Unless there is forthcoming evidence to show that this change creates additional capacity without distorting judicial outcomes, we surely cannot consider such an idea.
The right to jury trial is, and should remain, a cornerstone of our justice system. For centuries it has served as a guarantee of public confidence and accountability. Any attempts to restrict or infringe upon that right should be approached with the utmost caution.
Before we consider surrendering our core principles of jurisprudence, we should first seek out efficiency reforms in part 2 of Leveson’s review and postpone any changes to jury trial until such changes have been fully implemented. At the very least, we need the Government to make reassurances that such changes would be reversed as soon as the backlogs are cleared, and to confirm their belief that trial by jury remains the best way of administering justice in this country.
In my view, removing trial by jury, even in complex or lengthy cases, risks undermining public trust, particularly among communities that already feel marginalised by the justice system. Non-jury trials should remain a measure of last resort rather than some administrative convenience.
I clearly believe that this is not the right path to follow. I fear that we are being made to consider watering down our justice system because the Government fail to understand that, even with reform, we will not be able to change the reality on the ground without proper investment. Creating a new court division will not in itself solve the backlog; it will merely shift the pressure from one part of the system to another.
Rather than sacrificing jury trials, we should be looking to solve things like the criminal legal aid system, which has been withering away thanks to years of chronic underfunding. Even with the Government’s recent £92 million commitment, more is required, especially if investment in one area comes at the expense of another.
Another key priority must be to reduce demand on the courts themselves—for example, introducing a rebuttable presumption that certain groups of offenders, such as first-time offenders or those suffering from mental ill health or substance misuse, should in appropriate cases be diverted from the criminal justice system at the outset. In those instances, out-of-court disposals could deliver justice more swiftly, more proportionately and without mounting pressures on an already overstretched system.
Finally, we cannot ignore the physical state of our buildings. Years of neglect have left our courts crumbling and have contributed directly to lost sitting days up and down the country.
The House will always support positive reforms that make key improvements to our justice, but reform must be principled, evidence-based and properly funded. That is the only way to clear our backlogs, and the only way to restore the criminal justice system to the essential and reliable public service that it ought to be.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for securing this debate. Sir Brian Leveson’s report—I have it as being 388 pages—begins with historical quotes, all of which roughly translate to the same thing: justice delayed is justice denied, as we have already heard in this debate. I want to speak specifically to a case in my constituency because I found it quite traumatic, and it speaks to the human impact of this issue.
A mother in my constituency wrote to me about her daughter’s case. Her daughter was a child sexual abuse survivor aged 11. She waited five years while her case was put back and back, five times, until it coincided with her GCSE exams. It was a cloud over her life for such a long time, not allowing her to move on, not letting her get on with her life. She was just waiting, and it impacted her during one of the most pivotal moments in a young person’s life. The perpetrator was found guilty, was given 10 months in prison and will serve nine months, but only after five years of that case hanging over that young woman’s head. It is indefensible, and I am so angry that our justice system could fail a young person—a young woman, a child—so completely. Her case is not isolated; it is one of many that can be replicated nationally.
The review makes it clear that the system is under intolerable strain. The number of publicly funded criminal barristers—those who handle serious cases like the one I described—fell by 11% between 2017 and 2021. Four out of five such barristers work over 50 hours a week, and one in three are actively seeking to leave the Bar. The problem could get worse. It is clear that serious mistakes were made by the previous Government. The victims of those mistakes have been members of the public and those who are most innocent in our communities. It is nowhere near good enough.
The report states that one cause of the crisis is the long-term funding constraints over many years. In positive news, I welcome our Government’s recent announcement that there will be more sitting days, with funding for an extra 1,000 legal days this year. That means we will get closer to clearing some of the backlog and getting victims justice. I am also pleased that the Government have stated that there is much more to do, recognising the generational shift that is needed and cannot wait. I look forward to the Government’s response to the review because I know that our Justice Secretary is passionately focused on getting that response right. In this debate, I wanted to stand up and say that my constituent’s daughter deserved better. Although we cannot change what has happened for the last number of years, we can fix the system that is failing people right now.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Efford. I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for securing this debate. Increasing delays in Crown court trials are a very real problem. They pose a problem for victims, witnesses and those defendants who are eventually acquitted. We have heard that remand prisoners now make up 20% of the prison population—a population that is at capacity and needs reducing. If we could speed up the rate at which Crown courts, and indeed magistrates courts, deal with cases, that would lead to a partial solution for our crowded prisons. I thank Sir Brian Leveson for his report; he makes interesting and important recommendations, but in the time available I will focus on one of Sir Brian’s proposals with which I disagree: curtailing access to jury trials.
I support the proposal to allow defendants to elect for trial by judge alone. I do not see any diminution in the rights of a citizen in that proposal. I am concerned at Sir Brian’s other proposals, which would reduce the defendant’s right to trial by jury. I regard that right as a fundamental freedom of our country. As parliamentarians, we should be very slow to limit it.
Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the jury trial system has evolved over time—it has been with us for centuries—and has changed intermittently over time: it looks very different now than it did in the 13th century. In the 19th century, civil adjudications were taken out of the jury trial system and our civil justice system is still extremely robust.
Sir Ashley Fox
The hon. Lady makes a good point, but before curtailing that restriction further I would want to be persuaded that there are very real benefits. I am afraid that I see none, or at least I see no evidence of any. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam pointed out, each of the trials under the new court that Sir Brian proposes would require a sitting judge and a sitting day. There is little evidence that removing the jury from that process will make a great deal of difference to the time it takes. In my view, therefore, the focus of the Ministry of Justice should be increasing the productivity and efficiency of our Courts Service.
The House of Commons Library produced a useful document, on page 17 of which we can see the Crown court caseload in England and Wales. The receipts and the disposals have risen only marginally since the pandemic, and yet the outstanding caseload continues to rise. I put it to the Minister that the reason for those delays is not the jury system—that is simply a misunderstanding. The problem is that the Courts Service is not working as efficiently as it should be. That might be partly due to failing buildings or computer systems, but I fear that in Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendation, we have a solution in search of a problem. There have always been certain judges and barristers who have never liked jury trials, and I am reluctant to accept this proposal by Sir Brian.
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for securing this important debate. As he said, we have serious and fundamental challenges in our criminal court system, and it is clear that only bold, radical action will overcome them.
There are lots of areas of the public realm on which the last 14 years of austerity had devastating impacts—the NHS, the police, our schools, and our asylum system—but I saw the impact of austerity on our court system most tangibly. As a barrister for 18 years before being elected last July, I saw the bruises inflicted by the wholesale neglect of our court system: leaking roofs, crumbling buildings and demoralised staff. I know many criminal barristers and solicitors who have walked away from criminal law because the failing and poorly resourced system was making them feel they could no longer deliver justice, which was what they went into the profession to do.
The Government inherited a record Crown court backlog. As of June 2025, the outstanding caseload stood at 78,329, as the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), has said. That is 78,329 individual injustices caused by the failure of the state to ensure that justice is done. I know that the Government are taking real practical steps to deal with that, and I strongly welcome the improved resourcing of criminal legal aid, with £92 million more per year for criminal legal aid solicitors, and the funding of a record-high allocation of 111,250 Crown court judicial sitting days this financial year.
It is obvious, however, that the demand in our criminal courts is still so high that the steps already taken by the Government will not be enough to address the outstanding backlog. That is why it is important that the Government asked Sir Brian Leveson to propose reforms to ensure that our court system can be fair, timely and efficient. This Government should not tolerate a situation—nor should any of us—where justice is delayed and denied to thousands of people every year.
I acknowledge the concerns that have been raised about Sir Brian Leveson’s proposal to restrict jury trials for certain either-way offences. Some have worried that removing a defendant’s right to elect trial by jury appears to diminish fundamental constitutional protections. I have sympathy for the point, raised by a colleague, that there is a need to maintain public trust in the judicial system, which could be undermined in the eyes of certain marginalised groups if this is not done correctly. But at present we have thousands of people who are being denied justice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) just told us in tragic detail, there are people who are being completely failed by our system, and we cannot stand by and let that happen.
As the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam said, this is about changing the threshold for jury trial, not removing it. I agree with his analysis that the availability of jury trial, given the situation we find ourselves in, must be balanced against the challenges that the system is facing as a whole. The proposed Crown court bench division represents reform that appears to preserve the fundamental standards of justice that we expect, while addressing the crisis threatening to collapse our entire court system.
Cases will still be tried by the same professional judges who currently oversee jury trials, sitting with two experienced magistrates. That maintains judicial independence and legal expertise, while the magistrates add lay participation. Importantly, the new division remains within the Crown court structure, ensuring that defendants retain access to the same qualified advocates, fee structures and procedural protections they would receive in a jury trial.
It is important that we maintain the standards of fairness that our judicial system has long guaranteed. I can see the time, and will end there.
Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. Intervention to fix the Crown court backlog is needed now. Without radical reform, things will only get worse; but in my submission this situation presents an opportunity to present the positive case for modernising our system.
The changing nature of crime is recognised by all agencies in the criminal justice system. This is an opportunity to change the criminal justice system so that it is fit for the modern day. The system has been modernised many times over many years. That is why we have the Crown court system in operation and no longer the courts of assize or quarter sessions, which made way in 1972. Later, we got rid of old-style committals for trial, so that witnesses did not have to give evidence twice. Those are the sorts of modernisation efforts that can improve the criminal justice system for the modern world. At this time, we have a key opportunity to both deal with this crisis and modernise the system.
I am conscious of time, so I will make a few brief observations from Sir Brian Leveson’s very thorough report. First, I ask the Minister to be cautious about what sorts of cases can be expanded into the domain of out-of-court resolutions and, in particular, the deferred prosecution scheme. It would not, for example, be suitable for domestic abuse cases, particularly as there is no requirement for the defendant to have an admission of guilt. We have to think about faith in the criminal justice system and the manipulative nature of domestic abusers, who often promise time and again to change before going back to their old ways. Furthermore, the use of bad character evidence often underpins a prosecution for domestic violence, and we would need to consider how a deferred prosecution might impact that.
We have heard about the removal of the right to elect for offences with a maximum sentence of two years. It would be imperative that the magistrates retained their power of committal for sentencing if they felt, having heard all of the evidence, that a sentence in excess of 12 months would be required.
The reclassification of offences is less attractive and more troublesome, because dropping some offences to summary-only would mean a maximum sentence of 12 months. The Sentencing Council is careful to ensure public and statutory consultations, so that the wider public and criminal justice professionals are consulted when it looks at sentencing guidelines, but this would effectively reduce maximum sentences for a number of offences. Careful consideration must be given to that.
Again, it would not be suitable for domestic violence or abuse cases to fall within that reclassification. Breaching a non-molestation order, which is one of the offences listed as potentially forming part of the reclassification, has a maximum sentence of five years. We would be reducing that down to 12 months, which would lead to a lot of concern from practitioners.
I will leave it there, but there is a lot more to be said and I look forward to future debates.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for securing this debate.
It is right that this House examines Sir Brian Leveson’s review with care before any legislation is brought forward. I spent many years at the Bar, as a prosecutor as well as a criminal defence lawyer, before becoming an MP. While an MP, I have served on the Justice Committee and for a number of years was shadow Minister for justice, prisons, probation and courts. During that time, I challenged Ministers at the Dispatch Box many times about the record delays to cases in the Crown court.
When the Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently asked the public which rights should be protected in a Bill of Rights, two things topped the list: the right to NHS care and the right to trial by jury—a constitutional safeguard rooted in public trust. Sir Brian’s report exposes the scale of the crisis: record delays, cases listed years into the future and justice slipping beyond reach. Yet in Bolton South and Walkden, as a result of the current Government’s expansion of court sitting days, we have been able to reduce some of the backlog.
Capacity is not just about buildings, however—it is about people. Not only juniors, but senior barristers are leaving criminal practice because the fee structure cannot sustain a career. Judicial shortages mean that we lack the judges, recorders and district judges we need to run additional courts. That has not happened by accident. It is the result of 14 years of Conservative Government political decisions on court closures, cuts to sitting days and erosion of legal aid.
Before contemplating such constitutional changes as limiting jury trials, we should act on the most basic recommendations in the review—for example, increasing sitting days now and using courts to their full capacity. If we want earlier guilty pleas, the defendant must have access to timely legal advice, which also means that the fee structure for payment must be re-examined.
There are many sensible proposals in the review, including support for criminal pupillages and improved case preparation, but they honestly cannot justify removing the right to a jury trial or curtailing the right to appeal, particularly when more than 40% of appeals from magistrates courts to the Crown court currently succeed. We cannot resolve delay by reducing scrutiny or by getting rid of jury trial, one of the foundations of our civilised society. I know that some changes have already been made, but jury trial is fundamental to our system. We need reform, but it must be to strengthen trust, not to weaken it. When justice fails, not only do individuals suffer, but confidence in our entire system is lost.
Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for this debate. He will be aware that there have been a number of debates on this salient issue here and in the other place. Nationally, the court backlog across England and Wales now exceeds 78,000. It is a problem that has been inherited, but we need to acknowledge it and face up to the challenge.
In my local area, Maidstone Crown court has 2,500 cases outstanding, while Canterbury has 1,000. I have met victims as well as those working on the frontline of the criminal justice system, and I acknowledge some operational challenges that I intend to raise today. Every single case we have heard from colleagues represents real people—real victims and defendants who are not getting their time in court. Defendants are suffering the concurrent mental health conditions of waiting for a sentence and victims are not getting redress.
As my colleague from the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), rightly said, if we do not tackle this issue, it is predicted to get worse, with 100,000 cases by 2030 if no changes are made. I welcome the Government’s announcements of an extra £92 million for legal aid so far this year and an additional 4,000 court sitting days, taking us to 111,000. That is a necessary step, but it is also right that we have commissioned Sir Brian Leveson, one of our most distinguished judges, to conduct a wholesale review of our criminal courts, and it is in an independent spirit that he has come forward with these guidelines.
There are 45 recommendations. I think it is eminently sensible that we look at out-of-court resolutions to a number of cases where the sentencing is below a certain threshold. The two-year threshold is sensible; it could be higher, but the Government will need to take a balanced approach on that when they respond to part 1 of the report.
I also think that the reclassification to summary-only offences, so that magistrates get more responsibility, is eminently sensible, because at the moment the number of referrals going into Crown courts is simply too high. The creation of a dedicated Crown court bench commission is a sensible next step; I look forward to seeing how that will work in practice, given that we have logistical and staff constraints within this sector at present. I understand that the recruitment of 6,000 extra staff might be required, which will be a challenge. The incentivising of early resolution through sentence reductions is also sensible—it is a practice we are already employing, but it can be expanded. Of course, all these suggestions will only reduce cases by 9,000 court sittings per annum on average, so it is right that we are speaking to the public about these issues and I look forward to the Government response.
I have one minute left. I have spoken to the Minister in previous Westminster Hall debates about my local courts in Kent. There are some operational issues as well, and I acknowledge some of the concerns raised by colleagues, including the increasing use of digital technologies in courts and the improvement in capital finance to improve court premises, some of which are falling apart, and to fix leaking roofs. I have also raised independently the movement of cases across artificial geographical boundaries, so that we can spread caseloads across other parts of the county and other regions. There must also be greater support, including greater human resources support, for justice offices and casework officers working in our court systems, so that we can get the cases through.
I will continue partnership work with the Government, but I welcome part 1 of Leveson’s report and I encourage Members to support it.
Clive Efford (in the Chair)
The Front Benchers have 10 minutes each and I intend to call the mover of the motion with a couple of minutes to sum up the debate.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
It is a pleasure, Mr Efford, to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) on securing this vital debate, on his knowledge and expertise of this subject, and on taking the time to read 378 pages of what was a gripping read.
Justice is a key pillar of our society, yet it rarely cuts through the noise or gets splashed on the front pages of the papers in the same way that our NHS does. Nevertheless, it is so important to have a functioning justice system when we need it, either as a victim or a defendant. I am also delighted to respond to this debate as the new spokesperson for justice for the Liberal Democrats and I look forward to working closely with the Government and His Majesty’s official Opposition on something that affects us all.
Sir Brian Leveson’s report into the criminal courts has proven insightful and a concerning necessity. Some 45 recommendations were made, with a goal of clearing the court backlog and enabling cases to be dealt with more quickly, which is a desire felt across the House.
As outlined by many hon. Members in the debate, our criminal courts are at a physical and operational breaking point. They are overburdened by an ever-expanding backlog of cases to hear and undermined by the deteriorating condition of our court estate. We also risk our criminal justice system becoming just a criminal system, because justice is being denied to victims up and down the country.
The average wait for a verdict in a Crown court now stands at 22 months, while the number of cases facing a delay of more than two years increased tenfold over the course of the last Parliament. We are hearing of cases being booked as far in advance as 2029. As of June this year, there was a backlog of over 78,000 cases awaiting hearing in the Crown courts. Given that the Ministry of Justice’s own public target is to reduce that figure to 53,000 by March next year, the current position is nothing short of abysmal.
Particularly concerning in this situation is the impact that delays are having on the delivery of justice. As my noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames has noted in the other place,
“evidence becomes less accurate with the passage of time.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 March 2025; Vol. 844, c. 1427.]
Delays reduce the willingness of witnesses to give evidence, or their ability to accurately recall the events that led to the trial, or even to relive harrowing events when they are keen just to move on with their lives.
The hon. Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) reminded us of the human toll by sharing the story of a constituent’s waiting five years for their day in court. That is totally unacceptable for that young woman and for the family supporting her. It can also be a huge strain on the mental health of all involved, and ultimately delays erode confidence in the justice system. It has been rightly said that justice delayed is justice denied. Both victims and defendants have a fundamental right to have their cases heard in a timely and fair manner—a right that, under the present circumstances, is simply not being upheld.
At the same time, the physical infrastructure of our court system continues to falter. A recent Law Society report revealed that two thirds of solicitors have experienced delayed court hearings due to the poor state of court buildings, as was highlighted by the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) and the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne). The problems range from crumbling structures to outdated technology. Both contribute to the already unsustainable backlog of cases. Those cases of professionals walking away from the judicial system tell a really sorry tale, when we need them more than ever.
Tessa Munt
To accentuate that point in particular, as I understand it we are waiting still for the independent body to make recommendations on barristers’ fees. That was a key commitment to ending the strike which has yet to be implemented. Would my hon. Friend agree that needs to be sorted out as well as the fees for expert witnesses, who will not work to legal aid rates? Both of those contribute to delays and to the fraying of the legal structure when people walk away, as she says.
Jess Brown-Fuller
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is really important to put that on record as something that also needs to be addressed, and all of those elements that contribute to exacerbating backlogs and professionals walking away from their service.
Types of and methods for presenting evidence have developed massively with new technology, but our courts have somehow served as time capsules and not kept up with innovation. The growing backlog in our criminal courts is also directly exacerbating the crisis of prison overcrowding. Remand populations continue to rise, now accounting for over one fifth of the entire prison population. That is not sustainable and nor is it just. The right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam made a very valid point that while people on remand are in prison awaiting trial, they are not having the rehabilitative programmes that could prevent them from reoffending.
We need to be clear where the fault for this lies. Years of poor governance have led to chronic under-investment in and neglect of our nation’s courts and justice infrastructure. The fact that one of the Labour Government’s first actions last year was to implement an emergency early release scheme to create space in our prisons is something that those on the Conservative Benches should apologise for. They ignored the crisis for far too long and left it for the incoming Government to clear up. It was under them that the backlog ballooned, that busy Crown courts such as the one in my constituency of Chichester were closed, and that staff shortages persisted.
The hole that our justice system is in is a deep and worrying one. It is therefore right that an independent, innovative and external review into the system by the well-respected Brian Leveson was commissioned. The first half of the report has provided some interesting ideas to address many of the issues outlined, and it will certainly create debate on what can be done. Responding to the headline suggestions—I am not going to cover all 45—about the Crown court bench division and reductions in trial by jury, the Liberal Democrats are deeply concerned by any impingement on the right of individuals to face trial by jury in a Crown court. That right is a cornerstone of the judicial process which, as has been set out in a number of reports, has been proven to be non-discriminatory and multiracial. That diversity cannot be guaranteed if trials are increasingly presided over by judges alone.
The Government’s efforts to implement the necessary reforms to the courts system to address the untenable backlog should be centred on the principle of ensuring that justice is delivered fairly and without discrimination. The removal of the right of individuals to trial by jury would undermine that aim, reducing the likelihood of both victims and defendants receiving a fair hearing, and therefore should be firmly opposed. As many Members acknowledged, including the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox), there is no robust argument that the removal of trial by jury would make a significant difference to the backlog. I wait to be convinced, if the Government decide to take that recommendation on board. That is not to say that the issues surrounding the processes of trial by jury should not be addressed.
As outlined in the Leveson report, the increasing length and complexity of trials is having a serious financial and mental impact on jurors. However, that must not be utilised as an argument to undermine the right to a fair trial. Instead, jurors must receive financial support and appropriate wellbeing services throughout proceedings. I have been contacted by many constituents who were keen to play their part in the justice system and do their jury service, but the financial burden, especially for those who were self-employed, had a huge impact on their livelihoods.
Liberal Democrats are also concerned about the potential impact of the proposed Crown court bench division on the workload of magistrates who would be drawn in to operate those courts. Attempts to mitigate the severe backlog in the Crown courts that exacerbate the backlog in the magistrates courts are clearly an undesirable outcome. The Magistrates Association states that implementing the recommendations would require an increase in the number of magistrates required. The creation of an intermediate court would therefore jeopardise magistrates’ current ability to deliver swift justice. That is particularly concerning for survivors of domestic abuse who already face distressing delays.
Tony Vaughan
As the hon. Lady seems to oppose a lot of the meat of the reforms, is there one that she can support to reduce the pressures on the system? That is a fundamental task that we all agree needs to be addressed.
Jess Brown-Fuller
I have picked out the main recommendations in the report that I cannot agree with. There are 45 recommendations in the Leveson report and some of them could go some way, but removing the key pillar of our justice system by removing the right to trial by jury is something that I cannot support.
Ayoub Khan
The Sentencing Council was headed by the late Lord Justice William Davis, who was a recorder at my local court in Birmingham. He made reference to the sentencing guidelines and the disparity in sentences highlighted in the probation report. We know that sentences were passed by judges. Given that judges have passed sentences that were disproportionate for certain communities, does the hon. Member agree that that is one of the reasons we must ensure jury trials remain?
Jess Brown-Fuller
I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I will bring my remarks to a close. Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to ask the Minister my questions, but I will get back to her on a suitable occasion.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Efford. I begin by warmly congratulating my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) on securing this important debate. He set out with characteristic thoughtfulness the context for today’s discussion: the pressures facing our criminal courts and the enormous impact on victims, as a number of Members pointed out, and the far-reaching recommendations in Sir Brian Leveson’s independent review of the criminal courts. My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right to say that the House should have a meaningful opportunity to examine the principles at stake and the implications of the reforms.
Turning to the Leveson review, I acknowledge the serious intent with which Sir Brian approached the task. His report contains thoughtful proposals: consistency in the use of out-of-court disposals; updating legal aid to better recognise work done at plea and trial preparation hearings, as has been pointed out; and changes to permission to appeal, giving more options for defendants to elect to have a judge-led trial. But several recommendations raised profound constitutional and practical concerns. Sir Brian proposes removing the right to elect to have a jury trial for some 220 offences and allowing more judge-only trials in the Crown court. He also recommends raising the sentence discount for an early guilty plea from one third to 40%. At the heart of this debate is a simple but serious problem. The approach to the problem is being tackled the wrong way round.
Sir Brian Leveson’s part 1 report focuses on radical reform proposals, as I have discussed, to do with jury trials, discounts for guilty pleas and creating a new Crown court bench division. Yet the efficiency review, part 2 of Sir Brian’s work, which will look at technology, workforce capacity, case progression and the better use of the court estate, has not even been published. We are being asked to consider endorsing fundamental structural change, including the curtailing of a centuries-old constitutional right, without seeing the full picture. The Government will struggle to build support for changes that should only be considered as a last resort, when they have not even set out the full range of options before us, and we cannot consider such a Bill in isolation. The proposals for early discounts for guilty pleas would sit alongside plans to let offenders serve only one third of their custodial sentences. What a mockery of justice that would make. In fact, the vast majority of what Sir Brian himself identifies as necessary to address the backlog can be achieved without altering the constitutional foundations of our courts. He is clear that we should focus on maximising sitting days, using the existing judiciary and estate to their full potential, and improving case management.
Those who have experience of Government—such as the sponsoring Member of this debate, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam—will recognise that there is a real risk that, in setting out to create a whole new Crown court bench division, as proposed in part 1, we would divert both ministerial and judicial energy away from the urgent task of improving and expanding the capacity that we already have. The Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), has highlighted that it will require some 6,000 more magistrates, a point also echoed by the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne).
Establishing new structures consumes time, money and management focus that should instead be directed towards using every courtroom and sitting day available to reduce the backlog that is paralysing the system. The backlog in the Crown court is now up 10% from when this Government took office just over a year ago. It has increased by 2% since March alone, when it first passed 75,000. Since Labour entered office in July 2024, the backlog has grown by more than 7,400 cases.
The former Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Birmingham Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), claimed that she had taken every possible measure to tackle the backlog, but the facts tell a very different story. In August 2024, the judiciary confirmed that they could sit for up to 113,000 days in 2024-25, yet the then Justice Secretary chose not to fund that capacity. Instead, she initially supported only an additional 500 sitting days in September and then a further 2,000 in December—a drip by drip increase in capacity.
The Government deliberately decided not to fund the courts to sit at full capacity, leaving 4,500 potential sitting days on the table. The Lady Chief Justice took the extraordinary step of telling the Justice Committee that the initial decision to limit Crown court sitting days had,
“frankly had a drastic effect across the board”
causing the “most distressing time” for victims and staff alike.
Even after facing this public criticism, the former Justice Secretary’s response was inadequate. In March 2025, the Ministry of Justice announced that the total would rise to 110,000 sitting days, still below the full 113,000 available. So much for every possible measure.
Sir Brian’s report is clear: the most important step is to add 20,000 extra sitting days per year, reaching 130,000. That would mean tens of thousands more victims finally receiving justice in a timely manner. It requires commitment across the system, but above all, leadership from Government. Instead of focusing on efficiency and capacity, Ministers risk being sidetracked by structural reform.
Part 2 of the review will show how to achieve efficiencies through technology, leadership and better use of the estate. Yet the Government seem intent on pressing ahead with reforms that water down key rights before those recommendations are even known. Whatever the Government might say, the Conservatives in office had to tackle the single biggest barrier to the delivery of justice when the pandemic hit. Labour Members would be taking the public for fools if they think they can convince them—given their record in government so far—that it would all have been different under them. Prior to the pandemic, we actually got the backlog down lower than the level it had been during Labour’s previous period in office.
We inherited a backlog of 47,000 cases and got that down to 39,000 before the pandemic hit. During the pandemic we kept jury trials running, a decision that the Labour Opposition supported at the time. We opened and extended 20 Nightingale courts, appointed 1,000 additional judges and raised the judicial retirement age. We also allocated £220 million for the modernisation and repair of court buildings and, crucially, removed the cap on Crown court sitting days—something Labour has still not done in its period in office.
In just 15 months under Labour, we have seen drift and indecision. Despite inheriting a recovery plan, Ministers have allowed the backlog to worsen, as I have outlined. Even Sir Brian acknowledges that curtailing jury trials would only at best have a limited effect on the backlog, as highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) and other Members, and in fact represents just 0.2% of the Department’s budget. That is a negligible return for an erosion of centuries of civic participation in justice.
The better course is clear: make full use of existing court capacity, build greater capacity, employ modern case management tools and strengthen the legal profession’s ability to progress cases swiftly, not rewrite our constitutional settlement. We will continue to make that case as any legislation is brought before this House.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Sarah Sackman)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Efford. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for securing a debate on this crucial subject, and for the typical expertise and measured, analytical tone that he brings to it. I thought, until the speech of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), that something of a consensus had broken out among us. To quote the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam, “something must be done about it”—I think we can all agree on that.
In the opening words of part 1 of Sir Brian Leveson’s review, he tells us that
“Criminal justice is in crisis.”
Indeed, it is. This Government inherited a record and rising courts backlog. As of June 2025, the open Crown court caseload stood at over 79,000 cases and it is rising. Other hon. Members have spoken to the human impact of that. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) for raising her constituent’s case. It is a graphic illustration of the impact of the Crown court backlog bequeathed to us by the previous Government, and particularly the impact of the appalling delays on victims.
The backlog not only places a psychological strain on victims, disrupting their ability to function, work and maintain relationships; it corrodes justice, because many of those victims—and indeed witnesses—pull out of the process, meaning that trials become ineffective. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam said, it also has an impact on defendants—those who are accused of a crime—as well as on our prisons, and on all those who serve within the system. It creates increasingly perverse incentives to exploit the delays and ultimately undermines the public’s confidence in justice. As many hon. Members have said, justice delayed is justice denied.
I reject the suggestion of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle that this Government have sat idly by. Far from it. We inherited a crisis, in both our prisons and our courts, and we have gripped that crisis. It is a fact that, as of today, the Government have added record, historic numbers of sitting days for our courts: 5,000 sitting days more than the number allocated by the previous Government. As other hon. Members have pointed out, we have invested in the workforce crucial to running our criminal courts, and in our solicitors, with an additional £92 million in legal aid on top of a £24 million investment in our duty solicitors. We also, of course, commissioned Sir Brian Leveson, one of our greatest jurists, to undertake his review. If the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle had bothered to read beyond the first couple of paragraphs of the 388-page report—
Sarah Sackman
I will conclude my point, then give way.
Sir Brian tells us that “greater financial investment”—which by the way, the Government have already begun to make—
“on its own, without systemic reform, cannot solve this crisis.”
That is a premise that the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam set out in his remarks, and it is absolutely right. We cannot sit our way out of this crisis. Of course, additional sitting days are part of the solution but, as Sir Brian Leveson and his team have told us, greater financial investment—namely sitting days on their own, without systemic reform—cannot solve the crisis. The Government will heed that lesson.
Dr Mullan
Just for information, I have read the whole report and it does not do the Minister justice, given her usual, sensible approach, to suggest that the fact I and many other hon. Members, including some in her own party, do not agree with her means that we have not read the report.
Sarah Sackman
I am delighted to hear that the hon. Member has read the report. I was not seeking to politicise the discussion. It sounded like, in many respects—other than the issue of jury trials, to which I will turn in due course—there had been an outbreak of consensus that something needed to be done. I want to draw attention to the central premise of Sir Brian Leveson’s report: that, in and of itself, greater financial investment—which of course is a necessary ingredient—will be insufficient to dig our way out of this crisis.
Grip is needed, and it is grip that the Government are showing. Three strands are required. One is investment. That is a question of the number of sitting days. As I said, we are setting record numbers of sitting days. That requires investment in our workforce and, as other hon. Members have pointed out, investment in the infrastructure of justice—investment in the court estate.
Sarah Sackman
I will give way in a moment; allow me to finish this point.
The second strand is modernisation. While we await part 2 of Brian Leveson’s report, His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service is undertaking modernisation and efficiency measures. The adoption of technology and the increased use of video hearings, which I witnessed on a visit to Kingston Crown court last week, are enabling us to realise some of those productivity benefits, but we need to go further and faster. I look forward to seeing what Sir Brian recommends in the second part of his review. We need investment and modernisation, but also, as I said, fundamental, once-in-a-generation structural reform to ensure that we progress cases quickly and more proportionately.
A number of hon. Members have outlined the variety of ways in Sir Brian’s holistic package in which we may reduce delays in the Crown court, retaining more cases in lower courts—where 90% of criminal cases are now heard without a jury—and also looking at how we might divert demand away from the system in the first place through making greater use of out-of-court disposals. There is also a proposal for a new bench division in the Crown court jurisdiction.
I understand and take heed of the contributions of a number of hon. Members—my hon. Friends the Members for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) and for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi), and the hon. Members for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan), for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox), for Bexhill and Battle and for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller). All of them rightly expressed an admiration for jury trials and a concern that they remain a cornerstone of our legal culture and British justice. I can reassure hon. Members that the jury trial will remain a cornerstone of British justice for the most serious crimes.
The essay question, as it were, that we have set ourselves and Sir Brian is: how do we deal with more cases more quickly and proportionately, so that we can squarely look the victim my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford referred to in the eye and say, “We did everything within our gift to reduce the delays”? Timeliness is an essential ingredient of justice. We can all agree that the state’s obligation is to deliver a fair trial. It is not a right to a jury trial; it is a right to a fair trial, and timeliness is a key ingredient in that.
Sir Ashley Fox
Has the Minister’s Department done any analysis of how much time would be saved by adopting Sir Brian’s proposals on jury trials, and if so, what was the result?
Clive Efford (in the Chair)
Before the Minister answers, please bear in mind that I will be looking to bring in Jeremy Wright at 5.58 pm.
Sarah Sackman
I certainly will, Mr Efford.
Sir Brian Leveson proposed the Crown court bench division idea based on consultation with experts, members of the profession and the judiciary. He makes the point that the deliberation of 12 members of a jury is less efficient than the deliberation of an individual judge who has heard the evidence, because it involves dealing with one person. As I understand it, the modelling analysis undertaken to support Sir Brian’s report suggests a time saving in the region of 20% to 30%. Before such a proposal could be adopted, we would need to test that and understand whether that finding is robust, but as the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam said, it stands to reason. In comparative criminal jurisdictions that have either one judge or a bench of three, cases are processed and progressed faster than under the current, jury trial system.
Ultimately, what we are looking to achieve is to ensure a fair trial for every person who comes into the criminal process. That is what we must guarantee, and we support Sir Brian’s overarching principles for reform. Plainly, we have to carefully consider each and every one of those proposals and all 388 pages before we provide our response in due course.
Sir Jeremy Wright
As the Minister says, she will have to consider each of Sir Brian’s proposals, although she will know that he says that they are to be taken as a “package” and not with a “pick-n-mix” approach. Is that something that the Government accept? Will they take the view that it is either all of Sir Brian’s recommendations or none of them, or not?
Sarah Sackman
As the right hon. and learned Member laid out, and as Sir Brian laid out, it is a highly complex system with lots of moving parts. The overall objective is to bear down on the backlog and reduce these delays. We must consider the totality of Sir Brian’s recommendations in careful detail and establish whether they do enough to achieve that overall objective. If we think they do not achieve that objective, it will be necessary to consider other ways to reduce the backlog.
We will put forward a holistic package, but I will not comment at this stage on whether it will include the entirety of these recommendations. That is something we will have to consider very carefully. Ultimately, as I said, our objective is to deliver swifter justice for victims and bear down on the backlog. How we achieve that has to be led by the evidence, and this is an important component of that, which is why I answered the hon. Member for Bridgwater in the way that I did.
Ayoub Khan
The Minister rightly points out that we need investment, modernisation and structural reform, but one of the biggest elephants in the room is prosecution and defence barristers. We have seen a very low take-up of that profession because graduates do not feel that the income, which can be below the national minimum wage, is sufficient. We have also seen a lot of people leave the profession, so although we can have all these sitting days, we simply do not have enough counsel in Crown court to deal with trials. What does the Minister have to say about that?
Sarah Sackman
The hon. Member is absolutely right. As I said, the workforce is key—they are delivering a vital, frontline public service. We need to invest not just in the barristers, but in the rest of the staff who run our courts every single day, and that is why we have made a record investment in criminal legal aid.
The hon. Member is right: when others speak about empty courtrooms and sitting days, we have to look at the capacity of the whole system. It is not simply a question of adding judicial time; it is about making sure that the system has enough capacity—enough court staff, solicitors, prosecutors and defence lawyers—to meet the demand coming in. We must make it an investment that ensures that this is an attractive profession and one that can meet the public’s needs.
Sarah Sackman
I am content to give way, but I am conscious of time, so this may have to be the last intervention.
Tessa Munt
I want the Minister to respond to the point about experts who will not or cannot work to legal aid rates and the legal funding that is not granted in time, which causes such a long delay when defence solicitors cannot get the access they need to experts.
Sarah Sackman
I am happy to follow up with the hon. Member on that.
In short, this Government believe that once-in-a-generation reform is necessary to address the crisis in our courts. Everyone agrees that something needs to be done, and we will do what it takes, but we also know that we need to get it right. That is why we are taking the time to carefully consider Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations and why I welcome today’s debate. I welcome the views and insights of hon. Members across the House, as we consider necessary reforms to save our justice system.
Sir Jeremy Wright
I thank all Members who have contributed to this debate. In particular, I thank the Chair of the Justice Committee for rearranging his Committee’s diaries so that its members could do so. This has, I hope, been a constructive debate, not least for the Minister to add to her considerations. I hope she will forgive the damage I do to her career prospects by saying that I am glad she is in a position to do it, and I know that she will approach it with the requisite seriousness that the process demands.
The Minister is right to say that there is a degree of consensus—we all agree there is a problem. As she knows, the curse of this place is that we tend to identify a problem and ask an expert to help us find a solution, but when they do so, we do not always have the courage to implement the solutions that are put to us.
I hope that we find that courage, because it may be that some of these solutions are controversial and have significant downsides, but the burning platform that Sir Brian has described is undoubtedly there. Therefore, we must act and must find a way of doing so with as much consensus as possible, and I know that is the approach that the Government will seek to take over the coming weeks.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts: Part 1.